As the business world crawls back to normalcy, it’s time for CPG companies to revamp their social media listening strategy. The crisis undoubtedly has opened up new, untapped opportunities to proactively innovate and find new ways to add value to your customers. Additionally, the rapid changes in market dynamics driven by technological improvements and socio-economic changes have prompted CPG companies to rethink their marketing strategies and devise better strategies to connect with customers. Changes in buyer demographics, increasing online product research, and uncertainties about product shelf space have all impacted the relationship between businesses and their customer base.
Today, we witness many CPG companies upping the game as far as a digital strategy creation is considered. In line with these developments, one of the most commendable implementations made by CPG companies encompasses the use of social media listening to best practices. Social media listening has empowered businesses to closely monitor and track customer behavior and leverage social media data to extract insights they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
Leading B2C and B2B brands agree that social media listening plays a crucial role in creating a cohesive customer journey. Request a FREE Proposal to learn how our social media analytics solutions can help you.
Social Media Listening Best Practices Checklist for CPG Brands
With modern CPG brands making massive headway in terms of growth from their social media analytics investments, we’ve curated a best practices checklist that have helped these reputable brands to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to acquiring and retaining customers.
#1 Start from Square One by Analyzing the Customer Purchase Funnel
We hear time and again that listening to customers is crucial to driving higher returns from your products, it could not be truer when it comes to CPG. Notably, leading CPG brands are analytics-focused and use social media platforms to create true brand value and not just promote products. They go a step ahead of their peers by leveraging social media listening to analyze customer intent, purchase behavior, and brand sentiment to ensure they target potential customers. Using social media listening best practices has helped many such leading brands to capture customer sentiments and build predictive attrition models that are aligned with customer requirements.
#2 Use Social Media Platforms to Set New Trends and Connect with Customers
It isn’t surprising that most CPG brands have more of a marketing-oriented, pragmatic vision when it comes to using social listening. However, true market leaders understand that social media is more than just a channel to generate sales and drive margins. This has prompted more CPG brands to leverage social media listening to set new trends and connect with customers on a more personal level. Real-world use cases of social media listening have helped us gain insights into how CPG market leaders are using social listening platforms to start new campaigns and launch new products that align with customer needs.
Your customers spend more online time on social media platforms than any other channel. Contact our social media analytics experts to learn how you can capitalize on this opportunity.
#3 Leverage Social Listening to Understand the ‘New Normal’
Categorizing customers based on their behavior and purchase intent is a common application of social media analytics, but unless you have a baseline social listening framework to work from, it can be challenging. Amid the crisis, leading CPG brands have been using social media listening to understand the ‘new normal’ from a customer’s perspective. This had paved the way for new opportunities and developments within CPG. Mainly because a detailed understanding of customer perceptions has helped CPG brands to benchmark performance by establishing what represents the new normal for the organization as a whole.
Based on our interaction with CPG market leaders and key decision-makers, it’s quite clear that when it comes to using social media platforms to acquire and retain customers in the CPG industry, innovation, strategic placement, and analytical thinking are key. Hence, CPG companies must up their game by leveraging social media listening to carefully monitor current events, set new trends, and analyze customer behavior, which, in turn, can help identify potential customers if implemented into a sound marketing strategy.
