Episode Summary
In this episode, Greg Shuey explores qualitative data’s impact on marketing. He discusses its role in defining ideal customers and shaping acquisition and retention strategies. From surveys to review mining, he covers methods for gathering insights. Greg delves into insights like customer needs and emotional connections, emphasizing strategies for personalized marketing and brand positioning. He highlights qualitative data’s transformative potential and encourages listeners to leverage it for success.
Key Takeaways
- Qualitative Data’s Significance: Greg emphasizes the critical role of qualitative data in understanding ideal customers, shaping acquisition strategies, and fostering brand loyalty.
- Insight Gathering Methods: The episode outlines various methods for gathering qualitative data, including customer surveys, product review mining, and social media listening, providing actionable insights for marketers.
- Invaluable Insights: Qualitative research yields valuable insights into customer needs, brand perception, emotional connections, and market trends, enabling brands to make informed decisions.
- Strategic Implementation: Greg elaborates on strategies for leveraging qualitative data in personalized marketing, customer journey optimization, and brand positioning, emphasizing the importance of tailored approaches.
- Transformative Potential: By harnessing qualitative data effectively, businesses can drive significant improvements in marketing efficacy, customer engagement, and overall business outcomes, underscoring the transformative potential of data-driven strategies.
Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Episode Transcript
Howdy ecommerce brand builders! Welcome to episode 5 of the 7 Figures & Beyond podcast.
I’m stoked to be with you today! I hope everyone enjoyed last week’s episode and have started looking at their product pages and figuring out what kind of tweaks they need to start testing.
As mentioned last week, today’s podcast will be a solocast and I’ll be discussing using qualitative data to double the effectiveness of your marketing
Qualitative data is critical to gather and analyze because:
- It will help you really define who your ideal customer is
- Help you figure out how to attract more of your ideal customer
- Help you figure out to how acquire them profitability
- Help you figure out how to grow them into high lifetime value customers
This is how we scale brands. We find the right customers, get them to buy from you, and keep them coming back for more.
Those are the three levers you can pull to generate revenue.
There are 3 or 4 things that I’d really like to get through today to give you a better understanding of qualitative data, how to get it, how to pull insights from it, and how to use the data to guide your marketing strategy.
Letl’s jump in.
So, most people in marketing have heard the words qualitative data and quantitative data, but they aren’t quite sure what the difference is between the two.
Let’s get that out of the way first.
Qualitative data is data that represents information and concepts that are not represented by numbers.
This type of data is often gathered from surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other observations.
Quantitative data on the other hand are measures of values or counts and are expressed as numbers.
This type of data is often gathered through analytics software, surveys, etc.
It’s pretty straightforward stuff.
We’ve got ideas and then we’ve got numbers.
What are the best ways to collect qualitative data?
There are quite a few ways to collect qualitative data these days.
We definitely have our favorites here at Stryde.
Two episodes ago, Laurel and I talked about a few of these when we were discussing customer research.
Our favorites include:
- Customer Surveys – We’ll send out open ended surveys to our clients customers via email.
- Customer Phone Interviews – We’ll call on our client’s VIP customers and talk to them.
- Mining Product Reviews – We’ll do a review analysis and pull out the best and worst things about the brand.
- Mining Customer Support Tickets – Same thing here, pull out the best and worst things about the brand.
Other ways to gather data include:
Listening To Customer Support Calls – Along the same lines as mining customer support tickets, you can also listen in on customer support calls, or listen to recordings after the fact. You’d actually be surprised at some of the things that come out of your customers mouths vs typing in a survey response.
Running Focus Groups – This is kind of a lost art. Not many smaller brands run these kinds of events. Try it. Get some of your customers or potential customers together and get direct feedback from them.
Reviewing Reddit & Industry Forum Threads – Go into reddit or industry forums. Search for your brand name, the names of your competitors, and general industry topics and see what people are saying. I actually do a lot of this for one of my own brands. It’s how I ideate product ideas and find problems that need to be solved. It’s a great way to differentiate.
Social Media Listening – Same thing here. Listen to what people are saying about your brand, competitors, or industry topic on social media.
You can gather so much data from all of these sources, it’s ridiculous.
The reason most brands don’t do this is because it takes time, but it’s so important.
What are some of the insights you can get from your qualitative data?
For brands like yours, qualitative research and datal collection allows you to gain insight around customer behaviors, customer preferences, customer motivations, and customer attitudes.
Understanding these four things will give you crystal clarity on the ‘why’ behind customer actions, allowing you to market your brand more effectively.
Some of the key insights you can gain from qualitative research include:
Customer Needs and Pain Points – Understanding the specific needs, problems, and challenges that your customers face will help you tailor your products and messaging to better address these issues and problems they are experiencing.
Product Usage and Experience – Insights into how your customers actually use and experience your products, including aspects they like and dislike, can inform product development, feature enhancements, and user experience improvements.
Brand Perception – Some of these insights will reveal how customers perceive your brand, including your brand values, personality, and differentiators. This will guide brand positioning and overall communication & messaging strategies.
Customer Journey and Touchpoints – These insights will also help you define the customer journey, from awareness, to purchase, and post-purchase. It will help you identify critical touchpoints, opportunities for engagement, and other areas that need improvement.
Motivations and Decision-making Processes – It will provide you insights into what motivates your customers to choose a type of product, switch brands, or make a purchase from you will inform marketing strategies, product development, and customer service approaches.
I love this one…
Emotional Connections – Qualitative research can uncover the emotional drivers behind customer behaviors, including loyalty, advocacy, and satisfaction. Understanding these emotional connections will enhance how you engage and take care of your customers.
Market Trends and Opportunities – By listening to customer opinions and observing behaviors, your business can spot emerging trends, unmet needs, and new market opportunities before they become widely recognized. This is a huge differentiator and opportunity for brands that use data for these purposes.
User Experience (UX) Insights – Detailed feedback on the usability and user experience of websites, apps, and other digital communities can guide improvements that make them more intuitive, engaging, and effective at converting visitors into customers and customers into advocates..
At the end of the day, the insight you are able to get are invaluable for making informed decisions that can significantly impact a business’s ability to attract, engage, and retain customers.
By deeply understanding your customers, your brand can create more personalized, relevant, and compelling offerings that meet or exceed your customer’s expectations.
Bringing it all together now…
What are some ways you should be using that data to guide your marketing strategy?
So, there are several ways that we use this data to inform and improve digital marketing strategy and execution.
The first…
Personalization and Segmentation – Use insights about customer needs, preferences, and behaviors to segment your audience and tailor marketing messages, offers, and content to different groups.
Personalized marketing can lead to higher engagement rates, improved customer satisfaction, and increased loyalty.
Customer Journey Optimization – Use insights to identify key touchpoints and moments of friction within the customer journey.
Use this to smooth out the path to purchase and enhance the post-purchase experience.
Brand Positioning and Messaging – Use it to align your brand messaging and positioning with the values, aspirations, and perceptions of your ideal customer.
Insights into how customers perceive your brand can guide the development of a compelling brand story and value propositions that connect with them emotionally.
Email Marketing – You should use it to customize your email marketing campaigns based on customer segments’ preferences and behaviors.
Use insights to craft compelling subject lines, personalize email content, and determine the best timing and frequency for sending emails to different segments.
Content Strategy – Use it to develop content that resonates with your audience by addressing their questions, pain points, and interests. The insights should inform the topics, tone, and formats that will be most appealing and useful to your target customers.
You have to remember, content for one platform such as email, won’t work on social media, so you have to repurpose and reformat.
User Experience (UX) Optimization – The insights can help you optimize the design and functionality of your website and mobile app. Improving the user experience can lead to higher conversion rates, increased time on site, and more repeat visits.
And the last I want to mention is…
Product Development and Innovation – Use customer feedback and insights to inform product development, feature enhancements, and service improvements. Highlighting these changes in your marketing can attract new customers and re-engage existing ones.
Please remember that these are only some of the ways you can use the data to influence your marketing and drive overall better business outcomes.
I hope that this has been the tip of the iceberg for you and you’ve been able to unlock some additional ideas that will help you level of your marketing.
My only ask this week is that you take some time to plan out how you’re going to get this data and make a plan to execute.
You can’t build a better plan without the insights, so go get it done!
Alright, that’s a wrap for this week.
I actually don’t have a guest lined up for next week yet. We might be having another solocast, which is okay.
However, in two weeks, I’ll be bringing in one of the founders of Phone Soap, Dan Barnes.
Phone Soap is one of my favorite Utah brands, they were on Shark Tank which makes them even cooler, Dan is a dear friend of mine and is actually my neighbor so I’ve gotten to know him quite well over the years.
In that episode, we plan to chat about how Phone Soap has had to overcome some challenges coming out of COVID and how they’ve had to change up their marketing and customer acquisition approach. It’s going to be awesome.
I talk to a lot of brands who are experiencing massive shifts in their industries and they are at a loss of what to do, so I’m hoping this will be helpful for a lot of them.
Alright…
As always, take what you’ve learned here, make a plan, and take massive action this year.
Until next time, this is Greg Shuey signing off.
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.
