Businesses always look to enhance their sales and profits. For this, it is important for them to adopt techniques and strategies that can help them have better reach, more market share, and enhanced customer service. Over the years, businesses, brands, and marketers have devised ways that can help them gain an edge over their competitors. An emerging trend is the improvement of brand messaging with social listening. Recent reports show that at least 51% of leading marketers worldwide use social listening platforms to gain more information about their customers.
What does Social Listening Entail?
Put simply, social listening involves two steps –
- Gathering data related to your products, brand, keywords, and competitors on social media
- Analyzing the obtained data to improve brand messaging, customer satisfaction, product and service quality, and more
Importance of Social Listening for Brands and Businesses
A killer digital marketing technique is the only way to increase revenue in times like these when everyone’s hooked to the Internet. Everyone is ready to jump on the bandwagon of success. But it is trying out new and improved techniques that can put your brand in a better position.
Closely following ‘social’ inputs about your products and brand as well as your competitors will do just that. You can use the information acquired to modify and improve the message that you send across to your audience. Regular incorporation of customer feedback and inputs into your brand message will enhance customer satisfaction and engagement. A brand that listens to what its customers have to say will make a larger revenue than one that doesn’t.
How to Improve Brand Messaging with Social Listening?
For brands willing to gain an edge over competitors, social listening is vital. There are many ways in which social listening can help build better brand messaging.
Engage Customers
The customer is King. Keeping customers happy is vital to success in business. And that doesn’t end with delivering a great product. You need to interact with your customers as often as possible. Social listening helps you know your customers better and their interests. This makes it easier for you to interact with them. When you know the demographics you are targeting and their interests you can speak their language. People like it when a brand takes out time to interact with its customers. It improves goodwill and builds a loyal customer base.
Handle Crises
Not all talk on social media will be positive. If customers are dissatisfied or unhappy with a brand or product, they may discuss the same on social media. You must track these hashtags, mentions, etc. to know the pain points. In case of a crisis, you can use social listening to initiate damage control procedures for your brand or product. Brands like Nike, Johnson & Johnson, and others have done a great job at addressing PR disasters.
The key here is to communicate and let users know that the crisis was unintentional. Make them believe that you are committed to delivering the best and will learn from your mistakes.
Product Appreciation
No product or service is perfect. Aiming for perfection can become a wild goose chase. What you need is a product that fulfills your customer’s requirements and puts your product ahead of your competitors. So, when you have a product/service in the market, you must watch out for what your customers have to say about it.
If they do not like a particular product or service or want some changes, they will share it with their friends and acquaintances. Follow mentions and hashtags on social media to get an idea about the pitfalls of your product or service. Consumer insights are one of the most powerful R&D tools. You can use these insights to improve the product/service and deliver a better customer experience.
Competitor analysis
Analyzing your products and services isn’t enough in a competitive market. You have got to know how your competitors are doing and what their pain points are. If you can address the problems that customers are facing with their product, you can easily offer an improved product to customers. Your existing customers will appreciate this and it will also be welcomed by users unhappy with your competitors’ products. In short, you gain a better market share when you use social listening.
Being a leader in the market isn’t easy, especially when the competition is at its peak. You have got to be proactive. Pay heed to your brand and product mentions on social media. It only benefits your business operations. Developing your brand messaging with social listening will help you outrank your competition and expand your market share.