Part of effectively reaching your ideal customer is gathering information on what their needs are and how they’re currently interacting with your business. We have a few tools that we use on a regular basis to gain insight on customer behavior- Spyfu, Hotjar, and ArcGIS. They’re all web-based and require an account, though some offer a free version.
Spyfu
Spyfu can tell us approximately how much a site is spending on Google AdWords, the search terms they’re paying for, what they’re paying for those keywords, and which ones are most frequent. This gives us insight to what a client will need to do to compete for those same keywords.
HotJar
Hotjar is a web tool that records web sessions and creates heat maps, tracking data of how people interact with a website. This allows us to watch user experience in real time, and know when to modify an unclear call to action, reprioritize content, and revise messaging. This often allows us to determine which key components need to be made front and center on a revised version of a client’s website, or what to focus on when paring a site down to mobile usage.
ArcGIS
ArcGIS Online has allowed us to dive into demographic and lifestyle data when creating market research feasibility studies. Using this, we can help clients identify locations that fit the model of where they’ve been successful in other markets. (An example of this was mapping demographics of successful brew pubs in other cities and locating ideal neighborhoods to place the business in new cities).
Active Campaign
This last one I’m going to mention is more of a communication tool than business intelligence, but it offers really clear integration capability and analytics. We use Active Campaign regularly to create workflows for automated emails that we integrate with other digital strategies. We often share a lead magnet or primary piece of content in exchange for web visitors to share contact information. The submission (and the specific landing page submitted on) creates a trigger for a specific series of emails that will nurture the lead from web visitor into customer.
Read more about targeting your ideal customer: