Listen or become redundant: Why is it important for brands to listen closely to their consumers

• After the advent of social media, it is has become easier for consumers to reach out to brands personally and share their queries. And it is pertinent for brands to listen to it carefully, address it and make the required changes because if they don't, the customer is likely to switch to their competitor.
• But listening to consumers is not just about hiring a customer service associate, it is about connecting with them. It involves paying close attention to their needs and understanding how you can help them achieve their goals.
• Unmisha Bhatt, Chief Strategy Officer & Director, India and MENA Region at Tonic Worldwide writes why it is important to listen to your consumers and how you can make the most of it.

It is 2021, the year that has seen everything transform. Including research and consumer insight mining

It is an era where digital transformation is not a luxury but a necessity. Most brands across sizes have gone digital. If you are reading this article, are a part of any agency or brand team and yet don't access business intelligence from what consumers are saying online, you might as well go back to your traditional means of doing business and become redundant!

Social Listening has taken a new meaning with data driven thinking. Today, with the access to most of the consumer conversations in public forums about brands or their feelings, pain points etc, one can identify motivators and triggers or barriers with online researches with ‘Listening’

Imagine the consumer shouting out loud and telling you how you can make him/her buy more or what is stopping him / her from currently buying your product. This is GOLD! Where do you find this information? Is it only with social listening practice? Not really...There are multiple tools that provide social listening and yet marketers having access to those tools are unable to leverage that data in an effective way because it is just data without any meaningful action to it!

Data is incomplete unless you can join the dots with relevant insights which is possible when you look at multiple data points and not just social listening for brand. Hence we have invented a practice called ‘Deep Listening’ which enables intelligence on category, consumer, brand and competition. Insights come out of all of these which are put to good use

Deep listening can enable you to

1. Make the consumer your key stakeholder. When they know that you are listening and taking feedback seriously and implementing changes basis the same, they will feel equally responsible towards the product / service. For example, a premium skin care brand, kept evolving the product basis customer feedback and kept sending the products as trial to these consumers who ultimately became loyal brand advocates
2. Develop ‘Product Innovations basis consumer need gaps’. For instance a denim brand came up with a simple change in women denims that had deeper pockets given that women were facing a challenge with their pocket size
3. Improve your customer service and experiences transforming negative sentiments to positive ones
4. Do not just focus on negative comments. The positive ones can enable brand love if appreciated, acknowledged and communicated with
5. Arrive at Communication insights which are relatable and enable better campaigns
6. Intent driven content strategy that enables qualitative and meaningful content for consumers
7. Create viral content

If the last one caught your attention, yes, content virality today is a bigger achievement than successful campaigns. Getting a consumer to not only consume but also appreciate and share your content with their social circle is a big achievement. With deep listening, you can identify upcoming trends, pop culture based conversations and enable content that is relatable and relevant to the TG making it shareworthy. Not just that, you can also identify content that is relevant to your brand and enable brand banter and conversations which catch attention

8. Drive ROI- Deep Listening around your product and category can help you identify demand and thus move the needle in that direction.

If you are still NOT listening, you are a bad listener.