CRM Functionality: 12 Growth Hacking Ideas a Small Business Needs

Growing the business is a top priority for any business owner.

But as a small business owner, you will face roadblocks and bottlenecks. With a very limited marketing budget, it can be an uphill climb to even try taking a slice of the pie from the industry leaders.

So, how do you succeed at scaling a small business without draining your budget?

With this ingenious idea known as growth hacking.

Many have compared growth hacking for startups and small businesses to the invention of the assembly line during the industrial era.

That’s how revolutionary growth hacking is. If you don’t step into this wagon, you’ll miss out on a lot.

This blog post offers a CRM functionality list of 12 proven ideas that can take your small business to the next level:

Data-driven lead management
Hot leads vs cold leads
Omnichannel communication
Mobile CRM for remote access
Segmentation with smart lists
Social proof and testimonials
Exit-intent popups
Customer retargeting
Blogging
Exceptional customer support
Following up
Regular interactions

Following these growth hacking ideas will surely help you grow your business.

Let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

What is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is the “fast and furious” method of experimentation on various aspects of marketing, sales, and customer service. In a nutshell, growth hacking is the process of identifying the most efficient way to grow your business.

There are ways to boost your conversion rate without following the conventional and daunting methods. You can also find novel and effective ways to acquire new customers and test how much your products and services mean to your customers.

Small businesses like yours need growth hacking or a growth hacking agency to get a competitive advantage over mammoth corporations with well-funded and highly streamlined processes.

Traditional methods can take a lot of time and resources to reach certain goals. In some cases, they might even fail.

That’s where growth hacking comes into play.

The trick is not to reinvent the wheel — you just have to experiment and tweak to find out what works the best for your company.

So, how do you growth-hack your way to success? Well, we have 12 of the best growth hacking CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategies a small business needs.

Here’s a great video by Neil Patel:

12 Growth Hacking Ideas a Small Business Needs

You can use your CRM to implement most of these ideas. Of course, for that to happen, you’ll need to use a powerful, integrated and unified CRM, something like EngageBay.

#1. Data-Driven Lead Management

Here’s a great CRM functionality for you.

Just knowing your lead’s name and contact details won’t help you convert them into paying customers. You need to dig deeper.

Before you can convert your leads into customers, you need to understand them wholly.

How do you do that? With a well-built CRM.

Don’t fumble in the dark. Use data-driven CRM functionalities, like lead management, and hack your way to success.

A CRM centered around your customers will help you attain crucial information, including their desires, likes, behaviors, income, past interactions, and more. Using this customer data, your marketing and sales team can mold strategies that can help convert better.

#2. Hot Leads vs Cold Leads

This one is another excellent tool from the proven CRM functionality list. Not all leads are the same, and therefore you shouldn’t give the same attention to everyone.

That’s where lead scoring comes to play. You can distinguish between your hot leads and cold ones using various filters and criteria and focus on the leads that have a greater chance of converting.

A CRM solution helps you automatically score your leads and create lists to target them through personalized marketing and even send them further down the sales funnel.

Conversely, you can weed out cold leads for re-engagement.

Many businesses make the mistake of targeting only hot leads and ignoring cold ones. Instead, lead scoring should only be used to gauge where the leads are in the sales funnel, and target them with personalized marketing for every stage.

#3. Omnichannel Communication

There are dozens of different modes of communication in today’s world, and your customers may have certain preferences. This could be email, calls, social media, websites, or even SMS.

That’s why you need an omnichannel communication system. Doing so will help you reach a wider audience and show that you actually care about your customers.

A good-quality CRM software lets you engage with your customers through various channels of communication. It can also have various CRM functionalities to capture leads, collect information, and store them in a central database for future access.

Knowing what your customers prefer is vital, especially for small businesses and startups.

#4. Mobile CRM For Remote Access

Cloud-based CRM systems have the added advantage of being portable. You can access various CRM functionalities as long as you have a good internet connection. This has revolutionized how small companies conduct their businesses.

Sometimes, your marketing and sales teams need a task to be done quickly. This leads to inefficient task management if your team is outside the office and there’s no way to access the software remotely. What’s more, you may lose out on important leads!

Having a portable CRM software like EngageBay lets you engage with your leads, schedule meetings, and even offer customer support on the go.

#5. Segmentation With Smart Lists

Audience segmentation is crucial if you want high conversions. Gone are the days of mass marketing and one-for-all sales tactics.

This is one CRM feature you wouldn’t want to miss out on. Segmentation is a basic CRM functionality, and most CRM software offer it, some for free.

Here, you segment your leads and customers into lists based on various factors, including demographics, age, income, past interactions, lead score, purchase history, and user behavior.

Once you get your audience segmented well, you can target them with relevant, personalized campaigns for better conversion.

Boost your CRM success with our in-depth guide on CRM databases – dive in today! 🚀

#5. Social Proof & Testimonials

Social proof, aka testimonials, plays a huge role in conversions. People want to know that the products and services they purchase are helpful in their lives. If you have great testimonials, this is the time to display them proudly.

Add them to your landing page, social media accounts, and even on popups.

Companies tend to inflate how good their products are, and your customers know it. Coming from someone who has paid for and used the product will give a much-needed nudge to convert them from leads to customers.

For example, here’s one testimonial for EngageBay that you can easily find on the product’s homepage:

#6. Exit-Intent Popups

Have you ever wondered how websites aptly show a colorful and eye-catching dialogue box when your cursor leaves the page?

That’s an exit-intent popup in action.

Simply put, an exit-intent popup shows up as the user is about to leave a webpage. This offers the brand another chance to convert its leads.

This is a great place to show your testimonials and USPs. Some websites even invoke a sense of FOMO (the infamous Fear of Missing out strategy) as a lead magnet by showing a countdown or displaying how many have joined a particular subscription. Some even offer limited-time discounts to try to win back customers.

One example from EngageBay:

Also read: 15 Intelligent Ways Top Brands Use Exit-Intent Popups

#7. Customer Retargeting

Sometimes, your leads go cold for a variety of reasons. Your campaigns may not appeal to them, they might not need your services right now, and some may outright dislike your brand.

Knowing what went wrong and where can help you tweak your strategy to get back your leads.

A CRM software offers various features to help you retarget your leads and send them further down the sales funnel.

Just because a customer does not purchase their first visit doesn’t mean you have lost them forever. According to a report by Digital Strategy Consulting, an average visitor makes nine visits before making a purchase!

Google and customer retargeting works wonders, too. Make sure to include this in your advertisement strategy.

👉Discover the most effective CRM database practices that will transform your sales process in our detailed article! 📈

#8. Blogging

Though blogging is not a wholesome CRM functionality, it deserves a spot here because of its effectiveness. Consistently and regularly creating blogs on topics relevant to your user base and solving their problems can enhance reach.

Share your blog posts on social media for better reach. Add CTAs to them so that new visitors can subscribe to your newsletter — thus offering another channel to nurture and capture leads.

One great way to growth-hack your way to success is to write blog posts that rank on Google’s first page for industry-related SEO keywords.

This will bring in more targeted traffic, thus significantly enhancing the chances of quality conversions.

For instance, when you look for alternatives to the popular CRM HubSpot, you’ll find EngageBay’s blog post about good HubSpot alternatives ranking first:

Also read: Track These 15 Marketing Metrics to Grow Your Small Business

#9. Exceptional Customer Support

Offering quick and efficient responses to your customer’s queries is a surefire way to enhance conversions. Your leads won’t wait for you for days to get a reply; they’ll simply move on to other vendors that offer better customer service.

That’s why you need a CRM software that offers a complete customer support system. With tools like helpdesk and live chat, you can respond to queries swiftly and possibly retain customers.

Using autoresponders and other CRM system features can help reduce your agent’s workload while simultaneously improving response times.

#10. Following Up

Here’s another great CRM functionality idea: Follow-up.

Many businesses, especially smaller ones engage with a lead once and then forget them altogether. In reality, multiple attempts are needed to garner a response from a potential lead.

Just because they don’t respond on the first attempt does not mean they have gone ‘cold.’

A CRM software helps you manage leads effectively and lets you follow up with them in a timely manner. You get the tools and data you need to make multiple follow-ups on various channels and then proactively send them further down the sales funnel.

Great things don’t happen in a single day!

#11. Regular Interactions

Don’t just ignore your existing customers as soon as they make a purchase. This is the time to up-sell and cross-sell your products or services.

You can make use of CRM features, including email broadcasts, multi-channel marketing, and email sequences to interact with your customers at regular intervals. With email sequences and segmentation, you can regularly send out personalized, relevant emails, promotions, and news to keep your brand name at the forefront.

Many CRM software offers web analytics and user behavior tracking to help you analyze how your customers respond to your web pages and emails. This will offer deep insight into your customers’ desires and behavior — making it easier for you to convert leads to sales, up-sell, and cross-sell.

Conclusion

For small businesses, growth hacking is vital for success.

This blog post offers a CRM functionality list of 12 proven ideas that can take your small business to the next level.

This brings us to the following question: How do you choose an excellent marketing automation & CRM software for your small business? There are dozens of excellent CRM software in the market today. Choosing any one of them can enhance conversions, boost your growth, and bring in more sales.

That said, EngageBay is one of the best marketing and sales force automation CRM software for small businesses.

With EngageBay, you get advanced segmentation, predictive lead scoring, intelligent reporting and analytics, autoresponders, pipeline management, email sequences, omnichannel communication, a Social Suite, workflow automation, Live Chat, exit-intent popups — the list goes on.

The best part?

There’s a free plan with a myriad of features for businesses like yours.

If you need a demo with our team, you can schedule a 30-minute session for free — at any time of your choosing.

Here’s a great video detailing our product: