Article Writing for Internet Marketing

Recommend telemarketing to many business owners and you are likely to see concern, doubt and panic. Many managers mix up telemarketing with telesales. The latter is tainted by the cold-calling, pressure tactics used by some companies to sell anything from timeshare holidays to carpets and garden furniture.

The only similarity between telemarketing and telesales is that they both use the telephone as a communication medium.

Here are 6 reasons why you should be using telemarketing in your business growth plans.

1. Appointment finding - the fundamental role of marketing is to promote opportunities for your sales people. The best opportunities come from one-to-one meetings. Telemarketing delivers qualified appointments with specifically targeted decision makers.

In finding your meetings a prime telemarketer will have had a number of contacts with your prospects’ decision makers. They will have built up a rapport and set expectations so that your appointments are geared for optimum results before you get to meet the client.

2. Lead generation - telemarketing for lead generation is a less in-depth process than appointment setting. The aim is usually to contact a prospect, gauge potential level of interest and to provide you with a profiled database of leads. You may follow up the contacts yourself or you may choose to commission a telemarketer to set appointments with the best prospects.

3. Database building and cleansing - overtime most companies acquire extensive lists of contacts and prospects. Telemarketing is a quick, cost-effective way to keep your database up to date. The odds are you will gain a few leads and appointments along the way.

4. Follow up - following up on every lead is vital. In business just about every one of your team makes contacts and maybe receive enquiries about your company. In a marketing sense, every such contact is manna from heaven. Following up every contact has been shown to improve sales in every company that systematically applies itself. Telemarketing is a cost-effective route to effective follow-up.

5. Customer Information - it’s between 6 and 12 times cheaper to market to current clients than it is to gain a new one. Telemarketing to your existing customer base is an excellent way to educate them of all your products and services.

6. Customer reactivation - do you know why old customers have stopped buying from you? You should. Often it is simply because they have not had any contact with you for some extended period. Sometimes it is because they didn’t know that you supplied the particular service they needed. So they look elsewhere.

And eventually stop buying from you altogether.

Telemarketing is a great method to make contact with customers as soon as they stop being customers. Sometimes that is all that is required to bring them back into the fold. At the very least you owe it to yourself to know why your customers are leaving. It is the first stage of making sure they don’t leave you at all.

Six ways you can use telemarketing to boost your marketing. And don’t let anyone persuade you it is expensive. Telemarketing is the ultimate modern cottage industry. All you need is a telephone and some confidence. You can instantly set up as a telemarketer. And if you are any good you can quickly use telemarketing to sell your own services.

Not surprisingly then, there are thousands of small telemarketing businesses - many of them absolutely excellent. There are, of course, others that are not so good. With that much competition you can get some outstanding telemarketing services for a very reasonable price.

Your challenge is to find the ones that are right for you.

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Telemarketing is only one part of your business growthplans. We have hundreds more articles on telemarketing and every aspect of business marketing mix on Small Business Marketing for Maximum Profit