marketing management

How can marketing help with profits during an economic downturn? What must businesses do to get started? Read on to find out.

The current economic crisis is prompting businesses to change directions. Many are now focusing on qualifying and converting leads and delivering value to existing customers. What’s more, with the pandemic accelerating digital transformation, businesses are now more equipped to understand their customers better to achieve the aforementioned goals.

How can businesses use marketing to improve their profits, especially amid an economic crisis? What steps should businesses take to get better results? Check out our tips below.

Reexamine your lead scoring strategy

Your lead scoring strategy is what helps you qualify your leads and determine which potential customer is most likely to make a purchase. Lead scoring is a critical step in lead conversion strategy. 

Messing up with your lead scoring can impact your lead conversion results. This is why it’s important to reexamine your lead scoring strategy and check if it’s working well.

Some companies automate lead scoring so their sales and marketing teams can focus on more important tasks. By automating using a system, sales and marketing teams can automatically identify which of the incoming leads they need to focus on.

Focus on converting qualified leads

According to surveys, more than 25% of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) do not get a follow-up from sales. This is a wasted opportunity for driving sales. And in an economic downturn, every dollar counts.

To prevent this from happening, it’s important that, as previously mentioned, you can screen out the leads that are more likely to make a purchase, so you can focus on them and help them make a purchase as soon as possible.

You can generate qualified leads with content marketing, conduct follow-ups, connect with them through email marketing, or use positive customer testimonials and reviews to help speed up their purchase decision.

Work on your CTAs

Your CTAs are also crucial in your lead conversion strategy. CTAs may make or break your marketing campaign. If a CTA doesn’t match the customer’s needs or preferences, they may end up exiting from your website or from your other sales and marketing channels.

For example, having “Learn More” as a CTA may discourage customers that are looking to make an immediate purchase. “Buy Now” may not be effective if the customer needs more information about your product or service.

The point of CTAs is to convince users they need to take action immediately or you risk losing them, but this only works if the CTA matches the stage of the buyer in the buyer’s journey. 

Assess and evaluate your value chain

The final thing that you should remember is to add value for your customers. This can be done only when you understand how your value chain works and determine whether they’re giving value to the end users (your customers).

You can conduct a value chain analysis by doing the following:

• First, identify all your value chain activities. You can do this by having a list of each activity in your company that is essential in the creation of your company’s finished product.

• Second, calculate their costs. Costs such as rent, utilities, and manpower often play a role in value creation.  By identifying your value chain activities and their costs, you can see an overview of how your company is running and which parts are taking so much of your dough.

• Third, determine what your customers perceive as value. This is where it’s important to gather data and feedback from customers to help you understand them better. To get you started, gather data related to why and how your customers make purchase decisions. This helps you understand their intent and what they perceive as valuable.

• Fourth, compare with your competition. Understand the marketing effectiveness of your competitors. Compare how your competitors carry out tasks, what their business strategies are, and their revenue (or other performance) outcomes.

• Lastly, decide on a competitive advantage. After making your comparisons, you’ll already know which parts you are performing better compared to your competitors. It can be the cost, the perceived value of the brand, or the accessibility you provide to your customers.

Gather data from your customers now

Do you want to know how you can effortlessly gather data from your customers to understand them better? Book a FREE demo with our sales and marketing experts now to learn more.

A/B testing is one of the most effective ways to determine what elements to use that respond to customer needs and preferences the most. Find out why should you do it and how you can get started.

Many of the sales and marketing elements you see on the internet from huge companies have undergone A/B testing— the color of the CTA button, the copy or words they used in the button, the headline, and the pictures. These things were carefully studied and prepared using the test. 

But what is A/B testing, why should you do it, and how can you start doing it? Read on to find out.

What is A/B Testing

A/B testing is the process of comparing two or more versions of a variable (for example, web copy, color, picture, or other elements) to determine which version target audiences respond to the most.

The goal of A/B testing is to optimize websites, webpages, and other online channels using data to eliminate the guesswork. With the data, you can understand at a deeper level your target users’ behavior, pain points, and the elements needed to achieve customer satisfaction.

Benefits of A/B Testing

Many companies have observed the following benefits of A/B testing:

1. Addressing target customers’ pain points

Have you ever visited a website and encountered an inconvenience like not being able to buy a product, check its description, or request a demo?

These are some of the pain points that businesses must learn to address to give customers a smooth experience interacting with your online channels.

With A/B testing, you’ll learn more about customers’ experiences and journeys with your brand so that you’ll give them a better experience the next time they visit your website or other online channels.

2. Achieving better ROI and other business objectives

A/B testing also helps you achieve business objectives such as driving sales, generating leads, or growing your business overall.

The tests let you increase conversions through your websites and landing pages without having to spend another dollar to drive traffic. This optimizes your spending— helping you get more sales with minimal costs.

3. Helps you understand your target customers better

The data you get from A/B testing also gives you insights about your customers— even information that customers don’t even know about themselves. These include preferences such as what words work best to encourage them to make a purchase or what pictures they’d like to see.

This data can be used throughout your business— sales, marketing, and support, among other things— to attract more customers, increase retention, and establish brand loyalty.

How to Start A/B Testing

To start A/B testing, we such doing the following:

1. Identify your business goal

The most important part of A/B testing is knowing what business goal you want to achieve. Some companies that conduct this test have the following goals:

• Generating more leads through websites
• Driving more sales through email
• Getting more people to sign up for the newsletter
• Encouraging people to refer the website to their friends

Knowing what you want to achieve helps you decide what to test and how to conduct that test.

2. Decide what to test

After identifying your business goal, select the variable that you want to measure (e.g. the size of the CTA button, the color of the CTA button, the tone of the copy, the pictures used, etc.). You will have to establish a hypothesis before doing this. Some hypotheses include:

• The pictures you use in the email will encourage email readers to scroll through
• The color of the CTA button affects its visibility and user experience
• The headline used in the website will impact brand impression

These hypotheses will help you narrow down and select the elements that you want to test. When testing, make sure that you have a control (or the main/default element that you’re normally using) and a challenger (the new variable or element that you want to test). 

3. Increase the significance of your results

Make sure that your sample size is enough to increase the statistical significance of your test. Split your sample groups equally and randomly— like testing with two or more audiences that are equal in number. 

4. Take one step at a time

More importantly, when you’re new to A/B testing, take one step at a time. Learn the basics first before moving on to the more complicated steps of A/B testing. Use tools to make collecting data easier and to produce more statistically significant results.

Want to learn more about customer data collection?

Try Saphyte to make data collection smooth and easy. Our platform have all the tools and features you need to make data collection, interpretation, and reporting easier.

With our digital ecosystem, you will have access to features that will help upgrade your sales, marketing, administration, and support functions.

Want to learn more about Saphyte? Book a FREE demo now.

Learn more about how to organically grow your email subscription list, a crucial part of running a meaningful email marketing strategy.

Many companies do not know how to organically grow their email subscription list. This makes it hard for them to run their email marketing strategy and achieve meaningful sales and marketing objectives.

To make your job easier for you, we’ve listed down tips on how you can grow your email list without buying them off the internet. Let’s get started.

1. Offer value in exchange for subscription

One of the most effective ways to get someone to subscribe to your email list is to offer something that the customer would find valuable. This can be information that they’re interested in or are actively looking for or tools that can help them work easily. 

Many companies offer lead magnets such as an eBook, a PDF report, an inspiring or motivational video series, an infographic, or even a discount on a product or service.

Find something that your target customers would find valuable and offer that as your lead magnet.

Learn more about developing a content marketing strategy here.

2. Personalize your offers

Customers have different needs and priorities at every stage of the sales process. You may even be able to predict what they need depending on the sales channel they’re using. 

Because of this, it’s important to personalize your offers depending on what they need. Offering them discounts at the first stage of the sales process may not be needed as the customer is still looking for information about your product. 

Offering detailed product information may no longer be needed if the customer has already gone through many steps after discovering your brand and is close to purchasing your product.

Making sure your offers are personalized ensures a high level of success in closing the deal.

3. Differentiate yourselves from competition

When offering lead magnets, it’s important to identify and communicate to customers what you can do that your competition isn’t able to do. This guarantees that the customer understands your unique value proposition, and will make it likely for the customer to avoid scanning the market for alternatives.

4. Have a straightforward CTA button

Your CTA button should also be simple and straightforward and redirect the customer to a landing page where they need to be. This must be sensitive to their stage of the sales process. 

Do not redirect customers that still need a lot of convincing to a page where they would make a purchase. It’s important to note that the CTA button must communicate clearly what value the customer will get after clicking the button.

5. Make your content shareable

If you’re trying to grow your email list, make sure your content is shareable. Those that have subscribed to your email campaigns may find it valuable enough to share it with friends and family. This makes the spread of your content through word-of-mouth communication easier to do. 

6. Connect through social media

Social media is one of the best places to get customers to sign up for email campaigns. Not only are most people active on social media platforms, but these social media platforms can deliver and spread information fast.

It’s also easy to promote your brand on social media organically or through paid content. This allows you to instantly connect with a massive target audience and get them to sign up for your email campaign.

Check out our list of the best social media campaigns here.

7. Conduct A/B testing

A/B testing is an important way of assessing the effectiveness of the elements of your sales and marketing strategy. This type of testing will tell your subscribers’ preferences over things such as:

• Subject line
• Type of Content
• Color or Style
• Schedule When Email is Sent

8. Engage through your employees

Get more people to sign up by making your messages sound more personal by coursing them through your employees. Have a “human tone” by signing off using your employees’ signatures. 

Below is an example of how Semrush, an American SEM company, uses a “human face” to communicate with target audiences.

You can also add customer reviews or feedback to social proof— making it easier to convince your target audience to sign up to be part of your email list.

Easier Email Marketing

Get access to a complete set of tools to easily gather customer data and grow your audience now with Saphyte. 

Saphyte provides a powerful digital ecosystem that can help you boost your sales, marketing, and support functions. Learn more from our experts and book a demo now for FREE.

What are the ways that personalized content helps businesses? Why should companies seriously consider personalizing? Read on to find out.

Personalization is a strategy that has been observed to help businesses that apply it. It has helped with boosting brand recall, driving sales, and establishing customer loyalty. In 2022, with the pandemic-induced trends, personalization has been found to matter more.

What are the ways that personalized content can help businesses? Read on to find out.

1. Personalization helps engage the audience better

It’s not enough for you to communicate with your audience through marketing. It’s also important to keep them engaged as an engaged audience is more likely to take action. 

Personalization narrows down the message, making it relevant and responsive to the target audience’s needs and preferences. This ensures that the audience will: (1) read the message you sent, (2) take the desired action, and (3) help you achieve your marketing objectives.

2. It enhances lead nurturing

Personalized content also helps convert more leads into MQLs (marketing qualified leads) and SQLs (sales qualified leads). With personalized lead nurturing, the process of establishing and nurturing relationships with leads at every stage of their journey becomes enhanced, making it easier for them to convert into customers.

3. It improves lead conversion rates

Personalization also includes the strategy of engaging a prospective customer with the right message at the right time. This curated experience makes them more likely to convert into actual customers compared to random, irrelevant messaging.

4. It helps drive sales

With an engaged audience, an improved lead nurturing process, and better conversion rates, sales are highly likely to increase. According to statistics, personalization has been observed to drive sales, with 70% of brands claiming a 200% ROI and 63% observing an increase in customer interactions and conversion rates. 

5. It boosts brand recall

Personalization has also been observed to improve the customer experience. This helps the customer remember the brand the next time the need comes up. Personalization not only helps with lead conversion, but it also increases repeat purchases for existing customers.

6. It helps with establishing customer loyalty

With an improved experience, customers are more likely to come back to you in the future. This makes their chances of churning or moving to competitors for their preferred product or service less likely. With established customer loyalty, it becomes easier for brands to convince customers to take an action to reach a sales and marketing goal. 

Discover how to personalize content

Explore how a digital ecosystem like Saphyte helps you collect important information about your customers for your personalization goals. Discover how you can keep your target audience engaged with minimal effort. Book a FREE demo now.

How can marketing help with profits during an economic downturn? What must businesses do to get started? Read on to find out.

The current economic crisis is prompting businesses to change directions. Many are now focusing on qualifying and converting leads and delivering value to existing customers.

What’s more, with the pandemic accelerating digital transformation, businesses are now challenged to understand their customers better to achieve the aforementioned goals.

How can businesses use marketing to improve their profits, especially amid an economic crisis? What steps should businesses take to get better results? Check out our tips below.

1. Reexamine your lead scoring strategy

Your lead scoring strategy is what helps you qualify your leads and determine which potential customer is most likely to make a purchase. Lead scoring is a critical step in lead conversion strategy. 

Messing up with your lead scoring can impact your lead conversion results. This is why it’s important to reexamine your lead scoring strategy and check if it’s working well.

Some companies automate lead scoring so their sales and marketing teams can focus on more important tasks. By automating using a system, sales and marketing teams can automatically identify which of the incoming leads they need to focus on.

2. Focus on converting qualified leads

According to surveys, more than 25% of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) do not get a follow-up from sales. This is a wasted opportunity for driving sales. And in an economic downturn, every dollar counts.

To prevent this from happening, it’s important that, as previously mentioned, you can screen out the leads that are more likely to make a purchase, so you can focus on them and help them make a purchase as soon as possible.

You can generate qualified leads with content marketing, conduct follow-ups, connect with them through email marketing, or use positive customer testimonials and reviews to help speed-up their purchase decision.

3. Work on your CTAs

Your CTAs are also crucial in your lead conversion strategy. CTAs may make or break your marketing campaign. If a CTA doesn’t match the customer’s needs or preferences, they may end up exiting from your website or from your other sales and marketing channels.

For example, having “Learn More” as a CTA may discourage customers that are looking to make an immediate purchase. “Buy Now” may not be effective if the customer needs more information about your product or service.

The point of CTAs is to convince users they need to take action immediately or you risk losing them, but this only works if the CTA matches the stage of the buyer in the buyer’s journey. 

4. Assess and evaluate your value chain

The final thing that you should remember is to add value for your customers. This can be done only when your understand how your value chain works and determine whether they’re giving value to the end users (your customers).

You can conduct a value chain analysis by doing the following:

• First, identify all your value chain activities. You can do this by having a list of each activity in your company that is essential in the creation of your company’s finished product.

• Second, calculate their costs. Costs such as rent, utilities, and manpower often play a role in value creation.  By identifying your value chain activities and their costs, you can see an overview of how your company is running and which parts are taking so much of your dough.

• Third, determine what your customers perceive as value. This is where it’s important to gather data and feedback from customers to help you understand them better. To get you started, gather data related to why and how your customers make purchase decisions. This helps you understand their intent and what they perceive as valuable.

• Fourth, compare with your competition. Understand the marketing effectiveness of your competitors. Compare how your competitors carry out tasks, what their business strategies are, and their revenue (or other performance) outcomes.

• Lastly, decide on a competitive advantage. After making your comparisons, you’ll already know which parts you are performing better compared to your competitors. It can be the cost, the perceived value of the brand, or the accessibility you provide to your customers.

Gather data from your customers now

Do you want to know how you can effortlessly gather data from your customers to understand them better? Book a FREE demo with our sales and marketing experts now to learn more.

Content marketing is a way for businesses to attract leads, convert them, and keep them engaged. Read on to find out why it’s important to do it in 2022.

Articles, e-books, videos, and any information you get from a brand— whether entertaining or educational— can be called content and it’s designed to make you aware of the brand and keep you engaged.

Some forms of content remind you that the brand is there on the market. Other forms of content motivate you to make an on-the-spot purchase.

So what is content marketing and why is it important in 2022?

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves the use of articles, videos, and other forms of content to attract, engage, and convert leads into customers, and retain them.

This approach helps the brand do the following:

Promote brand awareness and top-of-mind awareness

Establish credibility in the market

Encourage purchases to drive sales

Motivate leads to make their first purchases

Businesses often use search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and email marketing to forward their content to their target audience.

Talk to us to know more about content marketing and what tools to use here.

Why Is It Important?

The following are reasons why content marketing is an important strategy that businesses should use in 2022:

Content marketing works. According to 42% of B2B marketers, content marketing works and they’re effective in producing results.

They bring in necessary traffic. According to content marketing leaders, they experienced a 7.8x higher year-over-year growth in unique site traffic when content marketing is done right.

They help you get more leads. Businesses with blogs report getting 67% more leads than other companies.

Content determines buyers’ next steps. According to a report, 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content first before engaging with a brand’s sales rep.

Content helps build loyalty, nurture audiences, and drive sales. According to a report, 78% of successful organizations use content marketing to build loyalty, nurture leads and audiences (64%), and generate sales and revenue (57%).

Content marketing can help you establish and nurture your relationships with your prospective and existing customers. When the recipient of your content thinks of your company as credible, trustworthy, and responsive to their needs and interests, they’re more likely to choose you among your competitors when it’s time to buy.

How Content Marketing Works

Every buyer has a different set of needs and expectations at every stage of the buying process. Knowing the right content to send helps you nudge them to move forward to the next stages.

For example, a buyer at an awareness stage may need to know more about how your brand’s products and services can address their pain points, challenges, and questions. A buyer at a consideration stage may need to know more about the specific features or functions of your products and services and how they differ from what’s available on the market. A buyer at the closing stage may need to know how choosing you can benefit them in the long run.

Sending them the right content at the right time is crucial in closing these deals. Some tools are built and designed to help businesses automate this process.

Here’s an example of how you can engage your leads and customers through email with ease:

How to Get Started

To make content marketing easier, here are things to take note of:

Know your audience. The first step to making a content marketing strategy is to know who you want to reach and how to reach and engage them effectively. This requires you to determine their needs, preferences, and interests, among others, so you’d know what type of content to send them.

Get a team. Hire professional writers and editors to make your content for you. Remember, a small error in content, typography, or grammar can make you lose your credibility and discourage prospective customers.

Determine your distribution strategy. Know where your target audience is hanging around, when they’ll be most active, where they’re more likely to click on your content, and what type of content works best for them.

Use tools. To make the entire content marketing process easier, use tools and technologies designed for it. Some can help you distribute your content automatically with just a few clicks.

Automate your content marketing now

Want to know more about content marketing and how you can automate it? Talk to us and click here to get started.

To achieve business goals, marketers need to develop a content marketing strategy that is designed for their organization’s needs, as well as their audiences’. Read on to find out how to start making yours.

Many businesses plan to write some blogs, post on social media and send bulk emails to their target audience. But many also don’t know where to begin.

It’s understandable. According to a report, 74% of companies observed that content marketing increased their lead generation results. Those with a content strategy also achieved 27.1% higher win rates and 18.1% higher quota attainment. That’s why, in 2022, 90% of marketers continue investing in the channels they focus on using a content marketing plan.

In this post, we’ll talk about what content strategy is, why it’s important, and how you can develop your own content strategy that is designed for your unique business needs and your target audience. So let’s get started.

Learn more about what content marketing is and why it’s important in 2022 here.[1] 

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is a plan of action or policy that uses content (blogs, articles, videos, among others) designed to help organizations achieve their business goals.

Most business organizations use the content for the following:

To increase brand awareness in the market

To attract and generate more leads

To engage leads, nurture them, and convert them into customers

To remind customers of the brand and make a repeat purchase

To retain customers and reduce customer churn

A successful content marketing strategy will help businesses achieve their targets and goals, like those mentioned above.

Why is it important?

A content marketing strategy is important because it ensures that the content that you’re sending out is doing work. Remember, it’s not free to produce content. It requires time, energy, and company resources to write articles or publish videos. That’s why a strategy is important to make sure that they work.

It’s also important to note that your competition is sending out content too. Your strategy should take this into account because the first content the customer receives may lead that customer to ignore all other options and make their first purchase.

7 Essential Parts of a Content Marketing Strategy

What should your content marketing strategy be made of? Here are seven essential elements to take note of:

Your target audience

Their needs and preference

Your competitive edge (USP)

Your content format

The channels to focus on

Your team

The evaluation

1.   Your target audience

The most important element of your content marketing strategy is understanding your target audience. Who are they? How do they behave? Getting the right idea about your target customers lets you decide what to do in the next steps so you can get your message across effectively.

2.   Their needs and preference

Of course, each customer has a need that they have to address. Understanding each customer’s needs and preferences lets you provide an offer that is relevant and responsive to their unique situation.

3.   Your competitive edge

You need to know how to market your unique selling proposition (USP). What makes you different from the rest? Why should the customer choose you among the competition? Knowing your competitive edge allows you to drive your message home— telling the customer to ignore all other options and just focus on your brand.

4.   Your content format

Not all customers respond positively to blogs and articles, some prefer the video format. Choosing the right content format for the right customer is critical to getting them to consume your content.

5.   The channels to focus on

This is extremely important especially when you market on social media. Understanding which platforms your target customers is likely to use lets you optimize your content performance, especially when you choose to run paid ads.

6.   Your team

The success of your content marketing strategy depends on the team executing it. Choosing the right people to implement tasks and run workflows is an important part of the strategy.

7.   The evaluation

Last but not least, evaluating your performance lets you spot what needs to be corrected in your strategy and what needs to be retained. Use the right tools and metrics. Learn from industry peers and be ready to adapt.

5 Steps to Develop a Content Strategy

Now that you know what elements to focus on when developing your content strategy, it’s time to make one! Let’s dive in.

Set a goal

Know more about your customers

Choose your tools

Determine your content

Explore and experiment

1.   Set a goal

Goals are what would determine what your plan is going to look like and how it’s going to be implemented.

There are many goals to choose from. When planning their content marketing strategy, many businesses aim to:

Generate more leads

Establish brand awareness

Drive sales

Retain more customers

2.   Know more about your customers

Clearly defining your content’s target audience also allows you to be more specific about your content marketing strategy.

It lets you produce more relevant and valuable content that they’ll want to consume and which will, later on, push them to become customers.

Customer profiling helps you know more about your customers:

3.   Choose your tools

It’s going to be hard to run a content marketing strategy, especially if it’s your first time. Choosing the right tool makes the job easy and also helps you become more efficient in your tasks.

Tools like Saphyte’s Drip Marketing lets you send emails automatically on schedule to your target customers.

4.   Determine your content

There are several content formats to choose from and your content will largely depend on your target audience. Among them are:

Blogs.

Videos

Podcasts

Infographics

Emails

Case Studies

Ebooks

Lead magnets

5.   Explore and experiment

The success of many content marketing strategies today can be attributed to their willingness to explore and experiment. Evaluate what’s working and what isn’t. Try something new and see how far it goes. The sky’s the limit.

Want to know more about content marketing tools?

See how Saphyte’s tools can reinvent the way you engage with your leads and customers. Talk to us and get started here.

Relationship marketing plays a crucial role in increasing customer lifetime value, the amount of value a customer contributes to your business from their first purchase towards their last. Read on to find out the things you should know about relationship marketing and why you should consider this approach.

Focusing on building valuable and lasting relationships with customers improves retention. And customer retention is becoming more important these days, especially when businesses aspire to grow.

Multiple studies found that improving customer retention by at least 5% helps in increasing revenue by 25% to 95%. It’s also more cost-effective. Engaging existing customers for retention has been shown to be at least 6-7x cheaper than acquiring new ones.

What do these numbers mean? All of these mean that in order for companies to increase their sales, cut their expenses, and grow their profits, they should find ways to build customer loyalty and reduce customer churn. And one proven way to do this is through relationship marketing.

What is Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing is the process of building long-term personal, individualized connections with customers. It focuses on providing value and relevance through content, product, and services for a continuing, lasting relationship.

Companies that implement relationship marketing seek to get to know a customer better to improve their experiences with the company. They do not stop after a deal is closed.

In fact, they continue to reach out to the said customer by sending relevant content, personalized offers, and discounts to encourage repeat purchases and consequently increase the chances of customer retention.

The way relationship marketing works is often illustrated with customers going through a lifecycle process. They start by discovering the brand and end up becoming advocates of that brand.

Learn more about relationship marketing here: ​​What is Relationship Marketing and Why is it Important?[1] 

Examples of Relationship Marketing

The following are examples of how relationship marketing works:

1.   IKEA

IKEA is one of the few companies that focus on relationship marketing as a primary means of growth. It is considered the world’s largest home furnishing retailer and has more than 400 stores worldwide.

The company is famous for using demographic, psychographic & geographic segmentation to provide personalized experiences to customers and offering value at every stage of the buyer’s journey. It gives importance to customer retention, establishing loyalty, and building long-term relationships with its customers.

To “deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its product,” IKEA uses a combination of experimental marketing, customer engagement and content marketing, and digital marketing and social media engagement, among others.

2.   Starbucks

Starbucks didn’t just rise to the top because of good coffee. The company has been known to provide excellent customer experiences that make it easy for them to be the topic of conversation.

Starbucks starts with providing customers with comfort and peace at their stores— a different feeling that customers don’t commonly get elsewhere. A personalized product option is then offered to every customer— whether they want 2 pumps of syrup, soy milk to replace dairy milk, a scoop of java chips, or anything else added to their drink.

Starbucks communicates with its customers via text, email, and direct mail. There, they provide content to customers and also open accessibility for purchase. Starbucks also allows customers to turn their mobile phones into electronic rewards cards to redeem free drinks, a birthday gift, or a free sample menu item.

3.   Amazon

Amazon’s success story rests primarily on its ability to provide a customer-centric experience to its over 300 million customers.

The company built its own Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to collect customer data, such as location, searched items, and previous purchases, to instantly modify and personalize users’ on-site experience.

Amazon uses email to connect with customers and keep them purchasing. They also have the ​​Prime customer loyalty program where customers get free and fast shipping, free cloud storage, and free streaming services, among others, by paying extra for membership.

6 Things You Should Know About Relationship Marketing

When talking about relationship marketing, here are six things that you should know about:

1.   Personalization is key

Personalization is the process of crafting an experience or message to match a recipient’s needs, interests, and other factors, based on the data the company has gathered.

For example, if the customer has searched for hair products in the past few minutes, it’s likely that the customer needs a hair product or is interested in buying one. Having this data allows companies to offer relevant product recommendations which increase the chances of the said customer making a purchase.

Personalization is key to a relationship marketing’s success. Companies need to be able to offer relevant and valuable information for customers to continue to interact with them. When a brand’s product and services do not match the customer’s needs, interests, or preferences, it’s likely for a churn to occur.

2.   Repeat customers are more likely to spend more

A study found that repeat customers spend three times more per transaction compared to non-repeat customers. They’re also easier to sell to, which means that in relationship marketing, retaining customers is more important than anything else.

When repeat customers become advocates of your brand, they’re not just there to make repeat purchases. They’re also there to influence others to make a purchase, spreading good word-of-mouth marketing to promote your brand and increase your sales revenue.

3.   Technology is an advantage

Improving customer relationships through personalization would be impossible without technology. Technologies like CRM software allow companies to seamlessly collect and sort customer data for instant use.

CRMs help inform sales and marketing teams what a customer needs, what they’re likely to purchase, and what to do to encourage them to make a purchase. With CRM tools and features, companies can also automate tasks involving personalization such as email marketing, catalog offering, and customer profiling, among others.

4.   Everybody loves incentives

To keep customers engaged, companies need to keep sending content that helps customers maximize the use of their purchased products or encourage them to browse for other products for enhanced use and experience.

But nothing engages customers more than incentives. Incentives can take the form of discounts and freebies.

Many companies incentivize their customers through a loyalty program, where customers gain points with every purchase. These points can be exchanged for free items and products.

Each purchase allows the company to gain more details about the customer— their needs, preferences, and other information that can be used to provide a more personalized experience to the said customer.

5.   Customer feedback and insights are game-changers

Building a good relationship is a two-way street. Companies guestimating what customers need wouldn’t suffice. Customers also have to contribute and inform companies what they think, feel, and experience when using their products and services.

To encourage customers to provide real feedback, companies have to find ways to reward honesty, make providing feedback accessible and convenient, and be transparent about how the feedback would benefit the customer.

6.   Provide a multi-channel experience for every type of customer

For companies to truly capture every type of customer’s interest, they need to be sensitive about their marketing channels— how the customers found out about them and how these customers interact with them.

This way, the company can map the whole experience of the customer and look for ways to improve this experience. A different journey may then be provided for a customer that used online marketing channels compared to traditional marketing channels.

Because customers nowadays use more than one marketing channel, companies have to provide a consistent multi-channel experience (omnichannel marketing) to all customers.

Customers expect a consistent, quality experience throughout and that’s why the brand’s identity and values should be unified and consistent as well across these channels.

Upgrade Your Relationship Marketing

Improve the way you build relationships with customers. Get in touch with Saphyte’s support team now to know more about relationship marketing and the tools you can use to connect with customers.

Companies that value customer experience gain 4-8% higher revenue than their competitors in their industries. They are found to be 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers. Find out what customer relationship is all about and how it transformed the way companies deal with their customers.

When companies talk about customer relationships, they usually refer to the marketing strategies a company implements to encourage customers to stay for the long haul. Customer relationship strategies aim to build loyalty and they typically require determining what customers uniquely need and want first before anything else.

However, right now, companies face roadblocks in identifying these needs and preferences. The global pandemic caused a shift in consumer preferences and changes in consumer behavior, which means that the consumer data that companies have gathered in the previous years may be rendered irrelevant.

Without the right data about your target customers, it would be hard to offer the right solutions. This puts a strain on the customer relationship. Some customers may avoid coming in contact with the business again after the business failed to address their needs and preferences.

How Customer Relationship Works

All customers start from a point where they had zero knowledge about the brand. Along the way, they come into contact with the brand via advertisements, word-of-mouth communication, or other promotional activity of the business.

This is where brand awareness starts. When the brand messaging piques their interest, they may seek more knowledge about the brand. And after weighing options, or when a need arises, they may proceed to select the brand’s product and services out from the competition.

They will then use the product. Here, an experience will be formed. If it’s a good experience, the customer may consider buying the product again in the future. In fact, they may even act as brand ambassadors, actively promoting the product and the brand to other people.

If it’s a bad experience, the customer may no longer choose the product in the future and may even discourage others from buying the product.

Customer relationship then aims to keep the customer moving from the first stage (awareness) to the last stage (advocacy). It seeks to keep customers loyal to the brand (and promote the brand to their social circles) by identifying the customer’s specific needs, offering the right solutions, and consistently offering a positive experience throughout their journey.

How Customer Relationship Transformed Marketing

Many marketers began to prioritize customer relationships after seeing successful companies implement a customer-centric model.

According to a report, 45.9% of business professionals would consider customer experience as their #1 priority for the next 5 years.

And this is because many customers now would prefer experience over anything else. In fact, according to research, 86% of customers claim that they are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.

It’s not stopping anytime. At the end of 2020, a study expects customer experience to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.

How to Integrate Customer Relationship in Marketing

To emphasize the concept of customer relationship when engaging customers, take note of the following:

1.      Prioritize gaining customer trust

You can never build loyalty without gaining customers’ trust first. That’s why, in all things you do, always ensure that you will be able to gain the customer’s trust at the end of the day.

To do this, your products and services must be reliable. They must create a positive experience for your customers. They should be able to fix a problem or provide a solution to a challenge.

2.      Understand customer’s intent

Understanding why your customers became your customers is essential in running a customer relationship marketing strategy. It helps you predict intent and anticipate the needs of your customers before they even say it.

Here, you can create a roadmap that leads to a smooth journey for the customer, leading to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Integrating technology may be necessary to speed up processes and increase service accuracy and reliability.

3.      Identify opportunities through customer data

Throughout the journey of the customer, sales opportunities may arise for the business. Identifying these opportunities will not just increase revenue but may also enhance the experience for the customer.

Sending personalized offers or promotions, for example, is a way to enhance the customer experience and exceed their expectations. Gathering customer data through tools and technology is an effective way to personalize offers.

Customer Profiling with Saphyte Forms – YouTube

4.      Management must agree

To enhance the customer experience, the management must first agree that this is top priority. Drafting customer-centric company policies are, therefore, necessary to ensure that employees collectively follow protocols that aim to give customers a positive experience.

These policies must also align with company goals, mission, and vision. To build genuine relationships with customers, those at the top of the organization must lead in doing so.

Transform Your Marketing

Learn more about how to use tools and technology to gather customer data and provide a personalized experience. Get in touch with our experts here at Saphyte. Click here to get started.

Meta Description: SaaS businesses and CRM software solutions are the new Tyler Durden & The Narrator from fight club. Don’t you agree?

Social Copy: Move and give way to the new Tyler Durden & The Narrator (you know, Fight Club) in the business arena. Meet CRM and SaaS. Learn about this iconic duo making rounds about in the business world today and why CRM leads as a SaaS enabler here.

SaaS is becoming a more popular choice for businesses of all sectors and sizes. Study shows that about 80% of final users in the US alone prefer using SaaS applications. While this is excellent news for SaaS businesses, this means a constant battle to stay on top of the increasing demand and compete.

The Challenge

In today’s modern world, companies are constantly laden with drastically decreased lead conversion rates if the transaction business fails to respond to their query within 5 minutes, and availability has become a hot commodity around customer experience. Putting customers in queue will give them a leeway of choosing your competitors, further diminishing all your business’s efforts in attracting new customers and running effective marketing campaigns.

With this impending challenge looming over the businesses, buzzwords such as CRM and SaaS are often seen, and for great reason too. Both CRM and SaaS software are readily available in the market to help businesses align their sales and marketing needs and even their productivity needs. With their popularity, it’s doesn’t come as a shock that vendors are now combining these two powerhouses.

CRM Leads as a SaaS Enabler, Why and How?

With the constant demand for on-the-go services, choosing SaaS-based services over on-premise software is prevalent among businesses of all sectors. These demands, coupled with the advent of cloud computing and the mobile revolution, CRM software has jumped into the cloud computing world. CRM SaaS deployments of CRM are expected to reach their full potential soon (like very soon).

As SaaS will continue to commandeer the cloud model vessel of the future, businesses will also begin to shift their time and energy to their organization’s core goals instead of investing in obsolete IT solutions. In this case, modern-day CRM systems remain the most capable technology to enable and strengthen SaaS companies. Here are three reasons why.

CRM Software Automate Repetitive Tasks

SaaS employees spend hours and hours on day end on daunting repetitive tasks that prevent them from focusing on what matters most – the customer. There are plenty of events that can happen in an 8-hour shift, yes, but if SaaS employees spend much time doing manual tasks, all efforts are in vain.

A cloud-based CRM solution can help employees and organizations automate such tasks. For instance, you can use it to send the contacts on your email list a series of emails at pre-set conditions and track emails to check if they are read or ignored. Or, you can use CRM to assign tasks or pipelines to your sales team.

CRM software enables SaaS companies to help their marketing and sales teams spend time more efficiently. Automating repetitive, low-impact, yet high-effort tasks, the software frees up time so employees can use it to invest in scaling their business.

CRM Systems Manage and Secure Data More Efficiently

To understand the SaaS model better, think of it as a bank. The bank’s business model protects the privacy of the individual customer while providing reliable and secure services on a massive scale. Customers can use or avail of the bank’s offerings and services without worrying about other people accessing their personal information without consent. That’s why a CRM system is a great combo partner for SaaS companies because of its similarity when it comes to the business model.

We all know that collecting data for your current and incoming clients are free. However, it needs to be appropriately organized to use gathered information fully. A good CRM solution offers a prime repository from which all employees can easily access and communicate with their customers in real-time. All company interactions with customers and prospects are securely recorded and stored for future reference. Employees’ can use CRM tools to determine when the last contact with a customer was, provide call memos, and plan activities – of course, to assist businesses in making better decisions.