If you are thinking about starting a company or are already running one, you might have thoughts about purchasing a CRM solution. Furthermore, you might ask yourself if having a CRM guarantees more moving leads and if it’s worth the money. If we know that customer relations management software can be expensive, especially for startups, asking yourself this question is not strange at all. However, even with the higher cost, CRM brings a lot of value to the table. Let us see how CRM affects your business and is it really worth the money spent.
How to convert potential leads into returning customers with CRM?
Every sales lead is a potential client. The best way to convert leads into customers is to gather data about them and send it to the marketing and sales teams for analysis. That analysis will later be used to create marketing campaigns and sales strategies that will help you grow your business. CRM software makes this entire process a lot easier. With its powerful features that focus on customer research, it makes leads generation and leads management quick and easy.
How CRM improves data analysis
Our minds have limited capacity. On another hand, the digital database that CRM uses can store unlimited quantities of information. Furthermore, the analytics and reporting features are powered by a strong AI system that does all the virtual “heavy lifting” for you. It goes through thousands of lines of data, does customer behavior analysis, and returns reports with meaningful information. A complex process like this one is not something that we can do without the help of technology, at least not on this scale. That’s why it is worth investing in CRM.
Full automation capabilities of CRM
One of the reasons why having a CRM guarantees more leads is that you can fully automate all of the processes. We already spoke about how CRM helps marketing and sales teams to analyze data and create forecast reports. Based on those reports, teams create campaigns that boost the conversion rate and increase sales. Running those campaigns is not a simple process.
If we take just a small e-mail marketing campaign as an example, we can already see how much time it consumes. Creating content, sending e-mails, analyzing customer feedback, that all require a team of people who will track the progress and tweak the performance. With the help of CRM software, we can fully automate the majority of those processes, like sending e-mails, collecting the data on when the e-mail was open, etc.
Automation helps save time. As a result, your employees can focus on other tasks. Also, the automation of tasks removes human error.
CRM improves other lead generation strategies
The most popular lead generation strategies are:
- e-mail campaigns;
- social media posts;
- blogging;
- opt-in opportunities, like webinars, video demos, free reports, etc.;
- improving landing pages;
- writing ads;
- giving better offers or promotional deals;
- remarketing;
- quality content;
All of these strategies do very well on their own. However, if you boost them with CRM features, they can create much better results.
None of these strategies will be successful if you don’t have customer data. Sure, you can always create e-mail campaigns, write blog articles, do social media, and everything else. However, if there is no customer data to back up your campaigns, you won’t be able to analyze how successful they are, or what needs to be changed.
Profiling options of CRM that allow you to collect data on your clients work as a database of all the useful information you will need. Best of all, you store all of that data on a single platform, so all teams can use it simultaneously. Furthermore, this approach to collecting data removes redundancies or outdated information that often happen due to multiple databases.
Pitfalls to be aware of
Even though CRM software provides a set of powerful tools that will help you generate more leads, do not think this will be a done deal once you get it. Running a CRM still requires constant work, and a lot of time, effort, and energy. If you don’t have qualified people behind it, having a CRM will not make that much of a difference.
Furthermore, overcomplicating things can also be a double-edged sword. Since you have that many options at your disposal, there is always the danger of creating complex processes that you don’t really need. Instead of helping your team to save time, these processes will consume more time. Before you get a CRM, create a plan, and only buy features that will be of use.
Finally, another danger of having a CRM is collecting garbage data. By that, we mean data that has no use to your company. When you have a large database where you can store everything, chances are you will store everything, even things you don’t need. This way you will lose important information in the sea of everything else. Before you start creating customer profiles, discuss with your teams what data you need to collect.
Having a CRM guarantees more moving leads – yes or no?
With everything said so far, we can safely say that having a CRM guarantees more moving leads. CRM software helps you organize your business, and collect customer data. Furthermore, it provides support to all the teams in your company and boosts the performance of other lead generation strategies.
Best of all, full automation features and AI technology will do all the heavy lifting that today we cannot do ourselves. Still, have in mind that running a CRM also requires time and energy. Without the proper knowledge of how and when to use CRM, instead of helping your business, it will act as an expensive burden. If you are getting a CRM, it is crucial to invest in employee training to get the best results.
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