How to Apply Consumer Insights to Strengthen Your Digital Marketing Strategy

When it comes to KPIs, marketers are constantly adapting to better understand and optimize their digital marketing strategy. Perhaps the most important source of data for any marketer is user insights and feedback. Consumer insights help to unveil a user’s needs, wants, and buying motivations, which assist marketers in improving a range of KPIs, from customer lifetime value (CLV) and average order value (AOV) to return on ad spend (ROAS) and revenue.  This helps in identifying potential customers when creating an online marketing strategy.

Why Are User Insights Important?

Consumer insights provide marketers with the proper data to make informed decisions for their business. Focusing on facets such as brand loyalty, user experience, and the customer journey can help marketers identify consumer trends and pain points, as well as areas where their brand may be excelling. Without current data or knowledge of their target audience or an existing customer base, marketers cannot expect to successfully continue to scale their businesses and create business goals.

Which Consumer Insights Should I Analyze?

Just as KPIs are crucial for defining the path of any digital marketer, consumer insights should be selected based on a company’s goals, needs, and existing initiatives. We’ve provided a few high-level examples below of what brands should consider when selecting which user insights to focus their time and energy on.

Consumer Reviews & Brand Loyalty

Review sites are an incredible source of genuine, unfiltered customer feedback. These sites can help marketers determine where they’re winning with consumers and where they can improve. This feedback ranges from user experience and product offerings to customer service and order fulfillment. It’s important for marketers to not only recognize what is being said in reviews but to engage with consumers in these forums to ensure customers feel they’re being heard, regardless of the nature of their feedback. The marketer’s visibility here is invaluable, especially for new customers looking to gain an understanding of how the brand operates and what they can expect should they make a purchase.

The same goes for marketers whose brands have a strong sense of customer loyalty. Businesses that maintain strong brand loyalty are largely guaranteed that existing consumers will choose their brand over competitors. A deeper dive into brand loyalty can provide marketers with answers to what draws consumers to their brand over others, what aspects of their products or services are favored, and why. 

User Experience & Personalization

Plain and simple: identifying and resolving customer pain points allows marketers to stay ahead of the competition. Knowing which pain points or UX issues to look for and creating solutions to them can help improve a brand’s customer service and user experience. We know this is an imperative piece of the puzzle, as 86% of buyers have said they are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. Optimizing the user experience will not only enhance relationships with existing customers but can also attract new consumers through positive word of mouth.

Looking to increase new user acquisition? Customer personalization can also go a long way toward improving conversion rates and drawing new customers to your brand. A recent study showed that 49% of consumers made impulse purchases after receiving a personalized recommendation, with 44% becoming repeat customers after personalized experiences. Netflix is the perfect example of this, where 80% of their views reportedly come from personalized recommendations. If marketers can demonstrate that their products will make the consumer’s life better or more efficient, the chances of conversion are astronomically higher than a generalized email or banner ad.

Customer Journey & Social Media Engagement

As the world of e-commerce and retail has become increasingly digital, especially this year when most consumers have been stuck at home, the customer journey has become increasingly straightforward. The average U.S. adult spends at least 30 minutes of their day scrolling through social media, with more than 3.5 billion active social media users globally. A navigable, aesthetically-pleasing website is no longer optional for brands around the world, and an equally enticing social media presence is a must for the rising generation of consumers. The pool of actively interested consumers has never been larger, with approximately 200 million Instagram users visiting at least one business profile every day.

Brands that understand these digital must-haves may already be employing tactics such as retargeting on search engines and social media. As cart abandonment rates sit at almost 70% across all industries, those who are not utilizing such strategies are losing out to their competitors. Read more about how your brand can take advantage of these untraditional means of consumer engagement and more to strengthen your digital marketing strategy.

How to Start Analyzing & Applying User Insight Learnings 

Now that you’re privy to the reasons why user insights are crucial to the health of any brand, the question remains, how do marketers start analyzing this information and implement their findings to strengthen their digital marketing strategy? Setting goals is an excellent place to start. What do you want to learn from your consumers? What would you as the marketer want to gain from this data? From there, define who on your team is going to gather and analyze the information. Which target audiences will you be honing in on? How are you going to collect the analytics? 

Formulating an action plan can be tricky, especially if internal bandwidth is slim. For those marketers who need an extra hand, an Agency or Network partner can alleviate the research lift by utilizing their extensive knowledge of the industry, in addition to implementing ongoing optimizations after the fact.

Consumer insights can often be undervalued or overlooked due to the effort involved in gaining a granular look into the thought process of a user. However, those marketers who take the time to better understand their customer base will emerge stronger and more well-rounded than their competitors. By better understanding their consumer base, marketers can create an optimal consumer experience, ultimately increasing conversion rates, CLV, and revenue with a strong digital marketing strategy.  

Ready to dive in and take advantage of your brand’s user insights? Apply to be a Perform^[cb] marketer, or reach out to our team of digital marketing experts now to get started!