Talk to any marketer and they’ll ask you ...

What are your strengths; weaknesses; opportunities;  products;  benefits; tell me about your brand; your why? - your - your - your - your - me - me -me . Well guess what? It’s not about you! It’s all about your customer.

Business owners, CEO’s, General Managers and boards should be asking who are our customers, what do they like, what are their pain points, what motivates them, where are they online? 

More importantly where will they be and what will they be doing in 1-year; 5-years; 10-years?

For years we’ve heard that big data is the holy grail, promising to deliver customer insights at a more granular level. Their transaction histories, web and search behaviour, location data, and that social media activity will give you the rich data, but does it give you the granular insight you’ll need to survive, recover, respond and thrive. Can it inform you about your strategies and tactics?

If your customer has a problem with your product – chances are they won’t email and be ignored, nor phone and join a queue – they’ll leap onto the social media stage with a megaphone. Once on that stage - they’ll share their opinion - lack of customer service, poor value, bad quality …… a social media listening strategy will find and track these online conversations. 

Conversations around keywords, phrases, and events. Not just conversations about your brand and business, but about your industry, and your competitors. Listening to conversations will find patterns and trends you can use to your advantage.

There has been a huge surge in online activity and it’s here to stay. Pre Covid-19 seventy percent of customers were using social media for customer care. Rather than the phone, they’ll post questions, opinions, recommendations, and complaints on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Social media listening is different to social media reporting and monitoring. The big brands are across it, developing new products, re modelling, pivoting. To survive you need to be agile, responsive and show you listen. You need a 360 view of what your customers are doing, how they’re feeling, their pain points, what excites them, what motivates them - you need to be asking questions, conversing and tapping in to where they are online and listening to the conversations. After all, if you don’t listen to them, why should they listen to you?

Integrating a strategy around your customer to monitor the conversations so you don’t miss when your brand is mentioned has never been more important. So stop using social media as your personal megaphone, shouting your marketing messages – because, to be honest, they’re not listening to you any more they’re listening to each other.

Feel free to get in touch with me to discuss your customer strategies.

Nicola.