TFC Triples Web Site Traffic with Salesforce CRM and Google AdWords

David Resnick is vice president of sales and marketing at TFC Inc., a Northern California-based marketing services provider specializing in the execution of one-on-one marketing strategies. TFC primarily serves Fortune 1000 companies and its services include data analytics, digital printing, and fulfillment with direct mail for the rewards program of a major credit card company.

What issues were you were facing in your business that led you to consider Salesforce CRM?

When I first joined TFC, the company’s growth strategy had been focused on developing relationships with current clients. We had been really successful at that and hadn't really been marketing to find new customers. We decided to change our strategy to include new customer acquisition and I began to develop the marketing team. We hired two new outside sales people, and within six months had a client management team of five people. We began our outbound marketing and direct programs and I knew we were going to have to find a better way to manage our data. 

There were not many people at TFC who had a background in technology at that time, outside of our client-focused IT organization. Before I arrived someone had implemented UpShot, but I knew little about where the data had come from or how clean it was-the implementation had gone stale. We basically turned it off and started fresh.

What other solutions did you consider? 

We briefly thought about Sage CRM since we use Sage MAS 90 for our financial system. I had used Salesforce CRM before so I knew how easy it was to use and to train others. I also wanted something that would be really fast to implement yet was as comprehensive as possible. I was the first person at our company to create marketing activities, and I knew I’d be on my own with a small staff. My long-term plans included adding more marketing and sales application tools to help me run multi-channel programs, and the integration of new apps with Salesforce CRM would be a requirement with no IT involvement at all. The AppExchange was a major factor in the decision to go with Salesforce CRM because as we grow I know I can continue to add functionality and support additional teams in our organization outside of sales and marketing.

It was also important to provide the appearance that we were a larger company than we were. All of our clients are very large successful companies so we wanted to make sure to maintain our professional appearance in their eyes and demonstrate our value at various touch points. Salesforce CRM features like Web-to-lead forms, auto-response emails, Google AdWords, and custom communication templates help us manage client and prospect interactions with urgency even if we don’t have an inside sales team to manage those leads as they come in. This lead management process created the perception that we were a big company with lots of resources.

Once you chose Salesforce CRM, how did you get started?

I did the initial implementation with one other team member in about a week. Six months later we brought Echo Lane in to help us build out the implementation and do some heavy customizations and executive dashboards. We brought them in again to help us create new record types to handle our different sales processes around varying products or service offerings-we also use them for ongoing support and training.

What advice would you give companies like you getting started with Salesforce CRM?

Absolutely leverage the networking events and user groups in your area! I find that Salesforce CRM users are really generous with sharing info and helping one another. I have learned so much every time I have gone to an event. I’ve picked up tips on everything from how to increase response rates, to finding new functionality, to best practices around search marketing.

As the administrator I create a custom message on the home page which changes every day-I like to put up customer quotes, new lead generation programs, press releases etc., and of course I like to give credit for big customer wins. I think the latter helps to create some healthy competition with the sales reps. We also have dashboards that the vice president of sales uses to measure his team’s performance, and these are publicly available. All of these things keep our team logging in because there’s always fresh information.

Did you use Google AdWords before you adopted Salesforce CRM?

No, we were using Google Analytics for website management but not AdWords. I knew that salesforce.com was coming out with AdWords integration and wanted to wait to sign up until I could manage them in Salesforce CRM. It was so easy to sign up, I almost couldn’t believe it. We just put down a company credit card and I got my website manager involved to help create landing pages-we did the whole thing through Salesforce CRM.
I was still working on the Web site and trying to develop a lot of the content. What’s nice about AdWords is you don’t need a lot of content-the ad copy itself is pretty short, and you need enough information on the landing page, but that’s about it. We had a few kinds of generic ads driving traffic to our homepage to start and then quickly refined them once we had more offers and product packages to create specific landing pages. Now I probably have about 20 ads going at once and it continues to grow every few weeks.

How has it changed the way you’re marketing?

I would say it's expanded the reach of our outbound marketing efforts. Our site traffic is up 55 percent since we started using Salesforce CRM and Google AdWords, and now I know where that traffic came from and what piqued their interest. It has become a really easy way to add a whole new channel to an existing program. If we're doing a lead generation campaign with a new offer, we normally promote it through email, web banners, and certain sponsorships. Now we can add Google AdWords to the mix, it has just helped us to be more successful with the campaigns we’re already running at minimal cost and time to market.

Being able to track my efforts has been great. With Salesforce CRM, I can prove that 62 percent of open leads came from marketing sources this year-for me that has been huge, to be able to demonstrate the return I’m getting on my programs. Overall, I think Salesforce CRM has really helped us gain momentum in sales and marketing efforts. We have been able to quickly implement changes and bring new ideas and offers to market much faster. We’re growing fast and have limited space, so being able to leverage all the content about our customers and contact info that can be shared across different departments has been an added benefit.

What advice would you give to small companies who haven’t used Salesforce CRM and Google AdWords before?

Don't wait! Getting started is easier than you think! Play with the program a little more every day and you’ll learn to develop your own best practices. One of the great things is that you can experiment. As a private company we view every marketing dollar as a true investment, so we used AdWords as a test in the beginning. We had a limited advertising budget to manage every month. You can control your budget and you only pay for clicks. We did a few basic ads, noticed we weren't spending whole budget. So, we made a few more ads and created some better landing pages, and our website traffic is up 55 percent. We just tried a few things out on an affordable budget, and its working.

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