The rise of social media, online comparison sites and increased consumer choice has today given customers more power than ever before. With this shift in consumer control, combined with rising competition, there’s no better time for businesses to get to grips with their customers, their needs and purchasing motivations.
Understanding your customer is the first step in creating tailored marketing campaigns with effective outcomes, as you deliver relevant content and marketing messages that stimulate consumption. Here are just a few ways you can begin to understand your customers and protect retention.
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Connect with your audience
When learning about your customers, it’s important that you don’t overlook them as a research source themselves. Hearing first-hand from your customers can provide insightful information about what it is they like, don’t like and what you can do to enhance the customer experience.
Customer surveys are a great method to collect invaluable information from a large sample of your customers. By capturing your customer’s data with every purchase, you can easily distribute questions, collect feedback and implement your newfound customer knowledge on your marketing activity and service delivery.
Make use of automated data
Customer touchpoints, commonly refer to the aspects of your business that customers may encounter during the consumption process. Whether being redirected from external websites or trawling through your own news and blog pages, the use of analytical tools allows us to examine just what our customers get up to prior to purchasing items, calling for more information or leaving enquiries.
Freemium tools such as Google Analytics are easy to use and can provide you with a whole host of information about your customers, how they land at your business and they behave online. Not only can the powerful tool help you understand your digital customers, but it can also identify your target audience based on specific traits including demographics, interests and geography.
Conduct market research
Whilst you may just be getting to know your current customers, you can’t stop here. By carrying out primary market research tailored to your business you can identify new opportunities to increase your customer base and sell to new customer segments.
Focus groups and the use of public surveys allow you to collect valuable insights on who your prospective customers may be, and how your service delivery can be tailored to appeal to different types of customer. There are numerous free tools available to you online such as SurveyMonkey or SurveyLegend that make it both quick and easy to gather and analyse any desired information.
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To compete in today’s consumer-driven world, marketers must deliver relevant and engaging content through every step along the path to purchase. It can be all too easy to let your creative side get ahead of you. Whilst great campaigns tend to attract an audience, if you don’t understand who you need to market towards then your efforts won’t add value. Tailoring your marketing plans to accommodate your new-found knowledge of consumer behaviour will allow you to reach the right people, at the right time and in the right place, increasing conversions.
Understanding customer behaviour across your industry is vital in understanding how to effectively communicate to you customers. If you need a hand in getting to know your customers and how to articulate targeted sales messages, then call us on 01483 740747 and ask for Petra to find out how Custard can help.
