Total Marketing Solutions

Could Customer Relationship Management - CRM - be the new marketing? Without doubt it’s an increasingly important tool to help you grow your business by getting you closer to your existing and prospective customers. It also helps you better manage your existing client relationships and can help you to maximise the opportunity represented by each client. With the right CRM system in place, companies can grow their brand and their business in a more cost-effective and targetted manner than ever before. This all sounds too good to be true, and in many cases it is - simply because a CRM system is seen purely as a software purchase. The wider implications of having accurate, shared and relevant information available across your entire business are often missed and the approach to a new CRM system gets bogged down in the technicalities.

Whilst it is of course important to ensure the correct technical specification is in place, it is crucial to the success of any CRM system that you first decide on what you want the system to do for you.  Ideally a good CRM system should provide information  across your whole customer engagement cycle - including marketing, sales and customer support, together with the relevant analytics and reporting which will enable you to better understand the effectiveness of your business and to closely analyse your customers’ behaviour.

But a good CRM system still won’t create relationships with your customers and add value all on its own. With a new emphasis on customer service, it’s still marketing which drives businesses forward, creates relationships and adds value. For a truly successful CRM system a good starting point is to develop a new approach to communicating with and managing your customers - and then making the software part of this overall approach.

Together with our colleagues at Market Equity, we held a breakfast meeting in Truro at the beginning of December for growing businesses in Cornwall. The undoubted highlight of the morning was the thought-provoking session delivered by Professor Malcolm McDonald on how to develop a meaningful marketing strategy for your business. Professor McDonald is Emeritus Professor at Cranfield University School of Management and Chairman of Market Equity. He cut through a lot of the mystery surrounding marketing to talk about what really matters when developing a clear strategy for growth. We’re in the process of putting together a short video of the session and will be posting it here in the next couple of weeks. We’re also looking into arranging further events later this year along similar lines for businesses based in the South West and will keep you posted on any future dates.