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Don't forget the Relationship in CRM

relationshipsolarikonDoes your company have CRM (Customer Relationship Management)?  CRM used to be about a business process of managing a relationship with a customer, but now it often just applies to a piece of software that stores customer names and some information about them. During this recession, there is an opportunity to actually form relationships with your customers.  As Lee Odden from Online Marketing Blog says:

As companies decide where to invest their limited marketing resources, there is a distinct opportunity to focus on investing in relationships: with their customers, prospects, employees and business partners.

So instead of using your CRM to blast out targeted email campaigns, use CRM to form long-lasting relationships with your customers.  Reach out to them and see if you can help.  Companies and people who connect with their customers will be remembered much more than companies that just sent out lots of advertising.  Best of all, building relationships is easy on the wallet – just takes a bit of your time.

(photo by “Solar ikon” @ Flickr CC)

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Is Free Actually Valuable?

freelimbopoetOne way to entice customers to try your product or service is by giving away a sample for free.  This tactic is quite prevalent online with free e-books, free webinars, free slideshows, etc.  But is free actually valuable?

On the one hand, putting a value of 0 on something may make it seem less valuabe to potential customers.  Why are you willing to give it away?  It must not be all that great.  On the other hand, offering a free sample has become expected, especially for companies establishing themselves.  As a new product or service, a reputation has not yet been developed and so potential customers have no where to turn to get an opinion about whether its worth buying.

I think free is a great way to give potential customers a risk-free taste of your products or services – and, as I said above, it is pretty much expected.  However, I think what is given away should actually be valuable.  Take a bit of time to provide useful information to your potential customers and instead of thinking of it as free, think of it as a trial.

(photo by Limbo Poet @ Flickr CC)

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Twitter – The Most Effective Social Network?

conversationdragunskThere’s been a lot of news lately about companies using Twitter successfully.  Sure, you can micro-target an audience which has already told you they’re interested just by following you.  But is Twitter really an effective social networking tool?

We’ve been using Twitter since late 2007. I think it’s constantly been evolving as people find new and different uses for 140 character conversations.  At first, people would just talk about what they were doing – which could be pretty boring.  Then people expanded that to share what was going on and their opinions of it – Twitter is often the first to report large events.  Now people are using Twitter to have conversations and connect with new people.

Our use of Twitter has been similar in terms of evolution.  We’ve connected with some really great new people – even people locally and even gotten some business from it.  Best of all, we’ve had some really great conversations on Twitter.  In some ways, networking on Twitter has been more effective than other social networks because of the conversations.  The number of readers via Twitter, RSS and our blog continues to rise – in no small part from our Twitter connections.  I like to think of it as a giant instant messenger (IM) for the world.

What have your experiences been with Twitter?  Please share in the comments below.

(photo by Dragunsk @ Flickr CC)

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