“Think global-act local”- all sellers active in multiple countries have heard of this mantra. Strategies including translating content and localizing services such as customer service and marketing come to mind when thinking about the practical implementation of this. But grasping the local customer also has a lot to do with recording data and interpreting it correctly. Investment decisions, for retailers those could include whether or not to offer same-day delivery or click-and-collect in a certain region, can be made based on data and target group analysis. Data can also help to increase relevance of marketing and services. On Wednesday morning at the Online Handel ‘17 congress in Berlin, Jens Schnückel of BrandLocal and Oliver Reinke of AZ Direct presented some powerful ways to understand and serve the local customer using geo-intelligence and customer journey analysis.
Local Cosmos
According to Jens Schnückel, the entire cosmos of a customer evolves around local activities: Work, Sports, groceries and even the use of his digital devices. “All business is local, and if you ask me why that is so, the answer must be: All life is local,” claims Schnückel.
Using a Matrix
In order to analyse local customers, the expert suggests to use a simple matrix mapping basic criteria. For a local beer brewer, criteria included ‘male’, ‘between 20 and 50 years old’, ‘student’. Based on these demographics, the experts created datamaps in order to identify where the density of members of an interesting target group is high.
Determining investments
For an online shop serving an entire country, it might be interesting to understand which preferences customers have in order to decide where a certain service or product should be offered. The expert showcased an example where target groups were divided into ‘Convenience oriented customers’, ‘Mobile minded’ and ‘Lifestyle’ customers. In a situation where are three factors were relevant to identify the core target group, overlaying these maps created a heatmap indicating exactly where which customers were situated.
Digital and classic data
Oliver Reinke stressed why it is important to combine datasets in order to map customers: “If you take for instance a 67-year-old, British male, divorced, father of two and dog owner, you see that both Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne match your profile. They are geographical twins. In order to increase the relevance of your message to either of them, you need to look at more information, including their preferences, customer behaviour, socio-geographic data and more.” According to the expert, matching classic data with digitally collected data is the best way to increase relevance and understand local customers.