In a world that’s going digital, businesses are finding it hard to assess what this new breed of online customers wants. The businesses that are finding success in the online sphere are focusing on personalized marketing, customer-centric branding, and improvements in customer experiences. The new ‘rule of the jungle’ is simple – companies that can improve customer journeys get the lion’s share of leads. Before long, businesses that don’t adopt these customer-focused policies will find it impossible to compete in any industry. No wonder leading businesses are rushing to take behavioral data-driven steps in their marketing efforts.
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The Importance of Customer Behavior Data
Here are four reasons why businesses of all sizes need to focus on how their customer behaves before spending on marketing –
- In 2017, one of the world’s leading management consulting companies McKinsey & Company, revealed that companies that use customer behavior data to create behavioral insights record 85% more sales growth than companies that don’t.
- The three giants of online commerce – Amazon, Netflix, and Google, have constructed their entire empires using customer behavior analytics.
- However, the notion that only internet giants are eligible to leverage the clout of customer behavioral data is completely untrue. Businesses of all sizes can use customer behavior analytics to elevate their organizations, irrespective of how small or big their customer bases are. With the right information and the most advanced analytics tools, any business can do it.
- Lastly, and most importantly, online shoppers are open to the idea of their online behaviors being tracked for personalization purposes. In a 2020 study by marketing consultancy firm Invesp LLC, 53% of internet shoppers view personalization of customer journeys favorably. The modern-day shopper prefers engaging in business with companies that take the extra step of giving personalized recommendations or sharing personalized marketing messages. If sharing their personal info is the cost of receiving such perks, they’re more than willing to do it!
So, exactly how can a behavioral science market research company help a small-scale business? For starters, they can help them create marketing messages based on their audiences’ actual behaviors (not perceived behaviors). By tracking simple details like their website activities, purchase behaviors, etc., they can create engaging marketing messages that increase the chances of engagement.
With the aid of tools like web analytics, location tracking, and AI-driven personalization, these agencies can improve the quality of marketing campaigns that small businesses create. Here are some other ways combining behavioral science and market research can help businesses –
Create Personalized Messages
There are a hundred different ways of saying the same message. Unfortunately, 99% of these messages will fail to make an impact on your audience. In the past, marketers used to decide what message would be the coveted ‘1%’ purely via intuition and hunches. While their personal experiences may have given them success in the past, in an age where personalization is the norm and customers expect nothing less than highly-personalized marketing messages, hunches and guesswork doesn’t guarantee ROI. AI and data analytics-driven message optimization tools do.
These tools can assess tons of data to discover which marketing messages are most likely to work and which ones are most likely to fail. These tools can rank thousands of marketing messages and use customer behavioral data to discover the ‘1% message’ that’s likeliest to make the most impact. Since small businesses compete heavily for target customers’ attention, there’s no safer bet than a marketing message that’s backed by verifiable data analysis.
Email Re-Targeting
Email marketing is all about making as many people as possible aware of your brand. Email re-targeting is about revisiting people you’ve contacted before to enquire why the past marketing messages didn’t work. Unlike a standard email marketing message, re-targeting messages need to be super-personalized. Or else, a customer who has already declined to engage in business with you won’t even make the effort of opening the new email.
For instance, cart abandonment is a common occurrence in eCommerce platforms. Users browse around, add items to the cart, or wish lists, to never visit that eCommerce platform again. With highly-personalized emails, these potential customers can be easily re-targeted. Unsure about what type of messaging will encourage those people to return back to your eCommerce platform to finally make a purchase? Let an AI-powered message optimization tool do it for you! Be it creating highly personalized content or offering discounts – AI-powered message optimization tools assess each individual customer’s behavior before deciding what type of marketing message is most suitable.
Personalized Content
Unlike standard content personalization tricks that almost all businesses use, for instance, using the target customer’s gender, location, income levels, or past purchases to create “relevant” content, AI-powered behavioral analytics tools enable businesses to gain a far deeper understanding of their customers. These tools take all the information the customer provides to build ultra-realistic customer profiles. The quality of marketing messages and content becomes infinitely better!