The Rise of Social CRM and Why Your Business Needs It?
It has taken a long while for Social Media to evolve as a marketing medium for businesses. Though the B2B space has been slower to grow on this channel, many brands have started to make the most of it. Today, about 85% of B2B marketers use Social Media in one way or another, and they see results.
You may be one of that 85 %, however, are you leveraging social media to the extent you should? Also, are you doing it in the right manner? Social Media, today is a double-edged sword that can be highly rewarding as well as dangerous at the same time. More than 70% of your customers would expect a response from you within the hour, and if you do not, you will probably get an adverse reaction. Social media can beget real-time results but can be quite a minefield, tread carefully.
The way to tread carefully can get tedious, however, integrating your social media assets into a CRM [Customer Relationship Management] system can make it easier. This will not only help you avoid the pitfalls but also enable your business to address customer queries and service issues much faster. And finally, it will help you generate and nurture leads efficiently.
This is where Social CRM steps in. Keeping in mind the required best practices, let us see why you should use it and what benefits can it bring you.
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The visibility boost: Search engine optimization has always driven organic marketing and the keywords or key phrases have already debuted in social media. With social media entwined with search engines, it is to your advantage if can integrate those keywords or key phrases into your social media posts, videos or whatever kind of content you post. This is very important since customers need to find your business and the first place they would look at is the search engines.
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Influencer marketing: According to numerous studies, it has been found that over 90% of customers trust reviews and recommendations from other people before they make a buying decision. This is where the importance of influencer marketing comes to the fore. An influencer is someone who is an expert in your niche and has a great many followers on FaceBook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Through Social CRM you can keep a tab of influencer activity, and if you choose to engage with them, you can do it with ease. Being a part of their conversations is a very good idea and getting them to speak about your brand is even better. You will need to build a relationship with them slowly before you can engage them to your advantage.
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Internal Resources: The best way to get ahead with social media brand building and lead generation are to engage with your customers and offer them world-class service. So much so that they should turn into your brand advocates and speak about you on social media. Another method to gain traction on social media is to engage your employees and create social media accounts for them. They can use those to build your brand. OF course, having a social media manager onboard will go a long way in achieving these objectives using the Social CRM.
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Technology to the rescue: Using a Social CRM brings its advantages in terms of making it easier to respond on multiple social media platforms with immediacy. Honestly, all social media interfaces are built for individuals and not for businesses, therefore taking care of many accounts together can be slow and painful, not to mention the limitations that these social platforms come with. To mention, CRM’s are built on the foundation of analytical functions, and they can generate some insightful reports in no time which makes figuring out an effective strategy becomes much easier.
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Content is king: This has been reiterated time and again and content on social media needs to be spot on. Social media is a really fast draw, and one has to be on their toes to leverage the full potential. If you see an opportunity and don’t act on it, be sure that your competition has already swung it his way in no time. There is a lot going on - videos, events, freebies, offers, discounts, live feeds and many others wherein taking care of everything in real time can become challenging. A Social CRM can make your proactive on many such goings-on, and you can leverage your leads before they get hijacked.
The above are only some of the benefits that opting for a Social CRM can bring to your table. There are many others which you will realize with use. The world has gone social, and so did you. To stand up in the crowd, it is essential that you opt for a Social CRM.