Understanding your customers and target consumers is one of the fundamental aspects of running a successful business. These days, as consumers are becoming more culturally aware, it’s important for brands to be at the forefront of new cultural trends and what their target audience really wants to see reflected in the brands that they purchase from. Here are 5 tactical ways that companies can understand their culturally aware consumers better.
Vivian Chan is the co-founder of East Meets Dress–the first modern fashion company to bring more Asian representation and inclusion to the traditional wedding industry by combining contemporary cultural designs, quality craftsmanship, and a dedicated customer experience.
Create tailored exit surveys
Many brand websites will include pop-ups that show up when a consumer is browsing their products online. A majority of these pop-ups are meant to get you to subscribe to their newsletter or take advantage of a discount code. You can use this same strategy to instead offer an exit survey to your consumers with tailored questions that help you understand their culturally influenced buying decisions. Be sure to try to capture demographic data in these surveys as well so you can draw better conclusions from the data later on. To get people to take this exit survey, you can offer incentives like a free giveaway prize or a larger discount.
Schedule calls to speak with interested customers
Speaking directly with your customers and leads are a great way to build rapport and understand their preferences. Nowadays, it’s easy to schedule a quick Zoom or phone call or even correspond via email. During these calls, you can go deeper into asking questions about their cultural background and see how this and other factors influence their buying decisions. This can lend insight into ways you can improve your product and branding to be more tailored to culturally aware consumers.
Joining culturally relevant groups on social media
There’s no shortage of niche or affinity groups out there on social media (i.e. FB, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Tik Tok). Join groups that are relevant to your specific industry as well as go where you think your target audience and consumers are likely to be. Engaging in these culturally relevant groups will help you notice different trends and the types of topics and questions culturally aware consumers are asking in these groups.
Analyse your product and purchase trends
The data do not lie. Reviewing your company’s analytics and business metrics is a great way to get quantitative reports on what culturally aware consumers want. You can be thoughtful with how you analyse your data and see if you can find trends among different demographics of customers. At the end of the day, consumers can tell you one thing but their actual purchasing behaviour might present a different story. You might be surprised by what you learn and can then run targeted A/B tests to assess different hypotheses when it comes to targeting different types of consumers.
Observe what other culturally aware brands are doing
Your company doesn’t always have to be the first to do something. Sometimes it’s more effective to observe what other brands are doing and seeing their results before adopting the same strategies or improving upon them. Many brands are also trying to connect better with their culturally aware consumers so take a look around and follow some of these brands to see how they are approaching this issue. You can always reach out to their marketing team or founders as well to see if they can offer any tips for you.
