May 25, 2022  

Customer Relationship Management: The Ultimate Tool for Online Businesses?

Do you use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System for your business? Are you properly keeping a database of your current customer profile? Have you ever considered the benefits of knowing who your customers are? A lot of traditional businesses have operated for years without the existence of tools like this. However, this makes determining who your customers are, heavily opinion-based. But, first of all, Is your business still very traditional? If you’re not sure how to answer this, let us help you evaluate with a couple of questions.

  1. Are your sales still highly dependent on walk-ins and word-of-mouth referrals?
  2. Do you have a website or an online profile? If yes, are you currently unsure how much it actually helps your sales?

If your answers are generally “yes” to the above questions, chances are, your business is still quite traditional. However, that is not to say it’s bad, it takes a lot for traditional or offline businesses to thrive in today’s economic climate and its changing market audience and profile. Furthermore, it speaks a lot about the image of your business in its local; it wouldn’t be far off to say that you have successfully established yourself as a reliable business to be able to rely on offline means of business for many years. (Though it wouldn’t hurt to continue growing) So why do we think that a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System is the “ultimate tool” for online businesses?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

First of all, let’s break down what a CRM does. As it’s called, the primary function of a CRM is to help businesses maintain relationships with their customers. To be clear, the system is not going to do the work for you, but it’s going to help you gather enough insight into your own business that you could be missing otherwise. This is through the Analysis and Interpretation of Data. Your business’ CRM is ideally connected to your online platforms like your website, your social media pages, and many other forms of online broadcasting. However, it should also keep track of your offline sources like profiles of your walk-in customers. This is so that your CRM can properly present you with all the information you need to know through carefully collected data.

The Analysis

Your CRM collects and analyses the following factors for you:

  • Where are most of your current sales coming from? (The Marketing Campaign / Source)
  • What is their demographic? (The Customer Profile)
  • Which products are making the most sales? (The Product)
  • Which employees are making the most sales? (The Sales Performance)
  • How many of your already existing clients come back and which marketing method is responsible for this? (The Retargetting Source and Marketing Performance)

The Interpretation

Using the above information, you can interpret various facets of your business:

  • The Marketing Campaign/Source:
    • If you observe that “A” is your largest source of sales, you will be able to continue focusing on this.
    • If you observe that “B” is giving you new customers but they’re not becoming a sale, you can decide accordingly on a resolve (1) How to make more sales in the future by looking back at the product or the sales/marketing performance. (2) Decide to regroup and pause campaigns on this in the meantime to formulate a better approach.
  • The Customer Profile:
    • If you observe that “A” demographic is your current main source of sales, you can make sure to keep future marketing campaigns appropriate.
    • If you observe that the “B” demographic has the potential to become a sustainable source of business, you can form future marketing campaigns accordingly.
  • The Product:
    • If you observe that “A” product is performing well, this could be interpreted as a good product in the market that is forming a steady demand, you can highlight it.
    • If you observe that the “B” product isn’t performing as well, you can look back as to why that is so and make decisions accordingly.
  • The Sales Performance:
    • If you observe that “A” employee is capable of converting a lot of inquiries into sales, you can recognize this accordingly and observe what factors enabled this.
    • If you observe that “B” employee is not making as many sales, this lets you look into which factors are responsible and how to improve on it.
  • The Retargetting Source and Marketing Performance:
    • Keeping a customer database of existing and recurring customers (patrons) makes it easy to communicate with them and keeps them in the loop for future sales opportunities.

The Information Overload

When you look at all this on a piece of an article online, it can look almost overwhelming, right? But that’s exactly why you need to get your hands on the system and see it work in its full glory. It’s easy to explain in theory how a business tool will help to make decisions easily. But it’s different when it’s sitting right in your hands and is telling you what exactly you should know about your own business. Having a Customer Relationship Management System can help you determine what your goals are, or where your business is supposed to be. Most of all, it will help you see if you’re still growing as a business, and which areas of your business you need to focus on to do so. Your CRM will do so through a series of forecasting data, detailing your expected sales performance based on previous data, and giving you an insight into realistic corporate goals based on facts. Though a CRM will not directly do your business for you, it eliminates the tedious process of data collection and presents you with an organized overview of your business. So you can spend less time making trials and errors, and spend more time making smart decisions.

Make Customer Relationship Management Simple.

With Raspberry IT Services’ comprehensive CRM system, setting up your new business best friend is easy peasy. Speak to our expert sales analysts to find out if this is the tool that you need and how you can get started. Focus Keyphrase: Customer Relationship Management Slug: customer-relationship-management-online-business Meta Description: Do you use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System for your business? Are you properly keeping a database of your current customer profile?

May 25, 2022  

Business Website: 3 Myths You Need to Debunk Now for Online Success Boost

In this article, we will discuss the 3 biggest reasons why businesses (big or small) are not making a business website. Then we will debunk these misunderstandings. Finally, amplifying the reason why the best time to start a website is TODAY.

What’s stopping you from creating a business website?

Research says that there are 3 primary reasons why business owners opt out of creating a business website.

1. It’s difficult

Firstly, creating a website began as something only reputable establishments did. Of course, this was the case at the beginning of the internet. For instance, saying only big companies with global reach should have a website. Because they have the capacity to hire teams of developers to make it. However, this is not true. There is an influx of establishments willing to offer website design services. Additionally, there are multiple platforms offering to make this process an easy DIY. Designing a business website has never been easier, almost anyone could do it– even you can! Still, this doesn’t mean you can commission just anyone. Investing in a website can hurt you if the person responsible for it will not commit enough. They have to make sure your website design is the best fit for your needs. By this, it means trusting your website in good hands. Towards people who will spend a laborious amount of time configuring the following:

  • SEO optimization – Make sure that you are using the right photos and content. Ensure that your business will be at the top should someone search your service on Google
  • Responsive design – Making sure that your website looks cohesive on all devices
  • File compression – Make sure that all your files are the right size and wouldn’t disrupt your website performance.
  • Schema markup – Advanced tool derived from SEO Optimization. This allows websites to be featured at the top of the page organically. This is through having informative content on their website.

Above are just four of the initial overwhelming– but not completely difficult tasks that come with website design.

2. It’s expensive

Besides thinking it’s difficult, most business owners think that having a website comes with a price. This was relatively true in the past. However, there is a great demand for being online as a business. With that, came a large number of companies offering these exact services. Consequently coming up with more ways to make the expenses more accessible to the market. Here’s what we can tell you, as long as you know the right sources that will cover the basics. This includes hosting, domain name, and design that you need, you have nothing to worry about. The only reason websites become more expensive is dependent on how many plugins and extensions you have. On top of how much customization you want to put into your website. For example, wanting advanced motion graphics elements or branding designs.

3. My company doesn’t need a “business website”

Most businesses seem to think they already get plenty of business offline. Also saying that they are already having so much work and a website will make it worse. There is also speculation that websites are only for certain industries. However, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. On getting plenty of offline business and fear that attracting more business from online networks. The majority of people look up a website to know answers to very simple questions. These are questions which they would otherwise call your establishment to ask. i.e. Operating Hours, Location, Directions, Product Questions for Pick Up, Reservation Queries. Having a website where you are already clearly showcasing this information is good. This will eliminate phone calls having to tend to by your employees. Instead, they can focus on attending to current matters of service at hand. In saying that a business website is only for certain industries, you eliminate innovating. The idea is that you can always revolutionize a known tool to your advantage. If business-to-business, manufacturing or corporate companies thought that only e-commerce businesses should have a website. They are risking the prospect of having bigger clients or potentially branching off to a more global scale of operations. Similarly, if a smaller e-commerce or food industry business thought the same. That only big-scale operations needed a website i.e. large food service chains. They are failing to realize that at the current time, 55% of businesses have taken to having a website. And they are progressively becoming left behind in having an established online presence.

In conclusion…

There is no business out there exempt from needing a business website. Every single one needs to take advantage of this new tool to improve and branch out. It has become less difficult and less expensive for everyone. This has opened the grounds for small-scale businesses to be on the same playing field as the goliaths. And the sooner you start, the more you will reap its rewards in the future.