Have you lost touch with your audience’s needs?

Take a quick glance at your social media accounts and ask yourself these questions:

Are you reaching out to your audience on a regular basis?
Are you addressing your customer’s goals and concerns?
Are you focussing on how your product or service can make people’s lives better?

If you answered “no” more than once, read on to learn how listening can make or break your social media marketing success.

Key Takeaways

Fierce online competition makes being customer-centricity a necessity. You have to know your audience’s concerns and what they’re looking for.
An overload of conflicting information makes consumers increasingly critical of marketing messages. They tend to stick to brands they know and trust, making genuine relationships the key to your competitive advantage.
It’s why listening has become the skill that sets companies apart. And with social media being the best medium for doing so, listening has turned into a vital part of any social media strategy.

As businesses, we can become so caught up in sales that we forget who we are doing it for - our customers. And we forget to take a step back and listen to what they need.

But that’s a big mistake. Here are the 4 reasons why listening to your audience is so important:

1. People don’t care about your product or service

They care about their own lives.

It does not matter how amazing your product or service might be. If people don’t see how it will make a positive difference for them, they won’t pay attention.

That’s why companies that talk too much about themselves are missing a real chance to connect with their audience.

How to fix this? Make sure to address your audience’s concerns and show you are committed to making their lives better. Highlight your product’s benefits and how it improves their lives in a tangible way.

2. By listening you’ll get to know your customers much better

Listening helps you uncover your audience’s needs so you can optimize your social media communication.

It can help you discover:

What content to provide
What words to use
When and where to offer it

Knowing this will give you an incredible leg up compared to the competition.

Want to understand your audience even better? Check out our blog posts on Jobs-to-be-Done and Customer Journeys.

3. Consumers are sceptical of sales and advertisement

Marketing messages are everywhere. Consumers are savvy and have seen their fair share of ingenuine publicity stunts.

As a result, they have grown suspicious of ads and picky about the companies they engage with. Only 4 percent of consumers believe advertisers and marketers practice integrity(!).

This means you’ll have to spend effort to assure customers that you have their best interests in mind.

4. A genuine connection with your audience is indispensable

There are many options nowadays.

And with little time, consumers tend to stick to the brands they already know and trust. In a survey conducted by MarketingLand 90% of the respondents reported being brand-loyal.

The benefits of brand loyalty are significant:

60% stated telling friends and family about the brands they’re loyal to
39.4% spent more on a product from their favourite brands despite cheaper alternatives

This shows building genuine connections with your audience is essential. But once you do, these relationships keep paying off.

In our noisy online world listening has become the way to stand out.

It helps you understand your audience and build genuine, long-lasting relationships that make all the difference for your business.

That’s why we’re offering workshops on How to listen to your audience and build relationships that last. Fill out our contact form or drop us an email to find out more.

Keep an eye on our upcoming blog posts as we’ll give actionable tips to improve your social media listening skills.

Also: don’t forget to sign up for our monthly Social Media Updates, where we’re sharing the best articles and social media tips we discovered!