Top 7 Effective Ways to Use Social Media for Market Research
Social media has brought lots to the marketing world in recent years; one of the biggest gains has been market research. Sure, we can use Facebook for ad campaigns and Instagram for competitions and hashtag campaigns. But, we can also use social media to learn about the very people who follow the company (and buy from us too!). The more we learn, the better we can appeal to their needs. Knowledge helps to improve ad targeting, creatives, and even product development.
Today, we’re going to uncover how social media can be utilized for market research.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Social Media for Market Research
Why use social media for market research? Well, for one thing, it’s possible to gather information faster than ever. With a simple Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter poll, we can easily gauge customers’ opinions on new products and customer service preferences. According to one study, social media is three times faster than email at generating customer feedback.
Secondly, the cost of market research on social media is almost non-existent. Whether you’re running a poll or just emoji responses on Facebook, the cost of the post is nothing but your own time, and it doesn’t take very long.
This all sounds great… so what are the problems with gathering information on social media? Firstly, the results aren’t going to accurately represent your customer base if you don’t have a decent following on social media. If you start a poll and only get 10 responses, the results don’t truly reflect your audience’s beliefs and opinions.
Additionally, another problem is the so-called ‘herd mentality’. No matter what an individual believes, they’re going to find honesty difficult when 80% of people have voted against their view. Rather than giving their true opinion, the individual is more likely to click away or follow the crowd. Again, this doesn’t give you a true reflection of what your customers think.
Social Media Qualitative Research Techniques
What if a poll only gets 10 responses? Instead of focusing on polls and trying to research your market by likes and comments, you have an opportunity to perform qualitative research instead. Rather than focusing on likes, look at engagement and interact with followers. Alternatively, you can focus on sentiment analysis, industry trends, word contextualization, and theme categorization.
In recent times, ‘social listening’ has taken precedence for many marketers. Traditionally, we would ask customers what they thought of our products. However, with social listening, we can tune into the conversations and mentions of our brand even when those having the conversation aren’t talking to us directly. From here, we can gather insights and take action based on what people are saying.
For us, the perfect social media market research strategy has a blend of qualitative and quantitative opportunities. If you have thousands of followers, it’s easier to pay attention to likes, comments, shares, followers, subscribers, and votes in a poll. For those with fewer followers, or who want a more detailed insight, this is where you dip into qualitative research. Normally, quantitative research tells us the ‘what’ and qualitative tells us the ‘why’ behind customer intent, decisions, and opinions.
7 Effective Ways to Use Social Media for Market Research
How do you get the insights you want from social media? The second half of this guide is going to tell you everything you need to know.
1. Choose the Right Platform
Facebook is the most popular tool, so this is the best solution, right? Well, not necessarily. With over one billion active monthly users, Facebook is a very good place to start for many businesses. However, this doesn’t always mean it’s the right way to go for your business.
To start, it’s important to consider your audience and the demographic on each platform. It’s thought that the dominant age group across LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is between 18 and 29 years of age. For example, dig deeper and you’ll see that a platform like Pinterest has a gender split of 71/29 towards women. For those with a mostly male user base, Pinterest won’t help at all.
Meanwhile, in 2018, around 69% of Baby Boomers used YouTube (around the same percentage as Facebook). On the other hand, only 23% of Baby Boomers used Instagram. If you have an older audience, a poll on Instagram won’t be useful. The first tip is to consider your audience and always choose the platform that will allow you to get closest to them (and therefore learn the most!).
2. Track Trends
The beauty of using social media for market research is that you don’t need to do anything yourself to assess the actions of customers. Just look at what’s trending in your niche on Twitter or Facebook and you’ll quickly see. In real-time, learn what customers are talking about. One of the best ways to do this on Twitter is to keep an eye on the hashtags that are relevant to your industry. With notifications on, you can even receive alerts whenever somebody uses the term.
3. Communicate with Customers
Depending on the study you read, around 75% of followers on company pages are already customers. For the remaining 25%, they have been told of the brand or know about a product after some research. For both sides of the coin, you need to converse and become a personable brand. When you communicate with followers, you’re making existing customers more loyal and encouraging prospective customers to spend their money with you.
Of course, we’re talking about market research today and this means you need to pay attention to customer comments to learn about your brand. If we use Facebook as an example, the conversations you have through comments can actually be very intimate. You get feedback, and this allows you to improve:
• Product design and development
• Brand image
• Marketing campaigns
• Tone and message
The benefit of getting market research through social media comments rather than more formal means is that you get true opinions. With formal polls, it’s too easy for respondents to polish their answers. On social media, the same filters don’t tend to exist, and we get more honest replies.
Also, there’s the added bonus of other people being able to like comments. If one customer mentions their desire for your product in a different color, and dozens of others like the comment, this shows a wider interest in the market.
4. Choose the Right Tool
We mentioned the importance of choosing the right platform, and the same goes for choosing the right tools. It comes back to the quantitative vs qualitative debate and what you’re trying to achieve. Here are some popular methods on each platform:
• Polls
• Social listening
• Conversations
• Brand mentions
• Polls
• CTA posts
• Competitions
• Conversations
• Emoji sliders
• Polls
• Question stickers
• Brand mentions
• Conversations
5. Language Assessment
If you’re struggling with a marketing campaign, social media is a great way to learn the sort of language customers use when talking about your product. How do customers gauge value in your industry and how do they speak about your brand and product? By learning this key piece of information, it will be easier to target them with ad campaigns and send a message that resonates with potential future customers.
6. Follow Up on Marketing Behavior
There’s no more effective way to use social media for market research than to keep digging. If somebody gives feedback, don’t just accept this feedback and move on. Instead, build on it with even more feedback. If you aren’t sure what point a Facebook user is trying to make, ask for clarification. In all likelihood, the person who left the comment will appreciate the fact that you’re actually listening.
7. Get Long-Term Customers Involved
We’re talking about social media techniques, but your interaction with customers is not limited to social media. Let’s say you have a list of 100 names on Facebook who have been long-term customers. Why not ask them if they want to partake in a product development trial? Their input could help you shape new products (or improve existing products!).
In truth, the possibilities with relationship-based marketing are endless. All you need to do to get started is to take the jump and communicate with your loyal followers on whichever platform your audience uses most. The better your relationship, the more loyal they remain (and the more they will help when you ask).
With this, you have dozens of ways to use social media for market research. Along with our seven tips, you also have specific advice for techniques including polls, question stickers, competitions, and more. Get started today and take advantage of this free tool to improve your service for all customers!
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