Knowledge is power when it comes to building a successful marketing strategy. The more knowledge you have about your consumer base, the more effective your campaigns will be. If your brand is looking to learn more about your target market and a gain competitive advantage over other brands – social listening is a secret weapon that you can use to achieve your marketing goals.
Social listening is a powerful tool that provides your brand with real-time data on what your audience is saying about you, your competitors and your industry online. Having access to this level of insight has proven to be extremely beneficial to brands. In fact, in a 2022 survey conducted by Social Media Today, it was found that 61% of businesses already have a listening strategy in place, and 81% of those businesses view social listening as a key planning element. Another study by Hootsuite reported that nearly 2/3 of marketers agree that social listening has increased their value in 2023.
What is Social Listening in Marketing?
There are so many ways you can leverage the audience data obtained to create winning social media marketing strategies. Here are some examples of how implementing a social listening strategy will benefit your brand:
1. Understand Your Audience
Learn what your customers love about your brand along with the aspects of your brand that could be improved. This data also helps you understand your customers’ specific wants and needs. By leveraging all this information, you can adjust your value offering to satisfy the pain points that your target market is facing.
2. See the Full Picture
By engaging in a listening strategy, you will never miss a comment that’s posted about your brand online. Social listening helps you to see the full picture of your brand’s perception. Additionally, social listening gives you insight into current industry trends, which can help you create effective marketing strategies. The wealth of data delivered to you by social listening platforms provides you with the tools you need to see everything that is happening around your brand and in your industry.
3. Stay on Top of Press – Good & Bad
Social listening platforms track audience sentiment in real-time. If your audience sentiment takes an unexpected downwards turn, you’ll be notified of this change instantly, and you’ll be able to easily identify what caused the change in audience sentiment. This gives your brand the ability to tackle bad press head-on and take control of PR crises before they get out of hand.
4. Track Competing Brands
With a social listening strategy, you can track more than just what’s being said about your brand. Social listening platforms enable you to track as many brands as you want, so that you can stay ahead of your competition by seeing what their audience is saying about them. This way, you’ll know where your brand falls short against competitors, and the actions you need to take to gain competitive advantage in your industry.
5. Make Data-driven Decisions
The most successful marketing strategies are driven by data. Social platforms give you access to a wide range of data points that all help you better understand your audience. You can see when and where (which social media platforms) your consumer base is talking about your brand, along with exactly what they are saying. Social listening also shows you the top trending hashtags in posts about your brand, audience sentiment measurements, – the list goes on! Each data point can help you identify customer needs, improve customer satisfaction, and amplify your marketing strategy.
6. Enhance Your Value Offering
Social listening provides your brand with insight into what’s working and what’s not for your customers. It’s like having constant access to a “Suggestions” box created by your consumer base. This streamlines your product and service development process, since it’s easy to identify improvements on the product your brand offers.
7. Personalize Your Marketing Strategies
Create marketing campaigns that hit home every time. By hearing what customers say about you online, you can begin to target them with marketing strategies that speak directly to their wants and needs. Instead of creating generic content, you can give your marketing campaigns a more personal feel by highlighting the parts of your brand that customers care about the most.
8. Improve Customer Relationships
See everything your customers are saying about you online. You’ll never miss an opportunity to engage with a customer by responding to their feedback. Whether what they’re saying is positive or negative, taking the time to interact with your customers will improve their relationship with your brand. When you improve your customer relationships, you also strengthen your brand’s community.
