4 WAYS IN WHICH MARKETING PROFESSIONAL CAN USE SOCIAL LISTENING

Introduction

Marketers need to maintain the brand image to move along with market movements. Social Listening (SL) means being alert to any online brand mention, what your consumers say about your brand, the sentiment around your brand, and how people perceive your brand. SL means listening to what's being said about your brand and industry. It helps brands strategize better marketing decisions.

Social listening allows brands to tackle all the sentiments around their brand and the industry in real-time. Various SL tools enable brands to monitor each mention, tag, comment, or query in real-time without missing.

 If someone posts something on the internet that relates to you or your brand, these SL tools help you notify them in real-time without delay.

The latest information and data analysis allow brands to “thinkovate” creative solutions and offer the best customer experiences.

With the help of various advanced social listening tools available in the market, marketing professionals can quickly know what your customers are looking for and their preferences to serve them better with their customized services.

Sometimes people require recommendations. Involving conversation at the right time, with an appropriate reply, helps build your brand image in the minds of potential consumers. Sometimes such responses go viral, which also buys you a lot of goodwill. SL helps brands monitor such posts throughout the internet in real-time, aiding them in lead generation.

At other times, marketers use social listening to build trust around a brand's image and negate naysayers by restricting negative posts with the right response at the right time.

Additionally, by gauging each marketing campaign or program, marketing professionals know what strategies work and what do not. They can also track the campaign that gives the best results to expand these selective campaigns to gain more customers and generate more sales.

Four Ways in Which Social Listening Helps Marketing Professionals

• Market research and analysis
• Generating leads
• Strategizing ad campaigns
• Customer engagement and brand reputation management

Market research and analysis

All marketing campaigns start with research and market analysis. Market research is the most important task for any marketing professional. They need to invest a lot of time to gain clarity on market and consumer desires, where the product sells, and knowledge about their consumer base to launch successful ad campaigns. Any brand must understand the kind of conversations their audiences engage in and their exact requirements. Understanding and knowing your audience is the best way to give yourself a permanent place in their hearts, and successful marketing professionals are experts.

SL plays a vital role in such research. Marketing professionals can easily track all these things through SL without devoting long hours to manual searches over the internet. Chances of missing out are also ruled out when one uses SL tools, as they provide real-time analysis and alerts.

Social media monitoring through social listening navigates your brand to the top and allows it to cater to the needs of your consumers. Consumers start loving the brand and stay loyal, despite other lurking offers from the competitors. 

At times, monitoring social media sentiments around your brand also aids marketing professionals in preventing your brand from going viral for the wrong reasons. Building authority around your brand adds to your brand reputation and builds consumer trust. Market analysis also enables you to find your target audience.

Learning the market conditions that suit a particular product and the possibilities that lie ahead can be known by monitoring the right keywords for your brand and those used in your industry.

Generating leads

Despite the information overload and the high competition, digital marketing is a growing field. Marketing professionals can generate many leads using SL tools to their benefit. 

For generating more leads for any business using SL tools, marketing professionals need to:

• Comment and help a customer when they require something
• Offer a product that will satisfy their needs
• Let them know the features of the product at the right time
• Leave them with the thought that their product is the best one
• Make an impression that their product can satisfy all their requirements.

SL tells you what your potential customers are talking about your brand and how to build a favorable sentiment around your brand. ‘Looking for recommendations’ is a widely used keyword these days. Marketers need to track any such solicited recommendation keyword. They also need to track any other sub-keywords around their industry to keep up with what potential leads are looking for. Catching up with them in real-time to serve them for what they require while matching their needs with their product offerings helps brands build their presence in consumers’ minds and convert leads into increased sales.

Strategizing ad campaigns

In this digital era, it is easy for marketing professionals to understand the effect of all their ad campaigns online over different social media platforms using SL tools. Marketing professionals need extensive research and keep track of the ad campaigns that drive huge sales, the geographical locations they are most likely to sell, and the products sold among various consumers. They need to strategize their ad campaigns accordingly based on the research work results.

Leveraging SL help these marketing professionals manage such ad campaigns with the click of a few buttons. They don’t need to dig deep to search over the internet about their required keywords, mentions, or related sub keywords or phrases or hire someone to monitor their social media.

Many marketing professionals are unaware of these SL, which can solve all their problems in real-time and allow them to utilize their precious time for more productive work. Tracking your competitors’ strategies also gives you a clear idea of the next big move to stay ahead.

Tracking the marketing campaigns in real-time allows these marketing professionals to know early what campaigns drive fast leads and where to focus their energy and time.

Social listening also aid marketing professionals if they opt for influencer marketing to let them know who the top influencers are and what type of content they are posting that works.

Customer engagement and managing brand reputation

Sometimes you cannot discover a crucial conversation for your brand where the discussing party did not tag or mention you. In such cases, SL tools notify you in real-time and leave no conversation unnoticed. Here, you have the opportunity to convert a conversation in your favor.

People talking about a competitors disadvantages, or seeking alternative suggestions, are important to engage and convert to social selling. Monitoring any other issues or problems people face that your product can cater to allows marketing professionals to enhance their product's credibility and scope of selling.

Conclusion

Marketing professionals can leverage social listening in the ways mentioned above. Knowledge about your target audience and their exact requirements, customer engagement, understanding of competing market trends, monitoring social media conversations and not missing important things, preventing any social media crisis, discovering social selling opportunities, improving content marketing strategies, upgrading and managing ad campaigns, benefiting from influencer marketing, maintaining and growing brand reputation add to enhanced lead generation and exponential growth in sales.

For any such marketing professional needs, you can consult Cogent Infotech, which will help you make better marketing decisions.

‍