This year has been rough, but there are emerging trends that brands can uncover to pick up the slack. And the eservices category is where to find them, using social media analytics.
We’ll look at the eServices market, specifically:
- Identifying emerging trends within the eServices sector
- Love, dinner and toned abs – how social listening is a brand’s eye in the sky
- Opportunities waiting in the wings, as events expand
And these statistics are key:
- Cell phones account for 71% of digital traffic
- 37% of consumers have used a dating app in the last six months
- 67% of consumers are more likely to buy tickets if they watch a live stream of a music event.
State of eServices’ Emerging Trends
In-person activities like eating out, going to the gym and even dating all but became a thing of the past – until savvy companies found new ways to market themselves.
Restaurants began offering delivery of not just food but essentials, and many gyms offered online classes to the millions of people growing restless inside. And now, eServices are front and center of our daily lives. And by spotting emerging trends via social media listening and market intelligence, your company can be front and center too.
Our network map reveals top conversations surrounding eServices and how different industries are taking advantage of it. Dating Apps has a large segment as does Virtual Fitness Classes, and there are many segments focusing on our favorite pandemic comfort – food delivery.
Looking to our timeline which identifies emerging trends, the conversation is always shifting – so setting benchmarks is critical to understanding your consumers. For example, in February Food Delivery M&A was a big conversation as companies like Uber looked to take over the market, and consumers looked for the best deal. However, in April, it’s replaced with a spike in Virtual Fitness Classes. And over the past two months, Online Dating is picking up speed. It’s no wonder, as Dating Apps has been a consistent topic over the past year, as consumers felt isolated.
The timeline is searchable, revealing the ‘why’ behind the dips and spikes.
By analyzing eServices, and isolating segments of growing interest, we can see what’s being said. Below, Virtual Fitness Classes highlights senior fitness and the overwhelming demand for any virtual class online. And Dating shows a wide variety of topics from the best apps to dating sites targeting different demographics of people. Food Delivery M&A discusses the battle ground for food delivery apps worldwide.
But what are consumers saying? For that we look to NetBase and Quid Social to illuminate our path….
Fitness, Dating and Food eServices Offerings
Consumer emotions are key to a successful product launch – and they are also fickle and fleeting, which can make navigating their waters tricky.
Our social listening tool makes easy work, with visual markers that can track the rise and fall of sentiment around a chosen category over a period of time.
Below, a comparison of eService segments Dating, Food Delivery, and Fitness can be seen, along with net sentiment over six months. Staying the most consistent is Dating, while Fitness represents the fluctuating love for physical activity during lockdown while maintaining high net sentiment (a score from -100 to 100). And Food is manic with large dips and spikes. It seems people have a very love/hate relationship with it.
And emerging trends can be spotted in those dips and spikes. After all, not knowing what is behind a sudden drop is useless. Clicking on Sept 14th in our fluctuation summary illustrates more.
Our top post shows positive sentiment from a paper in Manilla talking about everyday home cooks taking a chance and delivering meals to people through social media – exhibiting the opportunities in food delivery and advertisement.
And consumers are all about food delivery; it experiences mostly positive emotions expressed in our interactive, clickable and transparent word cloud:
Clicking on Great leads to this post from Instagram about New Zealand’s pet food delivery service ‘Pet.’ This is another great new way food delivery is branching out, demonstrating that businesses are harnessing food apps and sites to fit consumers’ (and their pets’) post-pandemic needs:
And apps are big talk within not only the food segment, but also dating and fitness. After all, mobile devices are responsible for 71% of the country’s digital traffic and much of it connects consumers with apps of every variety these days.
Below, we have a bar chart of conversation around fitness apps, showing segments that are ordered according to highest engagement. We noted a few stories that received more interaction. Though Start Working Out is the largest category, Weight Loss wins for social engagement:
A sampling of articles highlights the various conversations around fitness from the best apps to the downfalls of them.
Apps are a great opportunity for brands to advertise – and this is true even of dating apps. 37% of people have used a dating app in the past six months. And they talk about them, in the content of which apps they like or are deleting. And it’s all on social media. Everything is, really.
Social media analytics also details where consumers are speaking up about dating apps. Here we have our search filtered to show top domains. Twitter and Tumblr come out on top.
With a few clicks we can see what they are saying, revealing opportunities for brands. This lady is bored with them…
And this news post points to what could be an emerging trend that could take dating apps by storm.
But it’s not all love either, which is important to track for brand health.
Food and fitness opportunities abound in the post-pandemic eServices field too, of course. It’s not all about dating. Intel is everywhere, if you know where to look . . .
Events Offer Opportunities
Brands are finding innovative ways to reach their consumers, and most creative of all is the live music and entertainment segment. Looking again at our conversation cluster below, music is rather small. However, digging deeper reveals more:
Online Live Music Events has a relatively low publish account, but its social engagement is high and research shows that 67% of live video viewers are more likely to buy a ticket to a concert after watching a live video of that event. This is something marketers should keep in mind for future campaigns.
And investigating this with social listening reveals posts and articles about live music and live cinema events that have adapted to the new standard of social distancing:
This is great for advertising. Online live events and drive-in theatres are making social distancing social again – and consumers are ecstatic. Our sentiment wheel shows the love as well as a sampling of tweets and posts from consumers.
And it looks like the UK and comedy have already found ways to do live entertainment safely using the drive-in as their model. Other eServices and consumer-facing opportunities are sure to follow suit soon enough:
No matter what your brand needs, having social media listening is key to understanding what your consumers want. Spot emerging trends with the best social analytics and market intelligence powered by next generation AI. Take a moment to reach out for a demo right now – your CEO will thank you!
