Social Media Market Research Examples

Mercedes Benz – Repeated, successful social media marketing campaigns

Mercedes Benz seem to win every time with their social media campaigns.  The one that stands out to me was back in 2013 when they created what I still believe to be one of the best Instagram marketing campaigns to date. Mercedes wanted to reach out to the younger audience so they hired five top Instagram photographers to each take the wheel of a new Mercedes CLA. Whoever got the most likes got to keep the car – so they all really worked at it!

By the end of the campaign, Mercedes has received:

• 87,000,000 organic Instagram impressions
• 2,000,000 Instagram likes
• 150 new marketing assets (stunning photos)

What lessons can you learn from this? Could you put your followers up for a challenge and make it into a competition or campaign?

• Can you do a competition that gets people trying out your product first?
• Think about your target audience. What is a prize they would value?
• Like Mercedes you could recruit bloggers/influencers via social media and get them blogging about your service or product. Whoever receives the most engagement wins.

See how customers use your products or services

Tried @weareomsom tonight for the first time. It was delicious and pretty idiot proof.

Instructions:
1. Cook fish
2. Add sauce & cook more
3. Eat pic.twitter.com/6ZMmf7XsmA

— Greg Baroth (@gbaroth) July 12, 2021

Consumers aren’t shy about sharing how they use certain products and will rush to share their thoughts on social media. Omsom, a company that creates pantry shortcuts for specific Asian dishes, is regularly tagged in consumer reviews and photos of people’s home cooked meals. In one Tweet, a customer shares how they use Omsom to jazz up their leftovers while another attributes a successful dinner to the Asian pantry shortcut.

How to find this information: When customers want you to know something, they won’t hesitate to tag or mention your brand. Search for your brand and the name of your product on social platforms like Twitter or Instagram to learn how customers actually use your goods and services. Reddit is another treasure trove filled with conversations and communities relevant to your brand or products. And with a tool like Sprout Social, you can easily monitor those branded keywords and phrases to stay up to date with what customers have to say.

Learn what customers dislike about your brand

I don’t like the way @netflix skips the credits.

— toastfundraiser (@ToastFundraiser) August 13, 2021

One guarantee of any social platform is you can always find someone who dislikes something about your brand, product or service. In the example above, an individual shares a specific feature that forces viewers to skip the end credits of a film or TV show. Even if they’re tough to digest, the negative comments can actually help brands identify areas for improvement to strengthen their offerings.

How to find this information: Truth be told, you probably don’t need to search too hard to find what people dislike about your brand or your products. Beyond searching for branded keywords and phrases, consider checking your social inbox for direct messages that contain constructive criticism. This is also a great opportunity for social teams to solicit feedback from sales or customer service teams who hear directly from customers about their likes and dislikes.

 Discover what customers like about your brand

Even after spending 6 hours waiting to leave Pensacola, I still love @SouthwestAir. They’re the best airline, even in crisis mode!

— Dr. Erica M. Stone (she/her) (@ericamstone) August 16, 2021

As fast as people are to point out what they dislike about a brand, they’re just as quick to heap praise on the businesses they love. Travelers, for example, may have a favorite airline and are eager to share what makes them a frequent flier of one airline over another. For brands, this is also an opportunity to learn more about what attracts customers to your competitors. If you notice customers can’t stop praising the competition’s exceptional customer service on social, consider reevaluating your own service efforts to find potential opportunities for improvement.

How to find this information: There are several ways you can find positive feedback about your brand. You can search for branded keywords and phrases organically on social; you can also peruse the reviews section on platforms like Facebook, TripAdvisor and Google. In addition to monitoring the conversation around your brand, you should also keep a pulse on what consumers are saying about your competitors. With Sprout’s Listening tool, you can easily set up a competitive analysis report to better track and understand consumers’ attitudes toward the competition.

Gain insight into what customers expect from your brand in the future

Hint hint feature request @SproutSocial

— ✨ Brittnee ✨ (@BrittneeCoomer) August 3, 2021

Consumers frequently take to social to share what they want to see from brands in the future. A brick-and-mortar retailer might receive a request for a future store location while a coffee company might see comments asking for a specific roast or drink to come back on the menu. At Sprout, we often field Tweets from customers with new feature requests which we pass along to our product team for consideration down the road.

How to find this information: One place where you’re likely to find customer feedback is right in your inbox. With Sprout’s tagging capabilities, you can even label and sort messages by type as they come through, making it easy to pass along product requests to the appropriate teams. Another way to solicit feedback around what customers want to see from your brand is to simply ask. You’d be surprised how many people respond to a question published on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook with their thoughts and ideas.

See what trends customers are interested in

General Mills is trying to target my childhood nostalgia! There is Dunkaroos and Pokémon cereal now. pic.twitter.com/VWrYyt0cKp

— Lexi Birmingham (@LexiBirmWX) January 22, 2021

As volatile as they may be, trends have a significant impact on a brand’s social strategy and how they connect with their audience. Jumping on the right trending topic at the right time on social can be a jolt to brand awareness and customer engagement. Nostalgia marketing, for example, is a rising trend among consumers and big name brands like General Mills are capitalizing on people’s desire for a childhood throwback in their latest campaigns.

How to find this information: To quickly see what’s trending, check out the explore tab on platforms like Twitter and YouTube or use a tool like Google Trends to see what topics are gaining traction. You can also use Sprout’s listening tool to identify trends within your industry and topics most relevant to your customers. With listening, you can uncover keywords and terms most commonly used by your target audience and discover related topics frequently mentioned with any terms you’re currently tracking.

Contests

A chance to win a prize can motivate fans to provide their email addresses, send you user-generated content (e.g. photos, videos, testimonials), or offer valuable feedback about your product.

In partnership with Pinkbike, GoPro ran a “Best Line” contest with a $15,000 prize. Contest participants had to create and edit a video based on their experience, providing hours of compelling footage that both companies could market as authentic experiences with their products.

That same footage also provided insight about who their most fervent supporters were, how they used the equipment, and the most compelling narratives that customers built around the use of the product.

Get to know your customers on a personal level

soo Peloton, what milestones are we celebrating this week?

— Peloton (@onepeloton) July 5, 2021

The beauty of social media is it encourages two-way conversations between brands and their customers, giving brands an opportunity to get to know their audience on an individual level. Facebook communities, for example, provide consumers a space to get to know one another, celebrate personal milestones or share challenges. Peloton is known for curating massive communities where riders can find support and motivation from peers, while Peloton gets to learn a little more about the people who make up their audience.

How to find this information: To get to know your audience better, consider building out your community management strategy on platforms like Instagram or Reddit to stay connected with your customers. Give your customers a reason to engage with your brand by responding to their questions or posting topics for conversation. To help nurture those relationships with your audience further, Sprout’s social media engagement tools ensure you never miss a message from someone in your community.

Using Tools For Market Research

Surveybot 

Surveybot is the ultimate social media research tool, especially for hardcore Facebook users. Surveybot is essentially a survey software that helps you conduct your social media research in both Facebook and Facebook Workplace.

Usually, the survey that you post on Facebook may not help procure a good response rate. This is mainly because of the fact that the moment the user clicks on the survey he/she is redirected to another page, forcing them to leave the comfort of the platform. Most of the respondents opt out of the survey when this happens.

With Surveybot you don’t have to worry about such an occurrence. The chat-like surveys can be filled in the Messenger App itself without the need of redirecting the respondent to another page. This will naturally increase the number of responses to your research survey. You don’t need to stop there. 

You can even post the survey on Facebook and boost it, so that it reaches more users, thereby bringing a significant increase in the response rates.

Surveybot also lets you build your own audience panel with the users who took your surveys earlier. This social media research tool can be the best companion, particularly for researchers and professors who conduct their research based on popular opinions.

Pros 

• Intuitive UI
• Robust Analytics

Cons

• Comparatively young as a platform 
• Constant updating with demanded features

Pricing:

First 50 responses are free. Paid plan starts at $6 for 100 responses per month.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a highly intuitive social media research tool that helps you gain the most reliable analytical data across various social networks. 

From Facebook page impressions to Instagram follower count to Linkedin Engagement, Sprout Social has got you covered. You can get detailed information about your performance on a single social media platform or even compare the results of a platform with various other social media platforms. 

You are also eligible to collect and share data about your social media metrics through easy-to-use, presentation-ready reports of Sprout Social. What’s more?! You can even analyze your competitor’s activity through the tool!

Pros 

• User friendly
• Intuitive Reports

Cons

• Steep pricing
• Limited analytics

Pricing:

Plans start at $99 per user per month

Hootsuite

This intuitive social media research tool is nearly a one-stop-shop for all your social media activities. Hootsuite not only lets you research and analyze your activities but also enables you to schedule posts on multiple social networks. 

When it comes to social media research, you have the Search streams in the dashboard that allows you to track interactions relevant to your product, business, and niche. You can learn what are the trending topics and what is discussed based on the keyword, hashtags, locations, and specific users if necessary.

You can effectively collaborate your work with your social media team as well. The detailed analysis received from the tool can be shared with specific team members

Pros

• Reliable ‘Free’ Plan
• Ease of Use
• Multi-channel dashboard

Cons

• Slow reporting
• Limitations in integrating with Instagram

Pricing:

Plans start at $29

Talkwalker

Talkwalker is definitely one of the best social media research tools that offers you AI-powered analytics to track over 150 million sources which also includes social media platforms. 

Structure and categorize your conversations by leveraging 50+ filters and make decisions based on it. The proven KPI frameworks of Talkwalker enables you to benchmark your marketing campaigns and gauge brand health. You can also analyze brand sentiment, the reach, comments, and engagement garnered by social posts.

Pros

• Excellent customer support
• Easy to use
• Multiple dashboards

Cons

• Dull Interface
• Expensive

Pricing:

Request for a quotation

Social Mention

Social Mention is a free social media research tool that helps you track your brand’s activities and performance in over 100 social media sites that include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the likes. 

It provides you information on a variety of different metrics like strength which is the number of times your keyword pops up on social media, the range of influence, the number of positive and negative mentions, and so on. This tool offers you real-time statistics and an analysis of your competitors if necessary.

Pros 

• Real-time data of campaigns
• Ease of use

Cons

• Limited filtering capabilities
• Basic UI

Pricing:

Free