Telemarketing is dead, long live telemarketing

Sometimes, the simplest of things yield the best results. In a world of paid search, social media, marketing automation, how can such something as innocuous as picking up a telephone and calling a prospective customer give the best ROI? And what if I told you that any B2C company could incorporate telemarketing into their strategy and the ROI would suddenly look like it is on steroids? It would seem crazy right. But never underestimate the power of the combination of a telephone and an intelligent and empathetic salesperson on one side.

At some level, most B2B companies use telemarketing- be it for prospecting, qualifying leads, generating leads etc. That is common knowledge and I am not going to touch upon B2B telemarketing. For B2C companies, the opportunity to improve marketing ROI by incorporating telemarketing is huge. More so in a country like India where digital literacy is still relatively low, and a lot of sales is being still influenced at the point of sale by the retailer/shop owner. And when I talk about telemarketing, I am in no way meaning the spam calls that we get from real estate builders, financial organizations and DTH operators. While those might also give you some kind of a ROI, but the poorly trained and automated sounding script reading salespeople who call you destroys the brand image for most others. And no short-term ROI is ever worth damaging your brand.

Of course, telemarketing cannot be a standalone strategy. It has to seamlessly fit in along with your paid media across all funnels, content, CRM and marketing automation.

So, how does telemarketing help you improve ROI? By improving conversions. And why does it improve conversions? It is primarily because of the following:

Assisted Selling- You would have seen this  Ad from Vijay Sales. This is the exact problem that 90% of Indians face while trying to make buying decisions online in categories where the ticket size is on the higher side and where the product has technicalities. And is extremely common in consumer durables, appliances, financial products etc. When there are so many different parameters, it becomes difficult for a person to choose as they aren’t experts. India by default is not a DIY market. While multiple reviews, unboxing videos etc definitely help, but when you consider a 50 year old man who didn’t grow up with the internet, nothing replaces an empathetic salesman on the telephone who acts as a consultant and helps the customer make the right purchase decision. And it is because of this fundamental customer characteristic, that no amount of tools/technologies like Augmented Reality, Chatbots etc will replace the empathetic salesman. Again, the key to higher conversions is being honest, empathetic and acting as a consultant as against during a hard sales push

Trust- This is more relevant for startups who have excellent differentiated products, but not the brand awareness and brand trust that established companies have. A lot of consumers find the claims hard to believe. While online reviews, product ratings, testimonials and having an excellent website goes a long way in substantiating the claims, a good telephonic interaction with the brand during the purchase journey is the icing on the cake when it comes to evoking trust.

So, if you clear all customer queries to perfection, help him select the right model for purchase and build trust throughout the process, your conversions will skyrocket

And not just conversions. If done right, it leaves a lasting impression about the brand. Something which even 100 TV ads might not be able to achieve.

But telemarketing done wrong will not give you any ROI and will go a long way in destroying your brand. As marketers, how do we ensure that this doesn’t happen. From my experience at Atomberg of using telemarketing to help keep our marketing costs to as low as 4% of revenue while scaling up revenues by 12x in 3 years, these are the must follow best practices:

Team- This is the single most important parameter to ensure success of your telemarketing. Your calling team is not a mere tele-sales team. Instead they are part of the marketing team. They are here to help customers make the right decision and get them to trust the brand. And the insights that they get by talking to 100 plus customers everyday will make them excellent marketers when they move on to other roles in marketing. You need to ensure that you have a high-calibre team and have them so well-trained about the product, brand and the industry that they can hold discussions with anyone without relying on a script.

Identification of right people to call- No one likes to get unnecessary irritating calls. This is where your digital capabilities come in handy. You need to identify people who are in the purchase journey, and only call them. If you are generating high quality in-market audience leads, your conversions would go up. You would also need to identify people who most likely need the assistance of a call to help them purchase. Having a good scoring algorithm based on demographics and other user behaviour is a true game changer here.

The Customer Experience- In addition to you calling up prospective customers proactively, make it easier for prospective customers to call you. With more than 80% website traffic coming from mobile in most industries, click to call is a pre-requisite. And ensuring calls are answered/called back within a strict TAT is mandatory. Also, in a country like India, English cannot be the only language. Having vernacular capabilities(major Indian languages) in the calling team is an extremely good to have benefit.

Integrate with Automation and Communication Tools- Last but not the least, having a telemarketing team in place does not diminish the importance of having a well rounded marketing automation strategy in place. In fact, it makes it all the more important. Right emailers/notifications/messages at the right time in the purchase journey to the right people does wonders. The indicators that your marketing automation parameters give will also help in your lead scoring algorithm and help you decide whom to call. More often than not, a call would be followed by the customer asking for some brochures/videos etc to make the final decision. Having communication avenues like whatsapp integrated into your CRM will tremendously increase performance.

While the importance and use-cases might differ from industry to industry, you should definitely evaluate and pilot with telemarketing. And more often than not, it will give wings to your marketing ROI.