How well do you know your customers?
First of all, I would like to thank you 🙏 for all the replies to last week’s blog about nine problems with ECOM brands.
So many great conversations started because of it, and if you haven’t checked it out, return to it.
Now, off to this week’s topic, which is about knowing your customers.
In the last couple of months, I have been working with 10 different ECOM brands, and what is surprising to me is that only 2 of them really understand their customers.
Yes, you read that right, ONLY 2.
It’s shocking, but it’s true that:
Many ECM brands overinvest the time to study their competition and underinvest the time and resources to understand their customers.
For most of them, they are like strangers they are just shipping products to.
But you know what, during my career and in my network, I have seen and worked on many customer-centric projects, and they understood their customers:
a) Who they are
b) Their desires
c) Their objections
d) Their pains
e) Why they are buying their products
f) Their behaviours and
g) They let them co-create the products.
That leads to better results – better marketing – better strategy – better products – better scalability.
Now, most of you think this all sounds nice and makes sense, but how can you do it in practice?
CHECK OUT THIS POST 👀 Before I move further, I want to share with you my best post on LinkedIn from the last week that talks about failures, not winning.
Let’s move to the fun part of this blog.
🔝 What to do?
I will share with you what we did with the two brands that grew from 0 to 40 Mio € in 4 years and the second one that grew from 0 to 100 Mio € in 3 years.
Ready? Let’s go 🔥
(1) Talk with your customers
Sounds easy, right, but many brands don’t do it. This is not just providing customer support by answering emails, messages, and comments on social media, although that might be helpful too.
I mean, here is to do 1-on-1 interviews, live or only with your customers, and get to know them better.
(2) Email campaign surveys
This is the holy grail in ECOM if you ask me. 💰
Sending out surveys as email campaigns at least once per quarter is super helpful in getting to know customers, receiving feedback, and letting them co-create the brand/products.
(3) Post-purchase surveys
The thank you page is the best placement that I believe in. There are many tools out there that enable you to do it, like Fairing.
💭 Ask the customers questions like:
> How did you hear about us?
> When did you first hear about us?
> What concerns you had before the purchase?
> What convinced you to make the sale?
It will give you a better understanding of their behaviour.
(4) Abandoned cart or website survey
Placing a short survey on your website or inside the abandoned cart/checkout flow will give you a better understanding of what customers are missing or what bothers them.
🕵️♀️ Usually, it’s about the following:
> Missing payment method
> Lack of social proof
> Not understanding the products
> Just browsing = lack of urgency
(5) NPS
You are measuring the satisfaction of your customers with your products, services, and website. – NPS explanation by Hotjar
It’s a standard way of measuring it, but you can also connect it with the review section if they rate you great on NPS or surveys to figure out what is wrong, and you can fix it.
(6) Quiz funnel
This one combines the best of both worlds; it’s a great way to boost your acquisition results and get customer data.
Some great examples in niches include skincare, haircare, supplements, fitness, and digital products. 🔥
DTC brands like:
(7) Voting for new products surveys
It is one of my favourite methods I started leveraging four years ago.
It’s a simple voting system where you display the products that you think about launching, and they vote on what they like most.
💡 It’s important to randomise the product order displayed to get relevant data.
At the end of it, add a question:
If you were the CEO of our brand, what would be the next product you would launch?
Trust me, it’s super valuable. 👑
I use Typeform a lot for this one.
_______
Here are my top 7 ways to get to know your customers; there are many more, like organising live events and so on, but my advice is to start with one and then move further.
BONUS SECTION 🤩
Real example 🤔 Last month, I had a strategy consulting meeting with a client pushing Influencer marketing, and they had a problem in that it got hard to find new influencers, especially in the international markets.
🙀 They knew who the right ones were on their home local market, but beyond borders, it was a mystery.
So I advised them:
>>> Let’s add a question to our survey:
Which influencers do you love to follow?
We let the customers guide our decision-making. <<<
They changed the survey, sent the email campaign the same week, and got valuable insights…
350 survey submissions (15% from the list)
70+ new potential Influencers they can collab with for the international markets
Results: The first round of testing was done in the last two weeks on one international market with 10 Influencers, and the results are above all their benchmarks when it comes to direct sales.
So, we call it a WIN🏆, and they will continue with this approach.
Guess what? You made it to the end of this week’s blog.
How did you like it? 🤔
Let me know by sending me a message on LinkedIn.
What’s next for you?
I suggest you revisit these methods quarterly and start with one of the approaches.
For example, the end of the year is a great time to thank your community for their support and send out a survey to become even better in 2024 💪
Thank you for reading.
Happy scaling! 🚀
Bests,
Jure (JK) Knehtl
Founder @ JK GROWTH