​Big data goes social

How can Tahola help the hospitality industry drive actionable insight from the vast volume of social media data?

Leigh Baillie - 16th November 2017

Many of us have sent a tweet or written a Facebook status about a restaurant or a new bar to showcase our satisfaction or perhaps to make a complaint? We may have “checked in” to a hotel we recently stayed at on social media or taken a photo of our last meal out and posted it on Instagram, or perhaps dowloaded a new lifestyle app and logged in with our Facebook or Google account?

All of these things evoke personalisation and relate to the advertising that pops up throughout our feed because of these interactions.

Everything we do online or via social media, creates data — that data is then aggregated and stored and sits, just waiting to be analysed to gain greater insight into the customers behaviour to ensure the most effective marketing strategies are put in place.

However, the problem is that businesses are not always taking full advantage of this data. Shouldn’t using data to understand your customers better be a priority for any organisation?

In our digital age, people most frequently take to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Yelp to discuss their customer experiences. This provides an easy way for businesses to actively get involved with their customers in real-time to create a relationship.

Social media isn’t just about responding directly to customer requests and complaints in real-time; it also constitutes the largest source of unstructured data. Every activity performed on social media is stored on servers for future data mining.

This allows businesses the opportunity to analyse that information for insight and understand how best to tailor marketing efforts to improve overall customer engagement and promote services to meet specific customer needs.

Companies can take advantage of this information by:

• Making personalised offers: Social media gives marketers access to specific information about the consumers they are targeting (i.e., age, gender, marital status, hobbies, social demographic, etc.). Marketers can then leverage this information to make personalised offers that directly align with the customer’s preferences and dramatically increase the likelihood that the customer will make a purchase.

• Use the insight to improve customer experience and marketing: Some companies, use analytics tools that enable them to pick up on customer sentiment on social media, thus improving customer experience and marketing. Companies can zero in on social listening data related to their brand, to uncover valuable insight, that you would never have known existed. Extracting that insight means getting closer to understanding customer sentiment.

• Use customer service feedback to inform product innovation: Consumers often take to social media to divulge their experiences. This direct and personal feedback — good and bad — is valuable data that can be utilised to improve products and/or services, thus enhancing the customer’s experience.

Social media provides a huge opportunity for the hospitality industry to learn more about and interact with their customers. Analysing the big data available could help enhance the customer experience and get a more complete view of their target consumer, all while building lasting brand relationships and increasing positive share of voice on social media.

So how can Tahola help the hospitality industry drive actionable insight from the vast volume of social media data?

We can provide both the analytics tools and expertise, that will help you to understand the stories in all of your data. This will enable you to gain greater insight into your business through informed decisions in a more efficient way.

Data from a wide variety of sources, not just social media can be used to drive business growth and build the 360-degree Single Customer View.

Do you want to bring your data together in a cohesive way and make it work for you? Do you have a requirement for a management dashboard that enables you to manage your profitability and customers more effectively?

Contact Tahola and let us understand your challenges and provide the right data analytics solution for your specific needs. We don’t just provide an analytics tool, but a holistic approach that ensures the partnership outcome provides actionable insight into all of your data.

For further details contact:

Leigh Baillie

Marketing Director

Tahola Ltd

Leigh.Baillie@Tahola.com