Trust us, your customer analytics are a gold mine that can make your business boom!
Surely you’ve heard terms like Analytics, SEO, email marketing, and ROI tossed around in reference to the “things-you-should-do” for your business, but what does it all mean? In the grand machine of your business, many parts help keep it moving in the right direction. As the saying goes, you can’t improve what you can’t measure. Utilizing customer analytics, as a whole, not only gives you critical insights into your consumer’s buying habits and what they are looking for, it can also bring real value to your bottom line. According to McKinsey, companies making intensive use of customer analytics are 2.6 times more likely to have a significantly higher ROI than competitors. Those same companies are almost three times as likely to generate above-average revenue growth over competitors who do not use these metrics.
The conversation about analytics involves diving into how people interact with your business through various avenues. For instance, this can be through things like user engagement and in-app purchases. Each moving part has different considerations and proper strategies for best results. We will delve deeper into each facet as a part of a series in future blogs to help explain each piece of the analytics puzzle.
Because humans are complex individuals, analytics is the easiest way to find out what makes your customers tick. Gaining this knowledge can help you make better business decisions and forecast for the future. The first step towards using customer analytics to propel your business is to figure out which platforms will bring you the most insight into your customer base. This idea can vary depending on your product. For example, you would look for different things in your analytics if you sell dog treats as opposed to tech software. Some products benefit significantly from a solid social media presence and engagement. In contrast, other products will require a stronger push in SEO for web searches. Both methods are essential to all businesses, but not all companies are created equally, thus needing a customized eye on analytics.
To utilize customer analytics to your advantage, you must create a personalized experience for your customer. Creating personalized experiences will turn a somewhat interested customer of your brand into a future loyal customer. After gathering information about your customer’s behavior from your social media platforms and website, you can start creating strategies to understand them fully. These strategies include customer acquisition, customer retention, and customer engagement. With customer acquisition, you can bring in new and existing customers by developing sales strategies and creating targeted and personalized marketing campaigns. Customer retention is excellent for developing predictive customer analytics. Lastly, customer engagement is critical to maintaining a personalized experience.
To successfully implement customer analytics, you must look into data collection. Data collection will help you gather all of the information needed to create those strategies mentioned above. You can collect this data from all of the channels and platforms of customer interaction. Website analytics, customer service, social media, and customer feedback are all outlets you can use to gather helpful information about your customers.
By far, an essential aspect of data collection is website analytics. Tools like Google Analytics, is a great resource to pull reports of analytics such as demographics, website tracking, and conversion rates. A perk of Google Analytics is its ability to track and measure SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO improves your site visibility which comes in handy when trying to get attention from customers. SEO includes everything from words on your website, meta descriptions, meta titles, keywords and more. Things like keywords help your site’s ranking go up, which means you will see it in a Google search before other competing results. Just like any search engine, Google loves when you constantly update your website content. It gives the platform more information to share and causes Google to read your site updates more, which helps your ranking. Placing keywords throughout your website helps boost its visibility. For example, use industry-specific words in your website copy or blogs.
Having a solid social media presence is another must when it comes to data collection. With so many businesses using social media to generate profit, it’s helpful that the back end of all platforms provides a plethora of valuable insights through analytics! Pulling back the curtain on the behaviors of your followers can significantly increase your success. Understanding which platforms your consumer base uses and how they use them can boost your organic growth and create more loyal customers.
There are four main categories of analytics to bear in mind when assessing your current and potential customers. All customer analytics fall under one of the following four categories. And each of the types of analytics mentioned below has one of two purposes: one, to observe and discover behavior patterns across the entire customer or prospective customer base, or two, to understand who each customer is (i.e., age, income, where they are from).
- Predictive analytics forecasts future customer behavior.
Example: In the fall of 2022, purchases of product X are expected to increase.
- Diagnostic analytics helps you understand the “why” behind customer behavior.
Example: 50 percent of customers think product X is not what they expected.
- Descriptive analytics gives you insight into past customer behavior.
Example: 35% of customers returned product X within 30 days of purchase.
- Prescriptive analytics provides suggestions on how you can influence or address customer behavior.
Example: Social media campaigns and ads can increase sales of product X by up to 25%.
We know, we know. That was A LOT of information! And how the heck do you do all the things?! Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. We’ll break down each of the facets of customer analytics over the next few months in our “Get Schooled: Analytics” series, so stay tuned. In the meantime, our team at BKN Creative would love to help you grow your business and profits by meeting you and hearing about your business. We can find a starting place for your unique business and dial in the best strategy to meet your goals. So drop us a line and let us do the heavy lifting!
