4 Unique Ways Social Media Listening Can Increase Customer Advocacy
Social Listening Took Sport Clips’ Localized Marketing Efforts to the Next Level: Learn How
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Social Listening took Sport Clips' Localized Marketing Efforts to the Next Level: Learn How
In today's digital-first world, consumers are changing their buying behaviors. While solely relying on traditional marketing efforts may have worked in the past, that is no longer the case. The consumer in buying mode counts on digital more than ever before. Today, 97 percent of consumers conduct an online search when in need of a business or service. Similarly, 78 percent of consumers say local social content influences their purchase decisions. How is your multi-location business reaching these consumers, and what is the message you're delivering? These are questions to consider when building your localized marketing efforts, and it all starts with conversational commerce. Sport Clips is a great example of a multi-location business that found success through conversational commerce and a strong local social strategy. Throughout this blog, we'll recap a webinar on the rise of c-commerce, its impact on multi-location businesses, and share tactics Sport Clips found effective that you can use in your own localized marketing efforts.The Future of Commerce - Conversational Commerce
Conversational commerce is the intersection of messaging apps and online shopping. It's a new form of e-commerce where consumers communicate with brands through chatbots and messaging platforms to learn more about products and services, make transactions, and get help with purchases. C-commerce, already gaining traction before the arrival of COVID-19, has taken off during the pandemic. C-commerce allows multi-location businesses to engage in a more personal way. Customers can get more insight into the product before purchasing while adding convenience to the process. Shoppable social has become unstoppable, and c-commerce only strengthens this claim. With 25 percent of consumers saying they have discovered new brands or products through recommendations or posts on social media, it's clear that there's a significant opportunity for c-commerce. Not only should your multi-location business feature products on your local social channels, but you should also be providing avenues for consumers to ask questions or get more information about products. To develop a winning shoppable social plan and better understand what questions and concerns consumers have about your products, local social listening is necessary.How to Listen to Social Conversations
People now have more conversations online than speaking face to face, but not all discussions are directed at your brand. Social listening at the local level allows your multi-location business to pay attention to the conversations around your products, your brand, and your competitors. This information will help inform your localized marketing strategy and provide you with the insight you may not have gained otherwise. Social listening can help you collect more data than you would have through social media metrics alone. For instance, metrics on Facebook or Google My Business (GMB) can measure your content's performance but won't help you understand why it may or may not be functioning well. Through social listening, you can dive deeper into conversations to connect content performance with your goals. While providing you with more metrics and a glimpse into your consumers' minds, social listening can eventually help lead generation. For instance, through social listening, your multi-location business can:- proactively monitor and take action on local sales opportunities
- respond to feedback and questions on specific products or services
- see what potential leads are saying about your brand vs. competitors
- discover, save, and reshare authentic UGC from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Sport Clips - A Brand Success Story in Localized Social Listening
Local social media increased in importance for all multi-location businesses during the pandemic, and Sport Clips was no exception. Sport Clips already had a local social media presence before the pandemic. Still, through social listening, they gained a greater understanding of consumers' expectations of their business throughout these difficult times. For instance, they could tell that people searching for a haircut were concerned about salon cleanliness and wanted to know if stylists were wearing masks. Armed with this information, Sport Clips promoted the precautions they took to keep both employees and customers safe and healthy. Social listening also allowed the brand to find user-generated content shared by people getting haircuts at their stores throughout the pandemic. Sharing this UGC from local accounts let people know that Sport Clips was still there for them during COVID-19. Consumers don't always want to see polished content from corporate, and UGC gives consumers a realistic example of what to expect when they visit a Sport Clips shop. As the world starts to move back to a new-normal, Sport Clips is beginning to utilize social listening to a greater extent to get a better grasp of who is talking about them online and in what context. If Sport Clips knows who their target audience is, they will develop content geared towards that audience. Similarly, Sport Clips has started to use social listening to track keywords that competitors are using. Are competitors claiming to be the No. 1 spot for men's haircuts? If so, how can Sport Clips market differently to top their competitors? Sport Clips has seen great success using social listening. Not only has it helped improve their local social media strategy, but it's also helped them gain more leads and serve customers when they needed it the most. With more than 1,800 locations, it wasn't easy to find a tool to help them manage their social listening across all sites, but SOCi Listening got the job done! SOCi Listening is a social listening tool explicitly built for multi-location businesses and was instrumental in Sport Clips' success story.
