Sales and Marketing - Jen Jordan

Sales and Marketing - Jen Jordan
Jen Jordan brings a wealth of life and leadership experiences to her writing. After 10 years creating a variety of content for a nonprofit, Jen decided to establish her own writing business. She specializes in creating high quality blog and website content for small businesses. When she's not writing, Jen is a competitive triathlete with a goal of completing a triathlon in all 50 states.

Information You Should Be Gathering from Your Current and Potential Customers

Information You Should Be Gathering from Your Current and Potential Customers

In the digital age, information is king. An updated, accurate record of customer data is essential to retaining and growing your customer base. But what information is useful and crucial? What is the best way to gather that information?

Some customer information may be more applicable to some industries than others. However, most small businesses should gather these four pieces of information from their current and potential customers.

1 Contact information: This one might seem obvious, but no matter what kind of business you have, it's critical to collect basic contact information like phone number, email address, and mailing address. This information lets you personalize your communication with them, share details about your business, make them aware of promotions or events, and follow up with them after an order or if there is an issue.

The tricky part is to entice them to share their contact information without asking for too much. Some businesses make all the data fields optional on their contact forms, so people only need to share what they're comfortable with. Other companies only ask for the bare minimum (phone number and email address).

As you build trust, you can ask for more information, like age, profession, gender, values, and other details that likely influence their purchasing patterns. For example, suppose you own a lawn care company and discover, via a customer questionnaire, that most of your customers have children and pets. In that case, you might consider marketing lawn care services that are chemical-free and pet safe.

2 Transactional data: Also called "basket analysis," this is the information that tells you what they purchase from your business and how frequently they shop. This data helps you customize future offers for products and services they are likely to buy. Of course, this applies more directly to B2C businesses, but even B2B companies need to know their customers' purchasing trends.

Big online companies like Amazon are experts at gathering this information and delivering sometimes-disturbingly-personalized product recommendations based on your previous purchases or browsing history.

3 How they discovered your business: Understanding how your customers found your business will help you measure your marketing strategy's effectiveness. Suppose you're spending hundreds of dollars on paid advertising and learn that most of your clients come via personal referrals. In that case, it might indicate that it's time to adjust your marketing.

4 Who makes the purchasing decisions: It's essential to determine what level of decision-making power your customer has. It's helpful for a B2B company to understand whether their customers need approval from upper management before making purchases. In the B2C sector, businesses should know whether their product or service is a "one-click" purchase or if it's the type of investment that families make together.

These factors will influence the target audience of your marketing—upper management, spouses, individuals, or other groups entirely. Knowing who really holds the purchasing power helps you target the marketing and purchasing resources to the right people. If your customer is a middle-manager, you might need to create a document that helps them get approval to purchase your product from their supervisors.

Collecting the right data from your current and potential customers can make a big difference! Once you determine what information is most helpful to your business context, you will have the right data to make better business decisions.

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Works Cited

https://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/11-pieces-of-data-you-should-be-collecting-from-your-customers.html

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/231513

https://www.myfeelback.com/en/blog/pieces-of-data-collect-clients