Reaching Your Targeted Audience

I asked several people to do guest posts while I am out on my honeymoon.  I will be popping in randomly, but some guest posts sounded like a fun experience for you guys!!  Billy Daniels is the Marketing Manager for Title Boxing LLC in Kansas City.  I asked him to share his professional wisdom with me (and all of you guys too!!!) and here is what he had to say...

In this day in age, understanding your customers and their needs can be the difference between great success or great failure.

Through my retail and marketing career, I found it best to relate customer data to running a small retail shop. Imagine for a second you are the store manager at a small fitness apparel business. How do you know what to stock for your customers?  Of course, you want your store to be unique and have its own identity. At first you're going to build your inventory on a broad spectrum. Soon after opening, you will begin to notice the types of customers entering your store. You begin to make mental notes of clothing being worn, customer age, transaction amounts, transaction times, etc. These are all data points you add into your business plan, it changes your buying plan, inventory levels, hours of operations, price points, merchandise strategy, etc.

In the instant gratification world we live in today, customer experience is the focal point for most, if not all, eCommerce based retail companies. How do these companies become successful?  Data collection!  They can't see their customers, but they can develop customer personas based on the data collected through their marketing channels, purchase history, website viewing history, email interaction, and social media behavior. Tying all these marketing channels together can lead to better conversions through targeted marketing campaigns, powerful segmentation, re-marketing or product shopping ads. Customers are connected to the web more than ever, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The eCommerce world is hard to visualize, and many companies slough off how their customers experience and engage with their brand.  Mobile users have surpassed desktop users in the last couple months, and now more than ever, successful companies are finding ways to make customer engagement (buying their products) easier. 

ECommerce based retail companies need and should be investing in data collection software to see past successes continue and grow into the near future.

For those of you without an official eCommerce business, your customer is your reader and your business is your blog.  Knowing your reader and potential brand partners and knowing their expectations helps you to connect on a deeper level.  If you do not already use Google Analytics, it is a must in tracking your stats.  It helps you to track what your readers are experiencing.

Please feel free to ask Billy any questions in the comments section!!!