CRM and knowing the buzzwords

CRM is a software that has a lot in terms and Buzz words that people like to throw around this section gives you a background you need to translate the CRM speak.

You may be already familiar with some of these terms for example buy you a soda and tried-and-true marketing technique. But they may have a slightly different meaning in CRM contacts than you’re used to. Get to know these buzzwords as become up in meetings when you communicate your vision.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is marketing, except instead of telling people to buy your widget, you’re educating them on how great widgets like the ones that you sell are.

It’s a subtle way of getting people to read the pieces your marketing people right.

People consume content marketing that they find interesting or educational when you write a paper record a podcast or record a video it’s more likely to have an impact if you focus on providing value.

Your complete CRM is connected to your content marketing pieces shows a blog. Every blog article, e-book, and whitepaper you write should capture the reader’s contact information so you can follow up with relevant, personalized and targeted messages.

Capture all the information within your CRM for your sales and marketing teams to work together for to the benefit of both.

Personalized content

Personalize content means that you create content specific to the person reading it.

In the old days, this technique was referred to as a mail merge where you would printed your Joe at the top of a letter written to Joe.  Nowadays you can do that with email and web pages. You can even put totally customize the pages together based on what you know about the reader.

More targeted personalization in your marketing as a direct cause of impact and converting your leads into paying customers.

People listen to when they feel someone is speaking directly to them.

When you personalize content you make people feel as though you care enough to make something just for them. It’s like hearing a story that was made just for you you listen when you feel someone is speaking directly to you.

Personalizing content always brings privacy consideration, as some people may not want you to know everything about their preferences and characteristics, so be sensitive to your market and how you’re personalizing the information you’re communicating.

When people engage with your personalized content your CRM measures how they interact with you.

Your salespeople then have access to the information they need to have meaningful direct conversations while giving your marketing team insight into what resonates with your target market.

With your team armed with better information, you can focus on techniques that maximize conversion.

Conversion

Conversion happens when someone does something of value for you.

Usually it’s when a customer buys your product or service but conversion also record other actions that don’t involve the transactions such as downloading an e-book or filling out a form.

Conversion can have multiple stages and is often depicted as a funnel or pipeline.

The process of moving through stages toward the final conversion should be measured, if at all possible. This way you can set up with emission around people advancing to the next stage and measure your success in driving people to order conversion at the bottom of your sales funnel.

Your CRM should give you the ability to track conversions along with the paths people take to get there.

You need to know where weak links are in your conversion process and why they occur and have ways to easily address your messaging methods and improve conversion rates.

Use your buyer journey process to identify and address those weak links.

Data-driven

Decisions made entirely by Instinct are inherently riskier.

A good CRM provides you with a lot of information and the platform should help compile that data in a way that’s actionable. Require your consultant and employees to show you the numbers that back of their recommendation.

While experience is a good teacher it can also Lead You astray in a world of changing markets and forces and technologies.

Being data-driven is as much a mindset as it is part of an organization’s culture.

The more everyone relies on data to justify decisions the more accountable and rational those decisions are.

Big Data

Big Data means that people have accessibility to more data now than a few years ago; oftentimes it’s and unstructured massive and hard to understand.

You can accumulate all kinds of data if you want to :

• demographic data about your contact
• website visit
• email opens
• social media likes and comments
• video views for example

But if you can’t make any sense of it and if the data is in unactionable its useless.

Understanding with to do with all the data you get is much more important than simply accumulating mountains of data you can’t use. Conversely not enough data me lead you in the wrong direction as well.

Your complete CRM because it collects data from all the channels that you use to communicate for sales for marketing for operations it generates a lot of data that are well-segmented.

Make sure the CRM platform you select makes it easy to sift through all that data so you can be efficient in making strategic and tactical decisions about your business.

Your CRM gives you all the data you can handle through reports and charts.

Segmentation

When marketers talk about segmentation the means that they are looking at a smaller subset of the entire potential market of customers.

The more granular you can divide your market, the better you can understand each of these segments.

The most segmented Market is 1 to 1 personalization which is possible but challenging both from a strategy and Technology perspective.

A good CRM helps you understand which your various market segments are and how they interact with your brand. CRM platforms should make it easy for you to Target and send personalized messages to your market segments.

Buyer persona

A buyer Persona is a characterization of a particular Market segment.

If your targeting middle-aged housewives and you could create: Sally a forty-two-year-old, mother-of-two, who lives in the suburbs, and drives a minivan; if you’re targeting tall people, who might want to buy the pants you’re importing and you could create Tom, 25 years old, single, professional, who plays basketball in the weekends.

This generalized stereotypical person is meant to help with contacts around how customers would use your product or service.

If you think about how Sally would react to your marketing messages, it’s easier to put yourself in her shoes when you can picture an actual person responding to you.

Buyer personas are useful in helping you to set up market segments and personalized messages sent through your CRM.

Your cells and marketing themes can think about how to divide their efforts and resources to sell to the Persona as you create.

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing means taking care of leads when they make the effort to contact you.

Lead nurturing is another phrase you here in marketing.

When someone reaches out to you; she may have clicked an advertisement you placed or she may have visited your website or fill a form from social media.

Inbound marketing is about setting up processes to capture those leads and follow-up to them all the way to conversion.

Having a complete CRM focuses on having a process in measuring everything you can about your leads as they learn about your brand and eventually convert to customers. Your CRM collects behavioral and demographic data throughout the inbound marketing and Lead nurturing process and uses automation to help your team communicate with your leads and clients efficiently.

Customer lifecycle/journey

The customer lifecycle is a term that encapsulates the journey people take from the time when first, they hear about you, through their decision to purchase from you, to they’re consuming of your products or services, and becoming an advocate of your brand.

This progression isn’t linear as people tend to show very levels of interest and uses of your products or services.

A good manager of this life cycle can track where people are in various phases of engagement and can set up marketing and information to encourage movement toward conversion and advocacy.

A CRM platforms helps you measure this lifecycle knowing how long people spend in various phases and what moves them along the customer journey is critical to improving how you do business.

Your team uses your CRM to keep track of who is we’re in this journey helping each person effectively reach each individual contact with the right message at the right time to the right person so they move forward under conversion and closing.

Sales pipeline/funnel

When your potential customers move through the process of buying something from you, you can place them into categories(stages) around their journey(your sales process).

Often these categories are descriptively named like : lead, qualified lead, reviewing proposal, and win or lost sale.

It’s called a pipeline because it’s usually people go through a standardized process from stage to stage.

Pipelines are often drawn horizontally; Funnels on the other hand tend to be drawn vertically with the neck of the funnel getting smaller to represent the exit of potential buyers as they go from stage to stage.

For example, you may start with 100 leads but only 80 of them qualify to move closer to becoming a customer after they have a conversation with the salesperson.

Your CRM allows you to view your various funnels along with drilling down into the charge to see who is in which stages. A good CRM platforms also provide analytics showing you how long people are spending in each stage and the percentage of people who successfully moved from Stage to stage in a given time.

Opportunities

Opportunities have a special meaning when it comes to your CRM.

Each opportunity represents a chance for lead to becoming a client. Because opportunities generally have a longer sales cycle and more interaction with your team they’re typically used for selling high-value products and services.

Each opportunity has characteristics you can use to categorize it.

The quality of deer Port Richey Source Products and or Services involved the value of those products and services date of expected close and manager of the opportunity are aspects attached to it and can be used for categorizing and segmentation.

your CRM stores everything about an opportunity in a convenient easy-to-access place.

Contacts and companies associated with the opportunity make it easy to track who the key players are when you target resources to close an opportunity so you know what to say, and to whom to say it to.