Social listening made L’Oreal the leader of the cosmetics market

The bigger a business gets, it can be easy to market a product without evaluating the changing needs of your consumer. L’Oréal is a company that has positioned their customers at the centre of their business with social listening tools. Their R&D, marketing and sales efforts are all based on on-the-ground data from their customers.

A successful business relies on its customers to keep it going. The golden rule that is constantly being repeated and preached is that ‘the customer is always right’. This saying is not specific to customer service but must be translated across all areas of your business.

Times have changed. Market competition in the 21st century is stronger than ever before with the global market economy. The economies of the world have merged. The transactions of goods and services are now carried on at the international level due to globalization. Another notable feature of the economy in this day and age is the use of technology. Big data has never been easier to mine. There is a lot of useful untapped information in the crevices of the big web, on your NWO and your peers that are of commercial value to you.

“Digital changes lots of things. We have to adapt and reach out to consumers so that they discover, desire and eventually buy our products,”

Lubomira Rochet– CDO at L’Oréal.

Social listening has evolved. Old school methods of due diligence looked like this in the past: site visits, frontline staffing, checking the news, word of mouth, focus groups, hiring analysts and hiring private investigators.

Latent presents new, innovative methods based on data analytics and online surveillance to create a smarter due diligence process.

Latent presents new, innovative methods based on data analytics and online surveillance to create a smarter due diligence process. Our social listening tool uses codes to iterate and filter through the internet for user comments. Using machine learning and algorithms to analyse sentiments and provide 24/7 objective tracking, we have built what a smart search engine for user comments should be for you. User comments are infinitely more valuable than PR / Corp Comm released pieces. Hear and interact with the real users, the real stakeholders.

The Many Benefits of Social Listening

1. Provide unique customer insights.

“Social allows us to refocus our actions on the present moment, tracking and adapting in real time to continuously improve the link with our consumers”

Adrienne Rostaing, Market Insights & Data Manager at L’Oréal. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/loreal-paris-builds-brand-love-with-search/

Social listening enables businesses to find out what customers want and build on it. Some have successfully entered new markets by turning an ear to what the locals had to say, while others have developed new products after discovering their audience’s thoughts. Businesses can use attribution analysis to increase their market share in those segments and cater to changing customer needs.

For L’Oréal, social listening provides a way to connect with people at the moments that matter in their lives, allowing the brand to position itself as an innovative beauty resource.

2. Reach an interest audience. Engage this audience with the content they want, when they want it.

“We call it marketing nirvana.”

Julie Chamberlain, VP of marketing for L’Oréal Paris haircolor https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/loreal-paris-builds-brand-love-with-search/

Latent has the tools to use social listening and machine learning on a businesses’ internal CRM data. We can identify top quality leads and run prediction models on which demographic is best to target and via which method. Using this intelligence from our proprietary database, we can tailor an outbound conversion effort to send targeted marketing campaigns to a lookalike audience and extend your businesses’ reach to different audiences.

L’Oréal uses Google’s software Search insights to reach a lookalike audience and target potential customers. Not only do they target individuals who search for their or competition brands or products, but additionally, they place advertisements to target individuals who search for other trending beauty-related content.

Julie Chamberlain, VP of marketing for L’Oréal haircolor shares, “We call it marketing nirvana.” I mean, if we can use Search to find out when is she searching, what is she searching for and therefore what message to serve her in the right medium, it’s beautiful for everyone.”. Social Listening is crucial to L’Oréal’s goal to be the beauty brand that is always there, always relevant and as helpful as possible.

3. Identify trends online and capitalise on them.

We observed 28 micro-trends in just six weeks.

Dr Anupama Wagh Koppar, Innovation Director for Hair (India and ASEAN) at L’Oréal Research & Innovation

L’Oréal tracked consumer-generated content over the course of six months in India, Indonesia and Thailand and identified 28 micro-trends across 5.2 million posts on social media, especially Instagram.

“(Social media is) a great place for stalking these smaller trends,” Dr Anupama Wagh Kopad told the Qual360 conference in Singapore recently. (For more details, read WARC’s report: L’Oréal mines social media for micro-trends in India, Indonesia and Thailand.)

Of course, L’Oréal notes that not all trends are disruptive and market changing in the long-term. Those trends happen once every 10 years Dr Anupama shares. L’Oréal has profited from jumping on small ideas and trends that help it penetrate the market quickly. Social listening helps businesses be agile, whether that be on the R&D, marketing or customer service side of the business.

4. Develop R&D based on what users want.

Social listening has changed the dynamics of R&D. In the past, products were developed, tested by an audience and reviewed before its product launch out to the market. With tech and AI development, businesses can shorten this process and make a product that they know (from Social Listening) is already in demand by consumers. Dr Anupama highlights how identifying trends via social listening “makes innovation far more actionable and agile”.

Social Listening, via Google’s Search insights, inspired the creation of L’Oréal Paris’ innovative Ombré hair kit. “We started seeing this new look on celebrities and fashion runways, that was the Ombré look,” explains Julie. “So we turned to Search and found a considerable rise in search terms for Ombré hair and dip dye hair.

Social listening enabled L’Oréal to learn that there was a deep dissatisfaction with available instructions of Ombré hair kits. Social listening allowed L’Oréal to identify that while the popularity of ombre hair was increasing, satisfaction with existing hair dye kits was decreasing. From online comments, L’Oréal could learn that the dissatisfaction was concerning with the applicator tool. L’Oréal responded to this insight by developing and launching the world’s first DIY Ombré solution, which continues to be the most popular at home Ombré kit.

Why L’Oreal will continue to use Social Listening

L’Oréal’s success with social listening is a case study of how state of the art AI and machine learning is the future for businesses. The satisfaction of all the stakeholders in a businesses’ ecosystem (consumers, colleagues, clients etc.) can now be optimised using on-the-ground data and converted into actionable insights generated by online intelligence and surveillance.

Latent can help your business track consumer preferences and their changing needs in Singapore online.

We improve your marketing strategies and increase your sales. We do this by:

• Online Surveillance: Track internet comments 24/7 fitted for the Singaporean market. Compare the effect of your campaigns on customers and sales via social listening. Access qualitative KPIs.

We conduct anonymous due diligence to improve your CRM.

• Data Marketplace: Task our registered users to snap physical pictures of your displays to capture information on product lines and review traffic to identify areas to improve.

If these sound interesting to you, visit our website for more information and to experience the capabilities of our SaaS.

This was originally posted on Aug 26th 2019 at https://www.latentapp.com/2019/08/26/social-listening-made-loreal-the-leader-of-the-cosmetics-market/. For more posts like this, visit Latent App’s blog.