4 Effective Ways to Leverage Consumer Insights 

A consumer insight is information about the behaviors, opinions and actions of consumers that explain what they believe, prefer, dislike and the reason behind it. When businesses effectively use this information they can create better products and services that meet their customers needs every step of the way.

Organizations that leverage customer behavior to generate insights outperform their peers by 85% in sales growth, according to Microsoft.

Put simply, customer insight is just a fancy way of making friends with your customer and getting to know the humans who purchase from your business. One of the many ways to gain consumer insights is through the analytics that track your customers actions and help you create a customer journey.

Below are four easy ways that consumer goods businesses can gain consumer insights using the Real® analytics dashboard. 

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Learn what content matters

There is a lot of information from politics to world affairs to product reviews that take up space in our content feeds. As business owners we have to find out what matters to our consumers to break through the noise. Knowing what your consumers read and where they click is a huge part of this understanding.

Get inside the minds of your target market and understand your customers’ product experience by collecting and analyzing customer data and insights. Because if you don’t, you’ll never know how to improve. Knowing what your consumers want and motivations behind their behaviors is a huge part of this understanding.

A recent report by Klarna states that 68% of U.S. shoppers use their mobile devices to research products while shopping in physical stores. With this in mind, why would you trust that Google or any other search engine will point them to the content you need your customers to see? A Real code on your packaging directs your customers to your message. And with Real® Analytics and Insights you will know where and how often users access specific information and open a door to meaningful feedback that can influence future product development, sales, and marketing.

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Start conversation with polls and surveys

Polls and quick surveys give consumers the opportunity to voice their opinion and businesses the opportunity to listen and take action. People want to be heard. More than 50% of shoppers were willing to share personal data in order to receive discounts or offers, according to study from Forrester and RetailMeNot. With the Real Platform and our integrated polls and survey functionality, you can easily prompt your users to answer questions that will help you develop, understand and connect on a deeper level with your consumers. 

Take for example, Target’s recent social media poll (above) that addressed the issue of race in America to let their listeners know they care. With these insights they were able to understand and learn what black-ownder founders and values resonate with their consumers.

Real’s polls and surveys allow you continuous feedback from customers with your product in hand. There’s literally no end to what you can learn.

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Personalize your messaging

Today’s customers are looking for personalization while they shop, so why not extend this to the product in hand at home or the POS and gain insights in the process? The key to connecting with people is talking to and about them, not about your business — which means you should prioritize providing helpful and/or instructional content that adds value for them. Using Real analytics you can start to understand what which headlines, call to actions and messaging resonates with your customer as you measure where and how often they click on different products and offerings.

For example, a beauty brand might test whether their clients care more about it being a natural product or the price with two different headlines: “Incorporate nature into your beauty regime.” vs. “Invest less on beauty products and more on your next adventure!” 

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Maximize customer lifetime value and retention

91% of consumers are more likely to shop from brands who recognize, remember, and provide them with relevant offers and recommendations. The cost of acquiring new customers is far more than keeping current customers. Knowing what your customer wants in each stage of their cycle is what will keep them coming back. How do you do that? Track when, where, what and how often they buy. Notice when they become interested and how you can meet their needs.

It costs 16x more to bring a new customer up to the same level as a current one. As your customer evolves your product, offerings and services can evolve with them. However, you do not want to be guessing, that costs money and time. Real delivers consumer insights to help you evolve your messaging based on actionable data from consumers with your product in hand. 

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Real gives you integrated tools to deliver your message and collect consumer insights to develop real relationships and long term customers.

Learn more about how Real works or schedule a demo with us today to see how Real can deliver customer insights for your brand.