Imagine launching an advertising campaign without knowing who your target audience is. Sounds ridiculous, right? After all, developing an effective marketing strategy requires a deep understanding of who your target customers are, what they want from your brand, and the types of marketing content they respond to.
That’s why customer relationship management, otherwise known as CRM, is a system used by all types of businesses in every industry. Studies show that CRM assists Australian enterprises in achieving more fruitful and long standing relationships with their customers. No surprise there, as a CRM system allows you to closely understand your customers, helping you effectively communicate with them using a personalised and targeted marketing strategy.
In the past, previous transactions and interactions were the only means for companies to collect valuable information about their customers. Today, as technology continues to re-shape the world, companies can now leverage CRM digital marketing or digital CRM to improve their interactions with leads and increase conversions.
What is digital CRM?
In a nutshell, digital CRM is the use of technologies and communication channels on the Internet (e.g. social media platforms) to enhance customer relationship management. The important goal of digital CRM is to provide a business with a clear picture of each customer’s preferences and online habits in order to make personalisation and automated messaging easier.
Let’s take online shopping as an example. When a customer shops online, they don’t make a purchase right ahead. They usually research about the product and compare prices before reaching a decision.
In other words, just because a prospect expressed interest in one of your products, it doesn’t mean they’ll buy it immediately. Statistics actually show that most e-Commerce customers rarely make it past the first step of the checkout process.
With digital CRM, you can do things like identify when a customer has researched one of your products, enabling you to place targeted ads on social media and other platforms to engage them and keep their interest on you. As the internet is filled to the brim with distracting content, you want to take proactive steps in reminding customers that you offer what they’re looking for. Digital CRM simply allows you to implement a marketing strategy that helps you achieve that goal easier.
What is the relationship between CRM and Digital Marketing?
Now, we’ve come to the meaty part. As CRM is closely tied to a customer’s shopping behaviour online, what then is the relationship between CRM and digital marketing?
Needless to say, CRM and digital marketing go hand in hand. We’ll break down how their relationship affects each other into two major parts:
- Customer Segmentation
CRM digital marketing allows organisations to gain access to the behavioural activities of customers when they’re on social media platforms. This way, organisations can divide their customers based on their interests, behaviours, and attitudes irrespective of their locations and age groups. All of these enable businesses to send messages or communicate with their customers on the basis of their behaviours, interests and attitudes instead of their demographics. It’s a more accurate way of targeting quality prospects.
The data received from social media platforms is then integrated with the existing information within the organisation’s CRM system. The overlaying of data received from digital channels on the existing information help businesses come up with more personalised marketing strategies. For instance, VIP treatment can be given to prestigious customers while special offers and promotions can be targeted towards users who exhibit interests in sales and discounts.
- CRM Can Improve SEO Results
Search engine optimisation, commonly known as SEO, is the process of increasing traffic to your website through organic search results. This is typically done through strategic positioning of relevant keywords throughout your website’s content. With CRM software, you can record conversations and keywords that you have with customers. This includes asking contacts for details about how they found your business, what keywords they used when searching for your products online, and many more. This gives you an idea of what keywords to use to be found online.
It’s also good to note that with SEO, content is king. Valuable content that answers the search intent of users are more likely to land spots on the first page of Google. As mentioned above, CRMs keep a record of your conversations with customers. Those conversations can give you useful content ideas, especially if you talk about the troubles they face and the kind of solutions they need. When you know exactly what your customers want, it will be so much easier to create content that’s useful to them and to prospects that face the same issues. As search engines are also focused on providing searchers with solutions to their queries, you’ll rank higher in the SERPs. That’s just one of the amazing things that CRM and digital marketing offer when combined together.
Additionally, CRM and digital marketing are all about building brand awareness and an excellent reputation with your customers. You can definitely use CRM to improve your brand’s credibility, develop brand advocates and build a positive reputation online. You can even utilise CRM to track down loyal patrons and ask if they can post positive reviews about your brand on online review platforms such as Google and Yelp. Positive online reviews will make search engines and people trust your business. Reviews are also a form of user-generated content, which is invaluable to search engines.
The benefits of using CRM in digital marketing
Customers have never been easy to figure out, even if you have an efficient CRM system in place. Recently, they have been showing even more puzzling behaviour as they shop online and search for services in the digital age.
Here’s how using CRM in your digital marketing strategy will help improve your conversions and ultimately grow your business.
- Reduce costs
When you run a business, you constantly look for ways to reduce costs. Having CRM in your digital marketing strategy will save your team time and money, as CRM systems can manage and analyse customer data. Instead of someone in your team sift through all of the data and make sense of all the information, the CRM system can automatically do it. This frees up team members to focus on more important tasks.
A CRM system can also look at audience data more in-depth than humans, providing you with better data for your campaigns. This creates better opportunities for you to obtain conversions and increase your ROI.
- Build better campaigns
As previously stated, CRM provides your digital marketing strategy with more accurate data to help build better campaigns. But it doesn’t stop there.
When you attract leads, you attract them through various marketing methods and people will interact with your campaign in different ways. Whether it’s through email or social media, each customer has a different experience when interacting with your brand. It’s important to understand their individual and collective experiences so you can create better campaigns for them.
CRM and digital marketing help you do this by targeting prospects with content specifically designed form. When their experiences are personalised, they’ll be more interested in your brand. It makes them feel important and in turn, they’ll trust your company more than others. This also builds brand loyalty and leads to more conversions for your business.
- Create consistency
When you run an online marketing campaign, it’s vital that you’re consistent across all platforms. After all, you want to send the same message to each customer, in the way that best speaks to them.
When you have CRM in your digital marketing strategy, you can be sure that your brand’s messaging is consistent throughout your campaign. For instance, CRM marketing software organises client information, so it’s easier for your team to keep track of past clients. CRM systems can also automate specific processes like sending thank you emails after a customer purchase. They ensure that no customer enquiries are missed and customers receive personalised emails that improve their overall experience with you.
- Develop stronger relationships
After you earn conversions, your campaign doesn’t end yet. Your customers aren’t one-and-done purchasers. After you’ve put in the time and effort to build a strong relationship with them, it’s important that you keep them coming back for more.
Customer service is a major aspect that helps you build better relationships. For instance, if a customer has issues or concerns with a certain product or service, they’ll need immediate help. With a CRM system in place, they’ll get the assistance they need.
CRM, across all your digital marketing channels, lets your customers have access to all the resources they can tap when issues arise. This gives your customers gain a better impression of your business, and they’ll feel more confident about choosing your brand over your competitors.
In a competitive online world, new approaches are needed for building a committed customer base and companies need the right tools to thrive and succeed. As the world becomes more connected each day, people are searching for personalised experiences, and that’s exactly what you can offer them when you incorporate CRM in your digital marketing campaign.
Remember, no matter how good your sales team is, they cannot do everything. With CRM and digital marketing in your arsenal, you won’t only score leads, but you’ll nurture them and eventually turn them into loyal customers.