How Startups and Early-Stage Companies Can Use Social Media Data Collection to Gain an Advantage

What Marketing Research Component Most Startups Overlook

Many startups spend a lot of time and resources on marketing research, yet 42% of startups and early-stage companies fail due to "lack of market need".

In essence, this means that the sector in which they are trying to capture market share either:

• is saturated with similar solutions.
• or the target market/consumer is not sufficiently "interested" in their solution.

The primary way startups can avoid this unpleasant situation is by studying their audience and competitive landscape based on marketing research data.

Social media, in particular, can be a rich space for obtaining qualitative and quantitative publicly available information regarding:

• Consumer pain points
• How "unique" your unique selling proposition (USP) is compared to competitors (i.e., idea validation)
• Real-time market/consumer trends.

Moreover, according to Statista, the share of global corporations resorting to data collection via social media is steadily increasing.

Here's How One Marketing Startup Uses Social Media Data Collection to Support Its Technology

A good example of a startup using publicly available social media data as part of its unique selling proposition (USP) is a marketing technology company that provides software to improve efficiency:

• Guest posting
• Backlink profile building
• Identifying trending content relevant to the company's target audience
• Finding social media influencers for specific collaborations.

The biggest challenge in this context when collecting social media data is the need to individually connect to each platform's API. Using a data collection network that automates the entire process can easily eliminate such issues. Companies based on social data models can operate more efficiently:

• Search the internet for high-ranking domains (typically Domain Authority above 30)
• Monitor social media for relevant and engaging influencers, as well as verify the authenticity of influencer profiles
• Scan search engine results and social media posts for trending, high-ranking, and highly engaging content.

Deep Dive into Companies That Use Alternative Social Data to Achieve Their Goals

Let's take a closer look at how companies use social media to get answers to key questions about target audiences, products, and competitors.

Social Sentiment Analysis

Social sentiment is a very important issue, especially when launching, for example, a disruptive technology. Very often a product or software works flawlessly but ultimately fails due to low adoption. This typically happens when the founding company failed to fully grasp the complexity of the issue, including moral, ethical, and gender considerations.

For example, a company planning to sell a genetic selection service for parents who wish to change the physical and mental characteristics of their child must thoroughly analyze social sentiment to successfully offer its service with the least difficulty.

In this context, The Guardian published an article titled "Designer Babies: The Ethical Horror That's Waiting in the Wings?" This and other articles on the topic became a subject of discussion, debate, and controversy among individuals and politicians on various forums and social platforms. A startup aiming to "normalize" embryonic genetic engineering could use social media data collection before product launch to:

• First, understand the core ethical and religious concerns to formulate a successful brand narrative.
• And second, to gauge the political landscape in order to successfully lobby for the legality of their products and services, as well as to protect and defend their patent rights.

Identifying Organic Opportunities

Very often, social media forums serve as a platform for discussing pain points, frustrations, passions, and common interests of a particular group of people. Whatever the common denominator, you can track these movements on social media and see how you can improve your marketing campaigns, messaging, and product offerings based on them.

A good example is the social media data collection project and successful market research campaign conducted by Aerie, a lingerie company owned by American Eagle. By collecting social media data, they were able to discover the "body positivity" movement and skillfully incorporate it into their products:

Marketing: The "Aerie Real" campaign on TikTok and other social platforms was a direct product of the organic "body positivity" discourse, which is also one of the reasons for its great success. Aerie reported a 38% increase in quarterly sales as a direct result of "social listening and engagement campaigns." This story demonstrates the power of identifying and then leveraging an existing, organic social trend.

Production: Aerie also learned more about what products consumers actually want to wear, leading them to launch "more comfortable lines," plus sizes, and also being one of the first in the industry to introduce and release the "bralette" – an unpadded bra, caring first and foremost about how a woman feels, and only secondarily about how she looks.

Conclusion

Startups, early-stage companies, and established multinational corporations can all benefit from open-source social listening. A data-driven approach to social media allows these companies to operate with an awareness of the current social climate, genuine consumer needs, and competitive dynamics—something that is difficult to achieve from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective using data from any other source.