Haleon created social media intelligence within-house //

Consumers can use social media platforms to discuss brands that impact their lives. Haleon has created an internal team to manage social media for its many over-the-counter brands.

Haleon was founded last year by a joint venture of GSK’s Consumer Products and Pfizer’s Consumer Products, which include Advil and Excedrin, Robitussin and Tums, and other household brands.

The company created an internal team to use “social media intelligence,” or “social intelligence,” tools and strategies to learn what customers think about brands.

Dig deeper: Social media marketing guide for brands

Defining social media intelligence

Haleon first had to define social intelligence. Different things can be meant by different companies, so it is important that each company establishes goals and benefits from social intelligence operations.

“Social intelligence involves combining all these data sources and really trying [to figure out] what this data actually does and what it tells us,” stated Danny Gardner, analytics manager U.S.A and North America social intelligence lead at Haleon, at the MarTech Conference.

Gardner and his team view social intelligence as a sophisticated form of social media listening and monitoring. Social intelligence is more than just monitoring topics consumers talk about on social media platforms. It draws insights from these data and links them to marketing actions.

Gardner asked, “Why would a business want social intelligence?” It’s all about insights. We are able to use this data to get insights faster than any other team within the company.

Social intelligence gives brands access to consumers’ opinions on their products and the competition. They can also get feedback on marketing campaigns and learn more about their target market.

Social media intelligence also allows you to find out where customers are buying products. Haleon can determine if customers talk about Advil in Costcos or online to help them develop an ecommerce strategy.

Gardner said that if consumers speak negatively about a brand via social media, it can help the brand implement a crisis management strategy.

Four social media intelligence categories

Social media can be a huge space. Being able to listen to it intelligently requires having clear categories, or “buckets”, for the data.

Gardner and his team identified four main data buckets they wanted to collect through social media channels. They wanted to analyze social conversions related to their brands, competitors brands, wider topics related to these products and “macro- and cultural” trends.

Gardner stated that there are many trends and events in society. Gardner said that consumers care more about these things than brands. “And so, we decided years ago to make this a part of our remit.”

Social media: Building and scaling

Even though Haleon was only established in 2022 as an organization, their marketing strategy and approach to social intelligence have been in place for years.

Here is a timeline of their steps to implement social intelligence strategies and tools.

Gardner explained that there was a large discovery phase about what data was available and how to get it. Gardner also discussed the different vendors and their capabilities. “It took a few years for them to build the case that we might actually be able do this in-house.

Haleon also considered the pros and cons to building or buying their solution and ultimately settled on a set of social intelligence tools created by Meltwater.

Social media intelligence piloted during the pandemic

The world changed just as Haleon was about to pilot some of their social intelligence capabilities. Many consumers increased their use of digital channels for purchasing products and self-education during the COVID-19 epidemic.

Gardner stated that after our 12-month pilot, COVID-19 was at the end. “And so, this definitely accelerated demand and interest in social listening and really catapulted our company into the limelight…Social Media was kind of the go to for questions [consumers] did not have answers too.”

He said, “So at that time this was actually what inspired the macro trend tracking capability. We now know that we can do it pretty well around brands.”

Haleon now has a better understanding about how customers feel about their brands. They can also join the conversation about larger issues in a way that is relevant to their customers.

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The post How Haleon created social media intelligence in-house was first published on MarTech.