Consumer intelligence helps brands design exceptional campaign strategies. With it, brands can connect with consumers on a deeper, much more personalized level; measure ongoing efforts against previous campaigns; and, immediately understand what’s working, what could be improved and what should be discarded. Best of all? It’s starts with one super simple step – capturing consumer chatter.
We’ll share how social analytics tools allow brands to perform deep dives into past, present and future campaigns, revealing:
- Where consumers are talking
- How to extract meaningful consumer conversation
- Benchmarking tactics to quickly measure success
Where to Capture Consumer Conversation
So, where are consumers talking about your brand and its products/services? Diving right in with an example, when we explore breakfast items within the CPG category, we find that forums have the highest foot traffic for discussing the most important meal of the day:
Why does this matter? Each channel attracts different audience segments, and using consumer intelligence helps assess these differences to create messaging that will resonate. Let’s break that down a bit with some examples:
- Forums are essentially message boards for top-of-mind consumer-driven conversations, the posts are raw and telling. A popular choice here being Reddit, where the audience tends to be aged 25-29, followed by 18-24 year olds.
- Blogs are a one-to-many conversation where writers ask leading questions or share observations, all meant to elicit engagement – and readers react. The comments there are more expected and focused, based on the topic of the blog. Demographics vary by blog focus as well – and are usually very niche to a specific category.
- Social channels appeal to different demographics, with 35% of Instagram users generally aged 25-34 and 80%of Twitter users participating are affluent millennials. Brands tend to shy away from social and that can be a big mistake, as the precise people you’re trying to reach are participating and telling you what they want there.
And these little differences can require significant shifts in your messaging. If you can’t speak their language, you’ll be bested by someone who can.
Using Conversation Intel to Connect Meaningfully
How does a brand connect meaningfully with these groups – or any groups? Behavioral insight matters here, as emotion plays a significant role in purchasing. Most people think emotionally before logically, so fostering an emotional connection is wise. This doesn’t mean brands need to psychoanalyze consumers’ deepest desires, but it does mean they need to make consumers feel known. That’s the level of emotional connection to strive for here.
Additionally, consumers are creatures of habit. American families repeatedly buy the same 150 items, which constitutes as much as 85% of their household needs. When you have consumers who buy the same packaged goods out of habit or even old sentiment, engaging them in new conversations can be difficult. But this task is made simpler by consumer intelligence.
Continuing our exploration of breakfast items, isolating conversation on Twitter, we’ve highlighted conversation focused more on two main areas: sweet treats for breakfast such as cakes or even cookies, but then balanced by conversation around healthy living. This could be an excellent place to market your item to help make these sweet treats, or perhaps you have a keto-friendly muffin idea brewing:
And this is different from what we observed on Forums. It’s a smorgasbord of talk around favorite travel spots combined with breakfast, as well as many mentions of the company Waitrose. So an on-the-go option like a granola bar or a heat and eat option, such a breakfast burrito to take along on the trail might be appreciated here.
With as little as 3% of new consumer packaged goods exceeding first-year sales of $50 million, understanding consumer interests can be a game changer that helps you easily clear that hurdle. Brand messaging informed by site-specific conversations can connect you more meaningfully to these breakfast eaters, or whatever product your brand is dishing up.
Regardless of how you use this intel, tracking your efforts over time is important. You’ll want to see how your campaign plays out as you progress, and use those findings to inform future campaign planning.
Using Efforts as a Baseline for Future Campaigns
The consumer journey doesn’t end when you release your product, in fact these days, the after-purchase path is just as crucial. As an example, in February, M&Ms came out with a Super Bowl ad starring Dan Levy. Its focus was on the lighter side of life, as undoubtedly informed by the weary response many people have express online about being bombarded with too many serious matters.
As a basic example, we can track back ahead of the commercial’s launch. On and around December 20, we see a decent number mentions about M&Ms on Twitter. The count spikes with the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day – and has since leveled off at a slightly higher mention frequency than it was achieving before game day:
We can explore overarching conversations and keywords happening to understand what is causing the increase. Peanut M&Ms were figured prominently in the super bowl ad and all keywords point to these terms being mentioned most often in these posts:
When they design their next commercial, they can focus very specifically on how “peanut M&M’s” are trending on different platforms – what is being said and the conversation they’d like to encourage. And then track those results back here, as granularly as they’d like, to see if their messaging hit the mark and consumers are talking about the product with greater frequency/in the way they intended.
If increased volume was the goal here – then game, set, match. Whatever the goal, having clear benchmarking goals for your brand is a must. Capturing the right consumer intelligence is easy once you have that understanding in place.
Reach out for a demo of Quid Social, as there are so many amazing ways to slice and dice consumer intelligence, and we’d love to show you a few that relate specifically to your needs!
