SOCIALSENSE CASE STUDIES
Campaign Strategy — Home Furnishings
What's a WAHM?
Networked Insights helps a large producer of custom closets learn the secret language of moms and improve copywriting, advertising, and marketing effectiveness
Mission: A large producer of closet storage solutions sought to improve its marketing. Mothers were the company's primary target audience, but messaging was not connecting with that target. Research indicated that consumers understood the company's offerings, but they couldn't see how the products fit into their families' lives. The client also wanted a simple and effective way to improve the relevance of their messaging and improve marketing effectiveness.
Social Media Opportunity: Socially connected moms have, over the past decade, become a force to be reckoned with online as they form giant knowledge collectives, filled with shared experiences. Many businesses still struggle to positively interact with them and large opportunities exist when an institution or brand can successfully integrate and reflect their cultural belief systems.
Solution: Approaching "mommy bloggers" is a daunting task for most companies and brands. The wide spectrum of conversation across the Internet produces too much noise to just simply monitor.
SocialSense was used to identify the most relevant communities for the client's products, and the platform identified the sites where female home owners with high household income were discussing both closet solutions and family issues.
From this manageable selection, SocialSense was able to analyze the thousands of posts to understand the marginalized voices and unmet needs within this audience.
Results: SocialSense enabled our client to better relate to mothers by identifying a lexicon of terms that harmonized with them. For example, instead of using a polarizing term like "soccer mom," the client learned about popular abbreviations like WAHM (work-at-home-mom) and SAHM (stay-at-home-mom).
SocialSense also discovered the most buzzed-about topics, leading our client to have measurable results from fresh creative executions in marketing. Consequently the client was not only able to better integrate their products into their new audience's needs, but improve their cultural relevance and persuasion.
Innovation — Conusmer Packaged Goods
Cooking with Social Media
Networked Insights helps a leading frozen food manufacturer take innovation out of the lab into the consumer's kitchen — finding hundreds of marketable recipes online
Mission: A leading frozen-food manufacturer wanted to improve its product-innovation methodology by involving consumers earlier in the development process. In the past, new product ideas came "top down" from the food labs. This approach often led to product introductions that were ahead of the mainstream consumer acceptance "curve." The client's goal was to better understand what everyday consumers were cooking and discover any product innovations those consumers had made in the form of "twists" on classic recipes.
Social Media Opportunity: "DIY" instructions are one the key pillars of social media culture. Recipes, no longer trapped on note cards and in books, have become an integral component to that tradition. These "home-style" recipes are markedly different from those of culinary experts because they focus on family-pleasing foods rather than "fad" ingredients and flavors.
Solution: Networked Insights understood that because of the hundreds of recipes shared everyday — a mere sliver of the total recipes available online — the best approach was to derive insight on what made each consumer-generated recipe appealing, rather than reading each individual recipe.
Networked Insights applied SocialSense's analytics to discover emerging trends and themes that were important not only to recipe consumers, but to future product development as well.
Results: In just one month, Networked Insights' SocialSense identified more than 200 unique family recipes deemed appropriate for further concept testing and development. In addition to surfacing the recipes, SocialSense helped our client discover:
- Ingredients that make recipes more family pleasing
- Ways to provide ingredient variety while still having mass appeal
- Nutritional concerns reflected in adaptations of classic recipes
- Product features that allow cooks to feel better about meals they serve their families
Innovation — Retailer
New Audience, New Product
Networked Insights helps a large mail-order retailer discover an opportunity in hair products, finally getting traction with African Americans
Mission: A large mail-order retailer aimed to grow sales by reaching out to a low Brand Development Index (BDI) target segment: African American consumers. Sales indicated that the company's present positioning and product offering was not resonating with this demographic. Repeated attempts to reach out to the segment with marketing messages had failed.
Social Media Opportunity: As geographical barriers are disappearing, specific communities online are forming in order to discuss unique product needs and cultural issues. These conversations are critical to understand in order to gain a specific audience's business.
Solution: SocialSense identified a list of blogs, forums and communities with the highest traffic, interaction and relevance among the target. Analyzing discussions relevant to the mail order company's product lines, SocialSense identified key themes and consumer sentiment.
While discussions related to the company were minimal, SocialSense went beyond the initial set of topics and keywords and discovered a new hair-product opportunity for African Americans. Hair-related issues stood out as a major underserved need.
Results: While offering hair products for African American women were well within the company's capabilities, it had never considered that audience until SocialSense proved how important it was to listen.
As a result of listening, cultural and language insights discovered by SocialSense are now helping the company speak effectively to the needs and values of these new consumers.
These new avenues of communication inspired our client to aggressively pursue this audience by quickly developing and testing new concepts and products. The initial results of their success has demonstrated the business value of SocialSense as a tool for new- product innovation.
Campaign Development — Educational Games
What Teachers Taught Us
Networked Insights helps a producer of educational games redesign their website's look and content to improve search and sales
Mission: A producer of educational games for schools was disappointed in the performance and popularity of its website. The company's goal was to better understand the content and terms that would drive stronger website performance, improved SEO, and online sales.
Social Media Opportunity: Teachers and educational professionals care deeply about the quality of materials they introduce into the classroom. In an effort to not face the classroom alone, they participate regularly in online communities to research, discuss, and share information about curricula and educational tools.
Solution: Networked Insights constructed a unique SocialSense workspace in order to analyze the most relevant and influential teacher- and education-focused conversations. During the creation of this virtual community, SocialSense was able to identify many unexpected communities that demonstrated reach and influence beyond the sites the client had initially suggested.
SocialSense examined these communities and distilled teachers' unique wants and needs. Additionally, it identified high-interest terms and topics used to discuss important issues and pressing challenges in education — terms that could drive significant improvement in content relevance and SEO.
Results: Using the actionable insights supplied by Networked Insights' SocialSense, our client redesigned their site and re-launched with astounding results. The new site contained content that demonstrated their intimate grasp of the challenges that teachers face today and featured products that addressed the most important educational issues.
By understanding and elevating "hot button" terms, the company drove dramatic improvements in natural search traffic. Since the site re-launch, traffic, sales, and profitability have greatly increased.
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