Trend Tracking: It Could Make You Millions!

There are a variety of reasons why trend tracking is not only important for your business in its current state, but its future state too. Without identifying the latest trends, you’ll be missing out on potential profits. As the competition finds new ways to innovate, you’ll be left falling behind, losing your customers as you go.

So, trend tracking is important. But, when you’re a busy owner with a million things to do, tracking trends isn’t exactly at the forefront of your mind. It’s a time-consuming process, and it’s never easy to know where to start. We’re going to streamline this process by splitting it in two.

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The first category we’re going to discuss is industry trends. This relates to new technologies and purchase trends that are happening across the industry. If you don’t take advantage of them, other companies will. This is an important consideration, so let’s take a look at what you can do.

Industry Trends

• Sometimes, if you want to keep up with trends alongside the biggest names in the industry, you have to survey what they’re up to. The best companies out there always have a finger on the pulse of what the competition has done in recent times. As they spot new trends starting to emerge, they’ll get in on the action before it’s too late. It’s also a way of identifying any chinks in their armor. If you can survey their processes and find a weakness, that’s the best result you could possibly hope for.

• Google Alerts is a superb tool for tracking industry trends. You’re able to specify chosen keywords that will alert you to new news, blogs and videos surrounding these topics. You can get them sent to a variety of places, but most business owners opt for their email account. So, instead of being forced to traverse Google’s trillions of pages, you’ll get all the info you need delivered directly to you.

• Social media groups are yet another way of keeping up to date with the latest happenings. As long as you find the right ones, they’re often filled with industry minds questioning others about this and that. Don’t expect the competition to go giving away their secrets, but there are still plenty of benefits to getting involved. If it reveals the establishment of a new company or an important bit of news, you’ll be glad for having stumbled across it.

• Don’t forget the power of conferences and seminars. These events give you the opportunity to network with others, as well as learn some important information. It can spark ideas through inspirational conversation, and help you to fill in the blanks along the way. While you might not be up to date with the latest trends, you can bet many people in the room are. You’ll talk, listen, survey and ultimately collect a boat load of information to take back to your business.

The second category we’re here to discuss today is customer trends. This is where you can analyze your customer data in order to gain more sales and visibility for your company. It can take many forms, from the amount of views you get on a website to the amount of sales your latest product has made. As before, we’ve got plenty of tips to help you get started.

Customer Trends

• As a business, you collect all sorts of data across many different platforms. It’s sometimes hard to make sense of it all, and this is where big data analytics strategies can come in useful. These are often provided through services that gather large data and break it up into manageable chunks. Through this method, the goal is to finally make use of that data to find trends as well as benefit from fast data processing.

• In certain scenarios, the best way to identify customer trends is to go to the customers themselves. Periodic surveys and questionnaires can be beneficial for a customer to understand how to proceed. This can be tied-in with competitions to increase participation and raise brand awareness simultaneously. Whether you do this with a tool like Toluna QuickSurveys or simply add a poll to your website is up to you.

• Social media is yet again another crucial element of the customer trend tracking process. There are all sorts of ways to analyze trends from your own customers through this medium. Let’s take Twitter as an example. By creating tailored lists, you can see what your customers are discussing on a regular basis. This can help to identify trends about their needs and wants. Other methods include reviewing comments and tracking analytical data surrounding post engagement.

• Many companies look to CRM software for a lot of their dealing with customers. It works to store customer data and process sales in many cases. The big thing about CRM is that it can identify trends that you might otherwise forget about. A company dealing in two-year contracts might forget when the renewal comes around, but CRM software won’t. You can also get detailed statistics about recent transactions from age to time-of-purchase stats.

• Of course, your website is also important to analyze on a regular basis. Depending on the hosting provider you choose, you may or may not get access to extensive analytics. Many companies look to Google Analytics for their needs in this area. It can help to identify all sorts of trends about viewers, including the length of time they browse and where they come from. If you’re struggling to make purchases online, getting to understand Google Analytics can help to identify the cause.

Although it might seem like it, we haven’t mentioned a whole lot of ways to get involved in trend tracking. There simply isn’t enough time to go through all the possible ways of monitoring industry and customer data. But, we hope we’ve been able to open your eyes to the possibilities, as well as reiterate the importance of trend tracking. If implemented correctly, this set of strategies might just make you a millionaire before long!