"Maturing The Social Media Market With Data"

 

Silentale, a start up out of Paris with offices in Montreal and New York City, believes it’s time to get serious about social media data and what it can do for a brand. By social media, I mean Twitter and Facebook and by brands I mean the likes of Ford, Travel Channel, BestBuy, JetBlue, etc.

This is part of an ongoing saga in the advertising universe where there’s a constant struggle by brands to reach today’s consumers who are on multiple devices, at the same time and using social media daily. In other words, it’s where the consumer’s eyeballs are. Social media is the soft spot for a new kind of advertising, a more personal touchy-feely way to connect to the consumer.

As this market matures, so does the marketplace for technology that helps measure social

media’s effectiveness for brands. And companies like Silentale, are looking at raw data.

Their solution is human intelligence – to identify where bridges need to be built between a brand’s current practice and their social media data – blended with technology that’s centered around a cloud-based platform doing the heavy lifting – scouting and analyzing millions and millions of interactions happening on the brands’ Facebook Pages.

In plain terms, Silentale sifts through all the data that’s generated from a brand’s Facebook Fan base to help them improve and better target their digital marketing efforts and understand who engages with them and why.

According to Silentale’s CEO, Laurent Féral-Pierssens, there is an amazingly deep amount of information contained in each Facebook Page.

“There’s data that can help improve the community management of the Pages, such as the metrics found in Facebook Insights, but more importantly, there’s rich information that can be derived from fan behavior, their posts, comments and likes, to help enhance core business operations,” said Féral-Pierssens. “What most brand managers and business owners currently see through the standard tools is mostly focusing on community management challenges, covering metrics that are not related to their business.”

Féral-Pierssens says that only recently have businesses started to look at the deeper part of the data. They use it to create feedback loops to assist and enhance their market research and overall strategy. Some of the insights have made their way into competitive intelligence reports, share of wallet assessments or customer segmentation.

Silentale usually works with the market research teams of large brands or the people in an organization that want to improve and refine their understanding of their customer base. The company says they have seen very good traction in segments such as the luxury goods industry. (see Æsir Builds a Phone to Last)

And here’s some stats for you – more than 90% of Dutch consumer brands have followed their customers to social media. Then, there is Capital Foods, manufacturers of Ching’s Secret soups, sauces and instant noodles. The company uses Facebook extensively by discussing innovative recipes centered around the brand.  According to Ajaay Gupta, Managing Director and CEO of Capital Foods, sales of Ching’s Secret in 2010 grew 8-9% month-on-month.

“We spend 35% of our marketing budget on social media and believe that a substantial part of Ching’s growing sales is because of the connect with the Facebook generation,” added Gupta. For little over a year, the firm did not invest in above-the-line advertising channels like television.

However, Féral-Pierssens says brands are still developing their strategies.  “Larger organizations with strong strategic marketing teams or with a dedicated market analysis group are discovering how important this new source of information is and how it complements their CRM, digital marketing and business intelligence efforts,” added Féral-Pierssens. “Smaller enterprises are still trying to justify their investments in social media, overlooking how they can use the data in other parts of their business.”