Building Phase: Due Diligence
Today we will focus on the Due Diligence stage of Building, this stage should be intuitive for most. If you’re starting on square one with nothing, like I did, you’ll need to gather some basic information to understand where and how social data and analytics can impact your business.
The guiding principle here is to determine your use cases.
These are the 3 core use cases we uncovered at the inception of my team:
1) Consumer Insights & Competitive Intelligence
One of the most popular use cases was to get a better understanding of how our consumers speak about our brands. Pretty straightforward, you’re simply discovering, for the first time ever, what’s being said about your brand(s).
This information will evolve into the “Voice of the Customer”. The ongoing social listening program you put in place will give you a better idea of general consumer lexicon, slang, short-hand acronyms, and other brand-specific terminology your company may not use but your consumers do.
- Likes/Dislikes will be scattered across your brand mentions because no brand is free from criticism (or praise, hopefully). Look out for attributes that consumers like/dislikes, such as flavors, colors, and unnecessary packaging.
- Unmet needs go hand in hand with Likes/Dislikes, only this lens will isolate need states (in our case, these included chronic pain, fast relief, and dehydration to name a few). These are attributes that your product may not necessarily have or that you fail to address as a brand. These types of insights are extremely rich so keep your eyes peeled!
- Preferences for competitors may also bubble up, they certainly did for us! Whether it’s a million-dollar category leading brand, a store brand like Target’s Up & Up, or some crazy DIY remedy that someone’s family has used for generations. Expect to see any one of these in your data.
2) Innovation
We compete in the largest consumer healthcare categories in the business, from respiratory and digestive health to toothpaste and supplements, regularly looking to social media for insight and inspiration!
Ingredients are a major focus for our company, especially when it comes to the benefits each ingredient provides. We look to the market for inspiration to help us determine the “next big thing”, including popular ingredients like ashwagandha, elderberry, and apple cider vinegar.
Whitespace research goes hand-in-hand with innovation. For example, Peloton was originally known for its cycling classes and hardware but recently introduced a new rowing machine. An entirely different sport and athlete audience but in line with their larger fitness demographic. Peloton in this case, would benefit from social listening to “rowing” related conversations, an activity they (at the time) didn’t actively compete in or sell a product in.
If you’re a research-driven team and looking to support existing category research, whether it’s luxury bracelets, OLED TVs, or BBQ potato chips, these may be two of your top use cases.
3) Community Management
Social listening has immense application in community management. Brands these days have online personas, reflecting their company’s beliefs and the audiences they’re trying to target. But how do they know who to target and how to engage with them?
Listening to conversations beyond the direct mentions offers tremendous upside for insights. Sour Patch Kids, for example, has been selling SKUs with only their blue gummies, possibly because their earned mentions were littered with consumers talking about picking out all the “blue ones”.
Insights like this are routed right back into a brand’s organic strategy so that when the community management team goes to create posts, they know that by talking about their blue gummies they’ll be resonating with what their consumers want.
These insights give brands a voice that keeps their online audiences coming back for more. At the end of the day, you can’t delight your consumers if you don’t know what they want or care about.
This has been your due diligence deep dive.
❔ Which of the three main use cases are most relevant to you? Share the application ideas here so the community can learn!
Tune in tomorrow for more guidance on how to navigate the building phase of our social intelligence maturity model.
ICYMI
Here is the full series:
- Building Your Maturity Model Part 1
- Maturity Model Part 2: Due Diligence
- Maturity Model Part 3: Fill the Knowledge Gaps
- Maturity Model Part 4: Pilot & Assess