Product innovation is usually driven by a business who creates a new product that is tested, and then released to consumers who either embrace it or reject it. Social listening is changing the way businesses identify areas for product innovation.
Collectively, consumers wield the power of online conversation and reviews, to drive a brand's product growth and change.
Are your customers finding off-label ways to use your products?
The increased usage of social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram has also driven consumers to become more creative in the ways they use products and brands in their daily lives.
Home remedies and alternate product uses are nothing new, but the technology to collect conversation about these interesting product use cases is new, and it's driving product innovation, and sales.
Brands are using social listening to dive into consumer discussion and find new ways to market and sell both old and new products.
Sometimes these insights come by accident, whereas others are strategically planned with marketing campaigns that ask its consumers to generate conversation about how they use their products.
Consumers Use Shaving Cream To Dye Easter Eggs.
A quick search of Pinterest will uncover a multitude of do-it-yourself projects using a variety of products.
One of these is a great example of how a product can be used for a purpose that it was most definitely not created to accomplish. (But does!)
It turns out hardboiled eggs dipped into a combination of shaving cream and color dye can produce a marble design suitable for Easter egg decorating.
This interesting use case brings a number of opportunities and questions for a business who sells shaving cream.
- Is there enough of an interested consumer base to warrant marketing the shaving product for its alternate use or to produce a new product for the discovered purpose?
- During the holiday season could they produce a tested and safe cream for children to use with their Easter egg decorating?
- Would interest in a limited holiday product justify the cost of production?
- Are there any legal concerns that would arise if they marketed their current shaving cream product as a decorative tool for an edible product?
- Would current sales be negatively effected by the production of a new, unrelated and unforeseen product?
Using Social Listening to Drive Product Innovation.
All of the above questions can be answered using a social listening tool that gathers online conversation filtered by topic of interest. If the shaving cream brand was gathering general reviews and comments about their product, and discovered the alternate use case for their product, they might create a new topic to further uncover how people are engaging with the product, without disturbing their former brand analysis.
The topic can gather conversation broadly related to the alternate use of shaving cream in conjunction with Easter eggs, or it might hone into the brand directly and only gather comments that mention the product with Easter eggs.
Demographics
Meta data gathered through comments can determine the demographics that are driving this new product innovation, and how the brand could go one step further to create a product that appeals to their customers even more than a generic shaving cream.
New products?
- Pre-Colored shaving cream
- Dyed and flavored whipped cream
Further research could uncover more consumer driven product innovations. (Shaving cream Twister!)
Conversation Volume & Sentiment Analysis
Social listening applications like DataRank Insights uncovers where conversation is greatest in volume. It also uses machine-based and human quality checked and rated sentiment rating to determine the audience that is most positive about the consumer driven product innovation.
How Does Consumer Driven Product Innovation Increase Profit?
Rather than having to research the potential of a product in the market, a business will know that they already have interested potential consumers based on the buzz the off-label product usage has created.
Profit won't just be inherent in the sales of the new products. Creating a product to fill the needs of loyal consumers will also give way to positive conversation, and a potential to capitalize on this attention with a targeted marketing campaign.
Using loyal brand influencers who initiated the use of the old product for alternate purposes could also drive positive brand awareness, and help to reach a new audience currently unknown to the business.
This post was originally published as Increase Profit With Consumer Driven Product Innovation