When you’re developing a marketing strategy, it can be easy to get caught up in the data and statistics available. By now, there are entire companies dedicated to gathering big data on every type of customer and target audience. For this reason, many businesses don’t even consider spending time interviewing a single person. However, be careful about relying solely on numbers, statistics, and data. In fact, there’s valuable information to unlock by using old school research methods of interviewing real people. In fact, getting first-hand data and figuring out how exactly what makes your target audience tick may be just what you need to take your marketing strategy to the next level.
Don’t just rely on big data, research, and statistics. Get to know your customers personally.
Understanding your target demographic
Every company has their target customer. Every company has a key demographic that they would like to target. Whereas big data can help you understand your target demographic in general, big data is still an impersonal science. If you want to get into the mind of your customers, you have to get back to basics, pick up the phone, and have a conversation with an actual customer.
Getting up close and personal with your clients
Big data may tout itself as all encompassing, but there are plenty of things that you won’t learn from statistics. The most successful marketing strategy will understand that you can’t reduce your customers to numbers on a page. Therefore, every company should spend some time digging a little deeper into the minds and the personalities of their customers. Getting to know your customers is a bit like online dating.
Personalizing your brand to your best customers
When you date online, the first thing you learn about a person are the basic statistics. You find out what they look like, where they live, where they went to school, and the types of music that they like to listen to, but everything is pretty whitewashed. You’re never going to get to the core of a person from their dating profile. For instance, what you learn from a dating profile is how that person is when they’re putting their best foot forward. However, everyone understands that a profile is just barely scratching the surface of what makes that person special. To find out if this is a person that you have a long-term future with, you’re going to have to dig a little deeper and get to know the person behind the profile, beyond the statistics.
Interview the customers who love you to optimize your marketing strategy.
Interviewing the right customers
We’ve all had failed relationships, and it may be tempting to have your own High Fidelity moment where you go back to ex-partners and find out what went wrong. However, when it comes to your customers, asking why they don’t like your products isn’t going to be as productive as asking clients why they love your product. Instead of focusing on the customers that you may have lost, or those that don’t seem to respond to your marketing, find your best, most loyal customer and find out why they chose you and your company. Don’t be afraid to get up close and personal. Remember to ask the questions that you can’t answer with research and data. Data can help you figure out the who, what, when, and where, but when it comes to the “why” questions, those are the ones that you need to ask to get inside the mind of your best customer.
Once you figure out what makes your most loyal customer tick, you can hone in on those findings and use them to make your marketing strategy all the more personal and specific.
Digital marketing services
Garlic Media works with small businesses and major brands to develop a digital marketing strategy. We’ll use every angle to make sure your strategy is in line with your target demographic and your brand.
