Collecting & Leveraging Data for Insightful Brand Activations

How well do you know your customers — and what do you know about them? If you’ve done surveys or dug into your website analytics, you probably know at least some basic demographics. But while demographics and interviews are a great starting point, successful experiential marketing thrives on understanding interests, values, and lifestyles. Even better from an experiential marketing standpoint is understanding your target audience’s preferences and pain points and what differentiates your product or service from the competition in your customers’ minds. That could differ significantly from what you think sets your brand apart, making the “why” of their choices vital information for growing your brand.

Behavior tracking and review analysis are two powerful ways to delve deeper and understand your audience.

Behavior Tracking

Behavior tracking is an umbrella term that describes using technology to monitor and analyze consumer actions in real time. It might involve tracking consumer behavior online, such as on your website or social media channels. It can also include tracking customers in person, at your physical location or experiential event.

Regardless of the medium or methods, behavior tracking can reveal valuable insights and benefits.

Tracking Online Behavior

When you track customers’ behavior online, you’re tapping into the data stream generated by their actions and interactions. This can involve tracking behavioral data across social media as well as your website.

Imagine the sequence of events set in motion when a user clicks on a social media ad. First, the social media platform logs that interaction. Most commonly, the ad will direct the user to the advertiser’s website, which uses cookies or tracking pixels to record any actions the user takes such as clicks or form submissions. Every single action generates more data, which streams into a real-time analytics platform (such as Google Analytics) that analyzes the data, identifies the user’s source (in this instance, a social media ad), and records behavior on the landing page. Marketers can then use this data to personalize the user’s experience — perhaps by showing the user different content based on their initial clicks or offering a targeted discount based on the individual’s browsing history — and use these insights to influence decisions about website content, features, and design as well as to optimize email campaigns.

Social media listening across the social media channel itself provides further insights into user engagement with the brand’s content, including likes, shares, comments, and click-through rates, creating a more comprehensive picture of the user’s journey from social media ad to conversion.

Tracking Behavior In-Store or In-Person

More than a decade ago, brands began using apps running on customers’ cell phones to track consumer behavior in stores. This tracking has evolved and combined with other technologies to allow brands to “follow” customers as they move through not only stores but also pop-ups and experiential events like activations. Brands can “count” customers via motion sensors, follow their eye movements and gestures, and observe various attributes to analyze interactions within the physical space, according to an article on behavioranalyticsretail.com. Other tracking tools include the following:

• Registration forms that collect users’ data such as contact information and some demographic data
• QR codes and RFID chips, which are often used on conference/trade show badges to track individuals within an event
• Kiosks and event-specific apps, which give attendees access to information about the event and can also run polls or contests
• Smartphones with Bluetooth or WiFi enabled, which can be tracked by using WiFi or beacons to pinpoint users’ location
• Security cameras that track customers as they explore the space, from entry to displays to exit

Customer Reviews

Browsing the reviews customers leave on your website is always fascinating — but it’s only the first step in finding and analyzing reviews for valuable insights. Look beyond the star ratings to develop a clearer picture of your customers perceptions of your brand, experiences with your products, and satisfaction with your customer service. While it’s true that customers are more inclined to post negative reviews than positive ones, nearly every review, good or bad, offers glimpses into consumers’ thought processes and decision making. Here are some tips for gathering and analyzing customer reviews.

Finding Customer Reviews

Your brand’s website should be the first place you look for reviews and ratings by customers. If your brand is relatively young, consider soliciting reviews with every sale or asking a few questions at the end of customer service calls or other interactions; emailing customers is another approach brands have found effective, with the added bonus that customers will generally appreciate having been asked for feedback. “A benefit of soliciting feedback is that you can ask very targeted questions to get granular feedback on particular aspects you want to analyze,” says idiomatic.com.

While your website and customer service logs should be your first stop in collecting customer reviews, investigate other sources such as your brand’s Google Business profile, Amazon store, and Trustpilot. Search social media, especially Facebook, for comments, complaints, and recommendations. “People love to complain or praise businesses on social media,” says idiomatic. “You can search publicly available social media posts that mention your company name or a branded name and collect those posts to analyze.”

Look at reviews for other brands’ products or services, too. This can help identify what differentiates your brand in consumers’ eyes as well as deepen your understanding of what truly matters to customers.

Analyzing Customer Reviews

The primary goal of analyzing customer reviews is to identify themes and common characteristics. This information can be used to identify both strengths and weaknesses of your brand and its products. It can also help you identify your “ideal” customer — the particular mix of traits embodied by your target audience.

Reviews can yield different kinds of data depending on how they were obtained. Demographics like age, gender, marital status, household income, and geographic location are sometimes included in the mix or can be deduced based on the review itself. But the real value of reviews is in the psychographic traits — values, social status, desires, goals, interests, opinions, and lifestyle choices — they reveal.

It may be tempting to pay closer attention to positive reviews than negative — after all, marketers want to learn the mix of traits that make up an ideal customer, not a dissatisfied one — but both yield different types of information. Positive reviews help identify what customers consider strengths, which products they feel best accomplish the desired outcome, and what differentiates one brand or product from another. Negative reviews, on the other hand, can reveal flaws in the product itself, missed opportunities, areas of confusion, and customer pain points. Negative reviews can also indicate whether a brand’s marketing is reaching the right audience.

Making sense of all this information starts with categorizing it by sentiment, theme, or customer characteristics. Track which aspects of the product or service are most commented-on. Next, advises idiomatic, look for the “why” behind the feedback. “From this analysis, you can develop actionable insights to know which areas of your business need to be changed to increase customer satisfaction.”

Finally, use that analysis to make changes suggested by both positive and negative feedback; this could involve changes to the product itself or to your marketing or messaging. “If you don’t act on the insights you get from customer feedback analysis, collecting the feedback in the first place becomes redundant,” says idiomatic. With each change, give your audience time to catch on, or seek direct feedback as changes are deployed, to determine whether your adjustments moved the needle.

When combined, behavior tracking and customer reviews create a well-rounded understanding of your brand’s target audience. Behavioral data gives you the “what” — what customers do —  while reviews reveal the “why”  behind their actions. By leveraging both, your brand will be well positioned to craft experiential marketing campaigns that feel authentic and truly resonate with your ideal customers.

Promobile Marketing is a dynamic experiential marketing agency based in New York City. For over a decade, Promobile Marketing has collaborated with a range of brands—from budding startups to major CPG brands—on immersive marketing campaigns. Get in touch to discuss your next project.