With the beginning of the new year, companies everywhere are putting the shiny final touches on their 2017 marketing communications plans. Now, some of these may have started off with great aspirations and fantastic ideas, but the truth is that, while all good plans need those things, every marketing communications plan is at the mercy of the budget. Those with ample allowances need not worry so much, but marketing departments with limited budgets are nowadays exploring innovative ways to increase growth without spending a lot of money. Enter growth hacking.
Growth hacking has only one goal: to exponentially increase a company’s growth. Traditional marketing and public relations/communications focus on growth too, but growth hacking techniques take this important KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to an entirely new level, with a focus on using low-cost mediums like social media, landing pages, A/B testing, and Search Engine Optimization.
Using these low-cost mediums is all well and good, but without an extensive understanding of the marketplace and target demographic, you’ll be spinning your growth-hacking wheels. In order to gain the key insights that you’ll need to ensure explosive growth, you have to start with media monitoring and analysis.
Here are three ways media monitoring can help with your growth hacking:
1. Customer growth and support
It’s a modern-day reality that, before making a purchase, the absolute bulk of customers do research online. In fact, digital solutions provider Vendasta has found that 92 per cent of consumers read online reviews, and what’s more, 88 per cent of them trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Stats like these illustrate the importance of taking online customer service into consideration when implementing growth-hacking strategies. Media monitoring and analysis for customer growth and support can help your company:
- Understand your customers’ wants and needs so you can specifically tailor both your product offerings and content
- Find potential customers who are looking for a solution your company can offer
- Use social media as a customer support system to solve issues before they become bigger problems
Response time is a key factor in effectively managing your customer support and growth. Facebook has even added a new feature that allows you to track your typical response times. Actively monitoring can make the difference between a good review and a potentially ruinous one.
2. Content growth
Content marketing is an inexpensive and effective way to reach your company’s target demographic, but it can be difficult to determine what type of content will resonate.
By using media monitoring and analysis, your company can improve its content marketing strategy by having a better understanding of:
- what topics your customers are talking about,
- which headlines and content types are getting the most buzz in your industry,
- which questions are commonly being asked in your space, and
- which recurring questions haven’t been answered.
3. Business development and differentiation
When developing your business, it’s important to have an understanding of who your competitors are, what their unique selling proposition is, and how they differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Media monitoring and analysis can make competitive analysis easy, so your company can know exactly who your competitors are, and:
- what their share of voice is,
- what channels they’re on,
- what topics they talk about most frequently,
- how customers perceive them,
- what their company does differently from other companies, and
- how, in turn, your company can differentiate itself from them.
It’s also important to understand your industry’s marketplace and business landscape when trying to increase the growth of your company. Having a fundamental understanding of the following will give your company a leg-up in developing your growth-hacking strategy and differentiating your product/service from your competition:
- What is relevant to your target demographic
- Industry pain points that need to be addressed
- News impacting your industry
- General topics trending within your industry
- Gaps in industry offerings, perfect for new product or service development
Media monitoring and analysis can arm you with the knowledge and insight you need to improve your online reputation, produce more impactful content, differentiate yourself from your competitors, and ultimately grow your business.
Want to learn more about how you can use media monitoring to maximize ROI from your marketing and communications efforts? Contact us and one of our media monitoring experts will be happy to answer your questions.
This post was originally written by Sara Chisholm and was first published on October 20, 2015.
