Tag: best CRM for small business

How To Improve The User Experience Of Your B2B Website

Your business website is in all probability the most vital digital modern-day asset your SMB or startup has in today’s world, as nowadays more small businesses than ever do their businesses exclusively online for business growth. Now, even if you do have just a brick-and-mortar operation, your web presence is probably still necessary as the primary method for reaching out to your customers. In fact, it is much easier now to compete with major players in business those that have a stronger and larger brand recognition than it was just a decade ago in the past. This is the reason as to why carving out a profitable niche for your business requires superior-quality web presence, and these standards for quality are getting higher as more-and-more of our everyday activities are moving online.

Your company website is in all probability the most vital digital modern-day asset your SMB or startup has in today’s world, as nowadays more small businesses than ever do their businesses exclusively online for rapid business growth.

Now, even if you do have just a brick-and-mortar operation, your web presence is probably still necessary as the primary method for reaching out to your customers.

The average CRM user adoption among sales professionals is 73% and the average ROI period is 13 months. - G2’s CRM Software Research (2019) Click To Tweet

In fact, it is much easier now to compete with major players in business those that have a stronger and larger brand recognition than it was just a decade ago in the past.
This is the reason as to why carving out a profitable niche for your business requires superior-quality web presence, and these standards for quality are getting higher as more-and-more of our everyday activities are moving online.

Hence positive UX (User Experience) is absolutely indispensable to succeed online. Since website visitors do not have the tolerance for viewing websites that do not work well, and therefore you got to make sure that you are engaging potential leads and customers, while you have the opportunity to sell them your offerings.

So are you ready to improve your business website and convert more customers?
Since once you get the handle on how you can boost and maintain your site’s UX, it will be easier than ever to build a relationship using an easy to use CRM with your prospects and customers online.

Therefore, before we dive into the big-picture strategies, it is extremely necessary to be familiar with the building blocks for creating a stronger UX that any website should offer in order to not unknowingly turn off new prospective visitors which can hamper your business growth.

  • Fast website loading speed

As all web-visitors are edgy when it comes to viewing websites these days, your business website needs to load quickly for better engagements on your site.

  • Intuitive and clear navigation

Make it easier for your visitors to find quickly what they need. For this ensure that all your web pages are clearly labeled with links to the main sections of your website and place your contact info in the header and footer section on every page.

  • Think about landing pages

Try to anticipate what your visitors needs from your business website and as sending someone directly to your homepage when someone clicks on a link of your site via a social media post or a particular ad might not always be the best way to keep them engaged, create spectacular and informative landing pages where you can collect the contacts of your visitors and store them in your CRM database for nurturing of the leads.

  • Optimize your site for mobile

The majority of website traffic nowadays comes via mobile devices. Therefore, your website needs to be optimized and responsive to work well on small screen devices as it does on desktops.

  • Do not forget about design

Simply put, your website needs to look good, bold and up-to-date. Hence redesign your existing website if it is cluttered and is of an outdated design that might turn away customers or even make them raise the question whether you are still in business.

Now having discussed the above-stated points, it is true that even the best-designed website can always be improved to create a more engaging experience for the users of the site.

Well, you might probably already know that your website could use improvements, so take the time now to find out exactly what those might be.
Therefore to do this try to determine at what point in the buying process do your visitors tend to drop off, or what are your most seen business pages and which are the pages that cause your website visitors to turn away.

This is exactly where web analytics services like Google Analytics can be of real help, so if you do not have Analytics set up on your business website, do it, right today.

In fact, Google Analytics provides your business a free and easy way to measure how your customers are interacting with your website and even point out technical issues that need are needed to be addressed for providing an enhanced experience to the users of your site.

  • Offer social proofs

When a friend, colleague or a family member recommends a brand, we are much likely to actually check it out, rather than if we would have simply seen it in an advertisement.

This is called social proofing- which can a game changer for startups and small businesses.

This is because viewing reviews from other real people (even if they are strangers) can go a long way in creating further engagements.

Hence, incorporate social proofs in your business website by creating a strong testimonial area in the main homepage, upload reviews of your brand on third-party aggregator websites, and mention or share them on social media sites.

You can also integrate tools on your website that displays your brand’s Instagram and Twitter feeds to encourage your website visitors to get engaged with your brand on social media as smart companies know their customers are their best marketers and so increase in public support means a lot for generating consistent business growth.

  • Focus on organically marketing your brand

Traditional email marketing with the help of the best small business CRM software, and digital advertisements can certainly be effective for startups and small business, but it is equally vital to remember that today’s consumers are bombarded by these promotional materials and are have so become somewhat blinded to them.

Now, by marketing by the term more “organically” we indicate creating a web strategy around inviting your consumers to get engaged with your business and brand rather than merely telling them about it.

Some of the ways you might do this for your SMB include:

  • Engaging followers and customers of your brand on social media websites
  • Proactively interacting with reviewers on aggregator sites
  • Building a business partnership with local brands, non-profits, and other related businesses

Now, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is another highly effective means to boost your business website’s visibility online around ‘key terms’ used for your business.

For example as a vendor of a cloud based CRM software vendor, we use “Easy to Use CRM”, “Best CRM for small business” or for the Merchant Cash Advance version of our software we use “MCA CRM” and similar keywords in our whitepapers, articles, social media posts and blogs which helps in attracting more qualified leads to our B2B website, and reduce the use of pop-ups and annoying lead capturing techniques that ruins the UX of the websites of most brands.

Therefore, work with a digital marketing agency or read on some basic SEO tips and strategies to get started on your own.

  • Streamline UX whenever possible

Never needlessly complicate how your customers and visitors engage with your website.

Remember the UX element of your business website need to offer a streamlined experience for the visitors of your site and support the goals for offering a deferential experience for any visitors to your website- existing and new customers alike.

It should also be noted over here as pop-ups and manipulative languages are also a big turn-off, therefore never coerce your visitors to complete an action like creating an account or to log in unless it is absolutely necessary for your lead generation and business growth.

Finally- Integrate with a business tool

On the tech side of things, integrating your website with business tools like an easy to use CRM software , makes it much easier for your business to manage your digital efforts across multiple channels and platforms as CRM is a software that can provide a comprehensive view of your data, which includes web analytics that helps in granting insights on your website’s engagements to further refine your UX strategies and thereby create an effective online presence of your brand that ultimately helps in increasing your businesses’ bottom line and revenue growth.

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3 Ways To Improve CSAT Score Like A Pro

World-class customer support that boggles the mind of the purchasers on how good their experience was with a support agent is a journey you need to understand and evaluate whilst growing your business. In fact, the feedback loop in the support landscape is an essential element for building a support operation per excellence.

World-class customer support aided with easy to use CRM that boggles the mind of the purchasers on how good their experience was with a support agent is a journey you need to understand and evaluate whilst growing your business.

In fact, the feedback loop in the support landscape is an essential element for building a support operation per excellence.

The average return on investment for CRM is $8.71 for every dollar spent. - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

However, if your short-term substantiations are just in forms of lower call handling times, and tickets closed, the total idea of your support teams building relationships that can outlast a single purchase and can morph into long-lasting fandom that is capable of delivering more and more customers into your sales funnel – might be in jeopardy.

 What is a CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) Score?

Always remember although your end-game goal may be to close support tickets. However, you must teach your support reps to perform the job with finesse by providing solutions that harbor an element of human interaction which is capable of forging relations that can make your buyers smile and remain happy times and again.

The best time to opt for this feeling in your customer’s head is right after an interaction, which you can create through IVR or by automating a message using chatbots that can provide you feedback times and again.

Three Ways to Improve Your CSAT Score:

  1. SMILE

The ideal goal of any support agent solving and analyzing support tickers from your customers must turn their frown upside down, which they can achieve by:

  1. Sitting upright and smiling while answering their phones.
  2. Personalizing their emails so that your customers feel that they are reading words written by humans and not by a robot.
    For this, your support agents must get used to writing in the same way that they talk so that the same feeling is transmuted to the customers via words.
  3. The SLA’s must temp your support agents into actions. Therefore, chats need to be shorter and carry more fluid responses so that they remain hyper-specific to the problems at hand.
  4. There are instances when social media tickets can be dismissed, but when your brand’s reputation is at risk as the ticket has been raised by angry customers, apologize for the inconvenience and also empower your support agents with refund power and discount coupons to appease the fuming buyer.
  1. MEASURE

Look into the numbers on a weekly or bi-monthly basis, targeting metrics in your easy to use CRM database of the average number of calls handled by your support reps, the average call handling time, number of tickets that are pending vs. those tickets that has been resolved, calls answered vs. calls that were dropped, which can provide you with a clear picture to navigate feedback required for your support teams to improve upon their interactions.

This is because solid data-driven decisions yield hard evidence of where your support reps are falling flat and where they are standing tall, as CSAT scores are the best indicators of whether numbers in the score are in proportion to your customer satisfaction rate.

The most common way to measure the CSAT score using easy to use CRM software is by asking the customers to rate their support experience with a customer feedback survey on a scale of 1-5, where 1 is considered as “very unsatisfied” and 5 “very satisfied” and thereafter doing the math as follows:

Number of Satisfied Customers / Number of Satisfaction Survey Responses X 100 = % of Satisfied Customers.

  1. TUNE YOUR TONALITY

The force of good spirit is felt in one’s energy when you speak to them in person, but to speak to your customers over the phone, means fixing your voice.

Therefore when your agents answer the calls make sure that:

  1. Your support agents must answer the phone with a warm greeting, such as “Good Morning! My name is Patricia. How may I help you today?”
  2. Your support agents must listen more while taking less to allow the customers to vent out whatever frustrations they have with your brand and provide the customers with the resolutions needed to solve their issue(s).
  3. Teach them to apologize to your customers and then resolve the problems your customers are facing so that it helps them to get the CSAT scores up to where you want them to be.
  4. At the end of every support call advice your support reps to summarize the provided solution to ensure that your support reps are on the same page with your customers, which ultimately helps in weeding out unwanted fallbacks on support tickets that need to stay open beyond FCR (First Call Resolution) owing to lack of understanding on the subjected issues.

Takeaway

Companies, especially in startups and small businesses, often purchase products like easy to use CRM software solutions even before creating a plan, since most often they want to view a buyer’s journey that can easily convert and turn customers into repeat buyers of their products and services.

Therefore, once you start using your best CRM for small business to create a fruitful support operation with the help of your easy to use CRM software, grab a pen and paper and begin using support services and raise complains.
Next, study the brands that impress and blows you away with their effective and kind response, put them into a folder and share them with your support teams.

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Most Common Rookie Marketing Automation Pitfalls To Avoid Immediately

In modern times, marketing automation has become a vital tool for both enterprises and small businesses. Marketing automation (MA) is a tool that can aid you in gaining and sustaining competitive advantage by speeding up sales in the marketplace. Moreover, when MA is integrated into an easy to use CRM, it enables the user to personalize messages, engage more contacts and thereby builds a world-class relationship with prospects and customers. However, all marketing automation systems are not the same. There are many silo MA software apps and CRM platforms that need integration with third-party applications, which can not only cost time and money but also bring along with it the fear of things going wrong down the road.

In modern times, marketing automation has become a vital tool for both enterprises and small businesses. Marketing automation (MA) is a tool that can aid you in gaining and sustaining competitive advantage by speeding up sales in the marketplace.
Moreover, when MA is integrated into an easy to use CRM , it enables the user to personalize messages, engage more contacts and thereby builds a world-class relationship with prospects and customers.

Marketing automation on average drives upto 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead- Google (2019) Click To Tweet

However, all marketing automation systems are not the same. There are many silo MA software apps and CRM platforms that need integration with third-party applications, which can not only cost time and money but also bring along with it the fear of things going wrong down the road.

This is the exact reason businesses prefer to use all-in-one CRM software like ConvergeHub which includes Sales Force Automation (SFA) that is also popularly known as Marketing Automation in a CRM.

The four main benefits of using MA in an easy to use CRM are:

  • You can customize the MA for the unique requirement of your business
  • You can send multiple email campaigns 24/7 all at the same time
  • Automate your business processes specific to the contacts along their journey
  • Create alerts and reminders for enhancing your workflows

Nevertheless, there are also MA mistakes you can make along the way, which you must avoid as mentioned below:

MA Mistake #1

Send Emails to Contacts That Did Not Opt-In

One of the most important Marketing Automation best practices is that MA involves permission-based emails. This implies, you only send emails to people in your contact list that provides permissions to send them information about your brand.
You can get this permission when each of the contacts opt-in to your email, by providing their emails through authentic channels like web-to-lead forms, the free trial offers, buyer’s information forms and many more.

Therefore, going by the books, adding contacts manually or importing a list to your MA system is a violation of the Spam rules, since if you do it there are changes that doing so may compromise the delivery of emails and thereby reduce the success rate of your email campaigning strategies.

MA Mistake #2

Not Maintaining an Active Contact’s Database

Now, even after you get any contact to opt-in for your emails, you must also keep them active. This implies that you must continuously send emails with appropriate contents to keep your list engaged at least once every week. This is because, if you do not, your contacts may forget you and thereafter do not open your emails.

You can use re-engagement campaigns as an effective and time-tested method to get inactive contacts to get engaged with your emails.

Therefore, always maintain an active and clean contact list in your CRM database .

MA Mistake #3

Focusing on Wrong Metrics

Marketing Automation is an extremely robust marketing tool when integrated into easy to use CRM that allows the user to measure the results of their campaigns.

Some of the most important email campaigning metrics are:

  • Opt-ins
  • Sales conversion rate
  • Email opening rate
  • Link clicked rate
  • Landing page visits, and more

However, attending to wrong metrics can make you misinterpret the real results.

Therefore it is most important that you must know the metrics you are seeking to find with each campaign individually to determine your email campaign’s success using MA software.

MA Mistake #4

Not Split Testing Campaigns

All email campaigns done with the help of Marketing Automation differs by the number of contacts, type, content and more.
Hence, spit test your campaigns to find what works right for your business.
The key to spit testing your campaigns is to just focus one variable at a time like, offer, headline, price, design, target audience and others.

Take the campaign that wins as your new control and then tests other subsequent campaigns against it.

MA Mistake #5

Not Having a Certified Consultant on Your Team

We are finally talking about this mistake as MA is both an art and science. Marketing Automation in practice requires a mix of technological knowhow along with expertise in direct response marketing.

This is the reason why it is best to rely on an independent marketing automation software consultant to build your custom Marketing Automation system, train your employees and develop MA strategies for your business growth.

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Change Management: Just, Do Not Utter “Change”

The word “Change Management” is definitely a necessary requirement for the growth of all organizations, but with a terrible name. To most employees, the very word “change” itself is burdened with hidden meanings- personal physiological interpretations and renditions that can be negative and can create innumerable roadblocks to the successful adoption of even the best small business CRM software for your company. Do you consider that this word “change” is not that important? Well, your employees who hear the word “Change” may think of the following.

The word “Change Management” is definitely a necessary requirement for the growth of all organizations, but with a terrible name. To most employees, the very word “change” itself is burdened with hidden meanings- personal physiological interpretations and renditions that can be negative and can create innumerable roadblocks to the successful adoption of even the best small business CRM software for your company.

Do you consider that this word “change” is not that important?

Well, your employees who hear the word “Change” may think of the following:

  • Fear
  • Power and Control
  • Unknown and New Resistance
  • Pressure etc.
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress – Charles Kettering Click To Tweet

Nevertheless, certain perceptions and attitude about this word “Change” can be easily counteracted with a perceived and thoughtful approach.

Here are a few pieces of advice for helping you to find your best CRM for small business software adoption go more smoothly:

Perception #1: Your employees do not see the benefits

Most employees see “Change” as “more work”. Therefore, while adopting a new small business CRM software for your organization demonstrate the benefits (the actual advantages, not corporate-speak) of the application, so that they do not see it as an unnecessary solution and a waste of their valuable time.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Be ready to name complete benefits (along with drawbacks, if any)

-Have a clear vision of your business goals, and articulate it throughout the process

-Once and if there will be more work- say so to your employees

-Acknowledge that changes are difficult and provide adjustment period to your employees

-Do not obfuscate or lie- if there are risks involved, articulate it

Perception #2: Your employees feel that they were excluded from the decision

Change is always a disruptive process, even when you are adopting an easy to use CRM like ConvergeHub. There will always be a set of employees in any organization who will be more affected by the change as the impact radius of your change in the business process can be even greater than you expected. Therefore, never let your employees feel irrelevant, and remember that even the slightest of change in your business strategy or the new way that you want to run your organization can affect a wider group.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Share your decision making and vision for growth early in the process with all employees who will be affected

-Provide reasonable time for adjustment

-Include all stakeholders in Sales, Marketing, Support, Accounts teams, who will be affected right from the beginning

Perception #3:Change will be stressful

Like most of us, even your employees are led by habits. Therefore, we have seen employees abhor change as it interrupts habits and causes stress. Change takes people out of their previous comfort zones. If you can still remember your first day of high school, you will definitely understand why the uncharted and the unknown bring ‘un-comfortableness’ to many.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Allow time to your employees to adapt to the change

-Never dictate

-Do not spring surprises for your employees during a change

-Deploy baby-steps while implementation of your Salesforce Alternative CRM. Let your employees get a foot wet rather than casting them off into the deep

-Never criticize the old way; it can reflect insult to many

-Work with ALL the stakeholders, not just the employees affected by your new easy to use CRM

Perception #4: Your employees feel out of control

Your employees fear that they will not have any say and so they will be unhappy and out of control.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

Crowdsource decisions, and leave room for changes. It is rare that all important decisions in your organization like changing over to a Salesforce Alternative CRM software, for saving time, vital resources, and money will be blessed by the users of the new software, but then again there is a way to make everyone in your company feel included.

Although there are certain aspects of any new CRM implementation project that are set by management buy-in or technical requirements, all your other employees who will use the new Salesforce Alternative CRM software can have their say in other relevant details.

Therefore, whenever it is possible, let your employees choose from several equally acceptable options (i.e., Blue, Yellow, or Green? Include A, B, or C). That way there will be inclusion of ideas without chaos.

Perception #5: Status quo is better than innovative ideas

 “My current comfortable method is being discarded- is the way I have always done my job worthless?” Well, this can make people feel outdated and insecure. In a way, in any business or organization progress and advancements can make your employees feel alienated.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Create a culture in your office of embracing the new modern processes and making periodic updates

-Create an ambiance of rewarding those employees who are enthusiastic adopters of things new

-At times just saying “I know this might apparently be difficult at first”- goes a long way

Perception #6: Change will create the appearance of stupidity

There are many employees those who even think that they may look dumb since they are unable to comprehend that they will be able to learn new processes, systems, and ways of doing things.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Provide adequate trainingfor the new CRM system

-Provide the training documentation in different formats to address all learning styles

-Encourage the stakeholders to suggest improvements in the training

Perception #7:  Management may not know what they are talking about

Your employees do not consider you or your leaders bringing the change in their existing workflow credible since they might not consider the person trusted.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Be prepared to provide s logical rationale for the change in your existing CRM platform

-List all the decision makers and remove hierarchy

-Demonstrate the factors that led to the decision to look for Salesforce Alternative CRM

-Combat employee distrust of conventional “top-down” hierarchy models, be able to defend the decision you took based on competent analysis of your previous CRM system

Do you have any tips for handling Change Management solutions while you adopted Salesforce Alternative CRM for your business? Let us know in the comments section below!

Are you a business leader poised to take your company to the next level, and looking for a software platform that can help you do that?

If so, ConvergeHub is for you!

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Why You Just Cannot Make Up For Churn With Upsells

Optimizing the customers’ experience around your brand is a great way to find new customers, and the best way to foster customer loyalty. Nevertheless, still now, neglecting the customers before and after the sale is the biggest barrier in addressing this issue, which usually happens due to a lack of deep understanding of the customers. Therefore, it is important that you have the right systems in place, an easy to use CRM software like ConvergeHub, for a comprehensive understanding of your customers, which is required to achieve your business goals, be it trying to create more engaging contents, optimize your customers’ experience, or increase sales. CRM is a software that helps in leveraging both qualitative and quantitative data by collecting and storing customer-facing information in the CRM database, which helps you to better understand your customer’s mindsets that are needed in order to get you started.

Today we are going to unveil one of the greatest (and yet least spoken about) misconceptions around parameters like customer success- which illustrates why you cannot successfully offset customer churn with upsells.

ConvergeHub's ROCKET LAUNCH 2019 can help you acquire leads, automate your sales process, improve your conversion and get more referrals from satisfied customers. Click To Tweet

Here is the basic math:

Now, let us consider if your business loses $ X when one of the customers cancels their service that you offer, (or decides to remain but pays you less because of downsells or discounts), you need to replace that $ X before your business can start to grow.
There are two main ways you can offset churn revenue:
1. By acquiring new customers for your services
2. Making your existing customers pay more by expanding their relationship with your brand

However, as many businesses have found that the first suggested method (acquiring new customers) is often a losing or a difficult proposition for it creates a longer payback period for CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), it is the second suggested method (making your existing customer buy more) solves your problem.

Right? No, it is not!

Since Customer Success thought leaders like Lincoln Murphy and other similar professionals that we have in Team- ConvergeHub Rocket Launch 2019, believes that using existing customer to offset churn does not work either, so here is their well-reasoned argument:

The expansion is part of the customer’s success

Upselling and cross-selling only happens because a customer is satisfied with your products and services. Therefore, account expansion is a part of a customer’s growth towards success. However, if churn is what that happens when a customer is resentful towards your services and offerings, then expansion is not achievable when the growth of the customer is unsuccessful.

As Lincoln Murphy clearly states:

You can’t use upsells to offset churn because churn is caused by the very thing that prevents upsells from happening.

Hence, if you anticipate your Customer Success to be just more than making customers happy- which implies you expect your Customer Success as a Growth Engine element through up-sell and cross-sell, you must at any cost have a baseline focus on your customer’s success plans.

Offsetting is NOT growth

According to our Team- ConvergeHub Rocket Launch 2019, a critical metric to track in your Customer Success strategy is your NNR (Net Revenue Retention), which is the revenue that stays at the end of a timeline, net of any up-sell and churn.
Therefore, if your NNR is lesser than 100%, it clearly states that your business is shrinking.
Nevertheless, the paradox is, an NNR of 100% also does not necessarily mean that your business is growing, as it only implies your business is stagnant and to quote Murphy:

If that status quo is due to expansion ‘offsetting’ revenue churn just to break even, that’s likely a really bad sign.

Hence, it is advisable that your business should always have an NNR that is greater than 100 percent, which only indicates that you are making more from revenue expansion than any churn.

Then again, although this might seem like an appreciable thing for your business, even then it is not, the reason is what is being explained below.

Math and reality are different

As we said earlier that you just cannot use up-sell to offset churn since churn is caused by everything that hinders up-sells from happening, which Murphy explains:

If you are acquiring customers without Success Potential and/or not doing what is necessary to ensure your customers that have Success Potential are unlocking such potential, then you are not creating the conditions necessary for expansion. You’ve created – by choice or by accident – an environment and experience that are not congruent with the customer’s success; so how can you realistically expect enough customers to buy more or invite you into other parts of their company to offset the damage that’s being done by the customers you’ve failed?

While we can find exceptions with invariable edge-cases of businesses that have managed to offset their customer churn with up-sells, but in most cases, the reality is, this is not going to work, as according to Lincoln Murphy:

You simply cannot achieve the revenue expansion necessary to offset revenue churn – in a scalable, repeatable way – when you’re not working to ensure your customers are successful since expansion is PART of the customer’s success.

Therefore, the action that you need to take is what follows below.

Focus on avoiding churn

While it may seem to be a reasonable argument that churn need not be present, several businesses have even accepted the fact that customer churn is a reality, which is how they have developed plans (like up-selling) to offset that churn.
Nevertheless, Murphy advises getting back to the core of the problem and working out ways to reduce and eliminate it, as he states:

When you don’t have churn, you don’t have to offset the lost revenue; all of your expansion revenue just adds to the top line and improves your margins. It’s true that it costs less to get revenue from existing customers than from net new customers, but this only works if you create the conditions for Customer Success. And ultimately, this focus on the customer’s success directly increases the value of your company.

Customer Success Tips Around The Web

Skills to help you truly know your customers

Optimizing the customers’ experience around your brand is a great way to find new customers, and the best way to foster customer loyalty.
Nevertheless, still now, neglecting the customers before and after the sale is the biggest barrier in addressing this issue, which usually happens due to a lack of deep understanding of the customers.
Therefore, it is important that you have the right systems in place, an easy to use CRM software like ConvergeHub, for a comprehensive understanding of your customers, which is required to achieve your business goals, be it trying to create more engaging contents, optimize your customers’ experience, or increase sales.
CRM is a software that helps in leveraging both qualitative and quantitative data by collecting and storing customer-facing information in the CRM database , which helps you to better understand your customer’s mindsets that are needed in order to get you started.

Avoid Customer Success being stuck in a vacuum

Your customer success team can never succeed if it is stuck in a vacuum. Therefore, to add a strong relationship with key stakeholders, and customers, and to dish-out your immediate wins here are certain elements you must ponder for the success of your organization:

Ideas for quick wins:

  • Do you have a company-wide meeting?
    -Let your Customer Success Manager present great customer conversations, both positive and negative, that they have had and the learning that resulted from such discussions.
  • Do you have a company-wide newsletter?
    -Let your Customer Success Manager write up a customer spotlight piece or a summary of the feedback they have received.
  • Do you have sales meetings?
    -Let your Customer Success Manager be an active participant in the meetings with your Sales Teams.
    (Our CSM at ConvergeHub attends once a week and we have found it to be very beneficial).

 Word to the Wise

Are you a business leader poised to take your company to the next level and reduce churn, and looking for a software platform that can help you do that?

If so, ConvergeHub is for you!

Hence, sign up for a FREE 30-minute Rocket Launch session with us, and take the first step towards creating massive growth for your company in 2019.

During the Rocket Launch session, Team- ConvergeHub Rocket Launch 2019 will do a deep dive into your business along with you, and brainstorm how ConvergeHub can help you acquire leads, automate your sales process, improve your conversion, reduce churn, and get more referrals from satisfied customers.

So why wait- Sign up now! Limited slots are still available. What do you have to lose?

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Strategic Lead Management Tips To Keep Sales Moving Through Your MCA CRM Pipeline

Keeping track of what is going on in your MCA CRM pipeline is important for your Merchant Cash Advance business. Your Merchant Cash Advance CRM sales pipeline provides you an insight into how your sales strategies are performing, and if any improvement is required to increase your sales. Unfortunately, leads and fence-sitting prospects can get lost in the shuffle or suddenly becoming inactive. Hence, what do you do when you find that the leads in the CRM database are getting stuck or dropping out for a myriad of reasons. Here are some of the most effective tips on lead management strategies that can help you to make your MCA CRM sales pipeline going forward once again.

Keeping track of what is going on in your MCA CRM pipeline is important for your Merchant Cash Advance business.

Your Merchant Cash Advance CRM sales pipeline provides you an insight into how your sales strategies are performing, and if any improvement is required to increase your sales.

The CRM market has seen a steady growth in the recent past. For this reason, its value is estimated to stand at $19 billion. - GoalCast (2017) Click To Tweet

Unfortunately, leads and fence-sitting prospects can get lost in the shuffle or suddenly becoming inactive. Hence, what do you do when you find that the leads in the CRM database are getting stuck or dropping out for a myriad of reasons.

Here are some of the most effective tips on lead management strategies that can help you to make your MCA CRM sales pipeline going forward once again.

However, primarily do you understand what are the reasons that are causing your leads to get stuck in your sales pipeline?

Therefore, before you take any actions, the foremost thing that you need to do is to comprehend why leads are getting caught in the first place. Since, when you do a bit of pondering, you will most likely be able to link all your inactive leads to a few unambiguous causes for which they got halted in their progress.

Not find the proper person

If you are unaware of the right contact information and you do not know the proper decision-maker(s) in the company, you will hardly be able to make any sales.
In addition, a prospective customer may enter an email that the person may not use often when they fill out a web-form in your website.

Both these issues ultimately may lead to not letting your messages reach the right people who need to see them.

Therefore, measure the bounce rate for your emails using MCA CRM software, and if they are considered high, find a solution to your problem. As this can be an indicator that you are not selling to the right person, or rather to say, not selling at all.

There is a problem with your alternative lending service

Another pertinent reason why a lead might get jammed is that your prospects are having issues using your solution, or they assume that your services are too expensive when compared to other MCA businesses in town. Nevertheless, whatever the case may be, it is vital that you find and fix the problems that are within your control.

Although it is true that you just cannot please every prospect, however, making the right change can have a rocking impact on your bottom line.

For example, if you find that a majority of visitors are abandoning the account creation process on your website, do take up necessary steps to decrease friction at the steps.

Your buyer is not ready yet

It can always be that your prospects are not sure that they want to make a change and accept your solution. It is a known fact that most of the visitors on your website will not be ready to buy your service the minute they enter your sales pipeline, and therefore, not doing so can leave some of your prospects fence-sit without the confidence to make a purchase.

If you find this to be an issue, increase the chances of making the leads move through your Merchant Cash Advance CRM pipeline by being helpful towards your prospects.

 

Lead management tips to get prospects moving

Now, once you are aware of what is getting your prospects stuck; you are faced with another new challenge.

So, how do you remove these bottlenecks and advance your leads through your MCA CRM’s pipeline?

The good news is that when you adopt the proper lead management strategies into action, you can easily get all your inactive leads moving ahead again.

Here are a few time-tested tips that we recommend:

Revamp your communication strategies

Are you aware of your communication strategies with your prospects in the different stages of your sales pipeline?

Now, just sending an email blast to every prospect in your CRM database once or twice every month is not going to cut the knot, if you want to steadily encourage every leads to move towards a prospect.

Primarily, understand your sales process and think what is required for qualifying and pushing your leads at every stage of your sales pipeline.
Next, segment your leads using lead scoring tactics into different lists.

Find a lead scoring strategy that addresses to your lead’s concerns, curiosities, and pain points.

According to an article published by MailChimp, lead segmentation plays a major role in the success of any email marketing campaign.

According to MailChimp, it has been found that email campaigns with segmented leads using a Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, in alternative lending businesses gets cent percent more clicks when compared to non-segmented ones.

Know your leads better

Do you know if your prospective leads are casually considering your service or they are in urgent need of your solution?

Once leads are stuck in the sales pipeline, it can always imply that your leads do not need your services yet.

Maybe, they are doubtful if your answer to their pain points is a good solution for their needs. Knowing this allows you to nurture your leads properly.

Understanding where your leads are in the buyer’s journey aids in marketing to them more efficiently.

You can always find out what your prospective leads are thinking by asking them to reply to your emails or by sending them out a survey using an easy to use MCA CRM platform.

If needed, you can even consider setting up a feedback form for all your new leads so that you can without any problems, collect all the information about your leads and their businesses and store the data in your CRM database.

Lookout for stalled stages

Find out if most of the inactive leads are getting stuck in one specific stage of your sales pipeline. If it is so, reevaluate the stages of your sales process. However, to understand how to fix this stages, you need to find an answer to these two most pertinent questions:

-What is happening?

-What should be happening?

For this, find an answer to what are the specific goals for every stage in your sales process. Next, evaluate how close you or your prospects are coming close to meet these goals. Finally, find out what can you do to make it easier for your leads to move to the next step or fetch a decision to complete the deal.

Offer help

If you are determined that a prospective lead is facing trouble in making a decision or getting buy-in from other alternative funding companies, what can be done offer them help?
What can you do to make your leads generate more trust in your business?

Well, to redress this issue you can offer free trials, eBooks, consultation, coupon codes, and other similar ‘at no cost’ resources. However, you should always make these offers available to the right buyers and at the right time.

Again, the key to finding this proper moment is making sure that your contact list is properly segmented. Per say, you just would not want to email a guidebook of how Merchant Cash Advance business works and its benefits over conventional bank loans to a lead who is already in a decision making stage of the buyer’s journey.

Create urgency

In case your prospective leads are not feeling an urgency to go for your service, set an expiration date or offer a discount.

According to a study done by Experian, adding urgency to your email marketing campaign efforts can increase open rates of your emails by 14%, the click-through rates by 59%, and double the number of completed deals.

To do these include the offer and time limit in the subject line of your emails.

However, always make sure that your urgency is based on something real, and is not a trial offer which is supposed to remain for a week but remains beyond that time, which is one of the quickest ways for losing credibility.

Ask questions

Start listening, if you cannot get a lead to close the deal. Ask your leads questions so that you can apprehend their hesitations. Since, if you ask your prospective lead any question that can get them engaged, you always have a fair chance that they will certainly reply, and you can easily find out from their answers what is holding them back.

If you are using a survey or sending a short email with questions to do this work, always send something that your prospects can answer within a few minutes.

Bottom line

Therefore, you see, solving issues and pain points of your prospective leads are not as complicated as it apparently seems.

The key to keeping you leads moving forward seamlessly through your MCA CRM sales pipeline lies in simply understanding and apprehending what is holding them back. Hence, make sure that the sales process in your Merchant Cash Advance software is set up to support your leads, and prospects and not just you as the owner of the software.

Are you ready to take control of your Merchant Cash Advance CRM sales pipeline now!

Learn more about how ConvergeHub’s robust marketing automation and sales pipeline management features can aid you and your team to get the right message to your prospects and leads in the right time.

To get going, start a 14-days free trial of ConvergeHub- the award-winning MCA CRM software by clicking on the link below.

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Practical Guide For Upselling And Cross-Selling With An Effective QuickBooks CRM Software

We all have been sometimes or the other on the receiving end of pushy sale pitches, and hence knows why up-selling and cross-selling often gets a bad rap. However, if it is done effectively, with a robust QuickBooks CRM software both these marketing strategies are actually great weapons to grow your business by leveraging on your brands existing customer base. Therefore, primarily, let us clarify the difference between up-selling and cross-selling before we talk about the great strategies that can make it happen in reality.

We all have been sometimes or the other on the receiving end of pushy sale pitches, and hence know why up-selling and cross-selling often gets a bad rap.
However, if it is done effectively, with a robust QuickBooks CRM software both these marketing strategies are actually great weapons to grow your business by leveraging on your brand’s existing customer base.

Therefore, primarily, let us clarify the difference between up-selling and cross-selling before we talk about the great strategies that can make it happen in reality.

First thing first, Up-selling happens when you encourage and convince an existing customer to buy a more expensive item, version, or an upgrade of their intended purchase. A classic example of up-selling is when someone asks you in a restaurant “Would you prefer potato-chips with that?”
Here up-selling happens as the customer has already purchased one food item and adding fries to the menu just makes it a more delicious and expensive combo.

A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10%- Emmet Murphy & Mark Murphy Click To Tweet

On the other hand, cross-selling happens when you try to persuade your customer to buy add-on products or services that complement the customer’s initial purchase. For an example, when you purchase a two-wheeler, the seller will encourage you (hopefully) to add a fog-light and a helmet in the interest of the buyer’s safety.

Hence, regardless of whatever that your company sells, the act of selling becomes more effective at up selling, whereas cross-selling aids in generating repeat business and increase your revenue.

Are you now ready to get started?

Then, keep reading or download this PDF to learn how best CRM for QuickBooks online like ConvergeHub makes it easier to achieve these goals.

Always remain transparent about the pricing

While up-selling and cross-selling your products or services, your customers must never feel like they have been tricked into spending more. Therefore, advice your employees using your QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, to be upfront about what the add-on offering(s) will cost before telling the benefits of buying the products or services. Remember customers always appreciate honesty, and so they are more likely to consider the value of your proposed offerings if they are not distracted by unknown numbers.

It is always helpful to present your customers with an estimate that provides a line-by-line pricing break-up of your offerings.

Using QuickBooks CRM software allows your sales executives to create estimates easily directly within the easy to use CRM software, without requiring to wait for someone else to access the QuickBooks.

Bundle related offerings together

Here is the reason why “Would you prefer potato-chips with that?” is so very effective. Prospective customers always love a good deal, and it is typically cheaper to purchase a combo offer, than to buy, their burger first and go back again for potato chips later.

Now, if you find that your customer is debating whether to include an additional item to their purchase, try offering a time-bound discount on the combo offer, which certainly provides an incentive to buy now rather than waiting.

Therefore, if you want to refer to the regular prices of items in your selling list before making the big promises, QuickBooks CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub, allows your representatives to easily view your list of offerings and their usual pricing without leaving the CRM.

Know your customers’ preferences

According to Marketing Metrics, one of the leading market research firms focusing solely on advisor-sold investments and insurance across the world, states, “the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%”.
This happens largely because if you are using an easy to use CRM software, your employees already know who your existing customers are and what they prefer to buy at large.

Therefore, using a best CRM software for QuickBooks like ConvergeHub that offers QuickBooks CRM integration free your employees can track your customer’s past purchases and preferences, which can be thereafter used for identifying up-selling and cross-selling opportunities that are most relevant to their likings.

Using a QuickBooks CRM software like ConvergeHub not only provides a 360-degree picture of a customer’s history with your businesses, but it also provides every single personal detail and past communications with the customers which include notes, phone conversations, their response to your customized email campaigns in a centralized location, before formulating a new sales pitch.

Understand your customers’ journeys

Pay attention to the storyline that led to your customer’s first purchase, Even if you find them busy and focused on eliminating one problem or achieve a goal, they may have also mentioned other pain points that are related to that cause. Therefore, taking note of these long-term plans of your customers opens up opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling, when the customers are ready to take their next big step.

Hence, always encourage your employees to record every single communication with their customer interactions as a mandatory activity and ensure that everyone on your sales, marketing, and customer support teams has an access to the customer information to assist the customers on their journey with your brand.

Conclusion

Hence, up-selling and cross-selling need not always have to be a shady affair, since the key to both these strategic approaches focuses on delivering vales to your customer.

Luckily, a QuickBooks CRM software like ConvergeHub, makes up-selling and cross-selling strategic approaches focused on delivering values to your customers, which consequently increase your revenue.

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What Is CRM ROI? How To Get Paid For Your Investments Using Cloud Based CRM Systems

According to a study done by Nucleus Research, it was found that for every single dollar spent on a cloud based CRM platform, the return is between $5.60 and $8.71. According to another research done by HubSpot, it was established that 40% of sales reps do not even use this online lead management tool to manage leads and prospects but instead relies on Rolodex cards and Excel spreadsheets to manage their sales funnel and cultivate customer relationship. Now, how can this be possible when statistically 47% of the sales teams that use a cloud based CRM say that they registered a positive impact on customer retention by using CRM for their businesses? Part of the problem in this long-standing self-contradicting confusing statement lays in the horror stories we hear about companies that did unsuccessfully spend thousands of dollars on the promise of improving productivity with the help of a CRM for their sales teams.

According to a study done by Nucleus Research, it was found that for every single dollar spent on a cloud based CRM system , the return is between $5.60 and $8.71.

Nevertheless, there is also a bad news.

According to another research done by HubSpot, it was established that 40% of sales reps do not even use this online lead management software to manage leads and prospects but instead relies on Rolodex cards and Excel spreadsheets to manage their sales funnel and cultivate customer relationship.

Every single dollar spent on a cloud based CRM system, the return is between $5.60 and $8.71. - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

Now, how can this be possible when statistically 47% of the sales teams that use a cloud based CRM say that they registered a positive impact on customer retention by using CRM for their businesses?

Part of the problem in this long-standing self-contradicting confusing statement lays in the horror stories we hear about companies that did unsuccessfully spend thousands of dollars on the promise of improving productivity with the help of a CRM for their sales teams.

We all know any CRM is more than just a sales tool.

This means a CRM database serves as a data warehouse that centers on client interactions, so that marketing, customer support, billing, and other departments should be able to use its centralized repository for collecting and retrieving information.

Cloud based CRM software should also offer automation that effectively improves workflow and permits a seamless connection to all the front and back-end systems in an organization.

However, the golden key for this cutting-edge tool is that you have to use it right to garner your ROI.

In this article, we will look into CRM ROI and provide the readers with certain pointers on why investing in cloud based CRM software like ConvergeHub can make all the difference for your team.

Top Considerations for CRM ROI

Creating a business case for your cloud based CRM software got you this far. However, after go-live of the CRM users must find the impact this new online lead management software has on all the departments that use this platform.

Forrester (the global research firm) is one organization that has provided us a framework of how we can do this. Their methodology, which is known as ‘Total Economic Impact’ views on the sales outcomes as weighted against money and time spent on the CRM.

Forrester’s TEI methodology typically looks at whether sales increased or closed faster via improved lead generation strategies.

Forrester also evaluates the user-friendliness of the cloud based CRM software and how scalable is the CRM as the company changes and registers growth in employment over time.

Here are some of the questions Forrester use to measure their CRM ROI, which includes:

  • Did the CRM platform increase wallet share by capturing more customer income and consumers on your offerings?
  • Did the cloud based CRM software help sales reps match the services that your client needs?
  • Are the customer relationships lasting longer than before?
  • Did the cloud based CRM software provide marketing, sales, support, and the management teams with automated functions that improve business efficiency?
  • Have the management team in your organization been able to capture data that shows reduced direct selling costs?
  • Is the CRM platform, easy to use and intuitive enough to eliminate the time required for IT to pull reports from the CRM database?

CRM implementations are never identical. Therefore, as you can only see an ROI from your CRM if your employees use the platform, this human variable has a direct impact on CRM ROI. Hence, if you take two organizations with competing offerings from the same industry and provide them with identical CRM platforms, it is highly likely that the experiences of these two companies will never be similar. Consequentially, so shall be the differences in their ROI.

With that being said, let us quantify some of the steps that are necessary to set up a new cloud based CRM system for success in any organization, that include:

  • Making certain that the information silo housed in the different departments in the organization are abolished. It has been found that there will always be certain departments that will be more unwilling than others to comply with the CRM software, where all data is collected and stored in one place. However, it is important that each department in your organization agree to enter information in one place to reap the benefits of CRM ROI.
  • Create a means to measure the different metrics by departments and develop a reporting structure that can follow these benchmarks effectively. Therefore, select an online lead management software that is able to handle the deviating goals of marketing, sales, operations, billing, customer support, and others.
  • Accept workflow changes that will completely leverage the software. This may be a conflicting situation for most employees that are set in their ways. Setting the expectation upfront that CRM ROI is based on each team member’s acceptance of the software, is an important part of finding employee buy-in. Each of the employees must be aware that they will receive proper training to utilize the cloud based CRM software, which will make them grow individually and as a department.
  • Customize the CRM software to reduce the busy works, which is holding your organization back for generating CRM ROI, as you are likely to find a host of redundant tasks baked into many of the departments in your business.

Recovering what you pay for your cloud based CRM software means choosing the right CRM software and optimizing the platform to fit your business.

Recently we hired a research agency to conduct an analysis of CRM ROI for ConvergeHub CRM. Let us look at what they discovered about ConvergeHub online lead management software, which is a FinanceOnline award-winning CRM for small businesses:

According to the research study, the potential ROI of ConvergeHub cloud based CRM saw a number of business benefits, like reduced CRM maintenance and infrastructure costs, and quicker time-to-market.

The report further elaborated that:

  • The time-to-implement and deploy was much faster with ConvergeHub cloud based CRM solution than an on-site CRM implementation.
  • Organizational efficiency in the processes was improved as sales and customer support departments were able to automate several basic and redundant works.
  • The online model of ConvergeHub CRM software allowed customers to avail a fixed monthly subscription, which nullified overhead costs.
  • ConvergeHub helped businesses save money in the long term.
  • Businesses began to see an ROI within 3 months after installation of the small business CRM software.

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Ultimately, the research stated that ConvergeHub has an overall 63% CRM ROI rate, a figure that places ConvergeHub as a highly rated SaaS-based online lead management software , which is worth considering, as it helps you to get the most for your investments.

Salespeople, Big Data, Chat Bots, and AI- Stay Tuned for the Easy to Use CRM 4.0 Revolution

Continuing our series on easy to use CRM, AI, and sales, let us now take a close look at Industry 4.0, which is more commonly termed as the 4th Industrial Revolution since the fourth industrial revolution has a profound effect on sales- and if done right, for the best. Before we dive into this heavy and interesting topic, what do we mean by Industry 4.0? As we said even before, Industry 4.0 is the 4th Industrial Revolution, which is evolving in front of all our eyes right now. Industry 4.0 is bringing in internet-enabled smart devices that seamlessly interface with each other and human beings. These devices provide for virtual models and data analysis that makes it possible to solve production issues by evaluating them on the fly.

Continuing our series on easy to use CRM, AI, and sales, let us now take a close look at Industry 4.0, which is more commonly termed as the 4th Industrial Revolution since the fourth industrial revolution will bring a profound effect on sales- and if done right, for the best.

Explaining Industry 4.0

Before we dive into this heavy and interesting topic, what do we mean by Industry 4.0?

As we said even before, Industry 4.0 is the 4th Industrial Revolution, which is evolving in front of all our eyes right now. Industry 4.0 is bringing in internet-enabled smart devices that seamlessly interface with each other and human beings. These devices provide for virtual models and data analysis that makes it possible to solve production issues by evaluating them on the fly.

We may not have known it was called Industry 4.0, but we've been doing it for years. - Techradar Click To Tweet

4th Industrial Revolution is all about providing state-of-art services being delivered to customers and companies through the Cloud.

In brief, Industry 4.0 Revolution describes an industrial world virtually interconnected in real time.

The Trodden Path Through History

The 1st Industrial Revolution ushered towards the end of the eighteenth century in Great Britain, marked by the invention of James Watt’s steam engine, began the substitution of the human workforce by mechanical manufacturing units in industries and factories, the transition of hand to mechanical manufacturing. With the 1st  Industrial Revolution, products began to get manufactured in greater quantity and more rapidly than at any time in history.

The nineteenth century witnessed the onset of the 2nd Industrial Revolution, which is also termed as the Technological Revolution. The 2nd Industrial Revolution was facilitated by the introduction of assembly-line concept along with access to the electrical power in industries. The assembly-line concept that broke down production steps into individual processes, delegated the employees to become more specialized, which consequentially reduced production costs. This revolution bought a massive expansion in telegraphy and railway lines, which signified an unprecedented exodus of people and ideas, which finally lead to a new wave of globalization.

By the early 1970s, information technology and electronics dovetailed into the manufacturing processes, making it achievable for several manual production steps to be automated. Moreover, businesses and offices became computerized and computer networks began to step into the limelight, which propelled the beginning of 3rd Industrial Revolution all across the globe.

Presently, at the dawn of the 21st Century, we are witnessing and are on the cusp of the Industry 4.0 or the 4th Industrial Revolution. As we move forward, the 4th Industrial Revolution will be enabled to a greater extent by two predominant factors: Artificial Intelligence and Big Data.

What Does Industry 4.0 Have For Salespeople?

A common fear that is sweeping with the steady advances in Industry 4.0 is that sales will become fully automated and human sales reps will be replaced by automation and bots. However, in reality, the opposite is true, as, despite this fear and the growing trend in highly evolving digital solutions and smart technologies, customers and buyers are raving for a personal touch in sales as never before.

Evidence of this ever-growing demand for the human touch in sales is reflecting in the trends of 1-to-1 marketing, which empathize personal interactions with the consumers. Therefore, it is amply clear that the value for human interactions, which is very much still alive, will continue to increase as the 4th Industrial Revolution becomes more of a reality.

In fact, many believe that the more automated businesses and industries will become, the greater personal touch will be required as Industry 4.0 becomes a bigger reality.

A part of the reason for the requirement of personalization is the complexity of B2B products and services. Therefore, it requires an expert to help guide customers and prospects and so in the modern times, the role of B2B salesperson has changed, from one that simply pitches an offering, to an expert who assists prospects and customers in every possible way.

Added to this changing role of sales, the other innovation that is making Industry 4.0 possible is the constant increases in the speed at which people are conducting commerce in this digital age.

Therefore, the bottom line is that sales reps must be constantly armed with pertinent data they need to accurately sell to specific customers and prospects- a zone that requires AI and Big Data, especially in conjunction with technology like easy to use CRM . A software platform that is capable of providing a 360-degree view of customers and prospects, with a real-time record of their past and present wish lists and transactions.

The Role Of Easy To Use CRM In Industry 4.0

As the future world unveils, visualization is getting ever more important. Smart machines work together with one another- but as humans act along with technology, the only way humans and machines can perform so efficiently is through highly effective visual interfaces, which in the last few years, have become increasingly commonplace.

ConvergeHub CRM was ahead of the curve in this regard and therefore has evolved the most visual CRM in the industry.
Salespeople and sales managers are already applauding the fact that ConvergeHub the best small business CRM software provides them with a clear, immediate visual view of their priorities and statuses. Therefore, allowing their sales teams to focus on important tasks to move sales and win deals- at a speed that allows them to keep up with the stellar digital transformation and growth in this modern times.

Small business CRM doesn’t have to be an expensive undertaking. Click on the above link to try ConvergeHub, the award-winning best small business CRM solution for free.

 

9 Facebook Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid While Using Best CRM For Small Business

Now that Facebook has become the de facto social focal point for just about everything on the internet, it is more important than ever for users of best CRM for small business to harness the full power of this social media platform or be left behind by those businesses that truly make use of Facebook. Fortunately, there are a number of common mistakes that can be avoided by owners of best CRM for small business on Facebook, that if fended off can beyond doubt help your brand excel in your targeted Facebook audience’s news feeds.

Now that Facebook has become the ‘de facto’ social focal point for just about everything on the internet, it is more important than ever for users of best CRM for small business to harness the full power of this social media platform or be left behind by those businesses that truly make use of Facebook.

In our previous article on how to create a custom Facebook audience from your easy to use ConvergeHub CRM for SMB, we have described how small businesses can use their CRM database to send targeted Facebook ad, by creating a list of the custom audience, to draw in prospects to their business websites.

93% of marketers use Facebook advertising regularly, which translates to about 3 million businesses that use Facebook to market their business.- Facebook Click To Tweet

While it might seem like that, all you need is a good page, a sound profile and some regular posts to get your contents really stand out in the crowd. However, the deluge of contents on Facebook often makes it hard to achieve that.

Fortunately, there are a number of common mistakes that can be avoided by owners of best CRM for small business on Facebook, that if fended off can beyond doubt help your brand excel in your targeted Facebook audience’s news feeds.

  1. Leaving Your Profile Incomplete

One of the most widespread yet easy-to-avoid mistakes that many small and medium businesses make is not filling up their profile diligently. Make sure that apart from appealing images your page has your organization’s address, hours, and other necessary contact information. While this might seem like a no-brainer stuff, but you will be really astonished to know how many businesses leave their profile incomplete and visually unappealing that ultimately makes them lose the footfall of many prospective visitors on their page.

  1. Failing to Promote Your Content

It is known to many, that Facebook’s algorithm is a complicated and tricky one. Therefore, while it might seem that just by sharing your content people will magically flock to it, but in reality, it is far too easy for your posts to get obscured by the avalanche of contents that gets posted on any user’s daily news feeds. Fortunately, Facebook has a plethora of built-in paid and free tools to help you promote your content and drive customers to your page.

  1. Ignoring Video Posts

According to Facebook’s own stats, it has been noted that business pages that regularly share video contents outperform image or text-based posts by up to 135 percent. However when you share your video, make sure that you are using Facebook’s native video player, as these video posts are ranked much higher by Facebook’s algorithms than embedding videos from other sides like Vimeo and YouTube.

  1. Failing to Engage Your Audience

Just creating and uploading post regularly is not enough. As a social media platform, Facebook is a place where people come together and share information. Audience engagement, therefore, plays a substantial part in Facebook’s algorithm.  Hence, to make your feeds to stand out in Facebook you need to engage your audience.  One of the most common and easiest means to do this is to create open-ended posts that encourage audiences to reply and replying to comments posted on your post. Therefore, create posts that ask open-ended questions by using your imagination.

  1. Posting too Sporadically

One of the main things about Facebook marketing is that owners of best CRM of small business who uses Facebook for fetching prospects and leads often forget to stay in the user’s news feeds. This means you need to upload your posts on a regular basis, maybe even multiple times in a day, depending on the demographic scale of your business. However, too many posts on Facebook can also make you to get un-followed. Therefore, look into how other businesses in your area are posting and then achieve the fine balance of how many posts you need to upload on Facebook everyday to keep your business growing.

  1. Making Your Page Difficult to Find or Share

Your Facebook page just like your business website is essentially the “face” of your business. However, if you assume that users will automatically find your Facebook page, just after you have created it, you are wrong in your assumptions. Therefore, use Facebook widgets like “share” button of your Facebook page along with your Facebook page’s URL on your website, other official materials, and on your business cards. In other words, link your Facebook page in as many places as possible.

In addition, always remember that your website, Twitter profile, Facebook and other social media profiles use the same name, title or keywords so that your audience can easily find and share your posts.

  1. Not Informing Your Followers Before You Go Live

Since Facebook introduced the Facebook Live feature in 2015, this has become one of the most popular ways to engage your audience. According to Facebook, the use of Facebook Live has risen 330% since its inception to the present times. Moreover, Facebook’s algorithm promotes live videos more than any other posts on its platform. Therefore, if you plan in advance and promote your Facebook Live posts you will certainly find more interactions and hence more engagements on your wall.

  1. Failing to Harness the Power of Giveaway

Everyone loves free stuff. Hence, small and medium businesses must take advantage of this instinctive human liking for free stuffs by using Facebook as a platform for giveaways.

For example, not long ago, we at ConvergeHub developed a Free Lead Generation software and promoted it as a giveaway among our followers on Facebook, who likes our post as one of the best small business CRM software.

However always check out Facebook’s rules and guidelines for giveaways before you post your awards and contents online.

  1. Not Having an Overall Strategy

If you are using Facebook for marketing for your brand, you must consider why you are using this social media platform over others. Hence, look before you jump right into promoting your posts, providing giveaways, buying ads or sharing your live videos online.

Conclusion

Many small businesses merely join Facebook because they know they should do it, but are not aware of their overall social media strategies and goals for marketing their brands.

Therefore, create your social media marketing goals before using Facebook. Are looking for retaining your existing customers, attract new leads, open a new market, or boost your online sales?

Hence, if you are already using the best small business CRM software for taking care of your customers and your sales and marketing leads, the best way to understand the complex world of Facebook marketing is to hire a social media marketer and then create a strategy for marketing, before you place your brand on this most popular social media website.