Sometimes, it can feel like your customers materialize out of thin air. They discovered your business somewhere, but it’s not always easy to pinpoint the origins. Was it your hilarious TikTok videos? Your helpful email newsletter? Maybe a random Google search?
The answer might not be what you expect. Today’s consumers are using all sorts of discovery channels to find brands. One of the newest trends is the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to search online. In 2024, 15 million adults used these tools instead of or before traditional search engines. Social commerce is also booming, with nearly 75% of shoppers browsing products on platforms like Facebook and TikTok.
Of course, while statistics are helpful, they don’t tell you much about your unique audience. Here’s how to figure out how customers find businesses.
Why knowing your discovery channels matters
At first, learning how customers find your business might not seem important. They’re here now, so who cares, right? But actually, this detail matters — a lot.
When you know how people arrive at your metaphorical doorstep, you can better focus your marketing efforts to meet potential customers where they are. Plus, you could spot opportunities to reach your audience on platforms you’re not already using.
It can also help you figure out how to spend your marketing budget. Unless you have unlimited resources (ha — that would be nice!), you probably want to prioritize the channels with the highest return on investment (ROI). After all, if 90% of your customers find you through organic search, you should invest primarily in that, not Facebook ads or TikTok livestreams.
Customer acquisition cost comes into play here, too. You might be spending a small fortune on influencer collabs, but only gaining a handful of clients. With this insight, you could look for more affordable partnerships or try a new tactic entirely.
5 essential ways to track how customers find your business
You don’t need to hire a private detective to pinpoint your discovery channels. Just try these five practical strategies.
1. Ask your customers directly
Most customers, especially happy ones, are willing to let you know how they ended up on your website or at your front door. Here’s how you can ask:
- Encourage employees to ask when interacting with customers face-to-face.
- Give people the option to tell you where they discovered your business when making a purchase or registering for an event online.
- Create an online survey and send it to new email subscribers or share it with your social media audience.
- Organize focus groups to find out what brought customers to your company.
Use digital tools to compile and assess all this feedback. This could be as simple as building a spreadsheet that employees update every time they chat with a customer, or you could use a survey analytics tool like Qualtrics or SurveyMonkey to assess your data.
It’s tempting to ask about every aspect of the customer experience, but less is more! It’s always best to keep your questions brief and only ask for strictly necessary information. Customers are much more likely to respond when you aren’t overwhelming them with questions.
2. Leverage search intelligence
The vast majority (98%) of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses. Make sure your target audience can find you when they fire up their search engines, whether they’re traditional or AI-powered.
Searching for your business’s name is the easiest way to get started. When you type in your business, chances are the first page of results looks something like this:
- Your website/blog
- Facebook Page
- Other social networks
- Review sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor
Next, try search terms you think could drive people to your business.
For a mechanic, you might type in something like:
- Mechanics in [your town]
- Car shop in [your town]
- Where to get my car fixed in [your town]
- Where to get [repair/service] in [your town]
Pay attention to where your business shows up — and, most importantly, where it doesn’t. That’s a sign that you may need to optimize your online presence so you don’t miss nearby customers.
Of course, there’s no instant solution. Many factors affect search engine visibility, and each platform has a unique algorithm. For instance, here are just a few of the criteria Google considers when ranking content:
- Format (bullet points, short paragraphs, etc.)
- Helpfulness
- Quality of the writing
- Recency
- Reliability
- Uniqueness
For local searches, distance and relevance matter, too. You don’t have any control over the first factor — either your business is close to the searcher or it isn’t — but you can make your content as applicable as possible. Use keyword research tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to find out which search terms local users input, then create content that matches them.
And don’t forget about voice search! Many people ask their smartphones or speakers to look up information instead of typing out queries. You can increase the odds of your content showing up in these searches by using longer, more conversational keywords like “Where can I buy cheap water shoes in Phoenix?”
3. Implement comprehensive analytics
With Google Analytics 4, you can see which pages on your website generate the most traffic and where the traffic is coming from. It lets you track multiple channels, including web and app data.
Monitoring these key metrics can help you understand how customers find your business online:
- Acquisition channels, such as organic traffic and email
- Number of visits per page
- Referrals
- Search queries
You can also create attribution models for more advanced insights into the customer journey. For instance, the paid and organic last click model identifies which channel your customers used right before they converted.
4. Monitor social and community engagement
While not everyone who visits your Facebook Page or sees you on Twitter will become a follower, keeping tabs on how these audiences are changing provides insight into which platforms offer the biggest opportunity for your business.
Virtually every social platform has built-in analytics tools for business accounts. Use this software to see how your activities affect your audience and how customers find your business. Did your satirical Instagram Reel get 200 shares and grow your follower count? It’s time to unleash your wit with more content in that vein!
Also, look into how your interactions with different members of your community impact the rest of your audience. Something as simple as leaving a helpful resource in an influencer’s comment section could lead to an influx of new followers.
Take advantage of social listening tools, too. Use software like BuzzSumo or Meltwater to track how customers talk about your business online. You might have a small fanbase recommending your products on Reddit or a random hashtag leading people to your Instagram profile. You never know how customers find your business until you look!
5. Track digital touchpoint conversions
Customers can interact with your brand in dozens of ways. Here are a few strategies to monitor the less obvious touchpoints:
- Add UTM tracking parameters to QR codes to see who’s scanning them.
- Use Constant Contact to track your email list growth. These subscribers are so committed to your brand that they’re taking the next step to stay connected! By finding out where they’re coming from, you can try to recruit even more loyal fans.
- Heatmapping can help you track how users move through your site and what content snags their interest.
Once you’ve got a sense of how customers engage with your business, sketch out your buyer’s journey. For each phase, identify all the potential touchpoints — Instagram ads during awareness, blog posts during consideration, and so on. This step can help you spot opportunities to beef up your interactions.
The 5 basic needs of customers when finding a business
At the end of the day, your clients aren’t complicated enigmas. They just want you to satisfy these five universal needs:
- Need for convenience and fast results
- Need for social proof and validation
- Need for transparency and authenticity
- Need for mobile-friendly information
- Need for immediate answers to specific questions
Addressing all five areas isn’t always easy, but focusing on these needs can help you attract a steady stream of new customers. Adding testimonials to your social profiles, building an FAQ page, and working with a web developer to create a mobile-friendly site all go a long way to satisfy and motivate potential customers.
How to improve your discovery channels
Understanding how customers find your business is only half the battle. Next, you need to leverage this knowledge to improve your performance and expand your reach.
Rank your channels by performance, and work your way down the list to build your marketing priorities. For example, you might invest in more influencer collabs or add more interactive elements to your popular email newsletter.
For even more oomph, mix and match your top strategies with cross-channel tactics. This might involve retargeting people who browsed your site with Instagram ads or inviting your social media followers to join your rewards program. This integrated marketing approach might help you win over more skeptical leads (or people who just procrastinate on purchases).
And don’t be afraid to experiment with brand-new platforms. If you’re unsure, wait to invest a lot of money into this content until you know how (and if) your audience will respond.
Attracting more customers to your business
Regardless of how much you appreciate your existing clients, you still need to build up a stream of new customers. Here are a few ideas to help you entice new leads:
- Boost your discoverability by creating a mixture of evergreen and trending content. For instance, customers will always need how-to guides and video tutorials, but trending news in your niche can also catch new eyes.
- Write how your audience speaks to capture more traffic from voice searches.
- Optimize your Google Business Profile with local keywords and professional photos.
- Get more mileage out of customer testimonials by repurposing them across platforms. This could involve anything from embedding user-generated content in your website to interviewing satisfied clients for case studies.
Of course, you should also always provide excellent customer service. Don’t replace everything with AI for the sake of efficiency. When people need support, they want to interact with real, compassionate humans. Make sure your team is ready to meet that demand.
Measuring success and ongoing optimization
It’s no secret that improving your discovery channels can be a long process. Strategies like search engine optimization and gathering social proof take time, so focus on building momentum instead of overnight success.
Of course, just because you can’t always see your progress doesn’t mean it’s not happening! Use Constant Contact and other analytics tools to track these key performance indicators (KPIs) of how customers find business:
- Brand mentions
- Click-through rates for every discovery channel
- Email subscriptions
- QR code scans
- Search engine rankings
- Social media followers
- Web traffic from paid ads, referrals, and other sources
Use your earliest data as benchmarks to measure your progress and set realistic goals. For example, you might aim to double your social media followers in a year (totally feasible) or gain 100 new email subscribers this quarter.
This data can also help you spot and adapt to new discovery trends. A sudden surge of referral traffic, for instance, might mean that your customers are relying more on influencer recommendations.
Plus, KPIs come in handy when you’re auditing your content. Check performance metrics every six months or so, and refresh anything that’s gotten stale or isn’t bringing in traffic.
Next steps to get your business found
Once you’ve mapped out how customers find your business, you can take steps to get more from what’s already working. Start by ranking all your current discovery channels by performance, then focus on optimizing one or two per month. Want even more customer outreach ideas? Comb through our Marketing Advice Blog for a free masterclass in marketing!
