Through digital interactions, your customers are telling you what they want and need without you even needing to ask. Data allows you to watch and listen closely to what your customers do and say. Take the time to get to know your users and you can better target your messaging to maximise the resonance of your products and services. Eliminate the guesswork, map a path to where you want to be and attribute your actions to measurable outcomes.
Get to know your target groups
A lot of businesses focus exclusively on getting people through to purchase, but big data offers a bigger gain than that. By pooling information from initial contact right through to purchase and repeat visits, you can build profiles of your customers and the types of marketing they respond to.
Even if a user drops off without purchase, they’ve given up information like whether they’re a man or a woman, what products they’re interested in, even the channels that have brought them to the site in the first place. Identify your target groups – their similarities and differences, what they value and what they don’t – and you can focus your efforts on getting the right messages in front of the right sets of eyes.
Map a course of action
User profiles allow you to plan the best course of future engagement. It may be that someone downloads a white paper, or you know they open your newsletter – now might be the time to reach out and say: ‘Hey, we saw that you did this. Here’s how you can access more info.’ If the person opens the follow-up email, perhaps it’s time to give them a call.
Another individual may browse the website, sign up for the newsletter but never open it. Why? A great first step could be to establish whether they fit your audience profiles. If they do, great! Follow up with next steps. If they don’t, no problem. Leave it with them. But until you can separate who’s who, you’re wasting energy in the wrong areas.
Through a process of lead scoring you can use all the information you’ve gained to qualify if individuals are useful for your business at all. Why invest time if they don’t fit the profile types you’ve identified? It may be that 300 people visited the website but only 15 of them are qualified leads, or 20 of them fit your target demographic. Once you identify your buyer personas, you can break down the data to ask questions like: ‘Is our marketing spend worthwhile?’ ‘Are we hitting our target audience?’ ‘How effective was our effort?’
Go from good to great
Data will never replace intuition in business, but when used well it will help take you to the next level. A great example of this is our client Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. They had been successfully running for 25 years with a challenge obtaining deep insights into their audience. Their intuition had always been good, but shifting from offline to online ticketing let them capture data to learn about people’s preferences, identify target audiences and curate events to be exactly what people want. Their focus is now much clearer. And through more informed decisions they’re able to plan effectively and create far better customer experiences than ever before.
Ride a wave of positivity
We have unprecedented access to insights about our customers, so we need to be innovative in how we capitalise on this. Harness data and you’re removing the guesswork and stress out of planning your next moves. Use all the information you have to tailor great services – from first contact to purchase – and you’re generating positive brand awareness to shape your future successes.
