Knowing who buys your product, the demographic they fit in and their purchasing habits is important but, vitally important is knowing why they buy your product. This is because, after all, the product is tailored to fit the needs of the customer, rather than vice-versa.
When you gather customer insight properly, and analyse it correctly, you’ll not only discover why the customer is purchasing your product, you’ll know how to tailor future products for them. It is only through diligently gathering customer insight that you can learn to customise your service for the customer, making their experience as good as it can be – making them more likely to return in future, growing their lifetime value.
Marketing is increasingly becoming about effective implementation of personalisation, in a social media age, with algorithms defining what we see and don’t see, a broad and often impersonal campaign has little or no effect on the customer. They expect the brand to know them. They expect you to tailor everything for them, not for their demographic.
Who does it well?
It’s hard to find a brand who know their customers better than Spotify. Spotify pride themselves on knowing their consumer base and offering a personalised experience, and it’s no coincidence that they are the largest music streaming service with over 70 million subscribers and 191 million total users, according to the Spotify Google knowledge graph.
A study was conducted by Spotify, in a bid to gain customer insight to promote brands investing in Spotify, to “Understand People Through Music”. The research consisted of “interviewing 600 and surveying 7000 millennials across US, UK and AU. Participants were asked a series of questions to better understand the devices, locations, occasions and emotions involved in a Day in the Life of a Spotify user while streaming music. Spotify analysed these behavioural diaries alongside our first-party streaming intelligence to get a richer contextual understanding into the behaviours [they] see on [their] platforms every day”.
But, gathering customer insight isn’t just a one-time thing. Spotify offer a plethora of ways to gain customer insight, making it a never-ending process. The more means you develop to gain customer insight, the more in-depth and rewarding the results will be. It can even be simple additions such as the thumbs up/thumbs down feature on the radio tab.
They also offer a similar source of research with the “experimental feature” called the “Affinity Survey”, where Spotify asks the user to rate 10 songs to improve their personalised algorithm. In return, Spotify crafts a playlist for the user, the “You Have Great Taste!” playlist, this rewards the user for completing the survey, encouraging them to do future surveys.
These small, easily implemented features would be enough on their own in order to gain adequate customer insight for a company like Spotify. However coupled with their extensive study, the amount of knowledge and insight gained is extraordinary.
What do you gain from Customer Insight?
This kind of effort shows. Spotify offer a personalised experience, a whole tab on the app is dedicated to the user, known as “Made For You”. In here, you are given 3 new playlists everyday, known as Daily Mixes, as well as your Release Radar, and your Discover Weekly playlist- all of which are based upon the type of music you listen to.
These playlists, in my experience at least, always offer you the songs you love whilst also giving you a taste of something different, of something that you haven’t heard before and it’s exciting. No other streaming service offers this level of personalisation, and this is coming from a person who cancelled their Spotify subscription in order to switch to Apple Music only to come back to Spotify in a few short months as the service was far superior. It seems like Spotify know your music taste better than you do- all their recommendations seem accurate, based on what you listen to rather than what Spotify want you to listen to. Apple Music felt generic, playlists were curated rather than customised, and that was ultimately why I left. Spotify was tailored for you, to such an extent that other services felt lazy and impersonal.
But all this was achieved through customer insight, not lucky guesses or hedging bets. Just scrolling through the “Understanding People Through Music” case study highlights this, Spotify understands its customer base. They know the younger generations “Soundtrack their lives”, meaning they require different types of music, radically different genres even, to match their moods- to match what activity they are doing even.
In the study, Spotify highlights the different “moments” in the day where marketers can grab their attention best, and how to tailor their ads to fit that exact mood. Here Spotify show they understand, they understand personalisation is important and encourage marketers to do so. Think of it in this way, you wouldn’t run a Christmas ad in January so, if someone is listening to the “Piano in the background” playlist, advertising an all-out action and adventure weekend may not be the best route to go down.
All this highlights just how important customer insight is, with good research and accurate analysis you can optimise your marketing to deliver the best results. Contact KG Moore to find out how we can help you become closer to your customers. Build relationships and turn customers into advocates for your company.
