When money is tight getting your message out and raising your profile is a financial issue.

You’re looking for ways to achieve as much with less. Obviously, you shouldn’t have one strand of marketing but you need to make sure that you maximize your investment.

You need Mail-shots, e-mail marketing, advertising and telemarketing because they each have a specific role within each campaign. However, you can now start to use these tools far more strategically with a much tighter focus if you add in Social Media Marketing.

Social Media added to your marketing mix will get your name and message out to an increasing number of people regularly throughout every day of the year. You will raise your business profile, promote your service/product and drive more traffic to your website and the best bit is – it’s FREE.

You can inter-weave your marketing strands, drawing attention to your marketing campaigns and thereby make each much more effective.

As people naturally interact within the Social Media platforms you will develop relationships and, as you know, people will recommend and buy from people they know and trust.

If you can afford half an hour every day you can add this marketing tool to your existing strategy.

However, if you haven’t got the time there are companies, like us, who will give you a basic understanding of Social Media, manage your daily broadcasts for you and teach you how to Re-tweet and inter-react with people and develop your relationships.

Social Media Marketing does work and can and will work for you. However, you must remember that just like meeting and developing friendships in the real world so developing relationships within Social Media will take time. You will have to be prepared to have daily inputs for up to six months before you start to see any returns over and above your existing marketing strategy.

So, if you want to generate more and more business opportunities, over the next months and years, you need to embrace Social Media Marketing. It is here to stay. It is the most valuable new marketing tool to have been presented to business since the Internet and all it costs is your time.

Social Media is a marketing force that you should ignore at your peril.

Marketing agencies know that clients want to target their market and, within that, certain companies and, within that, the appropriate business individual.

Imagine a mail-shot from a software company, marketing a fantastic CRM package only addressed to “The Occupier”. That campaign is doomed to failure before it starts.

Now, imagine a mail-shot from a software company, marketing a fantastic CRM package addressed to the sales director/manager, by name. This campaign will fare much better.

Now we have to think about the other side of the marketing of this CRM package.

The fantastic CRM package only has one version and costs a fortune. The marketing of that package can be fabulous but it will only succeed with those companies who can afford it. The software company has forgotten something very important indeed.

This is very understandable. So much time and effort was been spent getting the CRM package just right that they developed a product which denies the needs of a lot of their customers and removes any price choice that there may have been. They have built a one track pony.

We can all fall into this trap. It certainly held true for us. Since 1997 we concentrated on developing the best telemarketing/marketing service that anyone could buy. We focussed on providing quality customer support, statistically produced reports and benchmarks followed by performance guarantees. Yes, there is a market for this but we excluded the rest.

We had forgotten that there is more than one client group. One group wants simple, no frills, telemarketing. Another needs very high quality customer support, reports, benchmarking, performance guarantees, sales team follow-up and regular meetings.

We have realised our mistake and have launched a range approach which fulfils the needs of each group. We have also built in additional flexibility into each range because there are bound to be additional sub-divisions.

So if you’re looking to grow you profits in 2012/13 you should think about the service you provide. Think like your market and provide a range of services and prices that they want – not what you want to provide.

Hopefully, this could just make that profit difference.

There are three things you need before reaching out to the market; business cards, a brochure and a website.

Get your business cards produced professionally so that they reflect the quality image you want to project.

Have a simple but good quality website to start with to keep costs down.

Have your brochure produced as a PDF and keep it on computer. Print it out when you need it, on good quality paper and with quality glossy covers. You can finish it on your own binding machine (they’re not expensive from office supply companies).

Now you’re set to go marketing, but what are your objectives and what techniques will achieve them?

You need to achieve three things quickly if you’re going to be successful;

• let people know about you
• gather market place intelligence
• win business/sales opportunities

Luckily, there are four low-cost techniques that will achieve these objectives; networking, social media, e-newsletters and telemarketing.

Each of these will let people know about you, provide market place feedback, and give you the sales opportunities you need.

Networking needs no description and just a little practice.

Social media, however, is something that can be handled more quickly and effectively by having a mentor who can teach you how to manage it and develop a presence on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Telemarketing and Newsletters can be handled in-house or out-sourced. In-house is, obviously, the cheapest route but can become too time-consuming as you become busier. The technique is simple, you buy a targeted database, ring through it and find interested companies who you can go and sell to.

As you ring through your data-base you can collect e-mail addresses so that you can send out your quarterly e-newsletter to an ever expanding circulation and provide details of your company, your services and, perhaps, your latest offer.

If you adopt these simple to operate strategies you will build a pipeline of potential clients, raise your company’s profile and gather market feedback to assist you with your market positioning. All of this can be achieved very effectively between 3 to 6 months.

If you need any further advice it is freely available from BHT Marketing Ltd on Free Phone 0808-172-1900.

Telemarketing has a very important part to play in any marketing strategy where information as well as sales growth is the objective.

This article will outline why you need telemarketing. It will detail the major concerns about telemarketing and show you how to find the right telemarketing partner.

What are the needs that lead a company to use telemarketing?

All of the following can be achieved by telemarketing:

• Up-to-date market feedback to assist with product/service targeting
• The identity of the correct contact in the appropriate company
• Sales appointments booked in a relatively short period.
• A steady and controlled expansion of your sales pipeline – knowing who needs what, when.
• Market research
• Competitor intelligence gathering
• Customer surveys.

There is no other marketing technique that can give you all of these in one campaign.

The major concerns about telemarketing.

Telemarketing has great advantages for the client if it is performed in an ethical and properly managed fashion. However, it does have an unfortunate track record of high fees and low returns.

In the main this has been caused by unscrupulous telemarketing agencies who led companies to expect more than is possible. People have been promised ridiculous returns on investment only to be disappointed.

I often hear tales of high expectations, bogus appointments, false information being fed back and worst of all good telemarketing support for a trial period which leads to a long-term contract only for the client then to discover that the performance falls through the floor.

How do you solve this dilemma and find the right telemarketing agency for you?

You would expect me to describe BHT as the agency for you and I will not disappoint you for some very serious reasons. The first of which is that BHT was established, in 1997, by Christine and myself because we, too, had suffered at the hands of unscrupulous telemarketing companies.

We were, and still are, determined to provide a customer focussed, reputable telemarketing service which will support the client with a service which has honesty and integrity at its heart.

Systems to protect the client

Right from the start (1997) we put into place systems that would:

• Explain what can reasonably be expected from telemarketing immediately and over a period of time.

• Guarantee consistency of approach and return for each client.
• Collect information from every call.
• Collate statistics for each week of each campaign so that a client can see the totality of the exercise.
• Calculate a benchmark of telemarketing performance so that each client knows what weight of campaign is needed to achieve their goals
• Guarantee the benchmark performance each week with an absolute copper-bottomed guarantee. (if you want to know more about that I will be more than happy to explain it to you over the phone because it is so ethical and revolutionary I don’t want to simply broadcast it over the net)

Telemarketing Campaigns : What to Consider

My previous article http://www.bhtmarketing.com/site/2011/09/05/telemarketing-campaign/

will also help provide additional information for you..

Talk to the clients

However, the quickest way is to talk to our clients. And you can look at our feedback on the website http://www.bhtmarketing.com/site/about-us/feedback/

Introductory Trials – where BHT shares the cost

BHT recognises that there is a financial commitment and therefore a financial risk to starting a telemarketing campaign and will, therefore, offer a trial campaigns at half price effectively sharing the financial risk with the client.

We want your long-term business and so we are keen to demonstrate that our operations are sensible, effective and honest. By having such a low cost trial the client should be able to discover a plateau of performance which can be maintained in future campaigns.

In Conclusion

If you want to find the right people to talk to, want appointments, market intellingence and want to develop a sales pipeline then you need telemarketing.

You need to be very careful how you choose the agency and I hope this article and my previous one will help you in that.

No other form of marketing is dynamic and can give you such information and rapid results.

If you would like to know more or to ask any questions please call me on 0808-172-1900.

Colin Bonham-Horton, (although he doesn’t like to admit it), has been in Sales and Marketing since 1969 and is a co-founder of BHT Marketing Ltd whose aim is to provide the telemarketing and marketing service which he would want to buy.

Now in today’s world there is an even more urgent need to address any potential downturn by pursuing a steady marketing strategy.

There is a way to improve on the effectiveness of a marketing campaign and that is by combining it with other marketing techniques. I have often told people that if you despatch a mail-shot you will achieve a success rate in the region of 0.5% to 1%. However, if you combine that with a telemarketing campaign you will double the performance. The converse is also true. If a telemarketing campaign is followed up, where appropriate, by documentation then the performance improves.

In today’s economic environment however, the majority of us want a combination which works but which is also low cost and effective. 

BHT recommends a low-cost programme – e-Newsletters linked with telemarketing and your website and your blogs .

• It provides the recipient with information which may be of interest.
• A large number of e-Newsletters can be despatched at low cost.
• You build your own profile because of the style and layout of the Newsletter.
• The prospects have the option to call and book and appointment.
• Telemarketing follows up to talk to those who have not called you.
• You can add the Newsletter to your web-site as a download for subsequent browsers and, who knows, you may get more traffic to your website as a result of the interest you generate and then you may start to get enquiries from there too.
• They can be low cost from as little as £5K+ for an annual campaign – you have the choice of frequency.
• The design, copy, despatch and follow-up will all be handled for you.

BHT, in conjunction with Aark Design, is running several campaigns of this nature and would be delighted to discuss this concept with you.

Once you start thinking like this you will start finding ways to link most of your marketing together. So you promote your website in your documentation – your website has special offers to any reader – the website allows readers to download your brochure and articles – your brochure refers to your articles – anyone downloading from you newsletter or website leaves their contact details for you to follow – and so on and so on.

It’s all very exciting once you get into it, but of course, it has to be handled professionally and, most importantly, within your budget. That’s where BHT comes in. We can discuss with you what you want to achieve and work with you to build a complete marketing strategy to suit both your aims and your budget.

For more information or to arrange a meeting ring us on 0808-172-1900 

It’s a low cost, call answering service

We make sure you don’t lose those important  business calls that could be worth £000’s  - whilst the monthly charge is low.

A Virtual Office is a professional body of telemarketing operatives who will take your calls when you are out of your office and pass on the messages to you. They will also take enquiries from your web-site number if you set it up that way.

This service operates 24/7 so can cover you during the working week, in the evenings, at week-ends or when you are on holiday.

Simply put a Virtual Office is a vital aid to busy people who need professional call handling when they are unable to take calls personally.

The advantages to you are that you will never miss a call or a message again. So if you’re waiting for an answer to a big quotation or you’re expecting an important call from a client the Virtual office can take it properly and then pass the message on to you, where-ever you are, so that you can respond quickly. 

BHT Marketing Ltd, in Northampton, is renown for its Appointment Setting service and now has a superb Virtual Office Service (VOS).

Intermittent call handling

If you are in and out of your office we can arrange to give you the cover when you need it.

Evening and week-end calls

Outside office hours, week-ends and Bank Holidays our system answers your call with a bespoke greeting tailored for you. A recording of the message for you is then sent directly to you by e-mail.

Calls from your web-site

If anyone calls the number on your web-site you need to know that it will be handled in a consistent and professional manner. The details will be taken and the message passed through to the appropriate person in your organization. By allowing BHT Marketing Ltd to manage this process with our VOS you know you will always have a professional and consistent method of collecting these messages.            

 Special Offer

If you sign up for our VOS quoting this article you’ll get the first month free!

Call us

If you’d like to know more, ring Christine Bonham-Horton on Free Phone 0808-172-1900 and she will explain how we could provide 24/7 coverage for your calls.

‘Thanks, for the offer. But we dont need an help’, was probably my favourite. I was almost tearing my hair out and screaming ‘Yes, you do!’ at my computer monitor.

What people don’t realise is that producing poor copy can ruin a first impression, and in todays’ climate first impressions count for everything in business. If a company is seen as not even bothering to proofread then what hope do they have with regards to other aspects of their business?

I was sent an email a few days ago which highlights the importance of checking through copy, here are a few examples of headlines for newspaper articles:

• Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter.
• Panda mating fails; veterinarian takes over.
• If strike isn’t settled quickly, it may last a while.
• Cold wave linked to temperatures.
• Enfield couple slain; police suspect homicide.
• Red tape holds up bridges.
• Typhoon rips through cemetery; hundreds dead.

…..and my favourite.

• Hospitals are sued by 7 foot doctors.

 If these are just the headline of the articles, god only knows what else we would find in the article body!

Maybe it’s my profession, but I feel that if a company cannot use the correct grammar and spelling in the content of their websites, brochures and articles then what other aspects of their business are they not giving 100% to?

However, there are more companies that are discovering the benefits of using a copywriter. One client didn’t realise the amount grammatical errors she had been making until I pointed out she was making common mistakes on her usage of commas. Although no one likes being told they are making mistakes, she was pleased that she now knew what she was doing wrong and that she would now be able to produce improved copy. Considering she wrote the copy for the company brochures it was a good thing I met her when I did!

People don’t actively look for spelling and grammar mistakes, unless you’re me, so although the lack of mistakes won’t jump out at people it is one less thing for the company to worry about as they have put their trust in a professional.  Here is where I come in. Not only do I proofread and correct grammar/spelling mistakes, I also advise on the style of writing, where information needs to be added and where it needs to be omitted. Poorly constructed copy is just as bad as copy littered with spelling mistakes and this speaks volumes to the people reading it. If they can’t get their grammar/spelling right what else are they getting wrong?

So to round off, if a company is looking for an all-round service of proof reading, editing, writing copy and advice on the style of writing then the smartest thing they can do is get in touch with me.

Louise Wright

Louise is one of the Copywriters BHT Marketing is happy to employ . So if you need any copywriting with this style just call 0808-172-1900

1. How much telemarketing do I need?

To answer this you need to know the answers to the following questions:

• What turnover are you looking to achieve by the end of your financial year?
• What is the rough average value of each new contract?
• How many pieces of new business per month do you need to achieve that target?
• What is your conversion rate of appointments to new business?
• How many appointments can you cope with each week/month?

2. What market sectors should we penetrate?

The market sector(s) you are already successful in and similar markets where your product/service could be applicable. This will be one of the points discussed at the briefing meeting with the agency.

3. What size of company should we target?

The size of company will depend on the type of company that uses your products/services but initially you could start with companies with 10+ employees. This will always be a subject of discussion during the briefing stage of any campaign and will be finalized then.

4. Which geographic area should we target?

We always recommend that you start close to home and then work out from there. This way you minimize time and travel costs during the initial stages of the campaign.

5. Where can I get the data from?

A reputable telemarketing company will give you all the advice you need on this. BHT Marketing Ltd can discuss this with you and then specify and procure the database.

6. Should we use a telemarketing company or should we go in-house?

Before going to the expense of recruiting, training and motivating a new member of staff it’s always best to trial the technique using a reputable tele-marketing company.

7. What should I look for in a tele-marketing Company?

We always recommend that you visit the offices of the company to “get a feel” for the people who work there.

There are several things to look out for:

a)     The owners – are they professional and dedicated to their profession and for how long – in other words is there a track record of success?

b)     The tele-marketeers –

• Is this their full-time career or just a fill-in position? You need to have dedicated professional telemarketers supporting your company because they will take ownership of the campaign and feel responsible for its success.
• Do they speak properly? They are going to be representing your company and you need to be confident that they will not let you down by their speech or their attitude.
• Are they intelligent enough to understand your business, your proposition and why the market place would want your product/service?
• Do they all work at the company premises? This is important for the security of your data and your company’s proposition.
• Can you brief them face-to-face or does an intermediary have to intervene? You need to feel confident that the person conducting your campaign is confident and capable and can talk to you face-to-face.

c)     Feedback – what feedback are you going to get and how often? You need to be told as soon as an appointment is booked and you need to be briefed each week about the development of your pipeline of new opportunities. In short, you need to be kept abreast of progress week by week.

d)     Statistical reports – can you expect detailed and comprehensive reporting? You need data to be able to evaluate the campaign and feed the results into your own strategic model. This gives you a steadily improving ability to forecast your turnover and profitability for your financial year.

e)     Guarantees of performance – can the tele-marketing company provide you with a copper-bottomed guarantee of telemarketing performance based on solid fact? Without this you cannot build your mathematical sales model with any degree of certainty. BHT Marketing Ltd has developed a unique system which gives our clients this security and is one of the reasons why we have such high levels of repeat business. (See our testimonials)

f)      Can you tip-toe into telemarketing with the marketing company – or do they want a lot of money up-front and a guaranteed campaign duration?

8. How many appointments are real and what safeguards do I have?

You need a telemarketing agency which can demonstrate that all of their appointments are genuine and give you the opportunity to ring and confirm them all before you travel. Since 1997 all appointments arranged by BHT have been confirmed genuine by each of our clients.

9. What happens if the appointment doesn’t close to a contract?

Any agency worth their salt will tell you to give it back to them to follow-up at the appropriate time for you and then get you back in. “Once a business opportunity is on the “sales table” – it should be kept there!”

10. How do I maintain momentum?

After an initial period, the agency should sit down with you and discuss how the campaign is going. This helps to focus the attention on the weight and direction of the campaign which is needed in order to fulfil your objectives.

11. Is there anything else I can do to build my client base?

You can consider an integrated marketing campaign so that, for instance, your telemarketing campaign can be part of an e-Newsletter campaign and an integrated web-site campaign. Luckily, BHT Marketing Ltd can provide all of the skill sets needed for integrated campaigns because we have our “Circle of Marketing Excellence” who will come together and build your own bespoke campaign. (For more about the “Circle of Marketing Excellence” see the article dated July1st “The BHT Circle of Marketing Excellence” and look at “What we do in the “About us” section of the web-site.)

12. Should I take references

Very definitely BHT Marketing Ltd’s clients are so confident in BHT Marketing Ltd that they are happy for their Testimonials and references to be published on our website and in our brochures, so please take a look and see what they say about us.

I do hope that this has been of some use to you. If you would like to discuss any of this or talk about a possible telemarketing or integrated marketing campaign just call us on 0808-172-1900

Colin Bonham-Horton

Director: Business Development

A common enough thought throughout business.

The question is how do you get more people to know about your company and your product/service?

There are many and varied techniques to increase the market’s awareness of your company, but in today’s pinched economy we all need a technique that can achieve several objectives at the same time and therefore one which is the most cost effective.

You need a technique that will improve awareness, give immediate feedback, gather market intelligence and provide a supply of interested potential clients to put money back into your cash-flow. Is there such a technique?

Well yes, there is.

That technique is – telemarketing.

An effective, professional, telemarketing campaign can let companies know you are here. It will gather information about them, your opposition as well as get a reaction about your company and its product/service. Luckily for you, those companies that are looking into your market at that time will immediately respond positively thereby giving you a real sales opportunity and therefore be able to put money back into your cash-flow.

However, I must emphasise the three adjectives I used about the campaign, effective, professional and telemarketing, because there is a world of difference between just anybody picking up the telephone and an experienced professional agency.

An Effective Campaign

For any campaign to be effective it must be properly planned and targeted.

• You will have to decide, who are the right kinds of companies for your product/service, and who are the right people in those companies who you should talk to. You will also have to decide the geographical area you want to target. So the question will be, do we have an effective database with the right names and addresses or do we need to get one?
• You will have to agree what is to be promoted, which is the headline product/service and what are the fall-back products/services.
• You will need to decide on a “call to action” and so you will have to agree what that should be and then what the fall-back “calls to action” are.

All of this means that you will need an in-depth briefing meeting with an agency which has extensive campaign knowledge and experience. You can provide your company and product/service information and they can help you target your campaign by bringing their extensive experience to bear.

A Professional Campaign

It is vitally important that the person making your telephone calls represents your company efficiently, properly and professionally so that you can rest assured that your company’s reputation is in safe hands.

So the professional agency will be able to demonstrate that it has only people working on the telephones that are well spoken, intelligent, courteous and experienced and who treat every potential client in the way that you yourself would like to be treated.

Tele-Marketing

Tele-marketing should not be confused with tele-sales.

Telesales organisations are often large call centres full of unskilled, part-time and short term operatives. They read from scripts, have to make large numbers of calls per day, have no interest in what they are selling apart from the commission they receive and their attitude of pressure and indifference comes across. This does nothing to build the client’s reputation – just the opposite!

Tele-marketing, on the other hand, will promote your company and product/service politely and courteously. It will discover if the recipient of the call has a problem which can be solved using your product/service and if that is the case then an appointment can be arranged so that you can meet the prospect and do the selling the proper way.

Telemarketing agencies are usually small, highly skilled organisations with demonstrable track records, client references and long-term operatives who genuinely like what they do, call it a career and who take ownership of each client’s campaign. Each operative is capable of leading a client briefing meeting and discussing their market and their goals. Most important is that each operative will talk to each caller without a script. Their involvement and enthusiasm comes across and they are usually perceived as being a part of the client company.

So if you want to raise your company’s profile, collect market intelligence and find prospective buyers you need an effective, professional tele-marketing campaign and BHT Marketing Ltd are just the agency for you.

If you would like to know more about how a telemarketing campaign is run and how it could help your business why not give us a call on Free Phone 0808-172-1900 to arrange a no obligation meeting -

OR we can simply talk on the telephone – after all that’s what we do all day!

We have surrounded ourselves with other excellent marketing entrepreneurs who became “The BHT Circle of Marketing Excellence.” They work in all disciplines and so allow us to offer  the complete marketing service.

We are very proud to say, that despite the sluggish economy, our concept is working well and we are now providing a wider range of marketing services to 30% of our client base.

So if you are looking for marketing services, from Virtual Office to PR, Telemarketing to Copywriting, Website building to Smartphone Apps, Mail-shots to e-mail marketing – we can supply it all.

We can supply anything you need in the marketing spectrum.

The ethos of BHT has always been to put the customer first. We will not, knowingly, supply a second-rate service and so when, in the past, we were approached to provide different marketing services, we always recommended other companies that we knew could do the job properly.

BHT continued to focus on and specialise in building the ultimate in telemarketing support. However, in mid-summer of 2009 we came to realise that our telemarketing service was being recognised as a first rate service, in all markets from simple to highly complex and that we needed be able to provide our clients with a much broader level of marketing support.

Consequently, by developing a good working relationship with “Our Circle of Marketing Excellence”, we can now provide our clients with any of the services listed below, whilst we act as the project leader. This approach leaves the client free to do what they do best – run their own business, and rely on us and our team to get the job done.

If you need one of these marketing services or would like to discuss and/or build a marketing strategy, all you need to do is call us on 0808-172-1900 and we will talk to you about your strategy and then build the appropriate team of experts to suit it and you.

It’s  Win, Win, Win!

Win for You because you get the expert team to suit your marketing needs.

Win for our Our Circle of Marketing Excellence because they get to do what they do best.

Win for BHT because we get to support and develop the relationship with another client.

Everyone’s a Winner – and you can’t get much better than that!