Why your business needs a CRM in 2025 and Meta's ongoing moderation struggles

Everyone seems really happy when I've spoken to them , which is really nice , so we're going to start things off with a little bit of a moan . We're looking at CRM , and we really recently did some research . I say research . I've googled some things and found a report from a company called Freshworks that said only 73% of businesses are using a CRM .

That was in 2024 . We're going to look at what the state of that is in 2025 and whether you can survive without a CRM in this digital era . After that , we'll be looking at Mark Zuckerberg's recent announcement around moderation changes and how they are removing fact-checking and replacing it with community notes , amongst other things .

For now , though , let's get on with the podcast . Okay , kick me off . Our first topic for today . We are looking at CRM and why you should probably have one now , because it is 2025 . This conversation came about after seeing a statistic from Freshworks that says 73% of businesses use CRM software in 2024 . That means 27% of companies are not using CRMs .

If you are working off an Excel sheet , we are looking at you . Talking about this topic today , we have our Senior Email Marketing Manager , mark Bundle , and we also have one of our ex-Bruig Digital staff members , freya Wilcox , returning to discuss this as well .

To kick things off , I'm going to keep things simple , just in case anyone listening to this podcast is one of those people in that quarter of businesses that don't have over a quarter of businesses that don't have a CRM In 2025 , what is the CRM ? What does it do ? Mark , let's kick off with you .

It is a system whereby you keep all of the data you have about your contacts , about the people you're talking to , your customers , your prospects all in one place .

You can use to cross-reference that data , to segment it and put it into different parts , and normally you can use to automate journeys , to do them as well , to save yourself time and effort by talking to people in an automated but still personalized way .

But at the same time , it's not only 27 of all business there's . There's absolutely people out there running , like you said , excel spreadsheets that should be running a proper crm system , because they are too scared , because they lack the know-how , because they think it's expensive .

Um , and just my call to all of them would be oh my God , please , there are options that are easily accessible and free . We will help if you're stuck getting started , but , yeah , you should absolutely be using a TRM system unless you're literally in the first days and weeks of your business .

Even if you are in your first few weeks , like you have to start yourself like from a good standing . Um , otherwise you're just going to be looking back and you're like why the fudge didn't I start that earlier ?

Because doing it early and small and getting it right is so much easier and so much cheaper than trying to fix a mess that's already there yeah , couldn't agree more .

It is so incredibly important and it's something that I actually can't believe I wasn't aware of until I started actually working in marketing . It's something that you'd assume that they would teach you in universities , and they don't not all of them yeah , I completely agree .

Absolutely they did as a way to track inbound leads , as a way to track call times and call lengths and deal repeats and that kind of stuff . But most of the systems these days are much more marketing focused .

That is , from the biggest kind of pub sport salesforce things all the way down to the new kind of entrance in the market that are trying to disrupt and break through . Um , marketing absolutely relies on crm . Personalization and scale is the number one probably requirement for marketing in this day and age .

And that is not just the email side , which is obviously kind of my , my playground , but even in the kind of the social ads and the linkedin ads , that kind of stuff . They're all still driven from crm because you can build things like look-alike lists , you can build targets and things like that .

So I don't think there's a single part of marketing or maybe a CEO that CRM doesn't touch on and can't improve in some way .

Interestingly , you mentioned salesforce , who maybe should be called marketing force , and hubspot , and according to google , I think those two plus microsoft dynamics lead the way .

When it comes to the crm market share , do you have a preference to any tools or do you think there are any um , smaller crms that are making waves and are better , particularly for those companies who are in that 27 , who might be , you know , startups or just lack that understanding ?

Um , yes , these big ones do offer some free plans to start with , and you will get some support in setting those up , because they're interested in helping you grow so they can , like you , use more tools and they can charge you more .

It's exactly the same with smaller players , though , and they might have different niche things that are more specified to your business . So , a lot of the disruptors , a lot of the new players in the game , are trying to trial new things or they're approaching things from a different angle .

There was a company we spoke to last year apologies , I forget the name , but their thing was very much about the journeys and their all .

Their focus was on how you can use the data for journeys to automate processes and how people move through their life cycles and all that kind of stuff , and that was their big focus , and they did it really really well , whereas if you want a more broad kind of I just want to get started then , yeah , probably a hub , sport or a salesforce or something like

that is going to be a better starting point , because it will do everything you need , but it just might not do it in the way you want . So there's a trade-off .

Every other week , once a month one of the two to help me learn and sort of develop my help spot skills , and it has been really really helpful to the point where , like now , I can answer questions for other people , whereas when I first came into brew , obviously I had no real idea what CRM was or the importance of it .

So definitely just take the time , dedicate , say , an hour a week to learning about it , but don't overwhelm yourself with knowledge , things like HubSpot . Hubspot is a huge tool , it's an amazing tool , but it's a huge and complicated tool . So if you don't get it all straight away , don't put that pressure on yourself . It takes time .

Or you know you're a criminal and there's a Batman logo in the sky and you realize that it's coming to get you . How do you get over that fear ?

If you're doing what you're supposed to be doing , you're following the rules and you're following the guidance that your CRM sets out for you , chances are you're going to have no issue . Gdpr was there to stop people doing bad things sort of capital B-T .

Largely , it's about making sure that if you're gathering data , you're doing it and people know you're gathering data . You're doing it and people know you're gathering data , so make sure you're asking for consent . Are you keeping that data for as long as you need ? That's something the crm system can help you with . That's strictly .

One of the best things about the crm system is it can help you with that . Other than that , it's largely are you spamming ? Are you doing things you know ethically you shouldn't be doing ? Are you abusing people's data ?

And yes , there are all sorts of kind of different nuances and throughout europe there's slightly different things , because , as well as gdpr , you then have to apply to all of the local regulations as well . In the uk that's the privacy and electronic communications regulation , which is from the 70s , and so that's wonderfully up to date . But yeah , it's .

Everyone gets really scared about it because they see the one% of turnover or unlimited fine . Honestly , largely don't do anything you wouldn't want somebody to do to you and you're probably fine in GDPR and your CRM system will help you with the rest .

Don't either yeah , do unto others as you would have them do unto you is , uh , yeah , probably actually a rule for the CRM generally .

It means A you can be GDPR compliant , so you can process that consent and stuff and have it timestamped , which is what you need , so that will make any business better and stuff and have it time stamped , which is what you need , um , so that'll make any business better .

And there are also it's a series of garages that I worked with and they obviously mot's for them are a big deal , and they were able to leverage the data they collected about mot dates , registration numbers , that kind of thing to send out a really highly personalized mot reminder journey .

So a couple of months out , you get an email going , your car registration blah with a picture of that car as well , or a picture of the car that's the right color at least I think it was is during however many days 60 days and then there's a series of four or five emails running up to the big day and to just after as well , I think .

Um , it was basically saying that remind us you're at mot , which obviously is a really important thing , but it wasn't too creepy , it wasn't too intrusive and it also gave the option every stage to say I don't want to hear about this anymore , which I think is really key as well .

Being able to stop receiving these things is a really important part of CRM and of GDPR .

When we look at the data , they useM even less , but it's so important for those companies as well . Yeah , absolutely .

That's a hospice and they know which uh events I've been to before , they know which um fundraising appeals I've donated to before , and so they can take their communications to me to the things that are most likely to elicit money from me . It's a good cause , so I'll let it slide .

But the concept still of as a charity at heart is a money-making machine is there to generate as much revenue as it can for this cause . So being able to do that , even as a charity , is really important and it's a . It has a great roi and a great uh investment for a future of a business that's .

If you had 30 seconds to convince them that they need to prioritize CRM in 2025 , we've maybe covered this a little bit , but I really want to kind of emphasize this at the end of the topic what would you tell them ? Freya , we're going to start with you .

So look at the whole thing as an investment in the future that you need to make now , same as you were doing kind of manufacturing or social or research or anything else super .

I just wanted to quickly jump in before we went to that recording to let people know that there is some language in this section that may be triggering or upsetting for certain listeners , because we are talking about the language which Meta has decided is permissible on their platform and it's not great .

I have also flagged it in the recording , but I just wanted to let you know in advance as well . So just be aware and continue to be kind and look after each other . Over to Freya .

They're also like . I think the more problematic elements of it is the content policies and restrictions around topics like immigration and gender . So Mark Zuckerberg said that they feel like their moderation policies were out of touch with the public discourse .

So they're winding back all of those protections for protected classes and everything else so that anybody can say essentially whatever they want and other than like actually a legal material , it's going to be the case that anything goes on all of Meta's platforms from now on .

But the Intercept , which is a really great publication , actually found some of the training material that is now being disseminated to those content moderators .

And , just to give an example of some of the things that are now permissible on Facebook and Instagram , it is now fine , according to Mark Zuckerberg and co , to say for , for instance , the immigrants are grubby , filthy , filthy pieces of shit . Uh , you can call gays freaks and it's also perfectly fine and please , this is a trigger warning .

Um , it is fine to say look at that tranny underneath a photo of a . All better off now in terms of civic conversation , which is really ironic considering that that is what Mark Zuckerberg is claiming . He wants to bring back civic content , but in the same breath , he also means that as political content .

I'm not entirely sure why he's calling it civic content , because it's certainly not going to be civil .

You are told what could be right or wrong , and it's a third party set of people and you know , regardless of their own beliefs , they would follow this training material and whereas now it's really up to the community to decide if something is good or bad . Is it factual , is it not ? Which is basically influenced by a lot of things .

It's influenced by your own belief system , is basically influenced by a lot of things . It's influenced by your own belief system . It's influenced if you are getting paid as well by other agencies and so on . So it's really going to be an interesting turn of events , as you can see . I mean for businesses for sure . What does this mean to us ?

This basically means that I could be promoting , you know . Promoting , you know putting a lot of money behind an ad that would be shown in a platform that could have things that are not aligned to the values of my company . So that also , in turn affects my brand , because , again , that no long . No one is you know .

It's all up to the community to now decide what is true or not .

Are you aware of any companies that have made announcements about sort of Meta's changes and all the stuff that Zuckerberg's announced , and do you think there's any particular reason why it's all come to light ?

Um , as I said , meta previously had 40 000 content moderators . They spent 280 million dollars setting up an oversight board where they were going to be like a supreme court who would adjudicate on the tougher um moderation decisions .

And zuckerberg personally previously donated nearly 420 million dollars to election infrastructure projects that allow people to vote safely during covid , and for all of that he has received no like political uh appreciation . So in america especially , both the democrats and the republicans rally on facebook for essentially undermining democracy .

Now , the validity of those arguments are somewhat varied . The republicans feel like there's a anti-right-wing bias which is just proven again and again to not be true , and the democrats look at facebook for how horrendous it is for mental health and perpetuating all of the lies that the right-wings do publish on their platforms .

So , essentially , for all of the work that facebook and meta have put into trying to moderate their platforms , they have received nothing and just spent money and now an administration is coming in run by a man who is personally vindictive and has previously threatened to actually imprison zuckerberg for the work that meta has done in moderating their platforms under the

ridiculous banner of free speech . So I can kind of understand why he would just go oh f it , I don't . I don't need this aggro anymore . There is no point , there is no benefit to me moderating my platforms because I'm not getting anywhere politically um from doing it and my users seem to stay regardless .

I think also he's probably looking at what has happened over at x , who got rid of all of their content moderators essentially and it doesn't seem to have like significantly harmed the brand . Well , it has harmed the brand , but like they are still managing to function .

Um and Elon Musk has essentially bought an election through the use of X , so there's probably yeah , there's just like there's no downside to him doing this yeah , well , I mean , can I just jump in ?

There are a lot of articles coming out that it's not only Facebook who are revisiting their content regulations , and basically everyone that has , quote-unquote , a woke policy , you know , protecting immigrants , gender identity and those type of sorts are essentially revisiting that .

There are companies that are , you know , as we speak , already taking out their DEI infrastructure . They're already taking out things that they have put in place during the Me Too movement , during the Black Lives Matter .

They're not taking that out because , as a result of the Trump administration and you know , a good example of this is like the impending ban of Twitter it really depends on the regulations of the country that you work in and how it affects how you work on that country .

So I think they just want to make sure that they are in good light with the new administration . I don't think that this will last forever , because hopefully , you know , trump doesn't last forever . But here we go . This is the new , you know new day that we're seeing .

So there's probably that sort of business element to it as well . Debbie , I was really interested when you said that there might be , or there will be , reductions across social media spend . We definitely saw that in X because it was just so toxic .

But I also think it was a lot easier to drop x because , in terms of return on investment , I never really felt like Twitter at the time bought in that much value . But Facebook , like Meta's ad platform , is massive . I think it's possibly the second biggest ad platform are going .

So do you really think that brands are going to start dropping their spend on these platforms ?

It's almost as if , like um , they will just make sure that their customers are happy with them right now , because they're not throwing their money at X , but at the same time , when everyone has calmed down , they might , like , put their money back up . But I'm foreseeing this because I also feel that brands need to compensate on something else .

I feel like , as an effect of this you know this regulations , this change in regulations there might be a need for brands to invest in other security tools that are out there in order to make sure that whatever ads they're putting out does not get seen you know , does not get seen on a page that supports terrorism , for instance , like that amount of money needs

to be compensated somewhere else .

Or is it something we don't need to worry about ?

Are they moving towards becoming more like X , or do you think this won't really impact them that much ?

They have essentially , from the start , been embroiled in scandals Like Cambridge Analytica did untold damage to their brand , even if it didn't really affect their business , and having Zuckerberg repeatedly hauled up in front of Congress just so that they can shout at him for social media clips that they then post on his social media platforms like Facebook , has been

dragged through the ringer , and this rebrand to Meta didn't really do anything to rehabilitate the brand .

So I don't think they were starting from a particularly high point , and those who are upset by these changes probably weren't in love with Facebook and their policies and their sort of like mendacious behavior before , so it's kind of hard to gauge how problematic this has been from a brand perspective . I think what has probably annoyed people more is like .

I feel like what we're seeing is a rejection of , like this billionaire ring kissing to Trump .

I think Zuckerberg's brand has probably been damaged more than Facebook's brand , in the same way that Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai , like all of the sort of tech CEOs who are now playing the political game of cozying up to Trump donating to his inauguration fund , all of that sort of stuff .

I feel their personal brands are probably more affected than the company brands at the minute .

It's the brand perception of their users , the brand perception of their partners , but also the brand perception of litigations like government officials , and I think , in a way and I must say this is true for big , big brands um , it's the truth , the reality is , and the truth is the brand perception of governments is much more important than the brand perception of

their users , because they would not be able to run things . They would not be able to run in a city . Hire do operate if they're always , like you know , put regulations against them , if they are kicked out of the country and so on .

So , right now , what they're doing is actually good in terms of reputation for the new US administration , whether they lose users or not . They don't . Really , I don't think they would care too much about that because , as you can see , there were also a lot of people that voted for Trump .

So a lot of people do voted for trump , so a lot of people do agree to this sentiment of free speech in every way and form . So in a way they might be losing supports , but they might also be gaining support in other parts .

Do marketers need to have exit strategies and if so , where could they even go ? Um , we'll start with debbie and we'll go to tom um , no , it's the same as um .

What they need to think about is one not relying too much on Facebook for promotions . So trying to think about which areas should they do if they want to go outside of the US , want to try other regions ? Offline marketing advocates , influencers , you know , experts , you know . Try to diversify where you're putting your ad spend and your promotion money .

Number two is , as I mentioned before , which is really looking at . Do you need to really invest in a tool that , basically , you know acts as your gatekeeper to make sure that at least your brand will be protected in these platforms ?

So I mean like maybe this will open up new avenues , but at the minute there's nothing really out there and unfortunately , the biggest social media networks are Facebook and Instagram . You've also got TikTok , but in America that's potentially going to be banned , literally today , as we're recording .

This suggests that possibly tiktok are going to , uh , just ban american users themselves , rather than like sell themselves up or let the cook , let the um , let congress decide how people can access it . It's like it's a really wild time at the minute and , um , potentially a good time to start experimenting with other channels as well .

So don't go full-throated into something else . But you know , have a little look .

I've been hayden and these guys are the marketers of the universe thanks for listening , like and subscribe .