A digital era.
In this new digital world with the power of social media, we have access to millions of sentiments–conversations that are happening in real time. If you have been that executive denying the direct access you have to your prospects on social media, you may want to reconsider. Listening on social media not only gives us insight into our brand and how we are perceived, but also on our industry as a whole. It presents us with the why, meaning the bigger picture we need to create successful marketing strategies and forward-thinking business decisions. Above all, it allows us to participate in the conversation.
Initiating your focus group.
Gone are the days of limited focus groups and guesswork on how our services are perceived. With millions of people and businesses offering their sentiments on social media every day, we can easily listen into conversations as we identify and predict trends. We can follow how our industry is perceived, how opinions are changing, and what sentiments emerge based on current events and societal change. What business would not want to simply listen in to receive the best insights offered?
According to Sprout Social, “Social listening refers to analyzing the conversations and trends happening not just around your brand, but around your industry as a whole, and using those insights to make better marketing decisions.” It beats old-school polls that are often obsolete as soon as they are published. In today’s new digital world, conversations move fast, and listening helps us see trends even before they become trends.
Validating your niche.
All of us would like to occupy our niche and validate our offerings as they pertain to our ideal clients. Listening to conversations on social media can help us do exactly that. We can listen in to what keeps our prospects up at night; what they would like to see improve; the positive and negative sentiments they have to the solutions offered. We might find a gap in offerings that need filling immediately. How valuable would that be for your business to know? Priceless, I assume. The businesses that can focus and occupy their niche with confidence will succeed in this fast-paced digital world where our audience is talking loudly. We just need to listen.
Pivoting your offerings.
As we know, change is the only constant. In a world where digital is king and embracing change is necessary to not just survive but thrive, the companies that can pivot their businesses successfully will see growth. I am not suggesting that we should change our business strategy with every changing sentiment on a daily basis; I am suggesting that we keep our ears to the ground, listen to our potential clients’ pain points, and strategically position our offerings. We can connect the dots and see trends as they shift to interject our businesses offerings. But we need the tools and data to stay in the mix.
In the end, it’s about strategy.
Social listening tools and the strategic advantage we can gain from them are indisputably powerful. We know that they will tell us much about the state of mind of our potential clients as well as the industry itself. Now we just have to hear it and consider it for the direction of our business, especially as part of our marketing and sales strategy. The future is social.
