Consumer insights are data that provide valuable clues to what customers enjoy and aspire to. These insights give a clear picture of who your ideal customer is, what they do with their time, and what kind of products they are looking for.
Insights are derived from analyzed data and provide a fresh perspective into customer motivations and behaviors. The effective use of data and insights increase brand awareness, builds a stronger connection with customers, and generate innovative concepts for updating products.
How do Brands Gather Consumer Insights Data?
Data is the raw material for creating consumer insights. The first step is to identify what kind of data provides the most value, then capture the data and analyze and interpret it to provide value for your company or brand. There are many useful sources for data, including surveys and focus groups.
These are commonly referred to as traditional data sources. Alternative data sources are mainly acquired by scraping data from user-generated content on eCommerce marketplaces, forums, etc. (a good example is online reviews and social media posts).
Why Consumer Insights Are Important
No company wants to be in the dark about what their customers want or how they feel. Capturing candid opinions about your company is marketing gold. Understanding how consumers feel about your brand and product is not just recommended but essential. A few comments or reviews here and there are not enough, but a comprehensive and thorough data sample is genuinely needed to have a finger on consumer sentiment pulse.
Analyzing information from a consumer insights platform can guide solving problems before they rage out of control. Finding a negative review can be a kind of a blessing because you have the opportunity to interact with the customer and use their feedback to improve your product, thus winning over this individual customer and many more.
Showing that your brand communicates, responds, and implements feedback from customers makes an impression that will be noticed. Customer service is an essential driver of conversions and customer loyalty. Your response to your customers will inspire them to respond by buying your products.
Innovation does just happen within the confines of a company. Input from consumers is essential for refining a product so it suits their needs. With a highly competitive market, shoppers have a wide selection and will pay more attention to companies that pay attention to them by designing products with them in mind.
The following are ways to gather essential data for creating consumer insights.
- Customer Surveys
Surveys are a tried-and-true method of collecting information about customer preferences, likes, and dislikes. You can provide short surveys by text, emails, or spontaneously through a pop-up at the point of sale. Surveys can be used to rate everything from satisfaction with products to customer service and involve filling in numbers of stars or typing in answers.
Surveys are an inexpensive and scalable method of collecting data for consumer insights. One challenge may be encouraging people to fill them out. Provide incentives, like a prize drawn at random or a voucher towards future purchases. Offering a coupon at the point of sale after completing a short survey following purchase can encourage the customer to make additional purchases on the spot.
- Focus Groups
Focus groups contribute in-depth information about a prospective customer’s thoughts and feelings about your company and its products. These groups usually consisted of 6 to 12 people, ideally of diverse backgrounds and a moderator. There is a discussion that may last about an hour about various topics that are related to a brand and its offerings.
You can use focus groups to explore specific problems you are trying to solve or resolve contradictory conclusions derived from other data types. However, given the small sampling, the need to provide payment or other incentives to participants, and members’ tendency to be influenced by others, focus groups should not be the sole method of gathering data. However, these groups can provide detail and nuance to the data collected elsewhere.
- Hire a Market Research Company
If you want to focus on running your business and feel it is too much effort to orchestrate all of the moving parts required to generate consumer insights, including deciding what consumer insights software to purchase. You may consider hiring a market research company.
Before making this investment, which may cost significantly more than using your strategies, take a careful look at your budget, what return will make this investment worthwhile, and your concrete goals and targets. You may be tempted to enlist a leader’s services in the industry, or you can find niche services that can be effective and save money.
- Analyzing User Generated Content
Although it may be tempting to outsource this task, a market research company may likely be using the same consumer insight tools as you would be using. Much of the essential data is publicly available, like online reviews, and can be scrapped from eCommerce marketplaces. All you need is the right tools to mine and analyze through AI and machine learning.
As consumers spend more time online, they leave more information about themselves, including their lifestyles, preferences, and attitudes. This data is widespread and waiting to be gathered, and thankfully, many AI tools can do this task inexpensively and efficiently.
Although opinions in focus groups or stars on surveys can become stable over time, as people post on Facebook or write a new review on Amazon, the information is refreshed regularly, and tools can gather this data up-to-the-minute consumer insights and strategy will always be fresh.
Conclusion
Gathering data, analyzing it, and producing accurate consumer insights with AI tools is how companies are marketing and developing their products today. Stay ahead of the game with consumer insights that will transform your brand.
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