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Do you actually need a marketing plan?

Posted on by dukadmin

Perhaps we could look at this question from a different angle, would you start a business without a business marketing plan?

The answer is of course, no! But why should the approach to marketing be any different? You are going to be investing in marketing and if done correctly, marketing will deliver ROI to grow your client base, revenue and ultimately business. It is therefore a critical aspect of your go to market strategy and should be thought through and planned.

Do you appreciate the importance of marketing?

You would expect us to ask this question, we are a marketing agency, we feel that marketing is vital to business success. But let’s explore this question.

For your business to survive, and of course thrive in a market place you have to attract and retain your customers. But if your business never told the market what you offer, why you are better than your competitors, your ethics, why you exist etc, then would customers simply come to you? No doubt a small number may stumble across you, but it’s unlikely that you will attract the number of customers needed for your business to survive.

Marketing is not simply the expensive advertising campaign you see on TV or the brochure that will cost a lot to produce and may quickly become outdated. It’s likely that marketing will have an influence over every touchpoint that your customers experience; from your telephone message, your welcome email, that customer service call or a client portal login. The messaging, branding, look and feel are all influenced by marketing.

Why create a marketing plan?

A plan gives you the opportunity to really understand:

* Who you want to target, why and how you will reach them?

* It prompts you to assess your competitors, what activity are they doing, could you be doing something similar?

* And to dive into your product or service – put your customer hat on, why would you purchase your product or use your service, are the benefits clear?

All of these questions need to be thoroughly thought through to carry out effective business marketing.

Putting this into a plan, allows you to focus your resource (time as well as capital) alongside specific, measurable timeframes and goals. This plan will help you with the day to day running of your business; sensible and realistic resources allocated ahead of time, will help you manage performance of your marketing efforts. This will keep your team motivated and allow you to test, refine and edit activity to produce the best results.

The marketing plan is your roadmap, it provides you with clear direction making it straight forward to align execution and reporting to your objectives.

You don’t have to do it alone…

Planning your marketing for 6 months, 1 year or even 2 years in advance can seem daunting but you don’t have to undertake this task alone. In fact, having an outside perspective involved with your planning, asking different questions, challenging your thinking – can produce even better results.

And don’t forget this is not a one-off exercise that is completed and stored to never be looked at again. This is a living plan, to be referred to, updated and amended regularly – make it your friend not your foe. Find out more about marketing planning with Roots to Market here.

Are you struggling to execute a rewarding telemarketing campaign?

Posted on by Doug Roots

We know there’s nothing better than building a healthy sales pipeline, and one of the most effective methods of doing that is by making calls and starting conversations with your key target market.

Implementing a successful telemarketing campaign is a process that many businesses struggle to achieve. A telemarketing campaign can often be seen as complex, time-consuming, or outdated. To eliminate this misconception, Air ensures all clients follow a campaign process which will lead your business through an achievable, step by step process, designed to deliver rewarding results for your business. Take a look at our Air process here

 

GDPR – opportunity for telemarketing

Posted on by Doug Roots

This May the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect across the European Union. The new legal requirements have been designed to improve transparency between businesses and their clients, strengthening the control individuals have over their personal data.

It’s safe to say that the new regulations have implemented a major change in the way marketers and sales teams approach their work and how organisations obtain, store, manage and process the personal data of their EU clients.

A couple of decades ago, data in digital marketing referred to simple things like demographics and response rates.

Today, living in an interconnected world, data enables marketers to predict customer behaviour, create targeted campaigns, build brands, and drive development and sales.

However, as GDPR came into place marketers immediately became concerned that they were going to become restricted in their ability to target individual customers based on personal data collection, slowing database growth therefore shaking up the digital landscape.

At Air we see GDPR differently

From our experience here at Air we are looking at GDPR differently, not as an issue but as an opportunity.  Instead asking the question, how can we better engage with those who share a legitimate business interest and make more of those who are looking for our services?

GDPR is pushing us to reassess how we perform market research and understand how we can help those who need our products and services.

As telemarketers we know person to person communication is the most effective method when understanding prospect needs, situation and pain points.

How Air telemarketing and GDPR can help build your database:

  • Building your pipeline by creating bespoke campaigns that really talk to your prospects.
  • Generating sales by using a tailored approach.
  • Increasing revenue by engaging the decision makers.

There are no restrictions in place that limit us contacting prospects who you share a legitimate business interest with. In fact, by avoiding contacting huge irrelevant mailing lists and focusing solely on contacting prospects that have a shared interest means we will be having more conversations of worth on your behalf and you will see better results from your telemarketing because of this.

GDPR is pushing all of us to be more transparent and personable, this can only build stronger relationships that grow your database and increase your revenue.

Apprehensive about telemarketing? It’s ok you’re not the only one

At Air we understand that you may feel apprehensive when investing in a telemarketing strategy, however with the new regulations in place we believe it’s one of the best ways to make the most of your relevant data and really engage with your prospects. As a company that already prides itself on transparency, we provide the following to keep you in the loop:

  • Live time reporting accessible at any time by clients
  • Involvement in strategy building and training by the clients directly
  • Regular feedback from your campaign manager
  • Direct contact with the team making calls
  • Digital call recordings requested as often and many as you would like

If you’d like to find out more information on how Air Marketing Group can help you post GDPR get in touch. GDPR isn’t an issue, it’s an opportunity!

What qualities make the ‘perfect’ telemarketer

Posted on by Doug Roots

Selecting the right telemarketer for your campaign is vital, get this wrong and you’ll see potential leads deteriorate, your business reputation plummet and you’ll miss the full potential of ROI.

At Air Marketing Group, we know that quality telemarketers are worth their weight in gold. They can draw from their experience and personal qualities to ensure your campaign gets results.

However, what qualities make these people so vital to your campaign?

It’s obvious, a telemarketer can’t sell if they’re unable to absorb the fundamentals of your product or service

The ‘perfect’ telemarketer will be adaptable, working across a variety of client accounts and multiple sectors, drawing experience and implementing it to different campaigns. A great telemarketer will be self-managed and fast progressing when becoming familiar with your campaign. They will have the ability to research and retain important campaign information, building a strong rapport between your business and your prospects. Taking the time to fully plan the strategy behind your telemarketing campaign will ensure that your campaign team are working towards the same goal, communicating the same message and focusing on meeting your KPI’s.

It’s time to kill the urban myth ‘a great telemarketer sells due to their ability to talk a lot’

A successful telemarketer listens and, more importantly hears and understands. It’s easy to get lost in that ‘parrot fashion script’ telling a prospect what you think they want to hear. However, the key is to engage in a two-way conversation. The ‘perfect’ telemarketer will listen, hear the prospects needs, situation and pain points, then focus on this information to lead the conversation. They will have the ability to think on their feet and change their delivery of a script to recommend the right solution for the prospect.

Telemarketers are tactful

In the telemarketing game you must be able to make smart decisions, getting tactful in order to get past the gatekeepers. Asking the right questions is something that can be learnt but being respectful and asking permission to ask those personal questions when engaging with prospects is a quality that a great telemarketer will already possess. Being progressive, ambitious and a good communicator across any level of person are key qualities of the ‘perfect’ telemarketer.

Mind over matter

Telemarketers hear a lot of no’s. If they’re right for the position they will have a high level of resilience, understanding rejection isn’t personal, and continuing to possess a courteous nature even when their proposition is turned down. The ‘perfect’ telemarketer has a positive mental attitude that every business strives to harbour.

Benefit from telemarketing

If your business is looking to work with positive, resilient and experienced telemarketing professionals get in touch and find out how we can turn your prospects into clients. Contact us on 0345 241 3038 or send us an email with your project details to contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

Do you think you could be the ‘perfect’ telemarketer? Why not become part of #TeamAir and show us what you are made of? We are always looking for talented telemarketers to deliver for our clients. Share your CV with us at contact@air-marketing.co.uk

‘National Give Something Away Day’ – A great opportunity to start implementing a sales incentive scheme

Posted on by Doug Roots

If you have a sales team, of any kind, it’s important to implement some sort of incentive or bonus scheme to keep them motivated and hungry, as this will keep them delivering for you.  These incentives could be cash based (commissions, bonuses, etc.), or non-cash based (trips, prizes, points, and other awards).

The type of sales incentives that will work best for your business largely relies on your capabilities, goals and demographics of your sales team.

At the Air Marketing Group, we reward our staff with both cash and non-cash incentives. We have learnt that a varied sales incentive scheme has many benefits: improved performance, higher sales rates and the ability to create a work culture many desire which will help your employability.

Find out more about sales incentive benefits

Focus

Retaining your sales teams focus day in and day out can be a challenging task. If you’ve got a specific target you need to hit by a certain deadline, a short-term sales incentive scheme with an enticing reward on the table, can work beautifully when focusing your team. At Air, if our sales team hit their weekly sales target we treat them to a 4:30pm drink or encourage everyone to put the phones down an hour early to attend an organised after work social. Creating a short-term scheme is often just enough to light a fire under people, driving the performance you desire.

Lead Excitement

Most businesses believe that the prospect of earning commission on a sale will be enough to motivate their team, unfortunately most will discover this isn’t the case. At Air, we have a variety of different tactics to keep things exciting and our team motivated. We recommend trying a washing line or a tactical wheel incentive scheme that gives your staff the opportunity to win a prize, do a forfeit or take a gamble. These prizes and forfeits could be anything from doing a dare, making someone a hot drink, or winning £50. Encourage your team to take risks that result in doubling their prize or losing it all together. The two examples above are great incentive schemes that get your team excited about what they’re working for and highlights that taking risks can be rewarding.

Loyalty

If you want to build loyalty amongst your sales team, we encourage you to think about implementing an incentive scheme that includes trophy value or emotional significance. At Air, we like nothing more than celebrating the success of our team, this could be anything from being with our company for a year, or having progressed to a new level within the team. Handing out rewards such as personalised vouchers are small incentives that really show your sales team their appreciated and that your company is focused on building a two-way relationship. We exhibit loyal behaviours when we trust that the person or thing we’re involved in will be good to us. By enriching your sales teams lives, you’ll evoke their desired to show loyalty.

Healthy Competition

Most sales people are competitive. Give them a goal, and they’ll want to out-do their counterparts. To encourage healthy competition, consider setting up a points system with a visible leader board. As a telemarketing company, we have created a visible leader board that showcases who’s winning the most leads. Allowing individuals to see where they stand amongst other colleagues inspired additional effort.

Collaborative Efforts

A well-designed incentive scheme can not only drive friendly competition, but also encourage collaboration. Get your team to work together, set team objectives such as an overall number of leads to be achieved by the end of the month. You can then add a significant team reward for reaching this goal. Think about organising a staff lunch or activity hour, not only does this reward but can be considered a team building activity. It’s important to create a culture of friendly competition, not just cut-throat rivalry.

 

Reduced Turnover

The main reason people seek new employment is due to a feeling of underappreciation. We have spoken about a short-term sales incentive scheme however long-term schemes are a way of giving away bigger prizes that show your staff their efforts are acknowledged. Air are running a 5 star incentive  that is run over a yearly period. Stars are given out over the year to people who have gone above and beyond, pulled through when the chips were down, or hit outstanding targets. If a staff member accumulates 5 stars over the year they are rewarded with a personal weekend getaway for them and a partner or friend. Long-term incentive programs are both great for reducing staff turnover and maintaining loyalty.

Culture

If you know anything about the Air Marketing Group, you’ll be aware of how important a positive work culture is to our business. We would not have achieved our positive, hardworking atmosphere if we didn’t regularly give our sales team incentives and show them just how much we appreciate them.

 

ROI

We know it’s the National #GiveSomethingAwayDay, created to give people the opportunity to give something away without expecting anything back. However, implementing an incentive scheme does allow your business to profit too. The more motivated your sales team, the more drive they have to sell and the better your clients and your own ROI. Having an incentive scheme in place will give you an all-round great company reputation amongst people both internally and externally.

We hope this insight encourages you to give something away to those who matter most in your business.

If you would like to work with a team that has an outstanding drive to sell, get in touch!

Our ever-growing expertise

Posted on by Doug Roots

Having come into telemarketing from the construction industry I had a lot to learn! I knew it was going to be a steep learning curve in order to make the most out of my opportunity and I was willing to take it on.

After thorough training, guidance, opportunities and of course learnings taken from mistakes – I worked closer to becoming an expert in telemarketing. But during this journey I came to understand that I can never truly be an expert because of the variance of campaigns, clients, industries, and requirements that I will work on in my telemarketing career.

But in truth, this continual learning, adapting and challenging myself is what motivates me to push even further in my career.

My knowledge on the science behind telemarketing is now strong and I am proud of this. But outside of this my knowledge now stretches from finance and HR services, to vehicle leasing, data analysis, energy consumption and much more!

The reason for this expansive knowledge? Is that all agents within Air Marketing Group are trained on 5 different campaigns (or more). The result of this? Is that agents are kept engaged and challenged with the opportunity to call on different campaigns – they could be working on telesales, appointment setting, events, market research for any B2B client offering any product or service.

But the benefits are also seen for our clients. Having a wide range of experience means that agents have a deeper understanding of responding to varied objections, they understand key pain points for different industries, and they can begin to build an understanding of approaches that work within different sectors to help clients with their campaigns.

We see ourselves as an extension of our client’s team, a partner. Because of this, we want to learn from our clients (who are the experts in their field) to ensure the best chance of success for their campaigns. With this in mind, we work closely with our clients when developing the strategy, our clients train our in-house agents and we encourage communication between all campaign members and all key client team members. Absorbing this knowledge from our client gives us the ability to truly represent their business in the best possible way.

It’s an ongoing journey, with ever-growing expertise that will never end – but that’s all part of the fun. Our aim to continue delivering outstanding services to our clients and the more equipped we are to do this the more we’ll succeed.

Opinion Piece by Ashley Heyworth, Senior Account Manager, Air Marketing Group

How well do you know your customers?

Posted on by Doug Roots

‘Know your customer’ has become quite a cliché in marketing. There has never been a business that didn’t start out fulfilling unmet needs for a very specific group of people.  

We suspect you probably know your customer  fairly well,  but let’s turn this question on its head and  instead ask: 

 How well do you know your prospects?  

Air Marketing Group know that a lack of qualified prospects moving through your sales process today, can mean trouble for your business tomorrow. We understand that a strong sales pipeline is critical to attain revenue goals 6 – 12 months from now.  

So what steps should you take to build and sustain a healthy sales pipeline? 

Start with enough leads 

Sales is a numbers game and to develop a strong sales pipeline you must accumulate enough leads to drive through your marketing and sales engine. If you have a good understanding of the pipeline process you’ll know only a proportion of your targeted leads will become qualified, and a fraction will convert and be ready to buy at any given time.  

Qualify every lead  

Generating a list of qualifying questions to ask every interested lead will allow you to determine if there’s a real business opportunity or not.  

Ask: Has your prospect got a realistic need you can fill? 

  • What are their major challenges in this area? 
  • Have they tried to solve these issues? If so, how? 
  • How soon do they want to find a solution?  

Ask: Is the prospect an appropriate lead for the value and price point of your offering? 

  • What solutions would they consider? 
  • What is the budget to address this solution?  

Be careful of time wasters. If it appears there’s little budget for your solution, put this lead into your low-quality category and concentrate on higher priority prospects.  

Use lead quality for targeted marketing  

It’s important to use resulting lead quality data to develop more tailored campaigns. At Air Marketing all our campaigns use bespoke lead generation strategies and are tailored to meet individual business requirements. This strategy allows us to provide clients with quality sales leads that meet specified criteria.  

Nurture qualified prospects  

Not every qualified prospect will be ready to buy today. Once qualified leads have been identified you can leverage the use of content based email marketing, and follow up calls, to continue to nurture leads and identify interested prospects.  

Create a next step for every interested lead. Base this on need, interest and timing: 

  • Schedule a demo or follow up call to share additional insights. 
  • Send a follow up email that needs a response within  a requested time. 
  • Send an industry-related article every month to stay in  touch and keep educating them.  

Remaining in front of interested, qualified prospects will mean you are at the front of their mind  to assist when the time of their need arises.  

CRM systems 

A customer relationship management system (CRM) will improve your sales efficiencies, and allow you to track and report on sales opportunities, leads and prospects.  

Remember a healthy sales pipeline will have the following attributes: 

  • Many opportunities at every stage of the funnel. 
  • New opportunities coming into the top of the funnel regularly. 
  • New sales being converted  at the bottom of the sales funnel regularly . 

Here at Air Marketing Group, we pride ourselves on our ability to get under the skin of your business, speaking with your prospects and where possible and relevant warm the lead into a position where they can be converted into an opportunity. In addition to this, we  provide a transparent reporting service, and the delivery of each call recording to ensure our clients that  any leads we’ve secured will convert.  

If knowing your prospect is still an area you would like help with get in touch today to find out how we can help on 03452413038 or get in touch.

Where does your telemarketing campaign fit into the bigger picture?

Posted on by Doug Roots

We are often contacted by companies who reach out to us because they have (rightly) heard that direct telemarketing delivers very tangible ROI or they see us advertising that our average client receives £18 for every £1 invested.

But often telemarketing is viewed in isolation, companies engage with the pilot campaign to test the water and see how it delivers without taking into account the opportunity that lies in the bigger picture.

We know that telemarketing is an extremely effective channel for many companies, but we also know that combining telemarketing activity with other forms of marketing or looking at the campaign as a longer-term investment such as a 6 month or year long tactic to support other business objectives, can deliver even better results.

The set up of a telemarketing campaign can bring up a lot of questions such as:

  • Have you researched your product/service? Do you know how well it will be received by the market? Do you know your competitors? Will it deliver what we say it will?
  • How are we supporting this telemarketing campaign? Do we have a branded email that can be sent afterwards? Do you have a website that echoes the message we are giving? Have you created anything such as a brochure or flyers we can share with prospects?
  • Have you considered your own sales pitch? Is your sales pitch and our telemarketing pitch aligned? Are we both on brand? Will your sales pitch see conversions?
  • Is your data right for use? Do you need to purchase new data? What else can that data be used for?

As a Business Development Partner, it is not our ethos to deliver merely a ‘project’ within constraints that are agreed. Instead, we want to help you look at the bigger picture, understand what the strategy for your telemarketing or marketing in general is, consider all the angles that could be taken to best engage with your target market and really help you generate the right leads for your business.

The visibility and involvement that is available when working with Air, allows you to ensure that telemarketing is firmly set in the bigger picture. Feedback on data allows you to update your CRM systems and instigate actions if needed. Being able to come in and train the team allows you to shape what the tone of voice for your business, the sales techniques and known objections. And being able to monitor calls in live time means you are always on top of what is happening, planning for appointments, understanding objections and client feedback etc.

So, if you’re looking for a partner to work alongside you, guide you and deliver for you, speak to the team here at Air for more information on how we can help improve your business development. Call us on 0345 241 3038 or email us at contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

Where to start with direct marketing?

Posted on by dukadmin

So, let’s start at the beginning, what is direct marketing?

Direct marketing is the opposite of inbound marketing. You may generate inbound interest and enquiries from having a website or publishing an advert, but you are not necessarily in control of who sees this and then enquires. Whereas direct marketing is exactly that – direct.

Direct marketing is aimed at a list of prospects who you wish to engage with and then you actively reach out to them either by phone, email or post. These prospects may be the business you really wish to work with, a focus on a certain industry sector, or a geographical area.

Why use direct marketing?

Direct marketing is a great method to use when targeting a specific prospect base. Allowing you to completely tailor your message and method of contact to what would suit those prospects. In a world with so much ‘noise’ and messages being shown to you every day, it’s proven that tailored relevant messaging is much more successful for converting than blanket messaging.

Direct marketing can also be a great medium to test campaigns to smaller amounts of recipients, allowing you to test and analyse this before rolling them out business wide.

What activity is classed as direct marketing? 

As with most sales and marketing techniques, in order to be effective it’s advisable to come at it from a number of angles. Therefore, use a mixture of methods to reach your prospects. Warming your prospects using intelligent targeted email marketing or direct mail can be followed by picking up the phone to talk in more depth, answer questions and guide the prospect through the funnel.

Telemarketing is a very personable method of direct marketing. Not only does this open up the opportunity for you to convey your product/service benefits and measure their reaction, this method also allows the prospect to ask any questions there and then meaning you are adding value whilst giving your sales pitch. The other benefit of this method is the ability to spot when the lead is warm enough to convert – allowing you to complete the sales cycle.

Other methods which work well alongside telemarketing or by themselves include email and direct mail. Email is a very cost effective method of reaching out to your prospects and warming them to your brand and service/products. Direct mail had become unfavourable as it was seen as ‘junk’ coming through the letterbox. However, this wave is now changing and we now receive more emails than letters, so to stand out direct mail is becoming more popular – it’s now a novelty for something to come through the letterbox at work.

We work with business across the UK helping them shape their marketing activity to see return on investment alongside building their sales pipeline and customer base. To find out more contact us on 01392 796702 or email us contact@roots2market.co.uk.

Let’s start with data

Posted on by Doug Roots

We live in a world where data is everywhere, it’s more widely available than it ever used to be, and we use it more than we’ve ever done before!

As telemarketer’s, data is invaluable to us. The simple truth is that we are only as effective as the data that we use. It is our job to understand who we are calling and to establish a need, all culminating together to create a lead or opportunity for our client. With the correct and clean data, we are able to do this in an efficient manner, understanding the target market, key message and target for our clients.

But, with bad data we struggle from the outset. Using out of date, irrelevant, or confusing data causes delays to our calling, meaning we call less relevant data and have less worthwhile conversations resulting in a worse return on investment for our clients.

Data changes quickly, especially if you are working with large quantities:

  • Staff change roles or leave companies
  • Companies change locations or details
  • Businesses close
  • Company mergers happen

And this can all change the data that you hold about that company.

Telemarketing is still proven to be an extremely effective method of business development when used correctly. Here at Air, we focus on the ROI that you receive when working with us, our average return is £18 for every £1 our clients invest. But to work as effectively as possible we rely heavily on working with the right data. For this reason, we have always partnered with high quality compliant data providers who we can rely on to deliver what we require to meet our clients needs.

With GDPR changes on their way in, data has never been so under the spot light. With this in mind, we’ve created our GDPR Readiness Statement, using plain English to explain how we have got ourselves ready, to give you confidence in our operation and to provide guidance for yours.

If you’re considering starting a telemarketing campaign, get in touch for a chat to find out how we can help you with your business development and data needs.