Here’s Why Your Business Needs A Social Media CRM

There’s no doubt that your business’s success can be measured by the growth in your sales and revenue. But who is responsible for that?

The customers of course! And if you want to continue being at the top of your game and in fact go higher, there is no denying that you need to have cordial relations with your customers. And that is made possible through CRM platforms.

A CRM or Customer Relationship Manager platform is actually software that businesses use in order to manage their communication with their customers, store and manage data related to them, and automates several procedures that are related to the customers once the customer enters in a transactional relation with a business.

HubSpot revealed that 13% of the existing firms agree that investing in a CRM system is among their top sales priorities.

But have you ever come across a social media CRM?

No? Wondering what that is and why you need it for your business?

Read our article below to know more about what a Social Media CRM platform is and discover its features and benefits that make it a requisite for the attainment of your business goals.

What is a Social Media CRM?

A Social CRM is that which is integrated with the social media accounts of a business and merges the social media with the customer’s data stored in the CRM platform. The social media CRM platforms serve as tools that can be effectively used in marketing, sales, and other services of your business. SuperOffice claims that the productivity increase associated with the services offered by social CRM is 8%.

Here’s how the social CRM is different from a traditional CRM:-

• A traditional CRM is concerned with collecting, managing, and carrying out essential functions with the customer data. The nature of communication is usually transactional, no matter which department is participating in it. On the other hand, a social CRM works on the strategy of brand exposure and customer management, minus the hard selling. The majority of communication is to create an interest in the brand and address social issues and interest areas of customers.
• In the case of a traditional CRM system, the interaction is controlled by the business through a standard communication channel. Furthermore, the conversations happen only in the working hours of a business. Opposite to this scenario, a social CRM places the control in the hands of the customers and allows them to converse with the business at any given time without any restrictions.

Let’s take a look at some features and benefits of social CRM that make it an essential part of your business’s management and functioning.

Features of Social CRM

SuperOffice has claimed that about 92% of businesses agree that CRM is an important tool in being successful in the business sector and achieving the business’s goals. Social CRM has some notable features that can help you do considerably better in your business and that is exactly why you must use it in your sales funnel. Here are some of them:-

1.    Social Monitoring

Social monitoring is one of the greatest features of a social CRM as a social CRM tool allows you to read and listen to the conversations happening online and make note of keywords to understand the current trends in the industry and identify potential leads. This type of monitoring allows you to stay updated and in line with the ongoing trends. Besides, you can also know every time your products and/or brand is mentioned in the digital space.

Reports by Deloitte have revealed that digital sales saw an increase of 18% and 14% more online shoppers started relying on online purchases since the onset of the pandemic.

2.    Emotional and Sentimental Analysis

Social CRM platforms are often laced with sentiment analysis tools that can help you better understand the sentiment or the emotion of your customers and potential leads. With such tools you get insights on what is trending in the world, social issues on a global scale, what is the reaction of your customers to these trends and events, and even the emotional reactions and approach to your own brand.

3.    Managing Social Media

Implementing an ideal social CRM can practically take the reins of social media management from your hands and do tons of things for the betterment of your business by syncing several profiles from different social media platforms. You can have the same post in different social media channels by simply scheduling your operations. You even get all the customer interactions in a single inbox that allows you to understand each customer and the engagement better. Furthermore, you get an in-depth analysis of all the elements on your social media profiles with rigorous analytics.

4.    Social Media Selling

The main goal of a business for creating a social media profile and connecting their online store to these platforms is and should always be boosting the ROI by converting potential leads into customers. A good social CRM can help you do that by directing the interests and interactions of the customers directly to your business’s sales department. Even better, this software can also direct these customers to your online shop especially through Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

Optinmonster in a report published in June 2021 revealed that 78% of salespersons that carry out social selling have managed to outperform their customers.

5.    Customer Profile Insights

A good social CRM can practically scan the social media profiles of all the customers connected with your brand and provide you relevant insights with regard to your customers’ age, gender, engagement history, location and other demographics. Bonus – a social CRM system can automatically update you when there are changes in your customers’ profiles. This can help you to personalise your marketing efforts as well as continuously improve them.

Benefits of Social CRM

YokeLocal revealed in one of their reports that using a social media CRM can improve the customer retention by up to 27%. Here are five major benefits of using a social CRM for your business:-

1.    Helps Publish Relevant Content

Social CRM collects plenty of data from social media and you can use it to your leverage. You can use this data to get the maximum traction for your platforms by using this information to create and publish relevant and interesting content for your blogs and social media posts and push them through appropriate channels.

2.    Enhance The Reputation Of Your Brand

A social CRM system can help you enhance the reputation of your brand amongst your customers extensively. Social CRM networks tend to value each customer feedback and acknowledge your customers’ online presence. You can reward your online connections and customers with the help of a social CRM. Besides, you can also channelize and share the positive feedback that they like testimonials on your pages. Furthermore, social CRM software keeps check of every feedback which can be used to improve your products and services constantly.

Marketing Charts has revealed that about 21% of customers tend to follow a brand on any given social media platform to be able to better interact with them.

3.    Strengthen The Customer Support System

An efficient social CRM provides rapid information to your customer support teams that is necessary to resolve customer complaints and provide essential solutions to any concerns raised by them. This information can be used along with the analytical and profile reports to troubleshoot problems and resolve them in time and strengthen your business’s customer support system.

Expert Market in one of their reports revealed that about 63% top brands use the CRM systems to provide a personalised customer experience, resolve customer issues and increase their engagement with existing and new customers.

4.    Understand Your Audience

Social media CRM provides you real-time data that can be utilised in understanding what is it that drives your audience at the present time. This information can be thoroughly analysed to get a better understanding of the audience on your social media platform and in understanding how the audience in each social media platform is reacting to the same piece of information, trend, issue or event. This diverse and in-depth information can then be used for creating a better customer experience.

5.    Controlled Social Presence

A social media CRM can perform the same tasks on social media in lesser time as compared to performing them manually. By integrating the social media platforms to singular software, it allows you to plan and publish content across all your social media platforms at one go and therefore control the content and your presence on all your profiles. It gives you better control of your presence by bringing in all the communication and customer conversations to a unified inbox and conducts cross-platform analysis and gives conclusive reports.

Data Reportal revealed that as of July 2021, there are over 4.24 billion social media users across the world. Social media has increasingly become an essential part of the marketing, management, sales, and other verticals of any business’s success and growth. While you would continue to benefit from a traditional CRM system, a social media CRM can boost your business in a much better way by focusing on particular aspects. And if you are deciding to get a social media CRM for your business, you can be rest assured to boost your business’s social media activities!

Team EMB

Our team of expert writers is committed to bringing insights on topics ranging in the fields of technology, marketing, and business. With a wide-reaching range of services on our platform, we help businesses achieve digital transformation end-to-end.