Technology is changing the landscape of digital marketing, and you should not be left behind in this revolution. Being an early adapter is of great importance in this competitive market.

However, even with technology, you could face challenges in your marketing if your customer data isn’t properly integrated, or your sales and marketing teams aren’t on the same page with their business goals, among other things.

Here are seven marketing challenges that you are likely to face without using a good CRM software on a day-to-day basis

Data integrity

The basic information that you have about your customers will keep changing. They could get promoted and change their job title. They could change their residential address. They could change their surname after marriage. Dynamic changes like these will change the segment of the market that you will be catering to. For both B2B and B2C marketers, it is essential to keep track of these changes. Having inaccurate or incomplete data will not only make it difficult to reach these customers, but also make it really challenging to get the right messaging across to them. How can you engage with your buyers when your systems do not reflect the most current customer data??

Integrating CRM with Social Media

When you know what your prospects like, share, or talk about on social media, it becomes that much easier to engage meaningfully with them. It becomes important to not just track the prospect’s journey on social media, but also to integrate it with your CRM platform. The challenge faced by marketers here is integrating the prospect’s social media data with their various internal systems accurately. 

Aligning Sales and Marketing

The primary goal of both B2B and B2C marketers is generating qualified leads. These leads should meet the criteria of the ideal buyer persona they are targeting. This goal differs from that of their sales colleagues, whose primary responsibility is to close as many deals as possible by prospecting buyers. In essence, with their goals and core responsibilities being different, marketing and sales function as two different entities and it can be difficult to get them aligned on the same page over common business goals

Mapping the customer journey

Customers go through different stages across multiple devices before they eventually make a purchase decision. They may see an ad on their smartphone web browser, follow your brand on Facebook or Twitter, search for a product on their tablet, and finally buy it using their laptop. Studies suggest that between 41% and 65% of all purchases involve multiple devices. Marketers are only identifying a small share of these purchases made through multiple devices. To interact effectively with leads, you should be able to identify where they are in their personalized customer journey and predict where they are likely to go next. You should also be able to predict what channel they will use for that next step.

Identifying new prospects

When you have incomplete customer data, you are likely to miss identifying a potential customer. For instance, the prospect’s smartphone cookies may indicate that they aren’t interested in a particular product, while their laptop browser may indicate otherwise.

Incomplete or inaccurate data of this kind can prove to be rather costly. When you are looking to grow your sales funnel, you have to be able to identify these customers and build brand loyalty in the long run.

Keeping the customer experience consistent

Incomplete or fragmented data can also lead to an inconsistent and frustrating customer experience. When you do not realize that multiple identifiers represent the same customer, you might well end up reaching out to that same customer several times, offering them something they might already have taken. For example, offering them a coupon for a product they already purchased. This will not just annoy the prospect, it will also end up damaging your company’s reputation.

Maintaining privacy

Marketers have to constantly uphold privacy standards while still using customer data to enhance their marketing. Privacy holds even greater significance in this day and age where there is so much of customer data available in the public domain, and this data is liable to be misused. Key information that identifies an individual, such as name email, address, or street address must not be stored on any data management platform. 

Conclusion

In the digital-first world, eCommerce enterprises have to deliver consistent, seamless experiences across all customer channels to retain them and also grow their customer base. 

Jarvis provides the latest technology solutions to leaders in the CRM space to ensure a holistic customer experience. Their dynamic and constantly evolving omnichannel solutions ensure that customers receive seamless omnichannel experiences across touchpoints and their journey is mapped at all these points, without compromising on their privacy. 

As technology partners, Jarvis delivers constantly engaging online experiences that have helped boost sales and rapidly improve customer retention rates for online commerce enterprises. They also have the ability to develop products for customers, and to launch and maintain them.  

So, are you ready to transform customer experience through technology?

Connect with our experts.