The online space is overcrowded, and brands leave no stone unturned in garnering customers’ attention.
And the same holds true for social media. Even with a small representative sample size, social media delivers valuable insights because it includes your most passionate fans.
That’s why more and more companies are focusing on social media for market research.
This strategy gathers real-time and historical data from different social media channels to identify and understand your customer preferences and know your brand image.
Apart from providing details about your target market, conducting marketing research on social media provides candid customer opinions, which are unbiased.
While many marketers might believe that social media for market research might not be a perfect system, it plays a significant role in helping a company understand its target audience.
In this article, we discuss seven ways social media provides accurate information in market research that helps a company make intelligent and data-driven decisions.
7 Benefits of using social media for market research
Here are a few benefits of using social media for market research:
Broadens the scope of market research
Have you ever been handed ten bucks to give your opinion on your favorite car or cold drink brand?
At some point in our life, we have shared our opinion in exchange for a gift or favor without having the slightest idea that it was a part of business intelligence.
Back then, companies could only ask a handful of customers they knew were using their products. But, today, with social media, companies have the privilege of connecting with millions of customers in an instant, increasing the scope of market research.
Companies often rely on various marketing research tools to reach the right customers. While SurveyMonkey is a good research tool, there are top alternatives to SurveyMonkey that help in finding survey respondents for conducting market research. I recommend checking out the brands with the best social media to learn even more!
These research tools help reach millions of customers in different markets to gather insights.
Also, these tools allow you to build surveys. It also empowers you to select question types to collect relevant answers from your target audience.
What’s more interesting is that social media promotes user interaction, participation, and engagement, further increasing the scope of market research.
This improves the chances of getting valuable and accurate data from customers and survey
participants.
Provides access to real-time insights
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter offer numerous ways for you to conduct market research and analyze upcoming trends.
You might understand emerging trends and identify what customers are talking about in real-time by conducting a simple search, such as searching for popular terms. You can also use eclincher as a social media productivity tool as well!
These platforms provide real-time insights into trends and opinions. This helps a company cater to the changing requirements of customers.
Interestingly, social media provides valuable information in real-time. This is helpful as instead of spending a large amount of time setting up a focus group, you give weightage to analyzing the information.
By looking into the real-time insights from social media research, you develop effective plans for future campaigns.
This allows you to create campaigns around ideas that a customer might find helpful.
Real-time insights provide valuable lessons on what a company might do to attract customers and what to avoid.
Helps you know the reputation of your brand
There’s no better place than social media to understand and identify your brand on social media.
Did you know that 62% of customers share their bad experiences with others? Why?
Your customers often prefer sharing their experiences with a brand on social media.
Customer reviews help you gain in-depth information about your brand’s credibility and reputation.
These reviews help in learning whether or not your customers are happy. Based on their reviews, you might figure out customers’ behavior and pain points and understand what they like about your brand.
Typically, market research helps you define your brand’s reputation, and with the right research method, you might check with your target customers to see if your brand reputation is hitting the spot or missing the mark.
Understanding your brand’s reputation helps you influence and change customer perceptions.
Helps you know your audience at a personal level
What led to the surge of social media, and what encouraged customers to prefer social media over email marketing and other marketing methods?
The beauty of social media is that it encourages two-way communication between customers and brands.
While social media allows you to know your audience, it’s up to you how well you leverage this opportunity.
For instance, you might use Facebook groups and communities to know your customers.
Gathering data from these groups helps provide relevant information about the customer’s pain points and preferences.
With 1.8 billion people using Facebook groups every month, companies have a lot of opportunities to get hold of critical customer information.
For instance, in the above example, using market research, Peloton group tries to understand and know people who make up their audience. Understanding the customer’s preferences and motivation and sharing victories helps build a strong brand.
Assesses the effectiveness of your marketing campaign
With market research, you collect data about what customers want in products and services. The data collected from market research helps you understand how well your campaigns are working.
Tracking changes in your customer’s answers during and after a campaign provides an idea of what’s working and what’s not.
Based on customer responses, a company determines which marketing ideas and parameters might need to be modified.
There is no better way for a company to find success than by listening directly from the horse’s mouth.
While you gather quantitative data from measuring marketing and performance metrics, market research helps decode the qualitative aspect. It helps you understand why customers choose your brand over competitors.
Apart from assessing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, market research lets you fine-tune them for the future.
Evaluates competitors
While market research helps in uncovering interesting facts and details about your target audience, it lets you eavesdrop on your competition.
With market research, you get an honest opinion about your brand on social media, helping you understand what differentiates you and why customers prefer you over others.
Knowing the competitor’s move helps you strengthen your branding efforts and allow you to work on your weaknesses.
After analyzing current and past data trends, you shape your branding strategies while keeping competitors’ strategies in mind.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, the way forward for companies is to have a watchful eye on customers to ensure that competitors do not hijack your target customers.
Discovers unnoticed trends and insights
Conducting market research isn’t only important when launching a new product or company. It helps in periodically discovering unnoticed trends and insights on social media.
A trend is an assumed future development that might have a positive long-term effect on selected industries.
Uncovering and unlocking these trends often requires a closer look at the past and current market conditions to understand the dominant patterns.
For instance, you might reach an unreached segment of customers who, like your current customers, might benefit from your products or services.
Perhaps these customers are unaware of your products as they think they’re ideal for someone else. With market research, you might unlock a new marketing strategy, trend, and insight that helps attract a new customer base.
What’s more interesting is that this market research helps discover opportunities to partner with other companies already established in their niche. Combining the power of two brands makes it easier to expand and strengthen your reach.
The best research begins with social media
Social media has an impact on our daily life as it streamlines everyone’s social and professional lives.
That’s why brands are leveraging their power by conducting market research.
Social media for market research is an essential recipe for success, even if you are not bothered about how much data Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have.
While the data might contain information and preferences of only a few customers, it’s a storehouse of unvarnished opinions from your most passionate customers.
If you want to know their reasons, motivation, inspiration, and opinions when making a purchase, conducting market research is critical.
Today, companies cannot afford to overlook market research in social media as it provides companies with fast and reliable insights about what triggers the interest of their audience.
Data companies obtain from social media empowers them to make intelligent, data-driven, and smart decisions.
Are you ready to experience better results from your social media campaigns?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is social media research?
Social media research refers to the practice of gathering data and insights from social media platforms to analyze user behavior, preferences, and trends.
Should businesses perform social media research?
Yes, businesses should perform social media research as it provides valuable information about their target audience, competitors, and industry, enabling informed decision-making and effective marketing strategies.
When is the best social media platform for a busienss?
The best social media platform for a business depends on various factors such as the target audience, industry, and marketing goals. It is important to conduct research and analyze demographics, user engagement, and platform features to determine the most suitable platform for reaching and engaging with the target audience effectively.
The Bottom Line
Utilizing social media for market research offers numerous advantages for businesses in today’s digital age. The seven benefits discussed in this blog post clearly demonstrate how social media platforms have become valuable tools for understanding consumer preferences, identifying trends, conducting competitor analysis, enhancing customer engagement, boosting brand visibility, gathering real-time feedback, and optimizing marketing strategies. By harnessing the power of social media, businesses can gain invaluable insights that drive informed decision-making, foster innovation, and ultimately lead to long-term success. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, it is imperative for companies to leverage the immense potential of social media in their market research endeavors, staying ahead of the curve and creating meaningful connections with their target audience.
