What makes a customer choose one product or service over the others? While factors like quality and affordability play a role, the answer is deeper than that. The most prolific brands have mastered the art of customer acquisition. They’ve customized their products and services and developed a marketing and sales strategy that appeals to their target audience by leveraging customer data that evaluates their needs and behaviors.

What Is Customer Data?

Customer data is information that depicts a person’s behavioral, demographic, and personal details. Consumers provide this data by interacting with companies through their websites, social media pages, surveys, and other on and offline channels.

Types Of Customer Data

There are several types of customer data that businesses need to acquire to be successful. Here’s a brief overview:

– Personal Data – This is information that is used to identify an individual. Personal data can include their name, address, date of birth, phone number, credit card accounts, driver’s license, IP address, device IDs, and more.

– Engagement Data – This information depicts how consumers interact with a company’s website, social media page, ads, emails, and customer service platforms. Engagement data includes metrics such as page visits, most visited pages, liked or shared posts, opened emails, and customer complaints.

– Behavioral Data – This information provides businesses with insight into patterns in a customer’s buying cycle. It can tell you which products or services the customer buys most often, average purchase totals, the number of cart abandonment, customer loyalty program details, and more.

– Attitudinal Data – This information shows how customers feel about a particular brand and its products and services. Attitudinal data is generally allocated through surveys, focus groups, interviews, reviews, and complaints.

Why Data Matters?

Now that you have a better understanding of what customer data is, here are a few reasons why it matters to your business.

– Improved Customer Experience – One of the most significant reasons to collect customer data is to enhance their experience. Customers prefer to buy from brands that know them inside and out, care about them as individuals, and provide them with quality items that enhance their lives.

– Fine-Tuning – Knowing customer needs and interests can help brands fine-tune their marketing strategies, products, and services to accommodate their customers.

– Save Money – Believe it or not, data can translate to huge savings for businesses. Take marketing, for instance. By evaluating which platforms your target audience responds to most, you can weed out marketing campaigns that aren’t effective, therefore, saving money.

– Boost Sales – Likely the most attractive benefit of collecting customer data is increased sales. Essentially, when businesses can create a positive customer experience, adjust their products and services, and develop effective marketing strategies, they boost their chances of converting consumers to customers, which increases sales.

How To Collect Customer Data?

There are several ways to allocate customer data. Below is a look at some of the most successful methods.

– Website Analytics – Consumers most often interact with businesses on their websites. By using tools like DataQ, entrepreneurs can collect and analyze personal, geographic, and behavioral data input by their target audience.

– Social Media Platforms – Entrepreneurs can learn a lot by evaluating social interactions. You can assess likes, shares, and comments, post surveys and ads, review complaints, answer questions and review consumer content through regular social media monitoring.

– Contact Forms – Acquiring personal information from potential customers is as simple as utilizing contact forms. Those interested in learning more about your brand will provide the necessary details to personalize customer experiences.

– Focus Groups – If you want to know how your target audience feels about your products or services, host a focus group. This is a small group of your ideal customers that come together to discuss their opinion, ask questions, and voice their concerns about your brand.

You can have an excellent product or service to offer, but if you don’t know anything about the people you’re selling it to, your business won’t go far. Essentially, customer data is invaluable to the success of your business. As such, entrepreneurs are encouraged to use the avenues listed above to further improve their brand, customer experience, and sales.