The Power of Social Listening for E-commerce
As an online business, you miss out on meeting customers face to face. But you can still understand their feelings and concerns through social listening. So, what is social listening, and why is it so popular?
Social listening is when you keep track of what people are saying about your brand or industry on social media. You start by watching for specific words or phrases related to your brand, competitors, or industry. Social listening is important for e-commerce.
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok have introduced native built-in social selling capabilities, making social commerce more accessible. Twitter and Snapchat have partnered with Shopify to create their own social commerce tools, indicating a significant shift towards integrating e-commerce directly into social media platforms.
The Social Media Listening Market is expected to reach USD 8.44 billion in 2024 and grow at a CAGR of 13.90% to reach USD 16.19 billion by 2029.
Listening to what people say on social media is a big deal for businesses. They can learn a lot about what customers like, what’s trending, and how people feel. This helps them make better products, improve service, and make customers happier. It’s like having a compass that helps online stores navigate through the evolving world of e-commerce, keeping them in tune with what customers want right now.
Challenges faced by e-commerce companies
E-commerce companies have to deal with tough problems in the online world. From lots of competition to keeping customer’s information safe, keeping their websites safe from hackers, and making sure products get to customers on time. Knowing about these issues helps them do better in the digital marketplace.
Competition: Just like in a crowded marketplace, standing out among many other sellers can be tough. Now, imagine you’re selling handmade jewelry online, but there are dozens of other sellers offering similar products.
Cybersecurity: Think of cybersecurity as protecting your online store from digital thieves. It’s like securing the doors and windows of a physical store, but online. For instance, if a hacker steals customer’s’ credit card information from your website, it can be devastating for both your customers and your business.
Logistics: This is all about getting products from your warehouse to your customer’s doorsteps. Sometimes, managing shipping and delivery can be like juggling many balls at once. Picture trying to deliver packages to different houses in different parts of town, all at the same time.
Customer Trust: Trust is the foundation of any successful business. If customers don’t trust your website or your products, they won’t buy from you. Imagine if you’re shopping online and you see a website with no customer reviews or a lot of negative feedback – would you trust it enough to make a purchase?
Technology Updates: Just like your phone needs regular updates, e-commerce platforms also need to keep up with the latest technology. If your website is slow or doesn’t work well on mobile phones, customers might get frustrated and go somewhere else to shop.
Business Compliance: This is about following the rules and laws that govern online businesses, like privacy laws and tax regulations. Imagine you’re running an online store and you have to figure out how to charge sales tax for customers in different states or countries – it can be quite a headache!
These challenges may seem daunting, e-commerce companies can overcome them with careful planning, innovation, and a dedication to providing the best possible experience for customers.With the right approach, they can succeed and do well in the online world.
Benefits of social listening in ecommerce
Social listening in e-commerce means paying attention to what people say online about products and brands. It helps in understanding customers better, so they can make them happier and stay competitive.
Using social listening can make a big difference in how well online stores do.
Understanding Customer Needs: Social listening helps e-commerce businesses know what customers want. Imagine an online clothing store that notices many customers talking about wanting more sustainable fashion options. By listening to these conversations, the store can start offering eco-friendly clothing, making customers happier and attracting new ones who care about sustainability.
Spotting Trends Early: By paying attention to online conversations, e-commerce companies can catch trends before they become mainstream. For instance, if a small online bakery sees a lot of people craving a new flavor of cake on social media, they can start selling it and attract more customers.
Improving Customer Service: Listening to customer feedback on social media allows e-commerce businesses to address issues quickly. Consider an online tech store that responds fast to customer complaints on social media about a faulty product. By addressing these issues quickly and publicly, the store shows its dedication to customer satisfaction and builds trust with its audience.
Building Trust and Loyalty: Engaging with customers in a genuine and helpful way on social media can strengthen relationships. For example, if an online pet supply store shares helpful tips for pet care and responds warmly to customer questions, it builds trust and loyalty among pet owners.
Increasing Sales and Revenue: By understanding what customers like and providing it, e-commerce businesses can boost sales. For instance, if a beauty brand notices a lot of interest in a particular skincare ingredient, they can create products with that ingredient, attracting more buyers.
Staying Ahead of Competitors: Utilizing social listening insights allows e-commerce businesses to stay ahead of competitors. For example, if a clothing store sees customers complaining about long shipping times from a competitor, they can highlight their own fast shipping options to attract those dissatisfied customers.
Overall, social listening helps e-commerce businesses connect with customers, adapt to their needs, and ultimately thrive in the digital market.
How to implement social listening in your e-commerce strategy
Opt for best social listening tools: To get started with social listening, you need to choose the right tools. There are different platforms with different features, like tracking keywords or understanding how people feel about your brand. Your decision should depend on things like how big your business is, what you want to achieve, and how much money you have.
For instance, if you’re a small business, a basic and affordable tool might work fine. But as you grow, you might need a more advanced platform to handle more data and offer more features.
Observe right keywords: After selecting your tool, the next step is to set up keywords, hashtags, and phrases you want to track. These keywords help your website with SEO friendly content. These should include terms related to your brand, products, and industry. Make sure these terms align with your goals.
For example, a cafe might track “best coffee” or “outdoor seating.” Use this insight to improve offerings, like adding outdoor seating or hosting coffee workshops. Regularly update keywords to stay current with trends and customer preferences.
Combine social listening with customer support:
Customer service teams need to work closely with social listening teams. It’s important for whoever manages social listening to share real time conversations as well as long term insights with the customer service team.
This way, customer service can be proactive in addressing concerns and questions about the products. This helps improve customer satisfaction a lot.
Evaluating strategy:
Reviewing and adjusting your social listening strategy is important. Meet regularly with your team to discuss what you have learned and decide if any changes are needed.
Share feedback often to stay adaptable as your business grows. Consider using a conference call app for easy communication, especially if team members work remotely.
Locobuzz for Social Listening
Locobuzz, is a unified platform to help you with your business’s social media monitoring activities. Even more so with the brand-user experiences that are dynamic, engaging, and immersive for the e-commerce industry. This AI-powered solution comes along with deep customer desires, needs, and expectations insights that are vital for every e-commerce business looking to optimize their digital presence and strategies for involving customers.
With Locobuzz, e-commerce businesses have a 360-degree view of their social media performance and the effects on customers and prospects. Such a detailed perspective on brand performance is essential to staying competitive in the quickly moving online market. This places the platform at the point of tracking social mentions from across various social media, using a single-view interface, and providing real-time insights, hence necessary for businesses to act fast on customer behaviours and social conversations.
Advanced machine learning capabilities of Locobuzz will assist in the proper categorization of social mentions for strategic data handling, up-to-date customer experience (CX), and engagement. This level of investment efficiency drives down expenses associated with Customer Experience Management and boosts the returns on investment, cementing its role as a 360-degree digital brand, CX, and marketing suite.
Key features highly relevant to the e-commerce industry include:
- Real-time Social Listening: Helps e-commerce businesses stay ahead with real-time insights into customer sentiments, competitor moves, influential campaigns, and key influencers.
- Actionable Insights and Data: The platform enables capturing and analyzing trends on changes and shifts in the market, to thereby derive actionable data that will influence brand strategies directly in the dynamically changed markets of today.
- Workflow Management: Manage customer interactions in an organized manner through a natural workflow that enhances quicker and more effective responses.
- Centralize Data Inflow and Management: Locobuzz centralizes the inflow of data, assignment of cases, and management of tasks in order to derive improved productivity.
- Automated Reporting and Publishing: DiY analytics with flexible reporting tools will enable you to measure and compare brand health, scheduled and published across social platforms by making it easier for the content management part.
E-commerce brands looking for an option to tap into business insights and lift up customer engagement with a unified CX management platform, trust Locobuzz. This state-of-art technology assures unparalleled delivery ability for panoramic brand insights, customer behavior, and competitive analysis across all main digital channels. It proves key in any e-commerce strategy.
Discover how Locobuzz transform the E-Commerce industry with our Social Listening Capabilities.
Final Thoughts
Social listening is a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses, helping them understand customer needs, spot trends, and improve customer service. By choosing the right tools, observing relevant keywords, and integrating social listening with customer support, businesses can succeed in the online market.
Regularly evaluating and adapting strategies ensures continued success. With careful planning and dedication to providing the best possible experience for customers, e-commerce companies can overcome challenges and drive growth in the competitive online landscape.
