Marketing Datafication No. 5 will look at social data and how marketers are making the most of this rich source of personal customer information to increase engagement and purchases.
Let us take a look at some social media statistics. 71% of online adults use Facebook, 23% use Twitter, 26% use Instagram, 28% use Pinterest and 28% use LinkedIn. Of these people, 40% engage with social media on their phones. 28% do this daily.
How customers are interacting
On a daily basis, customers are engaging with content on social media sites and in doing so they are leaving a rich source of personal information that marketers can use to increase engagement and purchases.
Looking at the type of content people engage with gives marketers more than simple ‘vanity metrics’ (e.g. likes, favourites, followers, shares etc.). It allows marketers to understand why customers like a specific brand and what motivates their buying behaviour.
“To incorporate social data into strategies marketers have to first start gathering it. The data you collect will add a finer level of granularity to your customer insights, which means you can engage with them on a more personal level,” says Rob Jones, Director at Euler.
Marketers can use personal social data to tap into ‘social commerce’ and offer customers shopper pick lists, user ratings and user-generated content that is all focused around brand products and messages.
Some expert thoughts about social data
Rob Jones continues, “Let us say you have gathered a number of positive reviews about product ‘A’. You have analysed your data and found that people who gave a positive review about product ‘A’ went on to purchase products ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. But, they gave poor reviews about product ‘X’. You can use this information to trigger a message to the next person to buys product ‘A’ to promote products ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. You could even use this data to learn more about why product ‘X’ was not well received.”
Social data has to be more than counting the number of likes you have on Facebook. It has to be about insight and how this helps you improve engagement and increase sales.
Our final instalment in our Marketing Datafication series will look at the future of data driven marketing. We will learn about the importance of data innovation and discuss the emergence of AI in data-driven marketing.