How do brands stay current with the ever-changing consumer behaviors and reactions? To remain relevant, brands require a consistent flow of reliable market and audience data that will enable them to understand the subtleties and complexities of a shifting marketplace.
Business-to-business (B2B) market research insights driven by social factors enable you to quickly adapt to market changes and support more focused and effective decision-making across different functions.
Based on the findings from The 2023 State of Social Media Report ™, an overwhelming majority of 95% of corporate leaders believe that giving importance to social media information is crucial for making well-informed decisions that extend beyond the realm of marketing. They are leveraging this data to foresee changes in their respective industries and to directly tackle issues that are causing their customers discomfort. This approach helps in establishing credibility and strengthens their business’s standing in a highly competitive market.
This piece examines the ways in which B2B market research can improve decision-making, highlighting underutilized techniques and social data that can provide a deeper understanding of your target audience.
What is B2B market research?
Market research in the B2B sector involves gathering and examining information on what companies require and desire to enhance their functions. It involves the interactions between a business offering a product or service and the potential clients it targets.
B2B research involves both qualitative and quantitative research such as ratings, surveys, customer experience (CX) analysis and social media listening. It provides decision-makers with actionable insights into key areas like industry trends, competitors and macroeconomic factors, which impact a sale, purchase or partnership between two companies.
B2B market research is different from general or business-to-customer (B2C) research because it involves a more complex decision-making process. For example, in contrast to B2C interactions, the B2B buyer journey usually involves multiple stakeholders with different roles and interests in the buying process.
The sales cycles for business-to-business transactions usually take more time than those for business-to-consumer transactions. This is due to the fact that B2B purchases require thorough consideration of aspects such as contract discussions, compliance with regulatory authorities, the customer’s unique requirements, and technology infrastructure considerations.
What are the benefits of B2B market research?
B2B market research gives a company in-depth insights into its business landscape and evolving customer behavior. This helps you fine-tune your sales, marketing and product strategies. You’re also able to develop more effective go-to-market (GMT) plans that meet the specific needs of your prospects and differentiate your brand from competitors.
These findings also allow you to enhance your brand’s stance, better your strategic partnerships, and connect more effectively with existing and potential clients. The key to guaranteeing that your research benefits all of these aspects is to make sure it’s current, pertinent, and aligned with the market. This can be achieved through ongoing research.
So now that we know how B2B research can help you strengthen your market positioning, let’s look at how exactly your teams can use it to their advantage while building strategies.
1. Plan goals strategically
Set realistic business goals, prioritize resource allocations more effectively and build well-calibrated partnerships. Regularly running research helps you measure brand perception and get insights in near real-time, which enables you to refine your positioning and product offering so they’re aligned with market shifts.
2. Identify growth opportunities
Leverage new trends and advancements to pinpoint opportunities for expansion, including untapped customer demographics, unmet product or service needs, or strategies to enhance customer loyalty and long-term value.
3. Understand evolving customer needs
Market research in the B2B sector can assist you in monitoring the shifting preferences of customers based on their ongoing needs and persistent issues. Utilize this information to fine-tune your brand communication and enhance your products and services to better fulfill the expectations of your clients.
4. Gain a competitive advantage
Regularly monitor the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of your competitors to make your brand more differentiated and gain a competitive edge. Monitoring their social media activity and customer interactions will help you benchmark your company’s performance against industry standards and identify areas for improvement or innovation.
5. Prepare for potential challenges
Prepare for challenges caused by market fluctuations such as geo-political factors, foreign exchange rates or environmental policies that can affect your business. Proactively address these hurdles with nuanced insights from cutting-edge machine learning (ML)-powered social listening and data analysis tools that can meticulously extract actionable insights from millions of data points across various social and online channels such as X (formerly Twitter), blogs, forums and news articles, in near real-time.
Thus, giving you the tools you need to make strategic decisions in an uncertain business climate with confidence and nurture trust among stakeholders and customers.
6. Optimize marketing and advertising strategies
Tailor and pivot marketing and advertising strategies as needed for maximum impact. Insights from continuous market research help your teams develop targeted content and engagement initiatives that resonate with your B2B audiences.
B2B market overlooked research methods
Let’s examine some powerful yet underused strategies for B2B market research that can provide you with an advantage over your competitors.
1. Understand B2B customers through keyword research
Keyword research is a tactical market research methodology in the early stages of the buyer journey, where the intention is to explore brands and businesses that match a company’s needs. And B2B buyer behavior is significantly changing in this aspect. As a recent report showed, B2B buyers are exploring more avenues outside of vendors, especially third-party resources, to make a purchase decision.
Commonly used keyword research tools include search engine optimization (SEO) tools like Google Trends, Answer the Public, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and Google Keyword Planner.
Finding out the ways in which companies search for answers on the internet (such as identifying their challenges or looking for options to rival businesses) can aid in creating a comprehensive business plan that provides highly pertinent information to your intended market. This will greatly enhance the visibility of your brand and draw in more leads that are ready for marketing.
2. Analyze industry and brand-relevant social conversations
Analyzing social listening data for industry and brand-relevant conversations provides you with timely and relevant B2B market research insights.
This allows you to gain insight into what customers think, feel, and say about your company. You can see up-to-date information on what’s trending and being talked about, and use this data to pinpoint new topics, trends, and changes in consumer tastes.
Also use these insights to align your content marketing strategy with what your audience is discussing to enhance engagement and develop a more targeted B2B social media strategy.
This research doesn’t need to be a passive process. Engage in discussions in industry forums and thought leader groups to gauge industry trends and the competitive landscape. These discussions enable you to learn first-hand what audiences think. They’re also great for promoting a higher brand recall and adapting your strategies to influence customers and stall attrition.
Analyze the social media presence of rival companies.
Social listening can also provide you with a transparent view of how your target audience perceives your competitors. Analyzing conversations around competitors will reveal their strengths and weaknesses, and yours too, contextually.
This granular competitive intelligence is valuable for refining your go-to-market strategy and brand positioning. It’s also crucial for content planning and your larger marketing strategy because it highlights topics that resonate (or don’t) with your ideal customers.
Explore the ratings and reviews.
Traditional B2B market research methods such as customer surveys and focus groups are time-consuming and don’t capture real-time data—unlike social insights that provide instant feedback and insights.
Analyzing customer opinions in reviews forums enables you to go beyond typical review metrics like star ratings and net promoter scores (NPS). Gather qualitative data around customer pain points (and what they love about your brand), so your team can proactively address and respond to their needs. This will build customer trust, encourage engagement and improve brand recall.
Your groups can examine information from discussion boards and evaluation websites such as Reddit, G2, and Capterra to gain knowledge from impartial opinions on user contentment, functionality, cost, and other important elements. Reviews of applications are also a valuable resource to comprehend how companies utilize your program and gather data that could potentially influence the product’s trajectory.
5. Analyze industry influencers
Trust is a significant factor in a business relationship and most prospects trust third parties more than vendors. This makes influencers a great source of audience insights. Use social listening to identify the influencers and advocates within your industry to see who is influencing discussions in different domains and driving conversations.
Analyzing their content will give you a better understanding of your brand perception, the competition and emerging market needs. This research will also enable you to explore possibilities to collaborate with the right influencers for your brand to amplify brand reach and credibility.
Ways to utilize social media platforms for conducting research in the business-to-business market.
B2B market research involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods that include surveys, interviews, customer data analysis and industry monitoring. Social-driven B2B research and analytics enable all of this at a fraction of the cost and time, so you can supercharge your marketing strategies including customer care requirements and brand management.
Here’s a look at how a powerful social media management solution will bring your data to life and enable you to leverage the methods noted above efficiently.
Monitor market trends by tracking keywords and hashtags
Use social listening for real-time B2B market research by tracking keywords and hashtags in customer conversations. This will reveal insights on competing brands and upcoming trends in your industry.
For instance, with Sprout’s Listening tool, which utilizes an AI-driven Query Builder, you can perform a keyword search on a vast number of social interactions across various platforms to collect specific information about your brand and the market you operate in.
Your teams can customize searches by including or excluding keywords most relevant to your business and analyze results to discover what’s top-of-mind among your customers. Thus, your teams have access to a significant sample size for market research without being overwhelmed.
Check out this video to learn how the Query Builder assists research groups in extracting specific data from social media.
Track B2B competitors across key performance indicators (KPIs)
Analyze social media data, such as customer conversations, trending topics and hashtags, to identify top competitors within your industry, including direct competitors or companies offering similar products or services.
This method also provides you with an understanding of which social media platforms your competitors are using most frequently and if there is an opportunity for you to fill a void. For instance, you might observe that your competitors are increasing their activity on LinkedIn compared to Facebook.
Sprout Social’s Competitive Analysis Listening tool gives a comparative analysis of key metrics across social such as audience sentiment, total engagements and share of voice. Monitor competitors’ follower growth and engagement on their social media profiles.
Identify the types of content that generate the most engagement among your target audience and analyze their responses to it.
Analyze sentiment to improve customer experience
Conducting social media sentiment analysis enables you to see how B2B audiences feel about your brand, products and services as well as your competitors’. For example, Reddit has a reputation for being a place where people share unfiltered opinions. Mining insights from threads related to your industry can help you map gaps in brand perception that may not have been on your radar.
In the same way, your teams can analyze the comments and mentions of your brand on social media platforms to measure customer opinions and pinpoint recurring patterns, frequent feedback, and problems that customers may be experiencing. This type of qualitative analysis offers important information about your customers’ perceptions of your brand.
Sprout’s sentiment analysis solution powered by natural language processing (NLP) and named entity recognition (NER) helps you explore positive and negative sentiment in brand mentions and conversations about you effortlessly. Get rich insights into what your customers like about you, or what product features are most popular amongst your customers and why.
These findings will help you optimize marketing strategies, spark product improvement ideas and improve the customer experience.
Find influential individuals to help grow your brand.
Build your brand by researching influencers such as industry experts, analysts or thought leaders within your B2B niche. Actively engaging with these social influencers by participating in webinars, events and discussions will boost your company’s share of voice significantly.
This not only gives you access to fresh perspectives on relevant industry topics but also opportunities to observe unique perspectives and best practices.
Sprout’s Influencer marketing tool enables you to partner with verified influencers who align with your brand’s image, allowing you to connect with new audiences on their preferred social media platforms.
Keep a close eye on the conversations and discussions initiated by your chosen influencers. Your teams can use the“People View” within Sprout to discover and organize profiles that interact with your brand to manage VIP lists and view conversation histories with these influencers.
Also analyze comments and responses from their followers to get additional insights into industry trends, challenges and customer sentiments. Influencers are an investment in your brand awareness, so assess the impact of influencer collaborations on your B2B market research efforts by tracking KPIs such as engagement, reach and the quality of insights gathered through these initiatives.
Incorporate social media insights into your customer relationship management data.
Integrate your social media market research with your customer data in your CRM tools to better understand your B2B customers and improve the customer journey for a smoother partnership. For example, use Sprout’s powerful Saleforce integrations to leverage your social data to tailor sales and marketing campaigns to your customers for faster decision-making.
In the same way, Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector allows you to combine information from various sources to obtain key metrics from every step of your customer’s journey. Monitor brand mentions and measure competitive share of voice while correlating conversion rates with your sales data.
Stay focused, relevant and informed with B2B market research
Knowledge is currency. And when it’s timely and targeted, it’s the foundation of informed decision-making.
Your social data is more than just facts and figures – it’s the driving force behind groundbreaking advancements that can elevate your business to new levels of success. Utilize this valuable resource of powerful market insights to support ongoing development and ease the challenges of expansion.
Use precise, social and AI-driven intelligence to double down on customer-centricity and help your brand exceed market expectations. You’ll empower your teams to unearth timely opportunities and forge stronger partnerships across the org with meticulously crafted insights.
Download the guide to turn your B2B social data into a revenue driver and bring your vision to life.
The post 5 overlooked B2B market research methods for understanding your customers appeared first on Sprout Social.
Business-to-business (B2B) market research is essential for understanding the needs and preferences of your target customers. With the right information, you can create effective marketing strategies and products that meet their demands. However, many B2B companies overlook certain market research methods that can provide invaluable insights. Here are five B2B market research methods that are often overlooked but can help you uncover your customers’ needs.
1. Social Media Listening: Social media listening is an effective way to track customer sentiment and identify trends in the marketplace. By monitoring conversations on social media, you can gain insights into what customers are saying about your brand, products, and services. You can also use social media listening to uncover customer pain points and develop strategies to address them.
2. Online Surveys: Online surveys are a great way to collect customer feedback and gain insights into their needs and preferences. You can create surveys that ask customers about their experiences with your products and services, as well as their opinions on potential new offerings. Surveys can also be used to identify customer pain points and develop strategies to address them.
3. Focus Groups: Focus groups are a great way to get direct feedback from customers. They allow you to ask questions and gain insights into customer needs and preferences in a more interactive setting. Focus groups also provide an opportunity for customers to share their experiences with your brand, products, and services.
4. Customer Interviews: Customer interviews are a great way to get in-depth insights into customer needs and preferences. You can ask customers questions about their experiences with your brand, products, and services, as well as their opinions on potential new offerings. Interviews also provide an opportunity to uncover customer pain points and develop strategies to address them.
5. Competitor Analysis: Competitor analysis is an important part of B2B market research. By understanding your competitors’ strategies, you can identify opportunities to differentiate your products and services. You can also use competitor analysis to uncover customer needs that are not being met by your competitors and develop strategies to address them.
By utilizing these five B2B market research methods, you can gain valuable insights into your customers’ needs and preferences. This information can help you create effective marketing strategies and products that meet their demands. With the right market research methods, you can uncover your customers’ needs and develop strategies to address them.
Source: sproutsocial.com
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