So, you strive to make sure that your products and services are of the highest quality. But your marketing campaign isn’t working. That’s because your offer isn’t what your audience wants. Even if it’s what they need, people don’t see the value right away. Before you launch any marketing campaign, you should conduct audience research. More exactly, establish the size, composition, and characteristics of the individuals that could be your potential customers. These days, you have access to a significant amount of data via social media platforms. If you manage to transform that data into insights about who your target audience is, you can build a winning business strategy.
Audience research is basically a listening process. Listening provides insight into what people think and how they act. What issues do they care about? How can you help solve their problems? Without audience research, your most pressing questions will remain unanswered. Don’t depend on assumptions. You should have a clear picture in your head about who your audience is. Here’s a hint: your target customer isn’t everyone. Audience research isn’t complicated. So, how do you get started? Well, there are many ways to get the information you need about your target audience.
Do 1:1 Customer Interviews
Speak with the people that matter the most – your customers (current or prospective). Sit down and have a discussion. Organise face-to-face meetings to interview people. You’ll get a better understanding of what motivates individuals to buy, get a sense of their pains, longings, goals, or buying objections, and identify new marketing channels/tactics to try. Ad-hoc interviews can be conducted in person, on the phone, or through video software. Of course, you’ll want to record the encounter to review it later. Talk to ten or more customers over the course of a month. If you are seeking for a much more accessible and modernized type of marketing, you can develop a customer avatar for your marketing strategies and tactics.
Identify who would be a good fit for the interview and use their information as a buyer persona to find potential customers to chat with. You’re not selling anything, so focus on the problem. Remain agile when sudden new information arises so as to keep the interview going. Before conducting the interviews, decide what metrics and demographics are important to you. As you prepare for the interviews, create a list of questions that will help you achieve your goal. Open-ended questions allow you to collect qualitative answers, which are full of information.
Set Up Survey Forms in Key Areas of Your Website
As noted by Sapio Research agency, which specialises in B2B and B2C market research, incorporating customer feedback into your business is more important than ever. It’s directly linked to many benefits, such as increased market share, lower costs, and higher revenue. Customer satisfaction translates into business performance. By using customer surveys, you can identify growth areas and, most importantly, cultivate a more positive relationship with your customers. You can set up survey forms on your site or within your app to get opinions and ratings from your visitors. Pop-up surveys can help you increase engagement and collect more responses. They require minimal effort to complete.
Get To Know Your Target Audience with Facebook Insights
Your Facebook Business Page can be a powerful source of information about your target audience. If you dive into Facebook Insights, you’ll discover a wealth of data to help you understand your customers, such as likes, engagement, and demographics. Don’t confuse observations with insights. Even if the information stands out as exciting or unusual, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve discovered an insight. Genuine insights should fulfil the following criteria:
- They should be new
- They should be unanticipated
- They should be relevant
- They should inspire you to take action
The most valuable insights come from serious analysis. Aggregate data from Facebook users so that you can better understand the type of people that make up your target audience. Go to your Facebook page and click “See All” under “Insights”. You’ll find info about trends, posts, and audiences.
Monitor Competitor Mentions
Knowing what your competitors are doing makes it easier to come up with new ideas. It provides more insight than industry awareness. If you want to learn more about the target audience, find out what they’re saying about your competitors. Happy and unhappy customers alike won’t shy away from sharing their experiences. The more you find out, the more you learn, adapt, and flourish. See where exactly your competition gets mentioned and how people relate to them. You can better position yourself by identifying the strategies that give your competitors an advantage. It’s vital to know if your competitors are doing something to be feared or ignored.
Make The Most of Live Chat Transcripts
Live chat is the preferred channel of support as it gives customers real-time interaction. What is more, it’s a fantastic tool for analysis and improving the customer experience. Use the transcript of every interaction to pinpoint frequently answered questions, not to mention keywords and phrases that give insight into their concerns. Instead of focusing on factual and readily-measurable qualitative data, you should better focus on qualitative data. It will help you get a better understanding of what people need and feel during their journey through the sales funnel. Unfortunately, you can’t ask for more detail or clarity.
The conversations you have with visitors are more than conversations. Download the transcripts, organise the data into a spreadsheet, and review each transcript. You’ll know what works and what doesn’t. Share the transcripts with your team so that you can brainstorm ideas together. The findings can help you better allocate resources and provide future training. Copy the actual quotes of chats and save them in a Word file. You can incorporate these words into web copy to make it more engaging. Online readers have a very short attention span. To get the best results, offer the most important information first.
To sum up, conducting audience research takes time and resources. The question now is: Is it worth the investment? Why, yes. Researching your target audience will definitely pay off when it’s time to create meaningful experiences.