Telemarketing might be dismissed as part of the old ways of doing sales, but it’s still relevant even with the rise of multi-channel marketing and other trendy lead generation tactics today.
However, the telemarketing that people are familiar with is the telemarketing of the past. A lot has changed and there are plenty of innovations with this particular channel.
In today’s article, we take a look at the relevance and the uses of telemarketing in today’s digital and multi-channel world.
Telemarketing is Still Powerful
People who say telemarketing isn’t powerful don’t really understand how it works.
A lot of things have changed and telemarketing isn’t simply calling an entire list of numbers without any purpose.
It’s gotten a little more sophisticated than that.
The reason telemarketing still remains relevant is due to the human connection that it entails. Let’s take for instance email.
Email’s – through testing – can be designed with messages that resonate well with their recipient, but it’s still impersonal, no matter how much you personalize or tweak it.
Telemarketing on the other hand involves a real person reaching out to a prospect to form a human connection.
This personal rapport can’t be replicated by any other technology available to us right now. Even live chat cannot replicate a real conversation with inflections, tone, etc.
Related: Telemarketing in Singapore: 7 Best Practices for Sales Prospecting Calls
It Doesn’t Work Without ABM
The old ways of telemarketing won’t work anymore.
People don’t entertain calls from people that they don’t nor do they appreciate getting calls for a general service.
This is why ABM is becoming an integral part of telemarketing.
Like with all campaigns, it first starts with determining the exact customer profiles that an organization is trying to target. Once this step is done, additional segmenting is done to make sure that targeted lists are made.
These lists are then used to create spiels and scripts that resonate well with these audiences.
Only then can a telemarketing campaign begin its run.
However, it doesn’t just end there, you still need to be able to create flexible campaigns.
Related: Winning High-Value Accounts with Multi-Channel ABM
It Involves a Lot of Testing and Monitoring
Just like social media content on social networking platforms, there is no guarantee that a campaign that has been greenlighted will be efficient enough to bring in leads.
There’s a lot of testing involved and, naturally, monitoring.
Even the best telemarketing campaigns run through stringent monitoring to make sure that they’re effective at convincing prospects to take the next step in the funnel.
A/B testing with spiels and scripts are becoming commonplace amongst telemarketing experts.
This system of switching out campaign mechanics or content in favor of better ones allows for more flexibility in a campaign.
Clients don’t have to waste money on campaigns that don’t work and they closely resemble what usually happens with email or social media campaigns.
It Integrates Well with Multi-channel Campaigns
When people think about telemarketing, they usually view it as a standalone campaign. Although it can be run by itself, no lead generation marketer runs a singular campaign and expects to get results. It doesn’t work like that.
In this day and age, multichannel campaigns are the only way to go because audiences are usually reachable on different mediums.
The great thing about telemarketing is it can be easily layered onto existing campaigns as a touchpoint.
For example, if a company started their first touchpoint with ads for custom audiences for brand awareness, they can then schedule calls to be made to these prospects for the first contact instead of email.
Telemarketing can also be used as a lead nurturing channel after the initial batch or prospecting emails are sent out. It can be combined with sales discovery calls to create more personalized campaigns.
Related: The Top Marketing Channels B2B Companies Should Focus On
Leverage Telemarketing Technology and Services
Telemarketing has also begun to rely heavily on technology with most of its processes leveraging tech to be more efficient.
Lead generation agents now have access to entire calling systems that allow them to look at information about the people that they’re talking to, create notes, lead score, integrate new data into a CRM, and access resources in the middle of a call.
Agents can look at a dashboard and their performance at a glance, and they can easily determine how close they are to hitting certain KPIs.
If you’re not confident about running telemarketing on your own, a lot of lead generation agencies – like Callbox – offer appointment setting and telemarketing as a service.
This allows for automated, DFY campaigns that the client doesn’t even have to handle directly. They are just fed with an automatic supply of leads that are ready to close.
Adding telemarketing to your lead generation toolkit is one of the best things that you can do to your marketing strategy today. If you lack the resources to set it up yourself, consider going with a telemarketing provider such as Callbox.
We provide specialized lead generation and appointment setting.