Customers can make or break your brand. The ultimate goal of a great marketer is to have strong brand awareness, great customer reviews, and loyal customers who keep coming back (and get others to do the same).
If you don’t make an effort to get to know your customers, your digital marketing campaigns can become flatter than a week-old glass of Coca-Cola at a children’s party! If you fail to reach consumers with personalized messaging and tailored experiences, your brand’s credibility will quickly diminish, along with your audience.
A one-size-fits-all promotional approach just won’t do anymore – and as it turns out, we as marketers could all do with a little reminder of that from time to time.
Why should you know your customers?
When you’re creating content marketing strategies or campaigns to promote your brand, it’s easy to get carried away with the creative elements, forgetting specific needs, wants, and preferences in the process.
But, customers are the lifeblood of your business, and getting under their skin is the only way to engage, motivate and connect in a way that’s both meaningful and valuable.
- 83% of customers cite good customer service as their most important criteria for deciding what to buy
- 73% of customers expect companies to understand their exceptional necessities and expectations
- 61% of consumers will switch to a new brand after a bad experience
- Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%
Know Your Customers: 7 Simple and Effective Tips
Now that you understand the power of understanding your audience, let’s look at the 7 best ways to get under the skin of your customers and use these insights to drive campaign performance.
- Get analytics across all touchpoints.
In the digital age, we are drowning in information. Naturally, customer measurement and insights are gold dust for brands looking to understand their customer base in a way that is deep and meaningful. However, would you say you are taking advantage of your data?
While Google Analytics is integral to extracting value from your various demographic insights now working on Interface GA4. It helps you drill down into additional data sources across touchpoints and will give you a great insight into your customers’ habits, preferences and behaviors.
By using a combination of social media analytics tools and mobile data platforms to gain deep insight into your key customer touch points, you’ll be able to create profiles or personas that optimize your marketing communications. And social media helps you measure ROI. .
- Create a dialogue and influence.
The most direct and effective way to get to know your customers is to start a conversation with them.
By meeting your customers where they are, you’ll be able to understand how they connect with their peers and ask them valuable questions that are organic rather than intrusive. What’s more, when you pose the right inquiries, you’ll find the right solutions — the sort that will assist you with significantly further developing your brand experience.
From surveys and polls to social listening, there are numerous ways of drawing in with your customers where they’re most comfortable — and get to know them. But, one of the most powerful ways to spark meaningful customer conversations and speak the language of your customers is with user-generated content (UGC).
User-generated content builds credibility and trust by offering deep insight into the minds of your customers. That said, it’s worth your time and investment, especially if you want to appeal to the Gen Z demographic.
It also ties into influencer marketing – a great way to tap into new and engaged communities. The influencer marketing economy is bigger than ever, with nearly three-quarters of marketers planning to use influencer marketing in 2023, a figure rising to nearly 90 percent in 2026, according to eMarketer data.
- Respond to positive and negative reviews. personally.
It always pays to respond to positive and negative compliments in a productive, timely manner.
Regardless of where they are posted, you should be committed to providing personal responses to customer reviews in the public domain. Doing so will humanize your brand, demonstrate your commitment to the customer experience, and give you more conversational insights.
As indicated by Oberlo, 9 out of 10 purchaser’s counsel reviews while thinking about a local business, while 59% use Google to find and understand reviews. So reviews are an essential indicator of trust, providing consistent responses is important—and doing so will give you a wealth of fresh customer insight.
Good or bad, take the time to get back to customers. It could be a simple “thanks for your feedback” or providing a solution to their problem or issue.
- Host an event or experience.
In terms of getting to know your customers, experiential marketing is a very rewarding tactic—if you get it right.
Consumers today are more demanding and want not only personalized content and messaging, but experiences as well. Assumptions from brands are high as 72% of consumers maintain that they should be positive contributors to society while 62% maintain that they should interface with consumers as per Sprout Social Research.
Big-budget brands can offer amazing experiences, such as Nike’s recent foray into the Metaverse, which lets people design and sell shoes. But there are also smaller budget opportunities like hosting a live event on Facebook or TikTok. For B2B brands, LinkedIn now offers a great platform for hosting workshops or seminars.
So if you hold a brand event or create a tangible experience (physical or virtual), create a platform to share your brand value with your customers using a personal approach. You will also be able to understand your audience segments in a way that goes beyond just digital statistics and metrics.
- Customize your deals, discounts, and incentives
Circling back to the importance of personalization: If you offer appropriate deals and discounts to your customers, you are likely to develop brand loyalty which, in turn, will get you to know them better. Here are a few facts from McKinsey & Co:
- 71% of consumers expect companies to give personalized interactions.
- 76 % get frustrated when personalization doesn’t occur.
- Companies that grow faster generate 40% more personalized revenue than their slower-growing counterparts.
This means that you can’t just use a blanket approach to contact your customers. Segment your email lists, track past interactions, downloads and purchases and be careful with your targeting so you reach the right people with the right message.
- Begin a mobile loyalty scheme
Speaking of building trust and building long-term relationships, creating a customer loyalty scheme will not only increase your customer retention rate, but you’ll also open a continuous portal of communication between your brand and your audience.
The 2022 Loyalty Barometer report observed that 79% of consumers are more likely to do business with a brand because of its loyalty program. This type of program now not only keeps customers informed of developments or news, but also gives them access to early sales and special offers.
The likes of Amazon (paid program through Amazon Prime), Starbucks (free through Starbucks Rewards), and Sephora (Sephora Beauty Insider using redeemable points) have found great success with their innovative loyalty programs. Insights and data into action.
- Host a contest.
Last but certainly not least, we offer another quick approval of user-generated content.
Appreciating your customers will encourage trust and loyalty, which, in turn, will make your customers more likely to engage in touchpoints with your brand. Creating a contest that creates a buzz and engages your followers and customers can go a long way to increasing brand awareness. Take Chipotle’s ‘Lid Flip Challenge’.
The goal was simple: get people to use Chipolote’s app. The brand created the hashtag contest Chipotle Lid Flip Challenge to encourage people to make burrito bowls. Starting with inspiration and fan David Dobric, the challenge requires you to have a phone and a Chipotle burrito bowl.
Result? 111,000 videos were recorded in the first six days, resulting in a record-breaking day for online sales, while more than 300 million people have watched videos with the hashtag, earning it a Shorty Award.
Want to know your customers better? Contact us at support@sunnydayconsulting.com or check our website at www.sunnydayconsulting.com!
