From Feedback to Sales: How Social Listening can help ecommerce brands stay ahead of the competition
Social listening is the key to effective social media management and staying ahead of the competition, especially for online retail companies. By monitoring conversations and customer feedback, e-commerce brands can gain valuable consumer insights and tailor their marketing strategies and tactics accordingly. Social listening also plays a crucial role in building brand reputation, preventing potential crises and fostering brand loyalty. There are several tools which you can use to do this yourself or contact a social media management service like Tashi Hati to help you with the process.
Introduction
E-commerce has revolutionised the way we shop, with more consumers turning to online channels to purchase goods and services. This includes social media, making social listening one of them the most powerful tools which e-commerce brands can leverage.
Social listening is the activity of monitoring and analysing social media content that is related to your brand which can provide valuable insight into customer needs, behaviours and preferences, industry trends and competitor activity. When done correctly, it can enhance a company’s marketing strategy by taking on a more customer-centric approach.
At Tashi Hati, we understand the importance of social listening and offer social media management services so that e-commerce brands can stay ahead of the competition. We use a data-driven approach that incorporates design thinking, lean startup and agile methodologies to identify how brands can improve their marketing strategies.
In this article, we’re exploring the importance of social listening in more detail while providing some practical tips on how e-commerce brands can leverage social listening to enhance their social media management and build brand loyalty.
What is Social Listening?
As mentioned, social listening is the process of monitoring online conversations about your brand. It involves analysing not only social media platforms but also forums, blogs, review sites and other online channels to gather data and insights.
It does not only provide insight into what your customers are saying about your brand, but also how they perceive it and what improvements can be made. There are plenty of benefits including
Addressing customer complaints directly to improve customer service
Identify and address potential crises before they escalate
Identify and partner with the right influencers to enhance their influencer marketing strategy
Gain valuable insight into consumer behaviours to create more effective marketing strategies
Stay up to date with competitors and emerging industry trends.
The Role of Social Listening in Social Media Management
Social listening can improve customer feedback and online conversations by monitoring your conversations in real time. Brands that track their mentions using tools such as Google Alerts to respond quickly to customer feedback and address any issues before they escalate. They also help identify patterns in feedback as you analyse themes and topics that emerge. Lastly, they enable a stronger customer relationship by creating a sense of community and encouraging customer advocacy.
It also has a significant impact on brand reputation, competitor analysis and influencer marketing. Responding in a timely manner, addressing negative comments and reinforcing positive feedback, can help brands build a positive image, therefore, enforce the brand reputation. Brands can also track online conversations about their competitors, allowing you to gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses. This can help you identify the gaps in the market and improve your own products and services. Influencers who are already engaging with your niche also help to build relationships as they can amplify your brand messaging and reach a wider audience.
Ultimately, the goal of social listening is to gain an understanding of consumer preferences. With social media, you can analyse the language and tone used by your customers, improve your product and in turn create content that is more relatable to them. Addressing positive, neutral and negative sentiment also helps with brand reputation and tracking your campaign performance allows you to gain insight into the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Social Media Monitoring and Crisis Management
Crisis management is critical and social listening helps with the early detection of negative feedback. When dealing with crisis management, we advocate for a rapid response to help contain issues before they become a larger crisis. Naturally, it is important to have a strategy in place for crisis prevention that will allow you to protect your brand reputation. This can be in the form of understanding the severity of the impact and then crafting the right messages.
A few tools that can brands can use for social listening include
Hootsuite: Hootsuite allows you to publish and schedule your content, engage with your customers, monitor activity, advertise content, analyse the results and integrate with other applications. Your social media platform analytics are easily seen in a single dashboard so that you can see your entire brand performance.
Brandwatch: The brand watch is here to help you understand and engage with your customers by providing consumer intelligence, influencer marketing and social media management.
Mention: Similarly, mention allows you to monitor conversations across the web, listen to social conversations by analysing data from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and lastly publish posts on these channels.
Sprout: Sprout. is an all-in-one social media management platform that helps with engagement, publishing and scheduling, analytics, listening and even employee advocacy.
Google Alerts: Google Alerts is a free tool that allows brands to monitor the entire web for mentions of relevant keywords.
The Connection Between Social Listening and Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty can be built when social listening is done correctly by personalising marketing messages, product offerings and customer service. It also helps with customer engagement to build trust and foster a deeper connection between the brand and the consumer. Lastly, the responses help build your brand identity as you align your messaging to adjust to the needs and values of your customers.
As an example,
Sephora used social listening to identify the top beauty influencers on social media. They then partnered with these influencers to create personalised makeup tutorials for their potential customers. The campaign allowed customers to feel more connected to the brand and its values.
Nike used social listening to identify the most popular running routes amongst its target audience. This made them launch Nike+ Run Club, a social platform that allows runners to connect and share their experiences with other runners. This platform helped Nike build a strong community and foster brand loyalty.
Monzo is a financial service based in the United Kingdom that has done an impressive job of creating a relatable brand by responding promptly to people’s feedback in a conversational tone. This helped them build a strong reputation for excellent customer service and fostered brand loyalty among its customers.
Tashi Hati's Approach to Social Listening
Tashi Hati uses social listening by starting with analysing the brand mentions. This allows s to identify areas for improvement, track customer sentiment and reply quickly to your customers. We also take a closer look into the client’s industry or niche and identify which influencers are the best to connect with that will lead to increased brand visibility and engagement.
From the analytics, we can identify consumer preferences, pain points and feedback that help us create more effective marketing campaigns for our clients. We also have a standard practice for responding to crises to protect your brand reputation.
The Wrap Up
To conclude, social listening is essential for brands to do well on social media. Not only does it provide brands with valuable consumer insights, but it also improves customer feedback, enhances brand reputation and gives you a competitive edge.
There are plenty of free and paid tools that make the process of social listening easier, such as Google Alerts, Hootsuite and Mentions.
As an e-commerce brand, it is crucial to start implementing social listening into your marketing strategy to become successful with social media. This allows you to gain a true understanding of what your customer's needs are, ultimately leading to increased sales and success.