Earlier this week we wrote about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and how to chose the best platform for your business. Today we’re going to focus on what the future of CRM software holds. Tech News World is predicting many changes in the CRM world in 2012, including enhanced social media, mobile and cloud integration. Lets take a look at the latest trends in CRM design.

Going Social
One of the biggest trends we’ll see within CRM software design is the increased role of social media within the contract center of the system. Ajay Kapoor, vice president of customer service for Avaya, argues that social media is no longer a side distraction. It is become part of business strategy for companies because it offers benefits without high costs. In addition, social media channels are becoming the new mediums for connecting with customers.

The Power of Analytics
Experts believe a strong analytics program will become a necessary component of CRMs as well. David Pennington, director of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, notes there will soon be a joining of web, CRM and ERP systems, and rather than using one system to work with people, the CRM will use many. As such, the trend in 2012 will be to have analytics that will cover social and viral influence as well as transactional information.

Integrated Platforms
There is also a strong push for flexible platforms that will integrate with legacy applications. Gone are the days when businesses used several different systems, each for their stand-alone purpose. The coming trend is for CRM systems that will integrate with existing data modules and programs. In addition, these new platforms will be more flexible and enable business owners and employees to access more comprehensive data faster than ever before.

Up in the Cloud
CRM integration with cloud service is likely to be a part of the developing technology trends in 2012. Cloud services are becoming more popular each day and they continue to increase in complexity. So as the cloud grows, it will become an integral part of how CRM systems store and manage data.

Mobile
The area that nearly all technology is currently focused on is mobile. With smartphones becoming more popular to carry than wallets, it is crucial that CRM systems be developed and able to integrate with mobile devices for people to use on the go.

With these changes likely occurring in 2012, according to technology experts, it may be prudent to examine where you are in the CRM acquisition process and determine your path from there. For example, if you have not decided on a system but know that mobile is a key component of your business, be sure to ask the companies about future mobile integration plans. If social media is where you are performing strong, consider a system that already has built in social components or maybe wait until a CRM is configured for your best usage.

Image Source: Sean MacEntee

One of the keys to staying sane as a small business owner is developing a system to manage customers and communication efforts. This is especially true if you do not have a large marketing and customer service staff.  Fortunately Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems were developed to help businesses manage relationships with clients. The programs help businesses benefit from quality customer relationships.

CRM software allows you to track each and every customer with an individual file. Within those files, you can track what communication messages customers engaged in, including emails, phone conversations, in-store visits, and mailed collateral. Your staff can also track all their customer interactions, and all of their past purchase data is stored in the system. This helps you – as business owner – and your employees personalize all customer interactions.

CRM Software Review states there are five key areas that you should carefully review when researching which CRM system is best for your business. Lets take a look at the five areas: Features, Contact Information, Sales and Marketing, Ease of Use, and Customer Service (for you, the CRM user).

Features
The main features you will use in a CRM are email contact lists, a calendar program, task lists, and the customer database itself. Be sure to evaluate each one of these features and how well they integrate with existing programs like Gmail, iCalendar, and Outlook. Most CRMs will have similar features. But some will provide more enhanced aspects than others.

For example, one CRM may have an auto-synch program with your personal Outlook, which will help you to maintain one list of contacts and calendar while synching with the CRM. If Outlook is a program you currently use, consider looking for that type of capability when CRM shopping.

Contact Database Component
Look carefully at the front and back end of the contact information module and how it varies from system to system. Some systems may have a great front end, but the back end is cumbersome. While others may be easy on both fronts. Consider all your options since this is a critical part of the CRM and probably a big reason why you’re purchasing a system in the first place.

Sales and Marketing
The sales and marketing tools within a CRM are items such as automated email campaigns and campaign tracking. This is crucial to helping you maintain excellent customer relationships with current clients, as well as a way to track prospective customers as well. Make sure the CRM you select has a full sales and marketing platform within the system. It should be integrated with the CRM, not a stand-alone purchase you are asked to make.

Ease of Use
Is the system easy to use? Is the navigation user friendly? Are there easily identifiable icons and instructions? Is it written in jargon or plain speak? Since you, the business owner, may not have a background in computer programming, you want a CRM that is easy to use and simple to understand. Even if you do know technical terms, your employees may not. And you want a CRM that makes it as easy as possible for your employees to access customer information quickly and easily.

Help and Support
Make sure whatever CRM system you select has a customer service support system that is ready and willing to take your questions, concerns and provides helpful problem-solving solutions. Always ask about support options, including hours of operation, return time of phone/email inquiries, and whether there is an online community forum or internal website available for obtaining additional information and connecting with other users.

When you find the right CRM system, it can be one of the most powerful software tools that will enhance your business and improve customer relationships. And in this day and age, customer service is really what drives sales and business strategy. Consider a CRM as a way to manage the relationships you have and those in your future.

 Image Source: Manchester Library

Do you have your blog running yet? We recently posted about why businesses need a blog and how blogs are crucial to building your brand. We’re taking the discussion a step further by sharing with you the essential elements to consider before you launch your blog. Lets take a look at defining a niche, finding bloggers, and the importance of social sharing.

Define a Niche

When you’re writing for your business, a well-defined niche will help you streamline your writing and target an audience. While it’s true that not all blogs are defined within a subject area, a niche is a great way to target your specific audience.

When you’re defining your niche, be sure to target both current and prospective customers and decide what you want the blog to be about. Are you providing business-to-business advice, or will your blog be comprised of posts related to your industry? These are items you will want to decide on before you start writing.

Finding Bloggers

You’ve identified your blog platform and niche; now you’re ready to start blogging. You will want to identify blog writers that will provide steady content for your site. An in-house writer or marketing professional is a great person to write content. But if your business is like many small businesses, you may not have a full-time marketing staff. Don’t discount your own employees, who are often the experts in their field. This is also a great way to get total company buy-in to the blog concept.

Another idea is to use a group of guest bloggers to provide content. Where do you find these guest bloggers? Ask your business clients and colleagues to contribute a post once a month. Including your customers in your marketing efforts gives them an opportunity to market their business as well.

Go Social

A crucial components of blogging is the ability to share the content via social networks. Sharing your posts via Facebook, Twitter and Google+ helps you build your audience and brand. It also gives your customers and colleagues a chance to share the content through their social networks. Most blog platforms now include sharing buttons that can be placed at the end of a blog post so readers can pass along the post. You should also connect your blog posts to automatically feed and post to Facebook and Twitter through services like Twitterfeed. These services do the sharing work for you and provide analytics to show click-through rates from the social networks back to your blog.

Starting a business blog is one of the most powerful – and inexpensive – online marketing tools a small business can use. After considering your niche, options for writers, and setting up social sharing, you are ready to start building a successful blog.

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In my last post I talked about the basics of local search — where to list your business online. Once you have your basic listings on google places, yelp, yahoo local, and bing local, you can do more to optimize your web presence for local searches. Today I’m going to discuss finding the right keywords for your business. You could spend hours researching and strategizing on how to get your website at the top of local search engine rankings. For small retail establishments, however, just some basics will go a long way.

What Use Are Keywords?

Keywords are ultimately about content for your website and online assets such as your google place page, Facebook page, Twitter account, and so on. The keywords are a starting point for your content, page titles, and meta tags. By building your online marketing strategy around keywords you can improve your search engine rankings.

Keyword Tools

Google's Keyword Tool

Every job needs the right set of tools. Google provides a great free tool for finding keywords: the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Type in a keyword and the results show keyword suggestions as well as the level of competition and search volume for those keywords.

For getting started, the Google tool is sufficient. If you’re looking for more detailed information about keyword, however, a more robust tool is necessary. I’ve used Market Samurai for the past couple of years. Its keyword research feature gives fine-grained information about keyword competition and searches.

Your Market

The first step in keyword research is to ask yourself what business are you in?

The answer may be obvious, but it may not be so clear how people are searching for your type of business. Are people searching for “bike shop”, “bike shops”, “bicycle store”? These are all different keywords. The difference in search volume may be negligible, but it is worth checking. You might be surprised.

Ideally, you want keywords that are relevant to your business, have low competition, and high search volume. But these parameters are only a guide. For local search, the keyword competition among all the websites in the U.S. does not matter so much. What matters is where you are located.

Your Location

The next step is to ask yourself where the hell am I? Again, the answer may seem obvious. If you’re in small town in the middle of nowhere, like say, Baker City, Oregon, then this isn’t a problem for you. My town, Sebastopol, is located only 3 miles from the city limits of a much larger city, Santa Rosa. While our shop ranks #1 for searches like “bike shop sebastopol,” we don’t do so well on searches from Santa Rosa. If you are in a situation like this, you might include the bigger city in the list of keywords (but only if you want ‘em big city folks coming to your store). A strategy could be to create pages on your site with information about your business and how it serves the larger city and how it is conveniently located and has accessible parking.

Your Products and Services

In your keyword search, you will probably find keywords for specific products or services  in your market. Make note of these. An appliance store, for example, might create pages on its site for each of washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, Frigidaire, and Maytag (provided that they sell these product and brands). You should also include the top keywords in your business description on google places, yelp, yahoo, and bing.

Just a Start

This information will get you started on finding the right keywords for your business, but like any part of your business the process should be ongoing. With your google analytics reports, you will be able to see how people are finding your business online. It won’t tell how people are not finding your business. That’s where your business savvy steps in.

Use Google Analytics to track keywords

Bonus Section - Brand Yourself

In your list of keywords, include your brand name and variations on your brand name. My bike shop, the West County Revolution, is sometimes confused as the West Coast Revolution. If I was on top of my game, I would create a page on our site titled West Coast Revolution Bike Shop.

Another client I consulted with uses her name in the business name. When I searched for the business using another common spelling of her name, her business was nowhere to be found. For example, if your shop is called Cathy’s Sandwiches, include Kathy’s Sandwiches in your list of keywords.

If you have questions, I’d love to hear them in the comments!

Anyone who has done a Google search in the last two years has probably noticed their search engine results page looks different. No longer is the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) filled with lines of text. Many results now contain rating stars, images, and vital information. These data-rich results are called rich snippets, and they are changing the way websites structure their data to encourage higher click-through rates. Lets take a look at the basics of rich snippets with some great information by SEOMOZ.

What Are Rich Snippets?

Snippets are the lines of text that appear within a Google search result. They are designed to give the user a preview of what’s on that webpage. They are a visual way for businesses to display products, prices, and reviews quickly. Here is a list of the most common categories of rich snippet data.

Restaurants: average review, number of stars, and price range

Recipes: photo, recipe rating, time

Music Album: ratings, songs

Video: image, ratings

People: photograph, phone number and name

Business and Organizations: location, customer review

Events: event date, location, and time

The Impact on Click-Through Rates

The idea behind rich snippets is the additional information that appears in the SERP will result in higher click-through rates from the reader. So do rich snippets work? Is the click-through rate better than regular search results? According to Yoast, many companies have seen a 20 – 30% rise in click-through rates. In addition, those website visitors are often more qualified and are likely to stay on the site longer since they already previewed the content.

Tips for Creating Rich Snippets

There are many applications and plug-ins that allow you to easily build rich snippets and integrate them into your website. Once that is done, be sure to complete Google’s request form to let them know rich snippet tags have been added to a website.

Make sure rich snippet content is visible to users, as Google will not display hidden content. Rich snippet content should always be marked-up to represent what is on the actual webpage. And make sure the elements match the category. For example, don’t use ingredients for an album review.

If there is a way to get ahead with SEO, rich snippets are a great way to beat the competition. The visual queues and images break up the lines of generic text and set those search results above the rest. Rich snippets can easily improve click-through rates and bring the correct audience to your website. So why note give this new searching trend a try and see how it works for your business.

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What is one of the most rapidly growing social media platforms in the world? You may think Facebook. But in today’s immediate world of Google searches and social media, the blog-o-sphere is hot with 70 million blogs on the popular WordPress platform alone.

Companies, like MerchantOS understand that blogs mean business and are one of the most effective ways to build a brand. Hubspot noted that 58% of companies claimed that their blogs helped them gain credibility within their specific industry. In addition, Hubspot reported that in 2010, blogs have an average ROI of 600%. Lets take a look at four reasons a blog will become your store’s best new marketing tactic.

1. Blogs build brand identity. One of the great aspects about a blog is that it’s not a website of static content. A blog has new information posted on a regular basis. It sends out messages that you want people to read and helps customers see the value in the content you disseminate. As such, blogs are a great way to showcase your company and give your customers and prospects a reason to re-visit your site.

2. Blogs are SEO machines. Writing regular blog posts keeps your company information fresh, thus providing search engines with new words and text to mine for search results. Imbedding key words into the content helps search engines like Google pick up on the trending words, bringing your blog – and brand – front and center in search results.

3. Blogs are conversation pieces and get people talking. How many times have you seen interesting or provocative blog posts shared on Twitter and Facebook. Blogs are able to generate dialogue more than a 140-character tweet. The content on the posts also promotes dialogue by the comment option that allows readers to share their views. After a few interesting comments, it’s not uncommon to see a healthy conversation follow a blog article.

4. Blogging is easy and inexpensive. It’s pretty simple to start a blog. There are a variety of platforms available – WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Tumblr – that are either free or have very little cost. The sites are easy to set up and have pre-created templates that do not require an HTML web programmer to create. This leaves your business with time and resources to dedicate to the most important part of the blog – the content.

Blogs are a great way for your business to stay in front of the customer, even when she is not making a purchase. The content keeps your name in the atmosphere and helps people identify your company with not only a product or service, but with thoughtful advice and information. As long as people are searching for information related to your business, a blog is a great way to remind shoppers that your brand exists and you’re just one click away.

Image Source: Maria Reyes-McDavis

When is the last time you made an actual phone call on your cell phone? If you are like the majority of smartphone owners, you are likely using your phone less for talking and more for texting, tweeting, and shopping.

Smartphones are now shoppers’ “go to” resource for finding the best-priced products. It is not uncommon for Suzy Shopper to be eyeing a price tag in a retail store, while at the same time, comparing the amount to an online shop.

Mobile phones are becoming our #1 resource for shopping. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 24% of smartphone owners used their phone to look up product reviews while in a store. And 38% of phone owners used their phone to call a friend for shopping advice before marking a purchase.

JWT Worldwide recently conducted a study of 18+ year-old shoppers and how they used their mobile devices while shopping. The findings were surprising. Lets take a look at smartphone usage among this age group and how it’s affecting purchasing.

1.  Mobile shopping doesn’t equal mobile purchasing. Mobile shoppers are not necessarily using their phones to make purchases. Rather they are being used to compare prices and find the best bargains.

2.  Mobile devices are more frequently used than computers, even if the computers are readily available. If given the choice, most people will use their smartphone to brose and shop. JWT speculates this may be due to the fact that people – while at work – do not want to browse the internet for deals on a computer that’s tied to the workplace.

3.  Men are more likely to use their smartphone as their “go to” tool while shopping. Male shoppers use the phones more than women for price comparison and gathering information in order to make an informed purchase decision.

4.  Shoppers want touchscreen mobile devices. It’s true – people are migrating toward to the touchscreen interfaces found on tablets and smartphones. Touchscreens have been shown to have an easier user interface, thus creating a better web-browsing shopping experience.

5.  Mobile phones may be used more for information than buying. Most shoppers agreed they would likely buy the item they need, with or without a mobile device. So where smartphones are used frequently for research and price comparison, if Johnny Buyer wants an item, he’s likely to buy if off the shelf of the store.

While it is true that mobile phones are playing an important role in the shopping experience, research shows they are not replacing the traditional modes of buying. Instead, they are supplementing the process of price comparison and research. This is good news for retailers. Online-only companies may still have a ways to go.

Image Source: Ed Yourdon