CRM (Customer Relationship Management) refers to the management of customer relationships. A CRM strategy is a corporate strategy aimed at maintaining and managing positive relationships with customers, leading to continuous revenue generation and securing profitability.
In today's market, where many similar products and services exist and competition is intense, it can be difficult to maintain or increase sales solely by acquiring new customers. Therefore, it is crucial to acquire not only new customers but also repeat customers who will continue to make purchases. A CRM strategy must be adopted as a marketing activity that provides an appropriate approach to each individual customer to build a strong relationship.
Benefits of a CRM Strategy
A CRM strategy offers various benefits, such as "gaining a deeper understanding of needs," "developing business based on data," and "deploying approaches tailored to customers." By implementing a CRM strategy, you can execute effective marketing centered on customer relationships.
Gaining a Deeper Understanding of Needs
Adopting a CRM strategy allows you to understand customer needs at a deeper level. Customer needs can be superficial, as reflected in their behavior, or difficult to discern. Latent customer needs are not always easy to grasp, as the customers themselves may not be aware of them.
Since superficial needs are also understood by competitors, responding only to those needs will not lead to differentiation. By implementing a CRM strategy, you can analyze data such as purchase history, website behavior, and customer attributes to identify even latent needs that the customers themselves have not yet realized. By understanding these latent needs for each customer, you can engage them from a perspective that differentiates your business from competitors.
Developing Business Based on Data
Traditionally, sales and marketing efforts have relied heavily on the experience and skills of individual sales representatives. However, in the modern business landscape, the importance of a data-driven approach—leveraging the vast array of data collected and managed within an organization—has gained significant attention. Relying solely on the knowledge and experience of individual sales staff provides only a fragmented view of the customer. In contrast, data accumulated within the company includes not only attribute data such as industry, business type, and organizational structure, but also product purchase history and information regarding customer complaints.
By adopting a CRM strategy, all this customer data can be centralized and analyzed. By utilizing vast amounts of historical data to analyze purchasing trends, companies can identify customer needs with high precision. When decisions are based on the results of data analysis, there is no longer a need to rely on individual intuition or skill when determining the direction of marketing initiatives. Because decisions can be made based on reliable analytical results derived from massive amounts of accumulated data, marketing activities can be conducted with greater efficiency.
Implement Approaches Tailored to Customers
As mentioned above, by adopting a CRM strategy that allows for a deep understanding of needs through customer data, companies can implement approaches that are personalized to each individual. By conducting a deep-dive analysis of individual customer attributes, usage history, and after-sales service records, companies can grasp exactly what a customer is looking for and what their specific requirements are.
Customer data allows for more than just analyzing trends across large groups; it enables the detailed examination and analysis of individual data points. By analyzing individual historical data, companies can identify specific needs, allowing for customized proposals of products and services that the individual customer actually wants, thereby enabling the most effective approach. This historical data can be utilized not only for sales outreach but also as a reference for support interactions.
Improve Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is widely regarded as a key metric by many companies, as it is directly linked to the improvement of LTV (Life Time Value). It is generally understood that acquiring new customers for products and services costs significantly more than reaching out to repeat customers who have already purchased from the company. Because repeat customers with high satisfaction levels can be engaged with lower costs, companies can streamline the process of increasing revenue.
By utilizing CRM, customer information can be managed centrally within a system, enabling information sharing across departments such as marketing, sales, and customer support. Every department can view, update, and accumulate various histories, from initial outreach to purchased products and services and support interactions. By nurturing customers through optimal approaches and campaigns based on this accumulated individual data, companies can expect to see an improvement in customer satisfaction.
Reference Article: What Is CRM Marketing? An Easy-to-Understand Guide to Strategies and Benefits
How to Promote a CRM Strategy
To advance a CRM strategy, follow steps such as confirming goals and objectives, setting targets, and designing a customer journey. After implementing the tools, the process is completed by reviewing KPIs and verifying the results.
Confirm Goals and Objectives
First, it is essential to clearly define what you want to achieve through your CRM strategy. Consider why the CRM strategy is necessary and the current challenges you wish to resolve, clarifying the gap between your current state and your goals. Goals should be more specific than broad objectives like "increasing profits." For example, if the objective is "to increase profits by nurturing and retaining repeat customers," you must define your goals at a more granular level, such as "reactivating dormant customers" or "converting existing customers into loyal customers." It is important to set quantitative goals, such as order values, customer counts, and average transaction values, along with specific solutions and the extent to which they should be achieved. To achieve these goals, the content must be shared beyond specific departments. By widely sharing and ensuring the determined goals are understood across relevant departments, each team can coordinate their actions toward achieving those goals.
Define Your Target
Next, define the customers your company will target. By setting a target, you can narrow down the audience for proactive communication, allowing you to build deeper relationships with your customers. To maximize the effectiveness of CRM in improving customer relationships, it is essential to develop strategies with each individual customer in mind.
It is recommended to set your target based on information from people who have already used your company's services or products. Define your target by segmenting attributes such as industry, business type, and office location, as well as organizational structure, specific business activities, and financial status. You should also establish a persona to represent your ideal customer. By conducting analysis to clarify customer needs using this persona, you can develop effective strategies based on the results.
Design a Customer Journey
After setting your target, design a customer journey that visualizes customer behavior and perspectives. When creating a customer journey map, divide the user's actions into phases, such as when a customer first "becomes aware" of a product or service, "compares and considers" the product, and finally "makes a purchase." By incorporating the customer's thoughts and emotional changes at each phase into a framework, you can complete a customer journey map that provides an overview of the entire process.
Once the customer's actions and thoughts at each phase are visualized through the map, it becomes easier to determine which approach is effective at any given time. Designing a customer journey helps streamline the planning and review of marketing initiatives.
Implement Tools
It is effective to advance your CRM strategy by utilizing tools. Implement a CRM tool that allows you to accumulate, centrally manage, and analyze customer data to drive your CRM strategy. While implementing a CRM tool involves costs such as initial setup and running expenses, it is indispensable for leveraging customer management in the development of marketing strategies.
Using a tool enables cross-departmental information sharing regarding customer data. For companies where customer information is fragmented—with marketing, sales, and customer service departments holding separate data—implementing a CRM tool that allows for the sharing and verification of the latest data at any time offers various benefits.
From purchase history to individual sales activities and post-purchase follow-up data, information that was previously siloed within departments can be accessed immediately using a CRM tool. Points to note when using CRM tools and detailed selection criteria will be explored separately later.
Consider KPIs
After selecting a CRM tool, set your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). It is necessary to establish KPIs to verify the effectiveness of the CRM tool implementation through numerical data. KPIs include "inflow to purchase pages," "number of business meetings," "lead conversion rate (CVR)," "number of orders received," "average customer spend," and "repeat rate." Since the optimal KPIs vary depending on the nature of your business, it is important to set them appropriately by comparing them against the goals established in advance.
Verify Results
The numerical values of the set KPIs are used for analysis to confirm whether the CRM strategy is yielding results. By configuring the system to regularly check KPI analysis results using CRM tool features such as dashboards and reporting functions, you can easily monitor key outcomes.
In a CRM strategy, it is also necessary to verify and improve initiatives to understand how much progress is being made toward your goals. By utilizing result verification to assess and improve your initiatives, and by cycling through the PDCA process, you can achieve results more efficiently.
Considerations for Implementing CRM Strategy Tools
CRM strategy tools do not necessarily yield immediate improvements in profitability upon implementation. When utilizing CRM strategy tools, it becomes possible to accumulate, refine, and leverage a wide variety of customer information. Because tools simplify the analysis of customer data, it is important to conduct data analysis repeatedly over the long term and monitor the progress of your initiatives. After implementing a tool, you may see gradual improvements in effectiveness by continuously refining the necessary measures to enhance customer relationships over an extended period.
To utilize CRM tools strategically, customer data must be properly collected and accumulated. Depending on the operational environment of each company, some may fail to accumulate even basic customer data, such as industry, business type, or office address, which is necessary to simplify data entry. In cases where data is insufficient, analysis based on your own internal data may be difficult. If your internal data is limited, utilizing a database with information enrichment capabilities, such as uSonar, makes it possible to supplement missing information.
When a CRM tool is introduced, there may be cases where it is difficult for employees who are not comfortable with IT tools to adopt them. Since some employees may resist using the tool, it is important to communicate the importance and benefits of the CRM internally when implementing it. It is also necessary to conduct training to ensure that employees do not struggle with how to use the tool.
How to Select CRM Strategy Tools
When selecting a CRM strategy tool, it is necessary to pay attention to the tool's functionality, usability, integration capabilities, and support structure. Rather than focusing on a single point such as features or usability, you should select a tool that meets the criteria required by your company from various perspectives.
Selecting by Functionality
CRM tools include features such as opportunity management, schedule management, customer information management, customer analysis, and marketing support. Since the features and details vary by tool, it is important to confirm in advance which functions your company requires. Some tools have features that automatically generate reports for customer analysis, while others are equipped with features that automatically extract target segments to support marketing efforts. By comparing and considering multiple tools, you should select one that is equipped with the features necessary to resolve your company's challenges and achieve your objectives.
Selecting by Usability
When selecting a tool, you must also pay attention to its usability. Even if a tool is feature-rich, it may not be utilized in the field if it is difficult to use. The operational burden on the staff to learn how to operate the tool will also increase.
If a tool is easy to operate, it becomes easier for employees to use, and adoption in the field will be smoother. Since many CRM tools offer a "Free Trial Version," it is recommended to check the user experience before making a selection.
Selecting by Integration Capabilities
CRM tools can further streamline operations by integrating with external tools. It is important for each department to share the latest customer information. If a tool can integrate with other systems currently in operation at your company, you can continue to use existing data for analysis. On the other hand, if integration with existing data is difficult, you may face the tedious task of converting data into formats like CSV files every time you need to use it. To improve operational efficiency, it is important to confirm integration capabilities before selecting a tool.
Selecting by Support Structure
CRM tools are essential assets that will be used for a long time after implementation. When there are questions about how to operate the tool, you will often need to consult support. A tool with a robust support structure is recommended because it allows you to get answers and solutions to questions regarding operations, uncertainties, and utilization methods. While some support services are paid, it is reassuring to request support if the fees are not excessive.
[Reference Article] What Is the Necessity of CRM in Marketing? Key Points for Product Comparison and Selection
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