Listening to what your audience has to say has never been easier for brands. Social media platforms allow you as a marketer to get in touch directly with the end-user and get their insights on your brand or product. Despite it being so easy to get audience inputs, Forbes predicted that 75% of efforts to create automated, personalised engagement will not be able to meet ROI goals due to inadequate buyer insight.
But what kind of insights do brands really need for improved results? Honestly, the more you know about your target audience, the more effectively you will be able to target them. Understanding your target audience, their demographic data, their lifestyle and preferences and more importantly their problems will help you help them better. Here are the kind of insights you need to know about your target audience:
Ground Level Insights
These include details on educational background and occupational information. You should also try to go above and beyond to understand about what platforms your target audience is present on, how they get their information, who influences them and where they socialise. Ask deeper questions like what their dreams and desires are, what makes them feel good and bad, what are the challenges they face, what motivates and frustrates them?
For better insights, it is a good idea to try and understand what a day in their life looks like and retrace their steps. Try to understand their problems, predict what future problems could arise and try to create solutions to these problems that would be acceptable to your target audience.
Now you may be wondering, how can you as a brand have access to such details about your customers and potential clients. Here are some ways you can use various digital tools to get insights into your audience and learn more about their problems and requirements:
Create Fun Online Quizzes
You can use tools like Typeform to create engaging and fun quizzes that help you understand your audience better and learn more about their preferences and habits. This is a wonderful way of gaining insights into the thought processes of your audiences and can be used as a tool to grow your email list as well. That way, you can kill two birds with one stone and increase your ROI.
Conduct Surveys
Online surveys that ask your target audience the right questions in a straightforward manner are also great tools to gain direct insights from your ideal customers with regards to your brand and offerings. You can use tools like Jotform, Typeform etc. to create relevant surveys and use social media to ask your audience for their inputs. You could also incentivise participation by giving out vouchers or other prizes to participants as a token of appreciation.
Set up Focus Groups
Focus groups are some of the most effective ways to understand your audience and lead valuable discussions related to your niche. They involve getting together a group of people belonging to your target audience and getting them to talk about various topics related to your brand and industry. Focus groups help you get the undivided attention of your audience and also allow you to study their body language to gain further insights.
Start a Routine Involving Direct Chats with Current Customers
A great way to monitor your audience feedback at various steps is by creating automated routines asking for their feedback. This could be feedback on their customer service experiences, experience while purchasing from your business or any other feedback you might require. This will help you to make the improvements needed to achieve better results for your company.
Need help with social listening? Book a free consultation call with our experienced marketing team to understand the way forward.
