Know your audience: it's basic marketing 101. (In fact, it's probably the first lesson of the first class.) Who is buying or utilizing your product, service or platform? Even businesses that don't meticulously record this information are at least aware of their customer base — it's simply common sense.
Take, for example, the following scenario: Your brand is a high-end line of women's footwear with locations throughout Southern California. You know which basic demographics to target: women between 25-45, within a specific income bracket, living in certain zip codes or neighborhoods. These demographics influence a huge number of decisions, from inventory and store decor, to staff selections, to marketing tactics, promotions and local advertising.
Now let's apply this same philosophy to an ecommerce site. In the brick-and-mortar example, it may be difficult to monitor and record every single customer who walks through the door, but you'll have an idea of your typical customer just based on observation. You'll want to pay attention to your online customer base or audience in the same way. The beauty of the Internet is that much more information — zip code, age, gender, language, time zone and more — can be tracked and, with the help of analytics software, displayed in a neat, easy-to-decipher package.
See also: 14 Tips to Nail Down Demographics
In our Metrics that Matter series, Mashable is investigating the metrics that marketers care about and explaining why each metric is so important. Below, we outline the important elements of visitor profiles and how to make the most out of the information you uncover.
First steps first: You should be paying attention to visitor profiles, one way or another. It's important to have a basic grasp of your audience, regardless of your business model. Who is looking at your site — and who you want to be looking — varies from business to business and from website to website. A non-profit may want to appeal to as many people in as many geographical locations as possible, with the goal of raising funds or even awareness. A luxury auto brand may pursue an international customer base, but only within a certain income bracket — and the goal is obviously to sell cars.
Image: Flickr, kk
Monitoring visitor profiles, generally through some kind of insights or analytics software or program, is one way to keep track of who is paying attention to your business, buying your products, visiting your website — and even potential customers. Moreover, this information can inform when you should tweak your site and give you insights into ongoing marketing campaigns to make sure you're reaching the right people. Though there can be challenges to this process (we'll get into that in a few), it's worth it to at least try and glean some basic audience trends, such as language and location.
"[Visitor profiles] are massively important for understanding your audience and then segmenting them into specific cohorts," says Cezary Pietrzak, director of marketing at Appboy. "Mobile messaging is much more effective when it's targeted to a specific need state and context. Profiles should include demographic information (where possible), location data and behavioral data within the app."
It's important to note that visitor profiles are only one piece of a rather large and sometimes complicated puzzle. There are countless other intertwining factors that work in conjunction with simple demographics — where your traffic comes from (mobile, desktop, etc.), Revenue Per User (ARPU), visitor behavior once they land on your site, page flow, etc. (We'll cover these subjects in upcoming Metrics that Matterarticles.)
Having a grasp on who is visiting your site, how frequently they are visiting and what they're doing on-site (browsing? buying?) is one of the first steps toward developing a viable marketing plan or advertising strategy. Once you've spent some time monitoring the trends of the visitors on your site, you can begin to tailor your content and ad strategies to these profiles.
"As 1:1 marketing experiences become table stakes to effective retention marketing, visitor profiles are more important than ever before. This is the case because there's a completely new face of personalization on the block; personalization is so much more than just a name or a location in the subject line," says Cassie Lancellotti-Young, vice president of client optimization and analytics at Sailthru.
Lancellotti-Young recommends personalizing marketing efforts based on the BUS model — behavioral, usage, situational:
Behavioral — What time of day does the customer browse? When does she convert? Which devices does she use? Does she shop via app or mobile web? What are her unstated interests?
Usage — Analyzing usage reaffirms the importance of what marketers have looked at historically; for instance, recency and frequency of purchases, visits, etc.
Situational — Thinks about circumstantial factors that could be affecting user behavior. "Maybe you see a certain segment of customers is highly disengaged; you need to understand why, and a lot of times that may have to do with their initial experience (i.e. maybe you had low inventory when they first browsed and they never came back, maybe your mobile check-out experience was less than ideal and you lost them forever). From there, you can develop targeted campaigns to address these contextual situations and work to re-engage the customer."
Image: Flickr, kk
Let's go back to the shoe store that's based in California (we'll assume you've now opened an online store). Perhaps, after monitoring site traffic, you begin to notice a high percentage of visitors from Palm Beach, Florida. You can now tailor your marketing strategies to this data — adjust online advertisements or target ads on Facebook, and adjust email marketing tactics for time difference and even content strategy. The more in-depth audience information you have, the more accurately you can fine-tune these efforts.
Tony Clement, strategy director and head of data and analytics at Big Spaceship tells Mashable, "Being segment-centric is the basis for making good business decisions. By going beyond 'location' and 'language' and getting closer to true demographic measures such as 'age', 'gender' and 'interests' it empowers us to contextualize other metrics like bounce rate, returning visitors and conversion."
Mailchimp Data Scientist John Foreman has uncovered fascination segments in the Mailchimp community. Foreman says he's amazed by how many retailers have customers who look the same, and also how different the customer bases can be. He examined one list for a lifestyle brand and says he found two very different communities in the email list. "They had a community of people interested in organic hair care, supplements, hot yoga, world peace, just based on their other subscriptions. And then in the same list, [the company] had another segment that was involved in political marches and the Tea Party," says Foreman. While these different segments could seem overwhelming, they offer opportunity, from a marketing perspective. You shouldn't be engaging with everyone in the same way because your users are diverse. "People live all around the globe, they've got very different schedules, very different lives," says Foreman — it's a marketers job to leverage that information.
Going beyond basic demographics and interests, there are a number of other factors to keep in mind regarding visitor profiles. With the rise of social media, it's important to consider that some users may actually be more valuable than they originally appear, depending on their level of online influence.
Jon Gibs, vice president of analytics at Huge, raises the issue of CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). "In the context of social media, a user may have a low CLV, and they might only buy t-shirts sporadically from a retailer. But what if this person has a huge number of Twitter fans and tends to tweet about good experiences? All of a sudden, their individual financial value might be low, but they are driving all kinds of new customers to your business," says Jon Gibs, vice president of analytics at Huge.
Here's where it gets tricky. First, you need to decide upon a method of tracking this information. There are a number of analytics platforms online to help you gauge your audience on social media — both third-party platforms as well as built-in features, such as Facebook Insights.
Image: Flickr, gustavog
One of the biggest issues that arises when building visitor profiles is accuracy. Specifics such as age, gender or interests can be difficult to effectively measure, even with the help of analytics software. This problem arises due to several factors, one of which is that browser profiles do not always match up with visitor profiles (note that mobile user data tends to be more accurate).
To increase the likelihood that your data will be accurate, it's important to track multiple data sources — social media, web traffic, mobile traffic, in-store purchases, etc.
In the words of Joe Glavin, CMO and EVP of sales and alliances for ClickFox: "Successful marketing analysis includes connecting digital footprints across time and data sources in order to view the end-to-end customer journey. These journeys should also take into account new segmentation attributes used to measure differences in lifetime value, satisfaction, loyalty and wallet share."
Here are a few guidelines to help you make the most out of visitor profile information:
Utilize CRM software to compile a list of current and past customers, including contact titles, locations, industries, company names, purchase histories, etc.
Consider an analytical strategy that involves lead scoring, or essentially assigning value to each of your visitors or sales prospects and "scoring" them based upon their profile. This will help you get a grasp on the likelihood of conversion, as well as CLV.
Break your audience into segments, and tailor strategies to each of these groups. "Whether you are running a CPG, automotive or power yoga brand, building your analysis 'Segmentation Up' will create a direct link between who your audience is and the metrics they are affecting. This simple connection will lead to faster insights, which means faster optimizations," says Clement, adding that this tactic also makes attribution to the bottom line easier to determine.
Add an option to your site so users can link their social media profiles to your website or app. This will give you infinitely more information about your customer base than you might otherwise have access to — not only gender, age, etc. but more in-depth information such as interests and areas of influence. Keep in mind that users may be turned off if they're forced to link their social profiles to visit your site or make a purchase, so consider making this feature optional, or perhaps offering an an incentive for users to link their profiles (i.e. a discount or special offer).
Consider implementing a "true intent" questionnaire on your website. These questionnaires intercept users and ask for data. This also helps with lead scoring — these studies enable you to build an initial demographic scoring strategy. True intent studies make it more likely that you'll collect accurate data, and just a few quick questions will do the trick: information about location, or a couple questions regarding purchasing behavior or affiliation. There's a fine line with these types of surveys — keep in mind that the more questions you ask (and the more personal they are), the more you may deter customers from participating.
Work closely with your sales team. Keep them updated about the trends you discover regarding visitor profiles, and adjust sales and marketing tactics accordingly.
"Visitor profiles need to be truly holistic, 360-degree portraits of users," says Lancellotti-Young, if they're going to inform your marketing strategy at all.
How does your business leverage user profiles? Tell us in the comments.
Image: Flickr, sunnyuk