Why Telemarketing Works in Online Customer Conversions 

Find out why Telemarketing works and should be a key to your marketing strategies to engage and convert customers.

Photo by Berkeley Communications on Unsplash

This post is going to help you discover some of the reasons why telemarketing is essential for online customer conversions.

 

How you approach marketing your brand and business affects the customers you attract and their engagement in your products. With the rise of influencer marketing and social media, businesses can find themselves relying heavily on digital marketing strategies. 

 

This isn’t necessarily an issue – for many brands, this allows them to acquire and interact with new customers. However, there is still a place in your business marketing plan for telemarketing.

 

When responding to customers and gaining their attention, there’s only so much digital marketing methods can do. If a customer chooses not to follow your channels or look at your content, these styles of marketing fall short. 

 

Telemarketing, however, offers the opportunity to start a direct conversation with your potential clients, guiding them along their customer journey and tailoring it to their needs and preferences, creating online customer conversions.

 

What is telemarketing?

As one of the staples of business marketing strategies, telemarketing has been widely used since the 1970s. Although the equipment and tools available have significantly changed, the main purpose has remained the same. Like other marketing, telemarketing aims to generate new leads for a business and interest them in your products or brand. This can happen throughout a single call or take multiple calls to create a conversion.

 

Typically, telemarketing connects a salesperson with a potential client or previous customer from another business, making it ideal for B2B conversions. Nonetheless, telemarketing can also be used with other consumers, using a phone to call them and start a discussion about products relevant to them. 

 

Predominantly using phone calls, telemarketing can also use online video calls or VoIP tools to connect with clients as is appropriate and helpful to the circumstances. 

 

10 Reasons why telemarketing works in online customer conversions

One of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) for any business is its conversion rate. This is often affected by a customer’s exposure to marketing and interactions with sales teams. 

Telemarketing is a great way of increasing your conversion rates. Using WFM for call centre software can help manage your incoming and outgoing calls, so that your team can focus on this. With more team members able to focus on telemarketing, you can assist and convince more online customers to finalize a purchase. There are many reasons for using telemarketing, including:

1. Human interaction

As useful as chatbots or automated replies can be in making sales, there’s a difference compared to interacting with another human. Similarly, online marketing methods can present customers with real people through videos and live streams, yet this isn’t the same as having a conversation with another person. 

 

Even if the answers gained are the same through telemarketing, speaking and interacting with another human builds a relationship and trust between the two individuals. When prompting online customer conversions by recommending products and services, human interactions give your brand a face and a voice, making your suggestions more convincing to the client. This is a good example of how to sell online.

2. Answers questions

Each potential client will have different questions and perspectives when approaching your brand and products. Although there may be frequently asked questions, the more you get into the specifics of your products and the customer circumstances, the more their questions will vary. When creating general marketing materials, there’s less chance to address these.

Screenshot from gruum.com

 

Yet, telemarketing allows your sales team to focus on the questions that matter most to your clients. This means you can explain with a greater level of detail the features of your product and how you use automated testing tools for QA, adopting a pace that suits the individual. This also provides answers immediately, without requiring customers to wait for a member of your team to get back to them with a response, by which time they might have lost interest.

3. Personal experience

The needs of your clients and their situations will affect the products that are most relevant to them and their businesses. Providing personalized experiences and offers is expected from 56% of customers, improving the customer experience of your business and making them more likely to purchase online, increasing your conversion rates. 

 

Rather than being confronted with your best-sellers, telemarketing allows you to ask customers about their interests and direct customers to the products that suit them. It also allows you to cross-sell and upsell lesser-known products. Likewise, you can adapt the services you offer to the scale and requirements of the client, offering them an immediate and personalized quote. This highlights the importance of customer service.

4. Connects with relevant clients 

When focusing on B2B marketing, not everyone in a business has the power or authority to make purchases. In the same way, speaking to a non-developer about IBM i application modernization is going to confuse them while, with the right team member, this could be a productive conversation. Marketing to the wrong people or using a vocabulary they don’t understand can waste energy and resources.

 

By using telemarketing, your sales team can identify the relevant people within other businesses who are responsible for making purchases and therefore worth persuading to buy your products. This enables you to have more productive conversations and allows your marketing techniques to be more effective, leading to conversions as the client has access to the budget. 

5. Different from other marketing

Much of today’s marketing relies on visuals and text-based messaging. This has its benefits, gaining the attention of clients with eye-catching images, informational videos, and engaging content. However, there is the risk of content fatigue, where potential customers stop interacting with your marketing due to its monotony or becoming overly familiar with your branding.

 

Hearing someone’s voice through a call can stand out from other types of marketing, directly speaking to clients and requiring them to respond actively. During the call, your sales representatives can gauge the interest of your clients and adapt their approach in real time. This prevents clients from losing interest and makes for a more memorable experience with your brand. 

6. Increase brand awareness

The more clients see your marketing, the more they should recognize your brand and products. Nevertheless, you want clients to interact with your marketing campaigns, thinking of your brand first when looking for related products. This needs memorable marketing experiences for clients, building a good reputation for your brand to direct customers to you in the future.

 

Telemarketing can do this, building strong customer relationships through conversations and continued interactions. As clients speak with your sales team, they associate your business with the products you offer and increase their brand awareness. Good telemarketing experiences also prompt clients to advocate for your business, adding to your brand awareness.   

Screenshot from trustpilot.com

7. Encourages follow-up

Customer journeys can take time and require multiple interactions between your business and the client. If they don’t purchase during their first interaction with you, you need to follow up with the client later to remind them and continue marketing to them. With some forms of marketing, this can be challenging as there isn’t an established channel of communication.

Due to its nature, telemarketing creates a clear line of communication with clients, enabling your sales team to get back in contact after your initial call. Alternatively, if the client calls you, call forwarding services help you to direct the call to the same person they spoke to previously. From a telemarketing call, you can also transition to either a video call or in-person conversation for your next meeting, as the client has a name and a voice they already recognize. 

8. Immediate results

The aim of telemarketing is ultimately to lead to online customer conversions, like any other form of marketing. However, with most marketing, there can be a delay between customers engaging with the content, making a decision to purchase, and then completing the conversion. During this period, the customer could change their mind or forget to continue their customer journey.

 

Nevertheless, telemarketing enables a sales representative to be with the client throughout their journey and ensure customer conversion with immediate results. Even initial calls can start the process of pitching and creating a custom service for client needs. At the end of each call, it’s clear what actions have been taken and the progress towards a conversion.

9. Builds a database

Knowing your target market, as well as your existing customer base, can help finetune your marketing to what interests and engages them. Building a customer database can inform you of key information about them which can be used to create more accurate customer personas. Aiming your marketing at these personas optimizes your campaigns for customer conversions.

Image sourced from digitalmarketing.temple.edu

 

During your telemarketing calls, not only can you establish the contact details of clients actively interested in your services, you can also gauge additional information. Whether by asking clients how they prefer to interact with brands, learning about the field and role they work in, or identifying their demographics, this information can be collected and used in the future.

10. Uses feedback

Most feedback your business receives is likely to come through reviews or follow-up questionnaires you send out. This is always useful for improving your customer experiences and learning how your brand is perceived. However, when negative comments are made, it can be difficult to remedy these immediately and make it up to those customers.

Feedback gained through telemarketing can instantly be responded to and worked on, as the conversation is ongoing throughout the customer journey. By asking clients about their experience as it’s happening, sales representatives can anticipate issues and offer different solutions where problems arise. Similarly, by monitoring calls, you can identify issues or trends and respond to them efficiently. This allows your marketing to be agile and reduce complaints.

 

Key takeaways

Telemarketing works well as a strategy for your business because it’s fundamentally different from other marketing techniques. Particularly with B2B marketing, telemarketing establishes a communication channel and takes the client through the customer journey, directing them towards online customer conversions. This makes follow-up for a client and remarketing to them easier to initiate, as well as continuing communication after purchase to retain the customer.

 

By building a relationship with the client, telemarketers can make their approach relevant and personalized every time. This allows for the focus to be on the questions of the individual client and the products that are best suited to help their situation. As telemarketing creates an ongoing conversation, the course of action can be adapted according to the response of the client, taking into consideration any changes they need or feedback they may have.

 

Increase your online customer conversions with telemarketing

At the end of the day, running a business is about finding ways to sell your product to customers and optimizing your conversion rates. Often, this requires finding new ways of making your products appeal to customers through different styles of marketing. Telemarketing not only promotes your services to clients but also assists them throughout the customer journey to ensure their conversion happens.

 

Employing telemarketing in your business strategies can improve the customer experience throughout the purchasing process towards making a conversion. Although having a basic script can be useful to ensure your call covers key points, a large part of telemarketing is improvising based on your conversation. Doing this well makes clients feel comfortable with your business, increasing your online business revenue by supporting them in making purchases.

 

Use telemarketing alongside your other marketing tools, such as text messages, for maximum effectiveness in converting customers.