Thanks go again to Davy Sims for his latest article in the Belfast Telegraph on the relationship between social network marketing and the CRM process, specifically the importance of all of that lovely customer information you can collect. Good lord, I even get a name check again!

Anyway, there's no point in me reinventing the wheel so, to paraphrase Davy's original piece; Twitter, Facebook - and so on - is one way for a business to get to know customers. It is cheap, simple and direct and its a good way to have a conversation. In an earlier Web Watch article, Have a meaningful online conversation with clients Customer Relations Management expert Russell Moore pointed out: “People are talking about your business; customers, employees, shareholders and competitors. What are they saying and how can you join the conversation?”

However, despite their merits, social networking platforms are not designed to build a profile of your customers or help you anticipate their needs. To achieve that a business can combine the Web and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to collect information about their customers; who they are, what they do, what they want.

Additionally that information needs to be analysed and understood. The owner of a corner shop will talk to their customers to get to know them and their needs. A major supermarket chain will have a loyalty card system. Customer Relationship Management solutions are all about providing tools which allow a business to improve the way it manages its customer or prospective future customer.

Any business not focused on their customers is liable to fail, CRM allows people to capture all their interactions with the customer, having the tools to analyse and therefore build the understanding of customers' behaviour. And the real advantages of using CRM and the internet together are beyond the simple Twitter feed and Facebook fan page.

Real advantages are said to include improving your business by understanding your customer better than your competition and being more responsive, improved conversion of inquiries to orders, quicker sales cycles and more successful marketing campaigns and quicker business growth.

Original article...