When you are running an online business, often different occasions appear when you have to adapt, you have to learn and improve yourself even if you are many years on the market. Everything evolves and changes fast, and you always have to keep the tempo if you want to maintain or grow success.
If your entrepreneurial startup is services-related, a small (or big) e-commerce shop or a blog that you started, the relation between it all is one – users. They either read, buy, sign up, or take any other action that you want them to.
And to know exactly how to make them do whatever it is that you want, you need to understand how they think. What drives them to action, and what is it that they are looking for. The segmentation of your audience and the analysis will help you in so many ways.
What are the Customer Insights?
Understanding human perceptions, behavior, and needs has been a philosophy that all want to figure out since we exist. Not just for marketing and business obligations but for better communication, and figuring out how nature works. But with the world-changing every day and technology evolving, the market has grown too.
This means competition is more significant, getting people’s attention is harder, and as follows wanted sales are much more challenging to achieve. To avoid that problem, you need to sometimes forget about advertising and try to get inside your customer’s head. Getting the insight, they have will help you do that.
To sum it up, customer insights are the thoughts your users have and their attitudes toward your business. It could be received directly or not. There are ways to do both, and here is how.
How to Get Customer insights?
Direct receiving of customer insights means people know they are giving you needed information that you can use to your advantage. They realize but still prefer it because they believe you can benefit it by making the product better, fixing a problem, or whatever else they think should be changed.
Those insights you get from comments, emails, feedback, all kinds of polls, etc. What people often mistake is the advantage that feedback has. They take the compliment or the critics and don’t do anything with them. But you need to avoid that if you want your business to succeed.
The indirect insights are those that you get from all kinds of tools. Insights you also get from social media. Having a business account on Instagram or a business page on Facebook has more to offer than expected. You can follow which days your followers are more active, what hours of the days, are they men, or women, what age, and where are they located.
Of course, all that can also be gotten from Google Analytics or another of the great tools the Internet has for us.
How to Utilize Data?
The further you dive into the data you receive directly or not as insights, the more ways to use them you will find. Of course, the point of it all is to improve your business strategies, to grow sales, and gain trust in the face of your users.
Marketing – Targeting and Scheduling
As pointed out earlier most of the tools for social media give insights that can tell you precisely what and when to do. If you don’t overthink the data you get and use it at its basics, you can figure out when your content should be posted, and you can schedule your posts, and pictures, or else consider it.
Not only that but you can create ads that are targeting exactly your potential customers. Any information you have can be used to create the best possible audience. Are your users – men or women, what pages on your website are they staying more, how old are they, what languages do they speak, what are their interests, and so much more that you can explore.
Build and Change Products
Using direct customer insights is necessary if you want to improve your business. If you listen to what people have to say about you, there is so much you can do. As mentioned, feedbacks always give the best insights. Data can be used to fix if something is not broken and you haven’t figured it out by yourself.
Furthermore, change something about your products, services, or even posts if you are a blogger. The positive comments can guide you to what you are doing well, but the negative ones can help you understand what is not working for you and your users. Making changes in that direction will be essential for your business.
Test New Ideas
I saved it for last because it is least significant compared to the rest, but it is, however, still a great way to utilize customer insights. A/B tests are pretty used when it comes to releasing something new, but trusting people’s opinions is also tremendous.
Monitoring how users react, and what they say and do when you present them with something new is the key to its success or failure. How you read their judgment will guide you to your next actions – should you change something, should you continue, or else.
Conclusion
Customer insights are essential to any business – online or not. Anything created to serve the people is more driven by them than the owner himself. Listening to those who you are doing it for, will get you further and help you explore more than you expect. Use insights for better marketing strategies, improve your services, and connect to your audience. Build a bond that will stay.