The world of A.I. and consumer insights is dark and full of terrors.

But, not really. 

While technology develops rapidly, there’s still much more out there for us to discover about artificial intelligence. Especially how it can help you understand your customer insights and customer journey, like in market segmentation. One could say that we are in the infancy of understanding artificial intelligence.

A.I. can revolutionize the way we gather product and consumer insights and improve customer lifetime value and customer service in 2021 and beyond.

Why Are Consumer Insights Important?

Collecting and analyzing consumer insights allows you to establish purchasing patterns that reveal your customer base values. Customer insights serve the purpose of building the most robust relationship with a customer, serving up relevant product and service recommendations, and driving the bottom line. And lastly, consumer insights can also enhance your overall marketing strategy by providing a tailored brand experience and customer journey that focuses on what your customers truly value.

Read: 3 Ways AI Will Change Market Research Tools Forever

Types of Consumer Insights

There are a variety of methods that can generate consumer insights.
These methods reveal the mindsets, moods, motivations, desires, and aspirations that instigate consumer action.

Some types of consumer insight aggregation methods are:

• trends analysis
• interviews
• custom surveys
• experimental secondary research
• online research
• market analysis

Social listening, focus groups, and predictive analysis are consumer insights and data analytics methods at the forefront of A.I. influence.

Read: The State of AI in Market Research (eBook)

Optimize social listening opportunities 

It is difficult for brands to keep their fingers on the pulse of a target customer's constantly changing preferences. Thankfully, researchers and digital marketing teams have social media to tap into! 

From Facebook to LinkedIn, social media data clues us in on upcoming trends and the changing needs of our target market. That is if you can find customer insights through the sea of online customer data. 

The issue of time is also a concern. So how can we maintain and obtain customer insights that ensure we’re always a step ahead of our competitors?

Thankfully, A.I. is helping researchers to strategically sort through data, pinpoint trends, and note actionable insights. 

The combination of data analytics, A.I., and social media affords us the ability to profoundly and rapidly analyze customer insights. As a result, trends and patterns appear and enable comprehensive market research into essential consumer insights to improve customer understanding and customer lifetime value.

Aritic says “AI will not replace social media marketers. Rather, it will help marketers leverage the full potential of social media''

Marketing Campaigns and Business Goals 

Are you thinking of what A.I. can do for your brand and customer retention? Levy Restaurants in Chicago is a great example. 

Levy’s wanted to improve customer service and appeal to the changing tastes of their hungry target customers — the city’s sports fans. 

After conducting an A.I.-powered analysis of social media, Levy uncovered customer insights that revealed his customers had a strong preference for fusion cuisine. So, they modified its restaurant concepts to meet this demand to gear up for the upcoming seasons with a goal to increase sales and customer retention. Within a mere half a season, the exact locations exceeded the revenue made in the entire previous year.

Read: The Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Media & Ads (Report)

Tools for Social Listening

Is your brand finding a timely and resource-efficient way to understand your customers and reveal actionable customer insights? A.I.’s got your back. We recommend Brandwatch and Netbase, two tools for discovering what people say about your brand online.

A move from the gut to predictive analytics 

In a world where consumer-facing businesses are in constant flux - especially online consumer businesses - relying solely on humans isn't mandatory.

Advanced information technology and analytics have increasingly become the key to effective market research and unearthing consumer insights. Researchers can then use these actionable customer insights to craft personalized and targeted offers, all one step ahead of your customers (and competitors.)

Consumer Insights Tools

With the power of A.I., platforms like Xineoh have developed a platform that finds patterns in historical consumer and customer data. Then, it applies the same practices to analyze current customer insights. The result is the ability to precisely predict consumer behavior and offer curated customer recommendations at speed.

Platforms such as Xineoh leverage A.I. to acquire customer insights, enabling companies to predict products and services that consumers would buy. Amazon and Netflix have used this technology by cross-selling products between the two platforms.

The tech giants also utilize behavioral and purchase patterns to offer personalized suggestions.

Knowing what customers want before they do offers companies incredible competitive advantages, like:

• the ability to minimize excess inventory
• improve customer service and experience
• maximize business efficiency
• out-predict their competition
• increase your customer lifetime value

Are you considering that your brand, too, might want to dip a toe or two into predictive analytics? Take a shot at Maroon.ai and 6sense, valuable tools that help predict prospect behavior!

Create a customer feedback loop

So you want to find a deeper way to understand your customers. What is a better way to gain consumer insights than by personally connecting with them?

Oh, we know the tools - focus groups, surveys, in-product messaging, and the works. However, even with these approaches, it’s incredibly challenging to engage with consumers deeper and gain meaningful customer insights.

It’s challenging to get users to part with their money, much less convince them to deliver brand feedback. Surveys are easy to implement, but they only offer one-way communication and a poor customer experience—either that or a focus group that takes ample time and resources for a brand to implement.

Focus Groups and Consumer Insights Research

Take focus groups, for example. We have entered an era where brands have meaningful conversations with consumers on a larger scale than ever before. A brand can use A.I. platforms to perform data analytics and understand text (and therefore parts of the customer journey) in real-time. 

Remesh is an example of an A.I.-driven customer insights tool that can scale live online focus groups in real-time. New ideas surface in this thought-provoking exercise, where participants are inspired and motivated by others’ thoughts. 

In this way, software like Remesh can encourage the collection of honest, thoughtful, and accurate responses. 

Coupled with other options like AceBo, a range of A.I. and data analytics tools can help brands bank on customer insights.

Ready to apply AI to your research? Get started with guidance from our free eBook!
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