Automation of Communication
If you search marketing on google you’ll get tones of articles, blogs and forums that all generally say the same thing, post regularly, advertise, increase your optimization on search engines. It is extremely time consuming doing all of these things, if you’re an established company who has lots of customers you may not think that you need to be doing any of these things. I speak to a lot of small business owners and especially in small towns, people are reluctant to change their ways, even when they know what they've been doing is not working anymore.
After people start seeing that their ad in the local newspaper isn’t getting as much traction as it did 5 or 10 years ago they start to panic and start posting excessive amounts of meaningless things on their Facebook page. They gather up all their email contacts and start sending them monthly newsletters about what their business has been doing and content from within their industry. After months of doing this they’re frustrated, exhausted, and fed up with doing all of these things. What they don’t realize is that if they were to integrate all their channels of communication around a strategy that focuses on building relationships the would start to see a change in and around their business.
Customer Relationship Management Systems
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems have been around for decades, it was originally invented to help companies who have a sales force that need to manage their contacts. However, the systems that are available to companies now have far greater capabilities that can be extremely beneficial to small business owners. Through the use of the right system you can effectively manage the relationships between all of your customer segments in real time.
For example, if you go into your local coffee shop, wouldn’t it be great to have someone automatically know your coffee order no matter who was working? If you actually started to have conversations with the businesses you buy products and services from would you buy from them more often? If you haven’t been into a business in a while and they suddenly reached out to you because they haven’t seen you in a while and they offered you 15% off, would you go into that business sooner rather than later to buy something?
Chances are the answer to all of these questions would be yes. No matter what industry you are in, if you take an interest in your customer, they will take an interest in you. A CRM system allows you to store information about your customer that is relevant to creating and maintaining a relationship with them. Most people already have a system like this for the relationships they have in their own lives, usually in the form of contacts on a cell phone or a personal Facebook profile. We store information about our family, friends, and acquaintances. We know when their birthdays are, we know what their favorite food is and we know what issues they care about.
So how does this relate to business relationships and CRM systems? A CRM system has the power to generate certain responses to your customers digital actions. An action based on if they did or did not open an email from you with different responses for each action. These are called triggers, similar to a domino effect, one action triggers a response. By creating a series of actions that are triggered by responses you can start to automate the communication that is essential to building relationships.
Not All CRM Systems Are Created Equal
There are tons of options to choose from when selecting a CRM system for your company but not all are created equal. Recommendations from friends and family are great but if you choose a system that doesn’t fit your company’s business model and overall strategy to get, keep and grow your customer base, you will just end up spending money and not getting results. When choosing a system you really need to keep your strategy in mind, not the tactics you want to use, your strategy. If you want to know more about the difference between the two, check out my other article “Tactics VS Strategy”.
If you’re an established business who already has a CRM system you will still want to do regular evaluations of that system to see if it still fits your strategy and business model. We live in a world where technology moves forward at an extremely fast pace, and what we used 10 years ago might not be the best fit to grow your company today. They key to success in marketing is constant evaluation, nothing is a guarantee because no one can make a decision for someone else! Even if you do all of the things people on every blog, self-help book and forum say, it may still not be a good fit for your business model and strategy. Changing things to help your business move forward is not a bad thing. All it means is that you’re doing something different so that you can end up with a different result, and if your current methods are not giving you the results you want you have to do something different because you want a different result.
Do I Have The Right System?
If you’re a small business owner, whether you’re just getting started or have been around for decades you should ask yourself these 3 questions.
1. Does my current system create a two way communication channel?
2. Does my system allow me to automate communications with customers based on behavior?
3. Does my system allow me to communicate with customers across multiple channels?
If you answered no to all of these questions then you’re most likely not using the right system for your business model and overall strategy to get, keep and grow your customer base. My suggestion to anyone who has answered no to all of these questions is to evaluate your business model, strategy and then your current system. Once you have done this you can start to look for a system that fits the needs of your business model and strategy.