The
article presents one of the greatest challenges confronted small business
owners everyday - while marketing automation tools like CRM will be able to generate follow-ups with
customers in order to produce potential new businesses, where does the database of such contacts come
from ?
As
Qureshi’s another article what digital marketing tool to use and when
mentioned, it is crucial that “ you need to get contacts and email addresses
before yo you start.” Different from large-scale businesses, such as hospitality
groups, airline business or banking industry which has maintained a magnitude
of customer information, small business owners can’t usually access such a
contact list. Additionally, some of the marketing automation tools even set up
a minimal number of contact information
to get started. And noted here is that the contact information here mainly
refers to email contact, where most of the sales information will be sent. And
echoing with last week’s guest speaker, email is still considered to be one of
the most used marketing tool to get information across to potential users
across different age groups and consumption habits.
Therefore,
the big question is how to gain a potential customer database. The article is
suggesting the small business shall provide discounts or gift cards to people
who are interested in their service or products through various marketing
channels in exchange for their contact information. Also, friends referral is
also a very useful and efficient way to follow up, as small business can then
access the customer groups which are quite proxy to the existing ones. The key
to enlarging customer database here is by providing adequate financial
incentive for people to access their information, in an effort to encourage
potential consumption. It might also be helpful, somehow to do a greater
financial analysis especially after a few months of initial opening period in
the hope of a fast database build-up phase. Whether to do it, and how to do it
in a more financially viable way are also worth considering.
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