Speaker 1: There's more to audience analytics than meets the eye. By studying the science behind audience analytics, businesses can better understand their customers and make informed decisions about their marketing and advertising campaigns. What does it tell us about customers? As businesses increasingly move online, understanding your audience is more critical than ever. Audience analytics allows you to track and analyze the behavior of your users or customers. Why consumer profiling? You've heard of behavioral targeting. Behavioral targeting uses consumer profiles to tailor ads and other communications to individual users' interests based on their past actions, demographic characteristics, and geographic location. But despite its many benefits, behavioral advertising has come under fire for being ineffective and invasive. In contrast, consumer profiling doesn't involve any personally identifiable information. Instead, consumer profiling relies solely on anonymous data collected from visitors through cookies and web server logs. Which devices they use? Consumer profiling gives you insight into your visitors' and customers' devices to access your content. If someone comes to your site from a mobile device, you can update the ads shown on your site accordingly. Which languages do your users speak? Regarding language preferences, audience analytics lets you know which languages are spoken across your audience. That way, you can translate your site or offer different content depending on the language of your website. Consumer profiling. Consumer profiling collects customer information to understand their wants and how best to meet those needs. This includes things like demographics, age, gender, income, lifestyle preferences, food choices, exercise habits, and psychographic factors, interests, values. Why is customer profile important? A profile of your current customers is helpful because it gives you a better understanding of who they are as individuals, what motivates them, and what makes them tick. Such an overview can inform future strategies and guide decisions leading to stronger relationships with existing customers and new leads. How does consumer profiling work? Audience analytics collects anonymous data about your visitors, including their IP address, browser type, operating system, and referring URL. Then, using this information, you can determine whether a visitor came from a search engine, social media platform, email client, or another source. How can I get started profiling my customers? There are several ways to collect customer profile information. One option is to send an opt-in survey via email or mail, asking participants to share their details. Another approach is to capture additional information while people interact with your brand. Do you need to create customized content or offer different products? If you're looking to reach specific audiences, using customized content can help. When targeting specific groups within your audience, you can create relevant content designed specifically for that group. Target your marketing efforts. This insight can also help you market to customers who haven't purchased. For example, if someone visits your site before leaving on vacation, you may want to send them an email reminder, direct them to your flight booking page, or remind them of your current sale. Identify new market opportunities. Once you know your most loyal customers, it's time to find out what else you can do to keep them coming back. By studying your best buyers, you can uncover ideas for new products and services that will attract even more business. Improve performance. Customers appreciate it when companies listen to their needs. Using insights from profiling customers, you can develop strategies to ensure that your customer support team knows exactly what to say and how to behave when interacting with clients. Why it matters. It matters because understanding your customer profile gives you a leg up on your competition, shows why people buy from you, and provides you with information to increase conversions and boost profitability. You can use audience analytics to identify new markets, develop new product lines, increase profits. How powerful are customer profiles? If you're looking for ways to create a database of qualified leads, you need to go beyond asking, do you have any friends? To build a compelling customer profile, you must consider all data types. Customer reviews on Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and elsewhere are all valuable sources of information. Other helpful data points include demographics, age, gender, education level, geographic location, income range, buying behavior, interests and hobbies, social networking activity. As you collect more data, you'll find yourself getting even more specific about what segments of your target market you want to focus on. Building an effective database. Make a collection. To build a solid foundation, you must first get a complete picture of your customer demographics. The most important thing here is to gather as much information as possible. Search engines. Did someone search for your name online recently? How did they perform while searching? Social media. Did someone mention you in a tweet or post? Whom are they connected to? Email. If you receive emails from prospects or customers, how do they reach out to you? Phone calls. How often do you receive phone calls? From whom? Events. Attend local events that relate to your products or services. Word of mouth. Do you know the names of your best customers? Ask them why they chose your business. Find out what they liked about working with you. Google Ads. Use Google AdWords to see what keywords people use when looking up companies like yours. Then, create ads using those terms. SEO. Search Engine Optimization. You can find websites ranking well for specific keywords using the same techniques above. The higher a site ranks, the greater its exposure in organic searches. Social media. Look at what others are saying about your company online. Monitor social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter for mentions of your business. See if there are any complaints posted online. Referral Marketing. A referral marketing program gives existing customers incentives to refer new consumers. These platforms are a low-cost way to build solid and targeted audiences. Audience Measurement. Audience measurement is the process of determining size and composition of a target audience. Media organizations use this information to determine which content to produce and how to deliver it. Media Planning. The media planning process involves identifying what content will be most effective at reaching your target audience. This could include creating a new product page, launching a blog post, or writing a press release. Marketing Optimization. The marketing team has a lot of different jobs. They must write copies for ads, social media posts, emails, and landing pages. They must design graphics and videos, build websites, and manage campaigns across all channels. An e-commerce merchant that wants to reach consumers where they spend the most time, in person, can use digital mapping tools such as Google My Business, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp, and more to connect with its local audience. Content Metadata. As digital media increasingly becomes the norm, understanding your audience is critical for success. Luckily, advances in content metadata are making it easier than ever to track audience engagement and analyze data. Content metadata is data attached to a piece of content, such as a blog post or video, which can provide insights into its use. Anchor Text. Anchor text refers to links in digital content. They appear on a web page, including headings, subtitles, titles, images, and lists. Anchors are more than mere navigational aids, they add meaning to a link, indicating exactly where that link goes. Keywords. People use these terms when searching Google, Bing, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, and other sources online. They see incoming contained special codes or symbols that allow a search engine to identify the linked page when someone clicks on it. The following are two examples of internal linking. In addition to link anchor text, each link should contain at least one relevant keyword. Include at least one noindex tag on every page if you want to prevent search engines, like Google, from indexing those pages. Also, make sure you insert a call to action on every page. A call to action provides directions as an instruction to take a specific action, like filling out a contact form or purchasing something. Audience forecasting. As a business professional, you are always looking for ways to understand your target audience better to market your products or services more effectively. Audience forecasting is the process of predicting your target audience's future behaviors, trends, and patterns. Surveys. One standard method used to gather data about your audience is through surveys. Surveys ask questions about your audience's interests and habits. Focus groups. A focus group is another popular strategy for gathering data about your audience. Focus groups involve small groups of people who discuss their opinions. Data analysis. Another popular technique for analyzing your audience is data analysis. Data analysis involves looking at all available information about your target audience, and you can then identify any patterns or trends in your data to predict future behaviors. Data information analysis involves studying audience statistics and data other analyzers. Analysis information involves gathered analyzing during numerical or data marketing related campaign to can your be the audience. Data driven segmentation. Today's businesses are sitting on a veritable gold mine of data, and audience analytics is a tool that can help them make sense of it all. By segmenting their data, businesses can gain valuable insights into their customers, what they want, and how to better target their marketing efforts. Segmentation what is it? Segmentation refers to breaking down data into different segments based on specific characteristics. Once you've created several segments, you then use those segments when designing your marketing campaigns. What are some benefits of segmentation? There are several benefits associated with segmentation. First, it helps businesses identify unique opportunities and address needs where there may not be much competition. How do I start segmentation? There are two primary methods for segmenting your contact list. One process involves creating rules based on criteria such as geographic location, demographic information, or any other attribute. Another technique involves using a software program to match details against a predetermined set of standards. Step one, determine how big your segments should be. Step two, define when the segmentation should start and end. Step three, create segments based on the criteria. Step four, identify the variables you wish to include when segmenting. Step five, use the correct tool for the job. If you're working with small data, try creating segments manually. Step six, track performance across segments. As mentioned earlier, you should always track your results after making changes. Rule-based method. This method comes straight from the rule-based computing world. What can you learn from segmentation? Segmentation can provide valuable insights into an individual consumer or buyer. Software method. Many applications exist that can assist you in creating a custom segmentation plan. These tools will pull in your data and allow you to build an algorithm that matches specific criteria. Pros. The primary benefit of this method is that it's easy to implement. You don't need to know much about computers to use them. Cons. The downside to this method is that it doesn't work unless you've already got a large dataset. If you haven't yet collected enough data points to create segments, you won't get very far using the rule-based method. Content recommendations. As companies strive for better customer engagement, they turn to audience analytics to help them make content recommendations. Audience analytics can help identify what content is most relevant to a particular audience and can also help to predict what content a customer is likely to engage with. The first type of audience is the demographic audience. Demographic audiences are made up of consumers who share similar characteristics, and they tend to differ from one another depending on region, income level, and age. The second type of audience is behaviorally defined. Behaviorally defined audiences consist of anyone who has performed a specific action or purchased a particular item. Multiple audiences aim to connect with users who fit a detailed profile. Companies often need to develop multiple audiences. Another form of audience targeting is search engine optimization, SEO, which helps websites appear more frequently in online searches. AI for video analytics. Video analytics is the process of extracting actionable insights from video data. It involves using computer vision and artificial intelligence, AI, technologies to identify and track video objects and analyze their behavior. Using AI to identify objects in videos. Many current implementations of AI-powered video analytics rely on machine learning algorithms that automatically train themselves to recognize several types of objects and events. Machine learning algorithms examine essential training data and learn to identify patterns unique to each object or event over time. Analyze audience data. SAS provides the tools to help you get answers out of any data source. These solutions integrate the most common data types, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics, Salesforce, and others. SAS offers real-time analytics, allowing you to quickly understand what's happening in your data. And you can easily share insights and reports with colleagues across your company. Building your data warehouse. If you're serious about growing your business, building engaging communities around your brand and marketing activities, and driving profitable revenue, you need a modern CRM. Mapping the consumer journey. Customers increasingly use multiple devices to learn about products, compare prices and reviews, share experiences, and make buying decisions. Creating a data-driven buyer and consumer persona. Creating buyer personas is a significant first step toward creating a customer journey map. Personas are simply fictional characters that represent your ideal customers. They're not meant to be replicas of actual people, but provide insights into your customers, what they like, and why they buy the products or services you offer. Buyer personas help you understand what motivates your customers and drives their buying behavior. Conclusion. Audience analytics and segmentation can assist you in understanding your most valuable consumers to build stronger relationships with them. These insights can also help you identify where you need to add value and invest resources to improve your business's bottom line. Once you build your list, you'll find yourself armed with the information needed to develop effective campaigns, plan strategies, and track ROI.