Modern Marketing is Visual, So Why Do We Need Words?

People prefer visual content. Attention spans are shortening. People don’t read anymore. At least, that’s what we’re told. So, do words really matter in modern marketing?

Words, of course, do matter. Language is still our primary form of communication, particularly when we have to put across information that needs any significant level of reasoning and interpretation.

The digital revolution has left us inundated with information. Attention is harder to earn and to keep and you have fewer words to get your message across. Doesn’t this mean that each word you choose matters more, not less?

Strangely, written content is usually the part of a website project that gets the least attention. Pictures, graphics and colours take up more meeting time than the tone, meaning or impact of the words that fill the spaces. And deadlines seem to matter more than quality when it comes to regular content publishing. Brands are missing important opportunities to be better connected and more persuasive.

What Do Your Words Say About Your Brand?

Every piece of written content, whether it’s a web page, blog article or social media post is a representation of your brand. If you thought that people were forming a judgement about the likely experience of working with you from what they were reading, would that make you choose and organise your words with greater care?

Content has to be useful and connect with a defined audience. Ideally, it should move people towards taking action. This isn’t a five-minute job.

Emotion in Marketing

Our buying decisions are much less rational than we like to admit. Effective marketing (both B2B and B2C) has to engage our emotions. You can’t hope to do this without finding the right words.

And when people have to rationalise or justify their buying decisions they need words that are concise, targeted and easy to digest.

Content Quality and Search Rankings

Content quality matters if you want your site to perform well in Google searches. Google wants to serve up the most useful, relevant and trustworthy search results to its users. If Google stops being the go-to place for information and answers they won’t be able to earn so much from advertising.

So, Google’s ranking algorithm smiles favourably on content that is original, well written, authoritative and relevant to the audience (based on the search they made). It will downgrade sloppy, unoriginal, irrelevant content and anything that looks like it was written to game a search engine rather than for people.

Words and Pictures

Maybe video is the chosen medium for most of your marketing content – that’s all about images, right? But even here you are likely to have text displayed on screen or a voice-over that has to be scripted. These too, need carefully chosen words to be effective.

There’s no getting away from it, words really do matter in the battle for attention that is modern marketing.

 

Guest blog by Richard Hussey, https://rshcopywriting.co.uk/

How our 5* incentives have contributed towards client success

Lost employees can cost a company up to double an individual’s annual salary.  The eye watering reality is that this cost alone is unlikely to address recruitment costs, the time lost through learning and upselling, and the detrimental impact that a high employee turnover has on the relationship you build with your clients.

Now, you maybe questioning why a telemarketing company, involved in an industry notorious for poor staff retention rates, has grounds to comment on improving employee turnover? Well, we know it pays to keep our team happy and encourage them to be the best that they can be. Not only for the benefits of our employees and our company, but so our clients can receive the best possible service from our team.

So, what’s the secret to creating the loyal, motivated and results driven individuals that have become familiar faces among our team? The truth is, we have always placed strong emphasis on recognising and rewarding individual excellence and creating a positive team culture. We have tried and tested many ways of achieving this, but our recent 5* incentive scheme is one that has allowed our individual team members, the company as a collective and our clients to really reap the rewards.

At the start of this financial year, our 5 Star incentive put a playful challenge in place for every member of team Air: showcase your outstanding performance or team spirit throughout the year and win a paid for trip to Edinburgh, Dublin or Paris – for you and a person of your choice, we’ll even throw in spending money. 

This scheme has not only drawn Team Air’s attention to what’s really important, awarding the people who outperform expectations and continue to win new opportunities for our business and our clients, it’s also delivered improvements in multiple areas:

  • Impressive results for our clients driven by the buzz of healthy competition amongst our team
  • Elevated team spirit and heightened sense of wellbeing created through employee appraisal
  • Our strongest team members continuing to progress within our company, ensuring our clients have a dedicated campaign team that are familiar and confident in selling their products and services
  • An electric culture which continues to encourage new sales talent to become a part of our family and our clients’ campaigns
  • Increased motivation that pushes our team to outperform competitors, better handle gate keepers and in turn secure the success of their team, our company and our clients’ new business.

Having started our incentives as a trial, we have experienced an overwhelmingly positive result. With 5 hardworking team members having won well deserved breaks with their friends and family throughout the financial year, the 5* incentive is measuring up to remain a deep-rooted tradition for Team Air. So, we pose the question – what 5* incentive will you be using this year? We’re already working on a new idea to reward our lucky 2019 winners. After all, it’s only right that our MD tops sending someone on holiday, isn’t it?

If you feel that your business could benefit from the support of an exceptionally driven outsourced telemarketing team, then get in touch today – Team Air are always on hand to help. Call: 03452413038

Ethical Selling: A Priority for Team Air

Ethical selling is not often something which springs to mind when people picture a sales person. Only 3% of people asked trust sales reps, so it’s not surprising that businesses can be reluctant to outsource their sales to an external team that they don’t know on a personal or professional level.

However, at Air we want to change that. We want to show that the vast majority of professionals in the outsourced sales industry are trustworthy people, looking to help businesses develop and grow. Of course, we have targets to meet and we are ultimately accountable to that, but what actually drives Team Air is people and, more importantly, our ability to build relationships with them.

From day one we are upfront and honest with both our clients and prospects, we base our entire sales journey on ethical selling. Offering a consultative approach, we work with our prospects and clients to help them to make smart businesses decisions.

We know it’s all well and good to hear us saying that, but let’s break down how we achieve it:

  • Realistic campaigns and goals: If a prospect approaches us and we know that they simply can’t afford to work with us, or at least can’t afford to work with us in the way they want to, we tell them. We will never sell our services to a prospect who doesn’t stand a strong chance of generating tangible success with us, whether that is through ROI, conversations with decision makers or leads. That’s not to say that we won’t work with them full-stop, but we will arrange further conversations to better understand their budget and goals. From this, we either recommend a reduced campaign or other approaches that may work for them – such as digital marketing, utilising the services of our internal marketing company, Roots to Market.
  • Transparency: At Air, we don’t just take your money and run with a campaign – we want you to be involved at every stage. When you express an interest in starting a campaign with us, we will invite you to the office to meet the team and view our office culture before you even start working with us. From there, you will be invited in to assist with the training of your dedicated dialling team and provide insight as well as getting a clear understanding of our approach. As the campaign runs you will receive weekly reports and calls as well as having access to our live time reporting system in the client portal.
  • Accountability: Our campaigns are driven by learnings and so the strategy or approach may change throughout depending on the results that we generate. However, through your weekly calls and reports you will be made aware of this and able to see our reasoning and the difference in results. As well as reports, you also have access to every call made on your campaign, upon request, so that you can listen to how we handle your calls and prospects, ensuring that you are happy and can voice any concerns or questions that you may have.
If you are looking for an outsourced sales team, who place an emphasis on ethical selling, get in touch today. Email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk or call: 0345 241 3038.

Outsourced Inside Sales – Your secret weapon

As your business grows, you’ll find yourself having more and more conversations (both in person and over the phone) with potential leads. Whilst this is great news and shows that your business is developing good traction, do you really have the time to sift through all of those conversations to find the diamond in the rough? Unless you have an in-house sales team, the simple answer is probably no.

In order to close qualified leads, you need to be able to spend time talking to prospects after the initial stages of the sales cycle. This is where outsourced Inside Sales comes in.

Some people may be dubious of the benefits of inside sales at first, asking, “is it not just telemarketing?” Whilst both are predominantly phone-based selling, they deal with opposite ends of the sales cycle. Whereas telemarketers are often cold calling and forming a first point of contact between a business and potential client, inside sales reps act as a final touchpoint, being the ‘expert’ and nurturing or closing warm leads.

With continuous developments in technology, inside sales is growing 15 times faster than field sales and buyers are becoming increasingly comfortable holding remote conversations and making remote purchases. But how does inside sales differ from traditional sales? And how can it become your secret weapon?

  1. Location

Similar to telemarketers, inside sales reps work in the office, contacting their leads via phone, email or video calls. This method of sales is both time and cost effective when compared to field sales reps who may find themselves travelling up and down the country attending dinners, presentations and meetings.  By having your sales team all in one place, they are always contactable and not prey to delayed transport or miscommunication of locations.

  1. Technology

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools are vital in assisting inside sales team and ensuring a smooth sales operation. In having a CRM assisting your sales, all prospect information, campaign updates, messages and appointments can be kept in one place and visible to both your team and yourself. Also, if you do choose to employ both inside sales and field sales, your inside sales can do the ground work and then pass key information on to your field sales team. At Air, we also offer full reporting. We understand that it can be daunting to outsource your sales activity which is why we created a unique client portal where you can see your campaign and it’s results in live time.

  1. Scalability

You may have the best field sales rep in the world or be amazing at closing yourself but if you’re generating a large sales pipeline, who is going to manage all of those leads.  By having inside sales reps that work as a first touch point, a relationship can be built and solidified before you or your field sales rep gets to the prospect. It also allows you to reach a broader audience, even a global one if you see your market growing to that extent. Team Air are experts at holding conversations with senior decision makers in businesses of all sizes and locations – we’ve even worked with a company in Bermuda.

At Air, our inside sales team is driven and dedicated to getting you the results that you want, often exceeding expectations. If you feel that you could benefit from working with our expert team then get in touch – call: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Direct Marketing: Is it worth your investment?

Supposedly, it takes multiple contact with a prospect – studies say as many as eight are required – before a sale is closed.

In 2018, 75% of companies said closing more deals were amongst their top priorities. However, with 63% of prospects having little to no knowledge of a company before a sales rep approaches them, with a new product or service, it’s no surprise that 40% of sales people are finding closing the deal more challenging. So, how can direct marketing help?

Direct marketing is a great way of introducing your product or service across multiple touchpoint, over a variety of different platforms which include: direct mail, email marketing and telemarketing to name just a few. When delivered tactfully this marketing tactic will:

  • Help you build relationships with new customers using personalised and targeted messaging
  • Test the appeal of your new product or service
  • Take your prospects or current customers on a brand journey that appeals to their own values
  • Measure and advise you on which marketing platforms connect with your target audience best
  • Provide customers with compelling content that will help nurture them through your sales cycle
  • Indicate where prospects sit in your sales cycle using specific call to action that inform you if a prospect requires more information, a follow up call or a way of purchasing your product
  • Allow you to base your sales strategy on fact and customer needs, increasing your overall success rate

So, how does direct marketing nurture your prospects through the sales cycle and at what stage does it need to be implemented if you want to reap the best reward?

We like to think of marketing and sales as the gatherer and the hunter. The gatherers job is to go out and make the initial contact with the prospect, discovering where they spend their time, what needs or problems control their impulses, and how best they can nurture this prospect to help them improve their situation. The hunter on the other hand is programmed to close the deal. Using the information/data the gatherer provides the hunter can increase his chances of success, he has inside knowledge of where the prospect can be found, he understands what problem areas are best to attack and he knows the prospect is at a stage where they feel safe enough to take a closer look.

In our 7 step sales and direct marketing diagram you can see exactly how we optimise this integrated approach:

We have learnt that both direct marketing and sales need one another to be truly successful, so, investing in a strategy that aligns the two is a wise move heading into the new financial year.

There’s even evidence that supports this approach, according to 2018 statistics, companies who better align their sales and marketing teams experience 208% more revenue from their marketing efforts, 73% agree their buyer’s journey has a higher conversion rate, 38% have higher sales wins and 36% experience higher customer retention rates.

Looking to better align your sales and marketing strategy, increase customer loyalty and boost your ROI?
Air Marketing Group work closely with their sister company, Roots to Market, to deliver multi touchpoint campaigns that benefit our clients bottom line. To get in touch call: 03452413038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

On average, for every £1 our clients invest they achieve an £18 ROI. Are you ready to see results?

Permission Based Selling – does it benefit a telemarketing campaign?

When I first started working at Air I found myself in a whole other world. I had landed a job in a fun, dynamic and rewarding start-up where we worked hard and reaped the returns. Air has a culture that we all want to be a part of and is a company that you truly want to contribute to. But when I started one thing did have me stumped – the method of permission based selling.

I won’t lie, I was dubious at first. It was different to anything I had ever known and the sales person inside of me was so well versed in the hard sale and simply working to turn a “no” into a “yes”. This new tactic of asking the prospect for permission at various points to progress the call simply seemed alien to me, I just wanted to get my information across, follow up on a lead and close the sale. However, I quickly came to see the method in its madness.

Many telemarketing companies conform to the stereotype of cold callers – they’re more interested in their numbers, not the people on the end of the line. At Air, we’re different. Permission based selling is a non-traditional selling technique in which sales people reach out to prospects after they have received permission from them to do so via opt in forms, email or calls etc. This method allows us the opportunity to be professional and polite but also assertive when building rapport and developing a 2-way relationship with potential clients. In turn, this often ends up saving us and our clients more time and money. This is for two reasons:

  1. People love to buy, but hate being sold to. Today, prospects prefer a personal approach, they want you to be consultative and guide them through the sale with clear expertise.
  2. Instead of pushing a hard sell that fails to close, by taking the time to read a prospects response and ending the conversation when you don’t strike a chord you will spend less time chasing unlikely leads.

So, how does permission based selling fit into our sales process?

At Air, we understand that no one thing will make a sales call great, as different prospects will respond to different tactics. Cold calling is about the combination of many small things that increase your chances of achieving the right outcome – and in my opinion, permission based selling is one to be practised.

Opinion piece by Shaun Weston, Operations Director

5 things to consider before beginning a telemarketing campaign…

If done right, telemarketing is a great way to provide an interactive and personal sales experience to your prospects. With a good telemarketing team, like TeamAir, behind your sales activity you can create immediate rapport with your prospects and, in turn, be able to gauge their interest in your product or service.

By using an outsourced telemarketing team, these rewards are further by freeing up your internal sales team to do what they do best – making sales!

However, a telemarketing campaign is not free and before you start you want to ensure that your new team know what they’re doing. So, what should you consider before beginning a telemarketing campaign?

  1. Target Market

Of course, the first thing to consider when making any sale is the people you are selling to.  Who are they? What kind of profile do they fit into? At Air, we sit down with our clients to analyse who their target market is, what type of industry they want us to target and what level of decision maker they want us to speak to. For us, the most important aspects are who and why. We don’t make any calls before we have created an in-depth company and prospect profile.

  1. The Script

We need to establish what it is you are selling and what we are going to be pitching. From Fintechs to Soft Drinks Companies, we have worked with a variety of businesses and so we understand the importance of a perfectly tailored script. When TeamAir are dialling, they will know your offering, its USPs, why a company should use you and not your competitor and how they should engage with a prospect. Engagement is key, so we establish the best route to success by implementing a two-way, consultative, permission-based conversation.

  1. Data

Strong data is key to strong sales. Whether you have your own data, or we need to source it for you, we offer a data cleansing service to ensure that you’re hitting exactly the target market that you want to hit. If we are sourcing data for you, we want to have a clear understanding of the data profile you need, from there we look to our UK data providers. Any data that we source belongs to you, this is why we are more than happy to build relationships between our providers and our clients, this allows you to get the best out of your time working with us.

  1. Objections

For telemarketers, objection handling is a fact of life – it’ll never go away. However, at Air, we make sure that our diallers are as knowledgeable as possible with regards to your product and ensure that they are armed with information to handle the relevant objections that arise. We also follow the diffuse > statement > question formula. By diffusing any negative pressure, TeamAir are able to make statements which switch the focus of the conversation and ask open questions which allow it to flow once more.

  1. Engagement process

Once a prospect is engaged, what are you looking to do with them, book a phone call or a face to face appointment? But more importantly, what does is take to qualify a lead? These questions are at the forefront of our campaign strategy as is it essential that we know your end goal. If booking appointments is something you would like us to help with then we ask for access to your calendars, this allows us to efficiently provide you with any details which you’ll need to know for appointments booked for you. With regards to lead qualification, that’s all down to you, you set the criteria and we follow, making sure to engage with the prospects who matter to you.

 

If you feel that your sales team could benefit from the support of an expert outsourced telemarketing team, then get in touch today – TeamAir are always on hand to help. Call: 0345 2413038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Why is market segmentation vital to your business?

In the era of GDPR, unwarranted contact should be a distant memory. To be truly business savvy is now, and always should have been, demonstrated by a company’s ability to target customers based on their wants and needs, not your own. Sales are increasingly determined by the trust that a customer has for a brand, if you are honest and transparent with them upfront they are more likely to buy into you as a brand. People value a brand they can trust.

A simple and effective way to build a trustworthy brand is by implementing a segmentation strategy – it shows that you have taken the time to understand the various groups within your target market. We’ve created the infographic below to highlight 5 key reasons to segment your data and customers:

But many businesses are still failing to hit the mark, with 20% of respondents to an Avention survey feeling that segmentation was one of the biggest challenges facing their organisation. Segmentation is a tried and tested means of delivering results to your customers. We only have to look to email campaigns, where Mailchimp showed that clicks are 74.53% higher than non-segmented campaigns, to see these results.

By taking the time to highlight the different needs and barriers that may be important to your potential clients, you will be better able to sell to them. Not only will it allow you to understand them, but it will allow you to forge personal relationships with them through meaningful interactions – which is essential in the telemarketing industry in particular. So, how can you segment your customers?

However, it is important to remember the earlier point about customer trust. With increasingly personalised sales and marketing materials out there it isn’t enough to take your data and simply spilt everyone into superficial segments. You need to gain insight into the people behind the numbers, otherwise your will simply be working from conjecture.

To gain insight and create genuine, informed personas for these groups, it is vital that you demonstrate a desire to know more when in conversation with your prospects. It is with this in mind that the scripts used by TeamAir are only there as prompts, we encourage our BDEs to engage in meaningful, personal conversations when on the phone. This helps us to nurture a sense of human connection whilst carrying out the vital research that is needed to lead a successful campaign and enrich the data that is held.

If you feel that you could benefit from working with a reputable, award winning telemarketing company, who work with a customer-centric focus, get in touch. You can call us: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

Hunting Down Leads for your Sales Pipeline Using PPC

Photo by Javi Lorbada on Unsplash

However your sales team operates, there’s a place in their work for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. A properly constructed PPC account will act like a pack of automated hunters, sniffing out potential leads from every search anyone does on the internet, and chasing them into your website. The trick is to train these hunters to bring those potential leads into your existing pipeline as seamlessly as possible.

Singling searchers out to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time involves planning your strategy in advance and then adapting it to the data you acquire. Too many PPC accounts simply show the same message to everyone who searches for a vaguely relevant keyword (or an overly specific keyword). You need to understand the mindset of a potential lead and learn how to recognise their intent from what they type into that search engine. Once you’ve learned this, you can herd them into your existing sales pipeline at the point it matches their decision-making process and significantly increase your chance of converting a lead into a sale.

Fitting Leads into Your Pipeline

If you sell office equipment and someone types, “office equipment,” into Google’s search box, then you can be fairly certain they’re close to the beginning of pipeline. They know they want office furniture and they’re seeing what’s out there. These are the people you can flag your services to, let them become aware of what you have to offer. If you’re in a complex industry where public perception is lacking, you can use this opportunity to become the voice of authority to them, increasing the chances they will come back to you when they are closer to making a final decision. These people are those you fit into the top of your pipeline.

Longer, more specific searches tend to come after someone has been thinking for a while or has a definite and often immediate need. If someone types in, “adjustable height computer monitor bracket,” it’s fairly likely that they need an adjustable height computer monitor bracket and they need it soon. These people come in around the middle of your pipeline.

The longest tail keywords are from those searchers who need to be herded towards the bottom of the pipeline. “Brand-X Model-Y monitor bracket next day delivery,” is about as specific as it’s possible to get. You know this person has made the decision of what they are getting, they are just looking for where to get it from. They’ve even included a handy USP that you can hook; “Next Day Delivery.” These are the people who you can drop exactly what they want into their lap.

Getting the right message to these people requires having your PPC account structured correctly. For the broader searches you have to use broader messages. As the user intent becomes more specific with longer tail search queries, you can narrow down the message you convey (both in the ad copy and on the landing page the user is directed to). At every stage it doesn’t hurt to have the user get in touch; a simple call back form is ideal, the shorter the better, just a name and a phone number is all you need – once you have those you have far more control in the sales process.

Matching Tactics to Intent

Unfortunately, it’s not always this simple to slot searchers into their correct slot on the funnel. Although it’s safer to assume that they’re higher in the funnel, the broader search terms make it harder to infer the true intent of the person typing it. The best you can do is give them options: Sitelinks on your ad allows you to link people through to other pages which might be of interest. These sitelinks give the user the opportunity to find their own place in your sales pipeline.

For example: If someone searches for, “office equipment,” you can show them a link to your home page, which is broad enough to have something of relevance to them on it. But on top of that you can have links to your products catalogue, to your most popular lines, and to your services/FAQ page which explains that you offer not only next-day delivery but a free installation service as well. And again, give a quick and simple means for them to give you their contact info at every step.

The Remarkable Power of Remarketing

Another tool in populating your sales pipeline from PPC is remarketing. Targeting specific ads to people who have already seen your website, or a specific page on your website, or performed certain actions means you can recapture their attention. This is a balancing act, you have to have an audience of sufficient size to guarantee anonymity.

Typically, the best way to accomplish this you need a single list of everyone who has visited your website, which you can then break down into progressively smaller groups based on the user action – the first tier may be all those who have visited any page in a particular category, and then those who have looked at more than one product. By creating progressively more targeted audiences you always have a working audience to work with, but if you have sufficient traffic for the smaller audiences you can use more carefully constructed messages. More carefully targeted messages always perform stronger.

 

Exactly how you integrate PPC into your existing sales pipeline does depend greatly on your own procedures, but the potential value is universal. The real knack lies in picking the best targets out of the herd of online searchers and potential customers. Only a small segment will match as a lead, and sorting these out to determine their place in your sales pipeline can be tricky, but very rewarding. Get it right and you’ll fuel your sales pipeline with a regular stream of leads across all stages – that’s enough to keep any sales team happy!

 

Guest Blog written for Air by Aquamarine Search and Social Agency

Quality Assurance, a New Year’s resolution to stick to!

A renewed focus on Quality Assurance (QA) should be at the top of everyone’s resolution list this year. In the telemarketing industry small issues within company processes can often snowball and result in bigger, damaging issues if not nipped in the bud quickly. By implementing a QA system, you can make sure that best practise is followed by your team in every aspect of their calls – from introduction to close.

At Air, we rely on our QA system to maintain our reputation in the local and wider areas. We have taken many learnings from our system and this has allowed us to make sure that our services are of a high standard in a highly competitive market. Our focus on quality is what has allowed us to disrupt the industry and bring business to Exeter, rather than it being focused purely in London.

We want to distance ourselves from the traditional telemarketing reputation that telemarketing companies have of offering low quality services. We achieve this through our ability to be transparent. Part of our QA system is regular ‘calibration’ sessions with our clients, in which they have the ability to listen to our calls and offer training to ensure that we are delivering their brand message the way it should be.

From the outset of a client’s journey with us, QA is at the top of our priority list. Within our initial meetings we outline our typical sales cycle and method, allowing them to get involved and adapt it where they see fit. From there, we introduce their dialling team and we encourage them to discuss their product and services in as much detail as they can so that everyone has a thorough understanding of the offering and industry they will be selling in. We then set up a script and pitch for our diallers which provides them with a guide for their calls. Our scripts are important, offering company USPs and common objections, however, we don’t hire robots and we don’t want our calls to sound scripted, so we allow our expert diallers to tailor them as they see fit.

Once the diallers have made their calls, they then go through the next phase of our QA process – call screening. This involves us randomly selecting calls from each campaign and grading them against Air’s call framework, which is adjusted to suit each client. Owing to our transparent approach, clients can have as much involvement with this as they would like, for example one client calls us every Friday to catch up with the campaign and compare call notes. To follow up on these discussions, we then have a debrief with the dialler who’s call has been selected to ensure that they implement any feedback going forwards.

For us, QA helps us to meet our clients demands and expectations. By continuously offering services of a high quality, we build strong trust with our clients. It also allows us to save us and them costs, as we can pin point issues before they become damaging. Investing in QA is indispensable in many industries today. It is most effective when it’s in place from the start. When Quality Assurance is done right, confidence is guaranteed.

Opinion Piece by Jo Marshall, Quality Assurance Co-ordinator