Hello dear readers. You may have
noticed that I have recently been missing from the esteemed pages of the Eastern
Daily Press. It is because for the last three months I have been ensconced in
the editorial departments looking at the web versions of our excellent Norfolk , Suffolk
Driving all this activity was a very
simple question, “Who are our customers and what do they want?” Unfortunately
the reason many businesses don’t have the level of customer understanding they
really should is because to do so means that you have to crunch that scary
stuff; data.
Before the Internet, customer data
only really came from market research. You might think that market research is
just some lady who stops you in the street and asks you if you eat Weetabix but
it’s a science in its own right. The internet though was created by geeks so by
definition came with a bunch of data. Luckily another bunch of geeks came along
to make it easy to understand the data and the art of analytics was born.
From my laptop I can see how many
people are looking at any Archant site right now, at what and for how long. By
adding another layer of behavioural technology we can analyse the type of
content people are reading and deliver similar articles to them. You might think
that’s all big brother but ecommerce sites have been doing this for a long time.
How do you think when you look at a products on sites like Argos
If you have embraced social media
you may have started just by listening to what people said about you. Then, over
time, graduated to using it as a tool to work with your customers to develop new
products and services. You may have a Facebook page and through Facebook
Insights know a bit about the people who “like” you and what they do on your
page. How many of you though know that now Facebook is selling ads, through its
ad booking software, you can see for example how many people on Facebook are cat
owners of a certain age live in Norwich
Like everything in life,
understanding all this data and the products that can help you do so range from
the very simple to the very complicated and from free to very expensive. However
in the current economic climate understanding who your customers are and what
they want is more important than ever. So for those of you trying to use the
internet to grow your businesses spend some time to understand how your
customers are using your sites the lessons you learn may surprise you and will
definitely help you.
Tim Youngman is head of digital
marketing at Archant - follow him @timyoungman
