[00:04] Speaker #1: This Is Totally Hyped a marketing podcast for today’s SMB leaders.
[00:12] Cale Guin: Let’s face it, marketing is one of the most important functions of your business. You’re a business leader. So this podcast won’t waste your time on marketing buzzwords or overhyped tactics. Instead, we’ll focus on topics like optimizing roi, building brand equity, and increasing sales and market share.
[00:28] Speaker #1: Totally Hyped is brought to you by Pure Marketing Consult, the most cost effective way to get the results you want.
[00:35] Cale Guin: On this episode, we’ll dive into one of the toughest marketing disciplines to get a handle on customer behavior. While it’s tough to wrangle in customer behaviors with their inherent fickleness and changing technologies, when you do get it right, it’s the key that unlocks a lot of marketing successes. We’ll cover the whys and the hows of conquering customer behavior, all on this episode of Totally Hyped.
[00:59] Speaker #1: This Is Totally Hyped with your host, Kale Gwyn.
[1:07] Cale Guin: Ah, the ever shifting sands of customer behavior. Trying to keep up can feel like building a sand castle and on a windy beach with dry sand, of course. But for small and medium sized businesses, understanding these changes and the ever shifting changes that are customer behaviors is essential for survival.
And it’s the primary path, or one of the primary paths to immense success. Customer behavior analysis provides the insights you need to stay ahead of the curve and thrive in today’s uber dynamic market. Right.
Like it’s just always changing new technologies, the way people do things, the way people perceive things. There’s, there’s kind of a lot to consider. Today’s episode. This guide will explore why staying in sync with evolving customer behavior is critical to how you can adapt for success.
So why is customer analysis so important? Well, why it matters is it’s your key to staying relevant. Customer behavior has evolved due to all kinds of different factors.
Technological advances, cultural trends, economic shifts, and just not only global events, but just personal events. You know, over time, people just perceive things differently. They learn, they adapt, they’re adapting all the time. And then therefore, you need to adapt to whatever they’re adapting to.
And you need to know that they’re changing and that all of these factors are weighing in on how they want to engage with you. Consumer or customer behavior analysis helps you stay informed about these changes to ensure that your products and services and your marketing all remain relevant. It helps you gain a competitive edge.
Knowledge of changing consumer behaviors is like having a crystal ball. You get insights to what your customers might need tomorrow by Understanding and anticipating shifts. Through customer behavior analysis, you can adjust your strategies before your competitors do. That creates a significant advantage if you’re out in front of them.
When something is changing or as something is changing, when you’re always on top of it, things seem smoother and you don’t feel like you’re playing catch up as much. It improves your customer experience. Your customer centric businesses are winning businesses. By understanding what motivates your audience through customer behavior analysis, you can create more personalized, engaging experiences. Whether it’s through tailored recommendations, seamless online shopping, or standout customer support.
What is it that they want? How is it that they perceive these things? You can optimize all your marketing efforts. Your budgets are often tight because you’re small.
You got to make every dollar count. Customer behavior analysis helps you sharpen your focus. You’re going to reach the exact right people with the exact right message at the exact right time.
That’s been a saying of mine for probably a decade. That’s the goal. Reach the exact right people with the exact right message at the exact right time.
What is that message? Who are the people even and what is the time? I would also, I would also throw in in the exact right place.
We’ll just kind of couple that in with the time though. Customer behavior analysis is going to help you drive business growth. When you can adapt to changing customer needs.
The result is sustainable growth. It’s not catch up. It’s not, we’re up because we finally get it and then we’re down because we didn’t get the next thing and then we’re up because we finally got the next thing and then we’re down.
In fact, your ops are never going to be as high as they should be. And your lows are probably going to be lower than you’d want them to be or that they, that they should be. So the first thing we’re going to talk about is identifying your ideal customer.
Because it’s one thing to just say, these are my customers, or I understand who my customers are, or my customers are anybody who wants to buy my product or service. But identifying your ideal customers, like throwing a party where everyone in town is invited.
It’s kind of the difference between this. It’s sort of like if you don’t understand your customers, it’s like throwing a party where everybody in town is invited, from toddlers to retirees, and you have no specific theme. And the result of that is kind of chaos. That’s kind of what you’re doing right now. Anybody will Buy my product or service is my audience.
It’s chaos, it’s disorganized. But when you identify your ideal customer, it’s like picking a theme and then understanding exactly who’s coming to your party and making sure that just the right people for that theme, that’s who’s showing up, everything aligns. But I want everybody at my party. Do you?
I, I, I don’t. That’s not, that never ends well. So how do you identify who your ideal customer really is? It’s, first of all, it’s crucial. It helps you speak their language so your messages are tailored to them.
Specifically. You’re going to find your tribe. These are the people who want to do business with you. And then you’re going to make connections, you’re going to understand what their pain points are. You going to be able to position your offering to match those pain points.
You can avoid wasting money on marketing to those people who aren’t interested. TV used to be kind of bad at that, right? Like you’d buy a package and you’d want it to focus on these things. But sometimes you’re going to get ads. That radio did the same thing.
Sometimes you’re going to get ads that are going to run over here too, or at this time or what have you. You’re going to boost your return on investment. Targeted marketing increases conversions and sales with less effort. So how do we do this?
How do we identify this ideal customer, this magical unicorn of a human being? Now, first you’re going to analyze your existing customers. So in order to be able to do that, you got to grab data from every resource that you have. Your email contact list, your CRM, your point of sale system, your email platforms, your social media analytics. You’re going to grab all those people, put them in a giant list and you’re going to segment them. How do you do that?
You can segment them by purchase history, demographics, engagement levels, things that you know, whatever it is that you know, male, female, whatever it is that you know, you’re going to segment them. And if you don’t know enough, your goal down the road as you go is to be able to learn more about them, ask them certain questions at certain times, get information when they’re filling out the form to communicate with you or to transact with you.
Just ask them one or two extra little questions that are so simple but give you valuable insight.
Conduct surveys with people you already do business with. Make sure you’re staying on top of your reviews and your ratings that are online.
Next is to Understand your product or service, list the features and the benefits, and I’m going to tell you right now that you’re going to be selling the benefits, not the features. That’s a constant struggle when work. When I’m consulting with a client. I know this thing has this amazing feature, but what good is that feature? It doesn’t matter that it’s the X2000 feature.
It matters that the X2000 feature solves this problem. And you really got to get into what problems are your product solving and then you craft a compelling value proposition. Here’s why I’m unique, here’s why you want to do business with me. Here’s why I’m your first choice for whatever this is. Research your competitors.
Who are they targeting? What are they mark or what are their marketing strategies? I warn against this a lot, by the way, but in the effort to differentiate your offerings, you have to research your competitors. What is everybody else doing?
Where do I fit? How can I be different? That can only be answered by researching your competitors. Where I warn against researching your competitors is there is a tendency, especially among small and medium sized businesses, to do what they do to be an also ran, oh, they’re running a big sale, we need to run a big sale. They’re doing this, we need to do that.
By the way, you don’t know that what they’re doing is working. You’re just looking at them as the grass is greener on the other side. What you’re really doing is looking at them for how are you different? What can you do that matters more to some group of people? That’s why you want to research your competitors.
Do not do what they do just because they are doing it. Telling you right now, you are going to hit more brick walls and spend more money doing that. And never, you’re never going to get anywhere. They’re always going, I’m going to tell you right now, if you do that, they will always, always, always be better than you. Always.
Now you might see him doing something and that might spark something for you to say, oh, they’re doing that. One of the great things, there’s a great commercial years ago about advertising and how simple advertising could be. It might have even been something for like Kinkos or something. But there was a guy who’s a barber and he has all this business, he’s been in the town, you can just tell by the way they present the commercial that he’s been in town forever.
He’s everybody’s go to barber and suddenly a big chain Comes in, you know, nine dollar haircuts. And he’s like, I can’t compete with $9 haircuts. And he’s kind of scratching his head a little bit and he runs down to Kenko’s and he gets a big sign and his sign says, we fix nine dollar haircuts. This is friggin awesome.
That’s exactly what this is. That’s why you research your competitors not to feel like, oh my gosh, they’ve done this thing, I’m behind, I need to do that thing too. Don’t do that, don’t, don’t, don’t do that.
The next thing you gotta do in this idea of finding your ideal customer is to conduct a market research. Use online tools like Google Trends. It’s all stuff you can do on your own.
You’re looking to uncover consumer interests and what are they searching for right now that’s related to you. Conduct surveys using platforms like Survey Monkey or there’s a number of those out there. But the idea is to, you know, get your finger on the pulse.
And the other thing too is there’s a danger, especially with small businesses, I think probably in a psychological way, to avoid having to do research, we convince ourselves that we know I know my customer, I know what they’re looking for, I know what their pain points are. But it’s changing so frequently I’m just going to tell you you’re probably in the 90% range of being wrong.
Engage in social listening, monitor trends and sentiment on your social platforms. You can get software that will look for keywords and show you posts and comments on things that are relevant to what you do. This is another thing. We talk about this in other episodes.
There are articles up on PureMarketingConsultation.com talking about building buyer Personas. So basically you’re creating a detailed profile of your ideal customer, including demographics, oftentimes male, female, what their goals are, what their affinities are, what their pain points are, what their motivations to buy are. And then you start crafting your marketing to speak directly to that person.
Then you share these with your team. You make sure that everybody’s on board and everybody’s line, that they know that this is who they’re talking to.
Some of this should be based on who is your customer now. But you have to be careful that who your customer is now might not be your ideal customer. And if you don’t want to grow, then keep marketing to your existing customers, customers or trying to find more people like them. You can grow a little Bit like that. But you are looking for expanding who is already your customer and finding that pocket of who does this work for best.
Then you have to test and refine everything. Try one message and then try another message. See which one works out better. Track key metrics like website traffic, you know, any kind of engagement that you can track. And always be gathering customer feedback as often as you can.
Do not be afraid of customer feedback. Yes, there will always be unhappy people. 100% can’t please everybody. Nope, you can’t. But it’s crucial to understand where they are and get an idea of the group as a whole, not as just the one offs.
The people. The 20% that are complaining or the 20% that are raving. When people are complaining and they write bad reviews, you should be able to tell whether this is a trend or if this is this one person. You need to pay attention to the trends.
So it’s crucial to understand who this ideal customer is. Then you need to analyze why. Why do they buy sometimes? Why do they not buy? What’s the thing that prevents them from buying? Customer behavior analysis is about more than just identifying your ideal customer.
It’s about understanding why they behave the way they do, what is motivating them, their needs and their preferences and monitoring that all the time. Why are they making these purchase decisions? Why are they buying from someone else and not you? Why are they buying from you and not someone else? Website analytics can help here.
Let’s just be careful because you know, just driving traffic to a website doesn’t mean you got ideal customers or that you’ve got people who are going to buy from you. Just means that you have traffic to your website. So let’s be careful on there. Social media monitoring, tracking mentions, sentiments and engagement.
One thing I warn about here is who is your audience on your social. It’s probably mostly people you know, people you’ve already done business with. So it’s a little bit slippery there. What you’re really looking for maybe, perhaps is other people’s social media that do something similar to yours. What are they saying?
These might be people you aren’t doing business with. Customer surveys are always great. Surveys of people that are in, that fit in your pocket of demographics and people who are likely to buy from you, people who fit that ideal customer, even if, especially if they’re not your customer.
But we have to understand why this is so valuable. Yeah, and really at the end of the day all you’re trying to do is you’re trying to predict the future more so you’re trying to understand what’s going on, at least right now, probably in the future.
Anticipate those future needs and adapt. The customer behavior analysis allows you to personalize, be more engaging based on what their wants and needs are, who they are, how old they are, male, female. Craft compelling marketing messages and you’ll get more transactions, more conversions.
You can improve your products and services, mold them so that they’re more valuable, more innovative, more problem solving. And the more you’re tuned into that ideal customer, the less they’re going to leave, the more loyal they’ll be.
So when you do this, your customers are likely going to fall into one of four groups. There’s more than four groups, but we’re going to generalize here and I can’t discuss your situation specifically unless you call or email me. We can, we can talk about that. Absolutely no charge for that.
But we’ll just chat about where you’re at. But at the end of the day, you’re going to fall. Your customer is going to be a millennial, a Gen Z or Gen X or maybe a baby boomer. But they all have unique preferences right now. And unfortunately these preferences can change.
But if your customer falls in the millennials category, you’re going to want to be doing a lot of content marketing. Blog posts, videos, offer experiences through events and workshops rather than just things downloads and things like that. You’re going to engage them more likely through social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube.
You’ll notice an absence of things like Facebook and in here if your audience is a Gen Z. I think I actually have stats in here about who these people are specifically.
I might have left that part out. I did. But just look up who millennials are, then look up who Gen Zers are. That’s another group.
Excuse me. This group focuses on visual content like short term videos, Tick tock and Instagram reels. They expect authenticity. And you must, you gotta be relatable to these people, to this very specific group of people. You gotta align your brand with their social causes.
These are your sustainability people. These are your environmental and your cause related people. If your audience falls in the Gen X category, you’re going to want to leverage personalized email campaigns. Yep, email, by the way, one of the strongest platforms there is in all of marketing. Not just digital, all of marketing.
And people miss it all the time. I don’t know how this happens, but I guess it’s just not as sexy as the others as the more you know, the social media has got to be social Media has got to be, you know, people are like, don’t, don’t do radio or tv. Do podcasts or over the, over the air or I’m sorry, connected tv. And at the end of the day it’s like, I don’t know, I mean, sometimes. In fact, we’re going to talk about that in just a second.
Gen Gen Xers. Let’s just stay there. Leverage personalized email campaigns. Direct marketing works like postcards, loyalty programs and reward programs. They love that. Baby boomers.
Yeah. With baby boomers, if that is your audience, one of the biggest audiences in the world, you should be looking at more traditional marketing. Tv, radio, print.
You got to keep your messaging clear and concise, void of jargon. Emphasize excellent personal customer service for these people. That’s what they want.
That’s right. Now this is brief overviews. We could, if we want to work together, we could jump into the very details of your product and these groups and exactly who these people are and who they should be for you. But I mean, that’s just the thing.
You can’t say, I’m going to be on social media. You’ve got at least two of the biggest demographics, don’t give a shit about your social media. So if you want to leave them out, go ahead.
Vice versa, if you’re big on radio and tv, know that you’re probably not talking to two of the biggest. You’re not reaching them. Everybody’s on social media. No, they’re not. A lot of people avoid social media like the plague. To be honest with you.
I’m on social media a lot for work. I don’t do it personally at all. I don’t.
I’ll scroll through Instagram every couple of months. Never on Facebook. Scroll through LinkedIn maybe a couple times a month. Otherwise I avoid it.
You’re not going to reach me that way and that sounds awful. Sometimes I feel like I know a little too much about social media. That’s why I stay away from it.
But by the same token, it’s just not my thing, if you will, to wrap things up. Understanding and adapting to changing customer behaviors is no longer optional for you small and medium sized businesses. It’s essential, it’s crucial.
It is 100% a critical part of your marketing functionality and quite frankly, your business functionality. By knowing your ideal customer, analyzing their behaviors and tailoring your messages and strategies, you can build a brand that not only survives but thrives in a constantly changing marketplace. Stay curious, stay agile. Put somebody on this and have them report to you. If you want.
It’s that important. Let your customers guide your growth. You don’t just ram things down their throats. Not everybody can be a Steve Jobs and to say, I’m going to tell people what they want.
If you want to think like that, if you want to think that that’s the right way, your likelihood of success is going to drop by 80, 90%. Start implementing customer behavior analysis today. You gotta stay on top of it all right now. Before you go, if you would be so kind, don’t forget to subscribe to Totally Hyped. And if you’re ready to level up your content marketing, check out compel content.com if you want some help on a personal level.
Pure marketing consultation puremarketingconsultation.com, give all of them a call. These are good, solid businesses. I’m involved in some of them. But as always, feel free to reach out to me [email protected] or call 8774771452.
[28:11] Speaker #1: This has been Totally Hyped.
For more information about this episode and to find supporting resources including cited content, links, downloads and forms, go to totally hyped.com.
[28:25] Cale Guin: On the next Episode.
[28:27] Speaker #1: Hyped is brought to you by Pure Marketing Consultation, the most cost effective way to get the results you want. Learn more@PureMarketing consultation.com Sorry about that.
[28:38] Cale Guin: On the next episode of Totally Hyped, we’ll talk about how to hit the ground running in 2025.
What you should be doing now so you can improve business immediately in January. What marketing approaches will help you achieve your business New Year’s resolutions. All that coming up on the Next Episode. Until the next time, make it a good one.
