How can you predict your customer behavior based on data analysis?

Customer behavior is a term which is used to describe the different phases a customer goes through before they buy a product or service. It also includes the things that have an impact on their research and selection of products/services.

Customer behavior is affected by a wide range of things including customer’s social characteristics and customer experience, culture, age, education, occupation, motivation, beliefs, and lifestyle in general.

If a business spends some time learning more about customer behavior and predicting it in the future, it can benefit greatly from this activity.

With the help of accurate customer behavior information, you can create successful product policies, use current market opportunities, learn more about the impact of price on purchasing, improve customer satisfaction and more.

So, if you figure out how you can predict customer behavior, your business will witness expansion and growth in a short period of time.

Even though there are a few methods that you can use to predict customer behavior, according to many experts, using data analysis is one of the best ways to achieve this objective.

We will use this article to explain how to optimize the results of this activity.

Data analysis – an efficient tool to predict customer behavior

Big data is no longer a theoretical concept – it’s a real thing that many business persons and marketers are using in their daily activities.

Thanks to big data, business owners, managers, and marketers have the opportunity to analyze and observe their marketing activity, website impressions, email messages, clicks that lead from one page to another, etc.

All these small things can help you create a bigger picture of the ways in which specific decisions made by your business affect customer behavior. By studying this data and information and using modern technology, you will take your business to another level and here’s how.

Be the first to identify market trends

Sophisticated algorithms, machine learning, artificial intelligence and other components of big data and data analytics can help you identify trends from the first moment they appear on the market.

In this way, you can learn what your target audience will want in the near future and make the changes to your business right away. Imagine a situation where you are selling a telecommunication product and there’s a new feature that has grabbed the attention of most consumers.

With data analytics, you will be able to add that feature quickly and beat your competition.

Identify different categories of customers

Unless you are running a business that belongs to a micro-niche, you are probably aware that your customer base includes different categories. In other words, not all of your customers have the same characteristics.

For example, you might be selling things to millennials, but some of them are males while others are females.

Obviously, their customer behavior is different and thanks to data analytics you can identify different categories of customers and use a special approach for these categories which will eventually help you predict their behavior.

Getting additional information that can help you build more complex buyer personas

The truth is that generic demographics which include simple indicators like location, age or gender are not enough to create a quality buyer persona.

With this simple data, you won’t be able to create a successful marketing strategy. However, thanks to analytics tools like Google Analytics, for example, businesses can find useful data that can help them predict customer behavior.

Their target market will become much clearer once they start analyzing things like keyword popularity, customer behavior once they visit or leave their website, device usage (mobile or desktop), social media usage and more.

Final thoughts

The checkout process in the 21st century might be faster than ever (people can complete a transaction in a matter of seconds from their homes), but the process of purchasing a product or service is longer.

This is a process that includes a few stages. There are many little things that affect the final decision made by the buyers like searching for a product, comparing the prices, evaluating the features, analyzing customer service and more. This is what customer behavior is all about.

With data analysis, a process which involves observing, filtering, transforming and modelling data to find helpful information you will be able to predict customer behavior and improve your business.