As social media and social media accountability move to the forefront of the marketing conversation there is an equal shift to the importance of having the right social media tools in your wheel house. In the last year, the discussions around social customer relationship management or social CRM have been inching towards center stage. I think most of us are in the same boat in that we hope social CRM is a customer relationship management system on steroids that includes the social conversation.

18 Use Cases of Social CRM

“According to Gartner, social CRM will be a $1 billion subsector of the CRM market by the end of this year. The various sites, blogs and communities that comprise this arena represent the fastest growing areas of the Internet. Further, it now reaches more people than email, according to Nielsen Online.” Source

Here’s my dilemma…what EXACTLY is Social CRM to you? I’ve been playing with some tools that claim to be social CRM and I’ve come to the conclusion that in the rush to get to market it’s possible that these tools focused on way more of the social than they did the CRM part of the equation. And for some companies that may be all they need. It’s also legitimately difficult to play with a true social CRM system because the backbone is your existing CRM system so most of what we are hearing about are tools that have built something that kinda…coulda…might be social CRM.

But my vision of social CRM is very different. I imagine being able to look up a customer record within our existing CRM system and being able to see their most recent posts in my online community, on Twitter or public Facebook pages and integrate that information with any kind of customer service complaints or service requests whether on or offline. I don’t necessarily require that everyone in the organization be able to “engage” with tweets or status updates within the CRM, but I want them to have the insights the information would provide. I imagine creating a prospect record and it automatically populating their online activities so I can see their digital footprint on our website. I would be able to see what information they found valuable and what path they came to our company from.

This information would be hugely insightful so that service people could provide better service and so sales people could provide a better sales experience. That would be awesome and help the company deliver on their promise to deliver great service. Eventually I will want people to be able to engage with the information where it was placed, but most of us are still in the stage of proving this social media stuff even has merit and value so I can personally wait for that.

But there is still a piece to the equation that is missing…ROI. With all the hoopla about how social CRM can improve the engagement experience some of the products I’ve seen completely missed the boat on the revenue part of the equation. I get it. Customer RELATIONSHIP Management system. And engagement is managing the relationship. Sure, but let’s be honest. To understand if that relationship management actually works it needs to be connected to the bottom line. It’s hard to find a traditional CRM today that doesn’t hold customer transaction information and the revenue associated with those sales. So how could it be possible to call a product a social CRM tool and not contain customer sales data? If you ask me, you can’t.

Social CRM is still in its infancy and with all the products that are rushing to the market to try and capitalize on the $1 billion in revenue that is up for grabs it is important that as marketers we call their bluff when we see it. Don’t accept a social CRM system that isn’t a CRM system, because that’s just a social monitoring and engagement tool.

Ask yourself, what CRM system am I using today? Does this social CRM tool do ALL of that and add in social insights? Can I measure how those social insights impact things like service levels, conversion rates, costs, or revenue? If not, your social CRM might not be CRM at all. The great news is that because these tools are so new we all have the opportunity to help guide the direction they go.

So this is your chance. What does social CRM mean to you? What features does it have? What MUST it do? What features are NICE to have? Which tools are BS and which tools are the real deal? Drop a comment and let’s chat about it. Let’s create a list of all the features that we feel make a social CRM system…CRM and a CRM system…social.

Well, yes!  But there is some real validity to the concept.  It may be defined in many ways but this is how I look at it.

Marketing Integration means that you must take activities that are currently being executed individually and work to do them in tandem ultimately with the goal of making them support one another.

Now that’s just my spin on it and I’m sure others have their own.  But why is this really important?  Well, take a minute and think about the activities that you do today within your own sales and marketing department.  Here’s my list from marketing: Brand Strategy, Brand Awareness, PR, Advertising, Lead Generation Campaigns, Lead Nurturing Campaigns, SEO, SEM, Social Media, Product Marketing, Customer Retention Programs/Campaigns, Events, and Product Demonstrations.  From the sales side of the house there’s: outbound telesales, inbound telesales, field sales visits, and relationship-building contacts. I’m sure I missed a few, but you get the point.

Pretty much every company likely does these activities regardless of the role of the person doing them or which side of the house they fall.  What I find really interesting is how many companies do NOT align these activities so they achieve a common goal. Further, how many times I’ve seen individuals steaming ahead down a path and how the other side of the house has absolutely no idea the project is even going on!  I’ll admit I’ve been guilty of this in the past.  Sometimes, you get so busy that stopping to put together yet another death by power point presentation seems daunting.  I’ll get into my thoughts on how I feel about power point presentations in another post, I suppose!

I truly believe the perception at many companies is that the entire marketing mix does in fact work together because it is the sum of all the inputs that delivers the expected output, right? Sure, but do you want to deliver the sales results you had yesterday for the next 5 years?  Or do you want to exceed projections and deliver unprecedented profitability?

Well, I sure as heck do.  And here’s how I think it can be done.  Now, I’ll admit I’ve never been allowed to actually do all of these things in tandem because someone who doesn’t get it always cuts something out.  But it’s my theory and if you want to prove it for me, AWESOME! Let me know, I’ll watch you and cheer every step of the way.  So you wanna be a rockstar?  Well I don’t know what business you’re in, so I’m just gonna call whatever you do…well, IT.

Theme It

In order for your audience to get it, and for you to be able to keep it straight internally you need to have relevant themes of what you are trying to accomplish so everyone can align themselves to support it.  Now don’t go all crazy here and drink from the cup of stupid. You need to pick no more than 4 or 5 common themes or it will get confusing.  Ideally, you could keep it to 2 or 3.  And it doesn’t really even matter what your themes are, think of them almost like secret mission code names.  Now, that could be fun couldn’t it!  So my favorite three themes are Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention, and Brand Awareness. Why?  Because they are simple and I don’t know a single company who isn’t trying to accomplish all three at any given moment in time.  If you get really good at those things, then you can get all fancy schmancy and expand.  But quite frankly, I have yet to work for a company that had mastered all three.  So, if I was going to be clever and come up with some codes names for that..hmmm…let’s see…bear with me…YES!…Here you go…I would call it…Operation Kidnap the Baby, Operation Friends in Low Places, and OperationPerez Hilton.  Now the deal is, EVERYTHING you do has to fall under one of those operations.  Now it is possible you’ll have some that straddle the fence and support multiple operations. And for some people that just sends them for a loop, they can’t throw it into a bucket and therefore it is wrong.  Well I say, I wish everything I did supported multiple objectives.  Why?  Because that is freaking integration and you can truly peg like 1,000 birds with one stone if you play your cards right.  I say peg because I’m an animal supporter, but I’m not all nutso fanatic about it and couldn’t find a cooler way to say it.  No really, it is all about the cool.  So here we go.

Promote It

How do you promote yourself today.  Yeah, that.  Do that.  Tie it into your direct mail campaigns, your web campaigns, your social media activities, your PR activities.  Everything.  See what fits together and push the issue to make them work together.  Gasp…did you say align PR with sales campaigns???  Yup, sure did.  And here’s how.  Stop using campaigns that are about your product to open the door, unless your like mega-huge and everyone wants your product.  I’ll admit, Sherwin-Williams could get away with this effectively and so can Apple and every other mega-brand out there.  But you know what, chances are…YOU can’t.  So do something that the customer finds value in and promote that. Capture their information, and then Kidnap the Baby!  Use something people care about whether it’s a free training class, e-book, chotzky or something else, and then give it to them.  Yes, give it to them FREE.  Why because we all walk around still believing that you can really get things for free.  Now, us marketers, all know that NOTHING is ever really FREE!  Because you are going to give us your information to get it, and then we are going to use it to Kidnap the Baby and afterward we’re going to tell everyone you are one of our Friends in Low Places.

Socialize It

One of my brilliant co-workers who taught me everything I know about social media, whether she knew it or not, coined that term and I totally just stole it!  You know who you are, @JessieX! So, if you are using social media then you know it’s a two-way street as I’ve mentioned before.  And as long as you haven’t upchucked your marketing messaging all over your followers then you still have followers, right!  And since they are still following you then you have done something to provide value to them.  And no, tweeting freaking article links all day doesn’t count. So tell your network what you are doing and start a conversation around it.  Do they like it, hate it, jump up and down on it, or what?  You need the feedback to do better next time, so you might as well get it from your loyal followers.

PR IT

Yeah, I know press releases are pretty much worthless pieces of space but you have to do them.  All companies have to do them.  So if you have to waste your worthless piece of space on some corporate crafted puppet-speak then make it work for you.  Don’t just send out the press release and check it off your list.  Create an optimized version of the release for your website. What does optimized mean?  Well first it means you started with a list of keywords that are relevant to your announcement and you have interwoven them in, and second it means you include links and make it easy for others to link to the page using those cool little web 2.0 linky icons.

Community IT

Do you have a community?  Yeah, I think most companies have invested a couple of dollars in some kind of community board at least.  And some have really set the standard for what community is all about.  My two cents on that starts like this.  A real community offers ways for people to connect, draw value, and find other like-minded individuals to be “friends” with and then use that opportunity to suck the information I need out of them like a Hoover. Because unless you are Mary Theresa, you’re probably a little narcissistic like the rest of us and mostly care about your own needs.  I found a great one in my research.  www.intronetworks.com The level of information they collect in their profile is truly astounding, and they do it in the coolest way I’ve ever seen.  Did I mention, it is all about the cool.  And back to the Hoover, you can use that information to profile groups of your customers into nice little common categories so you can address their needs in one fell swoop.  Now, hold on a minute.  I’m trying to see how many useless catch phrases I can throw into one post.  So count ‘em with me and throw a comment with your guess.  At some point I’ll go back and count them myself.

Rave It

Do you have people who don’t respond?  Sure all of us do.  Well make sure you tell them what they missed and then if you can turn around and give them whatever they missed it’s even better. For example, if you’re holding a webcast record it and send a link to the people who missed it, then turn around and put the video on YouTube so people who don’t come to your site have a chance of seeing it.

Support It

I read a really great two-part e-book called funnelnomics that really drove this home to me. http://is.gd/vXOC You’ve just got to stop doing things one time, or even twice and expecting some phenomenal results.  The key is to keep doing it and measuring it when you have some true data to work with.  Some of the best ideas don’t pay off the first time they are tried.

Don’t Forget About It

Make sure you put every single person into a lead funnel.  If you’re talking about your Friends in Low Places then there is a retention funnel that should exist for them.  You’re still working on Kidnapping the Baby?  Okay well you probably have some funnels for that to.  I personally, like the slow, medium and fast track. Oh, but what about Perez Hilton? We haven’t talked much about him?  Well, all of his friends go into a track to.  You should have a communication plan for all of your press outlets, your advertisers, your tradeshow associations and anyone else.  We get caught into the trap of viewing these as activities or projects that we execute.  But you have to remember that on the other end there are people.  And anytime there is a person you have an opportunity to build a relationship. And when you truly have “friends” in both high and low places who you work to equally support, the rest is history!