The Importance of Consumer Insights in Online Marketing

How are consumer insights changing the modern marketing landscape?

There are multiple advantages of creating a customer-led online marketing campaign. Customer behavior and insights can help you to shape your marketing strategies, get a realistic estimate of returns that you can expect from your campaigns or how well a campaign is being received.

A campaign for, of, and by the consumers is the best way forward because ultimately it is they who would decide the fate of your business. There was a time when mass media was used as a communication tool that would “patronize” the “patrons” themselves.

Not so long ago, when consumer insights were not easily available and market surveys were expensive and time-consuming, companies would tell their audience what their need is and why a particular choice fits that need.

However, due to the rise of social media, customer behavior has gone through a vast transformation and they would no longer tolerate such a condescending attitude. They want to identify their own needs and want companies to create products that satisfy those needs. They also have tools that help them to easily analyze or compare products, prices and features. They want to be the judge. In such a context, influencer marketing has become very important because influencers are seen to provide objective views about a product and hence their judgments and critiques are respected and trusted.

Consumer insights are important because it allows a company to identify the right target market, identify the mood and expectations and create a product that addresses concerns of the market.  Ethnographers and anthropologists also tell the marketing team how to tune a message-language, references, expressions, etc. as per the social and cultural context. The message has to change along with the social context to make a product appealing to a particular target group.

Importance of personalized online marketing

Simple demographic or psychographic differences don’t work effectively anymore. The nature of the market has changed over the years and the rise of online marketing has created an opportunity for one-to- one communication. Today, a marketer doesn’t have to club together a large demographic group and assume that everyone within that bracket has the exact same needs.  Rise of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other social media platforms allow marketers to seek information directly from the customers themselves and shape their message and offering in a bespoke, personalized manner that better solves their problems.

Customer insights also help to create a brand identity that syncs with an ever dynamic target group. Customer touchpoints will also vary as per the nature and expectations of extremely small and discrete groups. The messages, offerings and products from Amazon or KFC in China would be vastly different from what it will be in the U.S. or Canada. Preferences in more compact geographic areas or particular income groups can also vary and gaining proper customer insights helps companies to get the right perspective.

Don’t underestimate the power of consumer insights. Those companies that have made this mistake are also the ones that have failed to change with the change of times and have become irrelevant. Consumer insights will keep you relevant and stay in line with your consumer expectations that in turn will increase conversion, increase retention and lead to better conversion and sale.

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