FEATURED SPEAKER – Luke Moore, European Sales director …
Ahead of next week’s #SMWF Europe we speak to Luke Moore, European sales director at Crimson Hexagon to find out about how the company is helping businesses learn more from social media conversations.
Social media has long been referred to as the world’s biggest focus group and its potential for learning more about the customer has always been huge. In fact its very nature makes it even more effective than a focus group since consumers speak freely, openly and honestly on social media in a way that they never have before.
But the challenge in the past has been the sheer scale of those conversations and how to discover the golden nuggets within them. That has been a tough task, according to Luke Moore, European sales director at Crimson Hexagon. “Companies in the past have been overwhelmed with the volume of data and underwhelmed by the quality of insight and that has left them sitting on the fence,” he says.
Whilst there has been quantatitive analysis of social media in the past – such as measuring likes and followers, Moore suggests companies have been hampered by being unable to discover truly actionable insight simply because the tools haven’t been there. “In the past technologies haven’t presented anything of value. Eg presenting likes and followers hasn’t helped. Previously it’s been about sentiment analysis but when you try and understand what people have meant in terms of positive and negative that doesn’t always work,” he says. As a result he feels that many brands have given up on sentiment analysis.
“The challenges are about understanding what consumers are saying and why they are saying it to get the what and the why of the conversations that will give you insight that will steer your business,” says Moore. “We are about opinion analysis versus sentiment analysis,” he says. It’s the ability to measure such nuances of conversation beyond just sentiment analysis that will allow for real change he feels.
Whilst an invaluable tool for measuring the effectiveness of marketing Moore says the platform also offers the opportunity for real business change. “You can still measure reaction to your advertising and campaigns but can also look at more predictive indicators in an industry to analyse what customers may want in the future. It’s about listening closely to customer passion and pain points, frustrations and needs and being able to uncover things you weren’t necessarily looking for but can find to better serve your customers,” he says.
And it’s not just about current conversations. With historical conversations going back to 2008 Moore says the platform can be vital for companies looking to develop new products or services. As well as its opinion analysis platform Crimson Hexagon is also delivering further tools too – having just launched its Affinities product – which helps businesses understand the who of their customer base as well as the what and why. And there’s more to come, according to Moore. “Affinities is the tip of the iceberg. We are innovating in a way others aren’t doing at the moment,” he says.
Crimson Hexagon will be represented in two sessions as part of #SMWF Europe next week. Day one will see Tom Whitney, consultant for Crimson Hexagon present about the power of customers and how successful marketers are embracing that, whilst day two will see Luke lead a panel discussion that looks at whether anyone analyses social media sentiment and how to move beyond sentiment in social media analysis. Moore will be joined by representatives from IPA, BT, Rightmove, amc services and 3seven9.
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FEATURED SPEAKER – Luke Moore, European Sales director …
