Think about global giants like Amazon and Netflix. Aside from being goliaths in the online space, they have something more important in common—they’ve dominated the market because they meet their customers’ needs better than their competitors.
At the centre of their success is their commitment to getting the best consumer insights and making the most out of them to capture the audience’s attention, converting the audience into active users and loyal customers.
Businesses like Amazon and Netflix spend millions each year to expand their insights into consumer behaviours and needs because customers are always looking for an experience better than their existing one. This is evident in the slew of new technologies and changing business models that we see today.
Even with the changes that are happening, there are still companies that choose to remain in the traditional route of obtaining insights like surveys and focus groups, which offer limited information that doesn’t represent the larger customer base. The real danger in using these techniques in this economy is that they can make businesses obsolete.
Gain insights and generate organic growth
Before we delve into what customers want, it’s important to understand what drives them or motivates them in their decision-making process.
Going back to Netflix, the online streaming service now has over 220 million subscribers, making it the world’s largest—a steep increase from the 21.5 million subscribers it had just 10 years ago.
So how did they do it?
They analysed their customers’ past viewing preferences and used that information to develop runaway hits like House of Cards, Stranger Things, and more recently, Squid Game and Ozark, which have racked up millions of views from subscribers around the world.
They gained data about their customers using granular insights into their behaviours and used it to give them a more enjoyable experience, eventually turning them into long-term subscribers.
While these strategies may seem fairly simple, it’s how they were used to create a better experience that will give businesses a head start in transforming their insights into growth.
Update your messaging to reflect changing mindsets and attitudes
The consumer today isn’t the consumer that will be purchasing your products or services tomorrow. Consumers change along with their behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs.
One thing that consumers look for in a brand is a connection to something that they’re passionate about—like animal welfare.
Take the retail clothing industry, for example. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, renowned designers were creating luxurious designs with real animal fur—until PETA came along and created an animal rights revolution. Decades later, many of these designers have moved away from using real fur or any materials that contradict animal welfare.
The same goes for make-up brands that used to test their products on animals. Contemporary consumers are more inquisitive and as a result, they are more cautious about what they buy and the ethical means by which products are manufactured.
Having a clear message that resonates with the consumers’ emotional mindsets can help businesses drive their content, messaging, and branding to reflect their customers’ value systems without missing out on growth.
Grow your business by analysing your competitors’ reviews
Any marketer will tell you that listening to your customers can give you a lot of insights into whether they’ll be promoters or detractors.
If you’re a champion of turning insights into growth, you shouldn’t miss out on getting insights from your customers—and your competitors’ customers.
One of the best ways to improve your growth is to give your competitors’ unsatisfied customers exactly what they want. Every customer who leaves a negative review will always have something to say about the negative experience they had with the brand, opening the way for you to capitalise on that gap and develop targeted ad campaigns to attract new customers.
If you’re a restaurateur, for example, and you see that one of your competitors is getting consistent negative reviews about their limited selection of cocktails, you can offer targeted advertising to promote your offerings. You can also use competitors’ reviews to improve your range of products and services as well.
Double down on your winning content
As the saying goes—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Once you’ve landed on a strategy or two, don’t stop there. Monitor the levels of customer engagement that each post, email, or pop-up message has gained over some time.
Don’t stop at the most number of likes, comments, or even shares you’ve received. Look at more in-depth insights like user sessions, bounce rates, conversions, and time spent on the page.
Every marketing tool has a different measurement that you must define KPIs for, and you can then look for trends in customer engagement.
Think of a developer who creates an app for meditation. To promote the app, the developer develops a video showing testimonials from clients on how it has helped them change their lives. As part of the marketing campaign, some social media posts have also been prepared to be published.
Once the campaign goes live, the video goes viral and is shared organically, whereas the social media posts don’t garner the same attention. What the developer should do is turn this knowledge and data into an actionable strategy, by pushing more videos in their social media posts.
Identifying what works and what doesn’t allows businesses to stay focused and dedicate resources to get the most out of their marketing efforts. It’s also a great insight to help you give your customers the content they want that can result in organic growth instead of paid promotions.
Turn your consumer insights into growth
As marketers, it’s important to know what your customers want through continuously evolving techniques and by understanding which techniques are no longer working or adding any value.
Championing the transformation of consumer insights into tangible growth is vital, but the approach you take should be as dynamic as the market you hope to dominate.