Imagine a future (and we are talking two years max) where social networks will be more powerful than corporate web sites and internal CRM systems. If you don’t believe me, stump up $499 and read the Forrester report entitled “Future of the SocialWeb”.

We all know the marketing landscape is changing at a rapid pace. We can see it first hand in the way we are consuming social media in our work and private lives; the odd blog, the Facebook update, the occasional tweet, the increasing usage of Linked In.

Wherever you are right now on the social media curve, one thing is for sure; its trajectory is heading for the stars. So my question is a simple one: “What are you doing differently to embrace social CRM in your marketing campaigns?”

Can your current agency cut it?

This is as much a question for you (Mr/Mrs client) as it is for your agency. You see, the symbiotic relationship between clients and their agencies is coming under increasing scrutiny. The impact of social influence media and social CRM affects everybody. If your existing agencies don’t get it, what chance have you got of embracing it?

The big difference is this; old world agencies still work in silos; some are experts in advertising, others in direct marketing or PR, but we all know that the way we consume information, interact with brands and ultimately spend our money (B2B or B2C) is shaped heavily by a multitude of inter connected and often invisible relationships.

Can a single discipline agency really cut it in the new world?

Some agencies would have you believe that being “media neutral” is therefore the best place to start. But to be honest, “media-neutral” pisses me off. To me, “media-neutral” means “media-indifferent” – as in “media indifferent (because however you want it sliced, we still get a cut)”. The ability to cookie-cut an idea into every conceivable format is not a test of its rightness. In fact, it dilutes when it should be trying to concentrate, and encourages lowest common-denominator thinking.

I believe there is a big difference between creating the best ideas that works in any medium and searching for the best ideas and best mediums for those ideas. We are driven by a search for the latter, it’s something we call “media positive”.

Clients need agencies that don’t just churn out marketing messages and campaigns but that help nurture customer connections. Agencies that don’t just push out ideas and content but that pull in real live buying opportunities. Agencies that don’t just orchestrate campaigns but that facilitate conversations.

So what’s the Social CRM thing all about?

Old world CRM helps companies by pulling together sales and customer data from disparate parts of the organisation and giving a bird’s eye view of an individual customer or company to help sales and marketing drive incremental revenue opportunities.

Social CRM is your existing CRM plus the ability to leverage the social web and kick start, manage and ultimately automate the conversation process. It’s power lies in the ability for all parts of the organisation, but mostly customers services and sales/marketing teams to listen in on conversations (social voyeurism), craft compelling messages, join in on customer conversations (Twitter is being increasingly used in this context) and offer people added value information in real time.

Key benefits:

1) Social CRM gives your company a “friendly face”. It’s great to know that behind the big company facade there are real people you can talk to. This means push based content turns into pull based conversations. Your company appears more human and the customer take out from all of this is a positive one. Hopefully, they will talk about you to their colleagues, friends and peers and so the social looping phenomenon gathers momentum.

2) Social CRM lets you listen and watch from the sidelines. It’s an invaluable insight and research tool to gauge the mood of your customers, enhance new product development, utilise co-creation marketing techniques and to create “On the fly” campaigns and promotions that hit the right nerve at the right time.

3) Social CRM puts your customers at the heart of your business i.e. transform conversations into collaborative experiences that drive sales opportunities. And ultimately transform these experiences into meaningful relationships based upon real customer engagement.

4)Social CRM is in real time. Forget spending weeks devising marketing campaigns and doing endless focus groups. Everything you need to know about your customers, their behaviours, their likes and dislikes is LIVE on the web right now. Social CRM give you the power to become a real time, sales and marketing organisation.

Getting your head around it all

The first place to start is by mapping out the key social networks (Linked In, Plaxo, Viadeo, FaceBook etc) that your customers belong to. Invariably there will be more information on their profile pages than you have currently in your existing CRM system. The challenge is then to think of creative ways to merge and integrate this rich information.

The second thing to do is to identify your best customer advocates or champions. If you don’t have a formalised customer advocate group, now is a good time to start one. Involve them in shaping your product development and customer communications. This type of co-creation is ideally suited to the connected world we live in.

The final point is that we are still at the exciting part of the Social CRM curve, it’s not too late to start embracing social influence media in your campaigns and learning as you go. No doubt over the next few months and years, software companies will be developing killer cloud applications to help us manage and measure this powerful new form of marketing.

Check out:

www.bethehurricane.com

www.appirio.com

www.tweetdeck.com

http://blogs.zdnet.com/crm/?p=829t

http://events.linkedin.com/Social-CRM-Virtual-Summit-Expo/pub/128815