Data helps us better comprehend the world around us, including the people who live in it! We can leverage data to understand customer needs.
Data is now undeniably a key driver of corporate success. The ability to get insights from the ever-increasing volume and complexity of accessible data increasingly separates market winners from losers.
One of its most effective advantages is its ability to help us better analyze and respond to changing customer behavior.
On a social level, it has helped us comprehend the activities and movements of individuals during the Covid-19 epidemic. In finance, corporations have excelled at recognizing outlier behavior that might indicate something shady is afoot.
A “360-degree consumer view” lets marketers identify people ready to purchase and place items and services directly in front of them.
Data helps address client demands (and catch tuna).
The more you know about your consumers, the better you anticipate their needs. You may also convey it to them in a manner that suits them.
An excellent comparison is tuna fishing. Initially, fleets of boats would set out, with no more information than historical success places.
Our capacity to discover and capture fish increased as technology advanced — first by learning to navigate the stars, then by predicting the weather by meteorology, and finally by GPS and sonar. We can now track fish using satellites and underwater sensors.
Commercial tuna fishers must stay up with the latest technological advances. If they don’t, they’ll be out-fished and go out of business.
Customer fishing follows the same rules. Others will surpass you if you don’t keep improving your capacity to utilize data to locate them and understand their behavior.
What data do you need to know your clients?
Many organizations start with transactional and point-of-sale data. So we can identify broad consumer patterns as well as local preferences.
This helps us build goods and services that consumers will pay for. It also allows us to price our items at levels where we are sure they will sell.
These are also quite precious. We can understand who buys what once we know what individuals purchase.
As usual, combining multiple forms of data is much more beneficial than using them alone. Working with personal data has certain dangers and duties.
Therefore, it’s essential to grasp data governance principles, i.e. how to comply with all legislation and earn your customers’ confidence by protecting their data.
Attitude data is just another basic form of data.
You can obtain this data via simple market research or more sophisticated social media sentiment analysis.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) – mainly machine learning – advanced analytics systems may develop automatic reports showing us who is using our goods and what they say about them.
Customer data collected via schemes like loyalty programs or activity monitoring may also be considered internal data.
You may also purchase consumer data and other external information to get further insights. This may contain economic statistics, GDP growth, climatic data, and local and global events.
One innovative window installer and maker allegedly pioneered a certain practice. He began using publicly accessible data on crimes like vandalism to determine where to best deploy its rapid-response window repair services.
It also combines data from services like Google Trends to identify what people are searching for online. More recent advancements like Facebook’s Custom Audience service utilize people choices. Users may input information about their consumers, and algorithms display their ads to other customers who share their profiles.
Putting all of this information together needs a sophisticated analytics infrastructure.
Target, for example, was able to anticipate when consumers were pregnant before they ever began shopping for baby things. Amazon has lately discussed adopting anticipatory shipping. Currently, this allows it to guarantee things are at the distribution facilities closest to clients, but it aims to ship items to customers before purchasing them.
Observations and micro-moments are the new drivers.
The goal is to capture “micro-moments” — split-second purchase opportunities that exist for just a few seconds but may be tremendously lucrative if spotted and acted on at scale.
Walmart collects petabytes of consumer data, but they consider only the most recent transactions in its prediction engines. Because it recognizes how quickly consumer behavior changes, only current data can tell us what’s occurring now and shortly. Don’t make mistakes. But if you do, learn from them.
A micro-moment is someone getting off an aircraft after a trip. They may need a hotel room, a cab, or simply a meal.
Previously, firms may have anticipated seeing an advertisement in the arrivals lounge. Marketers may now target them with a targeted text message, phone notification, or Facebook pop-up when they check in to let their friends and family know they’ve arrived safely.
Today’s data technology provides firms unparalleled insight into their consumers. We can better forecast client needs by merging transactional, demographic, and behavioral data from internal and external sources.
