Consumer behavior is evolving as we speak and assuming you know your business’s audience without concrete data is a recipe for disaster. Identifying the right kind of customer is the first of many steps in your marketing efforts, but it doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming. Enter customer analytics platforms. They’re built to analyze your data and provide crucial insight on your audience to inform decision making and provide value. Every visitor on your website, social media post referencing your industry or a Google search about your services provides a surplus of data.
With that being said, how do you know which tool is right for you? There are countless customer analytics software out there and it would take hours researching each one. That’s why we created a list for you!
HUCKLE
The newest consumer analytics platform on our list, HUCKLE, takes the number one position hands down. HUCKLE uncovers insights about the lifestyles, psychographics and demographics of your audience by comparing them to over 260 million US profiles.
Does your audience go skiing on the weekends? Do they have Border Collies? Do they own a summer home in the mountains of West Virginia!? HUCKLE will find that out for you, so you can plan your business strategy around their likes, dislikes, habits and lifestyle, all presented in an interactive dashboard
Pricing:
- Minimum of 2,500 records; $0.42/record
- 12,000 records for $5K
- 25,000 records for $10K
- 75,000 records for $25K
Any more than 75,000 records must contact sales.
Google Analytics
Possibly the most popular on our list, Google Analytics tracks your website traffic and finds key customer data. GA allows you to create goals and assess how your business strategy is performing in relation to those goals through a quick and shareable report.
There is a wealth of information GA gathers from your website that it can seem a bit overwhelming, but they have a customer support system at your disposal. With that being said, GA doesn’t have a record of performing well with GDPR, meaning users must specify if they wish to have their actions tracked or not. In addition, they are sunsetting their Universal Analytics processing and moving completely to GA4.
Pricing:
- Free version with limited access
- Google 360 for $150K/year
Kissmetrics
From marketing industry leader, Neil Patel, Kissmetrics gathers customer information and provides actionable insights to aid business decisions. The software takes a personal approach to the customer insights by creating triggers for automated emails to your customers to keep them involved.
Kissmetrics is a good tool for the seasoned marketer or large corporations. One potential drawback to this platform is that it is so advanced that the learning curve is a little too high for those who need their results interpreted quickly. Regardless, Kissmetrics provides large amounts of valuable data
Pricing:
- Free version with limited access
- Silver plan for $299/month
- Pro plan for $499/month
- Platinum plan pricing varies
Brand24
Brand24 is more of a social listening tool than a consumer analytics platform, but it’s still worth mentioning. It pulls data directly from your social media accounts to reveal what your audience is saying about you, your industry or your niche. It provides a sentiment report with each post the data is pulled from and summarizes the overall sentiment of your brand.
This is a great way to gather data from your customers, but only if you have a large presence online or are a large corporation. Unfortunately, this tool doesn’t provide much insight for smaller businesses or those in a very niche audience. In addition, this tool only pulls info from your social platforms.
Pricing:
- Free trial available
- Personal plan for $492/year
- Professional plan for $996/year
- Professional Max plan for $2,988/year
Hotjar
This tool uses data visualizations through website heat mapping. You can switch from a heat map that shows where your customers are clicking, scrolling, and hovering to learn what content on your website attracts the most attention. In addition, this consumer analytics platform detects whether your customers are on a tablet, computer or mobile device to help you plan and optimize accordingly.
Hotjar is one of the best website monitoring tools to help you learn more about your customers. However, this tool only allows you to monitor one medium. Data from your website gives you information that is indeed valuable, but the data collected may not give you much insight to your customer as a person.
Pricing:
- Free version is available with limited features
- Plus plan for $39/month
- Business plan from $99/month
- Scale plan from $389/month
Depending on your end goal, there are many consumer analytics tools in the market. It’s important to do your research on these tools before committing. Be sure to know exactly what you should expect from your data.
