What is social CRM? Social Businesses?

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Great questions...
Not sure there is a right answer... however there may be the "right answer to you".. based on your business, it's maturity level, your target market, your customers target market, your social presence, your social brand, your marketing goals, your social media maketing goals, your budget, the company maturity towards social marketing , the tools the company use now and their ability to integrate, your need to scale, future plans, they way you drive traffic now, your CPA, your customer LTV...

This post include quotes and references from market experts who talk more on this subject...



I'm very passionate about people, and building strong relationship with people online and offline, I'm so passionate about it, that I read about it, try it myself and talk to many business and power users, try to understand how they do it, what are the good and bad things they do and together find a win win that create value.

If your in the business of value creation, like I do (a.k.a entrepreneur ) you know how hard it is to create value, and how powerful it is once you do it.

So, how things looks now:

For SMBs:

• 75% of small businesses will do even more social media marketing in 2011 (Source: businessinsider.com)
• 63% thought social networking drove their sales and increased revenue (Source: businessinsider.com)

For corporates:

• “Gartner’s first Magic Quadrant for Social CRM responds to the growing interest and investment in social applications to support sales, marketing and customer service business processes. Social CRM application spending will grow at a faster rate than traditional CRM spending.”
• "New study from SugarCRM: Only 26 percent said they currently integrate their customers' social networking information with their existing CRM data. 72 percent said they plan to do so within the next year. " (Source: 1to1media.com)

So what is social CRM:

1. “Social CRM is the business strategy of engaging customers through Social Media with goal of building trust and brand loyalty” (Source: Thoughts on Social CRM)
2. "Social CRM incorporate social media efforts into overall customer strategies - links a company's social activity with its overall business goals and customer strategy" (Source: 1to1media.com)
3. "It's a philosophy about engaging customers in all you do and be more social as a company. It's still very much in the experimental phase." (Source: 1to1media.com)

What is the ROI of social CRM:

• “a recent survey by Econsultancy found that 47% of the companies it surveyed said they were “not able to measure” their campaigns” (Source: Mashbale)
• “The most important formula in social media is your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). In a very basic sense, Customer Lifetime Value is the amount of revenue a customer will bring to your company over the course of their lifetime with your brand."

 How most companies use social media CRM:

• "Most businesses use social media tools to connect with customers for branding, customer service, information sharing, and collecting voice of the customer insight. Most also have CRM systems and other customer data initiatives in place around their traditional customer touchpoints. So it would make sense that social media programs be integrated with a company's overall customer strategy." (Source: 1to1media.com)

Why Social CRM is hard:

• "Social CRM is easier said than done, says Akula of NICE Systems.Challenges include data privacy issues, culture change management, and technology limitations. very difficult to connect the dots from third-party systems to internal systems " (Source: 1to1media.com)

The Social CRM future:

• The consensus among experts is that there's no looking back when it comes to social CRM initiatives. Morgan predicts even further advancement through personalization and customer collaboration to drive social business. "Customers will have more of a say in how they create and distribute products, and companies will be more transparent and willing to co-create." 

as the social CRm evolves, so is its definition, and deep understanding... more to be followed...

Make sense? what do you think...

Thanks,
Sharel