The role of INSIGHTS in Consumer Marketing
I am sure you have recently made a decision to pay or not to pay for a product or a service that you were offered. It is usually a decision made in a split second — you choose if whatever it is you’re paying for is worth it or not.
In Digital payment comes in many forms — time, contact information, cash, cryptocurrency, signing up for something or attending an event online or offline. This means that payment = engagement and can be expressed in three ways:
- Money
- Time
- Data
Ok by now you are surely wondering what this has to do with — The Role of INSIGHTS in Consumer Marketing….keep reading! Indulge me as I dive into a few important definitions:
- Consumers: These are your potential clients — often they are tough decision makers who have a hard time choosing what to give someone in exchange for a product or service.
- Transaction: The exchange of product or service for engagement.
- Target Audience: Your target audience refers to the specific group of consumers most likely to want your product or service, and therefore, the group of people who should see your ad campaigns, product videos, social media posts or any type of other media you may want to use to engage them. The Target audience is dictated by age, gender, income, location, interests or a myriad of other factors that fall into geographic, demographic, behavioural and psychographic segments.
- Target Segment: Market segmentation is a business practice that brands use to divide their target market into smaller, more manageable groups of people based on common ground they share to optimise their marketing, advertising, and sales efforts — these are called target segments. Simply put, customers of each target segment have similar characteristics that your businesses can leverage to advance your efforts.
- Insights: You can find insights at the intersection of consumer features within a target segment and payment offerings (money, data or time).
The above definitions eliminate the question of where and how you can find your consumers, but leaves us with the following questions:
- What do they want?
- How do we reach them?
- How do we influence them to take action?
- How do we show them that we can serve them and meet their needs?
The answers are just as vague and can be summed up in this quote: “Consumers want what they want; they may not know it but when they come across it they will know”
— Sam Walton
Now you may wonder, how do you find this intersection with insights and what forms do insights usually come in?
Insights are usually based on Data (Rational/Factual/Based on Numbers) or on Cultural Nuances (Emotional/Behavioural) and are often captured in case of studies — like the Case Study of Foodpro Group by Futuresoft, or reports and stats — like the yearly digital trends statistics by Data Reportal.
We can gather insights through surveys and questionnaires or by interacting with our consumers directly when we get a chance, but in the age of Digital, Analytics play an even more important role in uncovering insights. The data they give you can help you understand the consumer touchpoints that are effective, the ones that need to be optimized and the ones that you should probably discard completely as they are simply not working.
As you embark on your journey to uncover insights, remember that your consumers are always evolving and there’s a constant shift in what they want, and what and how they intend to pay for it. This means insights will evolve accordingly as well.
Have fun discovering your Insights and let us know if you need any help!
