Introduction: Use CRM Advertising to Meet Customers Where They Are
If you’ve ever gone fishing, you probably know it involves a whole lot of sitting, wishing, waiting. But you also know there are a few strategies you can use to increase the chances of getting a few slimy swimmers.
You know the bigger – and more populated – the pond, the better the chances of reeling in a couple good catches. So you don’t sit for hours in the wrong pond. You go to where the fish are. Of course, having appealing bait also helps; you don’t cast your reel without a little squirmy snack.
And if nothing bites after some time, you can slightly change your location, which might help to attract new fish…or maybe entice the ones who previously swam on by without being tempted by your offering. You’re just retargeting them.
It’s in this exact way that marketers can think about engaging (and reengaging) potential customers with targeted, engaging CRM advertising where they’re spending their time in the social sea.
Related Content: How Does Social Media Help with CRM Advertising?
The Value of CRM Ads: Personalized Customer Marketing
Customers expect a lot today. Personalization and brand experience are increasingly becoming the battlefield where customer loyalty is being won. But the challenge here is trying to achieve personalization at scale.
It’s sort of like anchoring down in the middle of a lake – understanding that different kinds of fish (customers and prospective buyers) swim in different areas (spend their time online in different places) and vary in their receptiveness to different kinds of bait (CTAs, messaging, offers). They expect to catch them all or catch the same fish a second time with an unchanging, one-size-fits-all strategy.
In the same way, many e-commerce retailers still focus the majority of their time and resources on mass-appeal advertising and customer acquisition. Of course, some acquisition campaigns are necessary, but marketers need a smarter strategy.
Related Content: How CRM Is Replacing Traditional Advertising
For brands to successfully adapt and evolve alongside their target customers, they must recognize that no matter how popular traditional, large-scale advertising has been in the past, there is a scalable, data-driven opportunity to use the information they’ve collected about people who have interacted with the brand before to reach out to them again.
This is the promise of CRM advertising.
What Is CRM Advertising?
CRM advertising enables brands to leverage the powerful data already in their CRM platform to create highly personalized, ultra-targeted experiences for shoppers.
CRM advertising works when a marketing platform can connect with online social and advertising networks, allowing brands to securely route customer contacts to these channels and target them with automated advertising campaigns.
When would these be especially effective and what might they look like?
Let’s say an existing contact has not visited your brand’s website in a while, responded to content, or converted on a recent offer – they’ve essentially gone cold, but you’re not sure why since they’ve bought from you before.
CRM advertising can help you retain this customer by helping drive them from their social media space back to your owned platform.
Using Facebook forms, for instance, companies can run targeted ads to capture new leads and send them to the CRM database. Then, through ‘lookalike audience’ creation, marketers can clone their best or most ideal customers, who will be most receptive to brand messaging.
The best part? CRM ads work.
A study by eMarketer found that 53% of people are more likely to buy from a brand after following and interacting with that brand on Facebook. Additionally, Bain & Company found that just a 5% uptick in customer retention can boost overall profitability by 75%.
Why Is CRM Advertising Important?
The data insights made possible by a CRM database are invaluable, offering a broad wealth of customer information at the marketer’s disposal.
CRM advertising helps marketers:
- Leverage contacts in a company’s CRM database
- Drive shoppers to a brand’s website from popular social platforms
- Use retention-focused ad campaigns to encourage repeat purchases
- Increase customer retention rates
- Create and power smarter acquisition campaigns.
CRM advertising extends a brand’s reach across multiple networks, working outside of traditional opt-ins or email campaigns.
Wherever target customers are spending time online, these ad modules can drive messaging, getting the right content to the right person at the right time.
By combining CRM marketing data with an advertising strategy, brands can use their CRM data to reach their customer base’s full potential.
Related Content: Maximize Your Advertising Budget with Timing, Targeting & Tact
Building personal relationships with customers is no longer a “nice to have”, it’s a necessity. And since not all of your database contacts or to-be contacts swim in the same pond, you need a way to scale smarter advertising to reach them all.
CRM advertising makes creating those relationships more efficient and more effective, strengthening them and fostering customer loyalty and trust.
Final Thoughts
Using CRM advertising can be a true game-changer for many marketers, creating the most memorable brand experience possible, while also allowing marketers to measure overall advertising impact and ROI in real time.
Using data-driven, CRM ads to connect with customers is one of the smartest, most scalable, and more reliable ways to increase retention and boost acquisition today.
And becoming more targeted, more sophisticated, and more personalized is just what you need to make those invaluable catches.
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