Written by Mihai Dragan on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: crm, customer relationship management, online marketing, salesforce automatition, salesforce.com, social crm, twitter
Wikipedia defines CRM (Customer Relationship Management) as “the processes a company uses to track and organize its contacts with its current and prospective customers”. People usually mistake the technology for the process and for good reasons: the companies that spend most on marketing the concept are the ones selling the technologies and want the concept associated to their brands.
The leading CRM software providers at the moment are SAP, Oracle and Salesforce.com with Microsoft growing at a fast rate. Microsoft has actually the highest growth rate, followed by Salesforce.com . The first backed up by its financial power and the second backed up by innovation and flexibility.
It should be noted that “flexibility and innovation” are terms that should be taken with a pinch of salt. The software cannot outpace the process too much as it becomes unusable for the company adopting it.
The benefits
What is the CRM good for? Everything. As a company revolves around its clients a customer-centric approach in management would have huge benefits in any company.
Imagine running a company (well – in case you are not already running one). Start with the beginning: a small company, focused on every customer and willing to serve him or her as good as possible. This is doable when you have a customer base of 5, 10 or even 50 clients. But what happens when you have over 1000 clients, 2000 prospects and you are running large scale advertising or marketing campaigns? You must automate.
This is where the Customer Relationship management comes in. Both as a process and a technology.
Who puts the “Social” in Social CRM ?
Salesforce.com apparently. They have recently integrated Twitter in their platform (quite a nice product). Many of you might ask – why Twitter? Why such a small social network? Well, according to Compete.com, Twitter is not so small anymore. With around 54 million page views it is surpassed only by Facebook and Myspace.
The social networks are the hubs your customers congregate now. This is where they share their views, opinions, feelings, thoughts and a whole lot more.
Brands should tap in this vast resource. They should listen, understand and reach out for the new customers.
The Social CRM has emerged as companies look for non-intrusive but useful ways of integrating social networks and their users. What seemed like a distant shift in perception several months ago seems closer than ever with the new trends.
Have a look at a very interesting presentation regarding the subject, put together by Fabio Cipriani, a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Netherlands and author of Blog Corporativo.
Connecting the dots – Online Marketing and Social CRM
Online marketing is just a part of OCRM (Online Customer Relationship Management). Just like the classic marketing is for the classic CRM.
The trouble with online marketing is that it doesn’t get the credit it should. We, the interactive enthusiasts, are yet to prove overall efficiency. How else can we but with the help of the CRM and its social features. Altough the Social CRM has just started its journey I am sure we will start seeing a great adoption rate in the future.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: article, brands, free, social media
I happened to stumble upon this great article by Amelia Torode on iMedia regarding the ways brands perceive the social web and where they usually fail.
You see – the social web is something that is way more basic than our corporate cultures and economic concepts we have developed over the years. It’s all free.
At least this is how the users see it. Brands don’t want it to be free. They want to use it. They want to benefit from it. And they can too…
But not in the classic way. They will fail trying to monetize it but chances are they will succeed if they will be focusing on earning something else: value. Brand value. By interacting and giving away freebies. Weather free is an article, research results, products or services.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: branding, crisis, long term, Marketing, oportunity, sales, short term
Why did I use VS between Brand building and Sales? Couldn’t they just team up? Can’t we have both of them in our marketing strategy?
Sure we can but in times of crisis management seems to focus on short term clear results and want to see sales figures going up or at least staying afloat. The longer term strategy of building brands, earning consumers’ hearts and adding intangible value to the company seems a little too “fancy” and expensive to be considered. But is it?
Short term sales versus long term vision
Crisis separates followers from leaders in the economic world and in the battle for mind and pocket share. Truly visionary brands innovate, invest and develop during the hard times. Today’s big brands are the ones that not only survived but made the most out of the difficulties they’ve encountered.
Short term tactics may add profit points but if we were to take into account the brand value losses companies cutting corners end up losing more than they’ve initially planned.
If everyone is doing something, that thing is probably wrong. I know it may seem risky but companies need to differentiate, even in terms of marketing strategy.
So, when your competitors are focusing on short term tactics, focus on tomorrow and build your strategy and brand around the bigger picture. The crisis may be the only oportunity you’ll get.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: adsense, adwords, google, interest, interest based ads
22 minutes ago Google just announced on their blog that they have just launched a new technology that lets advertisers target potential clients better, while serving less intrusive ads to consumers, through the help of interest-based ads.
As I can see it right now it’s a way of tracking users not only on Google but on all partner websites creating a clear pattern in user behaviour and profiling.
As an advertiser I am thrilled by the possibilities but some privacy questions do arise. Google addressed them as follows [quote]:
- Transparency – We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google’s ad serving.
- Choice – We have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
- Control – You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn’t deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: facebook, google, perezhilton.com, traffic, twitter
Apparently yes. This AdAge article states that for some websites (including celebrity gossip blogger PerezHilton.com and some social networks like CafeMom and less known Twitter) facebook has been sending more visits than Google.
This might seem a little odd as Facebook has less than a third of Google’s traffic. An explanation might be the fact that users are less focused and tend to “click around” while socializing with friends.
Is Google loosing ground to younger web applications like Facebook or even Twitter? Sure. Are these companies threatening Google’s supremacy? Not really. But the times are ever-changing.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: brain download, digital, digital human, future, mind, robots
…and I really mean digital.
Soon we will be able to download our ego on hard drives, back-up our conscience or be a part of the network.
What will this lead to?
Immortality
Immortality is one the things humans have long been looking for. They have dreamed about it, studied it and even built religions around it.
We dream of immortality when we are kids, when we grow up and even as old people hoping our death can be a step farther from our current existence. Not an end.
What if we would break down a human being to its very core – the mind? Is this all we are? Brains connected to an outer body, helping our mind work in its way around the world. Then that should mean we will have no problem adapting to being a machine computing our thoughts, decisions, lifestyle and others.
We will live in computers, have electric arms and legs, behave almost as if we were alive.
Access to all human knowledge
The internet is not only a web of computers interconnected. It’s probably the greatest thing humans have ever constructed. It’s made of information. Information gathered by our culture in thousands and thousands of years.
All a second away for the downloaded mind. The digital human can access this information almost instant. It can stay connected with every new discovery, it can process problems at a speed we haven’t thought of, it can learn a new language in the blink of an eye.
A new race
Humans, as we are today have been like this for the last 100 000 years. Quite a long time. Something like this, a mix between biology and technology can lead to a new breed of humans. One that are what we call today robots. But with a conscience, brain and the possibility to make decisions.
How far would this race go? We, humans, are better than any species at communicating, inventing, building. At least this is what we like to think of ourselves. We are also pretty good with things like war, destroying, killing.
How far would we go if we were intellectually omnipotent? Would we understand our actions or continue to act like Earth’s plague? Would we evolve or destroy ourselves and everything around?
Lonliness
I had a short debate with one of the most interesting people I have had the pleasure of coming across. He said we are just information and we can be very well digitized.
I would say we are something else. Something we can’t yet comprehend. I say that because beyond our thoughts there are feelings, decisions we are not “aware” of. We love and hate. We are glad to see the sun and enjoy the company of friends. We are thrilled by our children. We dream, we hope.
Would a set of digitized information be able to do all this things? Would it be able to doubt itself? Would it be able to know when wrong and reprogram itself?
And if so – if it were what we are today – wouldn’t it feel anger, sorrow and hate towards the one that made it what it is? Someone imprisoning it in a computer. After all – we all treasure our freedom.
At this point – the digital human, having all the power it can access, hating it’s creators and masters – wouldn’t it rebel against it?
And this is were we should think twice before choosing immortality. For it may cost us more than we are willing to pay for.
