subject: Ensuring Business Growth With Social Media Analytic Tools [print this page] Irrespective of the industry sector, every business survives on its critical component the customer. The customer being the king of the marketplace, the growth in businesses is dependent on the operational and marketing strategies as well as products and services developed to meet the consumer requirements. Awareness of the consumer and their preferences are the factors that lead to their purchasing actions. This forms the basis for manufacturing and development of any product or service.
Understanding of the customers choice is carried out with the help of a marketing research and surveys. However, as technological growth brought forth an era of globalized world, Internet and the World Wide Web has grown as a major communication tool, with more factors entering the marketing funnel making it a complex network of requirements. Today for the consumer, his decisions on the purchase of a product or service is dependent not only on his own understanding and knowledge but is also dependent on social intelligence gathered in the form of recommendations from friends and families across nations. Enterprises and their marketing professionals therefore need to make use of social media analytics tools to understand consumer behavior.
The World Wide Web providing an array of product reviews, and various alternatives for the product category have helped in making the consumer more knowledgeable. The changing demands of the customers are reflected in their attitude towards the existing products, the effects of which are reflected in the sales and organizational growth charts. Social media analytics will facilitate in engagement tracking and measuring the loyalty levels of a consumer to a product or service. These metrics also help to measure the effect of social media on such engagements.
Today's techno- savvy world with its e-commerce markets ensures that most of the leading brands and even the small and medium enterprises have their footprints on the web. To make the consumer aware of the new products in the market or updated features of the older ones, the enterprises today make use of the web based product reviews, message boards and online streaming videos. This not only brings in transparency to the product but also increase the social intelligence levels of the consumer. For the organization, such product reviews, blogs and Q&A sessions opens up opportunities for a one-to-one dialogue with even the distant consumer and helps them to stimulate interest in their brand.
By integrating the information gained from social analytics and chat sessions will help enterprises create effective business strategies. Foresters recent research predicts that internet based interactive marketing through social media analytic tools will accelerate spending in the US to nearly $61 billion by 2012 and the social media sales alone will grow to nearly $6.9 billion. Social analytics can help bring businesses closer to the customer and uncover untapped markets, providing enterprises with a competitive edge.
