Just because you do not consider yourself a business, does not mean that customer relationship management can’t help you become more successful with whatever it is you are marketing to the masses. 

Customer Relationship Management Goals

When setting up a CRM, you want to keep a few specific goals in mind. 

• You want to be able to acquire new business.  This could be done through contacting current clients or direct marketing to the public.
• Offer the best technical support or help with problems, as they come up.  You might be able to overlook this aspect of a CRM if you already have a help desk or some other means of support already set up.
• Keep your customers loyal and satisfied.  Make sure you keep those people you have already won over happy, because losing a paying or simply dedicated customer can be a lot more expensive to your bottom line than gaining a new one.  For those who are really unhappy, setup some form of a retention policy to keep them doing business with you.

All three of these goals can be comingled too.  An unhappy customer could be given a perk to keep them staying with you, then they spread the word to their friends about how well they were treated.  That, in turn, would get you more new clients or visitors.

Social Media Customer Relationship Management

Many customers also handle customer relationship management via the social networks out there.  Websites like Facebook and Twitter are filled to the brim with feedback and suggestions to others, so you should keep an eye out for your name or your brand’s name to know what people are saying.  Social networks – or even your own hosted forums – can be a great way to crowd source solutions to client support problems.  This also can save you time, if a client can get their question answered from your community, rather than having to search all over the internet for an answer. 

Customer Relationship Management Tools

Looking for a few tools to help you with your CRM management?  There are some great CRM software packages out there, but my favorite might be Zoho CRM. It will handle all of your sales and marketing needs, gives you reports on performance, lets you manage your inventory and manage customer email correspondence. 

Overall, Customer Relationship Management is really all about common sense.  You keep your current customers happy, and market your ideas to new people – you are bound to get more people coming in to check out whatever it is you do.

3 Simple Ways to Market Your Business, Project or Web Site

Over the years, I have become a ‘bit of a marketing junkie.  I am always checking out the latest trends, following successful marketing techniques and trying to figure out how each works. For those not as familiar with the idea, marketing is the process associated with promoting the sale of a good or service you provide.

Successful marketing can be the saving grace for a failing business.  Here are three simple marketing ideas you can use to help your business, web site or project.

Be sure to drop in, leave a comment and let me know if you would like to see more “poor boy” marketing suggestions anybody can use.

Highlight the Good Things, not the Bad Things!

Now what do I mean by this?

You do not bring up the features you don’t provide.  Instead, you want to highlight the features that you do provide.  Take for an example, you sell cars.  The consumer comes to you interested in that truck out back.  Now, you don’t highlight the fact that the truck has no wheels.  You want to point out to the consumer that it has a fresh coat of paint, and an all new interior.

That may be an extreme example, but it gets the point across.  Now, I am not telling you to lie.  That would be wrong.  What you need to do though, is find at least three highlights on a product for every down side.  Let’s say I want to sell you a wired computer mouse, that has a ball in it.  Now, most people would say that thing is dated and past it’s prime.

Where can you find the positive in that negative?

• It still works, just like it was brand new
• Makes a loud noise when you click, so you know you the button is being pushed
• It makes a great alternative to a wireless one, just in case you ever run out of batteries

You can not be a good sales person without being able to see that the glass is half full, and not half empty.  You have to be optimistic, because if you are not – do you think the customer will be?