When you write a marketing plan, one of the first things they tell you to do is to make a customer profile.
Formulating What the Behavior of an Ideal Customer Might Look Like.
The experts tell you to construct a description of what the customer you are selling to acts like in terms that what he or she might buy. The question is, how do you describe this customer? The answer is, you describe him or her in terms of behaviors and preferences you expect to see. Then you target your marketing and advertising to interest people having that profile. It’s elementary marketing in this day and age.
Making Multiple Customer Profiles.
You can take a “shotgun” approach and put out your marketing to interest those who fit the customer profile and hope all of the right people see it. This is the basic old-fashioned marketing approach. But today’s online and offline customer metrics potentials allow you to extend the power of your marketing reach by individualizing your marketing to suit people with different customer profiles. You do that by taking an active rather than passive approach to marketing profiles. That means, you assess the buying profile of potential customers first then find products that match each profile and you target each customer profile with marketing especially formulated to them. This could greatly amplify your potential customer base from one customer profile that you target to thousands. Each potential customer can have his or her own customer profile which you can specifically target with your personalized products or services. In marketing terms, you can segment your market.
Behavioral Data Collection.
The power of modern large-scale cloud server systems allows you to collect and save data on the buying habits, brand preferences, product usage loyalty the interests, economic status, and hundreds or thousands of other data points on millions of people in the marketplace. This is behavioral data that helps you make marketing images of individual prospective customers. These pieces of data typically come from measurements of online buying behavior. However, brick and mortar store behavioral metrics are also increasingly available.
The data is collected by internet service providers and others and is available, sometimes for free and sometimes on a contract basis. Businesses that sell and market things (especially online) are awash in data and have been collecting, storing, and making use of measurements of behavior collected on their websites and other sources.
There are three fundamental ways of collecting behavioral data.
- By directly asking customers in surveys.
- By indirect tracking of customers
- By appending other sources of customer data to your own.
Companies capture data in many ways from many sources to add to individual consumer records. Some data collection methods are highly technical in nature and others are more deductive, usually making use of sophisticated software. Businesses are increasingly adept at pulling data from nearly every marketing nook and cranny.
Making Individual Customer Profiles.
The use of behavioral data allows the marketer to make individual profiles of potential customers to segment their marketing down to the individual level. This enables the marketer to send promotional messages in a timely way to the singular potential buyers who are likely to buy a given product at a particular time. The practice of using individual customer profiles to target marketing is called “individualization.” This style of marketing gives the impression to the consumer that he or she is specifically known (individualized) by the company. It brings back the best of the old village Main Street shopping economy which can greatly enhance customer relations.
Companies like Netflix are always trying to interest customers to make selections based on what their analysis sees as what the customer likes from past performance. Past purchases and buying habits help companies like Amazon determine what advertising or offers are sent to which individual prospective customers.
M1 Data & Analytics enables you to target and connect with your most responsive customer. Whether you are a local business or Fortune 100 company, we can enable you to target and connect with your most responsive customers Please Contact us to learn more about behavioral data.
