Technology, Data Analytics for Customer Acquisition

Synopsis

My quick summary of the article –  technology and data analysis tools can help you:

• Maximize focus on the core, high-value tasks while simplifying support activities for sales, customer service, and outreach.
• See insights from your operations using visual dashboards to learn, revise and grow using specific, actionable ideas.
• Create synergies between sales, customer support, and marketing communication.

Overview

Technology enables ways to sharpen and expand customer acquisition in several ways:

• Organize, unify, and integrate the sales process data into one system.
• Use advanced segmentation based on target market segments, industry types, and confidence/credibility with prospects: develop a communication strategy to cultivate relationships.
• Create a system to measure and understand target prospects and customers.
• Leverage data analytics and business intelligence (BI) tools for visual storyboarding to discover and implement insights.
• Bridge the gap between different phases of a customer value chain – advertising, lead generation & cultivation, pre-sales support, training & guiding sales team, customer projects fulfillment, and service.

ONE: Nurture Your Nature

The ability to customize a system can help you sharpen the core focus: it can help you unify operations to acquire & serve customers.

Start with asking the right questions – Examples:

• How long is your typical sales cycle?
• What are the different steps that can help you build confidence with a typical lead?
• How do sales team members organize their leads and follow up with them?
• What has helped in the past cultivate relationships with the prospects in the sales process?

A CRM system can help you define, streamline, and benchmark milestones in the sales process.

The image below shows an example sales funnel: click on it to see a larger image.

Technology tools can also help you automate certain phases enabling sales team members to focus on priorities.

Custom Reports – Dashboards

Technology and business intelligence tools make it easy to analyze and interpret the data: it also can be summarized or visualized for quick takeaways.

Example One: The image below shows a Tableau dashboard with LEADS INFO DETAIL for one sales team member: It summarizes leads by confidence intervals for them. The ability to see information in a concise table makes it easier for a salesperson to see the leads where follow-up might be required to move the projects through the funnel. It is a report created by importing Nutshell CRM data into Tableau.

Example Two: Effectiveness of lead generation for a sales territory

The bar chart in the image below shows the effectiveness of leads generation over the past 3+ years. The table has a detailed summary of the leads.

The 3SG team has experience setting up a CRM system such as SalesForce for a relatively complex sales operation or a CRM system such as Nutshell for smaller companies.

Communication: Prospects Relationships and Leads Cultivation

CRM and business intelligence (BI) tools provide flexibility to segment leads matching with a specific target profile easily:

• leads with a particular range of confidence interval in the sales process
• leads in the specific geographic area(s),
• leads owned by a salesperson or a sales group/team, etc.

Developing tailored messaging for each segment helps with momentum in the lead cultivation process.

 

Examples:

The 3SG team has success with SalesForce Sales Cloud & Marketing Cloud to develop custom workflows and design targeted email marketing campaigns tailored to individual segments.

For several customers, a cost-effective solution is achieved by exporting Nutshell CRM data into MailChimp for the email marketing messages that help with prospect follow-up and relationships.

For comprehensive sales cycle support for B2B companies, Adobe Marketo Engage provides customized content creation, automated workflows, targeted messaging, and advertising over email, LinkedIn, and other social media channels.

 

TWO: Advertising

Digital advertising brings the capability to get in front of the desired audience in a very targeted and efficient way. It can also combine the ability to measure and learn, opening up avenues to learn more about potential customers and target market segments.

Example advertising channels:

1. Search engines such as Google and Bing: Search engines offer options to design advertising campaigns that can be set up to match the sales territories. There can be options to create several ads, focusing on a specific product/service or a market segment.
2. Social media advertising: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube: Social media enables options to create target audiences tailored to target profile based on location and other demographics. The Facebook advertising platform offers opportunities to upload email marketing and other relationships/sales lists: it can anonymize the data and support creating an audience-specific to this list.
3. Programmatic advertising platforms use audience profile definitions and offer options to dynamically select the most appropriate advertising channels, including search engines, social media, addressable TV, and mobile applications.

The 3SG team would be happy to understand your business objectives and suggest the most optimal advertising options.

THREE: Remarketing