We’re often told that in today’s world data is king.
While there’s certainly truth to that statement, sometimes having too much information can be as bad as not having enough. In fact, too much data can blind easily us to truly important insights.
That is, they know more about their customers than they know what to do with. This creates a whole host of problems. It’s inefficient. It makes it hard to know if you’re making the right decisions. It’s also just downright stressful.
To an extent, this problem is facilitated by the tools we use to analyze customer data. The problem isn’t with the tools themselves per se. Rather, we have the power to drill so deeply into our customers that it’s hard to know when to stop.
Take Google Analytics.
It’s the most popular analytics suite there is. There are also a host of Analytics tools that the platform supports.
From local bakery owners to behavioral marketing gurus at blue-chip companies, most people use Google Analytics to understand what is happening on their website. Yet how they use the tool varies immensely.
In reality, a lot of businesses don’t get further than a look at the number of site visitors or time on site. While these metrics are important, there is a reason that experienced marketers consider them to be vanity metrics. What companies with a limited budget and a business to run really need is a little bit of behavioral marketing know-how.
This means having a concrete strategy for segmenting and tracking your customers.
A Crash Course in Segmentation
Everyone likes to think that they’re a unique individual. In reality, this isn’t exactly the case. At the very least, it’s not so very difficult to group your customers into broad categories, otherwise known as audience segments. How you segment your audience will be based on certain indicators.
These come in two flavors static and dynamic.
Static indicators are things which don’t really change, at least not often. These are your audiences innate characteristics. The main examples are things like age, location, gender, income bracket and level of education. These are all available in Google Analytics by default, so you don’t need any wizardry to split your audience this way. – Read more
