Salesforce IMC

Running head: Salesforce IMC Plan

Salesforce IMC Plan

Jovanny Centeno

Saint Martin’s University

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Salesforce IMC

Abstract

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is defined as the “coordination and integration of

all marketing communication tools, avenues, and sources in a company into a seamless program

designed to maximize the impact on customers and other stakeholders. The program covers all of

a firm’s business-to-business, market channel customer focused, and internally directed

communications” (Clow, 2004). An IMC plan has become an integral part of firms in the 21st

Century. Salesforce, a cloud based computing company, has implemented different IMC plans to

be a top competitor in the software as a service market. This paper will analyze Salesforce’s IMC

plan with background information, a SWOT analysis, and position, promotion, and current target

market while suggesting a new target market.

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Salesforce IMC

BackgroundSalesforce Inc. began in 1999 as a company specializing in software as a service (SaaS). Since

then Salesforce has become the one of the leading global cloud based computing company’s in

the world. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Salesforce is best known for its customer

relationship management (CRM) product. Salesforce’s CRM service is broken into several broad

categories known as:

Sales

Sales Cloud

Tracks all customer information

Nurtures leads until they’re sales-ready

Automatically routes leads to the right reps

Accelerates productivity

Helps make insightful decisions

Data.com

Allows business to know their customers better and sell faster

Grows pipeline by segmenting and targeting new accounts by region or industry

Accelerates sales productivity

Know more about who’s buying, see market trends, and discover new

opportunities

Automate data cleansing so reps are empowered to sell faster and sell smarter

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Salesforce IMC

Service

Service Cloud

Gives 24/7 support to customers

Personalized services for customers

Multi-channel support (phone, email, and social media)

Predictive support; fix problems before they happen

Faster customer care

Desk.com

All-in-one customer support app

Get insights to build better products and make smart business decisions

Help customers help themselves with a branded self-service site

Scale easily as the business grows

Take advantage of flex pricing so everyone in the company can pitch in and help

Marketing

Marketing Cloud

Plan, personalize, and optimize the customer journey

Connect interactions from any channel by combining customer data and behaviors

to create relevant communication

Integrates all customer data in real time to know the customer better

Map 1:1 customer journeys

Guide customers through 1:1 journey by delivering relevant content to each

customer

Measure business impact; see what is working and what is not

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Salesforce IMC

Pardot

B2B Marketing

Generate better leads using a suite of powerful marketing tools

Simplify lead management; put most common marketing and sales tasks on

autopilot

Track engagement with campaigns

Improve follow-up speed

Track closed deals back to their original campaigns to better understand which

programs are actually working

Community

Community Cloud

Reimagine customer, partner, and employee engagement

Accelerate channel sales by connecting directly with resellers, distributor, and

partners

Help customers help each other and themselves with powerful community

software

Build deeper customer relationships with direct customer interaction

Collaborate with agencies, suppliers, vendors or any other member of the business

ecosystem

Chatter

Connect every employee with the files, data, and experts needed

Drive productivity

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Salesforce IMC

Accelerate innovation by providing a forum for anyone to share insights and

propose new ideas

Share knowledge with experts from across the organization regardless of their

role or location

Track team and critical projects in the mobile feed

Analytics

Salesforce Analytics Cloud

For every business user

Explore any combination of data. Get answers instantly, and share with the team

Deliver new insights to business users however, wherever, and whenever they

want them (for Analysts)

Securely deliver and data, from any source via a 100% native Salesforce cloud

service (for Admins and IT)

Build and analytic app for any business need (for Developers)

Platform and Apps

Salesforce1 Platform

How to build on; allows for building of custom apps

What to build with; ability to discover app-building tools and services for

developers and business users

How to integrate; with lightning connect, robust APIs, and more

How to manage; knowledge to manage apps, users, profiles, and more

Force.com

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Salesforce IMC

Builds employee apps for every role and department

All apps are mobile

Use AppExchange to help connect employees instantly

Download pre-integrated apps for Salesforce

Heroku

Empowers developers to create engaging apps

Build apps in dozens of modern programming languages

Sync apps with Salesforce using Heroku Connect

Delight customers with beautiful and engaging apps

SWOT Analysis

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Salesforce IMC

1. Strengths

Growth in revenue the past four years

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Salesforce IMC

(Source: Statista) Strong customer base with more than 1 million world-wide driving sales higher

Cloud computing establishment gaining importance

Leader in On-Demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

(Forbes)

2. Weaknesses

Geographic concentration

High concentration of customer base being business-to-business

Very high competition with other CRM companies

3. Opportunities

Join forces with Google

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Salesforce IMC

Growing demand in CRM market

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Salesforce IMC

(Forbes)

Sports industry

Spanish speaking customer base

CRM market in China

4. Threats

Powerful CRM companies (Oracle, Sage, and Microsoft Dynamic CRM)

Regulatory issues

Privacy concerns

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Salesforce IMC

One of highest CRM priced companies

(Base)

Positioning, Promotion, & Target MarketPositioning

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Salesforce IMC

Salesforce’s market position is vital to sustain a clear message to current and potential customers

while continuing high revenue margins. According to Inc. Magazine, four things that Salesforce

continues to do that make them a leading competitor in the software market are:

1. Speak Plain English

Salesforce likes to quote from an internal study to promise a roughly 30

percent increase in sales for companies that take full advantage of its

software. "So take the numbers and make them into meaningful metrics,"

says Greg Gsell, a Salesforce senior marketing manager. "You get an extra

day and a half a week if you increase your productivity by 30 percent!

That's huge! It means I'm selling all day Saturday and halfway through

Sunday--but I don't have to work on weekends." (Whitford, 2014)

2. Take the High Road

“Internally, we have these posters: Crush Microsoft and Obliterate

Oracle," says Gsell. But, he adds, "when you go out to your customers,

you have to be careful that you're guiding them and not just stepping on

Microsoft. Even though we all want to." (Whitford, 2014)

3. Defuse, Deliver, and Tell a Good Story

An objection is an opportunity. Step One: Don't evade--empathize. Tell

the customer that you've heard this one before and that you understand.

Step Two: Ask probing questions, get the customer talking, learn as much

as you can. Step Three: Offer a solution--ideally with a story that

highlights another customer's success. "We're not the hero in our

customers' stories," says Kardyhm Kelly, a Salesforce senior director with

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Salesforce IMC

"customer stories" in her title. "It's how the customer succeeded, not how

we saved them." (Whitford, 2014)

4. Be One of the Four Horsemen

No, no; not Conquest, War, Famine, and Death! When people at

Salesforce talk about "the concept of the four horsemen," they're talking

teamwork. Despite the posters on the walls and all the tough talk, "there

are no sharp elbows here," insists Tony Rodoni, senior vice president of

commercial and small-business sales. "We have high aspirations for

ourselves, but not at each other's expense” (Whitford, 2014)

Promotion

As a cloud based company with a Marketing Cloud product, Salesforce uses digital marketing

techniques to promote the company. Social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook,

RSS feed subscription, Google+, and a YouTube channel allow them to showcase their current

products.

Whether it is checking a bank account, making a payment, purchasing merchandise, checking

Twitter or Facebook, or even buying groceries, in today’s world nearly everything is done

online. Consumers are now able to access online material through smartphones, tablets, home

computers, watches, and laptops. Digital marketing techniques such as emails, online ads, and

sponsored social media ads are a perfect setup for a firm like Salesforce. Salesforce’s own

Marketing Cloud can bring back relevant information about consumers and the best return on

investment (ROI). The analytical capacity that the Marketing Cloud has allows for Salesforce to

map a customer’s journey and deliver relevant content to each customer. The Marketing Cloud

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Salesforce IMC

also allows for Salesforce to see exactly which digital marketing campaigns worked and which

did not; this in turn helps to reach a better ROI.

Target Market

Salesforce’s target market is aimed towards business owners and a wide variety of industries that

want more information on their customers. These industries include financial services,

healthcare, life science, communications, retail, media, government, manufacturing, automotive,

higher ed, and nonprofit. Because Salesforce is best known for its customer relationship

management product, all of these industries rely on Salesforce to discover consumer trends,

customer interactions, and measure business impact to say the least.

The impact Salesforce has on current target market is phenomenal. Salesforce publishes success

stories on their website of current customers who have effectively used Salesforce’s different

platforms. An example of a success story is that of Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo uses Salesforce’s

sales cloud, marketing cloud, service cloud, and chatter to maintain a deep customer relationship.

Steve Ellis, head of Wells Fargo’s Wholesale Service Group, commented on their use of

Salesforce products saying that "it used to be that you could just call someone on the phone and

you could make that happen. Now you just can't because we're so big and there are so many new

people here. So we see the cloud as a way to help people connect around customers, to connect

around building products, and to connect around risk management practices" (Salesforce). This

is evidence that Salesforce is doing an excellent job on its current target market.

New Target Market & Implementation

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Salesforce IMC

New Target Market

As of 2015, no sports teams are part of Salesforce’s customer base; this will change. Sports

industries will include the Major League Soccer (MLS) and Women’s National Basketball

Association (WNBA), as they aren’t as popular as the National Basketball Association (NBA),

the National Hockey League (NHL), and the National Football League (NFL). These two sports

industries are being chosen to show exactly how powerful Salesforce’s CRM platforms are. The

benefits that arise from Salesforce in the WNBA and MLS will be:

1. Identifying supporter needs

2. Better timing of events

3. Able to calculate customer lifetime value

4. Developing sports team brands

5. New market opportunities (International)

6. Increased revenue (ticket sales, merchandise, and sponsorship)

Implementation

In order to obtain these six benefits the MLS and WNBA will use tools such as CRM, email

marketing software, social media channels, and different analytical tools provided by Salesforce.

These data driven marketing campaigns will allow the two sports industries to segment markets

based on behavior, analyze engagement of customers (subscriptions and sales activity), and

determine a customer’s lifetime value. This huge opportunity will provide the MLS and WNBA

with a strong competitive advantage. Lack of knowledge about fan base, less attractive sponsor

proposition, and poor targeted marketing will ultimately leave behind sports industries not using

Salesforce.

References

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Salesforce IMC

Clow, K., & Baack, D. (2004). Integrated advertising, promotion & marketing communications

(2nd ed., p. 6). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Columbus, L. (2014, May 6). Gartner CRM Market Share Update: 41% Of CRM Systems Are

SaaS-based, Salesforce Dominating Market Growth. Retrieved April 29, 2015, from

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/05/06/gartners-crm-market-share-

update-shows-41-of-crm-systems-are-saas-based-with-salesforce-dominating-market-

growth

Columbus, L. (2013, June 18). Gartner Predicts CRM Will Be A $36B Market By 2017.

Retrieved April 29, 2015, from

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2013/06/18/gartner-predicts-crm-will-be-a-

36b-market-by-2017/

Mwangi, J. (2014, December 16). Salesforce.com: Slowing Growth Could Turn Out To Be A

Good Thing. Retrieved April 29, 2015, from http://seekingalpha.com/article/2756645-

salesforce-com-slowing-growth-could-turn-out-to-be-a-good-thing

Wells Fargo's Success Story - Salesforce.com. (2015, January 1). Retrieved April 30, 2015, from

https://www.salesforce.com/customers/stories/wells-fargo.jsp

Top Rated CRM Software. (2013, January 1). Retrieved April 30, 2015, from

https://www.futuresimple.com/top-rated-crm-software/

Whitford, D. (2014, September 1). 4 Keys to Selling like Salesforce.com. Retrieved April 30,

2015, from http://www.inc.com/magazine/201409/david-whitford/inc.500-selling-the-

story-how-sales-force-stays-on-top.html

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