User-Centric Marketing | Week 3 | Reveiw

User-Centric Approach

This is the third blog post as part of the series of blog posts in which I will sum up my learning experience with CXL Institute attending their Growth Marketing Minidegree.

Last week I talked about the growth process and how to build experiments along with a simple introduction to a User-centric Approach.

Today I will continue with "Customer research and Journey mapping" summing up my learning experience and review the following key takeaways:

# Gain a Better Understanding of  Your Customer

Paul explained how we can easily better understand our users/customers without sending any

money at all. He mentioned different channels and he's right it's all within the entity.

What caught my attention is that it's not about the channels as sources of information about

the customers but more about how you approach each and every channel/department within

your entity/organization. 

For example, the Sales team has a ton of information about the customer as its 1st line of communication with customers, approaching the sales team with the need to know the questions customers asking, the objection points they have and the goals they want to achieve. this approach is different and I see it powerful as it gives the most fundamental

touchpoints where you can really understand how your customer thinks and here's when you 

can leverage that and give the customer the best user experience ever where he buys your 

products and fall in love with it so that he/she can buy it again and buy it more. 

There are different other channels like Social Media; where you can know more about

customer behaviour from analytics and the ability to freely check customer profiles and learn

more about his/her interest. for a deep level of understanding  and build a better future plan, 

Customer Service represent a treasure for you where you have full access to customer's

frustration and struggle with your product so you know where to optimize, customer's wishes

of how the product should be like so you can level up your future plans accordingly and FAQs

where you have the opportunity of better addressing answers that best satisfy users/Customers.

Data gives you a view of who your potential customer is but it's not enough to know who your target customer is as we mentioned in the previous blog post. we need to know their motivations to take action, their goals and their objection. Starting with a search we can identify what our target customers search for, what is their intent, what they need to achieve.

With social media, we can learn more about what they like and w can dig deep into competitors to figure out what do our competitors do that's likeable by our target audience.

Now, the biggest source of information about your customer behaviour and what motive them which is the website. Yes, your website is a gold mine that contains huge information about your customer behaviour. use tools like hotjar to record customer sessions, check what page they are visiting the most and for how long, what product they like the most? and a lot more. 

Gaining a better understanding gives an indication of how to approach you,r target customer, complete/validate that indication by putting it into different campaign tests. 

# How to build a picture of your target customer using Surveys 

Surveys are extremely powerful and useful, especially when it comes to consumer behaviour, 

but let's admit it, nobody likes to be questioned a lot or asked to do something, especially in
the buzzy world of today. That's why when doing a survey you should focus only on 1 single
question. 

Having a clear idea of what one question that its answer is what you're looking for. Identifying
why you need the answer and what you are going to achieve with it, is extremely important.
Don't think of surveys as a way to know who your customer is, instead it should be a way to know
what questions your customers have, what goals they want to achieve, what pain points and
objection points they have. 

Now, the million-dollar question, how to encourage a customer to do a survey? 

The Right Moment to ask; 

let the targeted customer achieve what he/she intended to do when they land

on your website then ask them. or after they completed a purchase.

Focus on a single subject and Keep it short; 

Try to be more straightforward and focus on a subject that the customer thinks is relevant

and use close questions with pre-defined answers that customers can easily select from.

Let them know why you're asking;

Explain why you're asking and what you're going to do with the gathered info and don't 

ask for personal information

In Case of multiple questions, make it Simple; 

Start  with simple questions that require no thinking time from the customer and then 

gradually scale.

Offer them a gift in return; 

Offering incentives by completing of survey and has not to be costly, for example;

Free download or Free use of the services for a limited time

Surprise them; 

Sometimes it works to surprise your customers after they finish the survey and it could lead

to amplification through word-of-mouth

#Answer the Questions They Have, not the Questions You Think They Have.

We agree now that Convincing people take action mostly comes down to answering their questions
 and addressing their objections. But answering the right questions that's more relevant

to the target customer is what mattered the most. You need what questions matter the most

the customer to make sure customers can easily find the answers they need. 

How to find questions that are relevant to your customers? through top task analysis. 

A top task analysis is a powerful way to get to the questions that customers really care about its

answers. Running a top task analysis is a straightforward process that starts with brainstorming

Every question and every objection your customers might have, then simple questions into simple

statement, categorize them and give each question a rate from1~5 on how important it is. 

Now, you can easily run the survey on your website or via Email or whatever channel you see fit. 

Check the results of this survey focusing on top question and top objections your customers

mentioned. Answer their questions through your landing page structure, marketing campaigns and 

ads messages. Deal with their objections making sure you're covering them. Top Task analysis is a very good for Better understanding what potential customers really care about Enabling us marketers for prioritizing our marketing messages according to our customers questions and

objection points.

More about Customer Journey Mapping in next's week blog post.