There is too much competition and content vying for the attention of our viewers today. How can we make ourselves unique, then? 

Let’s begin with research. Understanding our audience, the people they follow, the content they enjoy, and the online conversations they are participating in will help us get to know our viewers better.

This is where social listening kicks in. Social media listening is a necessary tool for a few key reasons:

• Social Selling
• Brand Reputation Management
• Customer Support to help us understand our audience better and enhance our digital marketing techniques.

Similar to social networking, social listening was initially intended to be a tool for developing and maintaining B2C partnerships. B2B marketers have recently begun to recognize the advantages of including social listening in their marketing plans. 

Over 50% of top marketers have embraced social listening as one of their main sources of up-to-date consumer intelligence in 2020. But how do digital marketers use social listening to refine their social media strategies? Let’s take a closer look!

Why is social listening vital in digital marketing?

We cannot communicate with our target audience on social media in a monologue. Dialogue is the key to effective communication. Tools that improve identification and scoring add to the company’s overall sales revenues. That’s why social listening is vital for digital marketers and their businesses.

Here are some of the benefits of social listening:

• It allows for better online reputation management.
• It helps generate higher website traffic.
• It leads to a better understanding of target markets.
• A majority of brands employ social listening to gather client intelligence.
• It allows companies a thorough insight into their target customers’ preferences.
• It allows marketers to design campaigns that specifically address the ideas and thoughts of their target audience.
• Social listening tools like Konnect insights have several built-in features and capabilities useful for B2B sales and marketing.

Numerous firms now face an unclear future due to the abrupt changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. The entire business and marketing segment must now transition to the “New Normal.” This process of transition depends heavily on social listening. Consumers are moving to digital platforms to consume and create business-related content every day. Going online is essential to growing and expanding your business today.

Read Also – How To Implement A Social Listening Strategy? Getting Started With Social Listening

In the turbulent environment we live in, only companies that pay attention and adapt to new conditions will survive. Businesses are discovering new methods to keep or even increase their sales. Social listening is a vital part of the future of digital marketing. It has technically always been a component of marketing, but it is more important than ever today.

For years, businesses have listened to their customers by requesting survey responses and comments. Marketers now have access to their customer’s social media profiles as a result of social media. They can listen in on the conversations their target audience and customers are having instead of receiving their opinions through carefully controlled surveys and feedback.

When it comes to social listening, that is merely the tip of the iceberg. When a book, podcast, episode, or TV show is being discussed by its audience, brands can take notice and produce a content strategy that demonstrates their expertise. There are special perks and features you can take advantage of when integrating social listening into a digital marketing strategy.

7 Ways Social Listening is helpful in creating Digital Marketing Strategies 

1. Helps in Crafting Digital Marketing Strategy:

The #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt trend and shifting financial markets are just two examples of how events in the social sphere have a very real-world impact. The same is true of digital customer insights and their influence on business and marketing plans.

Even though a company focuses on a certain market, we are aware that every business has a distinct audience and needs tailored content. Getting this right is essential because 51% of customers will generally unfollow a brand for posting unrelated material.

Read Also – How can social listening improve marketing strategies?

Social listening enlarges the scope to include conversations that our target audience is having throughout the entire digital landscape, not just on platforms that belong to the company.

We can better understand an audience by paying attention to the hashtags they use, the trends they follow, their problems, and how they communicate about brands. Customers who use a particular brand frequently divulge vital information about their preferences. These can be used to create an effective digital marketing strategy.

With its most recent creation, the Netflix Socks, Netflix provides an incredible example of how it used social listening to drive its digital marketing strategy. It was wonderful news when Netflix discovered through social listening that most of its customers enjoyed binge-watching shows on its platform.

However, it soon realized that viewers would frequently nod off while binge-watching. To address this issue, Netflix developed socks that could detect when a user was dozing off and alert their TV to suspend Netflix.

The product was widely embraced by its user base and quickly became popular. It is an impressive example of how brands can use favorable brand feedback to inspire creativity, raise customer satisfaction, and eventually boost sales.

2. Analyze Real Time Customer Responses for a Particular Product:

Social media monitoring can provide us with vast analytical insights about the brand’s mentions. It also includes data on the growth in followers in the current month compared to the previous month and other statistical data. It’s only partially able to reveal the true attitudes of customers toward our most recent product, whitepaper, or staff relations.

Rather than simply monitoring, we must listen to gather specific and in-depth information. Social listening enables businesses to compile insightful customer data. It enables us to remain aware of the preferences and opinions of our customers.

When generating ideas to enhance the company, getting unfiltered feedback on its products is highly beneficial. For example, a logistics and transportation business in Southeast Asia was looking for ways to enhance the user experience on its mobile app.

The product team identified trends in user behavior and app usage through social media listening. Using this, they can comprehend the advantages and disadvantages of their user interface and pinpoint specific areas where the software can be improved.

 3. Design and analyze the campaign

We can gauge the success of our campaigns with the aid of a robust social listening approach. Brands can analyze both qualitative and quantitative marketing indicators. Analyzing quantitative metrics can be done using mention counts, the share of voice, and other statistics.

Online firms can adjust their digital marketing strategies on various social networks by following their target audiences using media monitoring tools. For example, we can use action-based hashtags, as Coca-Cola did in Coca-Cola’s popular #ShareACoke campaign. This aims to encourage user-generated content (UGC) to promote the campaign and engage our audience more.

We can also add listening data to our regular social media analytics reports when it is time to report on our campaign. The sophisticated audience information that other reports cannot offer can be obtained through listening. For example, Spotify just launched a campaign for its RapCaviar playlist that lists the artists that users have been listening to from “Day 1.”

Often, users reported their successes without mentioning the dominant music streaming service. Consumer responses will be captured by a listening tool. This can determine the campaign’s success and inform a brand’s subsequent move.

4. Track Brand Awareness

Another benefit of social listening in digital marketing is that it makes it possible for us to monitor the company’s reputation. Social listening may help us design an event by letting us know how attendees are feeling before, during, and after the event.

We can gain profound insights into consumer opinions by carefully listening to and observing social media. We can keep an eye on what our customers are saying about us. We can also see how they react to changes we make to our products or services.

This will help us decide more carefully and intelligently how to improve communication and marketing, broaden customer acceptance of our items, and increase revenue. For instance, there is a tweet mentioning Hilton Hotels almost every hour. It is reasonable to assume that most of Hilton’s customer base would be aware of the brand’s stature on social media.

Most people use social media to share their thoughts and experiences. Brands need to listen to their clients to retain high-quality service. The Hilton staff has been able to avert big crises and interact with consumers instantly. We can keep a continual watch on users’ social media profiles and gain brand awareness!

5. Make a Customized Customer Experience 

Social listening is one of the most acceptable ways for discovering the issues and viewpoints of customers and creating personalized customer experiences for them. By accumulating data from comments and reviews on related products, we can learn what irritates consumers and create solutions.

Based on their unique age range, neighborhood, income level, or family size, social listening can reveal people’s interests. Considering the issues our target customers are facing may help us discover the answers they are seeking. This information is a gold mine since it might point us toward developing goods that appeal to our target market.

For instance, after conducting some research and discovering (through social listening) that they were perceived as “a dinner where grandpa’s come to have pancakes,” Denny’s, a casual full-service family restaurant chain with more than 1600 locations worldwide, recently changed the way it communicates with customers on Twitter.

In response, Denny’s abandoned its “business tone” and began engaging with consumers through amusing and shareable tweets. Their social media strategy was changed to better serve their younger target demographic. The outcomes? Denny’s has a refreshingly upbeat reputation among young people, and its clients pay close attention whenever they tweet.

It is an outstanding example of how businesses can better engage their customers and connect with their target markets by simply listening to what they have to say and personalizing their digital marketing strategies accordingly.

5. Discover New Insights

Social listening can collect and evaluate online inquiries about our business. While it’s not advised to jump into someone else’s online conversation, doing so might assist businesses with better digital marketing strategies.

Learn what our target audiences prefer and detest by using social listening. We can get in touch with these prospects and start a relationship once we have a better idea of what they are looking for. Additionally, social listening will enable us to give these prospects relevant information at the right moment, which will aid in their conversion into clients.

For instance, the “Sonic the Hedgehog” live-action trailer from the beginning of 2019 attracted quick and scathing criticism. The eerie, human-like teeth of the avatar were the topic on Twitter, and its designers were paying attention. A new trailer with a less-toothy Sonic appeared a few months later, much to the internet’s joy.

6. Brand reputation monitoring

No matter how successful our digital marketing methods are, we will eventually face a crisis. Despite the numerous connections offered by the internet, many dangers could arise in a social setting. Frustrated customers, rumors, and unethical activity are some of them.

We must be aware of these possible catastrophes and create mitigation plans. In these unsettling times, social listening is a vital tool. We need to learn if something goes wrong and be better able to retake control if we use social listening tools like Konnect Insights.

For instance, Gitlab experienced a severe crisis in the company’s reputation that was created accidentally. An engineer for Gitlab unintentionally erased client data from the company’s database service. Despite the dire circumstances, Gitlab can maintain and even enhance its reputation.

They only engaged in social listening, which entails continual communication with their online audience through questions and comments, and their listeners liked it. Once the issue was resolved, the audience of Gitlab thanked the business rather than passing judgment on it.

7. Competition analysis

There’s a saying that goes, “If we focus on our competition too much, we will lose focus on ourselves and our business.” However, if a brand is a new marketer, it can benefit from competitive intelligence.

Consider it a journey of learning. We can learn from the mistakes made by our rivals by using social listening techniques to research them. One of the difficulties businesses have encountered throughout the pandemic is developing this competitive intelligence.

Unexpectedly, a recent study discovered that only 8% of brands had used social listening tools like Konnect Insights for competitor research and analysis. MoneyGram, a leading money transfer company, uses social listening to thoroughly research and evaluate its market, goods, and competitors.

They were able to anticipate market changes thanks to the social listening insights and organize their upcoming digital marketing initiatives accordingly. They can evaluate the effectiveness of their “Max’s World Adventure” campaign thanks to their investigation of the existing competition and their share of voice. Their child-focused, amusing campaign attracted much attention, and the business immediately witnessed an increase in its voice share.

Conclusion

Social listening has become an increasingly useful and effective strategy due to the recent rise in digital marketing. To convert potential leads into customers, social listening is the first step in the well-known and effective sales strategy known as “Social Selling.”

 It can assist businesses in gathering information from many digital platforms and informing business decisions about what our customers want. Serves as an illustration of a social business approach that handles the enormous amount of data that today’s organizations must manage and offers a method for evaluating this data to enhance business outcomes,

Our success in the market will depend on how quickly we integrate social listening since its popularity will only increase with time. Companies that do have a greater chance of dominating the digital marketplace!