Social CRM and Inbound Marketing - Hand Meets Glove
Back in early 2007 I updated my definition for CRM from:
to:
If you were expecting some big long drawn out definition containing four syllable words like pontificate and ubiquitous, sorry. Just do a Google search on "what is crm?" and you'll find one or two hundred thousand of those. I like to keep it short and sweet. But I did make two changes. The first was exchanging "catching" for "captivating". I mean when you think about it who out there really wants to be caught or captured? I know I don't. I much rather be captivated than caught, and I suspect most prospects and customers would rather you captivate them with good service, great information and interesting content.
The other change was to add that last part about making it easier to be found by them. It's great to have great processes for finding leads, but many of those good leads may not be ready to go right away. Let's face it, just because you're ready to sell doesn't mean they're ready to buy. But chances are there are a people out there who are ready to buy, but you don't know them and they don't know you. But they're looking, so it's incredibly important for you to show up on Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
The folks at Hubspot, maker of Internet marketing products, call this strategy Inbound Marketing. Below is a recent conversation I had for the show with Hubspot CEO and co-founder Brian Halligan. It's no secret I'm a fan of Hubspot and think they're doing some cool things in the smb space with their web platform, great blog, and with free tools like Website Grader,Press Release Grader and Twitter Grader. So you should check out what he has to say about using social media to attract customers... despite the fact that he's a Patriots fan...
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