Going Beyond Marketing Through Social Media and Listening to Customer Voice

As the CMO of Hootsuite, Penny Wilson has some fantastic insights into the social media listening industry and why identifying the customer voice of your company is essential. Not only is customer voice important for executing exceptional customer service but it can also be used as a tool to effectively communicate with executive boards and chief financial officers.

Drew Neisser asks Penny about her journey towards Hootsuite and the top questions on why listening to your customers is critical. The idea of going “beyond marketing” is explored and Penny’s understanding of this concept is unparalleled.

You can’t afford to miss their discussion on upcoming social media trends that could help your company grow by leaps and bounds. The top challenges faced by CMOs are also discussed in this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

It’s sure to be an educational and inspirational episode that you don’t want to miss.

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What You’ll Learn

  • [1:07] Drew introduces the guest for this episode, CMO of Hootsuite, Penny Wilson
  • [4:40] How social media is helping companies go “beyond marketing”
  • [5:57] Penny’s part in a new leadership team at Hootsuite
  • [7:53] Unpacking the voice of the customer
  • [13:02] Finding insights for your company through listening to the customer voice
  • [19:43] Hootsuite’s challenge of breaking out of their original market
  • [23:32] Drew asks Penny about the main challenges for CMOs
  • [24:25] How can CMOs provide CFOs with the tools they need to understand the importance of marketing?
  • [27:00] Social media opportunities that are often overlooked by companies
  • [29:33] How AI can revolutionize the social media tools companies are using

Customer voice is a tool that reaches beyond just marketing

By taking the time to understand your company’s customers and the preferences and expectations they have, you can capture their collective voice. While this voice has obvious benefits in product/service development it can also allow you to examine their entire journey with your company. Listening to the voice of your customers allows you to build a culture that encourages the customer to direct the company and lets the customer lead. Devoted listening creates loyal customers which leads to valuable insights. The listening process should be built into every level of your company, with employees being empowered to become representatives of your company. For more information on how identifying your customer voice can be an asset to your company don’t miss this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

The greatest challenge faced by CMOs and how Hootsuite has conquered it

Penny’s career in marketing has allowed her to understand some of the greatest challenges faced by CMOs today. One of the most prevalent issues is the constant need for CMOs to get approval from top-level company leaders for their social listening and marketing campaigns. This challenge requires CMOs to tie marketing to a tangible outcome – a challenge that can be solved by using hypothesis-driven tools and metrics. Dive into this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite to discover how Penny and her team at Hootsuite are enabling companies to create more effective marketing campaigns by offering information on the returns on investment for marketing campaigns.

The most overlooked opportunities that exist through social media listening

Penny explains to Drew that the best marketers should be paying attention to the fact that not every customer or employee is 100% comfortable with social media yet. Educational training components can be built into the company culture or customer interface to allow those with less experience to catch up with the current trends and techniques. She also explains that while artificial intelligence is definitely making an appearance in the social listening spheres, it’s not going to overpower the human element of marketing and customer interaction. No matter how your company goes about social listening to uncover the voice of your customers, keep in mind Penny’s best acronym for marketing – SCALE – social, customer-centered, authentic, listen and learn, and engage. You and your company will benefit from listening to this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, so be sure to listen.

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Incorporating Listening into Social Marketing for Increased Customer Connections

On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew Neisser asks CMO of NetBase Solutions, Paige Leidig, the top questions surrounding social listening and analytics. With over 80% of tweets mentioning brands and the social media analytics industry being a $2.7 billion operation, it’s critical to know how listening can increase your customer connections.

Drew and Paige dive into social listening to give you and your business the best chance to hone your target market and utilize the best marketing channels possible. You’ll also discover how artificial intelligence in the form of Natural Language Processing can revolutionize your metadata processing.

The toughest challenges and biggest surprises encountered in social marketing are covered in this episode. You also don’t want to miss Paige’s top tips for CMOs in 2018.

This conversation is sure to provide critical social listening insights, so be sure to listen (click here to listen now).

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What You’ll Learn

  • [1:40] Drew introduces this episode’s guest – Paige Leidig, CMO of NetBase Solutions
  • [3:00] What is social listening and social analytics?
  • [8:15] Paige shares a great example of social listening information used in revolutionary ways
  • [10:12] The main three marketing channels most brands utilize
  • [12:13] What is the state of the art technique for social listening?
  • [15:36] How can you differentiate your competitive advantage via social listening?
  • [16:59] Natural language processing (NLP) – Artificial intelligence to moderate meta social media data
  • [20:52] Top areas marketers miss while listening to customers
  • [23:49] Paige shares additional example stories on why social listening is critical
  • [28:19] How changing your message for your target market can increase sales and customer engagement
  • [33:35] Why customer stories are of utmost importance in B2B marketing
  • [36:33] Paige’s tips for CMOs moving forward into 2018
  • [38:00] Common surprises encountered when entering into social listening

The practical benefits of incorporating listening into your social marketing strategies

The premise behind social listening is aggregating all public data that’s published on millions of social media platforms and analyzing it to provide key insights into your industry. There are multitudes of practical benefits to social listening, including having the availability to quickly change marketing techniques if the listening offers new feedback on how the market is reacting to a campaign. It enables your company to create content that adds value to the market and encourages high-level digital connections with your customers. Microsoft and Apple are only two examples of top-tier companies utilizing social listening in their marketing strategies and their successes are demonstrated across the board. To hear their full stories be sure to give this episode a listen.

The top three channels used in marketing and how new technology can improve the data analysis process

Paige walks Drew through the main three channels that brands utilize on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite. The company’s own channel is the most obvious, followed by partnered content channels. But the most valuable channel is through earned content – where people are talking about your brand/content and the signature characteristics that they find interesting and applicable. The best insights come from this channel alone. In order to analyze all of the data that comes through the earned channel, companies should utilize a new form of artificial intelligence called Natural Language Processing or NLP. It automatically sifts through millions of posts, images, and videos to determine the main themes and sentiments of the messages. This data is analyzed across dozens of languages in real time and offers critically important insights into your social marketing strategies. You don’t want to miss this conversation, so be sure to listen to the full audio.

Top social listening tips for CMOs and how to avoid the biggest mistake in marketing analysis

If social listening is done correctly, your company has the opportunity to see huge progress made in your marketing campaigns. As 2018 approaches, Paige encourages other CMOs to be spending 80% of the marketing budget on digital marketing and to move beyond demographic marketing into psychographic marketing. He shares with Drew the biggest mistake to avoid in social listening, which is using false metrics derived from your own channel to drive marketing campaigns. There’s a whole world of opportunity that exists in your earned channel, you just have to be infinitely curious about your customers. You can’t afford to miss these applicable lessons from Drew and Paige so be sure to listen to this engaging episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

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