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With the fast-paced change in digital marketing, Telemarketing has an important, albeit changing role to play in connecting buyers and sellers in the future. If anything, the rise of digital has strengthened telemarketing’s stake in the market. Despite the ease and simplicity of communicating via bots or over email, prospects still respond to the human connection. That's why a phone call remains the most viable form of personal contact, piercing the digital veil with the human touch.
"In a marketing world dominated by digital, telemarketing gives you a more subtle niche"
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1. The History of Telemarketing
The sales call has been a part of life since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of trade. The telephone became part of this process almost as soon as it was invented.
- 1950's - The telephone started to come to prominence as a commercial tool after the advertising boom of the 1950s.
- 1970's - During the 1970s, the term Telemarketing entered the mainstream on the back of its application by Bell Telephone Company (now AT&T). Its reputation was quickly tarnished as the intrusive nature of consumer calls became more widespread.
- 1990's - Automated and off-shore call centres did nothing to improve telemarketings reputation.
However, in the corporate marketing world, a different trend was emerging. Telemarketing was starting to become a powerful tool for connecting individuals long before the internet came along. Trade directories provided prospect lists and the telephone was used to research and subsequently connect sellers with potential buyers. Much of this work was carried out in-house initially but the exhaustive nature of the work, individual skills required and an increasing reliance on new technology led to the creation of the outsourced Telemarketing industry. GCL was at the forefront of this industry in the United Kingdom when Greville Crowder established the firm in 1990.
The Advent of the Bad Telemarketer
The boom in Telemarketing was about to begin and with it so too did the competition. Unscripted, highly skilled operations such as GCL were undercut by automated phone systems as well as offshore call centres.
These lower-priced alternatives started to dominate the market. In the UK, in the same way that manufacturing started to move overseas, so too did this relatively new service industry. The Bad Telemarketer was born and in some respects, still lives on today.
Telemarketing in the Digital Age
The rise of the internet through the early part of this century initially had little adverse impact on the Telemarketing industry, in fact quite the contrary. Advertising spend grew through the boom years as companies implemented strategies of building awareness followed by lead generation and appointment setting campaigns. Some would argue that this method continues to have the same, if not more, success than current digital marketing strategies. Nonetheless, the world is changing, and it is changing fast.
In a marketing world now dominated by online content, marketing automation, CRM systems, SEO, pay-per-click ads and so on, Telemarketing is starting to develop a more subtle niche. Despite attracting only 2% of marketing spend in 2014, Telemarketing is starting to be seen as a potential differentiator. Marketing executives crave both personalisation and automation to drive engagement whilst at the same time controlling spend. The ROI is everything. In this environment, the role of the telemarketer becomes paramount. Getting the handover from digital to human requires both art and science. Science can provide you with huge amounts of information and trends but for true insight and personal connection, nothing beats the human touch of picking up the telephone.
In the same way that high-quality, precision engineering is returning to the United Kingdom, so too is high-quality Telemarketing. In the digital age where most research is carried out online, bad Telemarketing practices can leave their mark. For companies such as GCL who stayed true to the original vision of honest, unscripted sales calls, the digital age may yet be the best thing that could have happened to the industry.
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Building a glossy marketing campaign is no longer enough to generate inbound enquiries on its own. Messages need to be increasingly targeted and distributed at the right place and right time. No matter how efficient your marketing processes are, or how easy it is to track opens and click-through rates, generating interest requires top-quality data that is properly segmented and up-to-date.
‘Quality of in-house marketing data was regarded as the number one challenge for effective lead generation and nurturing looking ahead.’
What does this mean in the real world?
Think of your product as the pictures in an art gallery, and your leads as those queuing at the door. Who are those people at the door and how did they hear about the exhibition? Well once upon a time, they were strangers, or suspects. Now assuming these suspects are unknown to you (i.e. they haven’t been to the gallery before), how can you possibly know who to invite. A good data strategy will initially define a list of characteristics that are common to all suspects (e.g. they are human!), before condensing these into a prospect list (e.g. live within 50 miles of the gallery and have an interest in art). The people on this database can then be invited to the gallery. Simple? Well, in short, the answer is no!
What does good data look like?
In the world of B2B marketing, data acquisition, management and privacy are becoming an increasingly important issue. Once the domain of IT, marketers are now responsible for databases and managing customer preferences. As a result, varying levels of interest, skill and in some cases ethics are leading to data being shared, copied, created and corrupted at an alarming rate. Building a prospect list is not easy.
With EU regulations to consider, companies need to be careful about how they acquire and use individual contact details. The concept of opt-in has been around for some time and we expect this to become more high profile in the coming years.
Digital marketing is fast becoming the default way to build an opted-in contact list. However, there remains a demographic that can’t or choose not to engage digitally. Additionally, the volume of content out there means some people are starting to switch off. Perhaps this is why 55% of Marketing Directors regard Telemarketing as a ‘very effective’ tool for follow-up activity for lead nurturing, compared with only 12% for email.
Nonetheless, good data should be:
- • Targeted
- • Up-to-date
- • Opted-in
- • Compliant
Data that meets these criteria will mean that once you have built your marketing campaign, you will be able to direct it toward an appropriate audience. The next big question is when and where?
How can we help?
GCL provide data sourcing, appending, cleansing and enhancement solutions that transform our clients’ data so that it is usable, healthy and capable of delivering outstanding campaign performance that meets their high expectations.
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The Customer Journey
So what exactly is the customer journey? One thing is certain and that is the customer journey existed long before the advent of digital marketing. Current thinking and research suggest that up to 75% of a buying decision is made before first contact. Behaviours are evolving but buyers have always conducted pre-engagement research and more often than not started their journey with some form of preconception based on advertising, word of mouth referrals or independent research. Historically the art of the salesperson was credited with converting leads into customers and winning new business as if the quality of product and messaging was somehow irrelevant. Of course, things have changed, driven largely by the
internet, but human nature and behaviour have to a large extent remained consistent.
From a seller’s point of view, it is useful to categorise individuals so that the right message can be delivered at the right time. Getting the content right is one thing but choosing the right channel for each stage of the buying process is equally important. Now perhaps in the past, this has been largely the domain of sales, trying to read an individual’s buying signals over a table for instance, but a lot of this can now be tracked.
However as we have touched on before, this can have its limitations. Shock horror, people still like to speak to each other!
The Tipping Point
A combination of good data and digital marketing can assist your buyer on their journey from suspect to prospect. But then what? The point at which metamorphosis occurs is unpredictable, complex and as much down to timing and mood as it is to logic.
Of course, logic should remain the driving force behind any buying decision but we all know people buy for a variety of reasons, both declared and disguised. Unless you are selling to a machine, personality will drive behaviour and decisions.
However, where art is subjective, we can be more definite with the science. True insight comes from a holistic view of your marketing processes and your customer’s journey. Combining digital marketing with human contact in a way that satisfies your customers’ needs is vital.
36% of B2B marketing budget is spent on digital - but this is only part of the process!
In our experience, it will take an average of between five and twelve touches for a lead to make a buying decision. This will differ from one industry to the next but the expert marketer will align their messaging to each of those steps in the customer journey and determine whether those touch points should be digital or human and match their budget accordingly.
How can we help?
Our Insight service delivers the market intelligence that our clients hold on their prospects, clients and competitors so that they are able to effectively segment, target and personalise their messages.
A Typical GCL Buyers Journey
Let's take a look at what our typical buyer's journey would look like:
- Our buyer goes on an epic journey of discovery through awareness, information gathering, consideration and evaluation. Eventually arriving in your corner of the digital world.
- If they are the right type of buyer, they enter the sales funnel and the engagement begins…
- After successful engagement with your personalised content, our suspect buyer becomes a prospect.
- It’s decision time! The prospect is now ready to talk - time for the human touch.
- Good telemarketing, like that at GCL starts and nurtures a relationship - explaining your solution, how it supports the prospect’s needs and then qualifies the prospect based on Budget, Authority, Need and Timescale.
- If the prospect is a good fit for your business but isn't ready to buy straight away they enter the Sales Pipeline and are nurtured until they are.
- Only qualified leads that are ready to buy are passed onto you, ready to be converted into satisfied customers.
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Is your sales team afraid of the phone? The fear of a hostile reception when cold calling puts even the most confident individual off hitting the dial button. Some of this fear may be well-founded. Online research and self-service are becoming more prevalent as information is available at our fingertips. For lower-value purchases, zero personal contact is commonplace. However, in the B2B environment and outside of commodity sales, solutions become increasingly complex as the value increases. We see three key, but very different stages when the human touch of a telephone call or meeting trumps online exchanges.
The Top of the Funnel
Prospects can only research what you do if you have linked their need with your supply through communication. The underlying requirement for awareness provides a major challenge for businesses of all shapes and sizes and that major challenge is Return on Investment. The calculation will look different based on numerous factors such as the seniority of your target decision-makers, their propensity to engage online as well as their accessibility. Most marketers favour a blended model so as not to miss out on any potentially lucrative part of the market. But even digital campaigns need a demographic to target. We highly recommend using the telephone for both research and initial prospecting activities at the start of any campaign. With the right caller, you will start to build awareness, as well as filter out those individuals who really aren’t interested.
The Middle of the Funnel
The traditional domain of Telemarketing companies has been lead generation and appointment setting. The importance here is to work with someone you are confident can sound like the voice of the company. They need to understand the vision and purpose of the campaign as well as be able to listen to your prospects. The telephone call could well be the tipping point where a prospect becomes a lead and getting this right requires expertise and experience in equal measure.
The Bottom of the Funnel
Well much as we would like to close deals for you, in complex B2B sales, it is almost essential that a company representative or subject matter expert is on hand for the next stage of the customer journey. In some cases, smaller value, commoditised sales can be closed over the telephone although we consider this more Telesales than Telemarketing. Honesty and integrity play a huge role here and the initial campaign briefing is vital. As an example of how to get things wrong, there is not much worse than the introductory line: ”I’m not trying to sell you anything but…!”
Determining when to pick up the phone will be driven largely by your customers’ persona and typical buying behaviour. Structured in the right way though, it can differentiate you from the competition by introducing the human touch through an effective multi-channelled strategy.
How can we help?
We connect our clients to the right, effectively qualified decision-makers, allowing them to engage with their prospects on a one-to-one basis.
With over 30 years of experience, GCL remains at the forefront of an industry that has had to adapt to the challenges of telephone automation, offshoring and digital marketing. The company that has emerged is strong, resilient and the number one specialist in unscripted, multi-lingual, consultative Telemarketing. If you'd like to find out more, get in contact.
