by Matt Goddard, CEO r2integrated-

In the last part of our series on The Social Media Marketing Framework the focus is on market research.  Brands have relied on market research since branding and marketing first became an actual “thing.”  As individuals we do market research all the time.  Any information we have about how the people around us will react to a statement, offer, or excuse can be invaluable and certainly help with whatever goal we are trying to reach.

Online social spaces are fascinating market research tools because they have taken the old, and very expensive focus group model, and made it super efficient.  Inside of social spaces we can hear real conversations about our companies products and services and our competitors.  We can hear conversations about trends in our industry, what people care about, and what they don’t.  Because all of this information is on the computer it is recorded and stored for later consumption.  Using search engines like Google helps uncover these conversations many of which happen hours or weeks before but all very valuable.

As new technologies are created to aggregate the collective statements of our markets we start to get an fascinating picture of who our customer is and what they want from us.  These technologies and monitoring tools do the hard part for us.  But that is just the beginning.  Many social communities can be tapped by marketers to increase the level of engagement with our audience.   Find the opinion leaders and ask them to evaluate your next product.  Ask community members to assist with your next idea or the next name for a new service you are putting together.  We can now get proactive and tap this crowd wisdom on a one on one, or one to many basis.

However, we need to be careful.  Like any good market research exercise the sample size is important.  Listening to a small sample could cause your results to be less accurate.  The lesson here is to apply standard market research best practices to this new medium to achieve the best results.

Matt Goddard leads R2i's strategic direction while providing valuable support to client digital marketing projects. Matt’s understanding of social network theory is frequently called upon by clients and partners as they develop their short and long term strategic plans. Prior to founding Round 2 Communications (R2), he was co-founder of Impreza, a leading digital marketing and technology firm.