How Marketers Can Use CRM Data to Power Up Their Content Strategy

CRM Isn’t Just About Tracking Prospects—It’s About Using Content to Attract the Right Prospects

“Why does everyone dislike CRM so much?” Marie Wiese of Marketing CoPilot posed that question to a panel of Dynamics CRM experts at a recent MSDW Marketing session, and was told that marketers and sales people too often misunderstand CRM’s most important purpose, which is to help marketers not just identify prospects, but identify prospects who will turn into profitable long-term customers.

Because CRM has become an increasingly powerful tool over the last 20 years, “People become overwhelmed with it,” said John Bush of Map2 Innovate. Thus, organizations may fail to fully implement it among their sales and marketing personnel.

The huge volume of data that CRM draws on can help ISVs and partners pinpoint their top leads. “There is a certain kind of client we resonate with,” said Chuck Ingram of congruentX, and CRM enables his company to hone in on those especially desirable prospects.

Once you have those top prospects and clients identified, “You can personalize your content even further,” said Kelly Mazur of Evenica. That means reenforcing the preferences of your most desirable prospects, and letting go of prospects that don’t fit your desired customer profiles. Added Marie Wiese: “A lot of owners are afraid to act on this data—they want all opportunities, but not all opportunities are good.”

The panelists offered these suggestions to get the most out of CRM:

*Buy-in: You have to get buy-in from your team to use CRM. it changes the game.
*Internal communication: Sales, marketing, service, IT—get them all talking.
*Repeat. Once you have a CRM system that works well and produces consistent results, you are hooked.