Technology has provided businesses with an opportunity to know its customers like never before. Social media, search engine inputs, and web clicks all provide a trail of data that can be followed to ensure you reach your target audience.
Knowing who your customer is and what common attributes your customer base share can help you form a successful campaign and improve your business. For example, if you retail hair-care products you might be interested to know that 33{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} of the people on your site were directed to your site after reading an article online aimed at women under 25 years old who are living in New York and have a disposable income of more than $25,000 per year. That would be a pretty niche market and not one you might think to actively seek out without the statistics to back your campaign.
To access that data, you need to use the technology that is available. The following is a list of five ways you can get to know your customers using the technology at your fingertips.
Google Analytics
This free tool should already be part of your data-mining tool kit. Google Analytics can track the traffic coming to your website and the performance of each web page. It can tell you how long visitors are on your website, what page is of most interest (based on time and hits), where your visitors are in the world, and how they arrived at your site.
Google Analytics can help you to understand what people like about your site, what they don’t like and who your audience really is. This treasure trove of data is all at your disposal and careful analysis of the information it provides could help your marketing team to better target their advertising, tweak your site and really get into the minds of your customers.
Google Trends
People tend to be very direct when placing a Google search. It is quick and easy for users and for business owners, it is revealing in ways you might not have considered.
Google Trends allows you to identify and learn about the search terms your potential customers are using. The tool reveals how popular certain search queries are and how their popularity has changed.
People might be more interested in searching for a bookstore cafe on winter weekends, so as a business owner you might target a campaign to attract more customers at that time.
Google Trends also gives you results for related search terms and topics, which could reveal new opportunities for your business. Maybe the person looking at your cafe surfs to an interior design site, giving you clues for how to expand your business and attract cross-market customers.
SurveyMonkey
The best way to learn the answer to a question is to ask. SurveyMonkey gives you the option of doing just that. With the help of SurveyMonkey, you can write a survey asking the questions you need to be answered to help guide your business and marketing campaigns.
You are giving your customers a space to respond to your brand, business services or practices, directly. Be sure to ask the questions you really want to be answered. People will answer open questions honestly if they are given anonymity.
Salesforce
If you are still storing your customer data on Microsoft Excel or Outlook, your data is not actively working for you.
Salesforce is a cloud-based system which allows you to manage all of your customer data in one place. You can store contact information and notes, and send emails from the platform. All your data is organised and secure, and easily accessible to your team across a secured network.
When you store all of your customer data together, it becomes easier to establish patterns, direct interactions and create the raw data that forms the basis of any successful campaign. Being organised is easier than ever before with computer automaton and such tools support your business growth.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media listening tool that you can use to manage your social networks all in one place and track mentions of your brand. You can set up feeds for mentions of your company’s name, your competitors and your industry. You can tap into the conversations your customers are having about your brand or industry and learn from them.
The tool can help you stay relevant and keep up with the fast pace of commentary that can plague some industries.
For instance, fast-fashion distributors would be interested in what conversations are taking place after a red carpet event, such as the Oscars, to help predict what styles might be most popular in the coming season.
This list is not exhaustive and offers only a brief insight into the world of data mining tools you can access to advance your business opportunities.
