Are you interested in using big data to gather audience insights? If so, you’re not alone. Business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers understand the importance of learning about their visitors’ goals and pain points through data.
The more you know about the people landing on your website, the better chance you have at turning first-time visitors into email subscribers and, eventually, customers. When used correctly, these insights can help you create content, offers, and products that match the needs of your readers, which will undoubtedly lead to more conversions and engagement.
Despite the advantages of gathering data from visitors, many brand leaders still struggle with this part of their strategy. In fact, research shows that 37% of marketers say that their lack of user data makes things like segmenting their lead list nearly impossible.
Today, I hope to help people in this position by sharing several tips you can use to start gathering data from your target audience. I’ll also provide a few examples that we’ve used through the years to grow our brands.
Are you ready? Let’s get started!
Let New Email Subscribers Self-Segment
First, let’s talk about why and how you should allow new email subscribers to self-segment.
Segmenting is the process of dividing your leads into smaller sub-groups based on their unique goals or interests. For instance, a marketing firm would likely have a segmented list for people specifically interested in social media marketing. Similarly, this company would likely have lists for people interested in other types of marketing.
When you give visitors the option to self-segment, you’ll passively generate user data and organize your email list at the same time. This information will help you create personalized drip campaigns, which you can use to keep new and existing subscribers engaged with your brand. On average, companies that use segmentation data to personalize email subject lines saw their open rates jump by 26%!
Now that you know how this strategy can help let’s talk about convincing users to self-segment. We’ve had success including optional questions on our email signup form. Many email forms have two fields, one for the name of the user and one for their email address. We include a third, optional question when we want our audience to self-segment.
Your optional question will vary based on your industry and how you hope to segment your audience. For instance, the marketing firm we mentioned earlier might ask, “where are your biggest marketing pain points?” Based on what that user picks, the business can customize future emails and make them more personal and relevant.
Create Targeted Surveys on Your Site
On-site questionnaires are another excellent way to gather valuable customer data. People are more than happy to share their thoughts if you’re willing to ask. You can learn a lot about your readers and how they perceive your brand when you create targeted surveys that appeal to your various segments.
The questions you choose to ask will vary based on your personal marketing goals and industry. For instance, if your goal is to research a new product for your online store, you may want to ask your existing customers about their industry-specific pain points. This data can help you figure out what your audience needs but doesn’t have yet.
I recommend creating multiple surveys and placing them strategically on your site. We often add relevant surveys to our blog posts so we can learn why visitors decided to click a specific blog post. The thing is, you don’t want to open with a form. You can ask users for their feedback with a time-sensitive popup or by including your questionnaire at the bottom of the article.
The thing I like the most about surveys is they are helpful tools, regardless of how long you’ve been in business. People who just built their site and companies that have been in operation for a decade can benefit from targeted surveys.
Use Social Listening Tools
Social media has quickly become one of the best ways to gather audience insights and improve your business in real-time. It‘s not hard to see why this is the case. Over 4.55 billion people use sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, so it’s packed with data for business leaders and marketing teams across all industries.
Social listening is an excellent way to keep your finger on the metaphorical pulse of your audience. Simply put, social listening is when businesses observe mentions and conversations taking place online that are centered around their brand.
The thing is, with so many people using social media, it’s hard for marketing teams to put what their customers are saying into perspective. However, there’s good news. Many businesses are turning to artificial intelligence for social listening, which saves time, money, and resources. Once the data is compiled, a social media marketing team can analyze the organized information and assess how the community sees your brand.
There’s no question that AI is the way to go for social listening. You can create wide and narrow parameters that make it easy to discover what people are saying. For example, you could train your AI program to look for direct mentions of your brand as well as conversations around specific features of your product or service.
You will need to carefully review and adjust the AI-powered reports when you start out, but it’s worth it. As your social listening program learns from your feedback, it will make smarter decisions when organizing and listing data from social media.
Leverage the Power of Chatbots
Chatbots are a great place to start if you’re looking for a way to use your customer support channels to learn about your visitors. You can use chatbots to connect with your audience, answer their questions, and build rapport, regardless of whether the user is a first-time visitor or an existing customer.
Not only will this help you compile invaluable information, but it can also dramatically improve how satisfied people are with your business. Chatbots can answer common questions, provide resources, and even ask users for targeted feedback. All of this data can help you shape your marketing strategy, as well as how you engage with your audience.
For instance, we noticed a surge in requests for growing lead lists through our chatbot program. We concluded that many people were discovering our site for the first time and wanted to see if we had advice for them.
In response to this news, we announced a live webinar where our focus was teaching new business owners how to grow their lead list from zero. When someone engaged with our bot and mentioned that they needed help with this issue, we trained our bot to provide resources from our blog and offer an event invitation to our webinar. A significant portion of our signups came directly from a chatbot conversation, so we knew this strategy was a success.
If you’re wondering how consumers feel about engaging with chatbots, consider this; research shows that 60% of online shoppers say they’ve used a chatbot to answer their questions in the past 12 months. I see that number increasing as more businesses opt for a hybrid customer support approach that uses chatbots and live agents.
Back to You
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to gather actionable data from your target audience. The tips presented today can all help you learn about the people visiting your site, regardless of whether they are first-time visitors or loyal customers.
I suggest analyzing your feedback and big data strategy at least once a quarter. There are always opportunities for improvement, and you’re bound to learn tips and tricks along the way based on your experiences and interactions.
