Consumer insights marketing can help you understand your audience’s motivation, perspective, and behavior so you can discover more opportunities.

As a business owner, you probably think you know your customers pretty well. You might be right, but these days, you need to go beyond some general demographics in order to obtain true consumer insights. Beyond the likely age, gender, or even actions of current or future customers, you will benefit by digging deeper into the motivation, perspective, and information that drives their behavior. Find out how consumer insight marketing can yield surprising information and even better, great results.

Why focus upon consumer insights marketing?

In an era when a consumer's experience with a company outweighs the products they offer, attention to consumer insight marketing will help you connect with customers. For example, you may have some idea that your customers mostly base their purchase decisions upon such objective and obvious measures as product quality and price.

Deloitte, a prominent consumer insights company, ran a large survey in the US, UK, Brazil, and China for 2020. According to their consumer behavior analysis, a sizable percentage of respondents said they considered these measures when deciding which business to buy from:

• How businesses treat employees: 28 percent

• How businesses treat the environment: 22 percent

• How businesses treat their communities: 19 percent

For your own business, your customer base may vary somewhat. On the other hand, knowing that about 20 percent of your customers want to patronize companies that care about their employees, the environment, and their community could certainly inform your marketing. For example, you might focus upon social posts and ads that introduce enthusiastic employees or highlight your contribution to worthy causes.

In fact, consumer insights marketing may have even more importance than it did only a year ago. Deloitte noted that they ran a similar survey in 2019. At that point, their consumer insights found that most customers still cared about price and quality the most. This year's survey found that 55 percent of consumers think businesses have a responsibility to support issues that relate to their purpose.

Deloitte concluded that companies that fail to demonstrate they align with consumer motivations risk getting displaced by businesses that do a better job. On the other hand, understanding and aligning with their customer's point of view gives businesses an advantage of competition.

How consumer insights marketing will help your business compete

As a real-world example, Unilever has 28 brands they market as good choices for people interested in sustainable living. These include such well-known names as Lipton, Dove, and Vaseline. Considered sustainable-living products, they deliver the bulk of Unilever's revenue and also have enjoyed more rapid growth than the company's other brands.

Such items as tea, soap, and petroleum jelly appear pretty interchangeable, but Unilever did a good job of differentiating them as sustainable in order to grow its market share. Certainly, consumers still care about price and quality; however, in a crowded market, knowing what extra factors will prompt customers to favor one company over another can make all the difference.

How to gather consumer insights

By now, you might wonder how you can possibly start to understand your customer's motivations and perceptions. If you lack the time or training, you can find market research services that offer affordable packages for all sizes and kinds of businesses. The smaller and newer your company, the more valuable you may find this sort of help.

On the other hand, you can begin by studying general consumer behavior analysis, such as that provided by the Deloitte survey mentioned above. Even better, you should start to monitor your own customers on social media or offer surveys. If you're starting a new business, you may not have many customers yet. At the same time, you can try to peek at your potential competitors' customers to understand why they buy from other businesses.

You might also try setting up a booth at a trade show or local event. Not only will this give you a chance to introduce more people to your brand, you will also have the opportunity to meet the kinds of people who have an interest in the products or services that you offer. Start conversations with people, so that you can learn what motivated them to make similar purchases in the past and could prompt them to buy from you in the future.

Why start investing in consumer insights today?

In any case, you should know that consumer insights marketing has become more than just the latest marketing term. No matter what you sell, you can't assume that price and quality completely drive customer behavior. In fact, the more you know about your customer's motivations to prefer one company over another, the less you may need to compete on price.

In fact, getting customers to identify with your company in positive ways is a type of marketing that money almost can't buy. On the other hand, you can achieve that beneficial status if you invest in consumer behavior analysis and work to always view your business through your customers' eyes. In any case, if you thought that all of your customers were simply getting online compare prices, you should be pleasantly surprised to learn that you can find other ways to earn their business. You just need to figure out how to do it, and that's exactly why you need consumer insights.