If you don’t know your customers it can hurt you and help your competitors. Here are five things you need to discover about your customers if you want your business to grow.

It’s time you got to know your customers better than ever before.

Despite living in the age of “big data” and all of the research, registrations, surveys and social media that retail business owners have access to, it turns out that very few business owners say yes when asked, “Do you truly know your customers?” and even fewer act on what they know to gain competitive advantage and grow. If you don’t get to know your customers, you are missing out on a treasure trove of insights that can help you in customer retention efforts and new customer acquisition activities, too.

If you don’t know your customers, what you don’t know can hurt you.

Findings from a study of mid and large-sized B2C organizations by Yesmail Interactive and Gleanster point to gaping holes in customer intelligence – holes that mean lost sales and dollars left on the table when it comes to current customers as well as an organization’s ability to effectively reach other members of its target markets. On the other hand, if you take advantage of what your competitors don’t know, you could gain a competitive edge for your own business, attract new customers and increase sales.

Only 53% of those surveyed claimed to possess an “excellent” level of understanding when it came to the buying behaviors of their customers; in other words, about half of all direct to consumer sellers in the dark when it comes to the buying behaviors and patterns of their own customers. And believe it or not, that was the leading area of intelligence for retailers surveyed.

Here are the five areas where your competitors are most likely to be missing the mark when it comes to customer intelligence, and therefore, are providing you with a golden opportunity to grow your market share, attract new customers and increase sales among existing clients.

5 Ways to Know Well You Know Your Customers

1. Only 29% of survey respondents indicated that they knew when their customers were most likely to purchase.

Do you know when your customers are most likely to buy? This could come down to seasonal sales, where customers are in the education and buying cycle or even occur after they have purchased other goods or services. Understanding the ‘moments’ when customers would be most receptive to your marketing messages, and most likely to take action as a result, can help you maximize your return during those crucial times.

2. Only 27% of survey respondents knew the makeup of customer’s households.

Household composition is demographics 101 and should be one of the main ingredients for any buyer persona or “ideal client type” developed as part of your strategic marketing plan. Creating buyer personas and identifying common demographics is not just about understanding your customers, it’s also about identifying opportunity; you may well be able to serve other members of your customer’s households or suggest add-ons or gifts that are perfect for other members of the family, or develop new lines of products or services to bring in new customers from these groups.

3. Only 26% had a grasp as to the profitability of the cross-channel shopper / buyer.

Sure, you know that most buyer research occurs online, but do you know which channels your customers traversed in order to arrive at the moment of purchase? Did they receive an ad or attend an event that took them to a website that pulled them to your website or into your store to buy? Do you know which of your marketing channels produce the most web traffic? The most in-store traffic? The highest ticket sales or purchases of products and services with higher profit margins? If you don’t understand which of your marketing tools produce the greatest return, you are not likely to maximize their use and may be wasting resources on ineffectual campaigns.

4. A mere 21% of survey respondents understood their customer’s (marketing) channel preferences.

This is another area which should rightly fall under “marketing 101.” If you don’t understand your customers channel preferences, then it is likely that you are not reviewing data that is easily and readily available to you on a daily, weekly or monthly basis; such as, web statistics obtainable from Google analytics or your web hosting company, email statistics from your email marketing provider, social media stats, coupon or offer redemption rates, etc. Discovering customer channel preferences could be as easy as sending out a quick email survey or conducting 1-2 question “surveys” at the point of sale – there is simply no excuse for not knowing how customers most want to hear from you – and doing it!

5. Only 1 of every 5 respondents (20%) indicated that they knew the level of participation of their customers on social networks.

This doesn’t just speak to a data gap, but a connection gap, as well. If retailers don’t know how many of their customers are using social media or how their customers use social networks, it’s entirely likely that they have failed to engage their customers across online channels, including social media.

In business, all too often we only see “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to customer and prospect data and intelligence, when going even just below the surface can show us just how much more opportunity lies ahead. Those businesses that add consumer behavior science to their entrepreneurial instincts will be much more likely to attract new customers and increase sales over the long and the short term.

You might also like: Attack the Gaps, Not the Goliaths, to Grow Your Business Faster

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