What Do You Know About Your Customers?

Apart from your initial market research, it’s essential that you continuously collect customer information every chance you get. In any business, as such info is a gold mine.

These days, having excellent customer service is a great way to stand out from your competition. It’s the secret to repeat business, which can skyrocket your profit, and what better way to achieve this than to know what your customers really need?

There are certainly a lot of benefits that should convince you to take learning more about your customers more seriously, so you’ll start collecting data on your customers every chance you get.

The 4 Major Benefits of Customer Information

Enhance the Value of Your Customers

It’s natural for every business to want to maximize or enhance the value of every customer. This means that you’re able to get more from them than just a one-time deal.

When you have their emails, for instance, you can send follow-up messages and provide special promos. This pushes them to keep going back to you. You can even segregate the first-time buyers from the frequent customers, hence modifying your emails accordingly. This shows you that information on their purchases and buying patterns is also crucial.

Cross-selling and upselling may also be done more efficiently if you have collected info on your customers’ preferences, interests, and past purchases.

Let’s say a certain group of women bought leather handbags from your website. Perhaps now you can offer them to buy your leather cleaning solution. Or maybe you know that many of your customers are moms, so this gives you the idea to come up with child-friendly travel bags.

The examples given above tell you that you can most certainly enhance the value of the customers you already have.

Encourage Customer Loyalty

You must remember that in order for your business to flourish, repeat business is necessary.

Don’t just seek out visitors, learn how to turn them into actual buyers.

Don’t be contented with one-time customers, but instead encourage them to become loyal.

Don’t just focus on new customers, but also make sure to take good care of your existing ones so that they’ll be transformed into your raving fans. After all, a loyal clientele will get you plenty of referrals that you can add to your database of new customers.

For example, if you know where they live or what their daily schedule looks like, you can actually customize your offers and personalize communications with them. This will make a huge difference on how you reach out and how they respond to you.

In collecting customer information regularly, you can improve your customer relationships and therefore develop loyalty in the process.  You may want to consider a loyalty program, but if you are smaller and just starting out, you don’t necessarily need a loyalty program built into your website – there is still a lot you can do!

Maximize Your Revenue

A lot of studies prove that it’s much cheaper and less time-consuming to retain existing customers and encourage them to do business with you again rather than generating fresh prospects and trying to convert these people into customers.

If you shift your focus and budget to collecting the info of your current customers and working on those to encourage them to avail more of your services or buy more products from you, then you’ll be able to maximize your revenue.

What’s more, understanding the needs of your customers can help you identify which other problems you can give a solution to so they will just get that same product/service from you instead of turning to other providers.

Let’s say you provide email automation services, but you know that your customers also need webinar software and a publishing platform for e-books. Thus, you also develop these additional services and offer them to your existing clients. If they are happy with your email service, they are likely to try your other services too. And if you give them a good package, all the more that you’ll win their added business.

This is just one of the many ways you can maximize your revenue with relevant customer information.

Save More Money

Not only will you boost your overall profit with customer information, but it can actually help you save more money.

How? Well, there are several ways…

There are your media campaigns, for instance. You spend tons on social media ads, email marketing, e-book marketing, and a whole lot more. Sometimes, these campaigns aren’t even targeted well. You may not be triggering emotions or factors that make customers want to buy from you.

However, with the right information, you can do these campaigns and promotions more efficiently and cost-effectively. When you’re able to tailor them better, the response will be more positive.

For instance, you can time your social posts so the schedule will coincide with your customers’ free time or when they actually say they go online and check their social media accounts.

What if you know their localities? Then you can probably check out events and activities there that you can integrate with your offers or posts.

Such things will enable you to avoid trial-and-error campaigns and communications that cause money to leak out of your pocket. Instead, with the power of customer information, you can save more of your funds.

Different Ideas on Collecting Customer Information

Now that you are aware of the wonderful benefits of collecting data from your customers, the next question is: How do you actually gather the information?

It’s common to get basic info from your customers such as names and email addresses before they make a purchase. But if you want more information, you can ask them to complete surveys in exchange of a freebie or discount. Live chats are also a great way to gather the data because these go beyond the standard details.

It is a must to monitor your social media channels. Through the likes, comments, and messages, you can have a better idea on not just demographics but also feedback and concerns.

You may also want to create an online community such as a Facebook group. Some businesses also make use of forums to gather info. In addition, these ideas will help you develop a better relationship with your customers.

Other ways to collect information online include checking hashtags that mention you, offering the use of a mobile app and getting feedback from there too, using polls, and asking questions after order confirmation.

So what are you waiting for? Work on finding new ways to collect data on your customers!

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