Most people today are in a constant state of digital overalls. From the moment we wake up, we’re grabbing out smart devices and staying connected. This applies to both our personal lives and at work.
Due to this “always connected” lifestyle, most people have become nearly desensitized to the typical marketing tactics that most businesses use. Whether it’s scrolling through ad placements, solicitation emails, or branded text messages and notifications, many of these tactics aren’t as effective as they used to be.
The problem with most of these initiatives is that they’re all too often generic and cold. Many companies play the numbers game with these efforts, hoping that a “quantity versus quality” approach will still give them the ROI they’re hoping for.
Unfortunately, most businesses don’t realize just how wasteful these opportunities can be when they’re not leveraging behavioral data. Below, we’ll cover the ins and outs of behavioral data and why it’s so important for modern businesses to track. We’ll also provide a variety of different ways it can be used to help build stronger relationships with current customers and make it easier to acquire new ones.
What Exactly is Behavioral Data and Where Can You Find It?
To understand behavioral data, you first need to reference the standard data formats that most marketing teams usually look for when conducting demographic analysis. Most market research initiatives focus on “who” their customers are. This includes gathering information like age ranges, genders, job titles, salary ranges, and other identifiable information about potential customers.
All this information is important to know, but it also doesn’t really give you too much direction on how to actually make your messaging resonate. This is where behavioral data becomes much more useful.
Your behavioral data represents the “what,” how”, and “why” of your audience. If your basic demographics focus on who your customer is, your behavioral data zeroes in on what actually motivates them and how your products or services fit into those motivations.
Behavioral data lives in many different sources across your business. Basically, any time a customer interacts with your business, there are opportunities to collect or update your behavioral data metrics.
While purchase histories are a great place to start looking for this data, they’re not just limited to transactional exchanges. You could also find this information by tracking how customers navigate through your website, what blogs or articles they read and for how long, recent reviews left online, or customer feedback surveys.
For example, tracking a customer from their very first online sessions to a closing sale can tell you a lot about their experiences. Did they go straight to a purchase page, or did they follow a progressive path? In most cases, there is a series of steps that are taken before revenue is captured. Understanding each of these individuals’ steps can help you better understand which are supportive and which might be too distracting.
Why is Behavioral Data So Important for Businesses?
Modern consumers know how the internet works, and they know all the “tricks” brands use to get their attention. Because of this, there is a lot more scrutiny over how pay-per-click advertising is used or where and when solicitation emails are received. Customers know when brands are being genuine when offering them information on new products and services, if they just want to bump their revenue numbers.
The bottom line is that your customers don’t like getting “sold” to. No one wants to feel pressured to purchase something they may not even be looking for, even if it can provide some measure of value. But this doesn’t mean they can’t still be persuaded to explore new offerings; it just means how you approach this is key.
Customers want to make sure that your actions as a brand are genuine. They want to feel “supported,” not “pressured.” Behavioral data is what helps to strike this right balance, giving you more context into how your customers think and behave so that your messaging is always in alignment with their needs – not just yours.
Practical Ways to Use Your Company’s Behavioral Data
While relying strictly on demographic data doesn’t mean you can’t help move forward with your sales and marketing campaigns. However, it does mean that you could be leaving opportunities on the table for other brands to take advantage of.
Collecting and acting on your company’s behavioral data can help you address the direct needs of your current and potential customers. This helps you to ensure your messaging resonates the way it should, increasing the likelihood of gaining new leads and converting more sales.
Below are several practical ways you can use behavioral data to your advantage:
1. Constructing More Personalized Brand Messages
You might have a detailed content calendar in place or really impactful brand messaging. But it’s often not what you say, it’s how you say it, and most importantly, how you decide to deliver those branding messages to your audience.
For example, if you have an eCommerce website, focusing on abandoned carts can be really important. If you catch someone starting a purchasing session, but then stops before they can finish, you should never view this as a one-off situation.
Take advantage of this knowledge by arranging for a gentle reminder to be sent out with a small discount shortly after abandonment. Often, customers end their purchasing sessions prematurely to compare prices or conduct final research before making a commitment.
A small discount could be the motivation they need to get across the finish line.
2. Helping You to Get Your Timing Just Right
Timing is everything in marketing, and your customer’s purchasing history can be essential to getting it just right. For example, if you see that one of your customers just finished engaging with an article on your site or downloaded an e-guide, you can use this information to guide your next outreach initiative.
You might want to follow up to see if they enjoyed what they read and offer some other helpful resources, or see if you can set up a time to connect to help move them further down your marketing funnel.
However, the key is to pace yourself. There’s a fine line between being “helpful” and being a “nuisance.” You never want a customer to feel like they’re being pushed or manipulated into a purchasing decision when they haven’t proven they’re there yet.
3. Leveraging Past Brand Experiences for More Accurate Suggestions
The more you know about your customer’s previous brand experiences, the better context you’ll have for how to repeat good ones and avoid bad ones.
There are a lot of ways to dive deeper into previous brand experiences. An obvious place to look is at support tickets or recent feedback surveys. These feedback loops (good or bad) can reveal important information about how your brand is performing and can help you improve your public relations efforts.
When you come across areas that need improvement, don’t be afraid to address them and reach out to customers to show them how you’re improving.
Another thing that past brand experiences can help with is knowing the types of products or services your customers have already purchased. This can help you make more accurate and relevant suggestions when offering them new product upgrades or highlighting specific features that are likely to interest them.
4. Designing Fluid Customer Journeys
One of the best ways to keep your customers returning to your business is to make your customer journeys as seamless as possible. Any engagement point between your business and customers should feel frictionless, solving problems instead of creating new ones.
It’s important to track every touchpoint customers have with your brand and grade each one based on its effectiveness. This could be anything from a CTA on your sales landing page to chatbot dialogues and support email responses.
All of these elements come together to create one experience for your customers. Understanding how each of them connects and supports one another will help you create an impactful customer journey.
5. Forecasting New Behaviors
If you use behavioral data in the right way, it can actually be a powerful predictive analysis tool. By looking for patterns, such as certain purchases often being made after reading certain resource pages and clicking a CTA, you can start creating predictive models on this same data.
The benefit of taking this approach is that many of the “improvements” you make to your website, products, or support processes are now data-driven, instead of simply following a gut feeling about what your customers’ likes or dislikes are.
This can save you a lot of wasted time and effort putting expensive changes in place or new product directions that don’t bring tangible results.
Get the Most Use Out of Your Business Data
Building strong customer relationships is a critical part of building a successful business. But getting to this point should not be filled with guesswork.
You have a lot of valuable data right within your systems and databases that can help you provide the answers your customers are looking for. By following the practical strategies discussed, you’ll get the most use out of this data while creating more opportunities to scale more effectively.
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