We asked experts where can digital consumer intelligence help insight teams get to better, faster and cheaper insights in 2020? Here's what they had to say.
In the last few years alone, the industry saw a surge in new and emerging insights methodologies developed for a deeper understanding of consumer behavior. Equally, the awareness around and utility of these tools and methods became more widespread than ever amongst us insights professionals, so the bar is higher for quality and relevance of insights.
2020 will be a year of culmination and productivity when brands will maximize experimentation with the variety of intelligence at disposal to become more proficient in the evolving consumer motivations. The global rise in consumers’ desire for more socially responsible and conscious engagement with brands and products will mean that the new methodologies will push us to abandon a “mobile-first” viewpoint for a “human-first” approach on the way to more sustainable brand-consumer relationships.
Nisa Bayindir Consumer Psychologist NisaBayindir.com
Like any industry, evolution is necessary to drive growth and transformation as anticipated. Social Intelligence is hitting the next stage of its change. Rather than recruiting special forces like individuals, more and more of this work is being addressed via the tools and platforms with smarter ways to surface insights as well as specialized companies and firms who can and will develop the methodologies and frameworks to drive keen insights. As a supplier, we are excited to see these changes happen like evolutionary adaptions happening in front of our eyes.
I firmly believe that this change will happen on the front lines of the data with hearing and addressing customer feedback and product need. Just like how a product flaw in Robinhood's trading algorithm was identified on Reddit via /Wallstreetbets or a bug bounty for the lastest android release, the users of social media will always save the day. The tools are finally getting strong enough to help identify those needles in the haystack and drive down costs versus traditional research methods. I still believe that the perfect solution will be a hybrid of all processes.
Jim Reynolds Head of Global Alliances Socialgist
Social consumer intelligence often gets a bad rep. It’s easy to see why – there’s a lot of noise, irrelevant mentions and sense that “only certain types of people” post. Thing is though, social consumer intelligence isn’t bad; it’s how most brands approach it that’s usually the problem.
In 2020, we need to take a smarter, more analytical and more sophisticated approach to social intelligence. The better use cases will see insights teams cutting the data to focus on behavioral statements to see the actions people take; sentiment drivers on specific topic to see what about it is making them excited or mad; analyzing organic conversations of particular target audiences to discover true interests, and expanding our definition of ‘social’ sources and using more of them to get the right data and people.
Behavioral science is becoming critical to marketers. Effectiveness has been declining for years, so we’re (correctly) trying to understand how people actually behave and act, vs. what they say they’ll do. Social intelligence is still nascent and underutilized as a source for true customer insights. As long as you’re cutting and analyzing the data effectively, it may be the biggest untapped data source for your brand on how people behave, talk and what they care about.
Kristian H. Foged Principal Insights and Analytics Consultant Independent Consultant
Insight teams can effectively use digital consumer intelligence approaches to get better, faster, and cheaper insights in five ways:
1. Use social/digital media for doing desk research, and initial hypothesis formulation. Not very many people in traditional research world take desk research seriously but it is essential for any strategic formulation.
2. Map out consumer voice points and use digital media to gather insights in all digital influenced voice points
3. Inter-link digital media insights with insights gathered via traditional research methods to create next-gen measurement systems
4. Integrating internal data from different business functions with digital media research has a lot of unexplored potentials
5. The democratizing of digital media insights holds a lot of power. But do it with caution- data is powerful but can also be misused.
Preriit Souda Data Scientist PSA Consultants
In 2020 and beyond we will see digital intelligence evolve to play an even more important role in the overall market research strategy of a company or brand.
Digital intelligence is a form of qualitative research but needs to be orchestrated correctly in order to deem actionable results. Currently, it is mainly being used by larger brands with a strong emphasis on vanity metrics. However, there is so much more valuable data that has yet to be explored. As companies of all sizes begin using social media as a customer service channel, for example, this data over time will assist in VOC analytics, along with customer feedback surveys and other forms of research.
Demographics and the way in which marketers use them to personalize the customer experience will morph more into tribal marketing, in my opinion. Segmentation of groups of consumers should be considered in research along with traditional demographics. Specifically, understanding online behavior at a micro level will allow more personalization--which studies show consumers are wanting. When a brand understands Group X identifies well with Group Y on the subject of XYZ, personalization is achievable in a broader sense, allowing for increased ROI.
Kathy Doring President Social Media Market Research Association
Better, faster, cheaper? We've been told for years you can't have all three. But maybe the insights equation is changing given the rise of machine learning and AI.
More and more interactions are being handled or recorded electronically. All of them -- whether online, social, voice or messaging - can be tapped for insights.
Machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and analysis technology help you crunch the data quickly and cheaply (although talent can be expensive!), if you can get access to sources. Admittedly that's a big "if," and ethics, bias, and privacy do come into play. The ethics concern does complicate the better-faster-cheaper triangle, but it's a must!
Data in hand, ML, NLP, and analysis tech let us explore new insight dimensions and link them to business outcomes. I'm particularly bullish on emotion insights. The aim is to tie sentiment and opinion to behaviors in order to create more responsive, more empathetic approaches.
Data and AI provide a gateway to new and better insights and from there to outstanding customer experience.
Seth Grimes President Alta Plana Corporation
Judging by the conversations I had in 2019, we enter a new year and a new decade with the acknowledgment that social data is a valuable source of consumer intelligence.
Organizations are realizing the uniqueness of social data in providing real-time, unprompted and authentic ‘voice of the customer’ insights and are utilizing it to make more informed decisions across their business.
The key to this is not viewing social data in isolation, but blending with other data sources to get a more complete picture and to understand causation and correlation that may exist.
Also important is an appreciation for social data’s strengths and the types of questions it’s good at answering. It is not a replacement for surveys, focus groups or other forms of research. It is, however, a great complement to them, and so my prediction (and my hope) for 2020 is that organizations will use social data to focus their focus groups, sharpen and shorten their surveys, and get to insights quicker and cheaper.
I also hope to see them get inspired by what they discover, for one of social data’s great strengths is in providing answers to questions you didn’t think to ask.
Joe Rice Data and Enterprise Solutions Twitter
