The needs of your customers and their expectations change daily. With an effective customer analysis plan in place, you will gain critical insight into customer motivations and purchasing behaviors.
Using the results of the analysis, it becomes easier to ensure your organization provides the service its customers require.
Keep reading to learn how to conduct a customer analysis in 4 easy steps.
Step 1: Conduct a Customer Survey
Begin the customer analysis with a customer survey. Make sure to include questions that help pinpoint vital aspects of each customer's demographics, expectations, motivations to make a purchase, and so forth.
Here's a list of questions all customer analysis surveys should ask:
- What is your age?
- What is your income?
- What is your employment status?
- Where do you use the service or product?
- What is the primary use of the service or product?
- What is most important to you when buying the service or product?
- Does 24-hour customer support, or the availability of 24-hour customer support, make a difference for you when making a purchase?
- Do you prefer in-store or online shopping?
- Do you prefer in-store, over-the-phone, or online customer support?
Step 2: Customer Segmentation
To segment your customers means to divide them according to similarities and differences. The goal is to identify which factors to segment them by. To do this, you must first get to know your customers on a more personal level.
The way you go about segmenting your customers with a customer analysis first requires taking a look at your current customer base.
Do you serve individual customers or other businesses? Your answer greatly influences the criteria you segment the customers.
For example, if you serve other businesses (B2B), then one of your segmenting factors can be NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES. If you serve individual customers (B2C), one of your segmenting factors can be NUMBER OF CHILDREN.
Here's a list of other factors you can segment your customers according to whether you operate as a B2B or B2C company:
B2C Segmenting Factors
- Age
- Employment status
- Income
- Location
- Education level
- Number of people in the household
- Hobbies
- Pain points
B2B Segmenting Factors
- Business size
- Age of business
- Access to business credit
- Annual revenue
- Department budgets
- Location
- Pain points
Learn more about B2B and B2C market research.
Step 3: Create Customer Profiles
Once you collect the necessary information to segment your customers properly, you can adjust your marketing efforts to better reach each segment you serve.
Let's say you are a B2C company with a large number of customers who have children and a large number who don't. Knowing this, you can refine your marketing efforts so that you resonate more with each group of customers.
You can send marketing content that focuses on how your product or service helps parents to those who are actually parents while sending non-parent-related marketing material to the other group of customers.
Creating customer profiles, also known as buyer personas, is one of the best ways to ensure you reach your target audience with personalized marketing messages.
Some companies have only one buyer persona, while others may have up to 10 or more.
For businesses performing their first customer analysis, it's typically recommended to start with the creation of three or fewer personas.
Having several personas helps maintain organization during the process and allows you to build three personas that thoroughly represent your three most significant segments of customers.
Step 4: Acting on the Results
Now that you know how to perform a customer analysis in three steps, you're probably wondering what to do with the results.
Ideally and ultimately, you can now identify which customers are likely to be the most profitable and which ones aren't. You can also use the results to build loyal relationships with existing and future customers.
You're able to find out a customer’s profitability and loyalty because the analysis results enable you to create unique solutions to your customers' pain points.
And when used strategically, you can use the customer analysis results to predict future purchase patterns, which is paramount to increasing revenue through personalized marketing tactics.
Drive Research is a national market research company located in New York. Our customized customer analysis studies provide affordable and actionable insights you need.
Interested in receiving a proposal or estimate for a customer analysis? Reach out through any of the four ways below.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Emily Carroll
A SUNY Cortland graduate, Emily has taken her passion for social and content marketing to Drive Research as the Marketing Coordinator. She has earned certificates for both Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
Learn more about Emily, here.
