Episode Summary
In this episode of the Seven Figures and Beyond podcast, host Greg Shuey interviews Laurel Tuescher, the VP of Services at Stryde, about the importance of customer research and data collection in building a successful marketing strategy for e-commerce brands. They discuss the need for brands to understand their customers’ pain points and preferences in order to effectively target and engage with them. They also explore various methods of collecting customer data, such as surveys, customer interviews, and analyzing customer support tickets and product reviews. The insights gained from this data can help brands develop audience profiles, segment their customers, and create personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience. The episode concludes with a discussion on the importance of being present in the channels where customers are engaging and seeking information, and using customer stories and reviews in marketing materials to build trust and connection with potential customers.
Video Replay
Key Takeaways
- Customer-Centric Focus: Greg underscores the pivotal role of customer-centricity for e-commerce success in 2024. Neglecting customer needs can lead to a significant competitive disadvantage.
- Importance of Customer Research: Greg and Laurel emphasize the critical importance of customer research and data analysis in shaping effective marketing strategies. They discuss the evolution from traditional methods to modern analytics, stressing the need to adapt to changing consumer behaviors.
- Adapting to Changing Behaviors: The conversation delves into the dynamic nature of consumer behavior, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic fluctuations. Staying abreast of these changes is crucial for businesses to remain relevant and competitive.
- Effective Data Collection Methods: Laurel elaborates on various data collection methods, including surveys, interviews, trade shows, and customer support platforms. Deep segmentation and audience development emerge as key strategies for leveraging customer insights.
- Utilizing Customer Reviews: Greg and Laurel advocate for incorporating customer reviews into marketing strategies. They emphasize the power of authentic customer stories in building brand credibility and resonance.
- Ongoing Engagement: The discussion underscores the importance of ongoing customer engagement across various channels. Businesses must actively listen to customer feedback and adapt their strategies accordingly to foster long-term relationships and loyalty.
Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Laurel Teuscher LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/laureltoosure/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey:
Hi to e-Commerce brand builders. Welcome to episode three of the Seven Figures and Beyond podcast. I’m really excited to be with you today. So today’s episode is the very first time that we have hosted a guest on the podcast. So our first two episodes that we had were solo casts, and if you ask me, they were just complete works of art, like totally.
So today I brought in our amazing and extremely talented VP of services here at Stryde, and her name is Laurel Teuscher. I will let her introduce herself here in just a minute, but she is pretty awesome and a wicked smart marketer, way smarter than me. Our topic for today is going to be customer consumer research, and really mining the data that you’re able to get out of them.
So if you remember back to last week’s episode, I talked about my predictions for 2024. My very first prediction was that brands who focus on their customers are going to win big this year. It’s absolutely critical. Brands who sleep on this are going to be so far behind by the end of the year. So Laurel, before we dive in, will you take a few minutes and introduce yourself?
Laurel Teuscher:
Of course. Thanks so much, Greg. I’m really excited to join you today. So I’ve been in the digital marketing world for over a decade now. I started as a social media manager. I managed Facebook pages, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr pages, and then I also got a masters in library and information science, which really just means I love to know how information is organized, whether on a website or in a physical space like a library.
Greg Shuey:
And it actually means that she’s a librarian, which is why I hired her. I tease her all the time about that.
Laurel Teuscher:
He does. I started working at Stryde almost nine years ago now as a digital marketing manager. So I had a book of clients and I manage the strategy, the work that the team did, all of that. And I just learned more about, so I expanded from social media to SEO, email paid advertising, and then after a few years you promoted me to VP of services, so I guess I was doing a pretty awesome job.
Greg Shuey:
Librarians kicking butt over here, for sure.
Laurel Teuscher:
I love e-commerce businesses, but most of my paycheck actually just goes to e-commerce businesses. So I like helping them grow, I love getting into the data and just seeing what’s working and seeing what they should be doing with their marketing. So that’s me.
Greg Shuey:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking some time to introduce yourself. Super pumped to have you here.
Laurel Teuscher:
Good.
Greg Shuey:
So I prepared a couple of questions. I think I’ve got three today that I would like to go through. Are you ready to dive in?
Laurel Teuscher:
I think so, yeah, let’s do it.
Greg Shuey:
She thinks so, everyone. She thinks so. Okay. So the first question that I have for you today is to share with our listeners why customer research and data collection are so important to building and executing a successful marketing strategy in 2024.
Laurel Teuscher:
Yeah, so this is so cool. So I remember I’ve watched some of the TV show Mad Men, and I feel like I wasn’t back there in the ’50s or the ’60s, but that’s like how marketing used to be done. They would pull in focus groups, they’d send out mailed surveys, they’d pick up the phone and talk to people. And unfortunately the world we live in, we’ve gotten a lot more data, but it’s kind of made us lazy as marketers.
I remember back, I was telling you this the other day, back when my family, we were picked to do those Nielsen ratings. So we had a booklet and every time we watched TV we had to write down every show we watched and the time, and then my mom mailed it back in. But now we have website analytics, email data, meta, and we can profile our customers and we kind of just lay back and say, “Well, we know our audience. The data pulls up and we know that they’re women and they’re men and they’re this age and they’re from this state.”
And we kind of make a lot of guesses, but I feel like it’s just there’s been this loss or this laziness around really understanding who our customers are and their pain points. So the way things are going and the way things have been going is that that data, that accessibility to data is shrinking. There’s cookie list tracking, there’s privacy laws, and so that data that we’ve always had access to that tells us who our customer is is just, it’s going away. So you have to have a plan in place for how you’re going to learn about your customers in other ways. And I think really going back to how it was, focus groups, surveys, picking up the phone and talking to them is a really great start for you to understand who your customer is and learn more about them.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing. It’s crazy to me. I should have done some research before we hopped on this morning. When did analytics become a thing? Was it late ’90s, maybe, back when Omniture launched? They’re now Adobe Analytics. I can’t even remember when Google Analytics launched. I would probably assume that most DTC marketers these days have never had to operate without some form of analytics. It’s foreign to them. They never not had that data.
And so it’s really crazy to me how fast we are starting to lose that data. I mean, will analytics go away? No, but it’s watered down. It’s not as accurate as it used to be, and we’re losing it so fast, and we’re having to go back to old school techniques to get the data that we need to make better marketing decisions, to make better business decisions in general. It also doesn’t help with how fast consumer behavior is changing. I mean, we have consumer behavior pre-COVID, consumer behavior during COVID and now we have a whole other set of consumer behavior, and it’s just changing so fast. So would you maybe be able to take a couple of minutes and talk about that?
Laurel Teuscher:
Yeah, so it was insane to just be working with e-commerce businesses when the pandemic started and all during that year because just huge growth, numbers that I have never seen before for e-commerce growth. People were just willing to make those purchases online. They rewarded the online shopping experience, and they kind of also were focused on those small businesses. They wanted to give back and help out these small businesses. And then 2021 came around, vaccines came around, things shifted, and so people started going back.
So there’s that. There’s also just been changes in the economic conditions that have changed buyer behavior. It happens so often. So if you’re relying on this data that you have from 2021 or 2022 or even 12 months ago in 2023 that’s telling you about your customer, what they want, what their pain points are, you’re just looking too far in the past. Your customer has changed. What they want has changed, their priorities have changed, and you’re relying on old data and old assumptions, and you’ve got to be… Moving forward you’ve got to be talking with them and finding out what they’re worried about now so that your marketing will actually resonate with them.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah, for sure. And I talked about this in my first episode, the state of e-commerce going into 2024. We’re seeing consumer behavior shift even from last year. It’s happening so fast. We’ve got an election year, we’ve had crazy inflation, interest rates are so high, and those different variables and those factors can drastically change consumer behavior and the way that they shop, the way that they spend their money. It is crazy. It’s crazy how fast things change, and so research that you do in January 2024 may not even be as valid in June, in July of this year. Things are just changing so fast and so it’s absolutely critical.
So let’s talk also about how consumers are just getting more savvy in general. They are better users of the internet. They use social media to gather information. They can easily tell these days when a brand gets them, when a brand understands their problems and their pain points and are aligned 100% with their goals. So can you maybe share some insights about that?
Laurel Teuscher:
Yeah, customers just, they’re smarter. They know how to use the internet, especially younger. I don’t even know what they’re called anymore because I’m on the verge of a millennial, I think I’m like, what is it? A geriatric millennial or something like that. They grew up with the internet, they grew up with their phones, and so they know how to manipulate and look for information and look at your profile. So they’re going to do research on your business. I don’t know how many times we do a brand audit for one of our clients or for a prospect, and one of the top search terms is their brand name reviews or brand name social media. They’re going to do research on your business, and if they just get a whiff of somebody who is not generally interested in them or their problems, they’re going to move on because there’s always a next competitor.
They don’t want to just buy a product to buy a product. They really want to embrace the business and they are looking for quality, they’re looking for somebody who understands their problem and how to solve it, and that’s what they’re going to go to and gravitate to. The other part is there’s loyalty until there’s not loyalty. So we worked with a business who sells clothing for women, and we just did some customer research on that with them and they’re like, “We like the clothing until the styles don’t work for us. If they have styles or colors that just don’t work for me, I don’t like them, I’m not going to buy. I know that. I know I’m not going to buy it.”So they’re super sensitive about that.
The second thing is they always are like, “I know when your sales are happening. I’ve watched the patterns and I know that this thing is going to come on sale, so why would I buy it at full price if I know in a week or two you’re about to have a sale that I can expect? And then I’ll just wait for that sale. I’ll wait for it to come before I make that purchase.” And yet they don’t know that. The store, the owners, do not know that because they’re not talking to the customer. So they won’t know what styles, what colors, all of these things that matter, they won’t know that that’s important until they actually get in and talk to the customer about it.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah, absolutely. I also, I read somewhere recently, it was probably in a LinkedIn post, and it was talking about how customers want to be part of your story. And if you can figure out a way to pull them in and ingrain them into your business and your community and almost involve them in decision-making in terms of product line, colors, those types of things, if you can build this community, this brand of this band of advocates, it just is incredibly powerful and it ties them to you. They can feel that you’re genuine. They can feel that you value them and their scenario and circumstances, and it helps blow businesses wide open. It helps them really start to scale. So that’s incredibly exciting. So let’s jump into our next question. So how are brands right now profiling their customers? What are they doing to collect the data? What kind of tools are they using? How are they doing that?
Laurel Teuscher:
Yeah, so first of all, there are tons of tools that you can use to help you do this. That’s the amazing thing about technology. I mean, we just talked about how analytics are going away, but there’s still tools that are going to help you collect a lot of this data and figure out about your customer.
One of the ones that we love to use in terms of consumer survey technology is KnowCommerce. So we can put up post-purchase surveys to learn more about how these customers are finding out about your business, about the e-commerce business, what brought them to the site, how long did they know about the business before making a purchase, what channel actually brought them? And the cool thing is it’s not what analytics says, which is usually a last-click attribution. It’s whatever the customer they have said is, “This is how I heard about you.”
So you could be like, maybe you’re investing in social media or Meta ads on Facebook, Instagram, and you’re not getting a positive ROAS, or a ROAS that you feel like you’re comfortable with spending, but yet the data coming in from KnowCommerce says, “No, I’ve heard about you from Meta ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads. That’s where I heard about you.” Then you know, how do I… Okay, I need to still invest in this channel even if the ROAS isn’t the ideal for me, because that’s how customers are learning about me.
Greg Shuey:
Can I share a story there?
Laurel Teuscher:
Yeah, go for it.
Greg Shuey:
I just thought of this. About a year ago, I was doing some free consulting for a buddy of mine. I should never do free consulting.
Laurel Teuscher:
No, you shouldn’t.
Greg Shuey:
But that’s a story for another time. He sells mountain bike gloves. And when we were talking, he’s like, “Hey, my Facebook, my Instagram, my ROAS is a 0.5.” I’m like, “Well, that sucks really, really bad, but I don’t believe it at all.” And he’s like, “I’m thinking of turning it off. I’m not going to spend money there anymore.”
I said, “Let’s throw this tool on your website. KnowCommerce, they have a free version to be able to just throw on and start collecting some data.” After about a month of collecting that data, I came back and I showed him, how did you first hear about me? Facebook and Instagram, I think combined it was well over 50%. And I’m like, “Here, even though Facebook is not attributing that revenue and not capturing that revenue for you, look at it. It is driving sales for your business, we cannot turn this off.” And so it’s an incredibly powerful tool to be able to help start that profiling process.
Laurel Teuscher:
And it’s not like you have to wait until post-purchase. You can put those surveys on there for when they’re exiting, if they’ve added to cart and they’re exiting. You can find out more, you don’t have to just wait until that purchase to find out more. And the other thing too is you can get deeper. You don’t have to know what channel. You could even find out, did they hear about you from a specific influencer that you’re working with? A marketplace that you also are on, ads, social posts. What is it that they’ve found interesting, and what is the content and creative that got them to come to the website? So I think that’s pretty powerful.
The second is the way that businesses are collecting this data is just old school market research. They’re sending out demographic surveys. We’ve done that with a couple of our clients where we do a giveaway, we do a random drawing for anyone who submits the survey, and we send it out to a segment of their customer database, and it’s awesome the data that we’ve been able to find out from them, it’s amazing.
And then there’s performing customer interviews via phone and email. So we ask questions like, how’d you first learn about us? Why were you looking for something like this? Do you have specific problems you’re trying to solve? Walk us through your process of how you do the research and you figure out which product is for you. Talk about the specific websites you used to find out about us. How long did you know about the business before you made your purchase? Why did you choose to buy from us rather than a competitor? Who was this purchase for? This is good information that’s not going to be shared via website analytics. GA4 is not going to give you this data, but it requires you asking the question, sending the email, getting on the phone.
There’s also a lot of businesses will go to trade shows or conferences where they get to actually interact face-to-face with potential customers and oftentimes with customers. So this is a great opportunity to not just sell your product, but maybe engage with them and talk with them. And I know that’s sometimes really hard for people. I mean, you send me to conferences and I hate it. I hate talking to people. But it’s really good to just get to know them and understand what they’re looking for. In terms of you don’t want to do that, you don’t want to talk to people, you don’t want to send emails. Well guess what? You actually have a ton of data at your fingertips. It’s your customer support platforms and tickets.
Where are the problems? Where are people frustrated? Is it like they forgot to put in codes that would get them discounts? Are they very discount sensitive? That’s going to be information you’ll learn from your customer support team. Are they not happy with the level of communication after a purchase? Are they dissatisfied with the quality of their product? That’s going to be information that you can actually get without ever talking to somebody. It’s just making sure you have a customer support platform available and recording this. And then also product reviews. If you’re lucky… First of all, you should have product reviews on your site. If you don’t, there-
Greg Shuey:
That’s a whole nother problem.
Laurel Teuscher:
That’s a whole other episode that we should get into. But go see what they’re saying about your business. And it’s not just on your website. They can review you on Google, they can review you on Amazon and any of the platforms you’re on Facebook, they can leave reviews. So what are your customers saying on those reviews? Go read those and don’t just disregard them. I think that’s a lot of where you can go, and it sounds super overwhelming and super time-consuming. All of this as I’m listing it out, it’s like, oh my gosh, that is just so much work to do, but it’s so worth it.
Greg Shuey:
Absolutely worth it. I was talking to a prospect a few months ago, I think it was probably towards the beginning of December. When I was sharing her, this is typically what we do before we really get into building a marketing campaign. I was sharing her all of the different ways that we research and profile a customer. I mean, she was dead silent. And then I can’t remember exactly what she said, but it was something along the lines of, that sounds really hard. That’s going to take too much time. It’s going to cost too much money. I don’t want to do that. And we parted ways because honestly here at Stryde, unless we have this data, we are just taking our best guess.
And when we are using our client’s money to be able to market them and grow their business, best guess doesn’t work anymore. We want to be 100% sure of our marketing strategy, how we message, how we deliver so that we are able to actually grow and start scaling the brand. And so it’s absolutely critical.
Laurel Teuscher:
For sure.
Greg Shuey:
All right, so our next question. After brands collect the data, what kinds of insights are they actually able to pull from this data in order to build a better marketing strategy and grow their business profitably and be acquiring the right kind of customers? What are they able to pull?
Laurel Teuscher:
Yeah, so there’s a couple. The first I think is the most critical, which is audience development. So we were working with this client and they had this belief about their audience, again, from whatever data that they had. Where they said their audience is women who are in their 20s and 30s, that’s who purchases their products. They were dead set on that.
Well, we did that demographic survey that I just talked about. We sent out an email, we got all of these responses back, and what we discovered is actually like 58% of the respondents, but which was a good portion of their database, 58% were actually 46 years old or older. Their CEO got that report, was so shocked. She came back, she was like, “How did you even get this data? Because it can’t possibly be true. It can’t.”
Greg Shuey:
“It’s not right. I don’t believe it. It is crazy.”
Laurel Teuscher:
And we were like, no, legit, this came, we pulled your customer database. We got their emails from your database. These are the people who are purchasing from you, and this is who’s buying your products. And if we didn’t have that, if we were still under the assumption that they knew their audience, that they had done the research, we would be targeting these 20 and 30 year olds who are not buying from them, and we’d be leaving money on the table. We’d be alienating their entire 58% of their customer base. That’s a huge portion of their customer base. So I think it’s really critical, the first thing, is taking this data and really deciding, who is my audience and who am I going to talk to?
Greg Shuey:
And that changes your whole marketing approach. It changes everything from the copy, the creative, the images that you have on your website. If we have a bunch of 20-year-old women in your images and we’re selling to 50-year-old women, there’s a disconnect there. Now, I’m sure there’s an audience, a 20-year-old audience for that, but how do you build strategy to be able to reach them and make sure that we’re not ignoring this 58%? If we can change that, we will start to see lifetime value, grow, repeat purchases come back. We’re fully aligned with them and their goals and their situation, and it’s just so powerful.
Laurel Teuscher:
Well, and to that point, I don’t feel like you have to dismiss this other audience that you really want to go after. It’s just then you have to kind of get more into their head. What is it that we’ve got a message? What channels do we need to be on, therefore, to reach this audience? Because what we’re doing is capturing this other audience, which is great, that’s making us money. How do we shift it? And until you know that audience, you’re not going to be able to do that. You’re just going to be spinning your wheels. So the second part is deeper segmentation of those audiences. So you have your audience. And then we want to segment those audiences down to their pain points, their demographics, their specific needs.
And then you want to show somebody what they’re looking for. When somebody is looking for something specific, you just want to show them more of that. If I’m searching for a dress for a specific occasion, I just want to be shown all the options. And so every store should target me with their ads for their best dress, their best-selling dress that fits what I need.
But then once I buy that dress for that occasion, I don’t want to see more dresses. I’m done. I’ve made my choice. Now I need to see the accessories, the shoes, the next item to purchase. And without that deep segmentation of knowing what they like and what they purchased and all of that, brands are going to lose out because they’re going to be like, oh, well, you just need to keep buying the same thing. And that’s not what this is about. It’s segmenting and saying, okay, you’ve already made the purchase that we want you to do. Here’s your next purchase and here’s the product you should be buying.
Greg Shuey:
Yes, I love that. What does the customer need to purchase next? So I mean, I just bought a new office chair a couple of days ago. I’ve been sitting on this pile of crap for almost 11 years now, the padding shot, and I went through the process of looking for a chair. So I ended up buying a chair. The last thing I want to see from that brand are ads about more chairs. And guess what? That’s seeing in Facebook last night when I’m just mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, there they are. There’s the chair I just bought. Why am I still getting this ad? I want to know what’s next. Do I need to look at replacing my desk or are there accessories? Are there backpads for to support my back? I don’t know, but you’re a hundred percent right with that segmentation. We have to figure out who these people are, what their pain points are and what to sell them next.
Laurel Teuscher:
So then on top of that, so we’ve built the audiences, we’ve segmented them down. The next thing I always think is the best thing to do is take your customer reviews and start using those in your ad creative, in your ad copy. Make those stories come to life for people and give those ads to be like a mirror so that your customers see themselves and want to make that purchase. If a lot of customers love the personalization of your products, talk about that in your ads. This data that we have should tell you what are the most important things that to your customers, why they chose you, and you can take that and use it in everything that you have. You just want to show that you’re solving that problem that the customer has.
Greg Shuey:
Can I chime in?
Laurel Teuscher:
Yeah, go for it.
Greg Shuey:
One of my favorite things to do for my own brand is to go to my competitor’s websites and look at their customer reviews, look at what they’re complaining about, looking at what their problems are, and can I almost take that and can I flip that 180 degrees so that I can take that copy and I can inject it on my website, I can inject it in my ads, and I’m just constantly revising and just using the data, the third-party data that I can collect out there to be able to just do better marketing.
Laurel Teuscher:
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s exactly it. But what I love too is you shouldn’t just say, oh, it’s going to go on my ads like that’s the only place. Start injecting these comments, the stories, how your products solve those problems, and put them into your email campaigns, those newsletters that go out. Let those talk about it, put them in your blog posts if you’re blogging, which you should be doing.
You don’t need to just isolate it to one channel. It should be across the board, where are you talking about this? And you should always be just putting that qualitative data, those stories out there. Again, so the creative, the content is just a mirror to your audience so that they see themselves and they see that you get it, and they are just that more likely to come back and purchase from you. So you’ve got all of that.
Once you have all of that where customers are talking about learning about your business, you just need to be there too. Sometimes again, it takes a lot of time and effort, or it takes an employee to be having these conversations being part of the conversation. But I think it’s so critical for you to focus on those channels. Not all of the channels, but once you’ve really learned about your customer, I mean, one of the questions just to go back to that, that we ask is, where did you hear about us first? Where are you learning about the business? Go be there.
So some customers, maybe it is on Reddit, and so maybe that’s where you need to be as just the business to talk about it, to share, not to necessarily sell, but to just encourage and to be a part of the conversation way earlier than just like, well, I’m just going to wait passively until they’ve decided that they’re going to look for me. Be where they are, talk with them. And I think that’s the biggest part of this whole thing is you just need to talk with them. And that’s super hard to do, but it’s so rewarding.
There’s so much that’s going to come out of that.
Greg Shuey:
A hundred percent. And so next time Laurel’s on… So we’re actually going to have her on about once a month so that her and I can just kind of jam and talk about things that we’re seeing with clients, and work that we’re doing. The next time she’s on, which is in, again, about a month, we are actually going to talk about identifying these different ponds or pools where these people congregate. Like fish swim in ponds together. And so how do we take this information, how do we collect more information and figure out, how do we hyper-target and focus in these different ponds and these different pools to be able to capture the right customer who’s not just going to be a one-time, I need my discount code type purchaser to a brand advocate who comes back 3, 4, 5 times and just helps you grow your lifetime value and helps you scale.
Because that’s really where you are able to unlock scale is when you’re pumping new customers into the business who are right fit, who are going to spend more money with you, who are going to be way more profitable, and when they come back over and over when you put new customer acquisition in and then have customer retention really flowing, that’s when you achieve scale. So I’m super excited to be able to talk about that here in the next month or so.
So Laurel, thank you. I mean, I know that you’re super busy, you’re super slammed. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today. I truly appreciate it, I hope our listeners appreciate it, and I hope that you have been able to really catch the vision of why you need to do this type of customer research. It’s such a critical tool for brands. It’s such a huge unlock and a big aha when we’re able to take this information, present it to our clients, they’re like, holy smokes. Like holy cow, this is incredible. We’ve never thought about our customers this way. We’ve never really gotten this kind of insight before, and it is just a huge unlock for them. So thank you again, Laurel, so much for being here.
Laurel Teuscher:
Okay, thanks for having me.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah. So in our next episode, we’re going to be bringing in the founder of Smart CRO, Chris Dayley a conversion rate optimization agency that specializes in working with e-commerce brands. So we plan to chat about high-performing e-commerce product pages. I’m super pumped about it. It’s going to be awesome. He is wicked smart, so get excited for that. As always, please take what you’ve learned here, process it, make a plan, and take massive action this year. So until next time, this is Greg Shuey and Laurel Teuscher.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
