Customer research is so, so essential for all marketers. You need to know where your audience hangs out online, what websites they visit, who influences them, and a whole lot more. But, great customer research is really time-consuming.
One guy who is an expert at customer research is Rand Fishkin. You know Rand, he has written a book (which comes out today, coincidentally), he founded Moz, and just launched a new company called SparkToro. Basically, the dude is a marketing powerhouse. So when he speaks, we listen.
And today, he’s speaking about customer research. Here’s what he has to say…
- (08:14) The three things you need to know about your audience are diversity of source. That means knowing ALL the sources your audience uses for information. Not just, “most of them use Twitter.”
- (08:40) The 2nd thing is audience density around a particular source. So, let’s say a lot of your audience visits BuzzFeed. Great, but so does almost everyone. That means your audience density on BuzzFeed is low. That’s not helpful.
- (09:48) The 3rd thing is finding metrics you can trust. For example, if you’re researching influencers and ranking them based on number of followers, that’s not a trustworthy metric. Anyone can buy followers.
- (15:19) SimilarWeb PRO is a clickstream data company that is putting out really accurate website visitor data right now. And, it’s f-r-e-e.
- (17:13) If you’re doing influencer research, don’t just focus on follower count. Look at the last 50 posts and look at average engagement—likes and shares.
- (18:58) Don’t let your existing understanding of an industry bias the results. Especially if it’s just anecdotal data.
- (21:21) Even Rand was guilty of thinking he knew the SEO industry when he completely ignored a subset of the industry, by accident!
- (24:03) If you’re worried that your existing understanding of an industry is biased. Go back to the data. How do you know what you know about your audience? If it’s “Oh, my CEO told me everything about the audience.” Then your data is likely biased.
Preach, Rand, Preach! Need more? You know what to do…
