Getting to know your customers makes you a better strategist, empathizer, and persuader. You’re able to increase the accuracy of your decisions. Your brand resonates deeply with customers’ worldviews, aspirations, and immediate needs. You don’t find yourself managing a hard sell but a budding relationship of natural give and take.
Customer insights make all this possible. Learning the best ways to capture them can take time, something you might not feel you want to waste. Once you try a few methods, you could also find yourself in a rut. You want fresh ideas. Luckily, you can learn about five of them here.
Table of Contents
1. Conversational Ads
Advertising has come a long way since its inception. It’s less text-heavy and pushes creative boundaries. Ads also come in various formats, including interactive, influencer-led, and native versions. Messages aren’t limited to spewing information at consumers. Instead, they can become a part of immersing them in self-directed experiences.
These cutting-edge formats make them ideal for capturing customer insights directly. This information, also known as zero party data, can easily flow from conversational ads. Not sure what those are? You may have seen this form of advertising already without knowing the term.
If you’ve ever come across a promo message with a question or two, you’ve seen an example. These short surveys capture customer sentiment about the messaging, product preferences, and opinions about a brand. As a result, companies get instantaneous data about how effective the messages are. Brands also gauge what’s happening with customer sentiment in real-time.
2. Remote Tests
Want to learn how your clients use your products? How about the way they interact with your website after you’ve given it a facelift? Historically, companies have relied on in-person focus groups and surveys to collect information like this.
Depending on the survey type and targeted audience, response rates can vary widely. Typically, the range is between 10% and 30% for market research and client satisfaction questionnaires. As you can imagine, a healthy participation rate could impact the quality of the data. In addition, there’s the possibility the responders don’t fully represent your ideal customer. Perhaps they haven’t used your products in a while and have little interest in re-engaging.
Remote testing, on the other hand, lets you target specific customer segments and uses. Plus, these groups may not realize the product they’re using as part of the study is from your brand. Whether you do a blind test or operate the study under full disclosure, you’re putting something useful into people’s hands. They may not have to answer any questions at all. Meanwhile, you collect data about how ideal customers utilize something designed to serve their needs.
3. Reviews for Competitors
Online reviews for your direct competitors offer a wealth of information about buying behaviors. You can also learn more about your targeted audience’s needs. From competitor review data, trends can pop out. The info could lead to an ah-ha moment where you suddenly realize a solution to a market-wide problem.
Take the cell phone industry as an example. Your brand is not among the national carriers, but you partner and compete with them. Recent competitor reviews reflect increased dissatisfaction with phone prices. They don’t like it when new customer promos are lower than those for loyal clients who want to upgrade.
Consequently, people switch carriers every two to three years to get a lower price on a much-needed phone. You’ve just identified a problem with a workable solution — a tiered phone replacement program based on client value. A customer’s value factor could include tenure, plan, and phone model preferences. However you decide to implement the program, your brand becomes distinguished. And you’ll probably gain share for serving the market better.
4. Data From Influencers
When you work with influencers to promote your products, these partners become a valuable source of customer insights. With 69% of consumers trusting influencer recommendations, more companies are investing in this form of marketing. An impressive 71% of marketers say influencer partnerships are advantageous for business.
The benefits certainly come in the form of new customers and increased product sales. While these outcomes justify the partnerships, an overlooked benefit is more robust customer insights. If audiences trust influencer recommendations, they’re probably more likely to disclose what they really think.
There’s less apprehension about sharing how they feel about a product’s quality and whether it meets their expectations. Based on this feedback, you can tweak your offerings and come up with joint, new strategies. Additional possibilities include discovering niche uses or markets and ideas for further product development.
5. Customer Relationship Management Tools
Customer relationship management (CRM) software manages your client database. You’ve got lists of contacts segmented by demographics, locations, and purchase behaviors. This type of surface data is valuable by itself.
But beyond this, CRM tools can track how customers respond to emails and other forms of contact. Platforms with AI sentiment analysis capabilities summarize clients’ feedback from multiple sources. Were there high click-through rates for one string of text on a CTA button versus another?
Maybe after the launch of a rebranding campaign and a series of sales contacts, customers responded favorably. These insights can help inform future decisions while providing further opportunities for personalization. CRMs can offer insights from metadata as well.
Capturing Customer Insights Directly
Third-party research gives you a general idea of market potential. You’ll know the size, identify competitors, and form a baseline for your strategy. Indirect customer data allows you to learn who’s likely to buy what you’re selling.
What third-party information is lacking is what’s going on inside your ideal customers’ heads. You’re also missing how clients are reacting to your brand’s identity, message, and products. You need direct customer insights for that. Collecting this information is essential to brand success. Using fresh methods ensures you’re gathering honest, complete, and actionable feedback.
