Can't imagine how to save time and money on Marketing research? NinjaPromo will clarify the idea.

Let's be honest, social networks(SNSs) can hardly be called an ideal source for marketing research. However, for large companies, marketing research in SNSs is extremely important, since it is there that the most remarkable fans of the brand spend their time.

In addition, it is SNSs where we can observe a frank opinion of customers as consumers crave to communicate with brands. Here is what the statistics say on this point:

• 95% of consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 are likely to follow the brand on SNSs.

• Buyers report that they spend 20–40% more money on brands that interact with them on SNSs.

• 71% of customers who have had experience of interacting with a brand in SNSs will most likely recommend it to friends and acquaintances.

It is worth noting that not all marketing research requires a large number of participants and high activity in the group. For example, when GE Healthcare Life Sciences wanted to find out in what way their potential clients were discussing protein purification issues, experts analyzed about 500,000 comments on this topic. The data obtained allowed to improve the content, as well as to make the text on the site more accessible and understandable to users.

Social networks can be a useful tool to help you get the following:

• Immediate feedback from consumers, the info about their personal experiences using your product or service.

• Information on how to improve a product or service.

The main advantage of SNSs is that data can be collected very quickly since almost half of the users log into their profile at least once a day (if not a hundred times).

So, with the help of SNSs, you can quickly get feedback from customers. For example, one study found out that SNSs are three times more efficient than tracking customer feedback by email.

In addition, using social networks, you can save on research. Most functions (for example, polls) collect data at zero cost.

But it is worth remembering that SNSs as marketing research tools are not suitable for everyone. If your groups do not count hundreds of thousands (or millions) of subscribers, do not expect them to become an effective source of data.

However, for small businesses, there is one possibility: social listening of competing brands. Analyzing their groups, you will be able to understand what your potential customers are unhappy with or what they want.

So, what are the main methods that can be used for marketing research on social networking websites?

Methods of marketing research on social networks

There are three types of qualitative research that are suitable for social networks:

• Qualitative content analysis (number of likes/comments/reposts) — assessing the degree of consumer engagement in social networks may indicate the attractiveness of a marketing message or a product.

• Observation — passively collecting feedback from your customers or tracking the opinions on your brand or competitors.

• Polls /questions — asking questions directly on SNSs, encouraging users to share their thoughts and feelings.

Obviously, it makes sense to conduct marketing research only in those SNSs where your customers spend most of their time and are most active. Below you will find some tactics and strategies.

• Polls. The most popular SNSs offer the option of conducting polls. As a rule, polls get more likes than any other type of post. It does not take much time or effort to create a poll, get valuable feedback and analyze data. On top of that, polls have a dual goal: increasing social network engagement and marketing research.

• Monitoring (on Twitter) Monitoring is a method of monitoring customer behavior in order to know their thoughts about the company or product. For example, when the owner of a pizzeria chain with a focus on healthy eating BellaBrava wanted to open a new restaurant in Europe, he created a list of keywords that reflect their core values (for example, "organic", "vegetable", "vegetarian"), and tracked people who talked about this on Twitter and other Social utilities. As a result, the company has identified 10 potential places with the strongest market where it could open a new restaurant.

Conclusion

Listening and monitoring in SNSs means an in-depth understanding of your target audience. You can take even more advantage if you saturate yourself in every person on the SNSs, and will do that consistently to manage all digital activity you run in the best way. This is a time and money saving while getting a good return on your marketing investment and using the advantages of the audience so that your marketing activity becomes more personalized and remains relevant.