The forgotten son of digital marketing
The digital marketing landscape is evolving at a rapid pace, and businesses can be forgiven for investing a lot of time and energy into social media campaigns and other digital marketing efforts. Be careful not to lose sight of the fact that consumers are exposed to so much information on their social media newsfeeds, that if your content is not top-notch, you will get lost in the noise. Digital marketing is more than just social media. It is an intricate ecosystem of applications, processes, networks and methodologies that generates a huge amount of data. The value you gain from this data can be maximized with the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution.
Combined data = more insight into your customer
Effective marketing professionals understand that the value of social goes beyond ROI and conversions. Less tangible benefits, like
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brand awareness and market intelligence are also generated from social media. Incorporating an efficient CRM system in your digital marketing strategy will help you gain the most from both. You will have all the benefits of social insights combined with CRM capabilities to strategise marketing efforts, create campaigns, and measure your results.
It won’t cost you an arm and a leg
If you have a customer database, whatever the size or format, you can start harnessing the power of a CRM system without breaking the bank. If you already have a CRM system, but have only been using it to send newsletters from time to time, here are some of the other powerful benefits of a CRM system that could breathe new life into your business.
- One single view of the customer
Channels have increased, and there’s no way around it. Customers interact with your product or service, both online and offline. But it might be in a browser on their laptop, or on a pho
ne. They can browse, buy, email, tweet, search, like, share, review… the list goes on! There are so many ways to interact with your customers. All the interaction is impossible for any one team to keep track of. What a CRM system will allow you to do, is store all the data that you have at the customer level, in one place. If we were to collect all your data, put it in one place, and show you the full 360 of each of your customers, would you take it? You’d be crazy not to!
- Segmentation
As you and your customer embark on this journey together, you will get to know your customer and his behaviour better with every interaction. Make use of every opportunity to add information to you customer’s profile by adding tags. In the long run you should end up with well-defined segments, containing customers who have interacted with your business in a certain way in each segment. This enables you to tailor specific massages to specific segments, e.g. Your message to someone who is tagged as a prospect will be a call to action or special offer to convert him from a prospect to a buying customer. Your message to existing customers will be one that is aimed at invoking loyalty and repeat purchases i.e. nurturing. You can decide how deep you want to drill into the data and how many segments you want to differentiate, and it need not be very complicated.
As you continue to use CRM to monitor and review your interactions with your prospects, you’ll discover that CRM is a goldmine of information that helps you to communicate relevant information to the right customer at the right time.
- Creating a tailored, yet automated customer experience
Now that you have used segmentation to convert that prospect into a customer, a CRM system allows you to take the customer on a journey with you. But there’s a fine line between gently guiding your customer to buy again and barraging them with e-mails and calls, yet nurturing is vital.
The Annuitas Group found that nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. With sales cycles becoming increasingly complex, customer relationship management (CRM) systems have never been more vital. You can set-up certain triggers to get in touch with your customer. It could be as simple as an e-mail on the customer’s birthday, offering a special discount. Another example is to use CRM to guide a customer through an ordering process, keeping them up to date on the status of their order. The possibilities are endless. With some creativity, and putting yourself in the customer’s shoes, you can craft each and every interaction with your customer to suit his needs.
- Knowledge is power
CRM can help you pinpoint which content marketing pieces were the most successful and which failed to deliver. Using the digital trail, you’ll know whether the increase in customer response is based on the social media campaign, the newsletter or a specific promotion. Using this information strategically can help you study each part of your marketing strategy so that you can plan, enhance previous campaigns, and eliminate those that have no effect.