eMarket2 Blogs

Integrated email-telemarketing vs dinosaur advertising – where’s the smart money?

“War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who’s left.”

John Lennon

If the title of today’s blog looks like leading question, it was intended to. During the course of my work as a B2B marketer I encounter a surprising number of businesses who, in marketing terms, have so far allowed the 21^st century to pass them by.  Our own research at eMarket2 shows that 50% of large businesses don’t have an email programme in place. In the construction industry, that rises to a whopping 90%!

While these businesses will inevitably have an online presence, they do little to drive traffic to their websites, and often have no formal mechanisms in place to capture data and convert site visitors.  Many of these businesses have never even conducted an online campaign, and few attach much significance to their online rankings and flow of site traffic.  The prevailing attitude is ‘business as usual’ – i.e. reliance on the established channels of repeat orders, tradeshows and paying for conventional ‘old media’ advertising.

But while these methods remain an effective part of the mix in the short term, they are, like the dinosaurs before them, locked into a slow and irreversible demise.  The evidence is all around us. Just take a look the punishing decline in ad revenue for specialist trade journals and other hard-copy media in the last two years – it isn’t only due to the recession. 

The fact is the way businesses search for new products is changing forever right beneath our noses.  Smart B2B marketers across all sectors realise this, and as a result are gradually shifting the emphasis of their efforts away from scattergun advertising – i.e. broadcasting a sales message to thousands of people in the knowledge that between only 1% and 7% have any interest whatsoever – to a mixture of targeted ‘outbound’ marketing – integrated email marketing and telemarketing – combined with ‘inbound’ marketing, i.e. search engine optimisation and pay-per-click. 

How do you make the shift?

A good place to begin is by analysing your business’s internet marketing effectiveness. Currently, how often do you to get ‘found’ by prospects in search engines, blogs and social media? To get the relevant data for your company, do some keyword research using Overture Keyword Tool; search on Technorati for blogs in your industry; search on social media sites relevant to your industry (begin with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). 

Use the data from the report to see how you can build more opportunities to reach businesses that are searching for your products and services. The next step is to refine your data gathering mechanisms on your website, such as offering high-quality free downloads and improving the prominence of newsletter sign-up fields, etc.

By point-scoring the data gathered on your website into those prospects which require further nurturing through to those which could usefully be contacted straight away, you’ll be bringing a steady flow of leads into your sales funnel, ranging from ‘HOT’, to ‘ VERY WARM’, through to ‘LUKEWARM’ and ‘COLD’.  

(See Lead Generation blogs: “Precision B2B lead scoring based on prospects’ online behaviours” and “Selling to the techies” for more on this subject.)

In our experience, the combined use of inbound lead gathering with integrated outbound telemarketing and email as a follow-up has proved to be a potent mix which perfectly combines the best elements of both marketing channels. Metaphorically speaking, the inbound acts as the carrot; the outbound acts as the stick!  

I’m not suggesting, however, that you should ignore traditional adverting media altogether. The transition must be gradual and complementary.

Rather than bombarding your prospects with ill-timed sales pitches, you engage them in an ongoing, permission-based dialogue, one in which you take the trouble to understand what it is they need while providing the right information to help them make an informed buying decision – in their own time. This means approaching people when they’re ready, and not before.  

By this method you’ll be found by more qualified prospects and convert more of them into paying customers. You’ll also spend less money on costly, hit-and-miss dinosaur advertising.

And finally, what’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom?

Knowledge is realising that the street is one-way; wisdom is looking in both directions anyway.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading. As ever, your comments and ideas are very welcome. 

And always to a higher response!

Norman

Drop us an email now to see how quickly we can generate sales leads for your business