Social CRM – the new-age way of generating qualified leads

The increasing popularity of social media has changed the way organizations interact with leads and customers. Now, there are 4.2 billion social media users worldwide spending an average of 145 minutes each day on the platforms. To get a complete picture of our leads and prospects, we need to consider the part social media management plays in our customer relationships. 

Social media lead generation is part of every marketer’s strategy—whether they know it or not.

For marketers ready to move beyond brand awareness and engagement, social media lead generation is a good next step. Collecting leads on social media will help you find people interested in your company. More importantly, these leads will help you keep in touch with potential customers—whether it is to make a special offer or share news.

What is a social media lead?

A lead is any information someone shares that you can use to follow up with them. That includes names, email addresses, occupations, employers, or any other information that a social media user shares with you.

Before moving forward, let’s do a breakdown of some of the lingo marketers use for social media leads.

Social media lead generation: In simple words, social media lead generation is any activity undertaken on social platforms to collect new leads.

Social media lead nurturing: Once a social media lead gets generated, good marketers will nurture their leads. It includes taking them through the customer journey, or as marketers would say: through the sales funnel.

Picking the right social CRM solution

There are a growing number of SaaS products and other solutions describing themselves as social CRM platforms. However, as most sales organizations already have a familiar CRM, the idea of trading in their existing solution and pricing up a dedicated social CRM software isn’t so appealing. 

When looking for social media CRM tools, whether in a standalone platform or through integrations to your existing setup, there are different levels to consider depending on your requirements:

• Collection. A social CRM platform allows you to collect relevant data from social media about potential and existing customers. You can monitor mentions or hashtags related to you (or your competitors) in customer profiles and posts. 

• Interaction. More advanced tools allow you to directly engage with your prospects, enabling two-way communication across multiple channels while managing it all in one platform.

• Enrichment. With some tools, you can link the social data to the CRM entries for your leads and prospects, giving you a greater understanding of your contacts and enabling more personalized outreach.

• Analysis. To get the full benefits of social CRM, you need to analyze the incoming data and make sense of it. Recent advances in machine learning have made it possible to analyze social media activity at scale.

Why is Social CRM important?

Social CRM benefits the whole company, not just the sales team. Along with lead generation, building a complete picture of your customer engagement also helps marketers create more relevant campaigns and help desk staff respond to issues faster. For example, integrating Zixflow CRM software with Whatsapp Cloud API for WhatsApp marketing will help to level up the sales engagement of the company. When the sales, marketing and customer support teams all use a social CRM, it leads to greater alignment across the company and a more seamless customer experience.

Benefits of social CRM for salespeople

There are several ways that salespeople can benefit from the data collected by a social CRM.

1. Win More Business -

With Social CRM, you can get detailed insights about your customers regarding their demographics, tastes, preferences, buying behaviour, etc. It will help accelerate the sales process by allowing you to identify the leads that have the highest probability of being converted into deals.

It can also aid the marketing team in exploring new market segments and design personalized highly targeted marketing campaigns and promotional offers on different social media platforms. 

It results in enhanced productivity, optimal allocation of the company’s resources, and brings the desired ROI. If you are currently using any other CRM for your business, you can also do social media integration like integrating Twitter and Facebook with the help of plugins. It will consequently enhance your CRM functionality.

2. Better Coordination Among the Departments- 

Due to the inter-dependency among various departments, the key to success in any organization is effective communication to ensure that work gets done on time.

With a Social CRM implementation, every single team, be it marketing, sales or customer support can now stay up to date with customers’ activities through access to real-time data related to each customer’s profile. Every department will know what the status of each customer is and will, therefore, be able to act accordingly.

3. Bridge the Gap Between the Present & the Future-

Track what customers have to say about your company’s product and if they have changes or feedback. Today, customers with their access to vast amounts of data know what kind of product they would like to buy in the future, and that gets reflected in their online activity. 

Social CRM tools help you look into the future and develop products that customers wouldn’t expect to be in the market anytime soon.

4. Proactively Serve Your Customers- 

A positive word of mouth can do wonders for your business, whereas a single negative comment can do more damage than one can imagine. Social CRM software will give your customer support team data about customers’ feelings and sentiments in real-time, which will also help you serve and provide customer service in a more personalized manner. 

Later, it is up to you to use that feedback to make strategic adjustments and take the necessary action that enriches the customer experience.

Conclusion

As with any tool, social CRM works best when used with a clear goal in mind. When used in tandem with your overall sales strategy, your team will make better decisions based on holistic customer data.

By helping you better understand your leads and customers, organize your contact’s details and manage your communication from one location, social CRM can help you generate more qualified leads and increase your sales.

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