Why Analytics is Absolutely Necessary For Effective Customer Acquisition

August 07, 2015
Aaron Polmeer

By Today’s Industry Insider

A recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting revealed that 64 percent of marketers believe that they need better data for prospecting, and 67 percent agreed that customer acquisition is more challenging than retention.

Companies recognize that acquiring a new customer can cost thousands of dollars. Therefore, to optimize their marketing spend, businesses are searching for answers within analytics to drive their customer acquisition strategies.

Data helps teams create broader and deeper customer insights. We can now intentionally track a prospect’s purchase history, product usage patterns, and social media behavior.

Understanding your customers’ needs and desires, opens new doors to personalizing brand messaging and adjusting product strategy. Taking action with data-driven approaches leads to a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

To reach and influence your target audience, you must observe their behavior online and offline. Let’s learn how this data can enhance your marketing efforts.

Unlock the Value of Analytics

During the customer acquisition stage, we want to identify trends and patterns of behavior that indicate prospect responsiveness. Companies tend to focus on customer segmentation and campaign performance measurement. However, while employees strive to create “better campaigns” on the front end, various missteps occur on the back end.

Existing organizational policies can interfere with your customers’ digital experiences. We can’t work in silos anymore. Marketing teams must know and understand sales calls. Sales representatives should learn more about production costs.

The key is to get all departmental teams interested and actively seeking solutions in every function of the company. If not, your business runs the risk of gathering inaccurate or duplicate data that will poke holes in your customer analytics plans.

The typical customer acquisition goal is to extend our reach to more people. With a well-defined digital blueprint and no data supporting it, chaos can brew within your company. You must “develop a strong internal link between improved customer experience and data-driven customer insight.”

Pinpoint opportunities at the prospecting stage and extend analytics to unlikely business functions, such as sales training or project management. Then, your team can allocate resources in the areas that will have the most impact.

Signals of Intent

As marketers, our mission is to discover our consumer’s intent‐the reason why the individual will purchase a product or service now or in the future. In search marketing, we learn about the consumer’s’ intent through his or her keywords entered into the search engine.

“Search data, captured across ecommerce, pricing comparison and product review sites, is one of the strongest signals of intent and best sources for new customer acquisition.” Simply using demographic and site level data for acquisition won’t give you the results you desire.

For instance, how do you learn about a wife wanting to purchase a wallet for her husband for their upcoming anniversary? The best way is to monitor her intent data left on the Internet.

If you attempted to only use buyer personas, you probably wouldn’t target this woman who is searching for a men’s wallet.

Turn Data Into Action

Analytics offers companies the ability to leverage data to impact their bottom lines. By connecting data to action, organizations can understand consumer behavior, anticipate future events, and gain new insights to build valuable relationships.

Know your audience. I mean really know your consumers. At the end of the day, you need to be your customer’s best friend.

People use digital channels for a myriad of purposes. For example, research studies show that online customers seeking furniture possess these three characteristics:

  • 35 percent are more likely to have a Pinterest account;
  • 61 percent compare online prices with their smartphones; and
  • Two-thirds already have a particular brand in mind.

So, if eCommerce furniture stores are not pursuing social media channels, like Pinterest, they may be leaving money on the table.

Take action by creating a distinct customer profile and drawing up a personalized strategy. As discussed above, don’t be afraid to follow the search data to find unexpected buyers.

Test Multiple Strategies

Experiment with different techniques to learn specific go-to strategies. Engage prospects with different marketing messages to track response rates. Change the headline or placement of the call-to-action button to see which version produces the best results.

Reduce risks in your testing with diversification in your acquisition marketing. For instance, together “traditional direct marketing and social networking can deliver significantly higher levels of quality traffic for low overall cost.”

This combination lets customers take advantage of your product offerings and the opportunity share them with friends, resulting in more new customers at a reduced cost. Multiple approaches will aid your company in gaining new paying clients.

Tools You Should Use

Here’s a collection of tools that can lead you on the right path to analyzing and monitoring your data. Play around with a few to find out which ones work best for your team.

1. SEO

Identifying the keywords potential customers use to find your company is important. SEO tools help make your content easily searchable, in return more visible.

Google Keyword Planner

Moz’s SEO Tools

serpIQ

2. Email Marketing

Email marketing tools assist with managing your campaigns. Send, track, and monitor your email marketing in one central location.

MailChimp

Constant Contact
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AWeber

3. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Your goal is to convert visitors into paying clients. With CRO tools, your team can learn the best messaging and design combination by analyzing A/B test results.

Unbounce

CrazyEgg

Optimizely

4. Analytics

Analytics tools track your data across multiple channels. Learn key insights on how your customers behave on your website.

Kissmetrics

Clicky

Mint

Case Studies

So, will analytics produce results for your business? Well, that depends on how your team effectively executes its plans. Here are a few companies benefiting from a little experimentation and data.

SmartWool
Apparel and sock company SmartWool needed a new, improved website to entice customers. After reorganizing their product category page, Blue Acorn designed new pages “emphasizing certain products rather than presenting them all on the same level.” The eCommerce agency also created a traditional category page design.


Source

With a simple test, Blue Acorn found that the traditional category page design brought in 17.1% more revenue per visitor. It’s a positive testimony of how CRO can help you figure out what your customers prefer.

Ghost
The team at Ghost wanted to improve their trial conversion rate. So, they experimented with their initial onboarding flow. The goal was to segment the onboarding experience that persuaded trial users to become paying Ghost(Pro) subscribers.


Source

After a few experiments, the team found that trial users “who added a custom theme to their blog converted at just over 10%.” The personalization gave users a custom space beyond the default settings.

Yesware

Source

Yesware grew its revenue by 1300% within one year. In a nutshell, their team took a person-to-person approach. Yesware simply asked folks if they were interested in trying a new app. Plus, by offering their app as a Chrome browser extension, the company got a boost from positive reviews.

Listen to this interview with Founder and CEO Matthew Bellows as he discusses how the company got their first 1,000 users.

Gain Customer Insights With Data

Apply analytics to ask questions and amp up your prospecting efforts. Integrating data in your customer acquisition strategy is critical to your brand’s long-term financial success.

Be effective. Use analytics.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, the law and social responsibility. She inspires a new breed of innovative attorneys at Hearsay Marketing. Connect with her on Twitter: @shaylaprice

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