CRM vs Social Media | Which Is Better For Growing Your Sales?

"If you're not great at email, you have no business doing..."

Back in August 2013, Convince and Convert founder, author, and speaker Jay Baer was on The Sales Podcast Episode #15 (I'm past 800 episodes now, and you can subscribe here) and said...

If you're not great at email, you have no business doing social (media).

"But Wes. But Wes!! I MUST be on InstaChat and SnapGram and FaceTube and TweetIn and YouLinked because EVERYONE is there!!

Besides...email is so 1990s. It's all text messaging and live streaming today. Don't you know ANYTHING?"

You're right. What was I thinking?

On second thought, maybe I was thinking about...

The Positive ROI of Email Marketing

Here are some numbers that made the case when I first wrote this:

• E-commerce customers who received multiple abandoned shopping cart emails were 2.4 times more likely to complete the purchase than those who received only one follow-up email. (Source: Experian, 2016)
• Brands that personalize promotional emails saw 27% higher unique click rates and 11% higher open rates than those that did not. (Source: Experian, 2016)
• Campaign Monitor reported an average return of $44 for every dollar spent on email marketing. (Source: Campaign Monitor, 2018)

So the rumors of the death of email have been highly exaggerated.

You will get a return on email marketing if you do it right.

"Ahh Wes, I knew there was a GOTCHA!"

How To Do Email Marketing Right

To be great at any marketing, including email marketing, you need to realize a few key points.

Embrace Your #1 Job as a Business Owner

Your #1 job is to market your business. (See "Your #1 Job As a Business Owner.")

No one will bring the fire, the passion, and the conviction to telling your story like you will as the owner.

It's a noisy world, and it's getting noisier.

If you're ready, willing, and able to spread the word far and wide and focus your efforts on marketing more than anything else, your best days in business are ahead of you.

Learn How To Tell a Good Story

Ever since cavemen drew on walls, facts tell and stories sell.

Whether you start with...

• "Once upon a time...",
• "Space: the final frontier.",
• "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....",
• or my family's typical opening: "You ain't gonna believe this!"

...you need to get better at connecting with the emotions of your prospects and clients and leave the logical, technical stuff for later, once they've decided to go with you and need some "hard facts" to support their emotional decision.

It's why you use case studies and testimonials as much as possible. If you say it, your prospects may not believe you, but if someone else says it, well...

Tell a Powerful Story in a Powerful Manner

Too much emphasis is placed on "reaching the right people."

Ad targeting helps you stack the odds in your favor, but if you present a weak offer to the right people, you are doomed.

However, if you present a great offer to the "wrong people," one of two things will happen:

1. They'll eventually become the "right people" and buy when they need what you offer, because your message stuck with them.
2. They'll refer you to a friend or family member who they know is right, because your message stuck with them.

Case in point: my "always-pregnant" wife and me.

My wife has been pregnant ten times, and we have seven children here on earth and three little angels up above.

Even though we men like to say "we are pregnant," the reality is I've never personally been pregnant.

Using that logic to market a maternity clothing line, a marketing consultant might tell you to show ads only to married women aged 22 to 35 who own homes.

That demographic makes sense, right?

But who else might your message about maternity clothes reach? Maybe...

• me, the husband who hears my wife worry about what she can wear as our little bun in the oven grows,
• her girlfriends who might throw her a baby shower,
• the soon-to-be grandparents wondering what to get her, and
• the soon-to-be aunts and uncles who are wondering the same thing.

Get out of the "right-audience-only" mindset and into the "right-message" mindset.

Segment Your List

"Okay Wes. You just said 'don't obsess over the audience' and now you're telling me to segment!"

Allow me to explain.

When you run ads, it's arrogant to assume you know exactly whom to target on day one. Focus on your message first.

But when I say segment your list, I mean using your CRM to sort the contacts you already have, such as:

• Customers
  • One-time
  • Repeat
  • VIP
  • Inactive
  • Former
• Prospects
  • Trade show leads
  • Web leads
    • Free report requester
    • Multiple free report requester
    • Contact us leads
  • Lost
• Referral partners

When you know who people are, what they like, what they've bought, and when they last bought, you can send targeted, relevant emails. That's how email pays.

If you have a list of vegans and you send them a coupon for steaks, you'll offend them all.

Build On Land You Own

When it comes to the social platforms, you are at the whims of the powers that be.

They can pause or close your account without warning and without recourse.

YOU are the product on social media, and you do not own your account.

However, you do own your website and your CRM, which is your list of humans who have told you what they want from you.

So whatever you do on social media, the goal is to get your fans and followers to opt in or buy so you can reach them through channels you control:

• Email
• Direct mail
• Phone
• SMS

How To Do Social Media Marketing Right

Jay Baer is not "anti-social media." He's a realist. He wants his clients to get a return on their marketing, and that means using the right tool in the right way.

What Jay and I have learned over our many years in this business is that social media marketing:

• is always evolving,
• is, first and foremost, social, and
• has become pay-to-play.

Social Media Marketing Is Evolving

Change is inevitable. Growth is optional. Grow or die.

The owners of the social platforms want to grow and not die, so they evolve. New formats, new limits, new algorithms. Get used to it and embrace it to beat your competition.

Social Media Marketing Is Social

Too many shortcut-seeking marketers jumped into social media and started selling HARD, and many still do.

If you wouldn't show up to a friend's Fourth of July barbecue and start passing out your literature and asking for credit cards, don't act like that on social media. (Yes, there really are humans on the other end of the screen!)

Be a good guest. Listen. Compliment. Ask more questions than you make claims. Strive to be interested rather than interesting.

Related Articles:

• How to use LinkedIn to get a job
• The Sales Podcast
• Sue B Zimmerman: How To Use Instagram To Grow Your Sales

Social Media Marketing Is Now Pay-To-Play

Back when the platforms were young, a post could reach most of your followers for free.

Then everything changed. Organic reach fell to single digits, competition crept in, and the platforms went public.

Now, if you want to get the word out about your business on social, you need to master paid advertising.

Why Most CRM Installs Fail

During the "good old days," I had to suffer through CRMs such as Onyx, Siebel, SFDC, Zoho, Highrise, "Outlook as a pseudo-CRM," Cardscan, and ACT disasters implementations.

Case in point: In 2004, I took over a large territory from a sales rep who was moving to England to help open an office there.

Despite the company running an expensive CRM, he handed me a manila folder stuffed with printouts from customer records that were created in the CRM but never updated. All of the updates were handwritten on the printouts.

The excuse was that the company was moving away from that platform because it was too hard to use, and they were rolling out another in two to four months, so why update what's going away?

In the end, every CRM I saw installed back then became little more than an expensive calendar and a tool managers used to beat salespeople over the head about their pipelines. (Why am I thinking of Kevin Bacon murmuring, "Thank you, Sir, may I have another?" in "Animal House"?)

The acronym "Customer Relationship Management" is a misnomer. The big CRMs more closely resemble "Nag the Customer Incessantly So Management Can Get Paid Their Bonuses." (I guess CRM does roll off the tongue a little easier.)

So, is your goal to "manage" a customer or open the lines of communication with them?

What are the 3 or 5 or 25 steps, by email, letter, text, phone call, or visit every 1, 3, or 21 days, that turn a stranger into a happy client who buys again and again?

Most owners haven't written those steps down. That's the real reason the software sits there.

So, CRM or Social Media?

Neither, until you have a process. Then use both.

They are two sides of the same coin. Good social media gets people to raise their hands. A good CRM, running a follow-up process you wrote down, keeps the conversation going until enough trust is built that they buy on their own terms and sing your praises.

It takes a new perspective, a willingness to grow, and a little time.

The thinking that got you into your mess won't get you out. It's time to seize the day.

Why the CRM Didn't Fix It

I've used Salesforce since 2004, Keap since 2008, and HubSpot and Ontraport since 2014. Every tool on this page works. Plenty of owners still give up on it.

The tool was never the problem. A shiny CRM with no written process is just expensive dashboardery. Write down how a stranger becomes a customer first. Then pick the software that fits that process.

Get a process before you get the software →

Market like you mean it.
Now go sell something.