Introduction

Business today has gone beyond simply selling to your customers. Your goal ought to have shifted away from just getting customers to building brand loyalists. The best form of marketing is through word of mouth, and you can only get a recommendation from a satisfied customer.

For this reason, you should always aim to satisfy your customers and convert them into your advocates. If you care about your customers and in turn you want them to show so much care for you or your brand, then you need to incorporate CRM into your business.

For this reason, this article will be addressing the role of CRM in marketing. Perhaps you own a brand and you are curious to know how you can increase your brand’s reach, then this would hold a ton of insights for you.

What is CRM?

CRM means Customer Relationship Management. It is a technology that revolves around a brand’s interaction and relationship with its customers. CRM helps you establish a bond between you and your customer and ultimately improve your growth. With CRM, you study the behavior of potential customers through data and insights and later use those data and insights to convert them to your customers.

A customer could make a purchase and stop there, which you do not want. To have a successful brand, you need loyal customers who do more than simply purchase your products. You need brand advocates who would elevate your brand through word of mouth, which you would achieve with the help of Customer Relationship Management.

Nowadays, a lot of companies have employed Customer Relationship Management in their business strategies. With CRM, you can study how customers interact, products or brands they like or consider when in need, and so much more. Having a good knowledge of all this puts you ahead of your competitors who don’t.

Roles of CRM in Marketing

Modern-day marketing should include more aspects of costumers. You should care to study what customers do even when they are not shopping or making a purchase decision. Customers make decisions with premise, which is why you must study them. Finding out what could make that premise for them should be a priority. CRM helps you to achieve this, hence it plays a large role in marketing.

Consumer Relationship Management assists you in increasing your brand’s reach and establishing brand loyalty among customers. It also provides you with insights based on data surrounding your customers and potential customers. Hence, with CRM, your marketing tends to evolve.

Audience Segregation: Audience segregation is easily done with the existence of CRM. Audience segregation involves grouping your audience into different categories like age groups, gender, geographical location, and so on. Through this, you can target these different categories after studying their behaviors, preferences and what works on them. Because CRM offers data and insights on your audience and customers, it supports this process.

Marketing campaigns: With data generated from Customer Relationship Management, you would be well equipped to make targeted marketing campaigns. Data on your audience would show you how your audience behaves and interact with your content and products. You would also gain insights on when and where they are most active and most likely to engage with your content or even purchase your products. Hence, CRM helps you make informed decisions on campaigns.

Tracking Campaign Success: After running marketing campaigns, you want to know if they work as no one wants to operate blindly. How do you measure the success of your marketing campaigns? Through data. CRM supplies you with data and metrics with which you can track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. With this, you can easily decide what works for your brand and what does not.

Building Customer Relationship: The whole point of CRM is to build customer relationships, while the point of marketing is to increase your customer base. CRM plays a huge role in marketing through customer relationships. When you build a strong relationship with your customer, it becomes easy to convince them of your product and so you would have all the marketing you need.

Brand Loyalty: Employing Customer Relationship Management puts you on the right track in improving brand loyalty and customer retention. Apart from acquiring new customers, your priority should also be building a bond of loyalty with your existing ones. CRM aims at making sure your audience transforms from customers to brand advocates who will improve your brand’s reach through word of mouth.

Consumer Decision Journey (CDJ): The consumer decision journey refers to the various stages a potential customer goes through before making the final decision of purchasing a particular brand. The various stages include the Initial Consideration stage, which is the first stage. This stage refers to the moment when a consumer decides he needs a product, but at this stage, he isn’t sure of what brand of the product to consume.

The second stage of the CDJ is the Active Evaluation Stage. In this stage, the said consumer is considering different brands to make a decision of which to purchase. In this stage, the consumer weighs the available options and compares them based on criteria like quality, quantity, and the likes.

The third stage of this journey is the Moment of Purchase. As the name implies, this represents the moment the consumer makes that decision of which brand to purchase and makes the purchase. This is one of the ultimate stages every brand wants to get to. The fourth stage is the Post Purchase Experience which refers to the experience the consumer gets while consuming the product.

The next stage of the CDJ, which is the second ultimate spot, is the Loyalty Loop. This is a route that skips the Active Evaluation Stage. This leads straight to the Moment of Purchase as it represents the route loyal customers take. A loyal customer would not go through the process of evaluating other brands and would just go straight to purchasing from you. This is what you should aspire for as a brand.

CRM influences this Consumer Decision Journey as it helps you to track what point of the journey, consumers interact with your product. Knowing this, you can be informed of how to target and what type of content to push out to customers. It also helps you to determine the placement that would best reach your potential customers.

We have examined the various roles Consumer Relationship Management plays in the process of marketing. This has shown you the relevance of CRM and more reason why you should consider it in your strategies.