United States

Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Love used to make the world go ‘round. But today, that’s data’s job. Companies rely on data to:

First, companies need a master data management (MDM) strategy to keep customer data organized.

That's easier said than done. IDC estimates the amount of data created in the next three years will equal the amount of data created in the last 30 years. It will soon outgrow storage capacity. Customer data, in particular, is growing at a breakneck pace. That makes it harder to organize and control.

Here's another layer of complexity. Gartner estimates that businesses lose an average of $15 million per year due to poor data quality.

These are challenges we can’t afford to ignore. Overcoming them starts with getting a firmer grip on MDM. It’s a Herculean task. We suggest you break down your MDM into smaller objectives. Start with the lifeblood of your company: customer data.

In this post, we’ll dive into the basics of customer data management. We will explore how it’s used and provide tips for integrating a customer data platform (CDP) to centralize your data strategy.

How does master customer data management fit into MDM?

How can MDM and customer database software support my organization?

What tools can I use to support my customer master data management strategy?

How to create or improve a customer data management strategy

We define master data as being a single source of truth. It is a consistent, uniform, reliable set of data to provide context to an enterprise. Think of a master key. Most keys can unlock one door, but a master key offers unfettered access throughout an entire facility.

Master data management, or MDM, integrates data into a predictable, usable, organized format. It provides an organization with a single point of reference. Business users and IT work together to ensure that an organization's data is:

Every organization has different preferences for managing a database. But all organizations need a centralized visual hub that allows business users to interpret big data in real-time.

Customer data management (CDM) is a slice of the MDM pie. Managing a CDP involves creating a framework that determines how to collect, analyze, and manage relevant customer data from various sources (e.g., social media, email, live chat, etc.).

CDM software helps companies gain a unified view of every customer. CDM also enables an understanding of a company's target customer base as a whole.

With CDM, you do not have to rely on generic buyer personas that reveal little about your customers' unique characteristics. You can go beyond basic segmentation or surface-level demographic information. Marketers can create stronger personalized experiences and cater to their customers' needs.

Countless global brands use customer MDM software for many use cases. Some examples include:

Visualizing complex customer data to enhance data-driven decision making

Connecting the dots between disparate data types and channels

Gaining unprecedented cross-department insights that can help future-proof the organization

Let’s take a look at a handful of some of these use cases in more depth.

Customer MDM helps you present complex information with cohesive and interactive visual dashboards. Data management solutions often allow you to create unlimited, customized screens or dashboards. With these dashboards, you can see an overview of the data and drill down into insights if needed. Data points are presented in real-time, and visualizations automatically update in response to data changes. This allows you to quickly access critical insights and signals for:

Real-time updates in centralized data management solutions ensure accurate metrics and KPIs. Most customer MDM tools have link-sharing functions. Executives can share:

You can share all this with anyone, from any device, anywhere in the world. Your team will always be in the know. They can pivot strategies to ensure your brand remains relevant and competitive based on real-time data analytics.

Centralized data analysis tools can gather data from:

With the right tools, data combines to visualize:

Customer management solutions are often customizable. You can configure them for a variety of use cases across business functions.

Customer data doesn’t exist in a silo. If you treat it like it does, you run the risk of studying vanity numbers. Since data doesn’t exist in isolation, neither should teams. Customer MDM unifies information to give you access to the full picture.

For example, insights found via media monitoring matter a lot to martech professionals. But this data can also inform core business decisions beyond brand management, such as:

Creating competitive advantage through supply chain risk mitigation

By combining first-party and third-party data sources, you can better understand your position and competition. You can eliminate blind spots and identify developing threats and opportunities.

Data analysis traditionally kept professionals up at night. Thanks to technological advances, customer data management platforms (DMP) make analysis easier. Consider Meltwater's Consumer Insights platform, which stays on top of new trends, opinions, and preferences. We integrate data from across the web, including:

Our goal is to access real-time social data to understand what really motivates your customers and to empower your decisions. Another powerful tool for managing customer data is the Meltwater Media Intelligence platform. Old-school market research methods included:

These methods took weeks or months to yield useful feedback. Today, market research enables a continuous cycle of intel on your customers, competitors, and industry. Users can collect, analyze, and visualize data all from within the software. You can:

Make personalization an easier and more effective process

Showcase your results with custom reporting 

Consumer insights and market research are not just internal customer management systems. They also take into account your total addressable audience. That includes customers that fit your target but haven’t yet purchased from you. By looking beyond your own first-party data, you get true master data that will help you improve every touchpoint and expand your business using reliable, actionable insights.

CDM isn’t just about collecting and organizing your customer relationship management (CRM) data. It’s about making all that data work for you. With this in mind, let’s look at three principles you need to follow to create or improve your CDM strategy:

1. Flesh Out a Data Governance Strategy for Your Customer Data Platform

How do you write your date in your CRM system: MM/DD/YYYY or MM/DD/YY? Both of these tell us the same information. But only one way is correct — and it’s up to you to choose which one.

This is an example of why data governance matters. Cloud governance frameworks can help ensure your data management practices are secure, consistent, and compliant with evolving industry standards. For master customer data to live up to its potential, you need to ensure that information enters your customer database software in a consistent format. Otherwise, when your data tools are compiling insights from your CRM system or other channels, key information might be overlooked simply because it’s formatted incorrectly.

With governance in place, you can ensure that all data will be entered correctly and, therefore, will be usable. Put it down on paper so that you can turn your users into good data stewards.

How to Use a Customer Data Platform to Master Your Data Management

Big data holds big potential. According to IDC, businesses spent $215 billion on big data and business intelligence solutions in 2021 alone. That represents a 10% increase compared to 2020. Job growth in data analytics and business intelligence (BI) also remains strong. It's clear that the future is doubling down on data. But all its power and glory mean very little until you can answer one question: What can data-driven intelligence do for you?

Having a theoretical understanding of how to foster an intelligent business is one thing. Putting your BI tools to work and generating results is quite another.

Too many organizations fail to bridge the gap and successfully use business data to transform their operations. The effectiveness of BI data can suffer from:

Failure to involve the right people in the decision-making process

Limitations within the BI software itself

So, let’s fix that. Here’s a closer look at BI, along with some steps you can take to ensure it’s broadly adopted and benefits all users.

BI Definition: What Is Business Intelligence?

Why Are BI Reporting and Business Data Important for Companies?

What Kinds of Business Intelligence Tools Should You Use?

How Can Meltwater Help with Business Intelligence and Business Analytics?

Let’s start with some clarity. First, what is a good business intelligence definition? Business intelligence, or BI, refers to software that turns data into usable insights. To make sense of information, it uses:

When you wrap your data up in a neat and tidy package, you can make better business decisions based on real-world insights.

So what is business analytics, then? There’s a little overlap here. Business analytics uses historical data to identify potential trends and patterns that help companies make predictions for the future.

An easy way to think about it is that business analytics is a small slice of BI. Both are important, especially for informed decision-making. Both can work together to drive better business outcomes.

Imagine you are shopping for a new car. You go to the lot and see they have several of the same model in stock. On the surface, they all look the same except for the color. But after you buy one, you learn that it was actually a year older than the others on the lot and had thousands more miles than them. It had also been in a previous accident, but it still costs the same as the newer cars.

With a little more insight into what you were buying, you may have chosen differently. Since all the cars cost the same in this example, you could have gotten more value by getting a newer, less-driven model that was in better condition. BI and analytics work in a similar manner. They provide users with data they might have overlooked or might not realize is available. With those insights, users can improve business operations and data-driven decision-making.

To be clear, BI data doesn’t tell companies what to do or what will happen if they make certain decisions. Its value lies in presenting business leaders with simplified data insights related to a specific area of business. It helps to remove some of the guesswork of an endless list of what-if questions. It streamlines the process of searching for and combining various data sets to speed up the decision-making timeline.

Business intelligence software sounds helpful in theory. In reality, the possible applications are nearly endless. For instance, a retail store or logistics company might use BI for predictive purposes. AI is useful for identifying supply chain risks and may help companies plan for unexpected surges in demand or delays in transport.

Sales teams will often use a BI platform to visualize their pipelines and see where all of their deals are in real-time using sales intelligence technology. Take Meltwater client AxiaOrigin, for example. This consultancy specializes in best-in-class data discovery and analysis, with a particular focus on unused data that its clients struggle to unlock value from. Much of its work is bespoke to each client, so having a flexible solution that can address a wide range of requests is critical. AxiaOrigin can explore large sets of raw data without manually mining and extracting insights. And it's all because of our AI-powered business intelligence and analytics tools.

Another common use case is to predict future trends, which is how Fund for Peace uses Meltwater. This non-profit works to prevent conflict. It relies on easy-to-use BI to track trends and get early warnings of potential conflict. This forward-thinking approach allows the organization to respond quickly to escalating situations. Using an easy-to-understand, end-to-end solution reduces the time it takes to research and track events, which has enriched the organization's data even more.

Specifically, BI reporting can be useful in several ways:

Feed your competitive intelligence database

When used to its potential, BI reporting can help to improve just about any aspect of your business.

The right BI tools let you go from theoretical benefits to tangible value. To make this leap, you must first explore your options for choosing and implementing BI solutions.

A range of tools and solutions are part of the BI market. Examples include:

Among the most common are dashboarding and visualization tools. Dashboards can be customized to display certain types of data at a glance. These are most often used when business leaders need to access the same information on an ongoing basis. Visualization tools turn data into visual images or models for easier information processing.

Tip: Understand how image recognition works, how the Meltwater Suite can serve enterprises, and learn more about image recognition software.

All of the above can fall into one of two buckets. There’s the “classic” BI that focuses only on in-house transactional data. And then there’s “modern” BI that takes internal and external data from a variety of sources into account. Modern BI offers additional advantages to completing and enriching data sets, which allows for faster and easier analysis.

Today's BI solutions are largely cloud-based software-as-a-service (though some are still on-premise). They span a range of features and functionality. They're enterprise-grade in terms of power. But even non-technical users can benefit from the approach that many BI applications take. Having your own data analysts or team of data scientists is great, but it is no longer required for deploying BI.

Going Beyond a Business Intelligence System

It’s not just a matter of choosing software and tools to make BI solutions work. This is where a lot of companies go wrong. You cannot simply "solution-ize" your business. You must factor in other considerations that can make or break your BI implementation.

First, companies need to instill the right culture. Technology itself isn’t enough if the people using it can’t make heads or tails of it. Staff empowered to make decisions who know the right questions to ask are ideally suited for BI. They’re usually skilled in finding patterns in sales data or social media mentions, for example. They also view a BI solution as more than just a data tool. They see it as a valuable way to investigate how past actions triggered results and to better predict the results of future actions.

Also, companies need buy-in from the top down. BI software isn’t just a one-off activity. On the contrary, its value grows over time as it collects more data for deeper and more reliable insights. With this in mind, don't expect BI solutions to perform miracles overnight, and don't try to implement them quickly. Doing so most often means that some aspects of the organization were not taken into account. Using an implementation consultant can shore up these little bumps in the road that could ultimately derail your BI program. They ask hard questions to achieve short-term goals and long-term value.

The data you feed your BI software will also contribute to your success. You need to consider structured and unstructured data sources to gauge customer sentiment and relate it to other data points. This is becoming critical as customers engage with businesses through a variety of channels. Also, data should come from verified, reliable sources to maintain its integrity and reap all the benefits of BI.

Lastly, organizations need to establish specific goals for their BI system. Goal creation ensures that companies are collecting and analyzing the right data. You’ll likely have a mix of metrics related to customer satisfaction, sales, and internal user adoption. Your BI system must be flexible and customizable to accommodate future goals and priority shifts.

Tip: Learn how customer intelligence in the form of customer intelligence analytics retrieved via customer intelligence platforms  can help you feed your business intelligence.

How Can Meltwater Help with Business Intelligence Reporting and Business Analytics?

BI systems have come a long way from their early iterations, allowing more decision-makers to take advantage of their benefits. Meltwater helps companies expand the value of their internal and external data — without having to take a BI course or get a degree in data science.

Our comprehensive data analytics platform uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to pull data and insights from a variety of online and offline channels. Useful in everything from social media management to competitive intelligence and market research and more, we’ve designed our self-service solutions to provide actionable, real-time insights across the enterprise.

How Business Intelligence Can Fuel Your Efforts

Once upon a time, marketers relied on experience and intuition to understand their customers. Using insights from research methods like focus groups and polls, they built customer profiles to predict how their products would perform against their competition in the marketplace. These days, you still need to understand the complexities of consumer behaviour to create a successful customer journey. But now, more up-to-date, sophisticated consumer research methods are in play. This is especially true since Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix came into the fold and showed how data-driven marketing substantially increases gains. 

Take personalisation as one example. According to market research firm Invespcro, marketing firms that exceed their revenue goals apply personalisation methods 83% of the time. Plus, businesses that use data-driven personalisation methods reported between five and eight times the return on investment (ROI) on their marketing budgets. 

So what does this all mean? It's time for your business to use customer data to get a better sense of your customers. In this blog, we'll get into four ways to understand consumer behaviour using data-driven marketing. First, let's take a closer look at what consumer behaviour is. 

How to Understand Consumer Behaviour with Data-Driven Marketing

What is consumer behaviour, exactly? In a nutshell, the term "consumer behaviour" refers to how people think, act, feel, and make decisions when they buy something. It also describes a field of study that uses marketing, economics, psychology, and other social sciences to analyse the processes consumers go through when they buy something.

Humans are complex beings; understanding why we act the way we do is no easy task. When it comes to consumer decision-making, many internal and external elements come into play when we decide what and what not to buy. For a quick overview, here are five major factors that influence consumer behaviour, which you'll sometimes see called buyer behaviour.

Psychological factors include personality, perceptions, well-being, self-esteem, and beliefs. They aren't easy to measure, but they can play a huge role in influencing a customer's decision process and purchasing decisions. For example, a person who values or is motivated by belonging to a family unit will have different buyer behaviours than a person who is motivated by self-reliance and independence.

Personal factors can be everything from demographic qualities — like gender, occupation, and location — to more lifestyle-based qualities — like hobbies and daily routine. One example of a personal factor is age and generation. For example, Baby Boomer and Gen Z shoppers generally have different buying behaviours that call for different marketing strategies.

A consumers' cultural background and social networks — the people they regularly have face-to-face interactions with — can influence their buying behaviour and processes. What's a consumer's most influential social factor? Many researchers believe it is family. Some have even looked into how families pass brand loyalty down through generations.

A consumer's socio-economic situation and social class also impact their behaviour. Personal income, family income, and credit can all affect what a person chooses to buy. On a larger scale, when an economy is thriving, customers have more purchasing power for new products, both basic and luxury items. On the other hand, a weak economy can lead to less purchasing power. 

From brick-and-mortar stores to online marketplaces, the environment and circumstances consumers find themselves in when they make a purchase decision are situational factors. One common situational factor marketers take advantage of is holidays when many consumers aren't working and have more time to shop. Other factors, like mindset, mood, and attitude, are more personal (but equally influential) situational factors. 

Consumer behaviour theories model and classify how people make purchase decisions. Businesses and marketers use these theories to better understand and predict when and why their customers will make a purchase. 

Consumer behaviour researchers have developed multiple models that businesses and marketers use to classify consumer behaviour. Some of the traditional consumer behaviour models, which are based on unconscious consumer desires, include the:

Psychoanalytic Model, which explains that consumers' motivations, ambitions, desires, and fears are the foundation for their purchase decisions.

Sociological Model, which says that purchases are influenced by a consumer's place within different social groups and communities.

There are also contemporary consumer behaviour models that see purchase decisions as the result of conscious, decision-making processes. Some are:

Reasoned Action Theory, which states that consumers are motivated by the results they expect a particular product or service to deliver.

Motivation-Need Theory, which explains how consumers make purchase decisions to satisfy a hierarchy of needs.

Impulse Buying Theory, which explains how human impulse and external factors lead consumers to make purchases.

Now that we have our basics covered, here are four ways data-driven marketing can help you understand consumer behaviour.

A behavioural analysis can teach you a lot about how consumers behave and interact with your product or brand. You might end up zeroing in on the specific, influencing factors that come into play when they make buying decisions involving your brand. Start with a behavioural segmentation of your audience and go from there. Determine why each audience segment turns to your brand and compare that against internal quantitative data like newsletter subscriptions and third-party data like product reviews. Use your findings to improve your brand's customer journey and bring new buyers into the fold. 

Tip: Think about your CDM (customer data management) to gain more actionable insights from your data.

Behavioural segmentation is the process of classifying and sorting consumers into distinct groups of different types. In other words, consumer behavioural segmentation means grouping your audience by different behavioural patterns. 

Some different behavioural patterns you can use for audience and customer segmentation are:

Purchasing behaviour, which is often divided into four subgroups: complex, variety-seeking, dissonance-reducing, and habitual

Usage, which can include how consumers use your product or service, as well as how often and for how much time

Occasion purchasing, which looks at whether consumers purchase the product or service habitually, seasonally, or at particular stages in their lives

Customer journey stage refers to the customer's time interacting with your brand or company

Customer loyalty, looking at where in that customer journey stage a buyer develops brand loyalty

2. Use social listening to track consumer buying behaviour

How are your customers and potential customers talking about your company online? How often and in what contexts does your brand come up? What do customers have to say about your company, brand, or product pre-purchase and post-purchase? Resources like Meltwater's social media monitoring tool can help you answer these and other questions to learn more about the conversations your audience has about your business.

Along with social media, review sites, message boards, forums, blogs, videos, podcasts, comments sections, and other channels are full of insights about your customers and customer journey. Extracting and analysing data from those channels will get you actionable insights you can use to optimize that customer journey. Since all of these channels are constantly in flux, gathering this valuable data can be a process. Here's another area where consumer insights tools like the Meltwater's AI-enabled consumer insights solutions can get you a deeper understanding of your audience segments and motivations.

Using the Consumer Insights tool provided by Meltwater or the Meltwater Consumer Intelligence platform, brands can search for keywords and terms to establish a consumer group that engages with that topic the most. Breaking it down by factors such as gender, age group, and related interests gives marketers data-driven insights into who their audiences are and how they behave, well as their psychological qualities like personality types and values. 

4. Apply data from one marketing channel to another

Dig deeper into what's currently working on your go-to marketing channels. You may gain insights that you can then apply elsewhere. For example, if you find that you have more engagement on your social media posts at noon when people are eating their lunch, you could schedule an email blast for that same time to capture more of that audience. Whether or not the change gets more clicks, you'll still learn more about your email audience.

Customer behaviour is evolving all the time. Your business needs to understand it to effectively communicate with consumers making a purchase decision. Optimizing your online and in-store customer journeys sets you and your audience up for success. To learn more about how Meltwater's solutions can unlock the consumer insights you need to achieve your goals, fill out the form below. 

4 Ways to Understand Consumer Behaviour Through Data-Driven Marketing

When it comes to influencer marketing, brands commonly assume that a high follower count points to a popular influencer profile or an expert in their field. The truth is quantity doesn't always mean quality. From TikTok to LinkedIn, fake followers are rampant on social media, where fake influencers (and even high-profile celebrities and public figures) use them to inflate their follower lists. 

Marketers often go to Instagram and Twitter first to find influencers, experts, and leaders to partner with for various campaigns. With that in mind, we're focusing on Instagrammers and Twitter users to explain what you need to know about fake followers. Use our tips and guidelines to recognize the red flags and avoid falling into a fake influencer trap.

How to spot fake followers and avoid influencer fraud

How to get rid of your fake followers on social media

As the name implies, fake followers are profiles on social media that are used by other accounts to give a false impression of how 'real' or important they are. And while some are ghost followers that don't interact or engage, others are bots that do automated functions like retweeting, sending friend requests, or posting fake comments and replies. 

Established companies sell fake followers, as well as likes and retweets, to any person or company that's interested. Buyers who pay anywhere from a few pennies to a few hundred dollars can get big batches of followers that can have a huge impact on their online presence. 

Accounts that buy fake followers also have fake social media metrics, which marketers and brands use when scouting influencers for marketing campaigns. In 2019, brands lost $1.3 billion to influencer fraud, which included influencers with fake followers as well as outright fake influencer accounts.

Scammers also use malicious bots disguised as fake followers to spread spam and malware, as well as engage in phishing attempts for personal information. Do a regular audit of your brand's own social media accounts (or a specific Twitter audit) as part of your regular cybersecurity measures.

On the flip side, many fake Instagram and Twitter accounts feature profile pictures of real people who have had their photos and/or identities stolen. That's one detail any brand, company, or aspiring influencer should remember if they're tempted to buy fake followers of their own.

These numbers may shock you! In 2017, researchers found that up to 15% of Twitter accounts are actually Twitter bots. That's 48 million accounts. Four years later, another study determined that only 55% of Instagram profiles are real people with legitimate accounts. Not all bots are bad — the bots that tweet daily weather reports, for example — but the flood of malicious bots and fake followers on social media doesn't look like it's letting up any time soon.

Wondering if a potential influencer has a follower list full of fakes? Use these methods, guidelines, and tips to vet their profiles and the accounts that follow them.

Start with looking at the username and profile pictures on their follower list. No profile pictures or usernames that look automatically generated (with nonsensical characters and a long set of numbers) are telltale signs of fake profiles. 

Also, look at the account's profile and content. Has it posted anything? Is there any engagement under the posts that make it seem like a bot or a scam? Use your intuition and do all you can to avoid reporting and blocking the accounts of actual followers and potential consumers. 

Some Instagram fake followers will seem like real followers or active users. However, once you have followed them back, they will send you a direct message or comment with an offer to buy additional fake followers. This shows that the account is automated. 

Like on Instagram, a follower list full of empty profile pictures and suspicious usernames is a giant red flag for fake followers. But since this platform is more geared for conversations than images, there are a few different elements to look at. Survey their tweets and replies to tweets. Are they engaging with other accounts in an authentic way? Are they using the reply function and hashtags to spam? Have they ever talked about or tagged your brand? How old is their account? Like the method above, this one is time-consuming and may not be scalable depending on how big of a social media presence your brand has.

Use influencer marketing platforms and social media analytics tools

The Meltwater Blog

How to Use a Customer Data Platform to Master Your Data Management

How Business Intelligence Can Fuel Your Efforts

4 Ways to Understand Consumer Behaviour Through Data-Driven Marketing

Fake Instagram & Twitter: What You Need to Know About Fake Followers

Instagram Video: How to Use IGTV for Your Social Media Strategy

How to Create an Infographic [for Non-Designers]

The Full Guide To LinkedIn Management: SSI, Posting & Showcase Pages

Meltwater Celebrates G2 Best Software Awards Wins

Top Female Influencers From Ukraine

Happy International Women’s Day, 2022!

CEO Communications: Building & Maintaining Trust

How to Use Data Cleansing & Data Enrichment to Improve Your CRM