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Google is going to eliminate email accounts that have been inactive after two years which could help some marketers and hurt others.

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Marketing is getting more involved with cross-functional teams — and a lot of non-marketers don’t see this as a value add.

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To emerge victorious, it’s crucial to have a thorough understanding of your adversary. This entails gaining insight into their capabilities and limitations, as well as comprehending how they are viewed by your intended market. Conducting research on the competitive landscape is essential for this purpose. It enables you to gain a deeper knowledge of your main rivals and keep track of market shifts, allowing you to fine-tune your approach using factual information.

Social listening is an effective tool for competitive analysis, gathering specific insights about your brand from online discussions on social media platforms. It provides immediate information about consumer behavior, new trends, and what your competitors are doing, allowing you to quickly adjust your strategies and maintain a competitive edge.

Let’s explore in more detail how utilizing social listening can provide you with a competitive advantage in market research.

The advantage of utilizing social listening for market research lies in its ability to provide a competitive edge.

Social listening empowers you with real-world insights extracted from raw, unfiltered brand-related online chatter for a birds’ eye-view of the competitive landscape. These insights help you refine marketing strategies to optimize your return on investment (ROI). They also help you uncover whitespace opportunities to innovate and expand on product, pricing and geographic expansion strategies.

Research on competitors can also provide an understanding of larger consumer patterns, like how increased prices affect general spending habits and brand choices. Additionally, it can offer strategies for effectively reaching Gen Z, a group recognized for its strong buying power and distinct purchasing habits.

Competitive intelligence is especially critical in social media marketing because of the nature of social. As new platforms, features and trends emerge, social teams must keep competitive market research on their radar to prep for 2024.

Competitive listening gives social teams swift, comprehensive insights simultaneously from across social platforms, review sites and customer forums—at a fraction of the cost and time traditional research methods take. You’re able to overcome flux in platform algorithms and face continuously evolving consumer behavior. You also understand how your competitors are navigating these shifts and adapting their strategies to meet them.

Examine the emotions in numerous discussions about your brand to better meet the needs of your customers and protect your market share from competitors.

Pairing cross-departmental knowledge with social listening for deeper insights

Social listening data gives you a deep understanding of your business environment not just for marketing but also other key areas such as product enhancement, finding growth opportunities and informing customer care.

Per The State of Social Media Report, 95% of business executives agree companies must rely more heavily on social media data to inform business decisions outside of marketing.

This is happening for a reason. According to the most recent Sprout Social Index ™, 68% of consumers follow brands on social media to keep up with the latest products or services. They engage in conversations, ask questions, and compare different products and services. This presents a valuable opportunity to tap into customer-generated insights.

This is why combining knowledge from different departments with insights gained from social listening is a mutually beneficial strategy.

Social competitor analysis tools enable you to combine internal knowledge and social media intelligence to bridge disparities between how you think your audience perceives your brand and their actual sentiment. These insights, paired with data from your own CRM, product research and sales data, give you an even clearer picture of how to grow market share.

Building materials pioneer, James Hardie®, uses social listening for competitive research to do just this. They engage in audience and trend analysis, research product sentiment, identify industry influencers and conduct competitor comparisons to build holistic brand strategies beyond marketing.

“It’s beneficial for both our brand’s image and marketing strategy, as well as providing valuable insights for our sales and product departments. We can uncover recurring patterns and topics in discussions. We can pinpoint not just our own brand supporters, but also those of our competitors,” states Bridget Kulla, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at James Hardie.

Here’s a quick look at how you can combine insights from various departments with social listening.

Identify patterns and correlations

Search for commonalities and intersections between your own expertise and the insights gained from social listening data. This practice will assist you in discovering competitors that you were previously unaware of, allowing for a deeper comprehension of your industry.

Integrate social listening workflows

Work with department leaders across the organization to educate all team members on the power of what social listening can do and where social insights can plug into their workflows.

Monitor data on the subjects of the tracks being listened to.

Marketing, sales and product teams each focus on different aspects of your brand experience. By narrowing your social media listening focus on data that is truly relevant to your goals, you can get insights from thousands of social conversations without getting overwhelmed.

Sprout’s Listening solution enables this kind of detailed competitive research analysis to facilitate cross-departmental collaboration. Our competitive listening capabilities help you identify keywords and hashtags in competitor-related conversations, revealing common topics in your industry.

Users have the ability to form Groups for the purpose of evaluating multiple rivals simultaneously, and they can also design individual Competitive Analysis Listening Templates for product-specific data examination. This feature is particularly advantageous for major brands that have a variety of product lines.

Our integrated, AI-driven Query Builder provides customization options for your listening allowing you to include or exclude keywords. Here’s a quick video of the tool in action cutting through the noise in social listening.

How to champion your social listening findings across your organization

A key part of social media competitive analysis is ensuring you can build a collective narrative from all your research. This is necessary to champion your social listening research as a resource for decision-making to drive your business forward.

To gain support from different departments for insights gained through listening, it is important to eliminate barriers between data sources and present your findings in a way that is easy to understand and implement, particularly for executive audiences.

Sprout Listening’s competitive analysis templates and reports with pre-designed topic templates help you achieve this. These templates give your teams access to unfiltered data from millions of social conversions to build winning brand strategies. And, they consolidate all your competitive research data into a unified source to facilitate swift collaboration across departments.

The template provides a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of key metrics, including total engagement, potential impressions, brand sentiment and share of voice. This allows for a straightforward analysis of your brand’s performance in comparison to competitors. These metrics also offer an in-depth understanding of which brand is leading the conversation and how your target audience perceives you versus the competition.

Utilize the provided templates in order to:

Find insights by network

Gain valuable insights into your content performance on different platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly known as Twitter) through network-specific performance and engagement reports. These reports give you a comparative view of which networks your competitors are heavily investing in, which in turn can inform your platform strategy or highlight a content gap you can fill for your audience.

Also use Sprout’s Custom Reports to share relevant insights across departments. These reports help your teams combine cross-network competitor engagement and listening data for a holistic view.

Identify leading trends in the industry and among competitors.

Discover prominent trends and topics within your industry and extract insights on a number of factors such as competitors, content types, message styles and audience sentiment. Utilize keyword filters to refine your search and choose a date range to examine both long-term and short-term competitive trends.

For example, listening data can reveal an upward trend in consumer demand for products that are ethically sourced and environmentally friendly, which can influence your overall brand strategy and differentiate you from the crowd.

Analyze in-depth metrics on content success and audience interaction on Facebook, X and Instagram, taking into account the distinct characteristics of each platform. For example, content that thrives on Instagram might not have the same impact on Facebook because of variations in layout and user activity.

Identify areas of growth

Analyze feedback about your product and service to proactively address customer concerns and identify areas for improvement and growth. Also analyze competitor feedback and use those findings to refine your own ad messaging and develop more targeted selling propositions. This approach enables you to differentiate your brand while staying vigilant on competitor performance.

Combine and analyze data from various technology platforms.

Further strengthen the value of your competitive analysis by integrating your competitive research across your company’s tech stack. With Sprout’s Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector, you can aggregate insights from multiple systems into rich data visualizations of key metrics throughout your customer journey. Track social engagements, average response rates for social customer care initiatives and your competitive share of voice.

You can also customize visuals and gain an immersive view by mapping social engagements and conversion rates to sales data.

Utilize your competitive marketing analysis for an improved 2024.

Use social listening to conduct a thorough SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis for yourself and your key competitors. This approach to competitive market research will provide you with actionable insights to navigate successfully through 2024 and beyond.

From analyzing your competitors’ pricing strategies and value props to assessing gaps in your content strategy, use Sprout’s listening templates and reports to identify opportunities and differentiate your brand from competitors.

Ask for a demonstration to explore important insights in depth.

The post Why competitive research will become more important for social teams in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

As the world of social media continues to evolve, it is becoming increasingly important for social teams to stay ahead of the game. In order to do this, competitive research is a key component of success. Competitive research involves the analysis of competitors’ strategies, tactics, and performance in order to gain an edge over them. This type of research can help social teams understand their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as identify opportunities for improvement.

In the year 2024, competitive research will be even more important for social teams. As the number of social media platforms continues to grow, so too will the competition. Social teams will need to understand their competitors’ strategies in order to stay ahead of the game. By conducting competitive research, they can gain insights into their competitors’ tactics and performance, allowing them to develop more effective strategies.

Competitive research can also help social teams identify new opportunities for growth. By analyzing their competitors’ performance, they can identify areas where they can improve or capitalize on trends that their competitors may be missing out on. This can help them stay ahead of the competition and gain an edge over their rivals.

Finally, competitive research can help social teams anticipate changes in the industry. By monitoring their competitors’ activities, they can identify emerging trends and adjust their strategies accordingly. This can help them stay ahead of the curve and ensure that their strategies remain relevant in the ever-changing landscape of social media.

In conclusion, competitive research is an essential tool for social teams in 2024. By understanding their competitors’ strategies and performance, they can develop more effective strategies and identify new opportunities for growth. Additionally, they can anticipate changes in the industry and adjust their strategies accordingly. With competitive research, social teams can stay ahead of the competition and ensure success in the year 2024.

Source: sproutsocial.com