CRM For Dummies. Helgeson Lars

Get to know these buzzwords, as they come 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 (oh, and by the way, this educational piece was sponsored by ACME Widget Company). It’s a subtle way of getting people to read the pieces your marketing people write.

      People “consume” content 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; Figure 1-3 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 this information within your CRM, and your sales and marketing teams work together to the benefit of both.

       FIGURE 1-3: A blog is a good example of content marketing.

       Personalized content

      Personalized 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 print “Dear Joe” at the top of a letter written to Joe. Nowadays, you can do that with email and webpages. You can even put totally customized pages (known as personalized URLs, or PURLs) together based on what you know about the reader. More targeted personalization in your marketing has a direct, positive impact on converting your leads into paying customers.

People listen 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; see Figure 1-4. It’s like hearing a story that was made just for you; you listen when you feel someone is speaking directly to you.

       FIGURE 1-4: Personalized emails are better received.

      

Personalizing content always brings up privacy considerations, 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 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 conversions also record other actions that don’t involve a transaction, such as downloading an e-book or filling out a form.

      Conversions can have multiple stages, and are 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 automation around people advancing (or not advancing) to the next stage, and measure your success in driving people toward the conversion at the bottom of your sales funnel. Turn to Chapter 11 to set up an automation process.

      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 and methods of improving conversion rates. Use buyer journeys 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 consultants and employees to show you the numbers that back up their recommendations. While experience is a good teacher, it can also lead you astray in a world of changing market 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. Turn to Chapter 15 for more information about how to measure your CRM data.

      For example, my company decided to try Facebook’s lead capture system. After four weeks the numbers didn’t justify continuing, so the decision was made to stop using it. Had I not analyzed the numbers, my company may still be using a channel that doesn’t pay off as well as other channels. (As a side note, Facebook changed its system later, and after trying it again, my company found better success with it.)

       Big data

      Big data means that people have accessibility to more data now than a few years ago; oftentimes it’s unstructured, massive, and hard to understand. You can accumulate all kinds of data if you want to – demographic data about your contacts, website clicks, email opens and clicks, social media, and video, for example. But if you can’t make any sense of it, and it isn’t actionable, it’s useless.

      Understanding what to do with all the data you gather is much more important than simply accumulating mountains of data you can’t use. Conversely, not enough data may lead you in the wrong direction, too.

      Your Complete CRM, because it collects data from all the channels you use for sales, marketing, and operations, generates a lot of data. Make sure the 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. Chapter 15 covers how to capture and track data; Chapter 17 helps you see how the data has an impact on your business.

       Segmentation

      When marketers talk about segmentation, they mean that they are looking at smaller subsets 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 one-to-one personalization, which is possible, but challenging, both from a strategy and technology perspective.

      A good CRM helps you understand what your various market segments are and how they interact with your brand. (See Chapter 4.) CRM platforms should make it easy for you to target and send personalized messages to your market segments.

Figure 1-5 shows how you can segment an email targeted toward a specific interest. This particular message is sent to people who expressed interest in email marketing, as opposed to sales, marketing automation, or customer service products. You may send different messages based on interests, demographics such as gender or age, or actions taken, such as if one of your salespeople has already introduced your product to the lead.

       FIGURE 1-5: This email is sent to a specific segment – contacts interested in email marketing.

       Buyer persona

      A buyer persona is a characterization of a particular market segment. If you’re targeting middle-aged housewives,