Marketing Secret Series, Episode #2: Unlocking the Power of Customer Insights to Boost Demand Generation
By Collin Dayley
A crucial aspect of building an effective demand generation program is to base it on meaningful customer insights.
According to Merriam Webster, an insight is "the power or act of seeing into a situation: penetration." In other words, it is the ability to perceive the true nature of a situation, to see beyond the surface level and understand what is really going on.
To build a demand generation program around a meaningful customer insight, it's essential to truly understand your customers. This requires asking questions about what is most important in their lives, what they care about, what they are afraid of, how they see the world, how they want to be seen by others, who they admire and why, who they hate and why, how they make decisions, how they have fun, and how they deal with stress and disappointment.
Here are three ways to find and extract insights from customer data, behaviors, and interactions:
Talk to Your Customers: Engage with your customers one-on-one, either in person or through a zoom/phone call. Ask them why they buy from you, talk to them about their lives, and get to know them. It doesn't take many of these interactions to start to see similarities and themes that can be translated into insights for your business.
Review Your Customer Service Data: Listen in to customer service calls, review verbatims and direct customer feedback. Analyze the reasons why customers complain or return your product. It’s possible, you've missed an unspoken expectation. And that may be a critical insight you can use to improve your demand generation and sales conversions.
Implement A/B testing strategies: Use A/B testing to test your initial findings and let the market and your customers tell you what resonates with them. For example, you may want to test one version of copy that emphasizes how your solution saves money and time. While simultaneously testing copy that emphasizes how your solution delivers personal prestige and recognition. A test like this can help surface deeper customer insights and will enable you to continue differentiating your brand in the mind of the customer.
Why is building your demand generation around a key customer insight important? Because one solid insight can revolutionize your business and disrupt an entire industry.
Consider the case of Warby Parker. Their insight was that their customers thought of eyewear as a fashion statement…but hated the high prices and limited selection they found at their local optometrist…or the boring and low quality selection they found at the mall. That insight enabled the Warby Parker team to create a totally new online-first shopping experience that allowed their customers to express their fashion sense, without breaking the bank.
This and countless examples prove that building your demand generation program around customer insights is critical if you want to differentiate your company and compete. The process requires effort and time. But the payoff will more than make up for the investment.
By gaining and applying meaningful insights to your marketing and sales programs, you'll ensure your customers "feel" the connection and recognize your company as the solution they are looking for.
Conduit Partners has developed tools to help you gain the deep customer understanding you need. If you’re interested in learning more, click here to schedule a quick discovery call.
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About the Author: Collin Dayley is a Founding Partner at Conduit Partners and a lifelong marketing and sales practitioner. He honed his craft through 30-years working in agencies and for clients including, McCann Erickson, J. Walter Thompson, Wunderman, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Apple, Centerpoint Energy, and many more.