The One Thing That’s Better Than Knowing Your Customers

Knowing your customers is a never-ending quest for most marketers.

Understanding the customer helps marketers position the product, and sales teams persuade consumers to buy. It’s why businesses exist.

However, there’s one thing that is even better than knowing your customers.

And I’m going to tell you exactly what that is.

Yes, Knowing Your Customers Is Needed

Before I jump into the thing that’s even better than knowing your customers, I want to emphasize that I’m not suggesting we don’t need to get to know our clients, customers, and consumers.

The customer has more power today than ever when it comes to making buying decisions. It’s critical to take a walk in the consumer’s shoes and really understand what it’s like to buy from you.

And don’t even get me started on listening to customers.

I read at least one negative social post a day complaining about customer experience.

Sprout Social’s 2016 Q3 Social Index states:

41% of people will unfollow a brand that doesn’t share relevant information.

But most brands continue to add to the noise.

We marketers must work harder to:

• Know the value — not the price — of what we sell
• Identify our audiences, and additionally, our Alpha Audience
• Make data-driven decisions
• Create content that slips past the noise and contributes to exactly what your audience is asking for

And yet, there’s still something missing with everything I mentioned above.

Yeah, knowing your customers is fantastic (and needed!). But knowing how they behave, well that’s the sweet spot.

How Do Your Customers Behave?

If you’ll recall, my journey with Mark and the {grow} blog started with a post about psychographics.

Psychographics are thoughts, opinions, feelings, and behaviors.  And behavior implies, “I am interested in this.”

There are several ways you should be tracking customer behavior …

Your Website

1. New vs. returning traffic
2. Current customers and potential customers who visit your site (a CRM like HubSpot can deduce this info for you)
3. Which pages have the most “views” or the most “time spent”?
4. Where do users enter and exit your site?
5. Which pages have the most goal completions?
6. What keywords impact your site the most?

(Google Analytics can show you the data for 3-6)

Your Email Marketing

1. What is my highest open rate; which emails got the most opens?
2. Which emails got the most clicks?
3. What email topic(s) get most shares?
4. Which email call-to-action received the most actions?
5. Who interacts/doesn’t interact with your emails?

(You’ll need to use an ESP, or Email Service Provider, like MailChimp to collect this data)

Your Social Media Marketing

1. Who interacts/engages with your content (and which content is it)?
2. Where did your connections come from? (harder to decipher, but again, a CRM or Google Analytics can help)
3. Who is sharing your content (and which type of content attracts shares)?
4. Who are you having conversations with on social media; what are their questions? (you can track manually or with a social CRM — example of Sprout Social below)

Our social media dashboard and the CRM capabilities it provides for tracking conversations and potential customers.

And even if you don’t do any of the above, there’s one surefire way to figure out behaviors.

Think Conversation, Not Campaign

It’s no secret that our mantra (and tagline) the marketing company I own is all about saying goodbye to broadcast marketing and hello to conversation.

That simply means this … talk to your customers, potential customers, and social followers. Get to know your Alpha Audience.

I don’t care how you do it! Use:

• Interviews
• Surveys
• Email
• Twitter Chats
• An actual conversation (gasp!)

There are hundreds of ways to have a conversation and the only thing that stands in your way is you.

So when it comes to knowing your customers? Remember that a simple hello can lead to infinite possibilities.

What are some of the ways to measure customer behavior? I’d love to know! Give me a shout out in the comments below. 

Brooke B. Sellas is an in-the-trenches digital marketer & owner at B Squared Media, blossoming blogger, and  a purveyor of psychographics. Her mantra is “Think Conversation, Not Campaign” so be sure to give her a shout on Twitter.

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