CRM - October 2007 - (Page 23)

SMB MARKETING ments,” says Igal Alon, owner of St. Louis–based Mavrik Jewelry, while the other 20 percent is more or less derived from natural search and search optimization. Search-engine marketing only costs money when the ad is clicked on, which addresses companies’ budgetary concerns and hesitancy to commit to long-term advertising contracts. In a holistic marketing effort, that approach carries over, Alon says: When it comes to Mavrik’s offline revenue, for example, 80 percent is driven by word of mouth and only 20 percent comes from traditional advertising. But even the clicks you pay for aren’t the end of the battle. “Most [SMBs] can go to Google and Yahoo! and make [keyword] purchases, but it’s not just about eyeballs you’re driving to your Web site, it’s also how they convert from visitor to customer,” Peiris says. The key is to make keywords as specific to the product as possible to increase the likelihood of attract- to be very focused and very content-rich.” When bloggers do write about their own products or services, they write “focused blogs that help people with tips and tricks and let them know what updates we’ve made.” That level of interaction between bloggers and customers promotes credibility and “increases transparency into your business, but at the same time it increases trust,” Crenshaw says. As a result, he reports, blogs contribute “about 30 percent of our leads.” Programs such as HitTail tell the Web-site host the exact search phrase that led people to the site. Searches are grouped and categorized to suggest what people are interested in—that knowledge might inspire future blog topics. Aside from the opportunity costs of creating a blog, SMBs are also concerned about negative feedback. Although good reviews could vastly improve your reputation, bad reviews seem to hit harder and last longer. To Crenshaw, however,“any type of feed- “When people think email communication is easy, I immediately think they’re doing it wrong—and they’re probably doing something illegal.” ing a customer who is truly interested. SMBs can be at a disadvantage because they are often competing with larger enterprises that are providing similar services. Consequently, they cannot expect to get hits from general keywords—for example, “brown boots” may pop up alongside search results more often, but “camouflage Army surplus boots” would be more likely to draw actual clicks, and more likely to lead to a conversion. Sanjeev Aggarwal, vice president for SMB infrastructure solutions at AMI-Partners, also notes that, while it’s not necessary to be the top result, it is important to show up on the first page of a search. Again, marketing means measuring: Even with search-engine marketing, SMBs need to monitor where customers clicked, what they were searching, which customers then filled out forms on the Web site, and what they bought. By integrating and automating the data, it “not only helps us track our ROI on paid search, but also helps us understand the worth of our natural search activity,” says Kirk Crenshaw, vice president of demand generation and services at Demandbase, a San Francisco–based provider of marketing lists and sales leads. The Internet has also stimulated the rise and popularity of bloggers. “Everybody, start a blog,” Crenshaw says. “What [blogging] does in terms of natural search ranking is amazing…when you start building that content, five or six months down the road people put in searches that are relevant to your solution and your blog is coming up.” The hardest part, Crenshaw adds, is consistently contributing valuable content to the blog. And while it is free press, bloggers should avoid being too sales-oriented, Crenshaw warns. “The relationship to our product is minimal; we mention it every now and then. We try www.destinationCRM.com back is positive.” He argues that no one is expected to be perfect: “If a customer has a concern or complaint with the product or service you provide, you now have a direct means to respond to that concern.” The Internet has elevated the power of communication; there’s no point in trying to block negative feedback, Crenshaw warns. “[That’s] doing more harm than good,” he says. “If someone has an issue with your services, and are so motivated, they will find a way to tell everyone.” And worse: They’ll tell everyone that you tried to muzzle them, as well. MERGE AHEAD Companies can implement any of these marketing strategies, and should try several, but if they can’t integrate and automate the various initiatives, they’ll be struggling with a disjointed mess. SMBs in particular can’t afford to have 10 different solutions (e.g., one for managing contacts, one for emailing, etc.). Simply put, the accumulation costs too much, in money and in technical resources. “For a lot of SMBs, they typically don’t have a lot of IT resources. They don’t want to be maintaining systems; they just want to run their business,” Peiris says. Luckily, there are options available for extremely affordable prices— and hosted or on-demand software and services are gaining favor among SMBs for marketing and other efforts. “It’s a tremendous value to [SMBs] to have a solution that’s hosted,” Peiris says. That way, she adds, the host or provider “worries about whether the [on-demand software] is going to scale for them [and] whether it’s going to be available to them 24/7, and takes care of making sure the application performs well as the business grows.” That frees up the limited resources of an SMB to focus on actual business processes—the CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | OCTOBER 2007 23 http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - October 2007

Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity Coupons Without the Clipping Something Special in the Air Oracle’s Name Game Market Focus: Sports & Entertainment: CRM Scores for Sports Franchises Statistically Speaking The Pulse Required Reading Are We There Yet? Help Them Help Themselves The Chain Gang Pay Day OutClick Media Gets a Second Opinion Best Kiteboarding Makes a Splash with NetSuite True-Blue Service Documentation Secret of My Success The Tipping Point Re:Tooling Pint of View

CRM - October 2007

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