Nissan believes strategic use of social analytics can help reduce marketing wastage, following its use of social listening to inform a campaign for its Leaf model.
Nissan general manager for social media and digital marketing, AMIE, David Parkinson. Told new media age that its use of social analytics was helping taking some of the guess work out of marketing.
“Five years ago you could get it about 80% right but now the intelligence you can get means you can really get that last 20% and deliver customer-centric marketing,” he said.
Parkinson spoke to new media age as a case study as part of a wider report about how brands are using social analytics by Synthesio. The ‘Synthesio Great Book of Insights’ aggregates anonymous case studies for its clients across all sectors, aiming to show the diverse ways that social analytics tools are being used.
Nissan’s case study concerns its electric model the Leaf and how it used real-time analytics and social data to inform other parts of its marketing channels - for example, knowing that BBC TV show Top Gear was about to show an episode in which the car battery runs out, leaving presenter Jeremy Clarkson stranded in Lincoln.
Parkinson said they were able to monitor what people were saying alongside the show, informing their press team of how to structure targeted press releases to be sent out defending the car (see image below). Parkinson said that since using social listening tools in this way and strategically implementing changes across the business using the insights, positive conversations grew 60%.
Parkinson said that at the moment the increase in positive conversation was a suitable ROI for the car brand but that his team were working towards being able to extrapolate this to uplifts in both test drives and sales of the cars.
“It is still early days for social media compared to other channels, we are all still enthusiastic beginners,” he said.
Catriona Oldershaw, Synthesio UK director, said social analytics was becoming crucial for brands to use alongside more traditional market research tools.
“Market research is the zoo and the web is the jungle. If you want to learn about the tiger, don’t go to the zoo, go to the jungle,” she said.
