Jake Rheude
January 10, 2023

Things You Should Know About The Behavior Of Digitally Conscious Customers

Digitally Conscious Customers

 Once upon a time, customers made the majority of their purchases at physical stores. Today, experts predict that 2022 has seen more than 2.14 billion shoppers online, which is about 27% of the world’s population.

With new digitally conscious customers becoming the norm, it’s important for businesses to adapt to this new behavior. 

However, adapting means understanding customer behavior so that you can make smart business predictions. Here are several things that businesses should be aware of in the changing commercial climate.

Source

Learn To Connect With Your Clientele

Client connection is essential, especially in the digital experience. And you can establish the relationship you desire by empathizing with them. 

Empathy should always be involved in the initial stage of your brand’s design thinking process. It helps your employees and business leaders understand your digital consumers better. Plus, your brand can help them grasp the reality your customers desire.

For instance, your business could conduct surveys to figure out what your clients are looking for. Doing so helps your brand thrive by giving you insights into what your clients want and need. The most effective surveys are those that ask for feedback after direct action, in the post-purchase phase, for example. We’ll go over that more later in this article.

Connecting with your clients also means you should observe and interact with them through email marketing campaigns, satisfaction surveys, and reading reviews. This enables you to grasp their specific digital behavior because of the following:

  • What their physical environment is like: using analytics to observe your clientele’s demographics and see where they’re coming from 
  • Learning what challenges they desire to overcome: conducting surveys to find out what customers are struggling with and what their pain points are
  • Discovering their hidden desires and unexpressed needs: reading reviews to see what customers aren’t telling you but are sharing with their peers.

Empathy allows you to adapt your clients’ perspectives so that your brand thinks beyond your customers’ assumptions. Feedback, Customer Feedback, When you establish empathy with your clients, you need to keep the connection alive

Here are effective tips to help you:

  • Always be clear about what your intentions are as a brand.
  • When sending emails, always include a clear subject and explanation regarding the need to ask delicate and sensitive questions.
  • Ask for honest feedback about your products or services without being too inquisitive.
  • Ask about your client’s condition and recent happenings.

Use Metrics and Tracking to Understand Your Customers

Tracking your customers through a series of metrics can also help you learn more about their needs. These metrics allow business leaders to determine whether the brand’s products or services are valuable to the clients. 

One effective way to achieve that is through visualization. Check whether they are using the digital touchpoints relevant to your brand. Identify what company actions are appropriate to your clients and which need to be changed. 

Tracking certain metrics allows you to identify product satisfaction as well. Some of the essential metrics which can help you learn more about your customers include:

  • ARPA (Average Revenue per Account) – identifies how much revenue each customer generates on each product or service from your brand
  • NPS (Net Promoter Score) – a way to gauge customer loyalty and the chance of them returning to your brand
  • CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) – measures customer satisfaction in various aspects, such as during onboarding, after making a purchase, during a customer service exchange
  • Session Length – calculates how long a customer stays on your brand’s app
  • Session Interval – the amount of time lapse between intervals when the user uses the app
  • Retention Rate – the percentage of visitors who return to your app and check your other products

These metrics allow you to stay proactive in providing what your customers need. Tracking them enables you to identify changes your brand can address to create more value for your clients. When your customers feel valued, they remain loyal.

Get Feedback From Your Consumers

Constantly improving your brand enables clients to continuously trust and stay loyal to what you can offer. If your business doesn’t adapt, they’re likely to look elsewhere. 

And the best way to identify these needs and wants is by asking for feedback from your customers. Asking them how they feel not only helps you determine what you can do but also establishes empathy. 

Additionally, when customers feel you’re valuing how they feel, they will also likely feel they are always part of your decision-making process. There are several ways your brand can ask for feedback, such as through answering surveys, replying to your direct messages, conducting reviews, and more. 

To motivate customer feedback, you can offer rewards such as discounts or gift cards. Another strategy is to make it easy – add a survey pop-up to your site, or redirect customers to a reviews platform after they complete a purchase. When feedback is easy to give, it shows customers you care and makes them more inclined to put in the effort. 

If your business is active on social media, you should have a team responsible for staying up-to-date with your brand’s latest comments or mentions. This will help you know what users are saying about your products or services. 

And finally, remember that immediate feedback dictates best how you can improve your brand’s digital experience right away. 

Source

Offer Incentives to Increase Brand Loyalty

Customer incentives might be your one-way ticket to getting the most clients and skyrocketing your conversion rates. These include rewards you give to certain customers for accomplishing tasks that help with building your brand. Incentives can come in freebies, discounts, reward points, and more. 

Regardless of the type of customer incentives, you will be surprised at how these can encourage your clients to return to your brand. More than being rewards for customers to make more purchases, incentives also increase your overall revenue and sales. 

Expect the following customer behaviors when rewarding them with incentives:

  • Writing positive reviews about your products or services
  • Returning to your brand and repurchasing
  • Creating relevant user-generated content about your brand
  • Upgrading their plan

Giving customers incentives can also make them feel valued because these promotions provide a way for your brand to engage with them constantly. So if you’re thinking of effective incentive method ideas, here are a few things you can try:

  • Hold webinars and give incentives to customers who join. 
  • Hand out survey forms and provide a free product or discount to customers who answer.
  • Reward clients who joined your new product launch or inquired about your products.
  • Offer free eCommerce shipping to clients who join the program.

These are just a few digital reward ideas, of course. Brainstorming with your team can help you come up with more unique, tailored incentives to help entice customers to stick around.

Social Media Matters

Studies revealed that more than 55% of digital consumers learn about new product launches or even start-up brands. With the continuous rise of social media, it has been not just a platform for networking but also digital advertising. 

Utilizing social media is essential because it enables you to target the audience you desire for your brand easily. Social media is also an avenue for companies to learn about clients’ digital habits to generate better ways to capture them. 

Social media matters because you can:

  • Tell your brand’s story online.
  • Build your target audience without needing a hefty principal budget.
  • Stay updated about the latest trends your consumers are interested in. 
  • You can learn about what your competitors are up to.
  • Base your product releases according to your consumers’ buying habits.
  • They increase brand awareness among old and new visitors to your site.

With the help of several marketing tools, you can also take advantage of social media to make promotional posts. These tools can help enhance your digital marketing to create more relevant posts and stay ahead of your competitors. 

Social media enables you to create a well-thought-out strategy by creating visually-attractive content to catch your consumers’ attention and pique their interest.

Brand Loyalty Is Personalization

Regardless of how big is the group of your target audience, each consumer develops a different perception or image of your brand. This means that the ways how you can make them stay loyal to your brand should also be varied. 

Personalization has been an essential tool in generating ways how to create more effective and relevant content. It also allows brands to stay competitive, so they don’t lose their clients. 

Brands that implement the personalized approach in their user experience strategy are: 

  • More likely to retain high-value customers 
  • Receiving a substantial amount of information about their online shoppers
  • Getting more new customers on the account of positive feedback from their existing consumers

Brand loyalty personalization allows brands to create long-lasting relationships with clients, building their reputation and online image. There’s a higher chance of gaining returning customers

Get Your Order Fulfillment in Line

Digitally conscious consumers are also aware of order fulfillment times. With the processing time reduced thanks to faster online checkout systems and payment processing, clients expect faster delivery times too. 

Since the rise of technology has led clients to expect instant gratification, they extend that expectation to shipping and fulfillment. As a result, businesses need to make a greater effort to send items out to customers quickly.

One way to improve order delivery times is to set up specialty fulfillment centers. These centers can make it easier and faster for you to distribute customer orders once they’re placed. 

It should be noted that specialty fulfillment centers really only apply to physical products. If you offer digital products or services, you may not need these fulfillment options.

When customers know they can count on you for fast turnaround times, they’re more likely to come back and make more purchases. They’re also more likely to choose your brand over one that can’t deliver in good time.

Conclusion

With over 50% of consumers now preferring to shop online, understanding digitally conscious customer behavior is key to the success of your business. 

This involves using empathy, creating a sense of brand loyalty, personalizing the shopping experience, and taking advantage of tools to boost your sales. By implementing these strategies and getting to know your customers, you can start to see revenue skyrocket. 

Just knowing about current consumer behavior isn’t enough to keep your business relevant and successful. Stay on top of consumer trends and behavior by checking out our other posts and subscribing to our blog.

Sign Up For Our Mailing List And Our LinkedIn Group

If you want to join our Business After Twitter LinkedIn group, click here.

If you’d like to receive more in-depth articles, videos, and Infographics in your inbox, please sign up below.

Featured image: Copyright: ‘https://www.123rf.com/profile_ipopba‘ / 123RF Stock Photo

The following two tabs change content below.
Jake Rheude is the Vice President of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an eCommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of eCommerce. He has years of experience in eCommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.