What are some of the best business strategies in history?
Is Marketing a good career choice?
When should companies change up their branding?
Every day, thousands of Quora users ask questions like these. The social platform, launched in 2009, allows its users to ask questions on almost any topic. Answering them is a great way to increase brand awareness.
But Quora is also an underappreciated market research tool. Simply scrolling through Quora questions can show what your audience is searching for and provide blog inspiration, while analysing Quora’s answers can reveal game-changing insights into your customers.
And there’s a lot of answers: 99% of questions on Quora get responses. It’s no surprise. The website receives over 300 million search visits per month. That beats Pinterest and is almost as much as Twitter.
Quora also has 5.6 million keywords that make Google’s top 10 list, so users clearly ask questions that reflect common concerns. In effect, the platform has become a community hub, based on an exchange of knowledge and advice.
So, who is on Quora and what are they talking about? How can businesses use the platform to gather insights that bring them closer to their customers?
To answer these questions, we’ll look at 4 major audiences on Quora:
- Educated young people with high salaries
- Technophiles discussing the best new products
- Senior managers responsible for big deals
- Niche markets
1) Young’uns looking to learn and earn
As Quora puts it:
‘Quora is home to anyone with an inquisitive mind’.
On Quora, at least, it seems there is a connection between youth and curiosity: most of its users are 18-34 years old. The platform’s huge Gen-Z and millennial base can give you insight into new generations of customers.
This is especially significant to brands because Quorans often have high purchasing power. They’re usually well educated and strong earners. 65% have a degree and 55% earn over $100 thousand per year.
An investment in understanding these high earners is a good way of future-proofing your brand. In a similar vein, it comes as no surprise that educational companies who’ve marketed courses on Quora have been handsomely rewarded.
What draws these ambitious students and job-seekers to Quora?
The answer seems to be the high-quality advice available on the platform. A number of academics and industry experts can be found on Quora. Even famous marketing author Seth Godin has an account, where he provides tailored advice to Quora users.
This is part of what makes Quora such a rich source for social data. Many of the platform’s posts see experts share first-hand experiences with newbies following in their footsteps.
So, if analysed deeply, Quora answers can show whether hindsight really is 20-20. It’s a place to understand how people view their past, and how they want to shape their future.
2) Techies and gearheads
One of the main sectors Quorans are trying to break into is the tech industry – some of Quora’s top questions include how to learn Python and Java.
But the other questions asked by techie Quorans involve trying to find the best products on the market. 58% of Indian users are passionate about the latest innovations in technology.
Today, tech topics on Quora have amassed over 109 million followers and 400 million views per month, 25% higher than Quora’s average monthly views. But technophiles have been on Quora since its creation. Its founders worked at Facebook and Amazon before creating the platform and, as Vox explains, the platform has been popular with Silicon Valley big shots for years.
Marketers in the tech industry should also pay attention to Quora – they’ll have front row seats to what major players in the industry are learning about and access to in-depth discussions of products, written by people who genuinely understand the field.
3) Business leaders
As Quora reports, a Global Web Index study found that its users are:
- 24% more likely to be in senior-management
- 41% more likely to be responsible for business purchases
- 45% more likely to be decision makers.
In the report, Quora focuses on how B2B marketers can target this audience on their platform by answering questions or running a Google ad.
But existing conversations on Quora can provide marketers with invaluable insights they’d struggle to get elsewhere.
There’s a reason Quora stands out from other socials. It’s not just everyday customers’ opinions that are up for analysis, like is the case with product reviews. Business leaders form a significant part of the site’s community. Many of them, as Quora reports, decide on important deals with other companies.
So use Quora to understand what the biggest players in your targeted industry are talking about. They may potentially become your buyers.
4) Niche markets
Senior managers are not the only hard to reach audience that you can find on Quora. The platform’s format, which gives users the ability to ask extremely specific questions, allows brands to discover the opinions of consumers in niche markets.
For instance:
- What language do vegans use to discuss sustainability?
- What is the best way to market to the LGBT+ community?
- How are young women investing their money?
Searching for or even asking a question like this lets you find out the opinions of consumers in very specific groups.
Have a look at this question on Quora. It shows consumers best product recommendations for adolescents who suffer from eczema. The specificity of the user’s question lets them single out a particular skin-condition and age range.
As well as using Quora to deeply investigate one part of your market segment, you can compile different customer perspectives to create a holistic picture of your market.
As Listen + Learn Research MD Jeremy Hollow says in this interview with the Social Intelligence Lab, Quora can be used in ‘the early stages of a project. It’s great for quickly getting a bunch of perspectives, which can help you come up with new ideas and avenues to pursue in your research’.
So marketers, give Quora a try.
Use it to learn about hard to reach your customers, both broadly and deeply. The platform gives you a window into the minds of high-earning, professional audiences discussing almost every topic there is, in the language they’d normally use.
You’ll miss out on some insightful answers if you don’t.
By Ankit Kapoor
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