Big news in social media and customer relationship management today: Salesforce.com is acquiring Radian6, a top social media monitoring platform.
As you know, social media has become a key component of your marketing plan. You may also recognize the crucial role it plays in customer service. The Radian6 acquisition more tightly integrates social media into the marketing, sales, and customer service cycles.
Why the Radian6 Deal Matters to Your Business
Tools like Radian6 make it possible to monitor the social web, to listen to and engage with your customers, and to measure the impact of your social media efforts. The ability to hear your customer — to listen to her, to get to know her — is pivotal to building a relationship with her.
Enter Salesforce. The CRM platform helps thousands of organizations manage relationships with their customers. The ability to track interactions with customers — to pursue sales, track fulfillment, and cultivate relationships — is key to growing a business.
Together, these tools are a powerful combination. While Radian6 will remain an independent company, there’s no doubt the two platforms will learn from each other. The potential for tighter integration could allow a more seamless relationship with your customers and potential customers at every touchpoint.
Imagine being able to find and connect with customers at any point in the sales cycle — identifying a need, considering solutions, evaluating the choices, making a decision, purchasing, reviewing the purchase — and being able to track your interactions every step of the way.
Powerful stuff, ain’t it?
Why the Radian6 Deal Matters in the Big Picture
Proof of Social Media’s Worth. I still have clients who don’t like social media (I know, right?). Don’t like it, don’t believe in it, don’t see the point, don’t want it, and refuse to see the potential for their business. I can’t convince them. Maybe this acquisition by a well-regarded company will sway them. Maybe.
Tidying Up the Social Media Landscape. While we’ve seen amazing innovations in the social arena in recent years, the landscape is littered with under-nourished start-ups, abandoned apps, fledgling agencies, and scattered intellectual capital. Consolidation has its merits. If this is a trend, consolidation could multiply intellectual resources, attract more capital, improve efficiency, and declutter the attention minefield.
Focus on Sales. You can engage, interact and connect all day long on Twitter, Facebook, et al. And anecdotal evidence and a strong hunch tells me it generates leads, sales, awareness, and more efficient customer service. But it’s hard to prove. Linking monitoring and engagement to the prospecting/sales funnel will (finally) improve social media’s ability to demonstrate its impact on revenues and ROI.
Thoughts?
What do you think? Is the Salesforce-Radian6 deal big news? What does it mean for social media? For marketing?