It’s no secret that good market research is key to any successful business strategy. What is less well known by small business owners is the sheer volume of data available – and the many ways this can be collected and analyzed to provide valuable insights for their businesses.
Whether you sell directly to individuals or other businesses, knowing your customers' needs is essential for your business's success. Understanding your customers allows you to tailor your offers based on their needs and generate new leads and sales through positive online reviews or word-of-mouth recommendations.
Due to digital technology, the data available about your customers these days are at your fingertips, ready to be collected online. All you need to do is use the right tools to access that data.
While there are plenty of tools available to purchase, as a small business owner with a small budget allocated to marketing, you may want to try some effective but inexpensive (or free!) tools that will help you better understand your customer profile.
For instance, Google Analytics, GoogleAds Audience Insights, and Google Trends are free-to-use tools (provided by Google) that give valuable insights about your customers. These awesome feats also show you how your customers interact with your brand or tell you what are their favourite terms and topics they search for in the search engine over time.
Let’s discuss each tool to understand how you can collect and use the data available:
1. Google Analytics provides a wide range of insightful data about your website visits.
For example, you could find out how long people spend on your website, what are their favourite contents on your website, where did they find your site before landing on a web page, etc.
You can also go to Audiences>Geo>Location to see where your site visitors come from geographically.
By going to Audiences> User explorer > Client ID, you can learn more about individual users visiting your site.
For example, you can find out here:
When was the first time they have visited your site (acquisition date);
Where they were coming from (source/medium);
What type of device they use to visit your site (device category);
When was the last time they visited your website (date last seen)
These findings give you a good idea about your customer profile. Go ahead and use them in your social media strategy, or target similar audiences with your Facebook/Instagram Ads or Google Ads.
2. If you use Google Ads to promote your business on Google, you may want to leverage Google Ads Audience insights to reach customers willing to convert.
Like Google Analytics, this feature reveals information about your website visitors; and provides insights regarding their demographics, locations, devices, and interests. To collect even more data about your customer profile, connect AdWords and Analytics accounts. This way, AdWords will use Analytics data and build a better picture of the interests and traits of your website visitors automatically.
Google Ads Audience complements Analytics as it helps you discover more data and insights about your customer profile. For example, you can use it to discover new customers based on their readiness to purchase (in-market audiences) - individuals actively researching products and considering buying. And find out more granular information related to users' lifestyles, habits, and interests (affinity audiences).
Evidently, your digital advertisements will be more effective knowing all this. The more you understand each customer segment, the better you can tailor your ads and advertising strategy around that particular market segment.
3. Google Trends is a practical online tool as it provides insights on the volume of traffic for search terms and topics that could reveal new opportunities for your business. It also provides insights on the times of the year when those search terms are at their highest or lowest.
For example, let's say you are a small business owner selling flooring products. Using Google Trends, you can find out which products people are looking for online these days to know which type of product will sell faster.
Using Google Trends data, we can find out that people are more interested in laminate flooring (blue) and less in hardwood (red).
It is also good for your business to align your digital marketing strategy with the market demands and update the website to reflect customers' interests in that particular product.
So, all three Google tools - Analytics, Audience Insights, and Trends - paint an accurate customer profile for your business. You can use them with confidence that you will make more informed decisions regarding your offers, products, or services. However, if you want more in-depth and specific insights on, let's say, your target gender, then you could try using a tool like Facebook Insights which is also free to use (or other social media listening tools that are paid).
Conclusion.
Each of these three Google tools offers different, but complementary data about your customer. Collectively, they can give you a more well-rounded view about what makes your customers tick. Armed with this valuable information, you can then begin to target them with more effective and relevant content and marketing campaigns which will make your business more successful.
If you need help collecting and interpreting customer data, visit our website to learn what we can do for your business.