Are Consumer Insights Really Important?

Understanding consumer behavior holds the key to building the right marketing strategy. If you do not know what your customers want, it would be impossible to market your product or service as a first choice or as a solution to their problems. Over the years, digital marketers have devised many ways to track and record consumer behavior. This includes surveys, customer reviews, keyword research, analytics, and more. However, with time, one technique has stood out amongst all. Real-time consumer insights have emerged as an effective way to understand changing consumer behavior.

Why is it Important to Understand Changing Consumer Behavior?

Digital marketing isn’t as easy as it seems. Hundreds of brands are vying for a share of the pie at the same time. This makes it extremely difficult to get a brand noticed by its targeted audience. Naturally, brands as well as marketers, try a variety of promotional techniques. This includes paid ads, SEO, SMM, video marketing, and more. They try to promote themselves on every possible platform and in every possible way. However, success often remains elusive despite efforts. Budget constraints add to the pain.

In such a situation, it is important to pay attention to consumer behavior. Understanding it right can help create a marketing strategy that actually works. This is exactly where insights come into play. They tell you where most of your target audience is and what they are looking to buy. The data collected from insights paves the way for marketing campaigns with razor-sharp targeting. This reduces unnecessary spend on digital marketing and offers better ROI to businesses. Moreover, it is highly effective in reaching out to leads that will convert to sales.

What Do Consumer Insights Tell Us?

With changing times, consumer behavior has also changed. People are using new and improved technology-driven ways to search for products and services. Gone are the days when product searches were limited to a desktop or a laptop. The new generation as well as the older ones prefer to shop at the edge. For instance, there has been a rise in the use of third party digital touch points for shopping. This includes use of retail websites, direct-to-consumer platforms, social media, voice search, gaming consoles, chat platforms, and others. A Salesforce report says that 13% of Gen Z respondents make use of Alexa or Google assistant to place orders with Amazon. This ‘shopping at the edge’ customer behavior necessitates a change of marketing techniques.

Traditionally, brands meet ideal customers at places where they spend their time. And with the new norm, new-age shoppers are on their favourite platforms. It is important to reach potential customers via these media. People are more likely to purchase a product available on their favorite platform than going elsewhere. This also allows businesses to restrict their campaigns to platforms their users are on rather than beating about the bush. It saves time and money and helps create an effective campaign.

Can Social Listening Help?

At a time when businesses are running the rat race, you must make your brand stand out. Following a broader approach in your marketing campaigns is just a waste of money and time. Results are just peanuts. What you need is a personalized approach to your audience. Data suggests that consumers are keener to purchase from brands that personalize their shopping experience. Social listening tools help you gather real-time consumer insights which help you decode your target audience to the bits. With such data available, you can reach customers where they want and provide them with what they want. It’s also called being at the right place at the right time!

Providing Digital Customer Service in the Online World

Good customer service is of utmost importance to any business. It is impossible for a business, big or small, to make headway without offering good customer service. That said, the face of customer service is rapidly changing. Customers are more interested in buying products and availing services from the comfort of their home or on the go. And the same is the case when it comes to availing customer service. People relied on digital customer service more than ever during the lockdown. A report by Harvard shows that the number of “tough customer calls” nearly doubled during this period. This presents an opportunity for companies to look with a magnifying glass into the problems arising and to fix them without any delay.

Why is Digital Customer Service Important Today?

At a time when the entire world is going digital, sticking to traditional ways of customer care can become a drawback. A switch to digital customer service can be beneficial for your business in many ways, the primary ones being:

i. Customer Convenience

Customer satisfaction is essential for growth. Offering the best product or service to your customer isn’t everything. You must also guarantee customer convenience, both pre and post-sales. The best way to do so is to build an experience that shows your customer how much you care. This could involve offering pre and post-sales assistance. By answering queries and solving problems digitally, you are not forcing your customer to visit your physical store.

ii.Timeliness

Customer service is quite time-sensitive. You cannot expect your customer to wait for days to have their queries answered and problems solved. Today people are eager to get answers to their questions immediately. A physical customer support system cannot cater to that. Studies have shown that an e-care system allows the prompt and timely solution of customer support issues. Customers can have access to support any time they want. Moreover, quick responses create a better customer experience and help retain old customers and gain new ones.

iii. Cost-Effectiveness

By implementing a digital care system, businesses can also cut down on customer support costs. They can reduce several overheads. This includes physical customer care centers, unnecessary staffing at these centers, power bills, and more. A few employees can handle the queries/mentions dropping in. This reduces staffing problems. Using digital chat boxes, community forums, social listening tools, etc. can make it easier to manage customer support with just a small team.

How to Use Social Listening to Offer Digital Customer Service?

Of the many ways that businesses can use to offer e-care, social media is, for sure, an important one. Social media is not only important for business marketing but customer service as well. Social media users are on the rise. Along with that, the number of people who voice their complaints on various social media platforms has increased. Reports show that more people prefer to receive customer service over social media. As such, social listening has become important for customer service, now more than ever.

With social listening, businesses and brands can track what customers are talking about. This helps gain information about their brand’s performance on various social platforms. This will include posts, tweets, comments, @mentions, hashtags, etc. Monitoring these can help businesses know what people are complaining about or are unsatisfied with. This data can, then, be used to redress problems customers are facing. This proactive approach to customer service on a platform where the majority of the audience is present can go a long way in ensuring a better brand reputation.

Customer behavior has changed a lot in the last decade. Following traditional methods alone can drag you back in the race against your competition. That is why it makes sense to upgrade your physical customer service to a digital one. You may need some time to shift to digital customer service, but tools like Auris make the transition easier.

How to Understand Today’s Buyers?

Buyer personas basically describe the attributes of an ideal customer for your product or service. Factors like age, buying habits, needs, likes, and dislikes help describe who your ideal customer is. And every entrepreneur has a fairly good idea of who their target audience is. But in today’s world of savvy customers, you can never be too sure. This could mean that you are missing out on an important and substantial chunk of prospective customers. Here’s how you can begin to build your buyer persona, after analyzing and understanding today’s buyers.

Why is it Important to Understand Today’s Buyers?

The sole aim of every business is to grow and become successful. And when has any business been successful without catering to the needs of their public? This makes it important, if not crucial to track and understand the shifts in consumer behavior in the recent past.

And mind you, there has been a significant change! The younger generation, for example, has abandoned the use of print media quite unlike their predecessors. Broadcasting on television is also losing its audience. Facebook says that in the US today, a person spends 60 minutes on an average on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.

Major companies have shifted their focus to studying shifts in consumer behavior and they are relying primarily on:

Real-time insights from social media and other platforms to inform their campaigns.
Deploying modern digital marketing techniques to long-term relationships with consumers.
Gathering real-time feedback from customers.

The Process to Understand Your Potential Customer

To understand today’s buyers companies rely heavily on what these consumers have to say. The insights come directly from the horse’s mouth. And over the past, there have been many techniques for such market research. Some of these traditional methods include:

Focus Groups: Groups of people are assembled to share their opinions on a product or service.
Surveys: Forms with questions and prompts, served to existing or potential customers to gain insightful responses.
Face-to-Face Interviews: A set of questions asked in an interview format to customers and the answers recorded.

And though most of these techniques have worked in the past, they still have a lot of limitations.

The major limitations include:

The process is time-consuming and slow.
The use of data from past experiences renders the data outdated soon after the process is completed.
True representation might be a problem as the interviewee may feel uncomfortable about giving negative feedback face-to-face or in the presence of a group.

Use of Real-Time Insights

To understand today’s modern consumers you need more modern techniques. AI tools like social listening help you track real-time interactions happening in the online world. And the reason why this procedure is working successfully is that consumers today post on social media. Consumers post about their experiences, consume product-related ads and interact with brands online. Tracking all this information gives you a complete picture of what your target audience likes and dislikes.

The two main advantages of real-time listening:

It is time-efficient as it happens in real-time so the data does not go obsolete.
The data is available on a global scale or can be made to zero in on a specific location/industry/demography etc.

Social media experts have been using such information for a long. And rightly so, because they know the value that can be derived. Social listening tools aren’t just a means to gain real-time customer feedback. It allows you to track potential threats, brand sentiment, track competitors et cetera. And for a true marketer, a tool delivering all these features is a worthy investment.

How did Epic Games Use Social Insights for Fortnite?

The gaming industry has grown phenomenally in the last decade. Popular gaming brands like Gameloft, Ubisoft, Tencent, EA, etc. have created generations of games for their patrons. But Nintendo held the top position as the most popular gaming brand. This changed in recent times when Epic Games usurped it. Epic Games has had a long journey in the industry. But the key to their huge demand lies in the launch of their game Fortnite and the gaming engine Unreal. This success is neither a coincidence nor the result of a pandemic-driven behavioral change. The reason behind this success is the use of social insights in business strategies.

How Social Insights Helped Epic Games Gain New Business?

Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games, believed that virtual reality was the next big thing. This idea led to Epic Games initiating research that used insights from consumers and social media. These insights were used to reach the conclusion that people are looking for innovative, immersive experiences when gaming. And that led to the launch of Fortnite, a game that got listed at the top within a few days of its launch.

Popular games like Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Dota, and Fifa have always targeted hardcore gamers. But Fortnite is a class apart. As a free game, it appeals to gaming enthusiasts. What sets it apart is its inbuilt social platform. It caters to the needs of casual gamers and others interested in human connection.

Fortnite’s Strong Social Connect

Fortnite may not be your regular social media platform. Yet it amassed more than 350 million users by May 2020. A big section of this user base is young gamers who love how Fortnite punches a variety of features on a single platform. From hanging out with friends to watching events and videos, youngsters spend nearly one-fourth of their free time on Fortnite.

What made this possible was:

The incorporation of insights from various social platforms about user requirements, likes, preferences, and more.
Epic Games realized the gaming industry could grow if it didn’t restrict itself to hardcore game lovers.

In line with this understanding, Epic Games collaborated with Marvel as well as Ghostbusters to incorporate popular pop culture into their gaming world. This allowed users to better connect with what they like and turned Epic Games into a favorite overnight.

Proper research and consumer insights play a crucial role in any marketing strategy. The right use of it allows marketers and businesses to form a strong bond with their customers. Social insights obtained from various media platforms can tell you more about what users feel about your brand or your competitors. It also gives you an idea of what changes or new features they are looking for in a product or service.

Businesses can tap into this knowledge to create products/services that cater to the demands of the customers. This is the best way to evolve and expand your business to make sure that you are still relevant to your target audience. Social insights also help build business plans aimed for the future. Astounding success stories like that of Epic Games make it clear that businesses should pay more attention to insights from various social media platforms to give their audience what they desire most.

How did Stella Artois use Consumer Insights to Beat their Competitor?

Stella Artois, the Belgian pilsner, is a widely popular high-end brand across the world. For centuries, Stella Artois has been synonymous with class, taste, and luxury. The brand has enjoyed patronage from loyal customers worldwide. But in recent years, there has been a shift in the paradigm. Consumer insights revealed that material possessions aren’t the only luxury that people are after. It is now more about the experience that people can share with their friends, family, and acquaintances.

Marketers at Stella Artois realized that the modern generation wasn’t only interested in material luxury. What mattered more was the quality of time they spent with people. People were ready to pay more for non-materialistic luxury even if it was for a short period. This made the marketing team at Stella Artois understand that it was time to change with a changing worldview.

How did Consumer Insights help Stella Artois Solve their Problem?

With the changing scenario in the beer luxury market, Stella Artois took time out to figure out how consumer values have changed. Their ‘Perfection has its price’ campaign was extremely popular in the 80s and 90s but had lost its relevance over the years. It was time to change and Stella Artois was game.

Looking upon this as the age of social media, Stella Artois took a leap of faith. Customer insights helped Stella Artois to understand the changing needs of modern people. Experimenting with new things and adopting new technologies was the key to stay relevant in the present times.

True to this insight, Stella launched their ‘Host Beautifully’ and ‘Give Beautifully’ campaigns. Stella partnered with John Legend for their Host Beautifully campaign. The famous musician shared A-Z tips on hosting. But that’s not all. Stella sponsored a concert in New York featuring John Legend. Drinking beer with friends was one thing. But drinking beer with friends with good music and under the starry skies takes things to a whole new level. And that is what Stella did for their consumers. Create a luxury experience that they can talk about.

This wasn’t the only event that Stella Artois organized for its loyal customers. From the maiden UberBoat experience to the Buy A Lady A Drink program, Stella has focused on customer insights to change the way they appeal to the people. The result? An astounding annual growth rate and CAGR!

In Conclusion

Customers decide the fate of a business or brand. If customers like what a brand has to offer, business growth will follow. To do that, it is important for businesses to understand what their customers are looking for. And that’s where consumer insights come in. By analyzing customer insights, businesses can determine what customers like or dislike, what they want to be changed in a product or service, what they expect from a brand, and more.

This is possible with techniques like social listening. It monitors what is being said on social media about a brand and its competitors. It, then, uses this data to produce meaningful results that can be directly incorporated into a brand’s online marketing strategy.

Insights from the Food and Beverage Industry

Every industry dealing with consumers directly is at the mercy of their changing tastes and perceptions. The food and beverage industry is one of them. This makes it essential for an F&B brand to spot emerging trends to survive in this industry. The best way to do it is to research well and stay in touch with what consumers want.

Why is Consumer Insights Needed?

Regardless of the industry, every brand needs to engage in market research before they begin offering their services. Moreover, consumer insights are key to gaining a deeper understanding of the market you’re serving.

Salesforce’s report found consumers respond better to a personalized shopping experience. And to engage potential consumers in a personalized experience you need to know their preferences. Modern social intelligence tools have been helping marketers get a more rounded picture of what consumers like and want.

Consumer Insights from the Food and Beverage Industry

Social listening helped us use a variety of methods to gather the most relevant insights from the food and beverage industry. Social intelligence tools like Auris let you gauge your market share, and keep track of your competitors in the run.

1. Social Media Trends

The food and beverage industry is probably one that sees the most changes in trends. We’ve seen many of them during the lockdown period itself. Dalgona coffee, pancake cereal, cauliflower pizza – all these have been a trend in just the last few months.

Pancake Cereal — Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBnBZ50pTiJ/?igshid=1r3j6vmp2b9f1

As per The Economist, most food-related brands are finding it difficult to keep up with the trends that tend to shift so fast. Social listening to food influencers on platforms like Instagram, Youtube, and Tik Tok can help marketers stay updated in real-time.

2. Monitoring Negative Reviews Quickly

One of the most popular things people talk about is food. You can see people talking about their dining experience, preparing a particular dish, food presentation and so much more online. Since food is such a hot topic, a negative review can also spread really fast. And this has happened in the past too.

Brands need tools that monitor such mentions and reviews in real-time and can alert the team before the matter blows out of all proportion.

3. Information about Allergens

UK’s Food Standard Authority published a report which says 23% of allergy sufferers will complain about it on social media.

So providing allergen information is becoming really big these days. If you’ve been tracking these conversations around the food-allergy space, you’ll be able to serve your consumers better.

4. Health Consciousness

A large part of your consumer base could possibly be in the health-conscious segment. Everyone, and particularly the modern generation, is getting more and more aware of sustainability with their own health and nature’s health too.

Go Vegan — Source: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/govegan/?hl=en

Listening to conversations around healthy food and vegan/vegetarian options shows how it is really a big trend right now. The rising awareness among people about GMOs, animal cruelty, the obesity epidemic, etc is all causing major shifts in the F&B industry.

Gathering insights from the food and beverage industry may sound like a huge task given that it’s a broad industry. However, social intelligence tools like Auris make the process way more simplified. Insights are gathered based on the most relevant keywords and audience segments. Once you have the most relevant insights at your fingertips, you just have to start strategizing right.

Insights into the Emerging Consumer Entertainment Shifts

The year 2020 and the pandemic changed all our lives radically. These changes can also be seen in our collective behavior as a society. And to no one’s surprise, with social distancing in place, social media or media, in general, has become more important than ever. Facebook studied these emerging consumer entertainment shifts. Here’s a look at the main insights. Hopefully, this will also help marketers adjust their strategies in accordance with the new trends.

The Key Elements of the Consumption Trends

The report talks about consumer entertainment shifts under 5 main categories:

Content Economy talks about the main shifts in the consumption patterns of video and music.
Communal Consumption talks about the ways people connected digitally during the pandemic.
Inclusive Diversity talks about the expectations of improved and more diverse representation on media.
The Proliferation of Choice talks about the different platforms and their algorithms. It talks about how these algorithms are helping users find more of what they like.
Streaming Sustainability talks about the increase in the number of streaming services and the longevity of these streaming services.

What do the Consumer Entertainment Shifts Say?

Each of the sections mentioned talks about a range of insights based on Facebook’s survey and data usage. Here are the main insights discussed in the report:

1. Growth in Streaming Content

The report shows graphically how there has been a huge growth in streaming content discovery due to the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown.

Video streaming users across the world watched content that they probably wouldn’t have under different circumstances. In simple terms, major countries have all witnessed growth in video streaming primarily because of the pandemic.

Pandemic video streaming effects — Image credit: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/content-consumption-and-culture-perspectives-from-the-entertainment-industry

The reason why the report talks extensively about video streaming is that there has been a major shift here. More and more people are watching more content. This shift makes it important for marketers to note the trends for future references and strategies.

One graph also shows the share of users who watched a live stream during the pandemic for the first time. These viewers said they plan to continue to do so in the future.

Livestreams — Image credit: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/content-consumption-and-culture-perspectives-from-the-entertainment-industry

2. Growth of Facebook Groups

One of the most interesting developments surrounding these shifts is the rise in the number of Facebook groups. Facebook tracked the fastest-growing groups on Facebook during the pandemic. The subject matter of these groups is really interesting.

Facebook fastest growing groups — Image credit: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/content-consumption-and-culture-perspectives-from-the-entertainment-industry

It’s evident that most countries saw a growth in groups that discussed shows and movies. Some insights from these conversations inform us that consumers want more representation across all media. There’s been a demand to include a diverse cast and represent people from different value systems.

These trends and shifts should not be coming as much of a surprise for brands who have been listening to social chatter for the last few years. Social media chatter is the best place to track such actionable consumer insights and trends. How does it help your brand? These insights provide you inspiration for your next campaign!

How to Develop Actionable Consumer Insights?

Advances in data science techniques are helping marketers get consumer insights and actionable results. However, the process might sometimes seem very mind-boggling. Every marketer, every brand manager is spending time in trying to predict consumer behavior. Yet, as per Google, less than 40% of marketers are using consumer insights to drive decisions. One of the major reasons for this is that the process of collecting data and processing it to develop actionable consumer insights is not easy.

Use of Actionable Consumer Insights

Data is a precious commodity but managing the vast amount of data is quite some task. Walmart generates over 2.5 petabytes of data in an hour. The real merit lies in making sense of the data available.

It’s clear by now, that trying to monitor the vast amount of data manually is impossible. But with the right tools working for you, you will be able to generate meaningful insights round the clock. Once you delve into actionable consumer insights, it helps you develop and strategize better for your business:

Which marketing channels are the most profitable?
What bottlenecks are holding the business back?
What do people like/dislike about your brand/product?
Which are the areas where you need to improve?
Which product/service is the highest selling and creates a positive buzz?

Think about it, if you were to get the exact answers to these questions, you’d be able to make informed decisions. This is how powerful the use of consumer insights can be.

Developing Insights

The use of consumer data enables you to make intelligent decisions. But, how are we to develop these consumer insights? There are the traditional methods obviously but those require a huge investment both in terms of time and manpower. To turn data into insights fast, here are two ways:

Social Listening

Social listening tools are built to define the data. The tool makes the entire process automated. From collecting data to organizing it and analyzing it, the tool comes with an in-built framework. Just feed in the keywords and let it do the work. Social listening tools can pull data from a global or a local stream and filter out the noise.

Once the data is organized, you are to view the report on a real-time basis. The tool presents the data in an easy-to-understand way via graphical visualizations. These tools also allow you to delve deeper into the qualitative data – read into consumer behavior and patterns.

Google Tools

Google Trends coupled with Google Analytics also acts as a good free tool for basic market research and analysis. You’ll be able to track trending keywords and place your decisions/campaigns around them.

Guesswork is not the solution if you are asking “How to develop actionable consumer insights?” In the modern-day of constant social media interactions, what your consumers want is no more a mystery. If you are looking for better promotion tactics, R&D concepts, or even content ideas, your audience is your greatest asset. We, at Auris, help you tap into the goldmine that is social data.

Are Consumer Insights Legit?

Monitoring Consumer insights is nothing more than knowing what your consumer needs. Knowing the customer forms the basis for any business strategy. And it should be part of any ongoing business strategy. Running a successful business comes from having a loyal and strong customer base. Building that customer base requires forming long-lasting relationships. And consumer insights help you dive deeper into the psyche of your audience and judge what motivates them. Despite all of this, one of the most asked questions among users remains “Are consumer insights legit?” The answer is – actionable insights are legitimate and help your business grow.

What are Consumer Insights?

Before we delve into the legitimacy of consumer insights here’s a look at the concept from a distance. What are consumer insights? These are conclusions drawn from the opinions of your customers. Insights derived from social media comments and mentions tell you a lot about your customer’s behavior:

Why do they buy/don’t buy your product?
What product features do they like/dislike?
Do they plan on coming back for a purchase again?
How likely are they to recommend your product to someone else? And so on…

Imagine having a definite answer to all these questions! It is a goldmine of valuable information.

The Difference Between Consumer Insights and Market Research

In the previous articles on our blog, we spoke extensively about how consumer insights drive market research. Market research is about gathering information about the market. It involves reports and statistics revolving around market sizes, competitors, and customers. Market research tells you more about the quantitative side.

Market research tells you if your competitor has a higher market share. Consumer insights on the other hand dive deeper. Consumer insights will help you understand why your competitors have a larger market share. What do customers like about them that your brand might be lacking in!

In simpler words, market research tells you what is happening while consumer insights put the why in perspective.

How does it Help you?

From the previous section, you know consumer insights complement market research. And social marketing intelligence tools like social listening can help you use these insights to amplify your marketing efforts. Before you get started with consumer insights here’s a quick look at what you can achieve with its help:

Helps you analyze your target audience
It helps you create a personalized customer experience
Helps you identify areas of improvement for your business

Analyze your Target Audience

Like we mentioned earlier, knowing your customer is the basis of any business. And listening to what people are saying on online platforms like social media and discussion forums gives you genuine information.

Moreover, knowing the wants and needs of your target audience helps you with all the further processes. When you know what they like, you can successfully design an experience based on their preferences. This in turn makes them loyal to your brand and spread positive word of mouth. Investing in knowing your audience could go a long way in bringing you more business.

Create a Personalized Experience

If you have been using social media marketing and advertising to promote your brand you already know about the tremendous competition. According to Accenture’s study from 2018, “91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognize, remember, and provide them with relevant offers and recommendations.”

Delivering relevant recommendations is a part of personalizing the message you send to your customers. And in order to understand these preferences before you can recommend them, you need customer insights.

Identify Areas of Improvement

Forbes published a story about how Wayfair, an online home-goods retailer, used consumer insights to its advantage. Wayfair conducted consumer research and their analysis showed that they needed to improve their overall customer experience. They developed an app that allowed customers to take pictures of their favorite items and give the information related to it. This allowed Wayfair to take intelligent design changes based on the recommendations.

As a result of this practice, Wayfair saw a 50% bump in their customer retention rate the year they launched the app.

If you’re looking to get started with consumer insights, make sure to establish your goals first. Consequently identify your resources like where you will acquire your data, what metrics you will set up, and so on. Once you have the data, use it to process strategies and decisions. If you require help with the data collection and analysis, social media intelligence tools are always available!

Why and How do We Monitor Social Media Mentions?

Understanding how social media mentions work is easy when you know the benefits of monitoring and know how to do it. Monitoring social media mentions allows you to know every time someone mentions your brand name online. It can be a user leaving a review or a prospect asking for a review. And every time/anytime this happens, you get notified. Primarily this is a great tool to gauge the amount of buzz around your brand. However, when you look deeper, monitoring social media mentions can be a lot more than that. We are here to tell you why it’s important and how to monitor social media mentions.

Why Should You Monitor Social Media Mentions?

The reasons for monitoring social media mentions are limitless. At the outset, it helps your social media manager to listen to and engage with your audience members. Listening to different channels and what people have to say also helps with market research. You have a massive sample audience and genuine comments.

Besides market research, monitoring social media mentions help other departments. To be more specific:

Mentions, when they are comments or reviews from customers, can help your product development and customer service team.
If a user mentions your brand to enquire about your service or product, they are a part of the sales funnel. This in turn helps your sales team.

Overall, the insights you derive from monitoring your social media mentions builds a great foundation for your business decisions.

How do We Monitor Social Media Mentions?

The most obvious method of listening to social media mentions relies on notifications. However, the many limitations of this process make it less than ideal. Firstly, it isn’t always humanly possible to go through the volume of mentions with a fine-tooth comb. Secondly, notifications only send you an alert, not the analysis behind it.

Automation tools like social listening on the other hand make the process flow easier. Most of us have heard of social listening. But knowing how to monitor would help you derive the maximum value out of the tool.

Meet the Audience

When you start listening to the conversation around your brand name/industry keywords, you’ll have access to your niche audience. While monitoring your brand name you’ll know what your audience thinks about your brands. Go through the reviews, suggestions, and comments. This gives you a sense of what they need and expect. Direct feedback is invaluable. Listening to your consumers and acting on their feedback also allows you to build a relationship with them and retain them.

Social listening tools allow you to listen to your competitor’s audience too. And there is a lot to learn from them as well. How are they different from your audience members? Which influencer are they following? What do they like or hate about your competitor’s product? These insights help you make important decisions for your business.

Actionable Insights help Strategize

Listening tools alert you every time your brand or keyword is mentioned. This is helpful because a negative feedback can spread quickly. Dimensional Research’s study concluded that among the respondents, 50% of customers would share a bad experience with a brand on social media. In such a case, an alert can help your team prevent a crisis before it goes too far.

You also know about the people who trust your brand. These advocates help you earn more customers and business. And monitoring social media mentions helps you find your brand advocates.

Lastly, monitoring your brand mentions or industry keywords helps you understand the overall picture. Which topics are trending? What do people like about your brand? What do customers want you to improve? These insights help you to strategically plan for your product development or future campaigns.

Social media marketing is no longer limited to posting digital catalogs and gathering likes. Smart marketers are engaging customers in meaningful conversations. And gaining consumer intelligence by monitoring social media mentions is one of the best ways to do it.