What you need to know about social media - even if you don't work in marketing...
Despite its initial function as a way for friends to socialise online, social media has quickly become an important way for businesses to communicate with their customers; and for those customers to tell businesses what they think about their products and the service they receive from them.
Did you know:
56% of people are more likely to recommend a brand after becoming a fan on Facebook
34% of marketers have generated leads on Twitter and 20% have closed deals on the site
30% of B2B marketers are spending a lot on social media marketing; yet 30% of those are not tracking its impact on lead generation and sales
23% of all internet usage is on social media and blog sites.
Source: digitalbuzz
Awareness is good, leads are great, but sales are fantastic
Although publicity and leads are obviously important, the fact that many marketers are not tracking which of their social media activities turn into sales shows that social is not yet perceived as an integral element of the lead generation process. It should be. A good CRM system can help marketing departments track interactions to see which become sales and which end up going nowhere.
This is important information as social media is not going away. Smart companies should be developing strategies and KPIs for their activities. In response to the results of a 2011 survey, PricewaterhouseCoopers has said that every company needs to be developing its 'digital IQ', or integrating technology into its processes, to avoid falling behind. It's not just about the technology; it's about the people and processes that support it and whether or not it gets results.
Social media isn't just for marketers
Social media has been the domain of marketers since its crossover into the business world, but there are many who believe the real value from social media interactions can be delivered through the customer service department. CRM magazine recently published an article Social Media belongs in the Contact Center, which argues that this is the only department capable of managing large volumes of interactions in a timely basis.
Customer service and sales teams need to get up to speed
Many customer service and sales employees won't even recognise a lead when it's sitting there on a Facebook page, as that is not what they are trained to do. So there is the danger that if marketing, customer services and sales are not joined-up and can't all access the same information, important business opportunities will be lost. The purpose of CRM software is to avoid this by joining up business processes and making it easy for opportunities to be passed between departments.
Businesses should invest time and money in training their non-marketing teams on how to get the best out of social media. Here's a post about 3 easy ways for sales teams to use social media.