Would you be surprised if we said that 83% of the customers engaging with a company expect an immediate response? Yes, that’s true, and the Salesforce statistics prove that. The demand for customer engagement is at its peak due to the rising competition in the market.
Do you sell jewelry? Well, a hundred other people do as well. Do you teach yoga online? A thousand others do as well. If you don’t engage with your customers as they land on your web page or profile, 99% chances are that they will move on to the next best thing – your competitors.
However, to indulge in customer engagement, you need to know your customer. You need to know what they are looking for; you need to know what they are missing out on, and most of all, you need to know how your products and services can provide them with the right solution.
“Get to Know your Customers Day” is celebrated every year on the third Thursday of January, April, July, and October. This is the day the brands and businesses go out of their way to analyze their customer needs to bridge that gap with the right products and services.
This article will highlight some of the potent ways in which you can know your customer better and further use those data to promote better customer engagement.
Why Do You Need to Know Your Customers Better?
Knowing your customer is what fuels the growth of your business. Customers are the bane of your company’s existence because their money and their consistent support are what push your company to function, expand and prosper.
80% of companies launch a program without any insight about their customers, leading to a complete failure or a success by fluke (which is very rare). You can indeed get your hands on primary market research data from public sources. However, that isn’t close to enough when you dive deep and get to know your customers, their buyer’s journey, and their pain points during the purchase.
In simpler words, if you are doing the bare minimum to get to know your customers better, you will see positive impacts of the same on your company’s growth and development.
Top Tips to Get to Know your Customer
The reason why “Get to Know your Customers Day” is celebrated four times a year is to familiarize companies and brands with the importance of their customers. This is a global celebration that offers the brands a stark reminder that their customers are the integral pillar of their success.
It doesn’t matter what scale of business you run, focusing on your customers and their needs is quintessential to your brand’s growth. This is what determines the success of your efforts. And, when we speak about knowing your customer, we are talking about personalized messages, catered emails, and highlighted approaches that enhance brand credibility.
Your standard one-size marketing approach is very backdated. Not only will you fail to attract new customers, but you might also end up losing your existing customer base as well.
However, we understand that the process of getting to know your customers isn’t an easy affair. Don’t worry though because we have lined up all our top guns for you to implement on this “Get to Know your Customers Day.”
1. Keep track of the Analytics
In this digital world where everything is available in abundance on the internet, the data is available for you to venture into. Getting your hands on consumer metrics and insights is the game-changer that you need to understand your customer base.
It could be from your website analytics or even with the engagement that you are likely garnering via the social media platforms. Knowing the customer’s buying journey can help you use the acquired data to the maximum use and capacity.
If you are running your brand via an online website or an organized online platform, leverage the power of Google analytics. It can not just give you an overall insight into your customer interactions and highlight additional touchpoints, including the demographics, the page views, bounce rates, and the associated drawbacks to the equation.
Knowing the buyer’s journey allows businesses to assess what the customers are mainly inclined towards and find which products are doing well compared to the other ones. Also, key points from the buyer’s journey can give insights about the website heatmap and check if the customers are having issues navigating through the website.
Make sure you leverage a combination of social media with a website-based buying journey because it makes it easier for you to find what your customers are rooting for.
2. Don’t Make Pointless Assumptions
We are highlighting this as a part of this article because many businesses do this. You might know your target audience, but you can’t assume their moves to your products or services.
A marketing strategy that has worked for you in the past year might not work now. There are chances that your customers will likely not engage with the same kind of approach that they did in the past. There are also chances that the demographics of your customer base have changed over time.
The customer’s interaction and buyer’s journey with a brand are dynamic. It keeps changing over time. When you tweak your marketing approach or change how you interact with your customers, the same will reflect on your brand.
Let us give you a leading corporate example – Airbnb.
For those who aren’t aware, Airbnb is a popular vacation rental company where you can use its online platform to book vacation rentals and other kinds of lodging properties to stay in while you are on a vacation or out for work.
That said, Airbnb is the leading marketing underdog that makes the most use out of customer data and insights. Amidst all the other things, let us highlight the two most important customer insights that the rental company leverages.
Knowing the Airbnb Experience
For a brand or company whose business is solely based on customer experience (and reviews), they run a program called “Airbnb Experience”. Instead of having an overall customer experience question like “How likely are you to recommend Airbnb?”, they diversify their list of questions and the parameters they want insights about.
This includes:
- The overall review
- Guest acquisition channel
- Host quality and involved parameters, etc.
These individual insights enable Airbnb to work on the pain points of the customers and improve them. Sometimes it could be pertaining to the rental’s host and sometimes it could be issues with the website’s user interface as well. These actionable data contribute to a better understanding of the business’ marketing standpoint.
Split Testing
Split testing by Airbnb is more like an experiment that they conduct every once in a while. Their A/B testing solutions are personalized and developed by their data scientists and developers for a more personalized understanding of the customer’s experience on the website.
Airbnb actively tracks the buyer’s journey between the search and the final booking to keep track of what is working for the customers and what is preventing a successful conversion.
When they initially introduced mandatory colorful and vivid images for the listings, Airbnb found that it enhanced the clickthrough rate.
These are some of the most potent examples of usage of customer data and marketing strategies based on the ever-changing behavior and interaction of the customers. Airbnb is constantly evolving and optimizing its marketing strategies based on the acquired customer data.
3. Start a Conversation
The easiest and likely direct way to get to know your customers is by talking to them. And, by talking, we don’t mean you have to walk up to them and ask them questions individually.
In the age of the internet, leverage the online platforms to do extensive work for you. Engage with your customers via social media platforms. Answer the emails that the customers leave for you. Sometimes, going that extra mile to address a customer’s concern is just what your customers need to rely on your brand.
Besides directly engaging with your customers by providing them with a resolution, there are other ways to strike a conversation.
Conduct surveys and polls aligned to your brand’s needs. However, one mode of customer interaction that stands out is user-generated content. Let your customers be the voice of your brand, products, and services.
When potential customers see user-generated content, not only do they interact better, they are also likely to be influenced more for buying into your brand. User-generated content also ensures authenticity, which 90% of the consumers vibe well with.
4. Leverage the Power of Social Media
Your brand’s social media analytics holds a lot of secrets if you want to know your customers better. Reports suggest that 38% of the brands and marketers use social media analytics to channel their next marketing move.
When you use mainstream social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, get on top of those analytics instead of bypassing them. Not only do you get to engage with your customers via these platforms directly, but you also get to understand customer habits, what kind of content is driving better engagement, and what kind of strategies are a miss.
Social media analytics also come in handy in explaining what kind of products the customers are buying more.
Also, with the customer interaction on social media, you get to create a face of your brand to potential customers. When your potential customers witness you engaging with other customers or your recurring customers leaving their reviews on the social media platform, it influences them to go ahead and buy from your brand. That’s the power of customer engagement and data retention.
5. Host a Quarterly Event
The “Get to Know Your Customer Day” is celebrated every quarter as a way for companies to reflect on their customers and their buyer journey. So, there’s no wrong with hosting an event. This form of experiential marketing can get you a long way.
In this exclusive event, you can conduct special giveaways, host live sessions and discussions, interact with your customers, and focus on user-generated content.
Leverage this event to share your brand value and notice how the customers interact. This might not seem like a lot to begin with, but with the proper implementation of strategies, you will get to understand the specific segments of the audience and how they interact with your brand online.
However, don’t let the event go to waste. Instead, focus on integrating cohesive messaging and aligned branding to ensure that your brand stands out as the highlight in the event.
6. Directly Ask a Customer
Because, why not.
This is a prevalent marketing strategy to understand and know their customers better. Detailed surveys can do these on your Instagram stories, or you can leverage the standard route of personalized emails.
Directly asking your customers about insights about the brand allows you to understand how they interact with its products and services. This can also bridge the customer’s issues during their buying journey.
When asking questions to your customers, you need to ascertain the what, why, and how. What kind of products are the customers looking for? Why are the customers not indulging in the company? How can the company do better in the future?
Knowing the pain points that the customer is experiencing during their buying experience allows the company to polish those issues and provide a superior customer experience. This is also a quirky and effective way for a brand to stand out from its competition.
7. Tailor your Deals
You have customers who have been around for years, and you have new customers to your brand. Although you need to put both of them on a pedestal and focus on providing them both with the proper customer experience, you need to tailor your deals and discounts based on the loyalty of the customer.
The reason why tailored deals work is because customers prefer personalization. 72% of the customers will only engage with personalized deals, discounts, and emails. Sounds pretty challenging, right?
Well, it shouldn’t be.
If you track your sales and your customer engagement via the analytics and acquired purchase data, you should know which customers have been consistently supporting your business and deserve a token of appreciation from your end.
A simple act of kindness can put your brand on their good list, make them engage with your brand further, and even promote word-of-mouth marketing. Everything sounds like an all-in-one deal, right?
8. Look into Past Purchase Behavior
You can best know your customer from their purchase data. A survey conducted by Yesmail suggests that 50% of the marketing executives understand their customers from the collected purchase data.
However, keep in mind that although this can provide insight into the customer’s “at the moment” ideology, it isn’t a holistic understanding of your customer behavior. This doesn’t provide you with the requisite data to ascertain your marketing campaigns.
Keeping track of the past purchase behavior also allows the individuals to keep an eye out on the branding. The purchase data can help you ascertain which kinds of products the customers are more inclined towards.
9. Encourage Customer Reviews and Testimonials
While several customers have the goodwill to share their reviews right after they receive the products or have availed the services, some won’t.
No customer is obligated to share their reviews or testimonials; however, getting them can help you track the customer data. You can encourage your customers to share their reviews on your websites or even via the review websites like Yelp. This helps develop a better name for your business and, at the same time, provides you with ideal customer insights too.
Also, if you want to make things more special on the Get to Know your Customer day, offer personalized discounts. It could be a 10% off on the next purchase, or even a complimentary gift once they post a review. Sometimes, all you need to do is understand your customer better to provide them with the aligned customer experience they are looking for.
How Does It Help with Customer Engagement?
The primary objective behind acquiring customer data is to translate that into proper customer engagement. Every business that acquires the data from multiple sources uses them to improve their existing customer experience strategies or formulate new ones based on the collected data.
Following are the fruitful ways in which customer data can be used to strengthen customer engagement.
Create a strategic vision – using the customer data can help the brands and companies work on a strategic vision for the brand. Inclining these strategies based on the collected customer data can personalize the vision for effective implementation and better results.
Segment the customers – when you collect the customer data and analytics, it becomes easier to segment your customers. You can optimize the marketing approach for better engagement based on the collected data. Grouping the customers enables you to align the deals, product promotions, and the associated customer engagement accordingly.
Harbor transparency – engaging with the customers openly allows brands to foster a transparent communication channel that the customers appreciate and look forward to. It also promises better internal and external communication, which is an integral part of customer engagement.
Predict customer actions – having an insight into the customer data allows you to predict your customer’s buyer’s journey. This is part of the behavioral data that highlights the customer patterns and aligns the marketing and engagement techniques according to that.
Sometimes, having access to the correct customer data can do more than engage your customers. It is a fantastic way to allow customers to understand your business and leverage the right way to enhance their user experience.
Transforming Customer Interaction with Gleantap
We at Gleantap understand the importance of customer data, interaction and engagement. So, it was a no-brainer that our products and services are built to improve conversions and channel better customer engagement with the brand.
Our Marketing Automation tools are designed and developed for intelligent marketing to ensure better and more potent conversions. The automation tools offer the customers a personalized greeting at the right time to ensure better ROI.
The Adaptive Segmentation tool allows our clients to smartly segment their customers based on:
- Attributes
- Engagement
- Events and interactions
What this does is isolate highly targeted customer groups with similar buyer’s journeys. Synced with the acquired customer data, adaptive segmentation can amplify your marketing impacts. You can engage with the segmented customers with targeted campaigns.
Besides adaptive marketing, we also encourage the importance of A/B testing. This is primarily because the markets are dynamically changing. Your customers and their buying approach and experience and evolving too. What worked two years back might not hold the same potential anymore.
Through A/B testing, it enables you to test out marketing strategies and approaches and collect insights from the campaigns. Having a direct understanding of what is working and what isn’t allows you to mold your marketing strategies accordingly.
Our Conversion tracking and insights can help you with just that. Get a detailed report of your campaigns, keep records of the peak sales days, which hours of the day you get maximum customers and so on. Having access to the raw data encourages intelligent decision-making and converts that into customer retention and better revenue generation.
Conclusion
Understanding your customers is a tedious and prolonged process. While some companies prioritize this, some don’t. This “Get to Know your Customers Day”, you need to come forward and make the most out of the event. Leverage the day to understand what you are doing right and what needs to be changed.
Sometimes, there’s no better critique for your business than the customers. Since they are the ones using your products regularly, it is a given that you need to understand their standpoint and their experience with your brand. The customer data highlights just that.
We hope this article gives you a holistic understanding of the importance of customer data and its implementation in improving customer engagement.
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