Social CRM for your Business

How do you identify relevant messages for your brand from the universe of conversations online? That's where Social CRM comes in to picture. As a marketeer, you are trying your best to get the right message in front of the target customer at the right time. This could be over traditional forms of marketing through newspapers, billboards, TV etc or even through digital channels. However when your customers (existing / potential) are feeding inputs back to you in the form or queries, appreciation or even complaints over different social media platforms, you would need a tool to sift through all that data.

What typically started out as social media management with brands sharing updates or promoting products has now been taken to a different level. With an increasing number of people being active online on various social media platforms, the customer has one additional channel to post their experiences with any product / service. Now social media platforms are where a significant number of your customers are actively trying to engage with your brand. Social CRM is where the next level is.There will be a lot of noise that one needs to filter out and this is where the tool will come handy. 

How do you start out and make the most of it? Firstly you need to select a platform that will talk to different functions such as campaigns, sales and marketing to help you track the customer across several touchpoints. Be human and while responding back to customers, ensure that you're not being didactic. This particular point will call for resources that are trained to be hands on with customer service. Response times also need to be taken care of. According to a study, 42% customers expect a reply within 1 hour on social media. Using the tool, marketeers can also identify key influencers for their brand and develop tactics to engage with them though blogger outreach, guest blogging on partner on articles. Sentiment analysis will also provide a plethora of insight when it comes to customer experience. Should you have a large percentage of negative sentiment, then the product / service would need some tweaks or updates soon. In some cases, brands can also reward customers to build loyalty. The vast expanse of social media conversations offer a fertile ground to reap benefits for brands as compared to just generating sales and that's where marketeers need to be listening.

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