Tracking your customers is essential if you want to know more about your target audience. This knowledge can not only give you insight into the products and services your client prefers, but it also lets you develop your marketing strategy for furthering your business goals. In this article, we shall look at some of the most effective techniques that you can use for tracking customers of your small business.
What information should you track about customers?
When you are starting out with your customer tracking efforts, it can be challenging to determine what you need to measure. Since maintaining privacy of your customers is crucial, you can get insight by collecting information that indicates a customer’s purchasing behavior. You can analyze your sales information and observe what services your customers are interested in. Use your observation to develop targeted marketing campaigns.
Website metrics is also a helpful tool. With an analytics tool, you can determine what pages your customers spend most of their time on and use this information to send marketing emails. Having a database of contact information of your customers is useful if you want to promote your business via phone or email marketing.
Best customer tracking methods for your small business
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular ways in which you can track customers. Using a combination of these methods instead of one or two can generate more useful customer information.
• Organise your email lists: Use your email lists to differentiate your customers into subscriber groups. Segregate them on the basis of shared interests and purchase history. You can distinguish them further according to the frequency of shopping, demographics, and other factors. If you need any assistance, email marketing software can help you segment your audience into similar lists.
• Referral approach to marketing: Traditional marketing methods used word-of-mouth to spread awareness about any product or service. Since recommendations proved to increase sales by a massive amount, this technique can be applied to your digital marketing strategy. You can track which customer purchased something and whether they shared the product via email or social networking sites.
Companies often offer incentives to customers who share products with their networks. You can give discount coupons or create special programs for a customer who refers a friend. This will enable you to observe who your most loyal customers are and how they can help you increase sales.
• Adapting to changes in customer behavior: Among various developments, technology has emerged as among the most important factors influencing people’s behavior. Online purchases are now made on computers, phones, tablets, and other devices. Knowing this, it is helpful to ensure that your website can be accessed across all devices. You can study people’s purchasing behavior on different devices and use that knowledge to develop a targeted sales strategy for each device.
• Social media marketing: Social media is often the first place that consumers turn to when they come across a new service or company. As a small business, it is crucial for you to maintain an active presence online, which includes making your contact information available. You also need to share updates about your business regularly and have strong customer support.
Social media can help with generating leads and motivating those who display interest to invest in your organization. Using social media analytics and insights, you can see which part of the world your customers are from and their demographics. You can use your observation to prepare a detailed marketing plan for targeting a larger group within the same demographic.
• Measuring offline sales: When you are starting out your business, it is helpful to know which sources are connecting you with your customers. You can send out surveys post-purchase to a customer. You can also use tools that assess all purchasing activities of a customer. This allows you to determine how a customer arrived at your website.
• Customer relation tracking software: A customer relationship management (CRM) software is useful for tracking information, such as when someone is reading your marketing messages. You can also find how many clicks your website is generating or when someone is not opening your emails. The advantage of using a CRM software is that you have a central source providing you with customer information that can inform your marketing goals in a variety of ways.
You can make your work with a CRM more efficient by outlining goals that you hope to achieve and methods for attaining these goals. You can train your team members to observe and analyze customer data. Working with a team to segment this data and identify ways to connect with your target audiences can help you attain your targets.
Being a small business owner, it is vital to protect your company from financial insecurities. Consider obtaining public liability insurance to protect your organization from such risks.
