What is Telemarketing?
So many people think telemarketing is synonymous with tele sales and they are so wrong.
Tele sales is typified by the pushy salesperson on the phone trying to get you to buy and they don’t like taking “No” for an answer. They phone and intrude on your time.
Telemarketing, however, is a valid, Business to Business marketing tool. The object is to make contact politely and discover if the prospect ever uses or is likely to use the service/product that is being promoted.
If they are interested then a conversation can take place, more information can be sent and/or a meeting arranged.
If they are not interested, they are thanked for their time and the call is terminated.
What is telemarketing for?
The most powerful marketing tool is the human voice, it outstrips the written word by miles.
The voice has the ability to relay information with intonation, enthusiasm and personality. There is a phrase “The voice reveals, the written word conceals.”
Consequently, telemarketing is a very valuable and valid addition to any company’s marketing campaign.
It is, in effect, the forerunner of each salesperson’s meeting. It qualifies the lead and arranges the appointment. This saves each company a lot of time and money by eliminating unprofitable visits.
Telemarketing does the “ground-breaking” for the sales team and only books an appointment when the prospect has indicated a positive interest and realistic time scale.
Now that the menace of Covid is behind us more companies should employ telemarketing again as a genuine, must have, marketing tool.
The Statistics
The campaigns that we conduct, as a telemarketing agency of over 25 years, are always complemented by statistical reports every month.
These show how many companies have been contacted, how many key people have been spoken to and what the outcome of those conversations is.
It is fascinating to note that, no matter what the commercial sector is, out of every 100 companies contacted, roughly 15% show some kind of interest, and 4 to 8% want to take things further within 6 months.
Guaranteed Performance
Once 800 companies have been contacted the statistics gathered are robust enough to be able to provide a valuable guarantee of performance for the client.
BHT invented this statistically based guarantee in the early 2000s, and as a result clients could rely on consistent results for their campaigns. This meant they could then go further and forecast sales conversions, turnover growth, and profitability.
There are strong reasons why Telemarketing should be in the marketer’s toolbox
Now that the commercial world is settling, it is important to remind marketers that telemarketing can, once again, play an important role in providing properly qualified sales leads for each and every salesperson.
As with most marketing campaigns, telemarketing can never be used in isolation and should be part of a comprehensive campaign using advertising, social media, blogging, digital marketing, and email marketing.
An example marketing Campaign:
Social media messages are sent throughout each month, on every working day. Every message always includes the company name, telephone number and website address.
A blog is written and issued through LinkedIn each month and as above carries the company name, telephone number and website address.
An email marketing campaign goes out each month and then a telemarketing campaign follows it.
Telephone calls go out for 5 hours per week, to have conversations with the companies on your marketing list, This serves several purposes besides finding those who are interested and booking appointments because it will clean up the client’s database and eradicate wrong data and all the uninterested companies.
In Conclusion
With 26 years of knowledge and experience we feel able to advise marketing professionals to take another look at adding telemarketing to their marketing mix.
If you would like to discuss anything in this article, just call us on 0808-172-1900