Running a business requires making a lot of very important and potentially difficult decisions. You need to think about how to market, who you should target and how certain campaigns have gone. While there are a lot of different ways to make these decisions, decisions that are based on data are generally better.
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As a result, collecting accurate data and information from your customers is incredibly important. However, getting this information from customers (and ensuring it is accurate) isn’t always easy. With that in mind, this article is going to look at a few good ways to get accurate customer data.
Use Social Media
With around 2.5 billion people using social media, it is an incredibly useful tool for businesses of all kinds. With many people using it every day and having incredibly detailed profiles, it is quite easy to learn a decent amount about someone from a profile. Using social media can give you access to customer ages, locations, interests, behaviors, passions and more. Also, reaching out to or polling customers is easy on Twitter and could garner you great results.
Ensure the Data is Protected
If you don’t have a good track record of security and protecting customer information and data, people aren’t likely going to want to provide you with any. As a result, you need to have the latest and greatest technology and tools (such as cloud logging) to instill trust in your customers that you take security seriously. Also, with data breaches becoming more common, data protection and take steps to secure your information is incredibly important.
Make it Easy for Them
Most people lead incredibly busy lives and simply don’t always have time to provide the type of data or information that companies need. If you were to send an email to a customer or talk to them in store about providing more information, there is a good chance they will just ignore you or say not.
Because of this, it is very important that you make it incredibly easy for customers to provide you with the data you require. This could be anything from automation to quick self-fill popups on your website. The easier it is to fill out a form or to provide the data, the more people will likely participate.
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Be Open and Honest with Them
Companies use customer data and information for a number of reasons. When you let your customers know why you need their data and information, it goes a long way in convincing them to give it to you.
If you don’t provide reasons such as for better-targeted ads or to customize the user experience, customers might be a little hesitant to provide you with things like their demographics, email or other information. Honesty and transparency is always a good idea in business and saves you from any backlash that could come your way.
Incentivize Them
In general, people respond well to incentives. If you give them some sort of benefit or reward for providing you with accurate information, they will be more willing to help you out. This incentive generally doesn’t need to be huge, something as simple as a small discount on your products or a trial period of your service is often enough. People may still provide information with no incentive present, but incentivizing is a proven way to influence the behavior of others.
Hopefully, this article has been able to help you acquire better and more accurate customer data for your business. Without it, running a business and making the related decisions becomes quite hard.
