Market research through social listening is acquiring data by better gauging your consumers’ demands, likes, and dislikes.
Once you have a firm idea about your customers’ preferences, it becomes easier to cater to them. You can work on your products and services with the information you obtain. The obvious advantages of utilizing this process are higher sales and increased revenue.
Social media is the medium that helps with market research about various products and gives access to the public’s unsolicited opinions. Social listening can help you accumulate huge chunks of helpful information without incurring costs.
Let’s dive into some key ways your brand can benefit from it.
Get an Honest Opinion of Your Client’s Customers
When you’re inquiring your client about their brand, take whatever they say with a grain of salt. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that they’re not honest, but a business views itself differently from others.
There is a strong possibility that your client’s perspective is not aligning with their customer’s reality. Let us break it down for you.
For instance, your client’s firm just launched a product they worked on for years. They might think that this is their most significant selling point and have a lot of confidence in its sales potential. However, to customers, it may be of different value.
In an unfortunate case, your client might not receive the review they expected from the consumers from the beginning. It happens when you’re too busy agreeing with everything your client suggests. Don’t tell them what they want to hear. Tell them the truth.
In their feedback, the customers are going, so your client will be hit with the truth bomb one day or the other. So, please gauge the customers’ opinions through mediums like social media.
Re-evaluate Clients’ Strengths and Weaknesses
You must do your homework and find out your client’s natural strengths and weaknesses. It may be challenging to objectively and correctly point those out in the world. That is why you are never advised to ask your client this question directly.
Use customers’ opinions on social media to discover what they gravitate towards and oppose.
Quantitative Data and Qualitative Options
Use social proof from listening and monitoring to add more context to your qualitative data. For this example, let’s say your client has a fashion outlet. Qualitative data can tell you how many people choose their brand over another and the most popular markets and styles.
Data in hard form is fundamental to executing any PR strategy. However, while acquiring numbers and statistics is helpful, it’s insufficient. They don’t show the complete picture. They are great for answering the ‘what’ but not the ‘why’ or ‘how.’
Utilize social proof by carefully listening and observing to add context to your qualitative data. It would be best to supplement quantitative with qualitative data to show how many customers opt for your client’s brand over other competitors in the industry. For example, if your client is a fashion retailer, qualitative data can tell you what exactly sells, the prevalent market trends, and more.
But what is the extent to which this will facilitate in planning a marketing campaign?
Well, there is a lack of information on this. It would help if you determined why customers instead select outfits your client sells over others. It could be the price, the chicness, or perhaps the quality of the cloth. If you conflate them and assume that it’s quality selling instead of price when it’s the opposite, you could do more harm than good for your campaign.
Supplementing your market data with reviews and opinions derived from social listening is essential to understand your client’s position in the industry.
You Need to Know how Competitors in the Industry are Performing
Once again, listen to everything your client says, but be aware that all businesses operate with rose-colored glasses on. So, you have to tweak and adjust your client’s perspective to align it with the customer’s viewpoint.
You can only achieve this once you understand how the competitors are doing in the industry.
It is usual for a brand to view its competitor negatively compared to an objective individual. That is why you need to resort to social listening and get opinions.
Additional trusted sources of information include those who are a part of the industry, the press, and customers.
Find New Campaign Ideas
After finishing collecting all the relevant information and market research, you have the green light to get started with the actual fun part! Start planning out campaigns and pitching outlets, among multiple other things.
Wouldn’t it be cool to come up with diverse ideas for the campaign even before finalizing the client you will work with?
It’s better to be prepared beforehand and have an idea than get to this part after you’ve bagged the client. Do your homework and conduct extensive research to learn about the industry your client belongs to. It will make the process of brainstorming ideas much easier for you.
Please don’t waste time until it’s time to execute the campaign planning strategy. Be updated with the current popular trends, news angles, and hot affairs in the industry from the very get-go. It will help you save a lot of time, which could be helpful later when developing the campaign.
Bottom Line
Operating as an efficient agency, you must establish open and direct communication with your client. However, you must understand they’ve hired you to fulfill their company’s objective. To help them achieve their goal, you may have to acquire information from other sources and double-check research, sometimes even without taking them into confidence first.
Initially, your client may not understand why you didn’t reach out to them directly, but once you present them with all the valuable information you’ve obtained, they’ll be grateful that they put you in charge.
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