An Overview Of Customer Relationship Management

The Problem

 

Times have changed. When your business first started it made sense to track customers by email, address books and spreadsheets. But now your business is growing — and more growth means it’s time to grow the way you run your business. Spreadsheets are difficult to create, impossible to manage your team with, and hard to understand. Valuable knowledge about prospects gets lost in the inboxes of your sales team. Documents go missing or thrown away. All this is bad news for your business because an inconsistent customer communication means a poor customer journey.

The Solution

 

The real problem is that your information is spread out across multiple platforms and people. This makes it very difficult to share data and collaborate during the sales process.  

Here’s where CRM comes in.

What’s A CRM?

 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is technology that manages all customer and prospect relationships and interactions. This is a critical tool for inbound marketing.  CRMs allow businesses to manage relationships with customers, helping businesses grow.

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How Do I Use A CRM?

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If your CRM is the engine that runs your business, the fuel that runs this engine is your automations. What’s an automation? It’s a really clever way to engage with your customers or prospects without you or your team having to do it. Your automations are like your sales team… a sales team that you don’t have to pay. They’re a series of pre-written actions your customers and prospects will go through while they engage in your content. These actions guide them through a sales funnel, converting prospects from marketing qualified leads to sales qualified leads. Best of all, your audience will be delivered content they really want. This content is called a lead generator. Check out the illustration on the left to see how it works.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Today, technology has changed how people obtain information and consequently, marketing has undergone a massive transformation. Outbound marketing tactics, like television and radio advertising, are not as effective as they once were. Now comes the age of inbound marketing, driven by the internet and social media.

 Inbound marketing refers to marketing strategies that focus on pulling audiences in instead of going out to get prospects’ attention. This type of marketing pulls visitors in, increases brand exposure, and creates brand authority through the creation of valuable content.

Inbound VS Outbound

We’re an ActiveCampaign Agency

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If your just getting started with a CRM. ActiveCampaign is one of the best CRMs on the market. We love them from their ease of use, great customer service, and robust automations. New Story is a registered reseller with ActiveCampaign. Depending on the plan you pick we can help you get started or even build and manage your account for you.  If you’re not quite sure where to start the answer is always strategy. What are your goals and objectives? New Story can help you develop your marketing strategy with one of our New Story Workshops.

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