3 Reasons Every Small Business Needs CRM Software

As a small business owner or manager, you only have limited funds available to market your products. And too often, small businesses like yours choose to invest in more immediate promotional opportunities, thinking that they are better served to get the word out about a current promotion or new product than spending it on something less tangible, like a new (or their first) CRM.

But we’re here to tell you that investing your money in Customer Relationship Management software is not only beneficial; it can be absolutely crucial to your business success. So, without further ado, here are 3 reasons every small business needs CRM software.

1) Customer Acquisition

It may seem counterintuitive at first that spending your budget on CRM software rather than individual promotions can help increase your customer base. After all, this type of software is aptly named due to its main function: improving your relationship with current customers. But in reality, it can be just as beneficial for growing your customer base.

That’s especially true if you subscribe to the inbound marketing philosophy, in which your promotional efforts are geared toward turning members of your target audience into leads in your database by getting them to sign up for relevant content on your website. Used as a lead database, your CRM software turns into a powerful marketing automation tool that nurtures your leads with increasingly targeted content until they are ready to become customers.

Some software solutions, like ours, even let you run your social media promotions through them, allowing you both to monitor social conversations related to your brand and engage with potential customers. Both are invaluable tools in growing your customer base, made possible by your CRM.

2) Informed Strategies

But your CRM’s importance to growing your business goes beyond marketing automation and social media integration.

As leads begin to flow into your contact database, you will be able to run customized and detailed reports that allow you to understand your potential customers and target audience better. That, in turn, allows you to take a more strategic approach to all of your promotional efforts, even those that are not directly related to your CRM software.

Strategic use of Customer Relationship Management software also allows you to better integrate your email marketing and social efforts into your entire promotional strategy, ensuring that your marketing conveys a single, effective message at just the right time and in just the right medium to just the right people.

3) Customer Service and Retention

As you can see, CRM software is crucial to your marketing and business success even before we get to its main purpose. But once we get to the actual customers, it really begins to shine.

You’re probably well aware that it’s impossible to satisfy all of your customers. Through human or product errors or simply through miscommunication, your customer service department or person will inevitably receive complaints about your brands. How you handle these complaints will determine whether you lose or retain a customer.

Give your customer service people access to your CRM software, and your chance of satisfying an unhappy customer will increase significantly. That’s because your representative now has access to that customer’s demographic data and history with your company, allowing them to address the concern in a more targeted fashion. As you can imagine, satisfying unhappy customers can make a significant difference in the success or failure of your business.

Customers who complain and don’t feel heard feel the need to tell others about their issues. Bad word of mouth or negative reviews on sites like Yelp clearly hurt your business. On the other hand, responding quickly and positively to a complaint can actually turn unhappy customers into your strongest brand advocates, and you can accomplish that feat with the help of your CRM software.

Even though you may spend most of your efforts on increasing your customer base, repeat customers are the true lifeblood of your business, and with informed customer service through CRM software, you can ensure that your customers keep coming back.

In short, Customer Relationship Management software is absolutely crucial to your small business success. For more information on how it can help you and the various options available to you, contact us!

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