It is common knowledge that the key figure in any business is the customer. Understanding the values \u200b\u200band desires of your client not only simplifies cooperation with him, but also greatly affects the company's profit. What exactly do you need to know about the client, and how to use the acquired knowledge competently to establish long-term relationships and extract maximum benefits?

What information does a company need to successfully interact with customers

Any collaboration, in fact, is a rather complex and multi-component process, during which a large amount of data is used. Most often, a detailed customer base used by company employees in their work includes both basic information about each customer and additional information that may be required in the course of working with him. The most significant is the following information about the client:

All clients at a glance.
Manage customer relationships, increase customer loyalty and increase your sales!

General information: the name of the customer organization, its geographic location, legal data, initials of contact persons, photos, contact information (addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and corporate sites, Skype, ICQ, etc.);

Type of services provided to this customer: direct sales, service, advertising, marketing, information services, etc .;

Transactional data reflecting the history of work with the client: completed and current transactions, negotiations, meetings, as well as other cases of interaction with this organization or an individual;

Planning for a given client (planned transactions), a brief analysis of the partnership relationship between the company and this client;

All sorts of additional information about the client: data from the client's website, data from social networks, important dates, etc.

In addition, the database may contain other information. For example, all kinds of information obtained in the course of surveys, marketing research, or informal communication (values, interests, personal characteristics of character, etc.).

CRM for working with clients

Many companies postpone the purchase of a CRM system for fear of high costs for implementation and staff training.

However, the modern program Klass365 allows you to avoid all these problems and in a few minutes become the owner of a full-featured program for business automation Klass365 with a built-in CRM-module for managing relationships with contractors.

Working with the CRM module of the online program Klass365, you can:

• Make marketing impacts on customers directly from the system: make email and SMS mailings using an editable message template.
• View the entire order history, formalized documents for each client
• Search for the required counterparty using tags
• Plan events (calls, negotiations, meetings)

Data analysis in marketing determines your actions based on the influence of certain factors on the company as a whole. Moreover, the data can be analyzed both on the Internet and offline. Naturally, this analysis is suitable for any industry.

In this article, you will learn what tasks data analysis helps to solve in marketing, the algorithm for such analysis, and at the end you will find a conclusion on the whole topic.

Why you need data analysis in marketing

Both in working with clients and in my studies with students of Synergy University, I never cease to state one simple thing. Marketing is primarily about working with target data, not carrying out creative events or promotions.

Data analysis in marketing allows you to solve a number of important tasks, such as:

• release of a new product;
• entering new markets;
• increasing competitiveness;
• reduced customer churn and so on.

According to its sources, data are of two types - primary and secondary.

Primary data you get it yourself by using the internal resources of the company, or by inviting a third-party agency on a project basis. This data is collected by your marketers, contractors, press office or staff analyst.

As a rule, in a small business, the functions of collecting data and further work with them fall on the owner himself. However, in our practice, this happens very rarely.

Secondary data collected and worked out not by you. They are published by consulting companies, research centers, government agencies. The main disadvantage when working with secondary data is its availability, which can be used by your competitors, as well as not quite prompt placement.

Sometimes data are distinguished according to the degree of influence on the company - direct and indirect.

Algorithm for data analysis in marketing

The main tool for collecting and analyzing data in marketing is CRM. It is in such a system that data about your customers, transactions, the number of purchases, the amount and duration of the transaction, the number of calls are stored.

1. Collecting the required data

All marketing decisions dance around four groups of data: your customer data, conversion data, average check data, and repeat purchase data.

Customer data - the total number of potential customers (leads) and real (i.e. those who have bought from you at least once). Customer information must be stored in your CRM system.

Conversion data show how many people from the total number of visitors completed the target action. For example, 1000 people visit your site per month, 100 of whom subscribe to the newsletter. In this case, the conversion is 10%.

Average check data - This is nothing more than the size of the average purchase for a certain period. It (average bill) is calculated for each product separately.

Finally, repeat purchase data help us understand what products, at what price, in what quantity and after what time our client purchases.

2. Visualization of primary data

Having collected the primary data on the four mandatory groups, someone can immediately read them. I recommend imaging before starting the analysis. All the indicators that we have are collected in a dashboard (data panel) for visual display. It turns out something similar to the picture below.

For visualization, you can use Excel, extensions for your CRM, or separate tools. For example, Qlik.com.

3. Data analysis

Collecting primary data and visually displaying them is only half the battle. The main task is to correctly analyze the collected indicators.

In the analysis phase, well-known methodologies can be used: Six Sigma, Quantitative Analysis (Sociologists will understand), Targeted Customer Surveys (called sampling), Factor Analysis, Cohort Analysis, and other tools.

By the way, our colleague Ilya Balakhnin spoke very well about cohort analysis.

4. Search for dependent links

In marketing, your customers' behavior can be digitized. In other words, translate customer decisions into numbers. RFM analysis will help you with this.

This analysis is based on three indicators: R (recency) - age; F (frequency) - frequency; M (monetary) - monetary value.

The more time the customer does not buy from you, the less chances of getting it back (R). The same goes for the last two indicators: the less often a customer buys from you, the less likely they will buy something (F). Finally, the lower the average bill for one purchase, the greater the chance that the client will not return to us.

5. Making decisions

After analyzing the data, you just have to make a decision, set a goal and select the tools to achieve it.

We saw that most clients have a small average check, which means it needs to be increased (upsells and cross-villages will help you).

Output

Analyzing data in marketing reveals the real picture in your business. In fact, analysis is a universal way to answer almost any question: from "Why are we losing half of our clients?" to "How do we implement repeat sales?"

What is Big Data?

We live in an amazing time: traffic congestion, the right bus and even the courier who brings us pizza can be tracked in real time. Information technology rules the world. Real success comes to someone who not only owns information, but also knows how to properly dispose of it. We will tell you what Big Data means in the modern world and how to use it.

Big Data is a fairly new term, literally translated from English means “a large amount of information”. It is not only the data itself, information, but also the technology for collecting and processing data.

Where does the data come from?

BD source - corporate databases; information that users independently post to social networks; information from sensors, measuring devices and sensor networks (for example, pedometer or motion sensor) and so on.

How is data processed?

We started our conversation with information about traffic congestion, so let's look at the process of processing BD using navigators as an example. Once every few seconds, navigators send their coordinates to the application provider's system. Based on the data received, a route with information about the speed of movement is built - a track. Based on the amount of tracks received from drivers, the degree of road congestion is determined. Cars are part of the network, they form a stable flow of information.

Why is this needed?

Today BD is a mirror of society, it improves the work of transport, medicine, is actively used in banking, insurance, crime prevention, etc. BD is of great importance for marketing, advertising and retail. We will tell you how to use BD so as not to fall under the article of the Law.

What is BD used for in marketing and modern retail?

Companies use BD to solve various problems: increasing competitiveness, improving interaction with customers and among themselves, creating new services. All of this ultimately leads to better work with the audience.

BD includes the so-called 3V:

1. Volume is the volume or amount of information.

Quantity is perhaps the main indicator of BD. It is information that is beyond manual processing that is considered BD. This is such a volume of information that even hundreds of thousands, millions of people could not process manually. BD is inherent in automated processing.

2. Velocity is the processing speed.

Data needs to be processed quickly, because their readings are constantly changing. For example, information about the customers of a store grows both vertically (with the addition of each new customer) and horizontally (new information appears about each specific customer: name, gender, delivery address, each new purchase and visit to the store).

3. Variety is the variety of information.

In this case, information can be either structured or unstructured. For example, an online store may have information about the cities in which purchases are made; about pets; about the gadgets that the buyer uses and so on. Sometimes they add another 2V: veracity - reliability, credibility of the data; and value is value.

BD is one of the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools, which is based on a customer-oriented approach, that is, it takes into account the needs of each individual person.

Today, for a seller, it is not mass character that is important, but personalization: it is not so important to attract one or two new buyers for a one-time purchase, how to keep one regular customer, or even better to keep a constant one, attract a new one, and make a permanent one out of the new. To do this, it becomes necessary to collect, process, store and analyze large volumes of information about customers, including not only information that customers left about themselves (for example, filling out a questionnaire to participate in a loyalty program), but also the IP address, duration of stay on the site, number of visits, types of mobile devices, requests made on the site, etc.

BD analysis is used to determine the target audience, segment customers, identify their preferences, and study consumer activity. In addition, BD in retail can be used, for example, to select the location of a new store opening, to develop marketing campaigns, to work with prices, to predict the volume of sales of a particular product.

How do companies collect data?

Companies use different tools to collect data, such as:

1. feedback form
2. form for entering email to receive newsletter
3. form for registration and creation of a personal account
4. loyalty program application form
5. form for filling out contact information for ordering
6. registration via social networks
7. cookies, Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica.

What is personal data and how does it relate to Big Data?

Personal data is not only the data that characterizes a person, but also data that can be used for identification: a dynamic IP address, user cookies, plus information from the provider. However, this data will be considered personal only if you have the opportunity to legally obtain additional information from the provider. It is not always possible to say unequivocally whether certain data are personal, it depends on the additional information you have.

Big Data is a large volume of various personal data quickly processed by technical means (automated processing).

What laws govern the processing of BD?

Having understood what BD is and how they are going, it becomes obvious that BD is very closely correlated with a person's private life, with his constitutional right to privacy, personal and family secrets, protection of his honor and good name, with the right to privacy of correspondence. telephone conversations, postal, telegraph and other messages (article 23 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation).

To ensure that companies do not violate constitutional human rights when processing personal data, the collection, processing, storage and use of personal data is regulated by the Law. Using BD in your activities, you need to take into account the legislation not only of the Russian Federation, but also of other countries whose citizens are current or potential clients or users of the site.

The fundamental act in the field of personal data was the Convention on the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, adopted by the Council of Europe on January 28, 1981. Russia ratified the Convention and as a result, Federal Law No. 152 of July 27, 2006 "On Personal Data" was adopted ( hereinafter - the Law on Personal Data), which entered into force on January 26, 2007.

There is no separate legislation in Russia that would regulate Big Data processing. When processing a large array of personal data, companies must be guided by the Personal Data Law. This law contains the fundamental principles for the protection and processing of personal data.

Companies operating in the Russian Federation, and whose products and services are targeted at the Russian consumer and the Russian market, must be governed by the Law on Personal Data.

Those companies that:

- carry out their activities not only on the territory of the Russian Federation, but also have branches or subsidiaries in any of the 28 countries of the European Union

- carry out their activities only on the territory of the Russian Federation, but are focused on the European market

- carry out their activities in the Russian Federation, are not focused on the European market, but based on the company's website, a citizen of the European Union can become a potential buyer, that is:

• the site makes it possible to translate the page into English or any other European language (ru / eng button)
• the price is indicated not only in rubles, but also in euros
• there is information about products / services in English or other European language
• there is information that the company “works all over the world”, “provides its services all over the world”, etc.
• any information that is interpreted as that a product or service on this site can be purchased by anyone, including a citizen of the European Union.

must, in addition to Russian legislation, comply with the recently entered into force in the European Union GDPR - General Data Protection Regulation.

What is GDPR?

GDPR is a Regulation adopted in the European Union and entered into force on May 25, 2018. If we draw an analogy with Russian legislation, GDPR is a law that is binding in all countries of the European Union, as well as for everyone who is involved in the processing of Personal Data of citizens of the European Union.

Why do Russian companies need to comply with the GDPR?

The European Union, as a supranational association, is very attentive and respectful of a person's private life and guarantees its citizens the protection of personal data. That is why the GDPR was developed, which quite strictly regulates how companies should process, store and transfer any personal data. Since many Russian companies are focused on the European market, they must also guarantee the citizens of the European Union the full protection of their personal data. This guarantee only applies if the company complies with the terms of the GDPR.

How to comply with GDPR and Personal Data Law?

Compliance with the Personal Data Law does not guarantee compliance with the GDPR. However, GDPR compliance will ensure that the company is in compliance with the Russian Personal Data Law. Below are the main conditions of the Regulation and the Personal Data Law, and a list of actions that a company must take to process and store BD without the threat of being fined one and a half billion or even more severe punishment.

7 Principles of processing personal data:

The GDPR and the Law on Personal Data formulate 7 principles - the fundamental principles, in accordance with which the remaining paragraphs of the Regulation and the Law are developed, and in accordance with which all companies must act:

1) Legality, fairness and transparency processing and storage of personal data. The personal data subject must be provided, accessible and understandable any information about the purposes, methods and volumes of personal data processing.

2) Goal limitation... The data must be collected and used exclusively for the purposes stated when collecting this data.

For example: after placing an order in an online store, the buyer left his email, but did not give his consent to receive advertising mailings. In this case, the store has the right to send by mail only that information that relates directly to the order made - no advertising and promotions. It is obvious that this use of personal information (albeit harmless enough) is not in accordance with the agreed purpose. When it comes to home address, passport details and bank card details, things take a serious turn.

3) Data minimization. Personal data may not be collected to a greater extent than is necessary for the processing purposes.

For example: to place an order, the store does not need the customer's patronymic, his date of birth (if there is no corresponding age limit), gender, address (when making a self-pickup), and so on. However, if the goal is analysis and statistics, then obtaining information about age or gender is legitimate.

4) Accuracy. The available data must be true. Inaccurate data must be removed or corrected at the request of the user.

5) Limitation of storage. Personal data should be stored no longer than is necessary for the purposes of processing.

For example: the delivery address is stored until the goods are delivered; email, full name and contact information are stored until the user deletes his personal account.

6) Integrity and confidentiality. When processing data, companies are obliged to ensure the protection of personal data from unauthorized or illegal processing, destruction and damage to data. Companies are required to ensure that they are protected from unauthorized access to data.

7) Database merging is not allowedcontaining personal data, the processing of which is carried out for purposes incompatible with each other.

For example: you cannot combine a database that contains information about company employees, provided to an employer when applying for a job, and a database that contains personal data of the company's customers or customers. The purposes of processing such data are fundamentally different and incompatible with each other.

The rights of subjects of personal data that each company must guarantee:

1.Right to information.The right to be informed about the purpose of using personal data, how it is protected, how much is stored, where it is stored, to whom and for what purpose it is transferred, etc.

2.Right of access to datathat were collected by the company. It implies the presence of a personal account, where the user can view information about himself, change or delete it if necessary.

3. Right to change and delete information user about yourself. At the same time, one should not forget about the principle of limiting storage.

The user has the right to delete any information about himself, except for the one that is prescribed by the Law for a certain period of time (eg, the “package of Yarovaya laws”).

What to do to comply with the GDPR and the Personal Data Law?9 steps.

1. Define and analyze the current processes for processing personal data in the company.

Answer the following questions:

• what categories of data do you collect (name, gender, different preferences, etc.)?
• why do you collect them, for what purpose?
• how do you get user data (users send it to a special email, or fill out a return form on the site)?
• to whom and for what purpose do you transfer the collected data? (you can transfer them to other companies or exclusively within your company to a certain category of employees)
• how long do you keep data on your servers?
• do you transfer personal data to other countries?

2. To amend the "Policy on the processing of personal data"and / or "Privacy Policy "(It doesn't matter what you name the document)... According to the Regulation, the Policy must be drawn up in all official languages \u200b\u200bof the EU countries. If this is not possible and users from the European Union are only potential, it is necessary to ensure that the Policy is at least in English.

The Policy must contain the following information:

• full name and contact information (address, email, tel.) of the legal entity that determines the purposes of data processing;
• categories of collected and processed data;
• the purposes of data processing;
• names of third parties to whom you transfer the data, the purposes for which you transfer this data.

(these may include service providers, advertising, courier services, etc.);

• information on the transfer of personal data to other countries, along with a list of such countries and the purpose of the transfer;
• the period of time during which the user's data is processed by the company.

(you can specify abstract periods, for example: until the user deletes the account, does not report the refusal to receive advertising mailings)

3. Appoint a person responsible for data processing in the company - it can be an individual, department or department. The "Policy on the processing of personal data" must contain contact information, email, to which the user can write to receive any information regarding the processing of his personal data.

4. Renew consent to the processing of personal data.If the company has previously processed data without the consent of users, such consent must be developed. The consent text must be:

• explicit, direct and unambiguous;
• informative: the user must understand what data is processed, by whom and for what purposes;
• obtained by active actions: in accordance with the Law on Personal Data, the wording “If you continue to use the services, then you give your consent to the processing of personal data,” is allowed, but in accordance with the GDPR it is does not constitute the user's consent and does not give the company the right to process his data... It is necessary that the user consents with his active actions, for example, put a tick;
• free: the user must be able to use the services without giving consent (for example: to view the Internet catalog, there is no need to register and leave your data).

5. The policy and consent must be publicly and easily published on the company's website.Wherever there is a form for filling in personal data, the user should be able to familiarize himself with the conditions for processing his data.

6. Encrypt personal data, ensure their pseudonymization and anonymity when processing, storing and transmitting this data.

• According to the GDPR, data encryption must be ensured both in transit and in storage. In accordance with the Law on Personal Data, data must be encrypted if necessary to provide additional protection if there is a risk of their leakage or getting to unscrupulous persons.
• The company chooses encryption methods on its own.

7. Assess the effectiveness of BD protection... Systematize the description of data processing operations, their goals and the relationship between them, as well as a list of measures to minimize risks:

• organize a record of personal data processing activities : recording of various information about the processes of their processing;
• conduct a data protection impact assessment;
• ensure and record technical measures for processing big data, conduct regular checks, identify, record and correct violations;
• keep records of the technical means on which personal data are processed;
• limit the circle of persons and record persons who have access to personal data (companies that use automated information processing should develop an "Information Security Policy");
• eliminate archives of unnecessary personally identifiable information.

8. Appoint a representative to the EU.The representative can be a legal entity or an individual who is engaged in the protection of personal data. The Representative is responsible for responding to various inquiries from individuals and regulators about the compliance of your business with the GDPR. The representative must respond to inquiries in the language in which they were written.

• There are certain deadlines for responding to inquiries from individuals: up to 30 days with the possibility of extending the term for 2 months.
• If there is a leak of any data, the Representative must inform a specialized body of the European Union no later than through 3 days after finding such a leak.

From the wording of the eighth step, it is clear that this is necessary solely for compliance with the GDPR, the Law on Personal Data does not provide for such a clause.

9. Obtain consent to the processing of cookie data, to the processing of personal data in systems such as Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica.

• Please note that in Russia there is enough warning that “if you continue to use the site, you consent to the processing of personal data”. In the European Union, such a warning is not enough, and you will definitely need "active" user consent: a checkmark or clicking a button to consent to the processing of your cookies.

What happens if you violate the GDPR or the Personal Data Law?

For non-compliance with the regulations GDPR there are two levels of fines depending on the significance of the offense:

1) 10 million (~ 800 million rubles) euros or 2% of the company's total turnover for the year.

2) 20 million euros (~ 1.5 billion rubles) or 4% of the company's total turnover for the year, whichever is greater.

Russian legislation does not provide for such large fines for violation of the Law “On Personal Data” (for example, in the case of an administrative offense, the maximum fine will be 50 thousand rubles). But in case of violation of the Law, it must be borne in mind that the persons responsible for the processing of personal data will bear criminal responsibility in Russia. Article 137 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - Inviolability of private life, provides for a fine of up to 300 thousand rubles. or imprisonment for up to 4 years.

Who can impose a fine for violation of the GDPR and how?

If everything is clear with Russian legislation: any complaint goes to Roskomnadzor, which conducts inspections, issues fines and prescriptions, then Roskomnadzor or another body that operates on the territory of the Russian Federation cannot fine you for violation of the GDPR for non-compliance with European regulations. Such a fine will be issued by a supervisory authority of one of the EU countries. Nobody can force you to pay a fine while you are on the territory of the Russian Federation. However, it is important to understand that the owner of the company or the person who is listed as such according to the constituent documents is responsible. When crossing the border (vacation, business trip), he will be obliged to pay the fine imposed on the company.

Some more very real consequences of breaking the Law

1. Contractors or customers can set requirements for the implementation of the main requirements of the GDPR. It is logical to assume that if your activities do not comply with the regulations, then, most likely, they will stop working with you and terminate the contract. European legislation is designed in such a way that companies that work with those who do not comply with the GDPR are also fined. It is also possible that the European Union prohibits European companies from working with your company.
2. The relevant EU institution may publish on its website information about the non-compliance of your company with the regulations and, as a result, you risk losing customers.
3. In the EU project, the creation of a "black list" of unreliable sites and their blocking.

What conclusions should be drawn?

At the moment, it is difficult to judge how compliance with the GDPR will be monitored, with what frequency fines will be imposed on companies and what they will lead to, since a little time has passed since the entry into force of the Regulation and at the moment there is not a single precedent. The European Union itself is still finalizing the system of organs and methods for detecting violations. However, knowing the requirements of the regulation, it is already worth ensuring that BD processing is in accordance with the GDPR Regulation.

As for Russian legislation, it is necessary to comply with the Personal Data Law, as well as to process personal data and BD, in compliance with all technical regulations, preventing data leakage and ensuring the protection of a person's privacy and his right to receive honest information. It is necessary to process and store user data in accordance with the principles that are the same for both the GDPR Regulation and the Law on Personal Data.

I hope this article was helpful for you and your business. If something seemed too complicated for you, or if you want to discuss the competent implementation of the correct regulations for working with data in your business, then you can always send your questions to us by mail: [email protected]website.

And if you are interested in getting even more cool information, cases, insights, subscribe to our Retention Marketing Telegram channel. We publish only the most interesting juicy information on our topic. How to make you fall in love with your brand, how to make people talk about yourself, how to provide first-class customer service.

Marketing for top managers Igor Lipsits

Idea # 38 What customer information should you have in your database?

What customer information should you have in your database?

In our discussion of Idea 37, we talked about the importance of customer-based profitability analysis. Such analysis helps to identify those customers who are most contributing to the growth of the value of this business and who should be especially tried to retain for the future. But how do you keep these profitable buyers? The first step towards solving this problem can be formulated in the style of the biblical commandments: "Get to know your client!"

But what does this mean in practice, what should a top manager require from his employees when creating a customer database? Experience in implementing partner marketing (CRM) technologies suggests that it is desirable to enter four types of customer data into such a database (Figure 38-1).

Semantic information ... This is information about each customer, including the name (for legal entities - all their registration data), address and demographic data (for legal entities - data on the type of business). Semantic information also includes all current and historical data about the customer. Some of this information may be provided by your sales representatives, and some must be collected from open sources by your marketing team.

Episodic information include a description of the entire experience of the firm's contacts with this client over a series of transactions and negotiations. How many times did you manage to sell an item to this customer during the past 6 months, a year, etc.? What preferences or complaints have we found in past contacts? This means that your sales staff should be charged with the job of entering information into the database after each contact with a particular client - much like the criminal investigators did after each meeting with their informants. It is best if a special form is created in your database for this - "Business contact information card". The set of its fields will be set by the marketing department of your company, taking into account the specifics of your business, and filling in should be a prerequisite for completing a transaction and receiving commissions on it.

You can link to the activity in collecting customer information and the system of rewarding your employees over commissions. The only thing that cannot be done is to neglect the accumulation of such information. Among other things, this is simply dangerous, since there is always a threat that a sales employee will quit and you will suddenly find that he either took with him all the information about clients stored in his personal books - as a gift to a new employer, or it is simply nowhere was not recorded - and now you need to re-learn everything about this group of clients from the very beginning.

Hypothetical information. This is information obtained from external sources and includes, for example, data on the entire consumer industry or data from customer surveys. Such information contains additional or derived facts about customer preferences. To obtain it, special marketing research can be ordered or materials from previously performed surveys can be purchased. This also includes the materials of macroeconomic statistics that allow predicting a possible change in the composition of a given group of customers, its income or the situation in sales markets, if we are talking about customers in the B2B market, in the near future. For example, on the fashion market, such information is prepared by special trend bureaus, which regularly release dossiers about where fashion will go in the coming season.

Valuable information. This is information about the interests or values \u200b\u200bof the client. It can be obtained through direct communication with clients or through specially structured surveys. Gathering such information (especially in the B2B market) is undoubtedly the most difficult task, and how to solve it, your salespeople need to be specially trained. The task is greatly facilitated if your company is able to create a relationship of trusting partnership with the client, when your specialists begin to regularly contact clients, helping them to solve problems, as they say, “on the spot”.

Firms doing business as systems integrators have learned this best now. These firms were able to move their business from the plane of selling computers and software products to the plane of solving the ultimate consumer problem - creating the company's information system. And in this logic, their specialists have become a part of consumer firms, having received constant contact with the client "from the inside", and this opens up the opportunity to understand what the client really needs. What does it do? What is most valuable for any company is the duration of the contact and the offer to the market of only those goods or services that will be purchased. No wonder, as A. Karachinsky, the head of the largest Russian company-system integrator IBS, noted in one of his speeches: “Informatization projects, once started, never come to an end”. It is clear why: while they were solving some problems for the client, his business went further - now he needs something else, and the partner company will be the first to know about this and is glad to help immediately (not without benefit for himself, of course).

In the consumer market, it is, of course, more difficult to achieve such a business organization. There, for this, special marketing research is needed, for example, with the help of joint (decomposition) analysis - conjoint analysis. This method, with the help of specially structured questionnaires, makes it possible to quite clearly study the system of buyers' preferences regarding the properties of goods, that is, to understand what is habitually denoted by the vague term "tastes".

In conclusion, we note that the formation of such a structured customer database is an extremely useful business, but not easy and expensive. Therefore, it is inappropriate to implement such a technology of working with clients at once across the entire client base, but it is necessary to do this gradually - from the most important and promising clients for the company, those whom we managed to identify using the methodology described in the discussion of idea 37.

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When was the last time you looked at what makes your customer base fit for marketing campaigns?

Think about your ideal buyers - these detailed representations of the different segments of your target audience. Based on statistical research to determine who is behind the buying decisions for your products or services, Customer personas can help you get information that can be used for a wide range of activities, from writing better sales copy to product development. ...

If you answered “a long time ago” or “never” to the question asked on the first line of this post, then you need to continue reading.

According to a recent study by the Edelman Group, brands do not understand some of the underlying motivations and concerns of their customers. A consumer marketing study by the Edelman Group surveyed 11,000 people in 8 different countries who displayed at least one brand-related activity (such as following a brand's Facebook account) in the previous year.

The study found that 51% of respondents believe brands are failing when it comes to asking customers about their needs. Only 10% of those surveyed think brands do it well.

The title of the table is “Customer Relationship to Brand Relationships”. The types of relationships are listed line by line, for example, publicly disseminated information about how a brand performs in the market compared to competitors. The column names for farrowing data are Importance, Performance and Gap.

The above table reveals a significant gap between consumer expectations and the ability of companies to meet them.

Even more bad news for companies "hiding their heads in the sand"

But the situation is getting worse. Two studies from 2014 paint a much darker picture. Consulting firm Responsys surveyed over 2,000 US adults to find out how they felt about their relationship with brands. 34% of respondents reported that they "parted ways with brands because they received bad, misleading or irrelevant marketing messages."

Thunderhead.com's customer acquisition experts conducted a similar survey of North American communications consumers. After interviewing more than 2,000 adult customers, it was found that ¼ of respondents will switch to another provider after one negative experience. About one in 5 people surveyed will break off any relationship with a brand because they feel they can never regain trust after a significant negative experience.

A table of the biggest mistakes companies make when interacting with their customers. The worst of these is the receipt of messages by clients that they consider to be an interference with their privacy.

The data shows that too many consumers are tired of the way companies interact with them. Only 6% of senior executives believe their companies have a very good understanding of their customers' needs. Unsurprisingly, customer acquisition and retention has become a major concern for brands.

Why it is important to rely on data when creating client personas

Putting together valuable information about your customers with intuitive intent and the best of intentions is not a recipe for a successful conversion.

If the above research isn't enough to make you feel anxious, look at another example: the 2012 fiasco of the JCPenney rebranding of the American retailer.

During the month that Ron Johnson served as CEO of JCPenney, he began a radical rebranding of the chain he runs. Not only did he change the look of the stores, but he ditched JCP's own lucrative brands, replacing them with “designer brands” that were too expensive for most typical shoppers — Johnson set about completely overhauling the business model the company was operating on.

JC Penney's moved from a sales model based on coupons and constant markdowns to a concept of “everyday low prices.” It was a disaster - sales literally collapsed within months of Johnson's leadership.

“I thought people were just tired of coupons and everything. In reality, it turned out that all of our coupon discount programs were liked by a certain segment of customers. They gravitated towards stores that competed in this way. It turned out that our main customers were more addicted to coupons and used them more often than I expected. ”- Ron Johnson in an interview with Businessweek.

Johnson not only admitted that he didn't understand what his clients wanted, he made it clear why. When asked why he didn’t test on a limited basis what the new pricing structure and radical store redesign would lead to, his response was, "We at Apple have not tested this."

As a former head of Apple retail stores, he blindly drew up a plan based on what worked in another case without testing, and apparently without considering what was driving it new customer base to the store.

Which client personas are true?

In all this debate about the mistakes companies have made because of misunderstanding the problems and motivations of their customers, the argument for using a tool like data-driven and testing to create an ideal customer persona seems clear.

If you are unfamiliar with the term, let's start with the definition given by one of the leading experts in the field of buying ideas research.

“Buyer personas are research-based archetypal (modeled) ideas about who shoppers are, what they are trying to achieve, what goals drive their behavior, think how they buy, and why they make buying decisions.” - Tony Zambito (Tony Zambito).

In essence, personas are fictitious representations of segments of the customer base, but created from real data that reflects customer behavior. The purpose of using personas is to help people who are responsible for making decisions in companies to feel like a client.

What client personas are not

The problem with many personas is that they are either based on irrelevant data, poor quality raw information, or generally on what cannot be called "data".

As Ardath Albee, B2B marketer and creator of Up Close & Persona, a cloud-based customer personas, notes in an interview with the Content Marketing Institute:

"I see a lot of people that I call 'Ouija Board personas' (Ouija Board, a tool for communicating with the souls of the dead), because they are based on materials that marketers will never know."

Add to that "materials" that are essentially useless for the business goals you are trying to achieve, that is, to increase landing page conversions or online store sales.

While some basic demographics such as gender and age may apply, other very specific characteristics (such as what a family's dog eats if you don't sell dog food) gleaned - not essential - from research or anecdotes. useless.

What the client person looks like

Customer personas can be as basic or complex as you like. They can take many different forms, but ultimately their usefulness is determined by how effective they are at creating a clear picture of what attracts different types of buyers to your products or services.

While there are many templates and examples on the internet, consider modeling personas based on the available data from qualitative and quantitative research, with particular attention to:

• Behavioral drivers - these include: the goals of your customers; what exactly they want to achieve; what made them find your business.
• Barriers to Buying - Consider hesitation and problems that your customers are experiencing. How do they see your product or service, and how does this affect the amount of information they need to make a decision?
• Way of thinking - your customers come to the shopping experience with certain expectations and preconceived notions. Are they buyers looking for the thrill of a deal, or expecting a more sophisticated experience? Selling a weight loss program will be more emotionally charged than, say, selling network routers.

Giving names and faces to your personas is less important than making sure they are based on real people and not on stereotypes. As Tony Zambito notes in his article “7 Criteria To Ensure Doing The Right Things For Buyer Personas” in arguing for the need to rethink ineffective customer models, “... they read like job descriptions and offer little information. "

Shape your client personas with quality research

To fully understand not only the different segments that make up your customer base, but what motivates them, you need to start with questions. Some of the most productive ways you can ask them are:

1. Customer surveys

Conducting surveys - online or offline - using open-ended questions (an unstructured question that does not involve choosing an answer from several options) is critical to understanding how your customers define their motives and needs. The goal is to get into the heads of your customers to make sure your personas are based on what real people think, not just your idea of \u200b\u200btheir opinions.

Consider asking 7 to 10 questions that are based on knowledge of their behavioral drivers, barriers to buying, and thinking (see previous point). The questions will vary depending on the industry of your business. But the end goal is always the same - getting actionable information that meets your needs.

For example, a survey might include the following questions:

• When did you realize that you need a product / service similar to our offer?
• What problem in your life will our product / service solve?
• What hesitation or doubts did you have before buying?

2. Phone or face-to-face interviews

Conversations with your existing customers can provide you with valuable insight into their shopping habits, what motivates them, and the words they use to describe your product or service.

While the interview process can be costly and time-consuming, the responses received can be very valuable from an informational point of view. You can go back to a specific topic and ask your respondents to work through missing details that are not available in the surveys.

This can be done using, for example, pop-ups from Qualaroo. Qualaroo is a third party application that allows you to ask one question on your site at a specified time. It's a particularly good tool for figuring out why visitors aren't completing a purchase.

The question to ask depends on your overall goal. Do you want to understand whether your site / landing page itself or the products / services posted on it satisfy the needs of potential customers? Or do you want to understand what potential sources of friction are holding back visitors from taking a conversion action? Experiment with your question to see which answers and answers will be most effective.

If "Why didn't you complete your purchase today?" does not work as well as you expected, ask: "Do you have questions that you were not able to get answers to today?"

Summarizing Qualitative Research Results

Start segmenting your users based on the similarities you find. First of all, pay attention to intentionthen on possible fluctuations and the ways your customers are exposed conviction.

It is possible that you will find 2 persons, clearly amenable to definition, or 4. Their number depends on the solution to which specific problem the research will contribute.

Let's say you're selling a line of eco-friendly home cleaning products. After matching the survey and interview responses, you determine that one person represents the next.

Beth, a 35-year-old woman, worried about the environmental impact of her family's household chemicals. She cares about reducing her carbon footprint and is willing to pay a little more to make sure she is buying a product that is sustainable.

• What are Beth's behavioral drivers? These products give Beth the feeling that she is doing something good for her family and the environment. She can easily order them online, which is a positive factor given her busy schedule.
• What are the obstacles to buying Beth? She has doubts that all the information about where the ingredients were obtained is correct. She worries about the packaging in which the food is stored and how it will be delivered to her if it contains harmful substances.
• What are Beth's expectations of this shopping experience? Presentation is important to her: she wants to buy a product that reflects her values. Getting the benefit is not as important as purchasing a product she trusts.

Although naming and age is optional when creating your buying persona, it helps to visualize the person behind it. Beth seems like a real person, not "person number 1". You and your team are probably more likely to ask yourself exactly what this component of your customer base needs and wants when developing a sales copy or product landing page design.

Using the method of collecting and analyzing qualitative data, you have created several personas - personifications of audience segments based on user goals, behavior, and views. By delving deeper into the statistics and analytics of your sites / landing pages, you will be able to complement personas with quantitative results.

Take a look at segmentation

With a variety of new analytical tools, marketers can more accurately determine the individual behavior of users on the web.

You can create segments that display:

• Average revenue per user
• Number of transactions per user
• The ratio of new and returning customers
• The presence of "frequent" customers

Applying personas to customer behavior

You've spent time developing your buying persona, confirming its relevance to your target audience with research. Now is the time to rely on her to help you make testing decisions.

This is where your own conclusions about what motivates and upsets your customer base intersect with behavioral science. Here's just one example.

Prospect theory and customer decision making

Remember the cautionary tale of JC Penney's Ron Johnson? For him, a pricing model based on the concept of fair and fair and relative transparency was perfect. And for his established customer base - not so good.

Typical JC Penney customers expected to see discounts and use coupons. When buyers could no longer look at seller prices through the conventional "lens" they used to use (discounts and coupons) - regardless of the rationality / irrationality of that point of view - they no longer saw the value of the offers.

Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky attributed this economic behavior to what they called perspective theory (Prospect Theory). People always evaluate results in relation to some starting point - usually with regard to their current situation. Profits and losses are viewed through the prism the alleged results instead of absolute.

In 1981, these researchers conducted a survey in which a number of random respondents were asked the question:

“Imagine you're going to buy a jacket for $ 125 and a calculator for $ 15. A calculator vendor informs you that the gadget you want to buy is being sold for $ 10 at another branch of the store 20 minutes away. Will you go to another store? " - article by Kahneman and Tversky, "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice".

68% of respondents were willing to travel the extra distance to save $ 5 on their calculator. When the question was asked to another group of respondents, but prices changed - a calculator costs $ 125 and a jacket - $ 15, and a calculator can be bought for $ 120, but in a different place - then only 29% of respondents expressed a desire to travel around the city for the sake of economy.

The savings were the same, but the framing of the question was different. $ 5 is $ 5, unless it is put in the context of the savings to be gained from a higher value item.

As William Poundstone notes in his book Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value, "Price, which is extremely sensitive in ratio and contrast, is relatively insensitive to absolute value." ...

If only Ron Johnson took a little time to think about what is mentioned in this paragraph!

Real conversion stories

The number of complaints received by Facebook from members of the social network is approximately 4 million hits per week. In an effort to encourage users to communicate with each other, and not just send anonymous complaints to the administration of the service, Facebook representatives changed the system for submitting complaints for one group of users.

They focused on teens of both genders and all age ranges to understand what were the biggest barriers to requesting deletion of photos posted by other users. Facebook's goal was to increase the conversion rate of an automated complaint form so that users can get a ruling on their complaint without employee intervention.

After conversations with different segments of the teen audience, the service representatives discovered that the word "report" served as a trigger, provoking excessive conversion friction (Report, apparently, there is an association with the often used expression "Police Report"). The young people did not want to get their friends in trouble. When Facebook changed the wording to “This posting is a problem,” the number of complaints filed through the web form increased.

In addition, Facebook has tested a form change that allows the complainant to tell the recipient of the message the emotions that were triggered by the unwanted photo.

According to the data received, the social service employees found that there is an almost 85% chance that the publisher of the photo will respond to the offended user or requesting to remove the image, when the complaint uses the words “It's embarrassing”.

This is a good example of how you can do qualitative research that will base your user persona, apply it to your business area, and then quantify the image you create.

What happens when you start with quantitative data?

The British online watch retailer Watchfinder dived deeply into its statistics to understand how best to interact with site visitors. They found that less than 1% of visitors completed the conversion process on their first visit to the site.

Based on a case study posted on the Google Analytics blog, Watchfinder decided to set up a remarketing campaign using Google Ads. To begin with, potential customers were segmented according to the following parameters: user language, location, stage of the conversion funnel where the visitor is.

By comparing the findings with traffic performance analysis, Watchfinder's marketers concluded that the highest engagement and conversion rates came from specific IP addresses located in London's financial districts.

By redirecting messages specifically tailored to the interests and tastes of large investment bankers to these site users, Watchfinder was able to increase the average online order value by 13% while increasing its overall return on investment (ROI) to 1300% in 6 months.

Here's a case where quantitative data can be instructive on its own — when it sheds light on subsets of your customer base. It would be interesting to see how adding this kind of information to any good persona modeling could even better define the required marketing efforts.

Instead of a conclusion: act on data, then test

Client personas are tools. As with any tool, they are only as good as the people who use them. Personas can provide you with amazing ideas for how to create the best user experience, compelling sales copy, or a pricing model.

The key is to model the personas in the database that serve the goals you are trying to achieve.

Most importantly, remember that your personas should reflect real people with real motives, desires, and problems. When we overlook the human element, the modeled image ceases to match the client.

High conversions for you!

Adapted from: conversionxl.com Image source: jesusgag