According to Gartner, social CRM will be a $1 billion sub-sector of the CRM market by the end of this year. The various sites, blogs and communities that comprise this arena represent the fastest growing areas of the Internet. According to Nielsen Online, social networks now reach more people than email.

Salesforce states that as the growth of social media explodes, service departments need to influence customer conversations. Integrating social media into the contact center is a huge opportunity—both to delight your customers and to save money.

SugarCRM has added social features, and is in a simple form that allows users to decide how they leverage social data and channels inside the Sugar system. For example, users can now monitor Twitter streams of their customers, as well as uncover leads and relationship data from networks like LinkedIn and place it into the CRM records.

CRM is still working through the implications of Social Networks.  From my perspective, Social CRM has been defined in a restricted format by those that try to support and practice it, and we are yet to realize its true potential.  No one has dared to define the scope and implement the tools to fully harness this marketing and PR power.  Maybe it’s too soon?

I remember the early times of CRM – way before it became an acronym. Supply management system, accounting systems, sales force automation systems, ticket systems, the list is long.  The madness that often came with these disjunctive systems was boggling. The duplication of effort was clearly prohibitive from a cost perspective, but at the time, the cost of missed opportunities was drastically higher, so the markets pushed it forward.

With new social spheres like Google+ popping up out of the woodworks, social data, marketing, and mining opportunities are growing exponentially and it has become equal madness to it’s predecessors. The market will carry the madness, however, eventually harnessing it into unfathomable opportunities.

What is the situation of your relationship with your client?  If you are keeping up with the times, you have all sorts of digital relationships with them.  Maybe you’re reaching out through advertising to bring them back to a website or micro websites.  You’re probably conversing with them through a multitude of social media channels to invite them into dialogue.  You could be directing them through their mobile devices in order to bring them in and reward their participation in loyalty programs. It’s also likely that some of you reading this are doing all of the above.

With all this interaction being digital, every message, every name, every campaign renders invaluable data that informs you about the nature of your client and your relationship with them; however much of this data is lost in cyberspace.

Figure 1. Twitter Stream Graph where the subject includes "coffee" (Image Provided by Neoformix)

What are the semantics of what people are talking about in your demographic?  What benefits do your service providers appreciate?  What publications do your target market frequent?  Where do they look for help?  What drives them to repeat purchases?  Who are their friends and acquaintances?

In this new world there are no limits to where and how the organization can find, engage and interact with the client. Wherever they are, whatever they are doing, it is possible to present them with a relevant experience, an appropriate call to action, an appealing value proposition. The advertising infrastructure has now become a customer relationship infrastructure, and it opens amazing new opportunities and possibilities.

Cyberspace technology is catching up, and even before the business is ready to take advantage of the benefits, we have a new set of offerings called Data Management Platforms (DMP).  Yes, another acronym – talk to the geeks in charge.  The rules are still being written on what a DMP is, but the essence here is that they are capable of capturing, rationalizing and merging all of these data points, enriching them with third party data and funneling it to where the data is actionable.

DMPs are just beginning, but there will be new tools popping up in the next few years with full comprehensive solutions for marketing.  Regardless of how the channel shakes out, data will always be a key contributing factor to the success of modern campaigns, and, like always, marketing executives will be utilizing it’s potential.

Adobe, Lotame, BlueKai and others are pioneering this space, but on another level, small businesses are beginning to tap into this data and leverage it into leads and opportunities.  It’ll be interesting to see what innovations come out of this in the near future.

Please feel free to comment below on where you think this area is going and/or how your business is currently leveraging this data.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s take a step back in time and talk about the telephone. Telephone marketing started to become successful in the early 1950s. This was the time when DialAmerica Marketing Inc. completely dedicated their products and services to inbound and outbound telephone sales. In the ‘70s and 80’s, telemarketing took hold of the industry and cold calling became a major arsenal for the sales force. Since then, it has progressed down a slippery slope of unsolicited high-pressure sales techniques.

Unsolicited marketing calls at dinner time are now the bane of my existence. Email has a similar rep, but I’ll still put my name on the odd email newsletter signup that promises to send valuable content – now try convincing me to put my phone number on that same mailing list.

Unlike telemarketing, the Internet is regulated by companies that are constantly at battle with unsolicited marketing techniques, aka SPAM. Google gets paid for giving you good search results. Twitter, Facebook, and a myriad of content networks only have value for as long as they can keep users interested with relevant information. The same is required for a good social media marketing campaign. By offering relevant content, it is relatively painless to engage your target market. Being a convenient source of quality content with minimal disruptive behavior is the polar opposite of unsolicited telemarketing.

The bottom line to social media marketing is that although the odd Canucks hockey fan can quickly fill a timeline with #gocanucksgo (my bad), potential customers are finding valuable information about their friends, the buzz in their city, and the low-down on products, support, and service for your company – whether it’s from you or not.

As an example, I was recently talking with Dan Schubert Jr. – the owner of a plumbing company that was founded in 1978. Having used Yellow Page ads as their primary marketing tool up until now, the company has recently started investing in an online presence. Initially, Dan didn’t think he would see any serious impact from their online efforts for at least five years; however, the company’s website traffic is already climbing surprisingly fast.

Despite already having a company website, Dan decided to start a Twitter account: @sph_ltd. It seemed to be the quickest and least time-consuming way to publish information about the company. Instead of flooding the account with promos and coupons, Dan talks with customers about how their service call is going, thanks sub-contractors for the great job, posts a picture or two of job-sites, and talks about his family. I still see the odd ad here and there, but the majority is information that tells more about the person than the product. With that method, when promotions show up in their timeline, it is more of a treat than an advertisement. Here are a few examples:

sph_ltd Dan Schubert Jr.
The heavy equipment has moved onsite today, not sure how experienced the operator is though. http://yfrog.com/h4qrakahj

sph_ltd Dan Schubert Jr.
Why buy copper tees when you can make your own! Water mains for our Brookland project in #Surrey http://yfrog.com/h0boqpjkj

sph_ltd Dan Schubert Jr.
Mansfield Low-Flow Toilets on sale! $87.00 complete with seat! Limited Quantities available. http://bit.ly/hHZmnv #mission #abbotsford

Like any marketing tool, social media can take a lot of time and effort. This is a challenge for any company – particularly small business owners who never seem to have enough time or resources. With minimal effort, however, many business owners are starting to network online, on top of their regular offline networking like the Chamber of Commerce.

Let me end with a few tips to help you get started and/or moving forward more quickly:

• Take some time to look at what other people are saying in your area: what their interests are, how they talk to each other, what they use for their photo and how you can fit in but also stand out.
• Make sure you read up on the communication standards and understand the lingo of the social medium you are using. What are hashtags, likes, fans, followers, and tiny urls?
• If you don’t have a lot of time, pick one medium so that you can quickly start networking with your current and potential customers.
• Plan to be active on your social media accounts, indefinitely.
• Make sure you engage people: ask them questions about their posts, “like” their content, follow them back, and answer their questions.
• Advertise your account on your website, business cards, invoices, front door, and vehicles, and make sure staff and loyal customers are ready to spread the word.
• Experiment: each company has its niche and will have a unique combination of tools and techniques.

Finally, remember that it is less important how many followers or friends you start off with. A positive and friendly personality will steadily build your customer list. Tweet about your goldfish. I probably won’t think it’s interesting that they like flakes over pellets, but someone out there does.

For more information:
Twitter has put together a simple guide to help you understand what Twitter can do for business and Facebook also has some info in their help section. My Twitter account is @tim_steeves if you would like to follow and chat.

Of all the firms that participated in the study, 46 per cent said they were planning to increase their overall marketing budget for 2010, while over 50 per cent of companies are planning to increase their mobile marketing budgets.

Ok, for my Canadian readers, Tech Crunchies found that Online Marketing revenues grew 29% from $1.241 billion to $1.6 billion and 2009 was about $1.75 billion.  Steady increases for sure!

And (in case you didn’t notice) social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are set to come into their own in 2010.  70 per cent of businesses are looking to increase their spending in these areas of marketing in the next 12 months.

Linus Gregoriadis, research director at Econsultancy, said: “Digital evangelists have long been trying to get the big brands to spend more on online marketing (especially display advertising), and social media is now helping to give impetus to a second wave of marketers who are moving budgets online.

“Why? Because they see digital as crucial to brand reputation, and they’re right.”

Meanwhile, another survey released this week claimed that online spending on business to business marketing will grow by 8 per cent during the coming year, followed by a 14 per cent rise in 2012 and the reason is pretty obvious.

So what do all these numbers mean?  Businesses are recognizing that almost 1.8 billion people are now online where almost three-quarters of people in North America are now online and are more likely to use a Search Engine before they research a product anywhere else! It’s no wonder that traditional marketing such as newspapers and the yellow pages are becoming less effective. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting these are obsolete (I canceled my yellow page ads last year by-the-way). I’m just saying that all those people that said “Save the rainforest by using less paper” and chained themselves  naked to trees are really starting to win…and all they had to do was tweet!

What do you think? Is your website going to become your #1 sales person this year?