What are customer insights?
When you put all of this information together, you start to get a very clear idea of who your customer is, what they want, and how they want it delivered. Customer insights are what you learn about your customers by studying all of the data you have on them. This data can come from customer feedback, website analytics, or behavior in loyalty programs. When you have a lot of this data, you can understand your customers better and figure out what they want and how to give it to them.
There are lots of different ways to measure customer insights, both in terms of quality and quantity. What matters depends on your business and your audience. But a study by GetApp found that 16% of teams have enough data but not the right insights.
The importance of customer insights in marketing
In order to form buyer personas, you need to have customer insights. This includes knowing things like who they are, their demographics, what their pain points are, what impresses them, what disappoints them, what kinds of products/services they buy often, and what influences their purchasing decisions.
The more you understand about your audience, the better you can:
- Deliver the right message at the right time.
- Showcase the right product at the right price point.
- Highlight the exact features that customers are looking for.
- Develop empathy and emotional connection.
- Strengthen your unique selling proposition.
- Segment, target, and personalize your campaigns.
In other words, maintaining customer satisfaction is part of an effective marketing strategy for growth.
How and where to gather customer insights
Finding customer insights can be difficult, but there are some ways to manage this. Here are 10 sources of customer insights, along with tips on how to use them:
The research can be entirely delayed in some cases. Here are six powerful, creative sources of customer insights that you might not have considered before but could be invaluable in the short term:
App-based research forums recruit an “always on” panel for a particular study and elicit bite-sized pieces of information over a period of time. For example, rather than asking a physician to participate in a 45-minute online survey on a computer, the physician can share feedback in five- or 10-minute increments over the course of a week. The questions asked are engaging and are often completed closer to the moment in time that we are asking about, thus reducing burden and bias.
Social media analytics can help us to better understand customer beliefs and behaviors. It can also help us to find opportunities for product development, brand positioning strategy, reputation management, and competitive insights. Additionally, social media analytics can help us to understand what is happening from our customers’ perspectives. Finally, social media analytics can also help us to account for fake news.
Now that they are not in the field, we can use this approach to get customer perspectives from our field teams.
The point is to think broadly when identifying potential field resources We should think broadly about who we can tap into for potential field personnel. Sales reps and their managers are obvious potential sources, as are medical field resources. Many companies also have other individuals who work in customer-facing roles—such as nurse ambassadors, patient ambassadors or individuals supporting patient support programs—who may also serve as a source of customer insight.
I would like you to think about whether there are ways that we can establish systems and processes to help our field teams regularly share customer feedback, objections, and behaviours. This would be beneficial now and in the future.
When trying to better understand something, it can be helpful to tap into the collective knowledge of your organization. This is because people in different parts of the company may have expertise or insights that can be relevant. For example, sales and marketing colleagues may have deep perspectives on things like a patient journey, or potential patient types for a pipeline asset. So depending on the business question, we should look broadly for the right internal experts.
Prior market research can be useful in finding answers to key business questions. Most research digs much deeper than what is necessary, providing context and understanding customer behavior. It is possible that there are some insights in transcripts or deliverables from qualitative research that could help make a decision. Quantitative research can also be cut in new ways. A tracking study may provide insights to develop an initial customer segmentation.
But in these times of high customer fear and uncertainty, these internal sources of customer voices may be more relevant than ever. We should start listening to our customers in new ways. For example, many medical affairs organizations have recordings of phone calls from patients, which can be used to understand why patients discontinue using a product and what gaps exist in patient management. Similarly, your organization may have access to data from partners, such as recordings or transcripts of specialty pharmacy conversations, which can be analyzed to understand current customer issues and behaviors. In typical times, such data may be more difficult to interpret than asking healthcare professionals directly. However, in these times of high customer fear and uncertainty, these internal sources of customer voices may be more relevant than ever.
It is more effective to use a combination of the above solutions rather than just one. Customized primary market research is the best option, but if that is not possible, the other solutions will still be helpful.
1. Online reviews
The most authentic way to know how your customers feel about your products and services is through online reviews. You can use these reviews to identify what customers perceive your brand to be doing well, what needs improvement, and what they find better in competition.
This means that you should be looking at your reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp, the Better Business Bureau, Glassdoor, and other similar websites. For software or SaaS products, some of the popular ones include G2, Capterra, Clutch, Trustpilot, and TrustRadius.
The following text requires the reviewer to create an account using their social credentials like Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn, so the fact that these reviews are genuine can be comforting.
2. Competitor’s reviews
You can also learn about your audience by reading reviews of your competitors. These can be found on the same websites as well as groups on social media channels. There may be online communities of users for those products that you can learn from.
In order to better understand what customers want, Scott Chow suggests looking at reviews for competitor products. This will allow you to see any areas where your product could improve or excel. By using this information, you can adjust your product messaging to make it more appealing to potential customers.
How to use customer insights from competitor reviews:
- Identify their shortcomings and position yourself accordingly.
- Find out what strengths they have that you don’t (find our SWOT analysis template here!).
- Get ideas for features or gestures that resonate well with your audience.
3. Website data
With Google Analytics and Search Console, you can gather a wealth of insights about your customers, including:
- Behavioral data: what keywords they were searching when they found your site, what paths they’re taking on your site, which pages they’re exiting on, what content they’re most interested in, and more.
- Demographic data: age, gender location, interests, devices, and more.
- Campaign data: which pages are driving leads and sales, paths to purchase, and more.
It is important to have a website that all of your marketing campaigns lead back to.
4. Competitor website data
SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can give you lots of helpful information about your competitors, even though you can’t get as much detailed information from their websites. For example, if you run a design agency and Venngage is a competitor, Ahrefs will show you which keywords they’re targeting with their content and ads.
5. Preferences & purchase activity
The purchasing habits of your customers can tell you a lot about which products and services are most popular. You can get this information by tracking purchases in your CRM, or if you have an ecommerce platform. Additionally, if you have an email list or any other platform that requires an account, you can create preference centers to gain even more insights.
Zero and first-party data are becoming more and more crucial as third-party cookies get closer to their end.
6. Customer surveys
Since businesses started using door-to-door marketing, surveys have been a tool they use to gather information. Today, we have online survey tools that make it possible to share surveys through email, social media, apps, and other platforms. Surveys can be point-based, multiple choice, open-ended, or any combination of these. To get the most from your survey campaigns, it’s a good idea to segment them into specific groups, like new customers, loyal customers, your top referrers, or even disengaged customers. That way you can customize your questions to each group.
Some good questions to ask in your survey include:
- How did you find out about us?
- What did you like the most?
- Ease of ordering
- Customer service
- Pricing
- Packaging
- Other reasons
- What do you think we should improve?
Collect & apply customer insights
Customer insights can help you focus on the channels, positioning, offerings, and messaging worth your time and money. You can gather them through multiple sources, and thanks to digital marketing, you now have the tools to do it!
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