Why Customer Behavior Analysis Is Indispensable to 1:1 Personalized Experiences

The world is going bonkers about customer experience (CX), and leaders from top brands across the globe have voiced the importance of creating great CX – time and again. However, while most of us can easily see the big picture, the macro – carving overwhelming CX, but very few delve into the micro of how to achieve it – consistently and constantly.

The long and short of it is that all business have to dig deep into customer behavior analysis, if they hope to make a ‘home run’ with customers.

Customer Behavior Analysis? - Please help me wrap my head around it

To break customer behavior analysis in simple terms – it is the craft of getting inside the head of your customers, to decipher their thinking and reactions to any and every offering of a brand, that is already present or in the formation mode.

But, why do we need it?

This is quite a pertinent question for people trying to understand why we need customer behavior analysis. A McKinsey research holds the most apt answer - it states that organizations that leverage customer behavior data to produce key insights, outperform peers by 85% in sales growth and over 25% in gross margin.

How are Brands Faring with Customer Behavior Analysis?

At this juncture, it is just not enough to ‘know your customers’, and the ‘target persona’. Bigwigs such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix have already understood this, and have moved on to focusing on ‘what customers do’ – with measureable insights gained by understanding customer behavior, over a period of time.

In the world we live in, the concept of 1:1 personalized experiences is swiftly becoming the order of the day. Hence, if personalized customer experiences is the question, customer behavior analysis is indisputably the answer.

However, 1:1 personalized experiences is just a part of the answer, and it is the entire customer journey that matters. This is the age of Omnichannel, and so analyzing customer behavior across all channels of interaction holds paramount importance. A report from eMarketer suggests that B2B brands need to understand customer behavior on social media after piloting ample research, before implementing a social content marketing plan.

How Customer Behavior can Shape your Marketing Strategies

The 2017 State of Marketing Report by Salesforce has divulged that 65% of business buyers are likely to switch brands if a vendor doesn’t personalize communications to their company. Thus, it is safe to state that each customer brings his/her set of wants and desires, and thereby may seek different values from your brand. Understanding customer behavior can prove to be instrumental in shaping your marketing strategies. Here’s how:

> Past customer behavior can help you gauge the kind of products, services and offerings that your specific target audience is gung-ho about. This analysis also be highly helpful to approach prospects with great groundwork.

> The analysis will help you gain unprecedented understanding about the curves where your prospects or customers disengaged themselves from your brand. This comes especially handy when you are trying to nurture old or warm leads. Identifying the loose ends can help you strengthen those areas and come up with customized solutions for the future. Most of all, it will certainly add value to your personalization campaigns.

> Customer behavior data can be used to drive customer retention and growth. Thus, the fundamental element here is to pitch the right offerings to the right customers, at the right time. Brands should a leaf from Amazon’s recommendation algorithm, derived from customer behavior analysis – to ace at this.

Paying close attention to your customer behavior is what will help you drive revenue for your brand. After all, the most successful companies didn’t get at the top, without making it big on understanding how customer think.