CUSTOMER RELATION MANAGEMENT (CRM) PROCESS: WHAT IT’S AND WHY?

 

CRM can simply be defined as a method by which business keeps track of and organizes contact (priority profile) of both its current and potential customers. By doing so, business aims at increasing the volume and level of services provided and at the same time developing and maintaining potential markets and customer engagement and hence increases profitability and sustainability.

HOW AN OPTIMAL CRM CAN BE DEVELOPED AND MAINTAINED?

Scholars and interest business groups have developed and introduced several methods by which businesses can implement desirable CRM levels. These methods can be organized into five major steps, also known as processes. These are:

1. Identification of targeted market and value proposition. This can be achieved by creating data base of priority customer profile in which individual customers are organized such that the most valuable ones are listed on the top of the hierarchal order, followed by the least valuable, and so on and so forth.
2. Defining CRM strategy: at this stage, businesses should choose the best customer relation and services type that suit them. This can be done through, for example, building a dedicated online social community of CRM.
3. Handling individual customers: this can be achieved in accordance to customer priority profile data base as well as the chosen strategy of the business.
4. Measurement of performance. This is often done by selected software such as SAAS (Software as a service delivered online). It is well documented that this software reduces cost to its minimum for most businesses.
5. Developing and maintaining re-engagement of customer: Keeping customers engaged is one of the most challenging tasks for most businesses. However, the most effective and recommended methods by sustainable customers engagement can be achieved are customer satisfaction surveys; email and; social media.

In age of virtual media where there are millions of businesses competing with one another I wonder how would this situation affect the way we visualize CRM and how we can overcome these new challenges?

http://www.goldmine.com/wp-content/uploads/10-Steps-to-CRM-Success.pdf

http://thinkaboutcrm.com/crm-process-step-by-step

 

Class update

Hey everyone,

I haven't been able to get anything to save into eLearn since Thursday including any updated marks, blog topics or the class lecture from Friday.  I will keep trying and hope it is back up and working properly by Monday.

Christina

Brand Evaluation - Task #6

This is the first task for Part B of your Brand Evaluation assignment.  As mentioned in class, make sure you comment on specific details about your brand so I can easily identify that you are evaluating your brand.

How is your brand doing with their search marketing?  What page are they on when you use common keywords?  How do they rank compared to their competition on the top 3 search engines?  What types of on-page and off-page tactics are they using?  Try using some of the tools discussed in class - tell me what they are doing well and how you think they could improve.

This task is worth 15 points. 

Strategic Customer Relationship Marketing

In the past, a customer was defined by a transaction, simply put, they were what they bought.  Once they handed over their money in exchange for a good or service, our relationship as a company with that customer ended.   This type of marketing is known as transactional marketing, where the business focuses on maximizing its sales efficiency through increasing the volume of individual sales. 

http://www.ravenwerks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/retail02.jpg

In the modern world, global competition has become much more intense and as a result of this increased competition, customers have gained significant buying power. Therefore, businesses have been forced to look for more sustainable sources of competitive advantage, better separating themselves from their competitors.  This has led to the introduction of relationship marketing. Relationship Marketing involves developing a deeper ongoing relationship with your customers post-transaction, where the business focuses on their customers’ loyalty.

There are various practices of relationship marketing that companies use in today’s society:   

• Loyalty Programs – Rewarding their consumers with points for every transaction that can be accumulated into cash value towards a purchase. i.e. Shoppers’ Optimal Points
•  Email Marketing – Sending out frequent emails notifying customers of promotions or store-offerings. i.e.  American Eagle’s All Access Membership
• Social Media Marketing – With the explosion of social media, it has made it easier for businesses to create a 2-way communication channel between its customers; i.e. blogs, Facebook, Twitter, mobile apps
• Information Technology/Databases – Although expensive and difficult to implement, companies can implement technology systems that track employees’ purchases; used to gain a better understanding of which operational components add value and which do not, making your company more efficient.

The objective of relationship marketing is to gain loyalty and trust from your current customers, the following video demonstrates the four behaviours of building brand loyalty.

There are various benefits associated with relationship marketing initiatives, both economical and reputational.  Companies can realize higher profit margins with long-term customers, in fact, according to surveys, the top 16% of the company’s customers account for 105% of its profits with the bottom 28% eroding profits by 22%[1].  Furthermore, these loyal customers provide stable cash flows and generate word-of-mouth referrals to other prospective customers.  For a more detailed explanation of the advantages that can come from implementing relationship marketing click here, this website provides statistical proof.

Hope this blog has provided you with a better understanding of Strategic Customer Relationship Marketing! 

Thanks for reading J

 Darcy Davis

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[1] www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDMQFjAC&url=http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9240&ei=StOVUOmeBOru2QXO_4DABA&usg=AFQjCNFWqknEM8ZDFqDNtPfm2dkL3aVIZg&sig2=YK3tj5_6C-C3Ir9_VzY6Gg

Student Post/ Content Marketing for B2B

What is content Marketing? Content Marketing is defined as the creation and distribution of content across the web that users find valuable and significant, and that could pour visitors to the website. In term of marketing, content are all the things on your website. Your web content must be great and useful information or tools that your visitors would find meaningful and helpful.

 With this definition in mind, we would like to discuss “Content Marketing for Business to Business (B2B)”.

 In B2B online marketing, content are used in different forms to inform and motivate customer. It could have and immense success through the long buying cycles. When prospects see useful content published by your brand through your website, and other social channel, they would devour them, and they would lead themselves through much of the initial phase of awareness, interest, and consideration.  Smarter and good content is more capable, and it could educate your prospect before you get to the sales discussion, and make the sales cycle shorter, and it could have an impact on order volume and referrals.

 

                                  

                                   Content Marketing is a building stones for B2B        

 

What matter in B2B marketing content is not more content, but thoughtful, creative and consistent information which is designed for a particular audience, specific outcome, an individual objective, and part of an overall strategy? Content is like a building stones to keep visitors on your website longer. Every word matter, and must speak volume that builds interest.

 

                                         Every Word Must Count

 

Here are 5 strategies of good content marketing for B2B:

1.    Planning – should be adaptable and capable of analytical input and interactive improvement. You must be opening minded and be willing to put in new and creative ideas.

 2.    Prospect Central- Understand customer needs, interests, goals, and pin points throughout the buying cycles. Seeing things from the prospect’s point of view will help B2B marketers to develop a content that echoes, engages, and gets shared.

 3.    Give to Get- You must give something valuable to expect in return. Give information that is valuable, useful and inspirational to consumers, and the brand’s business objectives.

4.    Promotion - Let the content be promoted through spokes or social channel among communities that are interested. Promotion can attract traffic, social shares, and links.

 5.    Analyze and Optimize – creating, analyzing and optimizing your content is effective and inspirational.

 

                                   Content Depth Compare with Prospect Engagement

 If a B2B brand could consistently create, optimize, socialize, and promote great prospect-engaged content, the community will respond with share, referrals, engagement, links, and even sales.


http://www.toprankblog.com/2012/04/b2b-social-media-content-marketing/

 

http://demand.eloqua.com/LP=3298?elqoffer=GGcontent&GoogleCampaign=ContentMarketing&sls=PPC_Google_ContentMarketing_2012&gclid=COnPh-y0n7MCFexFMgodawQAiA


Submitted By: THEOPHILUS A. KIADII

 

Landing Pages… convert the curious into the customer

A well crafted landing page should be focused and created to target your audience, and potential customers, for your business. It should be clean and uncluttered, easy to navigate, promote a concise message about the product or service your business offers and provides a clear CTA (Call To Action), a means (button or link) to prompt the viewer to follow a path (or convert) to a sale. The goal is to have a high conversion rate by prompting the curious, potential visitor to your page to register their information (to generate leads) or convert them into a buying customer.  But first you have to direct the curious to your landing page.

The landing page is reached though an existing link, often in an advertisement, or by way of an online search. You can boost the accuracy of that search for your business by implementing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. These can easily be built into your site and landing page during it's construction and can play an important role in placing your site before competitors in search results.

Google, a leader in online search, offers suggestions to assist in landing page optimization. Search data is collected by way of "web crawlers" (or bots) that search the Internet to gather site data. You can assist the search bots and help push your landing page to the top of search results by following some simple page creation rules:

• creation of unique, accurate and descriptive web page titles (HTML <Title> tag)
• using the "description" meta tag in your HTML code (using words relevant to your business)
• short but descriptive page file names or links (URLs - Uniform Resource Locator), using hyphens as separators so bots can recognize the individual words (eg, dress-formal.html - yes; DressFormal.html - no, words not easily searchable)
• make site navigation and the Call To Action easy to find and access

You've help guide potential customers to your landing page through boosting search results, now the structure of the page itself comes into play. The following video provides 8 tips for optimizing your landing page.

Your business wants and needs a high "conversion rate" to be successful. Boosting the search results for your site through SEO techniques and implementing the design tips provided will greatly help convert the "curious browser" into a "buying customer".


References

SEO Starters Guide -
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Learn how Google discovers, crawls, and serves web pages - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70897

Landing Page Optimization - 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_page_optimization

Examples of small business landing pages -
http://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/8-small-business-landing-pages-critiqued-for-conversion/

What is a landing page -
http://www.vertster.com/landing-page-design/what-is-a-landing-page/

8 Tips video -
http://www.vertster.com/landing-page-design/what-is-a-landing-page/

Search Bot image -
http://seoyourblog.com

Submitted by Pamela Ramos Peraza

HTML5

HTML5

If a fast-paced server is being sought, then HTML5 is the solution to the entire problem. It is essential to be clear on the fact that HTML5 is not an XML or SGML language. However, on the contrary, XML can be used in a pattern of serialization which is called HTML5. There is not much difference between XML and HTML5 apart from the fact that the former uses a rather rigid syntax than the latter which is why most of the time, HTML5 is used instead of XML.

There is something of significant interest to the internet users which compels them to deal with HTML5. It has a much diversified semantics which means that it has a total of 30 additional semantics which could be used easily in any kind of static page. In fact, there are so many additional controls that could lead to a decline in the usage of java script altogether. There is also a revolutionized HTML5 structure which follows the pattern in this order :

•    Nave
•   Header
•   Footer
•   Aside
•   Article

One more thing that needs a lot of attention while dealing with HTML 5 is the meta tag. There are some users who are accustomed to using the XHTML version which is accompanied with longer meta tags unlike this version which has an advanced presentation of these. Html 5 does not make use of any kind of body elements unlike HTML4. However, there is still a version of this kind of browser which requires a lot more than just a body. (Lawson, 2011)

The HTML 5 has currently dominated the scenario. It has become a necessity to further knowledge in the semantics of computer. This means that any computer user will have to read up on HTML5 to comprehend better. A great place to understand HTML5 is www.brucelawson.co.uk

References

Lawson, B. (2011). Introducing HTML5. New Riders.

Pilgrim, M. (2010). HTML5: Up and Running. Mark O'Reilly.