Do you know what your customers want? If not, it's time to find out because they are the ones paying for your products or services. Keep reading below why online consumer research is more important than ever and how to do it adequately. 

It's no longer a secret that the better you know your customers, the better experience you can offer to them, And, by default, a great customer experience will also reflect in the numbers you see at the end of the month. 

So, how well do you know your customers? Do you know where your target audience spends its time online? Do you know their average annual income or average financial situation? And, most importantly, do you know what their biggest problems that your product or service could solve are? 

If you're not sure about the answers to all these questions, then take a moment and let the following statistic sink in: 46% people out of 20,000 consumers from 20 countries surveyed claim that they broke up with a business because they were getting "irrelevant content pushes" and 34% of them said they did so because they were receiving poor, disruptive, or irrelevant marketing messages. That's a lot of lost customers because brands failed to understand what their customers want completely. 

So, to avoid losing customers yourself, you need to know your target audience inside-out. How do you do that without reading minds? You collect data from lots of people. 

This article will help you learn where to go online to learn about your customers and how to make sure that you find out the most relevant things about them. Please stick with us and keep reading below!

Research on Quora 

You've likely heard about Quora before, the platform where people ask questions, get answers, and connect with other people. Well, this platform can be a gold mine in terms of data about your customers and business. 

On Quora, people hold in-depth conversations about pretty much everything, including social media, brands, movies, and many others. All you have to do to see what people are talking about your business there is to type a keyword or phrase related to your product or service in the search box, and you'll find plenty of long conversations that might help you find out what your target market wants or is thinking about things related to your business. 

Conduct keyword research 

Keyword research isn't only relevant to SEO. At its essence, keyword research is market research, telling brands what people are interested in and in what relative numbers. What's more, it helps brands see the actual language people use when searching these topics, providing insights on how companies should converse with people on their blogs. 

By conducting keyword research, your brand will find out what kind of content gets your target audience's attention, but will also tell you how often your industry competitors are using the same keywords or phrases in their web content. 

Take a look at your competition's website 

Speaking of your industry competition, another great way to identify what matters to your target audience is to take a look at your competition's web copy and blog content. 

Yet, while you can't be 100% sure that your competition's copy and content is based on thorough research, you'll get an idea of what are the common trends found in the content across your competitors' websites, pointing you in the direction of things that your target audience wants or cares about. 

Read blog comments 

Blog comments are also a valuable source of consumer data that can help you find out your audience's key pain points. If you're lucky enough to have a blog that engages readers and gets plenty of comments per post, reading those comments can see how your business can better help customers with their problems. 

So, whenever you're making a new blog post, remember to invite readers to conversation in the comments section at the end of your post. Encourage people to share their thoughts and ideas for improvement. 

You can also browse popular industry blogs or relevant articles to your field and identify the common threads that people tend to share their opinion about. 

Conduct surveys 

Surveys are another excellent way to gather information about your customers and target audience. Surveys are pretty cost-effective, and they can help your brand gather a lot of data. 

As the consumer research experts from Opinipoll explain, "Online surveys are increasingly easy for marketers to deploy as there are many tools that allow brands to create and distribute online questionaries' to a large consumer database."

Yet, you need to be aware of the fact that as people are living pretty busy lives these days, the response rates for surveys tend to be likely low unless you give consumers a good reason to find the time and answer your questionnaire. 

For example, you can offer various incentives such as a free gift card or a chance to win your best product for free if they take a few minutes from their time to answer your questions. 

Pay for research and data 

There are lots of free tools to gather online consumer data. But, using these tools on your own takes time, especially if you're not familiar with them. What's more, even after you gather data, you may not know how to interpret it adequately to know exactly what your target market wants. In that case, it makes more sense to hire experts to help you get a more robust data set and help you interpret it and turn it into actionable steps your business should take. 

Keep in mind that consumer research isn't a one-time thing you do when you first get on the market. It is a key part of your marketing and sales strategies that need to be done frequently. Market trends change, and so do consumer trends, and to keep up with these changes, you need to be aware of what your target market wants constantly.