Growing an SME or startup is often a matter of utilising different tools and approaches to help balance existing and prospective customer expectations to drive new business. Business News Daily recently reached out to industry leaders to get their insights on new and emerging trends for 2017. Here are some of our favourites:
Quality offline customer experiences matter more than ever
While people are increasingly turning to the internet to source or research products and services, human interaction will remain key to dealing with issues that can’t be resolved online. In the digital age building a team that understands how to speak to customers, build relationships and provide superior customer service is more important than ever.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools are about to get smarter
CRM tools allow businesses to gather data about their customers with a specific focus on using that data to provide insights, drive customer retention and increase targeted sales opportunities. 2017 sees CRMs developing into ‘smart discovery’ tools, where they will turn the data into machine generated customer stories that are more relatable to individual business situations and easier to understand.
Targeted social spend will be a must
Reaching customers through social media organically is becoming an increasingly difficult prospect. It is predicted that social media algorithms will continue to limit the percentage of your audience (ie., people that like or follow your company page) that see your posts. Social media spend must be integrated into marketing budgets. This will not only help with targeted advertising but analytics will also enable greater insights into return on investment.
If you would like to find out more predictions from global industry leaders in the marketing and tech space check out Business News Daily’s article here.