How to do a customer analysis as part of your content strategy
30 November 2022
A customer analysis will help you understand your customers, from their needs and wants, to their purchasing habits and how they consume their content. It’s therefore an extremely important and useful part of your content strategy.
Why is customer analysis an important part of your content strategy?
If you think about the amount of content we all consume, it’s extremely significant. According to a recent article by Wonder, research by the University of California, the average American consumes approximately 34 gigabytes of data and information each day. This translates to approximately 100,000 words both heard and read.
This is a huge amount of content! So, how do you cut through the content and reach your audience? The simple answer is, by understanding them.
Once you understand your customers, you’ll know:
- What their issues or problems are
- What they want or need
- What drives them to make a purchase
- What their purchasing habits are
- The formats they prefer
- The channels they use
- The times they’ll be available
- The tone of voice they respond to
How do you get to know your customers?
You should complete a customer analysis to get to know your customers and there are a number of ways you can do this.
You can instruct a company to do a consumer research project on your behalf, for example, by asking 2000 consumers a series of questions and preparing a report based on their answers. There are also platforms available where you can conduct the research yourself by purchasing credits. Although this can deliver excellent data to base your findings on, it can sometimes be costly.
The most cost-effective way is to carry out your own research. However, this can take some time. If you carry out the following 4 pieces of research, you can learn an incredible amount of information.
1. Asking family and friends
If any of your family or friends fit into your target customer demographic, prepare a questionnaire and ask them to complete it. If you have multiple target demographics such as Gen Z (18-25s), Millennials (26-40s), Gen X (41-55s), and Boomers (56-65s), ask all your family and friends to complete it. It’s quite surprising what you can learn from this research.
2. Asking your customers
You already have a great source of information, and that’s your current customers. Finding out about their content habits, their consumption, their drivers, etc, is extremely powerful.
You could send your customers an email asking if they’d like to take part in consumer research to help you deliver the content consumers want, and improve their customer experience. Some companies like to include an incentive to help persuade customers to do this, such as a voucher or prize draw. However, you should speak to your compliance officer before sending any communications or offering any incentives to your customers.
3. Social media questionnaires
If you have a large enough following on social media, you might want to consider asking your followers to complete an online questionnaire. Again, incentives can help persuade followers to do this, but you should speak to your compliance officer before you offer any incentives.
4. Online research
The internet is full of helpful information. If you search for specific demographics you can obtain a significant amount of information about their habits, preferred content channels, etc which can be valuable information.
What is a buyer persona?
Buyer personas, also known as customer personas or client personas, are semi-fictional representations of your clients. They’re based on data and research that you’ve carried out.
Buyer personas help you tailor your content and make it bespoke for specific people that fit into your audience demographic, and which stage of the buyer’s journey they are at.
How do you create a buyer persona as part of your customer analysis?
There are many examples of buyer personas online for you to consider, but the information you provide in it would usually depend on the product or service you’re selling. Here are some of the key things you should consider adding to a buyer persona as part of your customer analysis.
1. Image and Name
Give your buyer persona an image and a name. Simply find a picture of someone online that fits your target demographic and add this to the buyer persona, then give them a name. Giving your persona an image and a name helps bring them to life. This helps you remember everything you include in their persona and makes it easier to keep them in mind when creating your content.
2. Personal Information
State their age, where they live, their current marital status, whether or not they have children, their profession, their income, whether they’re the decision maker, and their hobbies. This will provide you with their target demographic, the tone of voice they’ll respond to, and how they’re likely to spend their time.
3. Content Consumption
How they consume their content is important as it helps you know where to aim your content. If you’re not planning on doing TV advertising, you may not feel it necessary to add details of your persona’s TV consumption. However, it can still be valuable. For example, if your target demographic tends to watch soaps in the evening, it can help determine when not to post your content. So, it’s good practice to include the full content consumption in your buyer persona.
4. Research and Purchase Habits
This can help you determine the best time of day to focus your content, if they’re purchasing on mobile or desktop, the call to action your persona usually favours, i.e. if they just prefer to call or if they like to complete forms.
5. Challenges / Needs
This is where you focus on the product or service you want to sell. What problems are you trying to solve? What are your clients facing? This will enable you to determine what content they need to help them on their journey.
6. Stage of Buyer's Journey
Knowing what stage of the buyer’s journey the buyer’s persona is at will help you tailor your content and make it even more bespoke for their needs, so it directly speaks to them, giving them exactly what they need at that time.
7. Emotional Drivers / Fears
This is how you determine what the emotional drivers of your customers are. For example, if cost is a fear, your content could demonstrate that it’s a cost-effective way to get the service they need, compare against other costs to confirm you offer the value price, offer a deal, etc. Knowing their emotional drivers will help you close those sales.
What are the stages of a buyer's journey?
There are 3 stages of a buyer’s journey:
The Awareness Stage: This is where they’re either not quite aware they have a problem or need, or they’ve only just realised they have a problem or need. They’ve not yet started to think about a solution.
The Consideration Stage: This is where they know they have a problem or need and have an understanding of it. They’re researching potential solutions to their problem or need and evaluating them.
The Decision Stage: They understand their problem or need and know the solution. They’re considering why they should choose a particular brand, product, or service. Their decisions are based on facts or emotions.
How many buyer personas should you create for your customer analysis?
It’s unlikely that a business only has one type of customer with one type of problem. It’s therefore advisable to create multiple buyer personas to represent each of your products or services and each stage in the buyer’s journey. This will provide exceptional insight into your customers and enable you to be focused on your content delivery.
Where you have multiple services or products, it’s often best practice to classify those various types of customers into specific groupings, known as customer segments.
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All content in this article was correct at the time of publication.
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