Knowledge is important in the ever-changing digital world we live in.
As a company owner, you must keep track of several crucial pieces of information, including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), business spending, inventory management, etc.
Despite all the relevant data you can monitor inside your company, one of the most significant sources of information is really outside of it—it comes from your consumers.
Social media
Utilizing social media marketing to communicate directly with clients is perhaps one of the best tools in any marketer’s toolbox right now.
Nowadays, many individuals feel more at ease answering questions honestly while hiding behind a screen.
While this may present some challenges for delivering excellent service and maintaining consistently positive contact with certain sorts of clients, it also affords small company owners the exceptional chance to hear both positive and negative feedback directly from their target market.
It’s simple to include forms on social media or brief surveys for visitors to complete, but conversing with individuals directly may be the best method to collect accurate customer data from them.
Consult with customers. Find out what your customers expect from you and how you stack up.
Request client testimonials on your channels, and once a problem is raised, fix it there so that all of your customers can see it. You don’t want to seem to be disregarding or trivializing their worries by taking them to a private chat.
Dealing with issues openly and receiving honest criticism demonstrates a dedication to preserving client happiness as well as strong customer service practices.
Not all effective customer journeys begin with a happy customer. When dealing with unfavorable customer feedback, you may often have just as much or even more of a positive influence if you are patient, kind, and professional.
Online tracking Customer Data
According to Andy Golpys, founder of MadeByShape, online website tracking is crucial. He explains: “Your e-commerce website is continuously collecting data for you of all types. As long as you know where to look, every consumer that visits your online business leaves behind useful information for you to analyze.
You may examine the factors that brought the buyer to your business. Did they click on a sponsored banner ad to get there? Did they click on a link that was posted on social media regarding a certain product?
You may calculate the return on investment of your marketing by analyzing this data to identify which advertising methods are effective and which are not.
The length of time that clients spent on certain websites, the number of different pages they visited, and several other pieces of information may all be analyzed.
These data should already be being gathered by your website server, and you can analyze them with the aid of programs like Google Analytics.”
Surveys
Surveys are a great way to get raw data from your clients and a great way to gather data. These might come in the form of generic surveys asking about the wants and requirements of consumers.
These sorts of surveys will provide you with additional information about the demographics of your target market and assist you in customizing your marketing strategy and any unique offers you create for them.
Personalization is a terrific method to enhance your consumers’ purchasing experiences and may result in improved customer retention and more revenue.
Ask, but also take action
Carl Jensen, founder of Compare Banks urges business owners to take action. He states: “Directly asking consumers for input may provide reliable qualitative data, but businesses often ask pointless questions that clients don’t believe will have any bearing on their experience.
Poor surveys have arisen as a result of so many businesses using voice-of-the-customer initiatives, teaching individuals to disregard requests from businesses.
Voice-of-the-customer initiatives are not inherently harmful; rather, they serve as the basis of any systematic attempt to enhance the customer experience.
However, it has become more difficult to get useful information due to the prevalence of poorly administered survey programs. Customers must feel trusted by a company before they choose to provide feedback.
The following are examples of best practices for efficient consumer data collection:
- Selecting the most appropriate research methods for the study objectives
- Making the research relevant to consumers.
- Emphasizing their requirements above those of the employees as a whole.
Companies can often identify the cause of a poor response rate to a question by not adhering to these procedures.
Airlines often ask passengers an absurd amount of questions regarding their experiences during flights, yet the journey itself may not have the largest impact on the customer’s perception of the airline as a whole.
It’s critical to concentrate on what matters to and is significant to customers rather than the business while gathering data.”
Classify Your Customers
According to Rhett Stubbendeck, owner of LeverageRx: “After gathering demographic information about your clients, you may utilize it to group them into different categories.
The method you employ will mostly rely on the goods you’re selling; for instance, a clothes company may find it handy to divide their clients into groups according to age or gender.
This will be beneficial for setting up targeted marketing. You may send an email to customers who have indicated in a survey or during account registration that they are interested in buying sportswear if you have a special discount event coming up.”
Abandonment of Cart
Marc Uhlmann, the CEO of NIMBO recommends checking how many people have abandoned their carts. He states: “The percentage of clients that leave their shopping carts is another important piece of data to gather. This may be found by counting the number of visitors who added things to their shopping carts before leaving your website without buying anything.
You may tell what types of things they were interested in and what they could have found cheaper elsewhere by looking at the items they looked at before leaving the website.
Then, you may use marketing to engage them in an effort to get them to finish their purchase, possibly by providing an incentive like a discount coupon.”
