Does social media marketing require IT knowledge

Does social media marketing require IT knowledge?

I have to answer with a resounding YES! But not for the reasons you might expect. As others have pointed out, the average daily duties of a social media marketing manager don't require you to have even remotely the same skills as anyone working in IT. You can totally get by in social media marketing without having any IT skills. However, I did say, you can "get by." Having these skills can be a HUGE asset! The IT skills are super useful in many ways: Buying Social analytics & management tools. When we are researching which tool a client should use for social media data analytics or as a dashboard for responding to posts on Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc, we know when the vendor is lying about limitations imposed by Facebook's API, and can infer what is really going on, how likely they are to fix (or be able to fix) problems with the tool, etc. This helps us (and our clients) avoid potential problems with these tools that someone without the same knowledge might miss. Building social analytics reports and platforms. We have a lot of knowledge in-house on how to build custom social media reports using API calls and even built our own in-house SMM analytics tool that automates a ton of weekly and monthly reporting that we used to have to do manually in Excel. Even back then we utilized Excel "personal" spreadsheets to easily store and run macros we created in-house to automatically create graphs from the KPI's we wanted to measure and copy them into Powerpoint decks. The sheer amount of work we were able to automate has allowed us to remain a small team without relying on freelancers, and to spend our social media reporting time focused on what happened, why and what our clients should do as a result, rather than on manually building graphs.  
  Understanding our clients better. Many of our clients are technology companies. Having a deeper level of understanding as to how their products work makes us more effective at working with them. As Reem already mentioned, people's assumptions about consumers are often incorrect. To really understand your online social communities, you need to analyze the social behaviour data to learn more about them, so having the knowledge to easily build social media reports for whatever information you want or need without having to spend hours every week in Excel just building the graphs before you can even begin working on actually analyzing them is a valuable skill to have. Again, you don't necessarily have to have these skills to work as a social media marketer, nor will most positions expect you to have them, but they most certainly are a great value add for anyone who might employ you, giving you a leg up that most of your competition just won't have. Also, just because no one expects you to have these skills doesn't mean your agency/client-side employer doesn't still need them. Your lacking these skills just means they also have to hire someone else who does have these skills to support you, or pay a third-party for the social media analytics tools that can save you time, but cost your employer money. Or, even worse (for you), it means you have to go without them entirely, and lose out on the time saving benefits that those skills could have brought you. This means you end up spending more time grinding away on busy work, rather than providing value for your employer/clients. That's another great reason to learn these skills. Not only does it make you more valuable to brands and agencies, but it can also help you learn to automate tasks and save yourself time. If you're spending less time on building graphs on social media behavior and more time on analyzing them and understanding the what, how, why, when, and who of what happened, and what needs to happen next as a result, then you're going to be more effective at your job because you're spending more of the portion of your time devoted to social media analytics on providing value, rather than spending more of that time on busy work that gets you to the point where you can finally start providing value.

Other important skills to have

According to SproutSocial, there is a number of other important and useful skills that social media executive and / or manager must possess: Community Management. One of the core foundations of what social media was built on is being inherently “social.” This means that establishing and building a digital relationship is still a treasured attribute. Community management refers to being able to navigate the online sphere of promoting your brand while engaging with your customers. It can mean slowly converting an observer into a customer by patiently answering questions. It can also be demonstrating what your customers are talking about when they post on social media.  
  Sales and Customer Service. If your sales and marketing funnel involves social media like it should, you’ll find that sales leads inevitably fall into your inbox. Make the sales lead transfer as seamless as possible by asking for the information upfront instead of making them email you. When 34.5% of customers prefer social media as their customer care option, you need to be able to navigate the ‘flow’ of the customers. Being able to provide empathetic care in a short, digital format is different from face-to-face customer service. The social media manager should be able to clearly articulate solutions for the customer while making the customer feel heard. Besides, Hootsuite states, understanding the link between search engine optimization (SEO) and social media reach can be confusing. Google suggests that social signals do not overtly affect your SEO rankings, but the full picture is more complicated. Content that has a high social reach and gets lots of shares, likes, and comments is likely going to get similar engagement metrics that will be read by Google’s algorithm and positively impact your rankings. This is a correlation rather than a causation, so while you do not want to build your social media plan around SEO, it is a great idea to know the common mistakes that social media managers often make. Luckily, there are some great SEO tools out there. LSI Graph will identify relevant keywords and phrases according to what has been searched on Google along with your main keyword.  
  Apart from that, some video content creation skills are important. Video content is unquestionably an important way to reach your audience. Over 500 million people are watching video on Facebook every day, according to Cisco’s research into global IP video traffic. And few years from now, video content is poised to account for 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic. Social media managers need the abilities to create compelling content for platforms like Instagram Stories, Facebook Live broadcasts, and Snapchat Stories. And with all these options, you will also need to know how to optimize your video for all of your different social media marketing channels.

Conclusion

One of the main advantages of social media for businesses is that it enables you to interact with your potential and existing customers. Social networks provide the opportunity to start a conversation with your consumers and deliver the right marketing message to the right individual. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Social Media Marketing ? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR MILLENNIALS

MILLENNIALS | HOW TO REACH YOUR AUDIENCE THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

  One of the main advantages of social media for businesses is that it enables you to interact with your potential and existing customers. Going through the tweets and Facebook status updates that are posted by your customers gives you insights into what they need. This is important for helping your company formulate marketing strategies that address their needs. Social media makes the process of providing and receiving feedback easier. If your customers have concerns with what your company offers, they can let you know in a timely manner. Social media gives clients a convenient and accessible way to express what they feel and gives businesses a chance to respond. With such platforms, businesses are able to monitor complaints and ensure their customers that their problems will be coped with. Social networks provide the opportunity to start a conversation with your consumers and deliver the right message to the right individual. To market towards multiple demographics takes great powers of empathy – and a deep knowledge of how different types of people interact with the digital world. You need to know how different demographics use digital, and how they experience it. Today, we will have a look at millenials: who are they? What do they like? What can we do?

MILLENIALS: HOW ARE THEY?

 
  In October 2004, researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss called Millennials "the next great generation," which is funny. They define the group as "as those born in 1982 and approximately the 20 years thereafter." In 2012, they affixed the end point as 2004.

Curiosity

Millennials are a curious generation. They are excited to learn new skills, and are willing to invest the time in becoming better employees. Just take a look at the trillion-plus dollars in student loan debt millennials are willing to take on in order to expand their minds.

Tech-savvy

We are all surrounded by technology and millennials spend 5-10 hours a day consuming copious amount of online content. So creating a brand experience within this digital world with relevant content is the first step in captivating this generation.

Advice-Seekers

Millennials unfortunately don’t trust a brand’s message. When deciding what to purchase, this demographic seeks opinions of friends, family members, or even strangers before making purchasing decisions. It’s important to rebuild trust with relevant content and user-generated content.

MILLENNIALS: MARKETING PREFERENCES

According to Geneca, millennials are all about experiences. Everything we do, buy, or eat, all stems from the experience we get from it (FYI this is why we post everything we do on social media-we like to share our experiences with others). So, if you want to be noticed by the millennial group, interact with us by creating an experience for us! A great way to gain brand recognition with millennials is to have live events that we can be a part of. 78% of millennials are more likely to follow or take part in a brand when the company puts effort into implementing face-to-face interactions. For example, Dove engaged their audience by putting on experiential marketing for their ‘Choose Beautiful Campaign’, and Coca-Cola connected with millennials through their ‘Coke Hug Me’ campaign, which advertised a free coke to anyone that hugged a vending machine.  
  Millennials need to see your company as a professional industry with stability and growth potential, but if we have learned anything about this generation, it is that they want to love and have fun with what they do. Think about it this way, give your company the mullet haircut! Just like the mullet, business in the front and party in the back, you want your company to also have a fun/party side! By having a presence on Snapchat and Instagram, you can connect and show millions of millennials what your company can truly offer them. Almost half of the Snapchat audience are millennials. They consume about 30 minutes of content every day on Snapchat. This will give you a chance to interact with millennials by capturing events, sharing different promotions, or giving your followers an exclusive sneak peek behind the scenes of your culture.

FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM OR MAYBE YOUTUBE?

Useful Insights by MarketingProfs.com 

Consumers see social media as creating more accountability for brands in a number of ways, including by uncovering unfair treatment (80%), giving consumers power (75%), encouraging transparency (70%), amplifying issues (65%) and helping employees share experiences (55%). Although Facebook is the most popular social network across generations, it is not as dominant with younger people as it is with older ones, according to recent research from Sprout Social. The report was based on data from a survey conducted in January 2017 of 1,000 Millennials (age 18-34), Gen Xers (age 34-54), and Baby Boomers (age 55+) in the United States. Some of 65% of Gen Xers as well as Baby Boomers say Facebook is their favorite social network. Facebook also ranks as the most popular social network with Millennials (33% of them cite it as their favorite). However, Instagram (22% of Millennials rank it as their favorite) and Snapchat (16%) have much more Millennial fans than they do older ones.  
  The youngest set of Millennials surveyed (age 18-24) rank Instagram as their top network (25% cite it as their favorite), just ahead of Facebook (24%) and Snapchat (23%). Respondents across all three generations are more likely to pick YouTube as their favorite social network over Twitter or Pinterest.

MILLENNIALS: WHAT CAN WE DO?

If your small business isn’t on a social media platform, you will need to be on one to market millennials. In fact, we’d recommend you get on more than one platform. Your social media presence is where your business can easily connect with your target audience. It’s where they spend a large portion of the day and where they go for information. Millennials grew up always being connected and building relationships with people through social networks. So, when they look for a brand or business to buy a product from they are also looking to build a relationship with that business. Insightful posts, product recommendations, useful information about your business and your product will help your brand build that important relationship. When reviewing your social media accounts in order to attract millennials to your business make sure you have a clear and developed brand personality. Express your personality by posting interesting and engaging information on your social accounts multiple times a week. Post videos of your product in use or testimonials on how people (particularly other millennials) have benefited your business. Also, engage with your customers, to show millennials coming to your pages that you can form a relationship. Engagement consists of answering your followers’ comments, sharing their posts, and asking questions to welcome feedback.  
 

CONCLUSION

Besides knowing what social networks your audience uses, it is also helpful to discover their interests outside of the industry that you are serving. This used to be a very difficult thing to do, but now that everybody’s interests are plastered all over social media, as well as the sites that they frequent, the data is there if someone is aggregating it. Fortunately, Google Analytics makes the data pretty easily available by enabling their demographics feature. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Social Media Marketing? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!  

With creativity in heart, with an idea in mind!

Mobile Application Marketing

5 MOBILE APP MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Does Your Business need a Mobile App?

If you think that mobile apps are solely for big name brands like Walmart and Bank of America, you are wrong. More and more small and midsize businesses are following the mobile trend, understanding that an effective mobile strategy involves more than just a mobile-friendly website (Forbes, 2017).   In fact, these days you’ll notice that many small businesses you interact with in your everyday life have their own dedicated mobile app — be it the corner coffee shop or the beauty spa downtown. These companies are ahead of the game when it comes to taking their marketing to the next level. And they are doing it the right way! Do you know why? The digital era demands everything mobile-optimized and for this reason, companies are investing a huge share. Not because every company is investing in mobile app development, makes it necessary for you to invest in it to gain a competitive edge. It is because people want it – it includes everyone from your customers to everyone around you. Have a look at some of the statistics presented by IQVIS to know how important mobile application development for your business is.

• By 2020, global mobile app downloads will reach 284 billion
• Google Play will top 166 billion by 2020, and iOS will reach 35.2 billion.
• Non-game app downloads will exceed $182 billion in 2020, accounting for a quarter of all app store downloads
• Digital radio and photos now generate 96% of their total engagement from mobile devices
• Total mobile engagement on social has grown 55% in the past year
• Mobile ads perform 4-5 times better than online ads
• 62% of smartphone users are “ok with 15-30 second ads” in exchange for video content

How Small Businesses Benefit from Mobile Apps

According to Smallbiztrends, a recent survey showed that 62 percent of the businesses asked already had mobile apps or were in the process of building one. Of those, 20 percent used their apps purely for branding purposes, 30 percent have revenue generating apps and 50 percent use them for support and engagement. Even businesses that you wouldn’t have thought would benefit from an app are proving critics wrong by producing innovative and engaging apps. For example, an independent pet food supplier could have an app that encourages users to upload comical photographs of their pets for a chance to win a prize. A product for new mothers could build a community of local mums and arrange meet-ups. A realtor could create an app that compares local house prices now to five years ago. The possibilities really are endless. All it takes is a little imagination to devise a system that consumers will enjoy engaging with. Similarly, in essence to Clutch.co, the amount of small businesses with mobile apps is set to experience a huge jump over the next year. Currently, 42% of small businesses have built a mobile app. However, two-thirds (67%) of SMBs plan to have an app built by the end of 2017, a whopping 50% expected margin of increase over the course of the year.  
  This evidence of small businesses’ increased interest in building a mobile application represents a fairly significant departure from just a year ago. The 2016 Mobile App Survey indicated that 54% of SMBs were either unlikely to build, or were unsure about building, a mobile app in the future. Compare that to this year’s data: only 35% of SMBs in this year’s survey don’t plan on having a mobile app built by the end of 2017.

You have a Mobile App, what’s the Next Step?

Mobile application marketing is an important stage for your business as a whole, and success of mobile app in particular. You have to first understand that your main focus has to be the end-users of your app. You are essentially dealing with people and so, you will have to study their mobile behavior and understand the same, before embarking on a particular marketing strategy. According to App Partner , before jumping into tactics, you need to nail the basics of app marketing ー prioritization and efficiency. Dwight Eisenhower  created what’s known as “The Eisenhower Box” to stay efficient and focus on what’s most critical. We recommend that you write any tactics you want to use into one of these four boxes so you can prioritize what’s important, because as an entrepreneur time is your most precious resource.  
  Clearbridge Mobile defines a Go-To-Market strategy as one of the successful mobile app marketing strategies nowadays. First of all, what is a go-to-market strategy? A thorough strategy will answer these questions: Who is your target audience, and how do you relate to them?

1. How do you provide everyday value to your audience?
2. How do you transition from initial point of contact with a customer to fulfilling brand commitment?

All the major elements that guide your business strategy (sales, pricing, marketing, branding, competitive research, consumer profiling, and distribution) form the foundation for a go-to-market action plan. This plan will define the most effective way to reach a target audience and establish a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Market the Experience, not the App

In the past, when companies made apps for the sake of having an app for their customers to use, it was more acceptable to market the app itself. That is no longer true because you aren’t trying to sell audiences on the app itself anymore. Instead, you are selling them on the experience your app provides. And, more importantly, how that experience is uniquely different and superior to any other experience they’ve previously had on mobile. This is not a new concept, by any means. Today’s consumers look for the simplest experiences offered by brands In fact, 86% of consumers are more likely to purchase when they are not overwhelmed with confusing information. Keep that in mind when you are writing your store descriptions. Market how the app will simplify users lives, not every little thing the app can do. The strategy of marketing the experience rather than the mobile app has caused customer experience to become a front-running issue of businesses across nearly every industry. Don’t market your app—that’s simply is not enough anymore. You have to focus on the experiences that are only possible with your app.

Any other Tips? Yes!

App Store optimization (ASO)

Both Google Play and Apple’s App Store algorithmically prioritize certain apps in search results based on a variety of ranking factors (ratings, tags, screenshots, app title, download data etc.). The goal of ASO is to drive more traffic to your app’s page in the app store, so searchers can take a specific action: downloading your app. Also, the ASO process requires a crucial understanding of your target customer base, including the keywords your potential customers are using to find apps similar to yours. When you learn more about which keywords are being used, you will have a better understanding of the language of your potential customers – a crucial piece of any marketing plan – and you can home in on your keyword choices.  
  The most important ranking factor when it comes to app store optimization is your app’s title. If you’ve built a train time-checker app, then it’s recommended to use ‘train time checker’ in the title. You can use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool (with the device setting on mobile) to identify which terms / phrases relevant to your app people search for the most on mobile. The CEO of MobileDevHQ, Ian Sefferman has mentioned that: “ASO is having dramatic effects on our client apps. For those who put the time in to understand, iterate, and test, we’ve seen many apps increase their downloads by a factor of 2x-10x, and an increase of revenue by a similar, or bigger, rate due to the increase in engagement of users earned by ASO. ASO is not a simple process, and you might not see the impact overnight, but if you’re willing to invest in it, the outcome can be incredibly worthwhile.”

Conclusion

Mobile application marketing is the science of reaching your targeted audience and let them know your app, and what the most important is to make them like it! Market-to-go strategy can serve as the basis for your mobile app marketing, where the core idea lies in the understanding your audience. Having complete information about your customers, you may proceed to App Store Optimization, where the thought-out keywords research is the key to your success! Also, as the ‘assisting’ tools, you may also use Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Marketing to promote your business mobile app! Would you want Blueninja.io help you with the development of a great mobile application for your business? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, Progressive Web Applications Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article! With creativity in heart, with an idea in mind!

SEO: Best Examples

Search Engine Optimization: Best Practices & Examples

“On a broad scale I see SEO becoming a normalized marketing tactic, the same way TV, radio, and print are traditionally thought of as marketing tactics.” © Duane Forrester The importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices are vital in order to survive in the modern competitive business world. To stand out of the crowd, businesses all over the world need to put enormous efforts by developing a comprehensive thought-out strategy, taking into account the company’s major goals, preferences of targeted audience, and ‘rules’ of search engines. Today we will introduce to the key benefits of SEO for business, best examples of optimized websites and present few very interesting statistics. Let’s get started!
 ____________________

Key Benefits of SEO practices

SEO Helps You Stand Out from Your Competitors

On the first page of a SERP (search engine results page), there are up to six paid positions, three map listings, and 10 organic listings. If you can align your keyword strategy to appear in a paid listing, a map listing, and an organic listing, you’re increasing your likelihood of a site visit and decreasing the likelihood of a searcher clicking to visit your competitors.

Take Your Business to the Next Level

SEO can bring it thousands upon thousands of visitors to your website a day. This may put your company in a position of needing to expand to a larger web server to accommodate the traffic and sales to your website. Your customers may recommend you a product or service that they were looking for when they visited your website. SEO is a really great investment for your company and could be what you need to take it to the next level.

A Good SEO Strategy Enhances PPC Quality Score

We all know how important Quality Score is for PPC campaigns. But, did you know that Quality Score and the content on your website go hand-in-hand? A good SEO strategy includes creating pages on your website for your products and services and using relevant keywords through your site. By aligning your text ad messages to the content on your website or driving PPC traffic to relevant landing pages (like a page for a specific product or service), you can improve your Quality Score, which can, in turn, reduce your cost per click and improve the performance of your pay-per-click advertising.

SEO Boosts the Effectiveness of Your Other Marketing Efforts

Because of an increased market share in SERPs (search engine results pages) with SEO, you can boost the effectiveness of your marketing efforts like PPC and retargeting. For example, coupling SEO and search advertising can improve traffic by 50%. Coupling SEO and retargeting can increase brand awareness. You can also use the insights from your SEO strategy to fine-tune your PPC campaigns – if you have keywords that are performing well for your organic search, you can add those to your PPC campaigns and test whether or not performance improves.

The Results are Low Cost

Organic listings are essentially free. When you are listed at the top, you don’t need to pay per click or allocate a budget for business advertising, one of the main benefits of SEO is that it is the gift that keeps on giving. With a little bit of effort you can watch your website get consistent traffic. You don’t have to pay $10 for every person who clicks on your ad. Unlike pay-per-click advertising, your traffic will not drop to nothing when it stops. SEO gets rid of the need to have thousands of ads across the web. _________

3 Great Examples of Best SEO Practices

Have a look and get inspired by new ideas!

Cloudbakers

 
  Cloudbakers, optimizes SEO through a strong homepage. The page contains a strong call to action (CTA) as well as keyword links that link to content on their other pages. This design gives the company more opportunities for their site to be found by providing specific keywords that are easy to locate because of their page placement and will increase page ranking in results. Why it's exceptional:

• Direct call to action: "Talk to someone who does"
• Secondary call to action: The three thought bubbles below the main CTA link directly to their products page, allowing the user to learn more information if they're not ready to talk to someone, as suggested by the primary CTA.

MULESOFT

 
  Marketing campaigns often create a big bang, but they all too often lose momentum and fizzle away. MuleSoft, an integration software company, recognizes that sustainable and impressive results come not only from campaign activity, but from the continual application of technology and continued iteration of marketing best practices. Still, easier said than done. To keep campaign momentum going, MuleSoft’s digital marketing team invested in a smart integration strategy, achieving great results when all of their digital channels where working together. For starters, their SEO team altered their metadata structure and audience segments, resulting in a hefty increase in organic traffic to their website. Their marketing leads instituted real-time personalization, and their social team increased revenue a whopping 115% through expanding Account Based Marketing (ABM) efforts. They also prioritized creating a top lead-converting asset by recycling old assets into a long-form book. The results? You guessed it: stellar sales and revenue performance. In addition to killing their integrated marketing game, they also aren’t afraid to go behind-the-scenes and write about their culture, too. Don’t miss one of our favorite blog posts: Putting our culture of innovation into practice. Why it's exceptional:

• Good H1 tag: "Transform your business with API-led connectivity"
• Very prominent call to action: "Get Anypoint Platform"

Mouseflow

 
  Another strong example of SEO success would be Mouseflow, a tech company that uses an online customer tracking heatmap software that facilitates a clear analyzation of a user’s online experience. The Mouseflow home page has strong on-page optimization, with a clear and relevant H1 tag along with an effective call to action. The page is full of relevant keywords which equate to higher SERP ratings. This provides an insightful framework that many other websites can follow in order to construct a SEO -friendly website. Why it's exceptional:

• Good H1 tag: "Do You Understand Your Visitors?"
• Good H2 (including bolded words) that also serves as a concise description of the product
• Eye-catching call to action (the video and also within the main navigation bar)

_________________________

Mind-Blowing SEO Statistics You Have Not Heard About!

•  Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day
•  50% of search queries are four words or longer
•  93% of online experiences begin with a search engine
•  The first organic search result will get nearly 33% of clicks
•  75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results
•  High-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search
•  Long-form content of over 1,000 words consistently receives more shares and links than shorter form content
•  Marketers see SEO as becoming more effective, with 82% reporting effectiveness is on the rise and 42% of this group stating effectiveness is increasing significantly
•  In 2018, the average firm is expected to allocate 41% of their marketing budget to online, and this rate is expected to grow to 45% by 2020

Conclusion

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial aspect of the company’s success in the online business world. Despite of the fact that SEO does not brings fast results, consider it as a long-term investment giving unbelievable ROI in the future. Highly-qualified SEO specialists are of a great demand nowadays, and our team members are those you are looking for! Do you want Blueninja.io to help you? We are waiting for your call! Our search engine opitimization (seo), social media marketing (smm), and search engine marketing (sem) services will help you to be on the first page of Google Search and social media network newsfeed! We are looking forward to meet you!

KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER

How Understanding Your Consumer Influences Your Business Success

Most companies start out with a general idea of their target consumer group in mind. Maybe your product is targeted at middle-aged working professionals, or busy mothers, or young male gym-goers. But how well do you actually know your consumer. According to GrowBusiness.org., knowing your customer is key for any company endeavor. Successful business owners understand what their customers want and the most efficient way of making their products available, both online and offline. The depth of the knowledge is vital as well – it requires knowing more than just their names, ages and incomes. As a business owner, knowing your customer’s preferences, tastes and interests along with what they watch, listen to and read can be a profitable advantage too.  
  There isn't a single "best way" to better understand your customer base. Instead of emphasizing on just one or two methods, find the right tools that provide you with information about your customers and lead to broader conversations about marketing and business choices. Understanding their buying behavior is also very crucial for developing successful digital marketing plan. As a business owner, you need to comprehend what type of person is most likely to need the product or service you offer. These are a number of questions that successful business owners need to ask themselves on a daily basis:

• What is their reason for purchasing your product or service?
• How often are they going to need to buy that product or utilize the service?
• Who are they buying for?
• Where are they most likely to purchase?
• Do they prefer digital (online e-commerce) purchasing options or traditional ones?

This is an area many businesses overlook, although it can have a huge impact on your business (digital) success, especially in the following areas:

Creating a Brand Identity

  Deciding who you are as a brand is greatly influenced by your target consumer group – and not just such Google Adwords demographics options, such as age and gender. You need to identify what your consumers’ lifestyles are like – what their hobbies are, the kind of food they eat, a typical day in their lives. You identify what they care about, the issues they face, and the solutions they seek. Then, you can use that information to shape your brand into an ideal that appeals to your target consumers, and create an image of a community that they want to be a part of. This brand identity will drive all communications with your consumers, in the ‘voice’ of your copy, or the style of your visuals. This will make your brand relatable to your target consumers in a much deeper way than a generic communication would be to a broad audience.

Developing New Products

  Every business needs a reason for their customers to buy from them and not their competitors. This is called a Unique Sales Proposition (USP). Your USP can be identified by completing the phrase "Customers will buy from me because my business is the only one offering... "Your USP can change as your business or your market changes, and you can have different USPs for different types of customer. Once you have identified the issues your target consumers face and the solutions they seek, you can then put this information into the development of new products, as well as the improvement of current products. By going into detail and understanding what your consumers care about, you can streamline your efforts to make sure that you are putting effort into something that will actually matter.  
  According to McKinsey.com, what Unilever, Philips, Amazon have in common, though, is that they drive growth by meeting consumer needs better than their competitors do. Core to this consumer focus is a strong belief in customer insights, and in the active use of a diverse mix of insight tools—new and old, qualitative and quantitative, digital and analog—to get better answers. Unilever, for example, has successfully engaged in consumer cocreation to launch TRESemmé, a fast-growing dry-shampoo brand that is now one of the best-selling mass hair-care products in the US. Philips has achieved major market-share gains in highly contested home-appliance categories through city-level growth analysis. Thanks to its data-driven recommendation engine, Amazon attributes more than one third of its revenue to cross-selling, and Netflix saw its subscribers triple between 2011 and 2015, largely because of its ability to develop hit shows such as House of Cards, based on advanced analysis of subscribers’ past viewing behavior. Developing a better understanding of customers is increasingly a strategic necessity, because fast-moving markets, new digital technologies, and new business models are changing what customers want and how they shop. Remember, you can’t be everything to everyone – so aim your resources towards meeting the needs of your target market, and let the other things go. For example, if you own a shoe company and find out that your target market consists of women who are on their feet all day, then it may be more important to prioritize the comfort factor of your shoe line, than to spend resources produce a wide variety of colour options for each design.

Creating the Best Customer Experience

  Understanding your target audience and their behaviors also allows you to meet their needs for a good customer and user experience, whether online or offline. If you are catering to an older population who may not be as tech savvy, making sure your website is clean, easy to navigate, and presents key information in an easy-to-understand manner is key. Conversely, a younger target audience may respond better to multimedia elements such as GIFs, videos, or an interactive 360-degree display of your product. You can also expand this to include perks or services that come with your products. For example, you could offer an extended return period if you’re targeting people who are not used to shopping online to reduce their feeling of risk. Or perhaps, you could include a free demonstration video for a product that is complex to use.  
  Whatever your business is, there is always a benefit to understanding your consumer and showing that you care for their needs as a brand. At the end of the day, your business can’t lose by having happy, loyal customers!

Conclusion

  The better you know your customers, the easier it becomes to predict their behavior, to communicate effectively with them, and to anticipate their needs. Understanding your customers allows you to create accurate customer personas, which helps you target your customers based on specific categories. Know your customers better because only they can help you get more lead and more business. Understanding customers is the key to giving them good service which in turn results into strong customer relationships both online and offline and new sales through positive word-of-mouth recommendation. However, understanding the customers’ psyche is not easy and most often requires a thoughtful analysis to identify their preferences or purchase patterns so that you can anticipate their needs, exceed their expectations and develop a thought-out marketing and digital marketing strategy. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Digital Marketing? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!