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Can CRM Benefit Your Social Media Marketing

Social CRM Benefits

Social selling is a trending strategy in the business world. Essentially, it means using social media platforms in your sales process — not just for marketing.

To do this effectively, you need a system for gathering data about customers and monitoring social activity. That’s where a CRM comes in.

Many of today’s systems include a social component that can help you have more effective conversations and increase your chance of sales.

Social CRM Benefits

Want to learn more? Here’s how a good CRM can benefit your social strategy.

1. Learn More About Your Customers and Prospects

The more information you have about a prospect, the better chance you have of making the sale. Learning about potential customers gives you the ability to target offers or conversation styles to their personal preferences.

Social media can be a deep source of information. A person’s profile can give you a glimpse into who they really are — what they like, what they don’t like, where they live, what companies they love, etc. And CRM can help you pull that data and turn it into something usable.

Ivana Taylor of DIY Marketers says, “Today’s CRMs often use sophisticated technology to reach out over the internet and social media channels to collect a contact’s engagement over social media.

This is important because it gives you (the salesperson) the ability to get to know the prospect before you have a conversation and even to reach out over social media to begin that relationship.”

2. Look for Opportunities to Engage

Really, CRM is all about relationships. And social media provides you with even more opportunities to create those relationships.

The combination of info from your CRM and the easy conversations that take place on social media can make for a powerful combination.

Taylor explains, “You can enter a prospect into your CRM, grab their social media profiles, watch what they share on social media, listen for opportunities to start conversations and engage with them — not pitch and sell.”

3. Move Those Relationships into Your Sales Process

The first conversations you have with potential customers on social should NOT be sales related. It’s just an opportunity for you to get on their radar. Engage with them in an authentic way, using the information you have.

But once you’ve made that connection, there may be opportunities for selling. Say you have a retail store located in your city’s downtown area. You might see a prospect post a question about a special event happening in the downtown area one day. Provide them with a helpful answer — free of your sales pitch.

They might appreciate the interaction and pay you a visit while attending the event. This gives you the opportunity for more genuine conversation. But you could also offer them a special discount if they’d like to purchase from your store.

One last point: Don’t just bombard people with social media messages about your products. You have to offer something that’s helpful to them. Basically, the social media interaction is you opening the door. Gradually, you can work on integrating your pitch and selling to them.

Next Steps:

1. Start with the right tools. Find a CRM that offers some kind of social selling feature.

2.  Identify target customers. Use your CRM to pull in social media data that could help you make sales down the line.

3. Look for opportunities. Start real conversations with people and help them solve problems. This might eventually lead to sales.

 

Image: Depositphotos.com

25 thoughts on “Can CRM Benefit Your Social Media Marketing

  • Yes!
    CRM can Benefit Your Social Media Marketing because now a days Billions of people are on Social media and for business, it becomes a default option
    You need to look out these things on social media!

    1. Monitor Your Brand
    2. Send Social Updates
    3. Discover Leads
    4. Capture Leads
    5. Direct Message (DM) From Your CRM
    6. Derive Actionable Insights
    I hope this helps!

  • Hey Annie,

    What an enlightening post! This is stacked with incredibly valuable information.

    I am looking ahead to employing the extraordinary resources you have shared. Any other recommendations on CRM other than Zoho? What about Keap? Great article!

    I am presently working for a start-up called Efortles, which aspires to empower small business owners. Currently, we offer CPA services for free, which is just the initiation of our objective to eliminate all obstacles confronting small businesses.

    I will certainly share this information with all my friends, customers, and
    associates. Looking ahead to your next post.

  • Building greater relationships with your customers can increase your revenue. The more connected you are with your customers, the more loyal they will be to your brand.

    • Hi Anil,

      Thank you for commenting. Yes, more businesses need to understand that without a relationship, you don’t get repeat sales. While many start ecommerce sites because they don’t want to interact with their buyers, if they do their sales can increase without having to buy more traffic.

  • Yes, a social CRM helps to track our customer’s digital footprints and lets us guess their interests, preferences and behaviour. Also it helps us know and understand the content our target prospects are searching for and consuming.

    • Hi Lizzy,

      The least expensive fully-featured CRM that I am aware of is Zoho CRM. You can see Zoho CRM Pricing here.

      Our parent company Small Business Trends, LLC uses Zoho Apps and really likes them. And that is what led to Zoho sponsoring the main BizSugar site and Mastermind Community.

      There are many free forever CRMs you can try, but if you want their advanced features they quickly get very pricey.

      We’d love to have you join our Mastermind Community. I wrote a post on why here.

  • I completely agree with the the author’s opinion about CRM systems. First of all, this is the place where we can find all the useful information about customers and their needs, and where we can control this customer base.

    With a CRM, we secure our business. Moreover, I believe that conscious work using a CRM is the first step towards building an IT infrastructure and your own business.

    This is the core around which the entire sales strategy will be built. Having implemented CRM, the company goes to a new level.

    • Thank you for your comment, Mike. Now that there are free CRMs, there will hopefully be more small businesses testing them out. The only way to really learn to use one is to jump in with both feet and do it.

  • CRM is absolutely helpful for social media marketing especially in terms of building trust and brand loyalty among customers. It can be incorporated into our sales and marketing strategies including brand monitoring. Thank you for sharing!

    • Hello Adam,

      Businesses that learn to integrate a CRM with their social media activities will definitely have the advantage over those who don’t. Thank you for taking the time to comment.

  • Yeah, Social media is an important place. It’s where customers talk about what what they care about, how they feel, and their opinions on your business. If a customer has a problem with your product or service, they can now let all of their friends and family know about it instantly. Social media should be a core component of your business’s Customer Relationship Management software plan, but a successful Social CRM strategy is about more than racking up likes and followers to drive site traffic.

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