Insights – a term we all hear almost day in day out. But what really are insights? Many of us fall into the trap of believing observations are synonymous to insights. “The durian mooncake sells out every year.”, “Gen Zs are tech-savvy individuals.”, so what’s next? How can we turn these mere observations from raw data into deeper interpretations that give meaning and sense to more than what we see or hear?

Question – Why do we even need insights? Putting ourselves in the shoes of consumers, let’s just say many of us are evolved consumers. We no longer wait passively for information to be fed to us, and we do more than just “consume” products, or services. Mood, prior experiences, reputation of brands, are some factors that influence our decision-making process. As consumers of the 21st century, we have a relationship with the brands we interact with. Typically, a consumer’s journey involves various stages such as awareness, consideration, trial, etc. These stages reflect the different touchpoints that consumers and brands interact with each other, and consumer experiences at these different touchpoints rarely happen in isolation. An insight should be actionable. A new and intriguing perception about our consumers that allows us to act on it! It allows us to translate this perception into strategic and creative ideas that differentiate us from our competitors. Being able to harness quality insights and curate them brings you and your brands a notch higher than the rest.

So, how can we make better use of our extensive collections of insights beyond driving sales and creating promotions?

Build Customer Loyalty

Buyer Persona Insights give you deepened understanding of your consumers. Not only do these insights enable you to better able to meet consumers’ needs, but also help encourage your empathy towards your consumers because you know exactly why and how they make their purchase decisions. When you can effectively and efficiently meet your consumers’ needs, it enhances customer experience which can in turn increase customer loyalty and maximize consumer’s lifetime value. Another positive when using Buyer Persona Insights to build customer loyalty is that with the rapport that you painstakingly build with your consumers, you might be able to anticipate possible concerns your consumers may encounter, and you come prepared to continue meeting their needs. Therefore, enabling you to continuously build that customer loyalty with your consumers.

Look at 7 Best Practices To Engage Meaningful Relationships With Your Customers.

Segmentation + Buyer Persona Insights = Strengthened Brand Position

Oh, good old traditional method of Segmentation. Nothing wrong with up-and-coming methods to achieve quality insights but you probably can’t go wrong with the tradition. What’s better? Integration of the old and the new. With your Buyer Persona Insights on hand, why not try “tidying” your consumers and their needs? This can better help you identify your target audience in the market. Is your Brand Position effectively serving your current group of consumers? Or could it be a time to expand into new markets and leave underperforming ones? Be it a repositioning of your Brand Position or a change in your target audience, segmenting your Buyer Persona Insights can just be your next move to strengthen your Brand Position.

Taking an Insights-led Approach

Consumers interact with brands at different touchpoints, i.e. At the “Awareness” stage, consumers see brands in a way of first impressions. At the stage of “Experience”, experiencing brands’ products/services gives consumers a different perspective (can be good or bad!) of the brands they interact with. Then, at the stage of “Advocacy”, consumers are not just looking for what the brands are doing to retain their consumers, they are also expecting the brands to do more than just providing products and services in exchange for their efforts put into “advocating” and “continuously supporting” the brands they interact with. With different departments such as sales, marketing, designing being responsible for your consumers’ overall consumer experience, it is essential that as a company that cross-functions, you and your team can better align yourselves when it comes to understanding Buyer Persona Insights. Why so? When the team comes together to align or even share different perspectives on the insights of the same group of consumers, we are looking at creating consistency in brand message and processes. This also in turns creates consistency for our consumers. Not to mention, transforming your organization into an Insights-led organization not only benefits consumers, but it also helps to light up relationships – in and out of your organization. See how at Mashwire we connect to light up relationships and celebrate these meaningful relationships.

After looking at how we can unearth and dig deeper into the insights we gather, we can look at how to further strategize and conceptualize this information to put ourselves in better positions to stay relevant in the ever-changing market.