CRM - October 2007 - (Page 24)

SMB MARKETING business- and customer-centric efforts that can generate revenue. When companies begin to think about CRM, they tend to immediately turn to sales force automation (SFA). While it is beneficial to automate the routine sales activities of a business, SMBs might want to consider an alternative early on: turning to marketing automation instead. The culture of marketing, AMIPartners’ McCabe says, is to “measure what they do, seeing and measuring return on marketing campaigns—who replied, who converted—and working with a lot of lists. It’s not [like] the very personal interaction sales is used to—marketing targets by the thousands.” SMBs can see great return on investment from a marketing automation initiative compared to one involving SFA—and it’s often much easier to execute. (There’s also less of a participation hurdle: Because the benefits of marketing automation tend to be more readily visible, marketing staffers are often more willing to adopt the technology than salespeople are.) “It’s not just about eyeballs you’re driving to your Web site, it’s also how they convert from visitor to customer.” “Basically, the bar is getting raised,” McCabe says. “If you can’t offer the same level of service—whether it’s marketing, sales, or service—someone else is probably doing it better, so you’re losing if you’re not doing it well.” She recognizes that large companies may have more money and resources to evaluate and implement, but SMBs have the advantage of maintaining a more personal connection to the customer. She adds, “The expectation [the consumer] has now for how people market to us is pretty high, and it will only get higher.” Customer management will eventually become impossible for one person to singlehandedly maintain, no matter what the size of the enterprise. Consequently, it’s imperative for businesses to look past the day-to-day activities and automate their processes. The situation used to be that the lack of communication between sales, marketing, and customer service would result in a rift between the parties. Integration introduced “complete transparency in the company,” Crenshaw says. “Everyone can see the processes and say, ‘Okay, we sold $25,000 today, great.’ The cool thing that happened was that [CRM] created a nice streamlined process between sales and marketing that never existed before—marketing was proving their worth to sales and sales got the complete insight into what marketing was doing,” he adds. From there, sales and marketing can see what worked best and what needs improvement. FLOOR IT SMBs face unique challenges, but they also have substantial advantages over their larger counterparts. They’re more flexible, more adaptable, and more responsive—if they do it right. “Because SMBs are inherently smaller, senior management is 24 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | OCTOBER 2007 naturally closer to decisions involving the marketing offers, promotions, and the communications vehicles their company uses to take their products to market,” Callaghan says. Having higher-ups intimately connected to CRM means “management can instantly react to incoming feedback from marketing campaigns, [as well as] sales feedback and feedback received through the customer service department,” he adds. An SMB has a “tremendous advantage in growing the size and loyalty of its customers by learning from its customers and proactively addressing their requirements quickly,” he says. CRM vendors marketing to SMBs also have to tailor their strategy. They have to make their systems very simplified, integrated, and clear.“It’s almost got to leap out at SMBs and whack them on the side of the head,” McCabe says. SMBs want the same capabilities offered to larger enterprises but they don’t have the time or resources to figure out what works best.“What seems like pocket change [for a large enterprise] may be the entire IT budget for an SMB,” McCabe says. So vendors have to price their products at 75 percent to 80 percent of the price tag they show the bigger companies. An SMB need not project itself as if it were a large enterprise, but there are affordable applications that can allow it to compete with one. Also, because so few SMB staffers are formally trained to use the Internet, SMBs should look for highly user-friendly products. “The expectation for Internet-based product/services is that [customers] should be able to figure it out on their own,” Swensrud says. But for those who want an added reassurance, most systems offer professional services to aid in implementation and problem-solving. But the responsibility to find the best solution falls primarily in the hands of the business itself. “You need to do a little homework” to pick the CRM application that’s the right fit, McCabe says. What worked for one company may turn out to be a disaster for another—“the best thing is to hold each of [the vendors’] feet to the fire [and have them] prove to your level of satisfaction in terms and conditions, pricing, and everything else that it’s going to be the best solution to solve your problem,” she says. Experts and business owners agree that the greatest marketing challenge is to gather all the data and be able to take advantage of it in the most cost-effective way. SMBs need to focus on growing their customer base and keeping their customers happy by targeting marketing messages from as relevant a perspective as possible. More than anything else, “your service is your brand,” Crenshaw says. “Focus on customer experience. If you do that, you’re going to beat out anybody.” Contact Editorial Assistant Jessica Tsai at jtsai@destinationCRM.com. www.destinationCRM.com 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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