Social media listening as a part of customer intelligence

Before sharing our thoughts about the importance of customer intelligence (CI), let's make sure we are on the same page of understanding this term's definition.

Crafting a product or inventing a service is not a problem nowadays, but selling it might be challenging. If you expect something more than keeping your company afloat, it's crucial to understand WHY your customers would choose you instead of anything else.

In brief, customer intelligence is meant to give you the answer to this WHY.

How social media listening tools can help you with customer intelligence

Previously companies had to conduct researches, including focus groups or interviewing customers to discover what they think of a product or service. Unfortunately, these methods are time and money consuming and not every company can afford that. Moreover, people sometimes do not realize their genuine desires due to some cognitive biases or can not express them correctly.

With the development of such tools as YouScan, listening and understanding your customers and prospects became easier and much faster. You can now use social media to gather mentions, opinions, experiences, and reviews and know your clients' real sentiments about your brand.

Still, it may sound too general and vague without a proper plan on how to implement all this into your business processes. So, it's time to move to a practical part of our article where we are going to give you some tips on social media listening, which is a perfect tool to carry out customer intelligence.

1. Analyze and segment the customer base

If you have a CRM, customer intelligence platform, or any other management system (and we hope you do), you can examine such data as demographics, location, purchase history, initial request, etc. But still, this data might not be enough to segment your audience according to their genuine needs and offer them personalized service.

On the other hand, social media is where your clients are posting about your brand, sharing their experience, and asking for advice. YouScan allows you to gather this missing data for customer intelligence and upload it directly into your CRM via API or Webhook integrations.

When you have broad descriptions of your client, you can use them to create or change your buyer's personas and prepare a detailed customer journey map.

After that, you can segment the audience, offer them more personalized experiences and create ads for each group according to their interests.

2. Build and increase loyalty between customers and business

After you have learned more about your customers, it's much easier to build strong relationships that will later transform into loyalty. There are several ways to do that with the help of social listening.

1. Improve customer service in social media. Track complaints and start a conversation to solve the problem as soon as possible. Customers whose issue has been resolved quickly are more likely to become loyal to the brand as they feel appreciated.

2. Enrich relationships with existing customers. Have you ever got a response or at least a like from the brand that you've mentioned on social media? Do you remember the pleasant feeling like you are noticed? People like to get attention from brands, especially if it is personalized, why not use it? One well-turned Twitter reply might bring you a new brand ambassador or even become viral.

3. Find influencers to boost your social activity. Influencer marketing is an efficient way to reach your target audience in a more human way than direct ads. Though it becomes problematic to find the relevant influencers, YouScan can help you with this task. Just filter mentions by authors and engagement to discover influencers in your niche. Find more details in our influencer marketing guide.

3. Increase sales efficiency

Now when you know your clients on an individual level, tailoring the personalized ad campaigns wouldn't be a problem. Usually, narrow targeting with customized CTA performs better than the abstract message that addresses everyone.

One more positive consequence of using CI is customer experience improvement, leading to retention, loyalty, and profits, of course.

Moreover, revenue growth can be achieved by implementing precious insights that were discovered using social listening. Consider all new information as an opportunity rather than a problem to develop your business and grow.

Bottom Line

Customer intelligence might seem to be an exhausting and time-consuming process, but it is an essential part of building a profitable business. Because how can you sell something if you don't know who is willing to buy it?

Ready to learn what your clients feel about your brand? Request our free demo and become closer with your audience.