5 Ways Social Listening Can Shape Your Marketing Strategy

As the digital population continues to grow, so does the amount of opportunity online. We’ve never before been able to find out so much about what people are saying, doing, thinking and feeling. Consequently, brands have the chance to get to know their target audience better than ever. Tracking the conversations that are taking place digitally around your brand, relevant topics and competitors will help to stand out from the crowd. Here are 5 ways social listening can be used to shape your marketing strategy:

1. Monitoring Your Brand Name

Just because someone is talking about you doesn’t mean you can hear them, and the same goes online. Most social media tools will only tell you people are discussing your brand when they’ve actually tagged it. A brand name search will help you to track all mentions – even the ones without tags. Once set up, you can add alerts for every time your brand is mentioned. This will help to address any customer issues as they occur to maintain brand reputation and trust.

2. Learning From The Competition

Why stop at your brand? Following mentions of your competitors will allow you to pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses. In fact, you can find out a great deal about other brands’ marketing strategies from social listening. This includes their preferred platforms, most engaging content and campaign successes. But don’t just focus on the positives – there is just as much to learn from their failures. Competitor analysis will show what’s working for them and what isn’t, preventing you from making the same mistakes, and saving time and money.

3. Getting To Know Your Audience

The most successful brands are those that know their audiences inside out, and therefore how best to target them. Social listening will first show where desired customers are spending most of their time online, so that you can make sure you’re also present in that space. In addition, it will reveal their likes and dislikes, and what resonates with them. Tracking their conversations will identify their key interests, needs and feelings, helping you to predict how these might change in the future.

4. Creating Better Content

In order to build an effective social media strategy, you need to know what is working. Good content will optimise reach, engagement, and subsequent sales. This can be achieved by learning which content your audience is most reactive to – and why! Identifying the ‘why’ will enable you to really understand what your customers tick, and help you to design content that targets them specifically. Tracking popular content around your topics of interest will highlight any patterns and trends.

5. Driving Sales

Social listening helps to uncover new selling opportunities as they arise. For example, if someone is looking for a product like yours, monitoring keywords will identify what they are searching for. This will reveal the optimum points, and most effective ways to reach them. Another example is if someone is unhappy with a competitor’s product or service. Monitoring online mentions of other brand names will reveal what consumers think of them, and the products or services they offer. Identifying where your competition is going right and wrong will show you how to be better.

In conclusion, social listening helps to navigate the dynamic wants and needs of your target audience, showing you how best to reach them. Finding out what works for them – and learning from what doesn’t – is also key, and will allow you to stand out from your competitors. All of this knowledge can be used to build a successful marketing strategy that boosts engagement, reach, and sales.

How Ten Bear Group Can Help

If you’re interested in using social listening but don’t know where to start, our experts can help you! To find out more about the services we offer, get in touch.