I’ve been operating my ecommerce website for 3 years now but I’ve just realized that I really don’t “know my customer”. But I don’t even know where to begin when figuring out the demographics of my average customer. How do I begin to find this information? Where do I look? How do I figure out her wants? Needs? Income? Spending habits? What does she read?
I have no idea where to start. No clue about where to get this info… Help!
Try this:
Create a fun, online survey with multiple choice answers covering all your questions in a not so obvious way. Give an incentive to fill out the survey, such as discount coupon awaiting the customer upon survey completion.
Thank you for your reply. I’ve tried that - it’s not a great way to compile info about your target market unless you can reach hundred or maybe thousands of people… but it’s a good idea.
Start a forum or a blog on your site, it would take some time to grow community however that is the best way to know your customers, their interests, their occupation, etc. There could be questions related to your site topic discussed or any questions at all…
What do you think about that?
It is very easy to get this information.
You can create a page and personal profile on the Facebook or Twitter and send a newsletter or just public the link to the Facebook or Twitter on your web site.
You need to promote the Facebook/Twitter page among the customers.
Customers will follow or add you as a friend and you will be able to see your real customers information (if it is opened of course).
Use the power of social networks!
Thanks for your reply. The survey sort of takes care of that. I was looking for an answer which involved activity outside of the website. I’m not getting enough traffic to my website because I haven’t been targeting the right people so the info I collect from the few people that come to my website won’t do much good. I’m trying to find out if there are some kind of consumer report records I should be looking at. Something like a census report of the American consumer. Someone with experience in marketing research may understand what I’m referring to…
Thank you Avactis. I’ve tried that. If I do the research w/ the limited membership in my ecomm. community right now, I may not be collecting the right info. Some of it is helpful, but it’s just a chip off the block. It’s not enough data.
What I’m trying to get at is this - I need to collect data about the kind of customer I SHOULD be targeting. This is sort of the kind of info that advertising agencies collect when they figure out a marketing strategy for their ad campaigns. I’m thinking of that realm. Programs like Google Anaytics don’t exactly cover that realm of marketing. And survey with the tiny social network and customer base I have, won’t do much good either.
May be you can use another tactics,
for example you can add the birthday field during the registration and also add new user type field “Mr.” or “Ms.”, thus you will receive the demographic information which could be used for further analysis.
Google Anaytics will give you geographical information.
You can use both information streams and better configure the target auditory in Bing AdCenter or Google AdWords this way.
Also you can try the Microsoft Demographics Prediction tools, for example the Keyword Forecast tool:
http://adlab.microsoft.com/Keyword-Forecast/Default.aspx
Or some other tools:
http://adlab.microsoft.com/alltools.aspx
Hope it will be useful.
As an idea for researching the target audience in your niche, I’d suggest also trying another approach: find the information which may already be available online. For example: some free or paid marketing reports, communities, magazines on your topic etc. What you are looking for may already be there in some form 
The best way to know your customers is to carry out the survey. With the Internet world one should go for either the online survey or should purchase the survey software for carrying out the surveys. One of the well known survey tool software company Magic survey tool provides you with the option of carrying out the survey but also the option to purchase the software at a much cheaper rate than other survey softwares available. While carrying out the survey for my organization I used the same survey softwares and it helped me in completing the survey in few days.
Thank you for the tip. I actually have over 100 responses to look through from my old survey. But once I extract the necessary info, I’m a little lost as to how it should be used…
Why kind of info have you (and everyone else on this forum) learned about your customers from the survey? And once you actually learned this information, what did you to with it? For instance, how did you use it to improve customer service or improve your marketing strategy?
Questionnaire sent directly to your customers, Reward those people who reply to you…
you will get the info from your customers
Hi jihanemo
have you tried contacting magazines that target similar products / lifestyle to what you believe your products to be suited to?
The only reason i ask is that if you ask them for their rate card and demographics (ABC 1s etc) then they should happily email it to you.
The ABC is consumer profiling that describes their readers from age to income, some have even more specific detail such as job occupation etc. If your products suit the magazine then it is likely to suit their profile. You can then use the profile to market more effectively.
I would suggest contacting several magazines as this will give you a broader basis of comparison.
Magazines, depending on their market can easily have 100,000 subscriptions and the magazines spend a hefty amount on profiling (I used to work for emap who at one point owned 60% of UK popular magazines).
At least this way, providing you don’t have an obscure product, you should be able to get some understanding of your target audience. This route is not fool proof but may offer you an insight.
Just a thought - hope it helps.
Another thought might be to look at your direct competitors and see who they are targeting? what do you sell by the way? would be helpful to know
Check out a web service called Crowd Science.
I have run it on two of the websites I manage to gain insight into demographics and found the results really useful.
You install a javascript snippet in your site and it randomly asks every 10th or so person to complete a questionnaire and you can review the results as they come in.
If you want customer profile information for your particular niche or industry, this information will most likely be widely available. There’s one catch: it’s all paid for.
Nearly all universities will give students access to the databases holding this information. So your best bet is: a) Go talk to the librarian and see if you can pay for a semester of access to the databases, or b) If not available, try to find a student who does have access. Talk to a librarian and let them know what it is you want to do and they should be more than happy to help you (it might help if you pose the question as though you’re writing a paper :P).
I think I know what you mean. Indeed, the census data includes a lot of potentially useful information. However, finding and interpreting the relevant data is difficult and time consuming. First, let me say that following the recommendations already posted will improve your ROI. Remember that you can increase your bottom line by either increasing traffic or increasing the conversion rate. Don’t only be focused upon the traffic part.
Thank you for your replies, everyone! I really do appreciate it. Your replies have been very helpful.
I apologize for replying so late myself…
bugscooter, I sell women’s designer inspired handbags - handbags modeled after high-end designer brands.
Thank you, nelsonkist! Yes - I will definitely take everyone’s advice into consideration. All of your replies have been very helpful. I’ll see what I can do. If anyone else has anymore ideas, I’m open.
I can’t believe nobody here mentioned Quantcast. They are doing exactly this kind of thing.