Dec 15 2023
What Is First-Party Data And How Do You Use It? via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson

First-party data has been the talk of the marketing industry for years now.

With ever-tightening user data privacy laws and regulations, it’s imperative that marketers embrace a world with little-to-no data cookies.

We have to get more creative on how to legally, and ethically, capture customer information.

Not sure what first-party data is? Or not quite sure where to start with a first-party data marketing strategy?

Follow along to understand what first-party data is, how it differs from other data types, and how to apply it to your own business.

What Is First-Party Data?

First-party data is information or data points a company collects from its customers.

This type of data is collected through the business’ owned digital channels, with the consent given by the users to have their data collected.

Compared to second-party and third-party data, first-party data is usually considered the most reliable because it comes directly from the customer.

First-Party Data, Second-Party Data, And Third-Party Data Explained

Let’s dive in further between the three data types, how data is collected, and when and where to use them.

First-Party Data Explained

First-party data is any data point collected by a business directly from users or customers.

There are many ways first-party data can be collected from an audience. Some examples include:

  • Website or app analytics. Typically, this information is gathered from user interactions on a website or in an app. Data points can include demographics, location, page views, clicks, purchases, or time on site.
  • Email marketing lists. Subscriber data from email campaigns, newsletters, or additional email interactions.
  • Customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Data housed within a company’s CRM system, usually after a customer purchases. It usually stores customer profile information, purchase history, customer service interactions, and more.
  • Social media accounts. Data collected from social media profiles and interactions with a company through their social media accounts.
  • Surveys. Responses from customers, which can include data points like demographics, email, contact information, and more.
  • Customer feedback. This type of feedback can be collected through multiple channels, such as website online chat or product reviews, just to name a few.

In order to collect first-party data, a user has to consent to their data being collected.

Typically, companies put a tracking pixel on their website or app. Upon a customer’s first visit to one of those, they are usually served some sort of banner or pop-up asking them to consent to track behavior.

If a user consents and accepts, numerous data points (like the above described) are gathered and stored in a CRM system.

Companies primarily use first-party data for personalized marketing efforts and improving customer experiences.

Additionally, it helps businesses make more informed decisions from the data by analyzing the behavior of their actual customers.

Second-Party Data Explained

Second-party data is sometimes confused with third-party data.

Simply put, think of second-party data as “secondhand” data. It is data that a company didn’t collect itself but shared directly from one company to another.

What makes this different than third-party data is that it’s not sold or purchased from another company.

Usually, the data is shared as part of a partnership or mutually beneficial agreement between two companies.

Below are a few examples of how second-party data can be used in practice.

  • A travel agent partners with certain airlines, hotels, or car rental companies to gain access to their booking and reservation data. This then can allow a travel agency to provide personalized packages, discounts, and recommendations to customers.
  • A health and wellness app collaborates with a wearables device company (i.e., smartwatch). The app can collect wearable data points from a user, such as heart rate, step counts, and sleep patterns. The wellness app uses that data to provide personalized insights and recommendations to a customer.
  • An educational technology company wants to partner with schools or universities to gather data on student academic performance and learning. The technology company then uses this data to inform future educational content to improve student learning.

Second-party data is primarily used to expand datasets on a company’s first-party data set.

This type of data sharing allows companies to gain data from trusted partners to get a better, more comprehensive view of their target audience without having to go through the heavy lifting of collecting the data themselves.

Third-Party Data Explained

Third-party data is data collected by an external source, which is then sold to businesses for various reasons.

The biggest difference between third-party and first/second-party data is that there is no true connection to the customer.

Additionally, because third-party data is purchased in large quantities, the data is aggregated and anonymized to meet privacy regulations.

Third-party data can come from a variety of sources, including information from:

  • Public records.
  • Government agencies.
  • Online activities or website cookies.
  • Social media accounts or profiles.

There are both benefits and drawbacks to third-party data.

One of the main benefits of third-party data is that it’s relatively easy to buy large data sets of demographic or behavioral information on your target audience.

Perhaps the biggest downfall of third-party data is the reliability or accuracy of the data purchased.

A few examples of third-party data used in practice include:

  • A real estate company gets third-party data from public records, including information on property values, property characteristics, and more. This helps the real estate company with property appraisals, market analysis, and how to better market real estate listings.
  • An online retailer wants to cross-sell or upsell additional products to its customers, so it purchases third-party data to analyze customer purchase behavior to help predict relevant cross-selling opportunities on its website.
  • Pharmaceutical companies may purchase third-party data on prescription medication usage in order to align their marketing efforts with existing healthcare trends.

Compared to first-party data, it’s considered less reliable as it’s not information coming directly from your customers.

Third-party data is primarily used by companies to complement first-party data. It’s not practical to rely solely on third-party data for marketing efforts.

Using third-party data to analyze trends and behavior in your greater target audience is a better way to leverage large data sets.

What Are The Limitations Of First-Party Data?

While first-party data is considered the most reliable and accurate for businesses, it does come with some pitfalls and limitations.

Below are a few drawbacks to first-party data collection.

  • Limited scale. Since first-party data is limited to the information a customer provides, or the interactions a company has with its users, data sets can be limited by size. Especially for newer businesses or niche companies, it may be difficult to gain statistical significance or be able to reach a wider audience at scale.
  • Sampling diversity concerns. Similar to the above, with limited scale, a company could run into a low sampling diversity when analyzing data. It could lead to skewed customer demographic insights and may not accurately reflect a wider target market.
  • Data privacy concerns. All companies, regardless of how they’re collecting first-party data, need to stay up-to-date on user data privacy regulations at all times. This takes time and employee resources to ensure compliance is reached.
  • Data decay. This is referred to when customer profile information becomes outdated. Examples of this can include if a customer moves, changes their phone number or email address, and can lead to inaccurate customer profiles.
  • Resource intensive. Gathering and collecting first-party data takes time. It’s not a “one-and-done” task. First-party data requires a level of maintaining after its collected, whether that comes from investing in technology, data analysis, and/or maintaining accurate customer information over time.

Don’t let these limitations scare you away from using first-party data to its full potential.

Next, we’ll dive into different ways to make your data work harder, and smarter, for your business.

How To Use First-Party Data

You’ve spent all this time collecting and organizing first-party data for your business.

So, what’s the best way to use it?

Believe it or not, there’s a lot more you can use first-party data for than marketing campaigns.

Below are five examples of ways to use first-party data more holistically for your business.

1. Expand And Optimize Marketing Campaign Targeting

If you’re looking to expand your marketing efforts to a wider audience but are unsure where to start, start with your first-party data.

If large enough, first-party customer lists can be turned into lookalike audiences in advertising platforms to help reach a broader audience with similar characteristics as your current customers.

For existing campaign optimization, try segmenting customer groups by certain characteristics.

Smaller, custom segments allow for more accurate and personalized messaging to those users, which can help increase conversion rates, customer loyalty, and more.

2. Encourage Customer Loyalty

Most customers like to feel rewarded by repeated loyalty to a brand. This could come in the form of a specific loyalty program, special discounts or sales, or birthday recognition gifts.

Using first-party data that captures purchase history and personal information like date of birth and turning it into special incentives can help retain valuable customers longer.

3. Prioritize Product Improvements

This is an often overlooked way to utilize first-party data because it comes back down to the company and product itself.

Taking the time to review customer feedback and survey responses helps identify customer pain points, opinions, and what they love.

Capturing these data points on a regular basis can help companies pivot to take action quicker on customer pain points and prioritize product development efforts to improve customer satisfaction.

4. Optimize Content Strategy

First-party data is also helpful for content optimization strategies.

Gathering information such as customer engagement metrics can inform what topics or categories users resonate with most.

Shifting ad, social, or website content to what resonates with customers can help better attract users quicker, which can then help lead to more customers.

As with all content development, keep in mind to ensure brand voice and tone are consistent and authentic across all channels.

5. Predictive Analytics For Data-driven Decisions

If you have a large set of first-party data, it can be used to build predictive models to forecast customer behavior, future sales and revenue, churn rates, and more.

Using this information strategically guides better decisions made directly from your data.

Predictive modeling also lends a hand at outlining a typical customer’s journey, which helps identify steps and interactions a user takes before purchasing.

Do We Need To Consider Zero-Party Data For The Future?

Third-party cookie deprecation has been on the docket for a while now.

As of October 2023, Google announced it will disable third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users starting in Q1 2024.

While that may not sound like a lot, the start of disabling cookies means marketers need to be proactive in 2024 about a zero-party data strategy in the future.

Zero-party data is considered data given to a company directly from the users themselves.

The data is willingly shared with a company through outlets such as:

  • Surveys.
  • Forms.
  • Direct interactions with a business.

Examples of zero-party data are similar to first-party data and can include:

  • Personalization data.
  • Purchase intent.
  • User account data.
  • Feedback and reviews.
  • Survey responses.

Integrating a zero-party data strategy benefits businesses because it can take personalized marketing and customer experiences to the next level.

To start gathering zero-party data, it may be worthwhile to incentivize users to provide their valuable information – also known as a value exchange.

A user provides a company with their personal information in return for something of value to the customer, such as a product discount.

Ultimately, zero-party data helps build customer trust, increases user engagement, and drives higher conversion rates and repeat customers.

When integrating any type of data strategy, always be sure to keep user privacy and consent at the forefront of your mind.

Not only is it ethical, but it’s becoming a legal requirement in almost all regions.

More resources: 

Featured Image: Piscine26/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 4 2023
Unlock Ecommerce Success: How You Can Get Up To 87% More Traffic [+ Report] via @sejournal, @getdotstore

Wondering how to boost your ecommerce SEO to help you rank higher on SERPs?

Do you feel like you’re getting a new competitor every day?

In the era when everyone has an ecommerce storefront, how do you make sure your store has as many advantages as possible?

Gaining traffic and visibility is listed as one of the top issues that online sellers face, especially if you’re just starting your business and the next step is to choose your URL.

So, what are some of the major issues you might face as a new ecommerce company? How can you solve them?

Let’s dive in.

How To Boost Ecommerce Performance & Decrease Customer Acquisition Costs

The game has changed and .com domains aren’t the only way to get customers to take your business seriously.

If the primary goal of your website is to sell, nothing says that better than a .Store domain extension.

It’s the perfect call to action that instantly connects with potential customers and attracts them to your site.

Some of the key advantages of using a .Store domain include:

  • 87% more traffic.
  • 2X visibility.
  • 12% lower cost of conversion.

Increase Your Web Traffic by 87%

An ecommerce website on a .Store domain gets 87% more visitors than its .com counterparts.

Your domain name is basically like the virtual storefront of your business, and choosing the right one can have a significant impact on your success.

Why It Works

When users see a .Store domain, it instantly communicates that they are on an ecommerce platform where they can make purchases.

This clear and direct messaging not only attracts more visitors but also translates into increased sales, which ultimately results in more revenue for your business.

Double Your Site’s Visibility On Search Engines

An ecommerce site sporting a .Store top-level domain (TLD) gets an impressive double the amount of search visibility.

How?

Well, search engines love contextually relevant keywords, and having the word “store” in your domain name can be a powerful keyword tactic for your site’s rankings.

This added relevance doubles your visibility on search engines, ensuring that potential customers looking to make an online purchase can find your store more easily.

Check out the study.

Reduce Your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) By 12%

Marketing costs can be a major concern, especially for new and growing businesses – and this is yet another way the .Store domain can transform your SEO strategy.

When users come across ads for a product category, they are 12% more likely to make a purchase if the ad directs them to a “store” domain.

Thus, the cost to acquire your user is much lower.

Analyzing .Store Domain Performance: The Full Report

[Get the full report]

The true impact of .Store TLDs on both paid and organic traffic were examined in a groundbreaking study conducted by Contrast Digital.

This extensive report uncovers a wealth of insights that can reshape your understanding of domain performance.

According to the data, there’s a potential long-term benefit of using .Store domains from a SEO standpoint.

We’ll dive into some key facts from the study below, but you can download the full report to dig into the detailed results.

Organic Study

This extensive 12-month experiment examined the performance of two distinct websites.

The key difference between the two websites was the domain extension.

One website was on .com while the other was on a .Store; with the second-level domain being identical (think example.com vs example.store).

Both sites comprised 82 pages categorized into products, categories, blog posts, and information pages, maintaining identical layouts and product descriptions in order to control variables and conduct a fair assessment.

Googlebot’s crawl time, along with impressions, clicks, and click-through rate measured through Google Search Console, provided a detailed comparative analysis.

Significance testing using MATLAB code offered insights into potential differences between the sites’ metrics, forming a comprehensive overview of their organic performance.

Key Performance Trends:

  • Example.store achieved the first 100 clicks, 20,000 impressions, and 250 clicks in a 30-day window faster than example.com.
  • Google seemed to prefer the example.store domain over example.com, indicated by faster indexing and crawling.
  • Example.store had a 49.01% larger keyword footprint than example.com, correlating with larger impressions over 12 months.
  • In non-blog content, example.store had a 30.27% increase in visibility compared to example.com.
  • In blog content, example.store had a 67.02% increase compared to example.com.

Overall, the significance tests consistently show that .Store TLDs outperformed equivalent .com TLDs in clicks, impressions, and click-through rate (CTR) over the 12-month experiment.

Want to learn more? Check out the full report for additional insights.

PPC Report

This report delves into the Google paid ads segment of the experiment, evaluating the performance of example.com and example.store over 5 months.

After allowing both websites to naturally perform for three months, paid media was introduced to assess their response to targeted paid traffic, with a primary focus on understanding consumer trust around TLDs.

To ensure fairness in the paid ads environment, settings were adjusted to rotate ads indefinitely, preventing bias toward any particular ad.

Additionally, landing page destinations, ad content, keyword targeting, and max bids were standardized across both accounts, eliminating variables and placing emphasis on individual performance.

Key Performance Trends:

  • Example.store had a 12.12% higher conversion rate than example.com, 1.48% vs 1.32%.
  • Example.store managed PPC spend more consistently through daily budgets, possibly contributing to better performance.
  • Example.store had a statistically significant 15.37% higher CTR compared to example.com, potentially due to the recognizable association of .Store with eCommerce.
  • Example.store outperformed example.com in conversions (33 vs 24) and had a cheaper customer acquisition cost (£39.59 vs £44.45).
  • After 5 months, example.store performed the best overall in clicks, CTR, average cost per click, and cost.

Overall, the .Store domain consistently outperformed .com and emerged as the superior performer in the paid experiment.

Navigating The Customer Acquisition Challenge

We know how difficult it can be to capture the attention of your ideal audience, particularly as a new online business without an established track record.

Another key issue you might be facing is profitability.

As essential as marketing may be for your brand, it can certainly be costly to execute effectively.

So what are some ways you can get the most bang for your buck and maximize your return on investment (ROI)?

How can you add value while keeping your customer acquisition costs low?

Though there are various marketing tricks and tactics you can try, sometimes, the answer can be just as simple as picking the right domain name.

Oftentimes, the domain you choose for your business can tell consumers a lot about what you offer and what they can expect.

So if you’re looking to enhance your online retail presence and lower your cost per acquisition (CPA), it might be time to switch things up.

With a .Store domain extension, you can gain a significant performance advantage and get a leg up on your competitors.

Diversify Your Digital Identity: Embracing The Evolution Beyond .Com

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Will customers trust an address that doesn’t end in .com?

How does Google classify a website with a .Store domain and how will it impact your search rankings?

Domain names are not actually a part of your overall search engine rankings – however, that doesn’t mean you can just forget about them.

Your choice of domain name can be an important aspect of your UX and public image, and should usually be the most recognizable aspect of your business.

Till now, the domain extension decision for anyone building an ecommerce site was largely determined by conditioning, perception, and an overall lack of data.

The idea that .com domains are the only viable choice for websites is incredibly common.

However, there’s now an objective, data-backed study available which, for the first time, shows that .Store as a top-level domain (TLD) can actually benefit ecommerce sellers in a major way.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 27 2023
39 Emotions Digital Marketers Can Use In Advertising via @sejournal, @gregjarboe

In a previous article, How To Make A Video Go Viral, I mentioned research that shows videos that evoked the emotion of hilarity, inspiration, astonishment, and exhilaration tended to be shared the most. People shared videos that elicited “high-arousal” or intense emotions twice as much as ones that elicited “low-arousal” or moderate emotions.”

For the past few months, I’ve been searching for a new way to categorize emotions and I stumbled across a post on LinkedIn that said, “Here it is! The DAIVID Field Guide to Emotions in Advertising with each of the DAIVID 39 emotions.”

The LinkedIn post said,

“As every good creative knows, make people feel something and it will have an effect on brand and sales.”

So, I downloaded their field guide and read all 56 pages in one sitting – like a whodunit. It even opens with a killer quotation by Jonathan Haidt,

“The rational mind thinks it’s the Oval Office when actually it’s the press office.”

The field guide draws from research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science at the University of South Australia.

The field guide categorizes 39 emotions into 6 “emotional cohorts”  and acknowledges,

“Emotions in advertising are nothing new. Intuitively, gifted storytellers have taken us through lows and highs to make us feel good and well disposed towards brands through the years.”

It explains, “What we have lacked up to this point though, is a clear codification. Whether something is ’emotional’ or not has often been decided subjectively and with the poor emotional lexicon that we humans have.”

And it concludes, “That’s why we have the DAIVID 39, which gives us a common language to communicate this through the advertising process and brief with feeling.”

So, here is the all-important language that digital marketers can use to define and, therefore, replicate advertising success through emotion.

39 Emotions Digital Marketer’s Can Use In Advertising

Empathy

According to the DAIVID Field Guide to Emotions in Advertising, there are 11 emotions in the Empathy cohort that digital marketers can put on their palette when creating a campaign:

  • Admiration: A feeling of profound respect or approval.
  • Calmness: To be free from agitation, excitement, or disturbance.
  • Empathetic pain: A specific variant of empathy that involves recognizing and understanding another person’s pain.
  • Gratitude: an expression of grateful thanks and appreciation for benefits received.
  • Hope: An audacious desire accompanied by the expectation of, or belief in, fulfilling it.
  • Pride: Complex with definitions such as self-esteem and satisfaction in oneself, pleasure that comes from an association, relationship, or achievement, or a feeling of solidarity.
  • Relief: The removal or alleviation of something oppressive, painful, or distressing.
  • Sadness: An expression of grief or unhappiness.
  • Satisfaction: The fulfillment of a strongly desired need or want.
  • Trust: The extent to which a person or thing is accurate, honest, safe, and dependable.
  • Warmth: The quality or state of being warm in feeling.

The field guide includes a link to a video, “seen in the wild,” for each emotion. And that will certainly help if digital marketers are unclear about the definition of an emotion.

But I looked for videos that I’d seen, which I could use to illustrate the creative effectiveness of “Empathy.” And I didn’t need binoculars.

In Google Analytics 4 Should Trigger Reorganizations & Agency Reviews, near the end of the article, I said digital marketers could use YouTube’s Director Mix to create customized videos at scale, swapping out different elements to tailor content to specific audiences.

As an example, I mentioned that Mondelēz India had designed its Not Just a Cadbury Ad Campaign Video employing YouTube Pin Code Targeting, YouTube Director’s Mix, and Google Maps API.

This enabled the brand to produce thousands of customized AI-generated ads for 270 pin codes across 8 cities. This hyper-localized campaign helped 1,800 local retailers grab business during Diwali in a global pandemic.

The campaign delivered incredible business results, including doubling the sales for the retailers featured in the ads and over 32% more business growth than they’d forecast.

What I didn’t mention back then was the name of Mondelēz International’s strategy: “Empathy at scale.”

So, “Empathy” made people feel something, which influenced branding and sales.

Approach

According to the field guide, there are 11 emotions in the Approach cohort:

  • Adoration: A state of deep love and respect.
  • Aesthetic appreciation: The enjoyment of something because of its beauty or some other factor associated with aesthetic preference.
  • Amusement: Something pleasantly entertaining or diverting.
  • Entrancement: The feeling of being carried away with delight, wonder, or rapture.
  • Craving: An intense, urgent, or abnormal desire or longing.
  • Inspiration: The state or power of moving the intellect or emotions.
  • Interest: A feeling that accompanies special attention to a person or thing. It engages attention and stimulates further observation.
  • Joy: To experience intense pleasure or delight evoked by well-being, good fortune, or by the prospect of owning what one desires.
  • Knowledge: The condition of knowing something gained through experience.
  • Nostalgia: A sentimental longing or wistful affection for some past period or irrecoverable condition.
  • Romance: A feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.

Yes, there’s a link to a video, “seen in the wild,” for each of these emotions.

However, I didn’t need a spotting scope to find examples of different approaches that have generated measurable outcomes. Let me highlight a recent one.

In 10 YouTube Marketing Strategies & Tips (With Examples), I included an example of inspiring video content of the UAE’s tourist experiences, cultural events, and enjoyable adventures.

It was created for the second season of the World’s Coolest Winter campaign and entitled A Winter Through My Eyes.

The short documentary film asks, “Can a country be truly enjoyed by someone who cannot see?” It tells the story of Clara, an 11-year-old Lebanese girl who has been visually impaired since birth.

Now, this award-winning video got 8.9 million views, which is remarkable – because the World’s Coolest Winter is primarily a domestic tourism campaign, and the UAE has a population of about 10 million, which is equivalent to the population of Michigan.

But it’s worth noting that the campaign helped to:

  • Increase hotel revenues in the UAE to AED1.5 billion, a 50% upsurge over the previous year.
  • Boost the number of domestic tourists to 1.3 million, a 36% jump over the campaign’s first season.
  • Raise hotel occupancy rates to 73% in 2022, a 7% gain over 66% in 2021.

So, this “Approach” not only made people feel something, but it also influenced branding and sales.

Positive Adrenaline

According to the field guide, there are four emotions in the Positive Adrenaline cohort:

  • Awe: Variously combines dread, veneration, and wonder that authority, the sacred, or sublime inspires.
  • Excitement: A feeling of great enthusiasm, eagerness, or thrill.
  • Sexual Desire: A physical attraction and desire for physical intimacy.
  • Surprise: The response to an unexpected or astonishing event.

I haven’t written about the following case study before, but I’ve used it in the class I teach on “Engaging Audiences Through Content” at the New Media Academy in Dubai. It consists of two videos.

The first is entitled, See you at Dubai Expo | Emirates and now has 5.3 million views and 87,800 engagements.

The second video is entitled We did it again | Emirates. This video takes a behind-the-scenes look at how Emirates took its A380 for a spin around the Burj Khalifa for the making of its new advertisement.

This video now has 13.9 million views and 211,000 engagements.

So, these videos made people feel something. But did they also influence branding and sales?

Well, Expo Dubai, the first event of its size and scale held since the start of the global pandemic, recorded over 24 million visits and was hailed as a tremendous success.

A couple of months after its videos went viral, Emirates Group announced that revenue increased by 86% over the previous year, with strong customer demand as worldwide travel restrictions eased.

Correlation or causation? You be the judge.

Negative Adrenaline, Primal Urges, And Rejection

Now, you may not want to put the last 13 emotions on your palette when creating a campaign, but you should be able to identify them if you see them in the wild:

  • Fear: An unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.
  • Horror: A painful and intense dread, fear, or repugnance.
  • Anger: A strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism.
  • Awkwardness: A feeling of discomfort or being out of place in response to a situation.
  • Disgust: A strong feeling of dislike aroused by something highly distasteful.
  • Embarrassment: A feeling of shame, self-consciousness, or awkwardness.
  • Guilt: A feeling of deserving blame for offenses committed by yourself or others.
  • Shame: An uncomfortable feeling of guilt because of your own or someone else’s immoral behavior.
  • Anxiety: An apprehensive uneasiness over an impending or anticipated harm.
  • Boredom: Being weary and restless through lack of interest.
  • Confusion: Uncertainty about what is happening, intended, or required.
  • Contempt: Despising someone or something.
  • Distrust: To doubt the honesty or reliability of a person or thing.

Yes, I know that Halloween has just been held again, and some people enjoy watching horror movies.

But you should think twice before using any of the negative emotions in these last three emotional cohorts.

Why? There are three key reasons:

  • The field guide says, “Generally, it’s advisable for … brands to leave us with a positive emotion.”
  • According to a recent article in Think with Google, 7 in 10 people say they try to be optimistic despite the latest political, ecological, and economic news.
  • As Yoda says, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

So, there you have it: A digital marketer’s palette of 39 emotions to use – or avoid using – in advertising.

Disclaimer: All statistics not linked are from a gated Tubular Labs report.

More resources: 

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 16 2023
100M Phone Call Insights: Your Key To Data-Driven Marketing Strategies via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

Looking to create golden sales opportunities efficiently and easily?

Do you think you’re attracting good leads, but results aren’t showing it?

What could you do with voice-of-customer insights summarized across calls?

The key might lie within phone calls.

CallRail has analyzed more than 100 million phone calls and consumer communication trends, and they’re ready to share their findings with you.

On November 1, I moderated a webinar with Jason Tatum, CallRail’s VP of Product. Tatum covered the past and future state of phone calls and how you can use AI to gain valuable insights that will transform your business.

Here’s a summary of the webinar. To access the entire presentation, complete the form.

What We Uncovered

Consumers prefer to call businesses for many types of transactions — particularly high-stakes purchases such as in healthcare or insurance, where two-thirds of consumers prefer calling over any other type of contact.

[Find out why inbound callers are your best leads] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →

Main Insight: Mining The Conversation Is Untapped Gold

Phone conversations provide some of the richest insights you can get about buyers’ needs and motivations.

This type of conversation data could improve:

  • Lead conversion.
  • Customer experience.
  • Agent performance.
  • Marketing optimization.
100M Phone Call Insights: Your Key To Data-Driven Marketing StrategiesScreenshot by CallRail, Nov 2023

8 Golden Insights From Call Tracking

The strategy of mining calls is helping companies gain massive insights for strengthening their marketing strategy.

Call tracking, alone, can offer you insights into:

  • Call attribution.
  • Call recording & transcription.
  • Lead qualification.
  • CRM integration.
  • Marketing ROI.

With 100 million calls backing this up, we know that call tracking helps marketers drive the most high-quality leads because call tracking:

  • Identifies which ads are performing the best.
  • Allows marketers to double down on performance.
  • Saves money and increases ROI.

[See the data] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →

7 More Golden Insights From Call Tracking With AI

We’ve also discovered that by implementing call tracking with the technology of artificial intelligence, calls are also providing companies with:

  • Keywords and phrases.
  • Buying intent.
  • Product and service interests.
  • Sentiment.
  • Agent performance.
  • Call outcomes.
  • Patterns across calls.

From our data, we’re confirming that phone calls are, in fact, one of the richest sources of untapped intelligence compared to SMS, chat, and forms.

How To Extract The Gold

Now that you see the data that thousands of companies are mining from phone calls, it’s time to learn how to get that same data for yourself.

However, manually identifying patterns across thousands of calls, agents, locations, or campaigns is virtually impossible without these steps:

  1. [Get the steps] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →

100M Phone Call Insights: Your Key To Data-Driven Marketing Strategies [Slides]

Here’s the presentation:

Join Us For Our Next Webinar!

The Evolution Of Search & SERPs 2024

In this roundtable discussion with Shelley Walsh, Ben Steele, and Matt Southern, you’ll get expert insights into the evolution of search to give you a competitive advantage in 2024.

Reserve my Seat

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 25 2023
How To Improve Lead Nurturing For B2B via @sejournal, @alexanderkesler

Driving interest in your brand to enable growth is a challenge – one that is becoming even more apparent, as budgets have become tighter and buyer scrutiny is at an all-time high.

In this competitive environment, companies have capitalized on trends and messaging to drive lead interest in their offerings, mostly through a memorable brand experience.

This is a positive approach for lead nurturing. However, executing this strategy is more complex than it seems.

In this article, I present what I and fellow demand strategists have leveraged to improve lead nurturing efforts for B2B – starting with the essential step of collecting demand intelligence to drive demand for your services.

Next, I share tips on perfecting and futureproofing your lead nurturing to ensure that your strategies will be as effective in the years to come as they are now.

Collect And Analyze Demand Intelligence

The foundation for lead nurturing is intelligence.

Intelligence in this context means data on your leads’ behavior, their demographic/firmographic/technographic attributes, and your industry to drive effective demand strategies.

Below, I detail the demand intelligence process we follow at INFUSE to engage Ideal Client Profile (ICP) leads – aligned with your buyer personas – and how to collect data to enable lead nurturing processes:

Collect And Integrate Data

Firstly, you must establish avenues for generating lead nurturing data while also compiling the data you already have. This means analyzing your current tech stack, starting with your client relationship management (CRM) system.

Gather data on the leads in your pipeline from a lead nurturing perspective (i.e., the touchpoints they engage with and the pain points/challenges they relate to).

This will help you form an overview of the evolving challenges of your leads across the sales cycle and what content engages them the most.

Once you have finalized this process, you can then proceed to the next step.

Keep in mind, however, that at this point, you only have a hypothesis of what generates demand for your organization, which must be tested to inform future lead nurturing strategies.

Launch A Test Campaign Based On Your First Demand Intelligence Dataset

With your first demand intelligence dataset ready, you must create a test campaign to evaluate if you have gleaned the correct insights on the evolving pain points of your leads (and the right ways to address them).

Therefore, develop a test campaign for a specific ICP (or buyer persona) and determine a timeline (preferably quarterly) to track engagement, conversions, and your return on investment (ROI).

This is when you can test different assets, messaging, and channels to measure performance to inform your next lead nurturing campaigns.

Glean Insights And Develop Best Practices For Future Campaigns

Once your trial campaign has been finalized, create a demand intelligence report, which details:

  • The touchpoints leads engaged with the most – their themes, assets, and messaging.
  • When prospective clients entered, got “stuck” in the sales funnel (disengaged with your brand), or dropped out of the funnel entirely (unsubscribed, shared their disinterest to a salesperson, etc.).
  • KPIs to measure performance, particularly conversion rates, cost per lead (CPL), lead qualification (marketing or sales qualified – MQL/MQA, SQL/SQA), and sales bookings.

It is best at this phase to share this demand intelligence information with stakeholders across marketing, sales, and client success.

This alignment will help you glean further insights from each department at your organization for refining your demand intelligence and enabling better lead nurturing flows in the future.

Once you have gained a clear understanding of your leads and how to nurture them, you can then move to the next phase of establishing personalized nurturing flows for better engagement.

Establish Multiple, Personalized Lead Nurturing Flows Based On Demand Intelligence

With your demand intelligence from your first test, move forward with planning sophisticated and personalized nurturing flows for your ICPs.

How To Plan Your Lead Nurturing Flows

Most likely, you focused on engaging one ICP with your test campaign.

Now you can develop multiple personalized nurturing flows for other ICPs or fine-tune your nurturing for your primary buyer persona to create separate tracks per pain point or other market segmentation criteria (such as industry size or technographics).

Another option, if you are pursuing account-based marketing (ABM), is to adopt an account-based experience (ABX) approach, which enriches account-focused outreach and lead nurturing with user and client experience (UX and CX) best practices.

No matter which route you pursue, below are three steps to plan your lead nurturing flows for success:

  • Map evolving pain points per ICP (or buyer persona) and develop multiple touchpoints to engage them.
  • Determine who is accountable for tracking lead nurturing engagement and ensuring continuous brand interest (such as pivoting messaging if required to address different lead demands).
  • Enrich lead nurturing with UX and CX best practices for a user-friendly and seamless brand experience (including, if beneficial, ABX).

How To Analyze Lead Nurturing Performance

With your lead nurturing flows in action, it becomes paramount to track performance to ensure you are truly engaging your prospective clients to drive the results you expect. After all, lead nurturing requires a substantial team effort and resources from your organization.

Below are three ways to measure the performance of your lead nurturing flows:

Establish Cross-departmental KPIs And Accountability

Determine a set of KPIs that are comprehensive enough to track engagement and ROI of your lead nurturing flows yet not cumbersome to the point of overcomplicating your reporting processes.

I recommend selecting five KPIs and finessing them as you pivot future lead nurturing campaigns as needed.

  • Example KPIs: CPL, conversion rate (per touchpoint), marketing-influenced revenue, sales bookings, and client lifetime value (CLTV).

Collect Sales Feedback

Your salespeople are interacting with nurtured leads and can share valuable insight on the effectiveness of marketing materials in piquing their interest and driving sales conversations.

Meeting with sales midway through the campaign is beneficial for considering a pivot if needed or what to do for more success in the next campaign.

Implement Lead Scoring And Lead Qualification Processes

Scoring leads during lead nurturing flows is essential to determine if the process is generating qualified leads, as well as help sales and marketing teams prioritize prospects in their outreach.

This should be paired with qualification methods (such as determining criteria for leads to be marketing, MQL, or sales qualified, SQL) to help track the number of leads being nurtured into qualified prospects for the organization.

How To Optimize And Pivot Lead Nurturing Flows

Recognizing the optimal timeframe to adjust your lead nurturing processes is crucial for conserving both time and resources. This entails enhancing your nurturing approach to better cater to your target audience.

Ideally, it is best to wait for the end of a cycle (such as a quarter) to consider optimizations or lead nurturing campaign pivots.

However, if the budget is an issue, consider pivoting an ongoing program to ensure the best ROI and avoid wasting marketing dollars.

The key is to identify the signs of nurturing success/failure early on.

Since lead nurturing is a collaborative effort, all optimizations and pivots must be actioned across teams in the organization to ensure their implementation and effectiveness.

Signs that warrant optimizations or pivots include:

  • Most touchpoints are ignored.
  • Prospective clients mention different pain points than those explored in your nurturing flows.
  • Leads disengage when contacted by a salesperson.

There are other potential signs – however, these are core indicators that your lead nurturing flows are most likely targeting the wrong leads, or require more aligned messaging with their demands.

In some cases, you can simply action a “quick fix” optimization to your nurture, such as updating the messaging of your touchpoints.

However, depending on the response from your leads, it is best to action a pivot for a brand-new lead nurturing strategy.

Five steps to pivot your lead nurturing:

  • Prioritize a lead nurturing flow and pause it. Analyze engagement, then relaunch when all issues have been resolved. Continue until all underperforming nurtures have been addressed.
  • Track performance closely for the initial three touchpoints to evaluate if engagement has improved.
  • Continue if engagement has improved. If not, revisit your initial touchpoints and update their messaging and which pain points they address.
  • Update remaining touchpoints accordingly if the performance of the initial three touches is satisfactory.
  • Monitor your pivoted campaign and glean insights from sales of their conversations with leads to optimize future campaigns.

Futureproof Your Lead Nurturing

To ensure that your lead nurturing strategy is futureproofed, you must regularly collect demand intelligence, analyze campaign performance, and keep track of evolving trends in the market and changing buyer behavior.

Lead nurturing is about building relationships through relevance, and keeping an eye on changes in your industry is the best way to position your brand as timely and valuable.

Inspire Yourself With Thought Leadership To Anticipate Evolving Demands

Following key voices in your space can help you anticipate evolving demands from your buyers, as well as themes to explore in your lead nurturing assets and touchpoints.

In the B2B space, LinkedIn is a key channel for keeping up with thought leaders and conversations that might impact the future of your industry.

Leveraging social listening tools, tracking hashtags, as well as following notable C-Suite leaders at competitors and major enterprises in your niche is a way to discover key information for futureproofing your lead nurturing efforts.

If possible, make sure your marketing and sales team members also follow these online conversations.

Leverage Intent Data For Timely Insights On Lead Behavior

When utilized correctly (and contextually), intent data can track evolving buyer needs and their interest in resolving challenges (which can subsequently be related to your brand and its offerings).

That being said, sadly, intent data is often misinterpreted as “ready-to-buy” signals, which they are not.

Intent data signals interest, which means prospective buyers who demonstrate intent should be nurtured more closely with touchpoints that further increase their interest in your offerings.

If anything, consider intent data as a way to prioritize lead nurturing efforts on leads who, if engaged correctly, could move on quicker to a sales conversation compared to the rest.

Utilize Surveys And Deep Knowledge Of Your Buyers

Surveying your audience is a way to gain knowledge of future problems they will face as buyers and collect data on their current challenges.

Surveys are important to inform marketing and sales efforts.

When it comes to relevance to lead nurturing, questions on media consumption preferences, future goals, and industry challenges can inform themes for touchpoints as well as the vocabulary to use in your messaging.

Key Takeaways

When crafting your lead nurturing strategy, keep these takeaways in mind to ensure you are on the right path:

Collect And Leverage Demand Intelligence

Make sure that your lead nurturing strategy is supported by comprehensive demand intelligence, as well as insights from intent data and sales outreach that will enable successful campaigns in the future.

Personalize At Scale With Unique Nurturing Flows Per ICP

Leverage user experience best practices (such as UX, CX, and ABX) to enrich lead nurturing flows per ICP (or buyer persona). Engage your buyers with touchpoints that stand out and encourage active engagement.

Futureproof Your Lead Nurturing With Methods That Will Inform Your Demand Intelligence

Follow thought leaders in your space and leverage social listening to track the evolving needs of your leads to inform future lead nurturing efforts.

More resources: 

Featured Image: Semanche/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 25 2023
How To Perform Website Experiments [+ SEJ Experiment Walk-Through & Results] via @sejournal, @Juxtacognition

How do you know what to change on your website or landing page to make it more effective?

Are the tweaks and tests you made to your site really successful? Or do they just look successful?

Could the best practices you’ve been following for years actually be what’s holding you back from achieving your goals and KPIs?

If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions or ones like it, it’s time to run your own website experiment.

Learn a step-by-step process for conducting website experiments to help you get the data you need to make good decisions.

We’ll show you how to set up and design experiments to collect data that will have the most value and impact for you and your audience.

You’ll learn:

  • When to run an experiment: Learn how and when to run your experiments to get the most informative and accurate data.
  • How to avoid data disasters: Learn how to prevent other factors from influencing your results and what to do if things do go as expected.
  • Experiment design: Tips for working with low-traffic sites, reducing costs caused by testing, and other challenges you’ll face when testing and running experiments.

Join our very own Angie Nikoleychuk, Content Marketing Manager, and learn the key factors to focus on when running website experiments, how to manage your data collection, and how to learn about the things that matter to your audience.

PLUS: You’ll get an exclusive walk-through of our new ad experiment, where we examined how ad types and layouts affect user behavior on our website. You’ll never guess what we found. We sure didn’t!

Don’t miss out on this opportunity!

View the slides below, download your copy of the resources, and watch on demand to learn how to run easy experiments on your site.

Join Us For Our Next Webinar!

How To Boost 2024 SEO Performance With Pillar Pages & Topic Clusters

Join SEO experts and Conductor’s Customer Success Managers, Alex Carchietta and Zack Kadish, to learn how effective pillar pages and clustered content improve site structure, internal linking, and on-page SEO.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 25 2023
How To Reduce Your Email Bounce Rate & Boost Email Marketing Campaigns via @sejournal, @zerobounce1

When you’re reaching out to a mass email list with your business offering, the last thing you want is to see that your last email blast didn’t make it to the full audience you aimed for.

These email bounces waste time and money. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

A bounce rate higher than 2% can shatter your entire email marketing strategy by sabotaging your email deliverability.

In fact, according to marketing standards, you want your bounce rate to be as close to 0% as possible and never more than 2%.

See how many bounces your next campaign may get >>>

The good news? You can take steps to avoid this common problem for good and calibrate your campaigns for better email deliverability.

Read on to find out how bounces hurt your business and what you can do today to boost your email marketing success.

What Is A Bounce Rate?

Your bounce rate is the percentage of emails you send that bounce or do not make it to a recipient’s inbox.

There are two types of bounces – hard bounces and soft bounces – and each has a different effect on your email marketing campaign.

In both cases, however, your message won’t make it to the intended recipient.

What Is A Hard Bounce?

A hard bounce indicates a permanent issue with the email address.

It’s invalid or possibly never existed.

There’s no hope of your email getting through with that address, so make sure to remove it from your email list.

What Is A Soft Bounce?

A soft bounce happens when a temporary issue causes your email to not be delivered.

The mailbox was full, your email was too large, or the domain was down. Your email provider will keep trying to deliver your message, but it may end up permanently bouncing.

Make sure to remove permanent bounces from your database.

What’s Wrong With Getting Email Bounces?

Getting bounces is antithetical to email marketing because you’re sending your emails because you want a real person to open and read them.

It’s frustrating and demoralizing when that doesn’t happen.

  • Bounces waste money. Email services charge based on the number of email addresses on your list, as well as how many emails you send. If you’re getting bounces, you’re pouring dollars down the drain.
  • Bounces waste time. Why would you put all of this work into your emails only to have them result in a pile of bounces?
  • Bounces affect your email deliverability. They send notice to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that you’re likely a spammer and should be treated as such. Fewer people will see your emails because they’re now going to the junk folder.

Is It Possible To Have A 0% Bounce Rate?

Perfection is unattainable, but it is an ideal to strive for.

You may want to achieve a 0% bounce rate. However, there are many factors out of your control:

  • A Full Mailbox: Your customer may have a valid email address, but their mailbox is full. This will result in a soft bounce.
  • Issues With Email Providers: The contacts on your list rely on other email providers, so you can’t dictate what happens on their end.
  • Glitches: You’ve likely witnessed an email that bounced for no discernible reason. Sometimes an unexplained phenomenon or glitch is to blame.

Any of these may be the culprit for a bounce.

They’re why the expected email marketing bounce rate benchmark is 2%, but it’s also why your target should be to reach perfection – 0%.

The concept of “aim small, miss small” applies. If you shoot for 0%, you may get close.

If you try to hit the benchmark, you may veer into the danger zone.

How To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Now that you know the risks of a high bounce rate, let’s explore the most reliable ways to keep bounces at bay and help your emails reach the inbox.

How To Reduce Your Email Bounce Rate & Boost Email Marketing CampaignsImage courtesy of ZeroBounce.Net, October 2023

Step 1: Validate Your Email List

You can remove invalid email addresses from your list once they bounce, but the damage is already done.

To keep your email deliverability high, you want to avoid bounces in the first place – and the most effective way to do it is by using an email validator.

An email validation service checks your email list for invalid email addresses so you can remove them before they cause harm.

The process is easy and fast – on average, you can verify 100,000 contacts in less than an hour.

Email databases decay at an average rate of 23% a year, so remember to validate your contacts at least once a quarter.

How To Reduce Your Email Bounce Rate & Boost Email Marketing CampaignsImage courtesy of ZeroBounce.net, October 2023

Step 2: Set Up An Email Validation API

After you verify your entire email list, you can go a step further and prevent it from acquiring bad data with an email validation API.

The API is your second layer of defense against bounces, working in real-time to protect the health of your email list.

Once you connect the API to your sign-up and registration forms, it blocks invalid emails right at the point of capture.

For instance, if someone mistypes an email, it prompts them with a message asking them to enter the right address. Aside from that, a trustworthy email validation API blocks bots and fake sign-ups, thus protecting your email deliverability.

Step 3: Remove Unengaged Subscribers From Your Email List

Building an email list takes effort, so many companies want to hold on to the email contacts they gather.

The bigger your list, the higher the ROI is the common mindset.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 24 2023
20+ Experts Share Insights: 2024 Strategies For Social Media – AI, User-Generated Content & More [Guide] via @sejournal, @semrush

These developments will roll out faster with the help of generative AI.

Simply put: Your competitors will gain an advantage if your marketing doesn’t embrace a winning social media formula.

How To Transform Your Social Media Strategy With This Winning Formula For Success

In order to elevate your social media strategy with the perfect mix of user-generated content, improved content quality, and generative AI, you should:

  1. Uncover small tasks that SMMs can delegate to AI.
  2. Choose creators who look, talk, and live like your ideal customers.
  3. Let content creators create their content with freedom.
  4. Establish lasting relationships with different creators.
  5. Invest in social media listening tools.
  6. Localize and share UGC content.

Pro Tip: Create or find a full 2024 social media strategy checklist to help you keep track of your new plan.

Insight 3: AI Delegation – Pick The Right Social Media Tasks To Give To Generative AI

Knowing how to safely give tasks to AI is the key to reducing your social media manager’s timespend and freeing up their day to execute these expert social media insights.

“With AI, content creation will be accomplished with impressive speed and efficiency. Its benefits are genuinely inspiring.”

– Urvee Tondwalkar, Content Strategist at Urvee Designs & Instagram Coach

What This Means

By combining their strengths with AI, marketers can enhance their productivity, creativity, and overall marketing effectiveness.

Simply put: There are social media tasks that AI literally cannot do.

Generative AI cannot physically create the human touch required for social media campaigns that truly resonate with your potential customers. AI needs humans, and humans can benefit from AI’s speed.

How Do I Improve My Workflow With AI?

“AI tools can be gamechangers for marketers. They can expedite the brainstorming process with data-driven suggestions, optimize content for specific channels, and help automate content repurposing across various platforms.”

– Lindsey Gamble, Associate Director of Influencer Innovation, Mavrck

You can utilize AI tools to:

  • Automate routine tasks such as scheduling posts and monitoring social media metrics.
  • Generate copy for your social media content more quickly and efficiently.
  • Analyze user behavior and preferences to deliver personalized content to your audience and record their activity.

Even though AI can enhance your social media strategy, make sure to regularly review and adapt your social media strategy based on the insights generated by AI, combined with the expertise and intuition of your human marketing team.

Insight 4: TikTok & LinkedIn Will Be The Top-Performing Social Media Platforms Of 2024

Thanks to their high engagement capacity and evolving abilities, TikTok and LinkedIn should become your priority platforms.

“TikTok is still developing exciting new features and tools for creators, advertisers, and regular users. It will likely focus on ecommerce, generative AI, and search in 2024. It also remains the king of short video engagement.”

– Matt Navarra, Social Media Consultant & Industry Analyst

What This Means

TikTok isn’t disappearing from the U.S.

LinkedIn’s user base has grown to millions of professionals from diverse sectors, making it an invaluable resource for establishing and nurturing B2B relationships.

Other social media platforms like X and Threads are making big changes, too, so as always, keep your audience in mind when selecting the best platforms for next year’s strategy.

How To Use TikTok, LinkedIn, Meta’s Facebook & Threads, & X (Formerly Twitter) In 2024

This year’s trends in social media and their platform efficacy implore you to:

  1. Establish new relationships with TikTok’s content creators.
  2. Activate your LinkedIn profile.
  3. Start conversations: Get your strategy ready for Threads.
  4. Explore Instagram’s latest tools.
  5. Be cautious about X investments.

Insight 5: Shift Your Social Media KPI Focus Toward Engagement + Shares To Monitor Authenticity

Engagement is currently a global trend in social media content.

True social media engagement, such as comments and conversations on shares, can’t be bought. This is a great marker for social media success.

For all you multi-hat-wearing marketers, think of it as link building and authority. The more shares and engagement on those shares you have, the better the content must be – according to updated algorithm logic.

“Qualitative metrics – more focused on people who book meetings based on content rather than just clicks or views.”

–Mandy McEwen, CEO and Founder at Mod Girl Marketing

What This Means

By 2024, algorithms will become increasingly intelligent, prioritizing content that stimulates conversation, ignites reactions, and promotes community interaction.

As a result, social media experts will place a high emphasis on shares as a crucial performance indicator.

How To Focus On Engagement & Shares Within Your Social Media Content

This links back to authenticity – a common trend within our 2024 social media expert predictions.

Be sure to focus your social media management on creating content that inspires discussions and promotes comments and these five key types of social media engagement.

Insight 6: Reshape Your Social Media Strategy – Become A Visionary

So far, we’ve seen five great insights that can be incorporated into your next strategy.

But, what does that strategy look like? You can get the full strategy checklist in our ebook, but here is our high-level outline:

  1. Use authenticity.
  2. Prioritize UGC.
  3. Activate content shares.
  4. Push active listening.
  5. Use Generative AI.
  6. Hire or establish long-term partnerships.
  7. Use AB Testing.
  8. Keep investing in video.

Get the full checklist.

Insights 7 – 20: Want To Explore All Expert Social Media Tips For 2024?

To get the full details of each insight above, as well as 13 additional expert tips, download the full guide below.

The insights provided by our Visionaries, a diverse team of top voices in Social Media that have made this report possible, are everything you need to create a social media marketing strategy that dominates your competition and expands your social media presence.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 19 2023
The 19 Best Market Research Tools Of 2023 via @sejournal, @annabellenyst

Building a successful business is no easy feat, especially in a world where consumers have more options – and distractions – than ever before.

That’s why market research is essential to any business marketing plan and marketing strategy.

Market research lets you learn more about our target consumers and their behavior, spot emerging trends, uncover important data, and make informed business decisions.

But with so many target consumers out there and so many places and methods to reach them, where should you start?

In this article, we’ll cover some of the best market research tools available to you across a variety of tactics and approaches.

Let’s get started.

1. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkeyScreenshot from SurveyMonkey, September 2023

One of the more well-known survey tools, SurveyMonkey offers a broad list of features and capabilities for creating audience surveys.

Whether you want to create your own survey or choose from one of its 250+ expert-created templates, SurveyMonkey offers a user-friendly interface that enables you to customize your surveys to your needs.

It also offers a suite of helpful features, including AI-powered knowledge to help you pose the right questions, as well as built-in reporting and analytics.

Pricing:

  • SurveyMonkey offers a free Basic tier with unlimited surveys featuring up to 10 questions and 10 responses per survey.
  • Individual plans start at $39/month with unlimited surveys and questions, and up to 15,000 responses per year.
  • Team plans start at $25/user/month, starting at three users. This level also gives you unlimited surveys and questions, but offers 50,000 responses per year.

2. Typeform

TypeformScreenshot from Typeform, September 2023

Typeform is an easy-to-use tool focused on helping users create intuitive and engaging forms, surveys, quizzes, polls, and more. Its selling point is the ability to create truly conversational, beautiful forms.

With Typeform, you can create slick surveys with customizable interactive elements, such as images and videos, that encourage your audience to take action. Its focus on interactivity makes it an appealing tool for market research.

Typeform offers plenty of useful features – from conditional logic to creating dynamic surveys – that adapt based on answers to real-time data analytics and integrations with tons of popular tools, from Slack to Google Analytics.

The company even offers a standalone video tool, VideoAsk, where users can create “video forms” to prompt responses.

Pricing:

  • Typeform offers a Free plan with unlimited typeforms and 10 responses per month.
  • Paid plans start at $25/month billed annually for Basic, $50/month billed annually for Plus, and $83/month billed annually for Business.
  • The company also offers an Enterprise plan.

3.  BuzzSumo

BuzzsumoScreenshot from Buzzsumo, September 2023

BuzzSumo is a content research and analysis tool that can help you gather some powerful market insights.

Regarding market research, BuzzSumo can help you understand the content landscape in your industry (and beyond), find out what’s resonating with your target consumers, identify influencers in your niche, and track how your content is performing vs. your competitors’.

The BuzzSumo tool analyzes articles (over 5 billion!) and social media posts across the internet to identify top-performing content. It allows you to comb through five years of data so that you can discover the right content ideas for your audience.

Pricing:

  • 30-day free trial (no credit card required).
  • Membership tiers start at $159/month billed yearly for Content Creation (individual) plan, $239/month billed yearly for PR & Comms plan, $399/month billed yearly for the Suite plan, and $999/month billed yearly for the Enterprise plan.

4. Qualaroo

qualarooScreenshot from Quaraloo, September 2023

Want to capture user feedback and deepen your understanding of market trends? Qualaroo might be the tool for you.

Qualaroo is a customer and user feedback tool that claims to be “10X more valuable than email surveys.” Using Qualaroo, you can add a survey to a page on your website or integrate it into your product.

The tool uses behavioral triggering to show surveys or feedback prompts in response to specific user behavior, so you know you’re targeting the right people with the most relevant questions.

Qualaroo also offers visual customization so you can get the branding right, automatic language translation, a library of survey templates, audience targeting, and IBM Watson Sentiment Analysis to help you organize your results.

Pricing:

  • 15-day free trial (no credit card required).
  • Plans start at $69/month billed annually for Essentials, $149/month billed annually for Premium, and $299+/month billed annually for Business tier.

5. SpyFu

SpyFuScreenshot from SpyFu, September 2023

SpyFu is a great choice if you’re looking to conduct competitive analysis as part of your market research efforts.

It allows you to effectively “spy” on your competitors by viewing their marketing strategies, advertising history, what keywords they’ve bought on Google Ads, and more – which can help you find gaps in the market and optimize your own approach.

You can feed the SpyFu tool a URL, and it will instantly show you its results for SEO topics like organic keywords, top pages, backlink analysis, total traffic, competition, and more.

Not only can SpyFu help you gain an understanding of the SEO landscape for your industry and gain a competitive advantage, but it can also tell you how hard it might be to dominate a specific niche.

Pricing:

  • SpyFu offers paid plans starting at $16/month for Basic, $36/month for Professional, and $149/month for Team (billed annually).

6. Ahrefs

AhrefsScreenshot from Ahrefs, September 2023

Another great tool for SEO and competitive analysis, Ahrefs is a popular choice of many marketers for good reason.

Using Ahrefs, you can learn more about the search landscape of your market, discover what keywords your customers are searching for, track your competitors, and analyze content in your industry to inform your own strategies.

With its keyword and content capabilities, Ahrefs will help you find gaps and opportunities in the market so that you can improve your content, your site, and your search visibility.

Pricing:

  • Website owners can sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free limited access to its Site Explorer and Site Audit tools.
  • Paid plans start at $83/month for Lite, $166/month for Standard, $333/month for Advanced, and $833/month for Enterprise (billed annually).

7. Delve AI

Delve AIScreenshot from Delve AI, September 2023

User personas are a crucial facet of an effective marketing strategy – and as such, developing them is a common step in any market research process.

Thanks to tools like Delve AI, it’s easier than ever to build user personas.

Delve AI offers a suite of persona-building tools based on your needs and the data available to you. Depending on what stage your business is in, you can generate:

  • Competitor personas using Delve AI’s data.
  • Social personas based on your social audience.
  • Customer personas using your customer information.
  • Live personas for your website based on Google Analytics data.

Beyond its multi-channel capabilities, Delve AI uses AI algorithms for accuracy in personas, offers behavioral insights, real-time updates to your personas, and more.

Pricing:

  • The company offers a free Lite plan.
  • Business plans start at $71/month for Standard, $159/month for the Growth tier, and $439/month for Pro (billed annually).
  • Agency plans start at $167/month for Standard, $343/month for Growth, and $687/month for the Pro tier (billed annually).

8. Sprout Social

Sprout SocialScreenshot from Sprout Social, September 2023

We don’t need to tell you about the importance of social media when it comes to connecting with your audience and driving business success. It can also play a major role where market research is concerned.

Sprout Social offers a robust suite of social media management features. Perhaps the most useful for market research are social listening features – which allow you to track market trends, industry keywords, and social conversations – and its competitor analysis capabilities.

It also provides insights into audience demographics, behavior, and interests, which you can use to inform your marketing approach.

Pricing:

  • Free 30-day trial.
  • Plans start at $249/month for Standard, $399/month for Professional, and $499/month for Advanced.
  • Sprout Social also offers an Enterprise tier plan.

9. Google Trends

Google TrendsScreenshot from Google Trends, September 2023

How can you supercharge your market research efforts? Look to search data.

Google Trends is an incredible tool that enables you to analyze real-time and historical search data to discover market trends, up-to-date consumer insights, and more.

By using this tool to access the latest information on how people search on Google, you can spot emerging interests and opportunity areas, and keep an eye on what consumers are most interested in.

It also offers location filtering so that you can see what’s trending in any given market.

Pricing:

10. Statista

StatistaScreenshot from Statista, September 2023

If you’re looking for data and statistics on pretty much anything in the world of business and marketing, you might want to check out Statista.

It’s a business intelligence platform that provides “statistics, reports, and insights on over 80,000 topics from 22,500 sources in 170 industries.” This means that if you’re looking for specific market research insights, Statista most likely has something to fit your needs.

From in-depth reports to data visualizations and industry forecasts, Statista can give you reliable insights into what’s happening in markets around the world, and highlight market and consumer trends.

Pricing:

  • Free Basic account available.
  • Paid accounts start at $149/month for Starter and $490/month for Personal (billed annually), with more options available.

11. Qualtrics

QualtricsScreenshot from Qualtrics, September 2023

If you’re looking for something extremely robust, Qualtrics’ market research platform is an all-in-one, AI-powered solution for your market research needs.

It offers a suite of features and capabilities, including:

  • Panel Management: Enables you to create research panels from email lists, site visitors, social followers, and more.
  • On-Demand Respondents: Companies can pay for access to survey respondents that match their target demographic.
  • Product Development: Get access to early feedback on your new products and services from customers.
  • Purchase Behavior: Explore data on what is fueling purchase decisions among your target customers.
  • And more.

While it requires a more dedicated investment, Qualtrics’ software is scalable and powerful. It comes with automation and integration with many other tools, and customers have access to a support team.

Pricing:

  • Qualtrics offers a free survey maker tool with up to 500 responses.
  • For pricing details, reach out to the Qualtrics team.

12. Temper

TemperScreenshot from Temper, September 2023

It’s important to stay on top of how your customers feel about your business, services, and products – and Temper provides a super simple way to do just that.

The concept is simple: Come up with a simple question you want to ask your question, and your customers can respond by clicking a smiley face that corresponds to how they feel.

You might want to ask your customers, “How do you feel about our new product?” or “Please rate your experience with our customer support team.” With just a little bit of code, you can place a Temper widget on your webpage, in a blog post, or in an email footer and get quick feedback on audience sentiment.

Pricing:

  • Plans start at $12/month for Hobby tier, $49/month for Pro, $89/month for Business, and $199/month for White Label.
  • Temper offers a 60-day risk-free, money-back guarantee.

13. Quora

You’ve likely heard of the question-and-answer site Quora, but have you considered its potential as a market research tool?

Quora is an online community where real people can go to ask questions about anything they’d like, and share their experiences and opinions with others via answers.

It offers a unique opportunity for brands to conduct market research within their specific industry or area by connecting with Quora’s diverse community of consumers, professionals, and others.

Try searching Quora for topics related to your business or niche, and look at what types of conversations are trending. Or, you could ask a question yourself!

It’s a great tool for engaging your audience, keeping an eye on your competitors, and even developing new ideas for content, product development, and more.

Pricing:

  • Quora is free to use, though it also offers separate business solutions.

14. Crunchbase

CrunchbaseScreenshot from Crunchbase, September 2023

Crunchbase is a handy tool for getting a good picture of your industry landscape and how your competitors are faring.

It’s a database of companies that includes information like funding round data, investors, and financial information for each business. It also includes information such as employee headcount, leadership data, and more.

You can search Crunchbase by region or industry, allowing you to see how other companies in your niche are growing, and who is deciding to fund them. This can help you identify investment opportunities and market gaps, or even just gauge the overall health of your industry.

Pricing:

  • Crunchbase offers a Free plan where you can preview profile pages at no cost.
  • Paid options start at $29/month for Starter and $49/month for Pro (billed annually).
  • An Enterprise option is also available with custom billing.

15. Google Market Finder

Google Market FinderScreenshot from Google Market Finder, September 2023

Another excellent market research tool from Google is Market Finder. This free, interactive tool is focused mostly on researching target markets – so you can use it to discover which markets might have the most potential for your company, monitor demand for your products or services, and more.

There are two primary features within Market Finder:

  • Test your export readiness. By providing your company’s URL and completing a short quiz, the tool will grade your “readiness” to expand into new markets abroad.
  • Dive into new markets. You can take another short quiz that will suggest new market recommendations based on the information you provide, as well as external data like search volume and Google Ads.

Market Finder can also integrate with your Google Analytics data for more accurate information.

Pricing:

16. Semrush

Market ExplorerScreenshot from Market Explorer, September 2023

Semrush is a one-stop marketing tool that can be leveraged to gain incredibly useful market research insights.

The company offers features dedicated to this type of research, such as its Market Explorer tool, which enables you to get quick information on your specific industry, conduct an analysis of market share, and benchmark your business against your competitors. You can also use the tool to analyze the potential of a new niche or market region for your business.

You might also find Semrush’s traffic analytics tool useful, as it allows you to go deeper with competitive analysis and target consumer demographics.

Pricing:

  • Semrush offers a free account with limited capabilities.
  • Paid accounts start at $108.33/month for Pro, $208.33/month for Guru, and $416.66/month for Business (billed annually).

17. Pew Research Center

Pew Research CenterScreenshot from Pew Research Center, September 2023

While not a traditional marketing tool, the Pew Research Center is a widely known and respected resource that can be super effective when it comes to market research.

The site hosts a robust catalog of reports, surveys, and research covering everything from tech and digital media to politics, cultural trends, and more. The data is unbiased and credible, offering a unique perspective into what today’s consumers think and feel on various topics.

You can use the Pew Research Center as a tool to further hone your market research efforts, providing you with insights into the attitudes and behaviors of your target consumer, as well as the various factors that are impacting their desires and purchasing decisions.

Pricing:

18. Exploding Topics

Exploding TopicsScreenshot from Exploding Topics, September 2023

We all know the saying, “I liked it before it was popular” – well, with Exploding Topics, your business can be the one to say this.

Exploding Topics helps you spot trends before they become super popular by analyzing searches, mentions, and conversations across the web to identify products, topics, and industries that are on the rise.

You can use Exploding Topics as a resource to help you predict shifts in the market and consumer interests, which can inform everything from your product design and strategy to your marketing approach.

It’s a lot like Google Trends, with some key differences; it pulls in data from a variety of sources and is focused on highlighting emerging trends before they take off.

Pricing:

  • Exploding Topics offers a free version of its Trend Database.
  • Paid tiers begin at $39/month for Entrepreneur, $99/month for Investor, and $249/month for Business (billed annually).

19. Loop11

Loop11Screenshot from Loop11, September 2023

In today’s day and age, you can’t build a successful business without an effective website. But how can you know whether your website will resonate with your target consumer?

You can use Loop11, a usability testing platform that helps facilitate user testing of your products.

Loop11 makes it simple to create a usability test and secure participants.

It enables you to view the user’s experience through video, audio, and screen recordings. Then, it presents you with in-depth insights and UX metrics to help you understand what’s working with your website, app, or product and what’s preventing people from converting.

Pricing:

  • Free 14-day trial with full capabilities.
  • Paid plans start at $179/month for Rapid Insights, $358/month for Pro, and $533/month for Enterprise (billed annually).

In Summary

Market research is key to any business plan, no matter what industry you’re in, what stage of growth your business is at, or what customers you’re serving.

From competitive analysis to keyword research, user feedback, and more, focusing on your market research efforts will pay dividends to your business in the long run.

And while there are plenty of different ways to approach market research, these represent some of the best tools available to you – and can be a great jumping-off point for you to get started.

More Resources: 

Featured Image: LAONG/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 18 2023
Mastering Data-Driven Marketing: Insights from 100M Phone Calls via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

How do you turn the conversations happening over the phone into invaluable data that drives success? 

From understanding customer behavior to identifying conversion opportunities, your phone calls are full of hidden gems and untapped insights. 

Humans may not have the capacity to analyze data from hundreds of calls or transcripts manually – but with CallRail’s AI-powered technology, it’s possible. 

In fact, the process has been kickstarted, and there is data ready for you!

So, if you’re ready to start mining the golden sales opportunities within your business phone calls, our upcoming webinar is one you won’t want to miss. 

Join us on November 1, as Jason Tatum, CallRail’s VP of Product, shares proprietary insights from more than 100 million phone calls, as well as how to harness them to supercharge your sales strategies. 

You’ll discover consumer communication trends that help small-to-medium businesses and agency marketers increase conversions and boost results. 

We’ll also be covering the past and future state of phone calls, and how you can use AI technology to gather useful data from them and transform your business. 

In this live session, you’ll learn:

  • How to use your conversations to unlock a goldmine of untapped insights. By analyzing customer calls, you can gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points. 
  • How you can use AI to mine gold from conversations. CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence technology allows you to transcribe conversations with near-human accuracy, surface key terms and phrases from conversations, and quickly summarize call details. 
  • Ways that AI-mined gold from calls can transform your business. You can use insights from customer calls to further refine your SEO and keyword bidding strategies and respond to customer sentiment appropriately.

This webinar is your chance to learn how to develop data-driven marketing strategies that deliver real results.

Don’t miss this opportunity to uncover the wealth of data hidden within your phone calls and drive your marketing and sales strategies to success.

Secure your spot now and start mastering data-driven marketing today.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments