Use Customer Data to Gain a Competitive Advantage
Data is an asset. Most modern websites collect email addresses in exchange for free downloads to gain more customer data. This is a great way in getting this information, but do you know where else to look for data? Once data collected, are you sure you’re capturing the most useful data for you and your customers? Taking the time and putting the systems in place to understand data can improve engagement and conversions and give you a competitive advantage.
To extract this information, you need to delve deeper than simply capturing an email address and date of birth (although still essential) and begin to use other tools and resources to understand not just who your customers are, but how you can tailor your marketing strategies and business plans to best serve them. So, where can you find this data?
- Tailor your contact forms: Take a good look at the data you’re collecting – are you getting as much as you should be? Are you getting data that will help you? Customers are precious about their data, so asking for too much could result in them not giving you any, but that doesn’t mean that what you ask for shouldn’t be relevant to you. For example, if you are in the wedding industry, knowing when someone is getting married is a vital piece of information you must have!
- Monitor Social Media: Are people talking about your brand? What are they saying? Are they talking about a product you sell? What are they saying? Conversations, both positive and negative, hold information that you can harvest and use to your advantage.
- Browsing Habits: How are people interacting with your site? Even non-converters (perhaps especially non-converters) can provide insights. Abandoned baskets, exit pages and what pages are navigated to in one session can inform how you interact with your next customer.
- Marketing Interactions: Understanding how your customers interact with your existing marketing efforts, you can improve future marketing campaigns. Make sure that you A/B test emails, analyse open rates etc., constant analysis and refinement will give you insight and an advantage.
Be nimble, utilize the tools available to you and embrace change – it’s not as hard as you think…it’s all in the data. Using customer data helps you unlock valuable information about your customers, not just who they are and where they live: data can give you insight into their interests, pain points, behaviours and more; collectively adding to your overall competitive advantage.
