Many businesses, especially growing ones, lack one crucial thing. That thing is information. In the Information Age, the more data you have, the more competitive your company becomes. Marketing and sales initiatives cannot rely purely on emotion or the whims of a founder or CEO. Rather, a business needs to know what their customers are thinking and feeling, both about their company and the overall landscape in which they conduct business.
For example, an ecommerce store that sells chess pieces and chess sets needs to know who their customers are, and cater to them accordingly. If their customers are chess aficionados, they might want to position themselves different than if their customers are chess novices who are just looking to explore the game. Having this information informs both the type of products that a chess ecommerce store may want to stock, and how they market their products in the first place.
One of the best ways to gather this type of information is through the use of a CRM. But what is a CRM? A CRM is a customer relationship management software. Within this centralized hub, a business can track and record every interaction with a customer, whether it is online or through a direct sales call or in-person event. That being said, a CRM is most useful for businesses that have a lot of different interactions with their customers. While having a lengthy sales process is not always a good thing, the advantages of it do allow for you to create a more comprehensive customer profile.
Using a CRM, you can create a customer profile and have a greater understanding behind the motivations of your customers. Going back to the example of an ecommerce chess store, you may find that your website pages that have the highest amount of interaction are from individual novelty chess pieces. This may indicate that your customers are more novelty chess players than professionally-minded chess players. However, without a CRM, you would have no way to systemize this information.
A CRM can also help your business by helping you to organize your marketing campaign. Marketing teams can use CRM data to segment prospects and customers to send out different paid marketing campaigns, including paid social and email marketing promotions. They can also use a CRM to deliver personalized content to customers and analyze their own marketing efforts, particularly when it comes to A/B testing to improve conversion rates.
Overall, a CRM is a great tool for any business that is looking to grow. Whether it is a chess-based ecommerce store or a digital marketing agency, a CRM can be used for all sorts of businesses. While a CRM is not the only tool in your arsenal, it is an essential one that all businesses should consider using. Using a CRM and project management software will help you business grow while staying on track and having key data available at your fingertips for easy viewing. A CRM will also allow you to identify dissatisfied customers and evaluate their experiences with your business. In doing so, you may be able to salvage those relationships or at least use their experience to improve customer retention efforts in the future.
While there are certainty other advantages to using a CRM, these examples should help you in implementing one into your own business. After all, small businesses do require assistance to automate different tasks such as report generation, accounting handling, meter reading, etc. Having unlimited access to all of your customer information, and being able to report and forecast it, is an invaluable way to grow your business.
