Is your company considering switching to a new CRM system, or is already in contract with one? If so, do you have an implementation strategy? What about coordination with internal staff and third-party consultants? If you have no idea what either of those two things are, then you need a CRM expert- someone who is trained to manage all aspects of CRM data software to reap your business the maximum amount of benefits. At Advanced CRM Solutions, our mission is to use our expertise to grow your business to the next level.
If you’re still not convinced, check out these benefits of hiring a CRM expert!
1. Up-To-Date on Marketing Trends
When you hire a CRM expert, you’re not just hiring a regular person. You’re hiring someone, or multiple people, who have encountered a wide variety of real-world business situations for multiple different clients. They know what strategy will work best for you, and which one won’t work well. This experience factor is a HUGE advantage, it could save your business a lot of wasted time and money
2. Knowledgable of CRM Softwares
CRM softwares can be pretty difficult to manage and navigate. All of them have tools for adding tables and fields that create relationships between the data. It’s hard enough for untrained or inexperience hands to figure how to adjust these tools, never mind use and implement them properly. The result of this could permanently affect the ability to generate accurate reports- which could make your whole marketing plan fail.
3. Can Provide Recommendations
Because they have the experience, a CRM expert can recommend which third-party businesses you should add on and implement to your CRM strategy. These third-party add-ons will help increase functionality with the addition of marketing automation, system integration and email marketing. These recommendations could save you a lot of time, stress and money.
4. Knowledge of Subtleties
Some CRM vendors have unpublicized, free functionality tools than are available upon request only! Untrained, or new users of a CRM software may know nothing about these, whereas a CRM expert would know about them. In all actuality, some CRM software sites are so difficult to navigate that even fully publicized functionality tools are hard to discover. As stated above, a CRM expert will have the knowledge and experience required to navigate these sites.
5. Can Offer Training
Even if you don’t want to hand over the reins completely, a CRM expert can consult you on how to efficiently use and manage your CRM software. This could take a couple months or years, but in the end, you will be properly trained.
Are you interested in hiring a CRM expert? Contact us today for a free consultation!
For many people, Google Analytics can seem overwhelming. Confusing. Complicated. And that’s especially true if you’re a beginner and you don’t know where to start.
That’s why we’re writing this post.
You’re about to learn the 3 Google Analytics reports that give you the most bang for your buck—so you can gain the most valuable insight into what people are doing on your site, in the least amount of time and effort possible. Continue reading to learn what they are!
Google Analytics Report #1: Source/Medium Report
In our opinion, this is the most important report in Google Analytics.
It gives you an actionable, high-level overview of your website’s performance broken down by traffic source.
You’ll find it under the “Acquisitions” tab, which contains all the reports that tell you about how people are getting to your website (How you are “acquiring” your traffic).
To find it, first click “Acquisition,” then “All Traffic,” then “Source/Medium”
Google Analytics Report #2: Landing Pages Report
The next report you’ll want to monitor on a regular basis is the Landing Pages report.
Now when people talk about landing pages here at DigitalMarketer, they’re often talking about a specific type of page—like an opt-in page that’s designed to generate a new email subscriber.
But Google Analytics defines a landing page a bit differently. To Google Analytics, a “landing page” is the first page that someone sees when they visit your website.
And what’s really cool about this report is that it breaks out all the sessions people had on your website into the landing pages that initiated those sessions. In other words: it shows you which pages people are seeing FIRST. Then it allows you to compare the performance of those pages to see which landing pages are doing the best job of engaging your visitors.
It’s located in the “Behavior” tab, which contains a bunch of reports that give you better insight into the behaviors people are taking on your website.
To find it, first click “Behavior,” then “Site Content,” then “Landing Pages”:
Google Analytics Report #3: Product Performance Report
The last report you’re going to want to keep a close eye on is the Product Performance report. And this one gives you a detailed view into your ecommerce sales broken out by product.
It’s located under the “Conversions” tab, which contains all the reports that dig into the goal conversions happening on your website.
To find it, first click on “Conversions,” then “Ecommerce,” and finally “Product Performance.”
Here you can see, at a glance, how much revenue you generated from each product. You’ll also see your sales broken down by quantity, average price, refunds, and more.
Still struggling with Google Analytics? No problem, we can take over! Visit our website for a free consultation today!
1.) Use a CRM software
When you keep a strong relationship with the customer after the sale, it promotes customer loyalty. While email connection is great it isn’t the most effective way to keep in contact with your customer. Using a CRM software would allow you to collect and store information on your customer which would make it easier to keep the relationship going.
2.) Offer Excellent Customer Support
Customer support is one of the biggest parts of owning a business. However, it is one of the biggest reasons why business fail. A lot of businesses utilized social media to create a faster response time.
3.) Reward your most loyal customers.
A generous gesture goes a long way with customers. It is something that a lot of businesses do to promote customer trust and loyalty. Giving even a $5 amazon gift card goes such a long way. This is a way to keep customers and also encourage new customers to come on board.
4.) Offer discounted extensions.
Most of the time when a business offers a free trial of their product, the customer will continue using it after the trial ends. You can get users to switch to the full program with a small bribe in the form of a discount.
5.) Ask for feedback.
Lastly, you need to ask for feedback at all times. This helps to see what your company is doing wrong and how to keep people from leaving. If a customer leaves, the wise thing you can do is ask them what you did wrong. This can be done in the form of polls or surveys.
Interested in more tips to increase your business? Visit our website to receive a FREE consultation today!
Advanced CRM Solutions
We have come a long way since our days in the trenches of DealerSocket…
When Advanced CRM Solutions was launched, our pitch to a dealership was simple. We would be the go-to guy for CRM.
Most dealerships only use their CRM at about 10 percent capacity, and it is our job to get that number up to 110 percent. On top of that, we provide full time value for part time dollars because of the high level expertise we bring to the table. CRM is still our compass and our central focus…. but now we offer so much more!
Drop Visionary Branding and Marketing
When you are a dealership’s CRM guy, you work with their marketing partners frequently. After a couple years we realized the average marketing agency did not know anything about the automotive industry.
If you are a marketing agency that does not have a login to your client’s CRM , where the ROI of your marketing efforts should be tracked, should you be handling their marketing? The answer is no and this is why we launched Drop Visionary Branding and Marketing.
Advanced BDC Solutions
This was our next step in the evolution of our partnership of companies. We have trained BDCs in hundreds of dealerships throughout the nation. There are some BDCs that are run at the highest of levels, but most are just money pits for their respective dealerships. How many dealerships have started BDCs only to close them down over the years? Thousands. We knew we could bring more to the table, that is why we launched Advanced BDC Solutions.
So here we are today, with three great companies that all flow together and have the highest level of synergy. Advanced CRM Solutions will be your CRM expert and keep your CRM dialed in month after month, Drop Visionary Branding and Marketing creates high quality leads for your dealership, and Advanced BDC Solutions converts these leads to qualified appointments.
Our unique collection of companies will create leads, maintain and retain! Contact us at info@advancedcrmsolutions.com for more information today!
Its nearly impossible to be successful in a customer facing industry today without a CRM system. By now everyone should be well aware of the many valuable features of a comprehensive CRM. Unfortunately, most dealerships experience a multitude of challenges with their CRM initiative and miss out on the majority of the revenue generating opportunities as a result, leaving them with little to no tangible ROI from their investment. With this phenomena being so wide spread, what is the solution? Its quite simple really… Do what you would normally do when you’re out of your depth… Hire a specialist.
The first challenge dealers encounter is deciding which system is best for their dealership and how to get through the implementation process. Dealership management does not exactly have a surplus of time to research the various features and integrations of the leading CRM platforms and so they often rely on the feedback given by the provider’s sales rep, which understandably might include some bias. An expert with cross platform experience can help you make an educated decision on whats best for your store without the bias that comes from trying to close a deal.
Next we move into the complicated implementation process, again time resources become a factor… Most managers don’t have time for the conference calls and administrative burdens necessary to launch a new CRM and some don’t have the technical experience to always know whats best or how to complete what is being asked of them. Because of this there can be challenges right out of the gate. Any speed bumps in the implementation can cause you to lose “buy in” from your teams from the top down, and once the staff has made up their mind that the tool “sucks” it will be nearly impossible to get them back on track. Our team has experience implementing thousands of CRM accounts and we handle the entire process for you so that you can focus on your operations.
Once the CRM is live, its time to start using it. Many stores miss out on ROI simply because they are not aware of best practices that can be implemented as part of their daily process to help improve response times, sales team accountability, prospect follow up, appointment show ratios, the recapturing of lost deals, better ad spend, higher conversion ratios and database lead generation. ACS will share these best practices with you while training your management team to integrate them with their normal operations. Once this is complete, we act as a remote CRM administrator to monitor these processes and provide feedback and support to ownership and management.
CRM training is also a critical factor. Yes, CRM Provider’s will typically offer some level of introductory training but ultimately it is the subscribers responsibility to make sure their team is adequately trained. Some of the challenges we see here include the fact that some CRM provider’s trainers have never sold anything and so they fail to successfully communicate the value of the tool in a way that the sales people understand. Additionally, they will only provide a basic operational introduction to the tool. Where as ACS has been hugely successful in providing comprehensive on site and remote training in a language that sales people understand and relate too, which establishes a better buy in and better utilization as a result.
Lastly, support comes into play. Most CRM providers recommend having a CRM administrator also known as a “Power User” who can deal with questions, training, technical support issues, database maintenance and analysis, CRM optimization and customization, email marketing, CRM security, and more. The challenge here is that these are specialized skills that we don’t typically see in dealership staff, and hiring a dedicated employee for this role will cost you on average $50k per year or more. Not exactly the kind of expense stores perceive as valuable, and so most of the CRM responsibilities get neglected which undermines the data insights, marketing automation and ROI. As your remote Power User, we relieve your staff of all of these burdens while constantly working proactively to help you sell more cars and get a greater return on your investment. The result is an efficient CRM experience that contributes to your net profit growth!
In conclusion, there are many ways that a CRM initiative can fall flat on its face. By hiring a specialist you can avoid these challenges and enjoy the fruits that an all-inclusive CRM initiative can bear.
Thanks for reading! What are your biggest CRM challenges?
You may just have written what you believe to be the most clever, eye-catching, and least spammy email subject line ever.
No one but you, a human, could have possibly done that, right? Times are a-changing.
Artificial Intelligence may be able to do your job, but better.
Coming to a Home Near You
Long gone are the days when Siri hardly ever understood what you were saying. AI has made a huge comeback with its advancements in Natural Language Processing. NLP is what powers Siri and its counterpart, Alexa.
Because virtual assistants have advanced so much, the communication with them is much more seamless. More and more users are starting to make these virtual assistants part of their homes, connecting them to every device in sight.
This is what’s making voice search increasingly more important, and those on the cutting edge are already looking toward how this will impact SEO and paid search.
How AI Could Replace Some Marketing Jobs
There are now entire services dedicated to writing anything from email subject lines to social media content using machine learning. These types of services could be potentially beneficial for businesses with hundreds of pieces of content to get out each day.
The jury is still out on how well AI could work on a consistent basis when it comes to content, but it is promising. Not only does it understand language better than ever, but it understands and measures engagement. This could lead to better content for engagement and business results with marketing efforts.
Making the Data Work
Letting AI do the heavy lifting when it comes to writing could be a good thing. AI won’t get the infamous writer’s block on deadline, it won’t make decisions based on emotion of creative desire, and it can manage more data than we could possibly comprehend in one mind.
With a mixture of the human element, AI could be one of the best things to happen to marketing since, well, the Internet.
With the rising popularity of open office environments and meetings that go far too long and happen far too often, it may feel like you leave the office with no sense of accomplishment. Where did the day go?
Fortunately, there are so many tools that can help you get back on track and accomplish goals – on time!
Listen to Spotify
Spotify has a playlist for virtually every mood you’re in, including productivity. There are some amazing playlists out there, from classical music to “Brain Food,” literally. Just be sure it doesn’t have distracting lyrics, put on those headphones, and go for it.
Exercise & Sleep
The foundation for almost all successful people is getting the basics in with a healthy body. When you’re sleeping well, your body has had a chance to do its nightly ‘cleanup’ of nonessential information. When it comes to exercise, it’s not only great for the heart, but it helps regulate your sleep cycle and it just feels good. Prioritize these two.
Plan, Plan, Plan
Before you even turn on your computer, write down 5 major things that you want to accomplish today. Is it meeting the end-of-month sales goal? Is it cleaning up your email inbox – finally? Set the tone for the day and take actionable steps to get to each one.
Keep Water Going
Once you’ve got the brain well-rested, hydrate it! Keep a few essentials at your office to motivate yourself to drink more water, like an awesome water bottle that’s easy to carry around, plenty of ice in the freezer, and lemons and limes for flavor. Make it a habit!
Leave It to the Pros
Are there certain areas of your business that suck up so much time, but are important for your overall operation? Tasks like managing your CRM or keeping up with phone calls can be difficult to keep up with, especially when staff is limited or methods have changed over time. Take the pressure off and hire a firm that specializes in CRM management to handle cleanup. It will save you headache and help you get on with focusing on your expertise.
We all know that content on the web is usually scanned, instead of really read. Your website visitors are hunting for a quick read; they want to get information fast! That being said, they make quick decisions without really thinking about it, like choosing not to read your blog post because of an unsatisfactory introduction paragraph. Continue reading below for writing tips that will improve your website!
Put Your Most Important Info First
Writing an essay and writing web or marketing content are two completely different things! Usually essays have an introduction, body and then a conclusion. The most important point usually made doesn’t happen until the conclusion section. For blog posts or any other web page writing, you need to do the opposite. Your most important points ALWAYS go first. Your customers want to know the details first. Basically they want to know what you do and what you can do for them instantly.
Keep It Simple
It’s extremely rare that a reader hangs on to every written word, especially on a website. Odds are the person doing the reading doesn’t have time and they are able to check several other websites instead of wasting time trying to figure out the main message. Clever phrases and complex words require people to think. People are not visiting your blog page or website to think. They are essentially on a hunt for quick information. A great rule-of-thumb is to write as if you’re talking to a 12 or 13-year-old. Use familiar words and don’t try to embellish or sound smarter than you actually are.
Write for The Scanners
When is the last time you read a full article on the Internet? If you’re like most people, probably never. Most website visitors glance at text and then click on the first promising link that catches their eye. Research actually shows that only 14% of people read web pages word for word, the rest scan. Make sure you have a great headline and featured image that communicates the message you’re trying to get across effectively. Also, ensure that your sub headlines summarize key points and include bullets for lists. Use short paragraphs and short sentences and skip all unnecessary words.
Plan Website Entry
With print writing, people usually follow the chronological order. For example, front to back or chapter one and then chapter two. However, this is not the case for writing that is published on the Internet. If you’re writing for your website, most of your web visitors will not start reading at your home page. Due to various links and advertisements, they could literally arrive anywhere on your website. You should make sure each page of your website is easy to scan and clarifies what your site is about. Each page should also have some type of call to action telling people where to go next. For instance, this could be “to read another blog post, click here” or “sign up for your email newsletter”. Do not rely on your navigation bar to tell people what to do next, instead include a button or link to guide people to take the next step.
In summary, don’t treat your web visitors like academic intellectuals. Keep your writing simple, don’t be wordy and don’t show off your extensive vocabulary. Know who you are and what you do, don’t try to be everything to everyone. In other words, be specific, be clear and be bold.