Gathering information for market research is a daunting task. Focus groups, surveys, interviews… Those things take a lot of time, money, and effort.
💡 Read Media Monitoring: The Ultimate Guide
If you’re a small business and you’re not in the position to conduct thorough research, media monitoring tools may be just what you need.
Market Research: Media Monitoring vs Other Methods
The problem with interviews, focus groups, surveys, and similar methods is bias. Peer pressure can motivate participants not to be fully honest in focus groups. In interviews, the interviewee may want to impress the interviewer. Because of that, they may answer questions according to what the interviewer wants to hear. When it comes to surveys, participants may answer them in a rush or give socially desirable answers.
You get the point.
The three main reasons for using media monitoring over these methods are:
1. Social listening data is unbiased and unfiltered
2. It’s a rare opportunity to observe customers in their natural surrounding
3. It’s a real-time research
With this approach, you can discover accurate and honest information about your (potential) customers’ preferences, wants, and needs.
Research different markets with the Location and Languages option
With Determ, you can narrow your monitoring to specific countries and languages.
For example, if you’re interested in the Italian market, you can set up the tool to track mentions only from Italy and in Italian. It’s also wise to set up the English language because non-native speakers often use it online.
This means you can be anywhere in the world and still be able to research various markets quicker and for a lot less money.
Also, you’ll be able to get real-time information, spot specific market and industry trends, understand (potential) customers’ needs, analyse sentiment, and more!
Discover popular channels in the market of interest
The tool will gather data about channels your audience is already predominantly using, so you can save money on testing various channels and focus your efforts on the most popular one(s).
In the tool, you can also find information about mentions over time by source and sentiment ratio by channel. With these charts, you can see the intervals of mentions on specific channels and what type of sentiment is predominant on which channel.
If you spot predominately negative sentiment on a specific channel, you should find the reason behind it because it may give you valuable insight into where your product or strategies need improvement.
Research competitors already active in the market
This is maybe one of the most important aspects. You need to identify which competitors you might face in the new market.
By identifying key players, you’ll be able to analyze their strengths and weaknesses and assess your position in the market. With Determ’s Competitive analysis you’ll be able to do just that.
In a matter of minutes, you can get a comprehensive analysis of your position compared to competitors. Inside the analysis, you will be able to see the comparison in the number of mentions, the share of voice, sentiment, influencers, and so on.
Use the collected data for preparing a communication plan
Each market has its own differences. That’s why you need to make sure your communication strategy is tailored to individual markets.
With media monitoring data, you can analyze what type of communication works in your market of interest and avoid unnecessary blunders.
Also, you can discover keywords often used in connection to your products or services and incorporate those topics into your strategy.
Analyse market trends
With Determ, you can also monitor existing and discover emerging trends in your focused market.
This type of information can help you with content creation, with which you can position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
For example, the focus shifted from makeup to skincare when the pandemic started. Brands who discovered that shift early on were able to adjust their offer and provide their customers with what they needed at the moment.
That ranged from switching their products to skincare to creating content that provided tips & tricks and other helpful information to their customers.
By monitoring current and upcoming trends, you can gain a competitive advantage because you’ll make data-driven decisions and be the first to provide customers with what they need.
Read How To Keep Up With Marketing News and Trends When You’re Just Too Busy
To sum up
Media monitoring can significantly lower the time and manual effort you would usually invest in market research. Not to mention the financial aspect.
Furthermore, media monitoring tools should be a part of your data collecting process because of all the valuable information you can get from them fast. The best part is that you won’t have to sort collected data or create reports by yourself, the tool will do all the work for you.
If you want to start media monitoring, book a call with one of our experts and get a free trial of the tool!