Nowadays it is impossible to imagine a modern and successful business that would not manipulate social media for different purposes. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or any other that comes to mind, can hugely influence the establishment of a brand. By utilizing social channels, companies can entice and retain buyers, and also research the demand, monitor competition, and discover what are the latest trends of the industry.
For example, the indicator of the public attention that you are looking to mass can be just IG likes, and replies on Twitter can be a greatly comfortable and effective method to receive responses about your merchandise. In this text, you will find some useful techniques and tips for making research on the market and customers.
Set The Goal And Develop A Strategy
This should be done before you begin your research campaign on any social platform. When your goal is clear and concrete, you will manage to distinguish the data that matters from any other chatter that happens online. Having a strategy sorted out is what will make you more confident in what you do, because then you will have a target that will serve you as an orientation mark in your actions. So, you need to figure out why you want the data:
- Merchandise launch
- Product analysis
- The behavior of the target audience
- Insights for customer service
- Identification of the buyer persona
These are illustrations of what you can learn on social media. The actual goal can be settled and later revised in accordance to the outcomes of your campaign.
Choose The Right Channels
Social networks vary in many ways. Most significant for your examination would be the demographic of each chosen platform. For example, the average Instagram audience is younger than the one of Facebook. YouTube holds a specific position, being a huge video search engine in addition. So, you must realize who your target group is. See the following metrics of your potential clientele to define which social network will be the most effective instrument for your research:
- Age
- Gender
- Profession
- Occupation
- Region of living
- Average time spent online
These characteristics will be helpful for many other activities you might want for your business strategy, and for sure, setting an objective will be simpler and clearer to you.
Dig The Competition
Social media has brought a new opportunity to monitor what your opponents are doing. In your research, this data can be extra helpful, as there is nothing that will let you escape the race between brands of the same industry. Every worthy concurrent will have profiles on popular networks, that is for sure. So your task here is to collect the information that will help you to enhance your performance. For instance, you should survey stuff like:
- The manner of communication between brand and clients. This can be found in the comment section
- The reaction to critical situations – how the business handles conflicts and misunderstandings
- The middle popularity of certain types of posts. Divide them by type and you will see what is more interesting to the audience, and which uploads users leave without much attention
- The overall activity on the profile – reposts, Highlights, updates, and replying to comments
- Collaborations – how many of them and what influencers can be valuable for you. Probably you can plan a collaboration with another brand as well.
The competition between companies that occupy the equivalent niche, is a bit different nowadays. Users decide by themselves, which brand is closer to their needs and wishes. Thus, sometimes, brands cross-promote each other to get equal profit from that.
Besides, by monitoring a page of your rivals, you can avoid mistakes that were made by them and adjust your strategy without losing much time.
Keep Track Of Latest Trends
Many platforms, like Facebook or Twitter, provide such options, so it will not be a difficult task. Simply look through the latest posts, Stories, or tweets and discover what is on air right now. Knowing what’s hot is a sure method to attract the interest of your target audience. The universal trick for getting to understand the latest trends is wielding the hashtags that are applicable to the industry. By browsing through the hashtags, you will achieve the data you require for building up your voice online.
Another bonus from knowing the latest trends would be the fact that as you glance through posts associated with your research, you will learn what is the language of your audience. That means that you will be prepared to catch the same wave with your potential customers and boost the connection between your brand and users.
Use The Voice Of Your Customers
Encourage your clients to share their thoughts about your merchandise and assistance. Collecting and sharing real-time feedback about it will steer the interest of your potential buyers. Also, this will help you to find out what speaks stronger to your audience. Is it the description of your product, the thought about its quality, or loving your customer support? Different users respond to different triggers, so you must acquire as many feedback types as possible.
Besides, user-generated content is also a help in market research. That is to it you can understand what users value the most in your creation, and then push these qualities forward.
Don’t neglect negative feedback as well. This is a guide to the improvement of the customer assistance and your product quality.
Broaden Your Research Scope
It is well realized that the prevalueating number of people use social media every day. For you, this is a unique opportunity to widen your target group. Approach different groups to find out how they answer to your product and what can be a powerful instrument for your business. Based on the information you obtain, you can quickly improve your rates and revenue. In this action, there can be a lot of guessing and tryouts, but in the end, it will definitely bring you more attention and purchases from accidental users.
Learn As You Observe
Unlike many other methods of market research, social media can give you information on the go. Forget surveys and interviewing, these can remain only as supporting channels for communication with the potential customer. On social networks, you can merely roll out any type of post and observe the reaction without significant time, finance, and resources loss. For most industries, such a scheme functions constantly and effectively. Again, you can control your competitors if you are not sure of your tactics.
Conclusion
Social media are a hugely effective instrument to do your market and customer research. However, your methods to get data you need have to be more variable. You should not rely solely on the information you receive from social networks.
