Why audience intelligence matters to your agency: winning new business

Social media listening already plays a major role in the way that agencies go about their business - and by taking it a step further and embracing true audience intelligence, agencies can benefit so much more.

“Knowledge is power” Francis Bacon, 1597

Never has this quote been truer than in the modern age: it is as though the English philosopher foresaw this golden age of social data. Imagine Francis Bacon re-incarnated, and being the CEO of his own London based agency: like many others in the UK, this agency finds it tough to stay competitive and relevant in a consumer-centric world. The solution? You guessed it: more knowledge.

Why social data is knowledge

There are many ways to mine social data. And if you extract the information in the correct way, the insights can be incredibly powerful. So I thought I’d list my current clients' favorite ways to mine data on Pulsar. This is my Power Top 5:

1) Connected Topics: deepen your understanding of your prospect’s audience by understanding how topics of conversations connect and grow online. If they talk about one thing - like boots - what other words are connected? Fashion, festivals, hiking? Do brands turn up like Dr. Martens? All this information gives you context to show your prospect that you can bridge the gap between them and their audiences by being truly relevant and engaging with your content - addressing those things that matter most to their audience.

2) Understanding their audience: Pulsar’s unique audience search feature allows you to take the followers of any brand and start to understand how they behave across social media. So instead of simply looking at what different people are saying - like most social listening tools will show you - Pulsar helps you understand what binds your prospect's audience together. What are their behaviors? What (other) brands do they like? Painting a full picture and understanding the networks will help build personas.

3) Knowing when to act online: using Pulsar, you can identify when your client’s audiences are online and which channels they prefer. For example, do you know what part of your audience prefers Instagram to Twitter? And do they look at Instagram on their daily commute, or just before they go to sleep? Does this match up to you or your prospect’s hypotheses?

4) Going beyond text analysis: images are a key language on the Internet nowadays. Show your prospect that you understand the visual language of their audience by analyzing exactly what types of images they share with each other. Pulsar –unlike other tools– goes beyond simple logo recognition, and can even identify objects if they are bent out of shape - for example, a crushed can of Coca-Cola will still be recognized as such.

5) Context: on Pulsar you can compare a brand or an audience across every available channel (blogs, forums, news, review sites, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Tumblr.) This is because we believe that to extract real insight, you need a robust and contextualized dataset. Why work with a few data sources, if that doesn't give you the full picture?

If social data is knowledge, then using it the correct way will give an agency power - a unique edge in the online space, raising the stakes and reducing the risk of losing a pitch against a competitor. Although nothing is certain in this world, this knowledge will better the odds and, with a little luck, let you bring home the bacon.

If you work for an agency and would like to know how your clients can benefit from audience intelligence, book a (free) demo now, or send an email to: [email protected]