Businesses today have a wide array of specialized tools for sales, marketing, and support. At the same time, these tools tend to push vital data in separate silos, making it difficult to see the whole picture and provide a consistent customer experience. With Zoho CRM Plus, we've solved this problem by integrating marketing, sales force automation, and help desk tools on a single platform. Zoho CRM Plus helps you break down organizational silos and provide a unified customer experience, from the first visit to the last support ticket.
With this in mind, we are starting a blog series to help you understand how to make the best use of Zoho CRM Plus to engage your customer, end-to-end. And in this post, we discuss the first stage: attracting traffic to your website. There are many ways you can drive traffic. Here are three of our favorites.
1. Leverage social media to your advantage.
According to a survey by DemandWave, 55 percent of all businesses worldwide find social media to be the best way to generate leads, rightfully so. Traditional marketing platforms don't always provide marketers the same luxury social media does in identifying and engaging your target audience. For example, hosting a Twitter chat to announce a new product release, sharing pop-culture polls for your followers, and interacting with influencers and thought leaders who cover your industry are surefire ways to build a powerful brand presence online and bring traffic to your website.
Start by creating a page for your business on popular social media networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. Using the Zoho Social application in Zoho CRM Plus, you can publish posts across all platforms simultaneously and measure their engagement levels.
Next, identify keywords and hashtags that are relevant to your business and track them on a regular basis. When the time is right, make your presence felt by joining the conversation to build your overall brand presence.
Remember to keep up the momentum. Keep your page bustling with activity by posting quality content that's relevant to your audience. In a few months, you will start to see a rise in your website organic traffic. But consistency is the key.
2. Invest in an AdWords campaign.
Statwit estimates that businesses make $2 in revenue for every dollar they spend on Google AdWords. However, PPC (Pay Per Click) ads are not exactly cheap. Depending on your industry, keywords can cost upwards of $50 per click. To get the results you want, you must find the best keywords and the right ad content for your PPC ads. Here’s how Zoho CRM Plus can help:
First, use Google Keyword Planner to search words or phrases that are related to your industry. This gives you an idea for how often your keywords are used, and how relevant they are to your business. Next, experiment with Google AdWords by bidding on these keywords to start a small campaign. Create landing pages with relevant content for each keyword, and route traffic accordingly.
Now that you're set up, integrate Zoho CRM with your AdWords account to get a complete picture of your campaign.
Experiment with different keywords and see which keywords led to the most conversions in Zoho CRM. This helps you optimize your budget and direct your dollars efficiently.
Before attempting to contact a lead, make sure your sales reps use Zoho CRM to cross-reference the keywords their lead has clicked. This way, they can deliver a more personalised pitch. For example, if your lead clicked on an ad for a special discount, your sales reps can follow up with a pitch on how they could maximize that discount. In our experience, the difference between a winning sales pitch and a carbon copy sales pitch is simple--the winning sales pitch is more personal.
Remember, in a real-world scenario, your AdWords campaigns don’t necessarily translate to direct online sales. For example, your online ad can take your lead to a landing page where they can download a ebook, watch a video, or fill out a web form. Later, the same customer who interacted with your online ads could make a purchase over the phone or through your office. This is where Zoho CRM can help. It automatically syncs your offline sales data with your AdWords account so that offline sales don’t fall through the cracks. This way, you can leverage the best performance from automated bidding.
3. Take your show on the road.
Trade shows are one of the few opportunities where brands get a chance to directly connect with their customers. According to the Center of Exhibition Industry Research, 86 percent of people attending a trade show have the ability to purchase. Find local trade shows that are relevant to your business interests and meet potential clients. Zoho CRM Plus mobile apps allow you to scan business cards and import them to your CRM, right from the trade show floor.
Once the contact details are imported in your CRM, the best way to solidify your relationships is by creating an immediate follow-up plan to ensure your potential client does not lose interest. Sync the names and email addresses of your new CRM clients into individual subscriber lists, based on their industry in Zoho Campaigns. Next, create mailers for each industry type with your call-to-action as a link to your website. Grab your client's interest by adding their first name in the subject lines, using merge tags. Once the campaign is sent, measure click rates/open rates in Zoho Campaigns, and start experimenting with different subject lines to improve your success.
It's your turn now, are you ready?
First, choose one or two action items from this list. Try to implement them and tell us how they went in the comments below.
Second, we'd like to hear your thoughts. Do you have any other ideas you'd like to see on this list? Feel free to share them here, as well.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Check out Zoho CRM Plus, our end-to-end customer engagement suite for sales, marketing and support teams. Zoho CRM Plus allows you to do everything you can from attracting leads to converting them into customers, and from managing your social media profiles to providing top-notch customer support. Sign up here for a free 30-day trial.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Very true! Another source of traffic that works for me is jumping into discussions into forum websites like Quora. If someone has a question which is directly related the problem my business solves, it is a direct place where all my prospects will be hanging out. Good read though, and thanks for sharing!
Hi Sajay, Glad you found the blog helpful and thanks for your tip. We agree that Quora is one of the best ways to establish a brand and generate organic traffic by offering useful information to prospective customers. Being active and helpful on Quora is definitely an investment which will pay off in the long run.
True. It's all about helping the customers, imho. Thanks again!