Broad Listening Leverages The Masses

Knowing what to talk about in marketing copy is often as important as the quality of your product. Looking at how many people are talking about something is called “Broad Listening”. Then determining why those things impact their purchases is called “Deep Listening.”

Broad Listening teaches the marketer about the vocabulary of the consumer, and which products the consumer is considering instead.

For example, the iPhone is talked about a lot on the internet. But do you know what questions people ask the most? Which products they consider when buying it? 


Competing Products As Use Cases


iPhone vs DSLR

This is really two questions: “Which should I spend my money on” and “How good is that camera really.”

The conversation becomes something like “I am going on a trip should I upgrade my phone or buy a DSLR”. 

This example requires a bit of Deep Listening, but is likely obvious to most people. You don’t have to ask “why are people talking about this” to get value from seeing that they are.

Broad Listening gives you the questions you should consider asking in the Deep listening stage.



iPhone vs Samsung, Android, Nokia, Etc.

This is what most people think of competitive analysis. These are the competing brands that the iPhone is up against. You won’t see many mentions of Huawei, or Kyocera, because those phones aren’t in the same price range, but Vertu makes the list. The number of mentions of each tells you how serious of a competitor each is. 

From a Broad Listening perspective this is where you get the most bang in 30 seconds. A human doesn’t need to look at this data before the insight that the most people are considering Samsung instead of the iPhone. 


iPhone vs XBox One

As adults we often don’t think about products in two different genres as being competitors. But if you are making a Christmas list, or debating how to spend your allowance these are two products that compete. The adult version of this is more like “should I remodel my kitchen or my bathroom” and the conversation goes pretty much the same: Do you want to talk with your friends on Facetime or in Call of Duty?