One of the biggest challenges facing businesses today is keeping up with the
changes. If we think back a decade ago, we might remember that once upon a
time Facebook was competing with MySpace for social network traffic, Apple’s
iPhone was just released, and Amazon was a big online bookstore. We were still
shopping mostly in physical shops. In today’s crazy, busy world, consumers
often shop online and don’t have a lot of time to debate the merits of one
product over another whether it’s online or in a brick-and-mortar store. In an
age where instant gratification is the norm, consumers find their favorite
products, buy them, and move on to the next item on their to-do lists. That
doesn’t mean they are mindlessly buying things. They do, however, make
decisions fast while using their subconscious. According to Harvard professor
Gerald Zaltman, 95% of all purchasing decisions are subconscious. The way to
get potential customers to select your product or services is to craft a
positive impression that engages them on a subconscious level. To accomplish
this, you need to discern what images or stories will produce positive
associations in their minds with your brand. When people see your brand, how
do they feel about it? What thoughts, experiences, and emotions come to their
minds? How do customers make their buying decisions? What influences those
decisions? The actions a customer takes before, during, and after purchasing a
product or service define consumer behavior. The behaviors are formed by many
factors including emotional, psychological, and social engagement that have an
impact on the purchasing decisions of people. Yes, there’s a lot of data and
studies out there. Every business is different, however, so relying on third-
party data can only take you so far. It’s important to do your own research on
what drives the buying decisions of customers in your particular arena. The
following strategies and tools can be used to track and study the behavior of
your consumers. Larger retailers like Amazon display reviews so prominently
because many consumers won’t buy a product these days until they’ve read
online reviews about it. However, reviews do far more than provide third-party
perspective for consumers. Good reviews can be included in a company’s online
marketing campaign. Reviews can also help companies better understand what
their customers are looking for. If they see a common complaint about a given
product, they can use that information to fix the problem, thereby increasing
customer loyalty to their brand and stepping ahead of their competition.
Consistent comments and patterns within reviews, including those of your
competition, can help you learn a lot about your audience. Google Analytics
offers up a wealth of information. It can provide demographics about your
audience and tell you which posts and pages on your website drew their
attention. You can learn where your traffic is coming from, your bounce rate,
and so much more. The data can be used to help you prioritize your online
marketing efforts. By making certain adjustments after analyzing this data,
you can grow your audience and boost your conversion rate. Keywords are useful
and flexible tools. We stand to learn so much about people’s buying habits
from knowing what they search for. Using tools like Google’s Keyword Planner,
Ubersuggest, and other keyword tools let you enter any keyword and discover
its search volume, how much it costs on pay per click (PPC) advertising,
related keywords, and competition levels. Learning new common keywords that
are associated with your niche and their value can significantly boost your
marketing efforts and your search engine optimization (SEO). Another great
place to search for patterns when gathering data about your audience’s
behavior are Q&A; sites like Quora and Yahoo! Answers. Questions about
products and services are answered on a very regular basis there. You can
search by specific brand and then expand your search...