The internet is full of information on why data analytics are important and how they can benefit your business.

How to Gain Useful Insights From Consumer Data

Whether it’s eCommerce stores, healthcare clinics, financial institutions, or simple grocery stores, all of these and beyond are and will continue to benefit from data collection.

Not only does data help you predict the future but also analyzes past mistakes and improves upon them.

A lot of small business owners are often at their wit’s end when it comes to gathering data and making sense of it. Hiring a data analyst is after all an expensive feat.

Below are some of the easiest tips to gain insights from your social media and other free platforms about your consumers:

1. Spot Key Customers Through Social Media

Try and look for similarities among people who are constantly ordering, reviewing, and posting about your brand.

Studying consumer profiles can help you gather data like age, gender, residence, marital status, professional career, etc. This data is used by businesses in crafting an initial profile of your ideal customer.

You will also be able to improve your products accordingly. Luckily social channels such as Facebook and Instagram actively provide businesses the data of their followers.

2. Demographics Through Public Profiles

Basic demographics is just the start. If we dive deeper, behind every age, name, and a residence is a person with his/her unique personality traits, choice, desires, etc.

Aligning your brand with the interest and choices of your consumers or vice versa can help your small eCommerce business go a long way.

E.g brands like coke or mountain dew brand themselves mostly according to youth as their major consumers are youngsters( teenagers to people in mid-thirties)

To gather this type of info, grab an appropriate sample size from your followers and study their public posts.

You will find people who like memes, some are enthusiastic gamers, artists, bookworms, shoppers, mommies, and daddies, etc. e.g if most of your followers are into memes, integrate those in your marketing, and voila, sales will go up.

3. Through Online Reviews

One of the vital reasons data is collected apart from improving service is brand perception. Brand perception is knowing how a consumer views your brand, are you a luxury brand that the rich love or are you an average brand according to the masses.

This information helps you focus your efforts on the larger chunk of your audience. e.g if Nike started pitching to really old people instead of focusing on a younger audience who loves to gym/sport, they will be wasting useful resources.

Moreover, if you need to try out a new product, testing it out with your loyal consumers is a good place to start.

Your brand perception can be found out by the comments, likes, and reviews people leave on your socials. They could be categorized as good, bad, and neutral. This gives you the idea of how people perceive your brand.

It’s a great marketing opportunity, you could give your brand-loyal customers special gifts,

4. Learn About Buying Drivers Through Social Media Groups

Knowing why a consumer buys your product is a win-win for both of you, the brand and the consumer.

As a brand having a firm idea of why your product sells e.g. quality, quantity, price or customer service, etc gives a great point to start replicating the same practice throughout your products, ultimately leading to increased sales.

There are several Facebook/quora groups where consumers discuss the brands that they like. E.g. groups for mothers, groups for young women/men, groups for food reviews, etc.

You could lurk around those groups to get a general idea of what drives your customers to buy from you, what is the general chit chat related to your brand etc.

You could post in these groups as anonymous and gain plenty of insight on where you could improve. Moreover, if you have your own group, Facebook provides detailed group analytics which is also helpful in driving engagement on your socials.

5. Through Localizing Strategies

When in Rome do as the Romans do, it’s a famous saying which applies perfectly to the eCommerce market.

It’s easier for global brands to market as their sales are not dependent on one local market and they are often the ones driving the brand perception. However, smaller brands, have to mold their strategies according to their customers.

Having local data where your businesses sell the most is a huge advantage over competitors in the market.

When targeting a specific area, it goes without saying to localize your marketing strategy according to the local people living there.

Be it in the form of a favorite movie, an urban legend, or a famous dessert, localized strategies always work 10 times more than generally targeted ones.

Conclusion

Whether you make use of consumers’ public profiles, your ratings, or use social listening tools, the data mentioned above is instrumental to creating your ideal customer profile and reaching out to them through different channels.

Not only this but it will also help you make your marketing strategies more focused on the right kind of target audience. We hope these help you, let us know what strategies have helped your small business accelerate its growth.

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