Category: Blog

Demand generation demystified

Demand generation is exactly what you’d think, generating demand for a business’s products and services. Where it differs from lead generation is that it’s a long-term, nurturing approach that takes prospects on a journey, moving them from interesting browser to converted buyer. As prospects move through the funnel towards becoming customers, an integrated marketing and sales approach is used to ensure they remain engaged and are targeted with timely relevant content. The upshot, marketing activities can be focussed on delivering quality leads to sales teams that are much more likely to convert. Prospects that aren’t ready to buy today remain under marketing’s watchful expert eye, targeted with relevant messaging designed to maintain the relationship and influence a future purchase.

What’s involved?

Demand generation encompasses all marketing activities from brand building, tactical campaigns, social and digital efforts to targeted email marketing, what makes it distinct from traditional marketing programmes is that all activities build and nurture key relationships for the long term and closely influence the sales cycle.

Why invest the time and effort when I can reach out using lead generation activities on ad hoc basis?

Lead generation, done well, is a vital part of any successful sales strategy, but consider the following: Only 3% of your market is actively buying. 56% are not ready, 40% are poised to begin (source: Vorsight). And 63% of consumers requesting info on your company today will not purchase for at least 3 months (source: Marketing Donut). This makes every interaction a valuable touch-point and an opportunity to convert prospects down the line and importantly, one that can’t be wasted.

But my marketing team are delivering stacks of leads, why would I outsource demand generation?

79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of nurture is the main cause for this (source: Marketing Sherpa). Research shows that targeting users with content relevant to where they are in the buying process achieved 73% higher conversion rates (source: Aberdeen).

Delivering content that’s relevant to where your prospect is positioned in the buying cycle is the most effective way to achieve conversion. Unless you have a full roster of content specialists in your team, it’s a tall order to expect your in-house resource to design and implement demand creation strategies that deliver immediate results. Producing high-quality leads is the number one challenge that B2B marketers face (source: Hubspot) and, with nearly 7 in 10 marketers still unable to identify their funnel (source: Marketing Sherpa) it makes sense to on-board a partner that has deep expertise in delivering results focussed demand creation strategies into businesses. There’s no need to do away with what’s already in place, often these programmes can work in partnership with the existing marketing plans to leverage existing best practice and content.

Why Roots to Market?

At Roots to Market, we build intelligent marketing capabilities using a mixture of proven marketing tactics to reach your target audience and produce marketing qualified leads for your sales team. We offer tailored, blended services of inbound and direct marketing, automation and complete tactical campaigns, dependent on clients’ needs. If you’d like to talk more about how we can drive tangible results from your demand generation strategy, get in touch today on 01392 796 702.

Every year we find the same old chestnut rears its head. As we get past Halloween and December is just around the corner, some of our clients tell us they want to stop their sales lead generation campaigns, saying that they will restart them either in mid-January or early February. After all, the reasoning goes, everything slows down in November and then nobody is at work in December and early January. 

But should we really be writing off December and January? After all, allowing sales activity to stop in December and January means losing 17% of the selling year. That’s the same as letting your sales team work a 4-day week for 10 months of the year! Well logic seems to say that this period is not a good time to be filling the funnel and selling. But is that actually true? Is this period just the same as any other time of the year? Might it be even better? 

As a global Group, we’ve always found that December and January are a great time for lead generation activity and for years we’ve been saying to anyone who’ll listen that we get our best results of the year during this period. This year, we thought we’d go one step further and run the numbers to prove it. And the answer is a resounding “yes”.

We looked at those clients who kept their lead generation campaigns going over this period (other than during our break from 20 December 2018 to 8 January 2019). We compared the results we got for them during December and January and compared these with the results we got for them in the three months prior (September to November). What we found was: 

• Call rates increased by 26%; 

• Conversations with Decision Makers increased by 18%; 

• The time required to generate a qualified sales lead dropped by 51% 

So (as we’ve been saying to anyone who will listen) it turns out that there are people at work during the December/January period – lots of them, in fact. And when you think about it, our results make complete sense.  

Sure, our call rate increased because some people are not back at work yet, so we have to make more calls to reach each decision maker, but we still had more conversations with decision makers. And for those people who are back at work, it’s quiet. They’re getting things done and they’re thinking strategically about the year ahead. They have more time to take our calls and are more open to having a conversation with our agents. All of this means that we set many more appointments in December and January than at any other time of the year. 

However, the clients that saw the biggest improvement in their results were those who started back with us right at the beginning of January. For those that came back in mid-January or later there was far less of an impact on their results. And on reflection that makes sense too, because there was very little loss of sales momentum on their lead generation campaigns. 

Now there are some caveats with this, of course. 

• If your customers are retailers, are running restaurants or cafes, or if they are schools, then you’re not going to want to do much in December and January because these groups either aren’t there (schools) or don’t have the time to talk to us (due to peak season demand). 

• If you have a very niche market (less than 100 potential customers to reach in the market you want to target), it makes sense to avoid December and early January. People are away at this time and with such a small market to reach, there’s too much likelihood that calls will stall. 

If that’s not you, why wouldn’t you keep your lead generation and sales activity humming as late into December as possible and restarting in early January? At worst, the results you get will be the same as you got in the previous months. At best, you could see a 51% (or more) increase in leads generated for your sales team.

But what if your reason for pausing sales activity is that your sales team take a large chunk of December and January off? Well, going forwards you might want to think about changing this: should they be away for that period of time when it is such a good time to meet prospects? But in the short term, we’ve found that calls made in late December and early January can be used effectively to set up meetings for your sales team when they get back so that they hit the ground running from day 1. You’re still clawing back as much of that “missed” 17% of the year as you can, giving you and your team the best chances of meeting and exceeding their sales targets for the year.   

Are you ready to increase your sales leads by 51%?

If you are thinking about running an outsourced sales campaign, don’t think about putting it off till next year, get up and running now – we’re coming into our peak performance period and you’ll get really great results. If you would like help implementing and conducting a successful outsourced sales campaign, get in touch. Our expert team have years of experience across a broad range of industries and will be able to help you reach your business and sales goals.

Call: 0345 241 3038 or visit our contact us page.

It’s common knowledge that the telemarketing industry carries with it strong stereotypes. The word ‘telemarketing’ has a negative connotation for many and this has resulted in an abundance of myths becoming associated with telemarketing.

This is extremely unfortunate for one of the most direct routes to market with incredible case studies to back it up. As a company that sees our clients get great results out of telemarketing campaigns, we’ve set out to debunk these and explore why they really are just myths.

FALSE: Telemarketing diallers always have to stick to scripts
Sticking to strict scripts does not result in conversations that are tailored to each and every individual on the phone. Although there may be some structure to the calls, a strict script is not adhered to. This enables real conversations that adapt to the prospect’s needs, build a relationship and trust in your brand.

FALSE: There’s no emotion – each call is just a number
If our diallers had no emotion and didn’t care, we wouldn’t have achieved what we had in the last financial year. Each call isn’t just a call. It’s a conversation which looks in to pain points and reasons why a service or product might help someone. This therefore requires a deeper and emotional understanding that goes way beyond statistics.

FALSE: Complex products or services can’t be sold over the phone
This all comes down to training. We would agree that without the right training, no product or service can be sold over the phone. If you’re looking to work with an outsourced telemarketing supplier, it’s important to understand that full training is carried out in order for telemarketers to be confident in what they’re talking about. At Air, we work on a vast range of products and services, which means we have to be seriously clued up on the details of each and what they could potentially offer a prospect. In the last financial year, we conducted 534 hours 45 minutes of training focused on our clients’ products and services.

FALSE: Telemarketers are inexperienced staff that don’t stick around
The phrase ‘call centre’ brings with it connotations which surround the idea of young and inexperienced team members who leave not long before their seat is warm. At Air, our diallers are ex-directors, business owners and sales professionals from a variety of backgrounds, spanning a wide age range. We take pride in nurturing all employees who wish to build a career with us – read Yasmin’s story here.

FALSE: Dishonest or aggressive methods are used to win sales
The belief that telemarketers hammer the phones, they’re aggressive and their practices are dishonest is one that is far from true. Before any campaign, we ensure that our data is as clean as possible with the right information and that we adhere to any TPS registers. Ethical selling and quality assurance are at the top of our priority list.

FALSE: Cold calling is dead
And this is the biggest myth of them all! There’s an ongoing debate which is based on the concept that cold calling just doesn’t work anymore. This simply isn’t true. Moreover, the results from both telemarketing and multi-channel marketing campaigns are proving this ideology wrong every year. In fact, our clients make an average return of £18 for every £1 they spent with us.

At Air Marketing Group, we don’t throw mud at a wall and hope some of it sticks; we look to nurture leads to encourage conversions. Read our top 10 tips for successful telemarketing blog here.

We’re passionate about the way we work with your business. We’ll ensure that any questions or uncertainties you may have surrounding a campaign with us are answered.

To arrange a free consultation with one of our Sales Directors, get in touch today or call 0345 241 3038.

The relationship between sales and marketing is famously a rocky one. If something goes wrong in the sales funnel, it’s easy to point blame at one another. If you work B2B, it’s likely that you’ve come across this argument around lead generation and conversion at some point in your career. Sales will often suggest that marketing have provided low quality, unqualified leads, or even a lack of leads. On the defending side, Marketing may imply that Sales don’t follow up leads and if they do, they don’t do it properly.

So how do you take the best from each department and turn the relationship into a happy union, resulting in business success for all?

Persona production
Marketing are fantastic at knowing the industry and who they should be targeting in regards to job titles, seniority and location. However, Sales can provide a valuable insight into which professionals both are and aren’t converting as leads and why. By working together and incorporating market research, comprehensive personas can be produced, or current versions refreshed. This will help Marketing to better target desired audiences and Sales to personalise pitches – resulting in increased acquisition.

Content collaboration
There’s an ongoing Marketing perception that the content they produce specifically for Sales is rarely utilised. Having worked together building and defining personas, take your new-found relationship to the next level by planning for and producing strategic content that targets leads at just the right time in the sales cycle. Naturally, Sales observe real FAQs and issues throughout the lead nurturing process and Marketing can turn these challenges into helpful solution assets.

Another great content strategy to consider is ghostwriting. Marketing can help build the credibility of Sales by positioning them as thought leaders in blogs and on social media. This will help build trust and most importantly, convert leads.

Strategy syncing
Turn your content collaboration into a long-term shared strategy that incorporates sponsored ads, email campaigns, social media, blogs, whitepapers and events (to name a few areas – depending on your business!). Supporting a shared message between Sales and Marketing will unify brand communications and tackle common goals.

Goal sharing
Defining shared goals may seem like an odd suggestion at top-level but there are a few insightful KPIs (key performance indicators) that complement the Sales and Marketing mix. After all, we are all working towards the same end game of improving the bottom line. Our partner and B2B lead generation software provider, Lead Forensics, suggest a variety of interesting KPIs including:
• Number of leads per channel
• Number of leads per asset
• Conversion rate of landing pages
• Ratios of MQLs (marketing qualified leads) to SQLs (sales qualified leads) and closed
• Lead scoring
• Email open rate
• Email click-through rate
• Cost of content

CRM integration
Integrating a Sales and Marketing CRM, such as Hubspot, is a brilliant solution for data sharing and visibility. Make the most of your CRM by setting lead scoring. ‘Lead scoring is the process of assigning values, often in the form of numerical “points,” to each lead you generate for the business. You can score your leads based on multiple attributes, including the professional information they’ve submitted to you and how they’ve engaged with your website and brand across the internet. This process helps sales and marketing teams prioritise leads, respond to them appropriately, and increase the rate at which those leads become customers.’ Learn more here.

Consistent communication
We all know that Sales have a competitive nature, but rivalry can be detrimental to business growth. Sometimes what can be seen as a lack of respect is actually a lack of understanding. In a busy environment, it’s important to set aside the time to keep each other up to date with anything that may be relevant to the other team, discuss your shared strategy, ideas and goals using easy to follow terminology. Analysing what both Sales and Marketing believe is working, who it’s working for and what could be improved will enhance synergy and streamline a route to success.

How do we know this works?
After exponential growth in our first two years as an outsourced sales agency, our ever-growing client base were often looking for other marketing services that could be provided to them within the group. We sensed a niche opportunity to help clients with their full marketing and sales demand creation by launching our marketing services line. As demand generation specialists, we build intelligent marketing capabilities to deliver marketing qualified leads to sales teams within ambitious sales led organisations.

Our sales and marketing services teams have been successfully working side-by-side for several years now – supporting one another, as well as clients, with their sales and marketing needs. We know that having a happy union between sales and marketing produces results and believe that this relationship should be at the forefront of businesses who are looking to grow.

If you are interested in exploring how Air Marketing can help you grow your business, contact us today: 0345 241 3038 / contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

In-house vs outsourced. You’re a business owner or a Marketing Director and you need to decide whether you invest in building a marketing team to conduct activity in-house or outsourcing it to an agency – so how do you decide?

Clearly there are pros and cons to each option and to ensure that you are making the right decision for your business, we’ve taken a look into some of the considerations below.

In-house

Pros

An in-house marketing team are absorbed within the culture of your business each and every day. They are bought into the company growth and success. This means that they live and breathe your brand voice, values and mission, providing consistency throughout all of your marketing activity.

Your in-house team benefit from continual training opportunities on your product/service portfolio as they will be working alongside the likes of Product Managers, Operations Directors etc. This gives great clarity of your offering, messaging and benefits to your customers etc which will be advantageous to your marketing activity.

Communication in many instances can be quicker and more streamlined. Unless you are a large corporate, you’re likely to be working in the same time zone, in the same language and in many cases, in the same office.

There is a perception that you have more control of your marketing team if they are working for you in-house rather than outsourced. This point is debatable as some marketing teams work very independently and many are now flexibly much more homebased, but there is still a perception that as they are ‘your’ team, their workload, working times and focus areas are within your control.

Cons

You have to invest your time and budget into the recruitment and appointment of the right marketing individuals to make up your team.

You have a high ongoing cost for the management of this marketing team – not only should you consider salaries but also all costs such as national insurance, work socials, training budgets, travel budgets etc.

Finding the right talent for your budget can be a challenge for some businesses. There are so many aspects to your marketing strategy and plan that you need a wide range of skills and expertise which are not necessarily found within just 1 or even 2 people. If you’re unable to find the right talent to cover all aspects, you may have to face the extra expense of supplementing your team with freelancers.

Creative idea creation is an extremely important aspect of the marketing team, but when your head is within the brand every single day it can have a negative impact on your creativity, making you more stagnant.

Outsourced

Pros

You have no people overhead costs, only the agreed agency spend budget to be concerned about. For this agreed agency spend budget, you’re likely to have a wide range of skillsets at your fingertips. The individuals employed within an agency should be up to date with access to the latest trends, technology and training to deliver the best possible experience to their clients. You benefit from this without having to invest your time alongside money to gain the skills of these marketers.

In many cases an outsourced marketing team are likely to have much more focus than an in-house team. Whether it is a project or a retained activity/number of hours an outsourced team have to be accountable for what happens to your investment and will be keen to demonstrate the value they have added. This means they are likely to be working in a much more efficient yet focused way to meet/exceed KPIs and target deliverables.

An outsourced agency can bring a new perspective because they spend their time being immersed in different campaigns/projects/brands. They experience what works well for other companies or industries and they can take those learnings and help apply them to your business. This can open an in-house marketer’s eyes to a tactic or strategy that they may have never considered before.

The flexibility and reactiveness of an outsourced team will always be greater than that of an in-house team. Whether you’re looking to outsource all your marketing activity or just a project. Whether you are a strategic marketer who needs assistance with delivery, or you have delivery resource in-house but you’re lacking the strategic thinking. All these bespoke options can be available much faster and more flexibly by working with an outsourced team rather than having to go through further employing in-house.

Cons

At the beginning of your partnership with an outsourced agency you will have to invest your time in immersing and training the agency on your brand, products/service offering and importantly your tone of voice. It is to be expected that even after this initial training you’re likely to need to support the agency with proofing/approving content and design in the early stages of an engagement. But the longer your relationship grows and the more you partner together; the outsourced team should become an extension of your in-house team.

In some cases communication can be slower between in-house teams and agency teams. Not being based in the same offices, sometimes not in even in the same country/language can add restrictions. What we find important is setting a clear process at the beginning of our partnership together. What is the best method of communication, how often should we be having account calls and who needs to be involved, how often do you want/need reports etc.

For some companies, outsourcing is an expensive option in comparison to utilising individuals who already reside in-house. Marketing should always be viewed as an investment rather than an expense, but if costs simply outweigh the value you feel you’d achieve from outsourcing then you need to seriously consider if it is right for your business.

Consistency of quality can be a con for partnering with an outsourced agency. If you experience a gap in perception between what you the business considers as good quality and what your outsourced agency considers as good quality, this is going to cause issues. Whether it is a one-off or an ongoing series, you have to be assured that the agency you have chosen to partner with are aligned to your perceptions, your aims and your expectations. If you cannot align, your partnership is unlikely to be long lasting.

There is a lot to consider when it comes to in-house vs outsourced and is not a decision to be rushed. Research is key, alongside analysing your business’ goals against the skills and experience and strengths and weaknesses of your in-house team or your available talent pool. Be realistic not optimistic with this decision. What is the best decision for the business at this moment in time and for the near future to reach your business goals? There is of course nothing to say that you don’t opt for a mixture, dependant on your budgets, where you seemingly are able to acquire ‘the best of both worlds’ if this works for your business, your team and your bank balance.

Key points to research include:

• Checking your values align with the prospective agency
• Understand if they have the expertise to help you reach your goals
• Checking their case studies and testimonials for real life examples of their work
• Starting the conversation with them to have a frank chat about your challenges and their experience to help you

If reading this has inspired you to get in touch for a chat, reach out on 01392 796702.

Are you marketing or are you starting a movement?

‘Marketing, it’s just about making things look pretty and fussing over colours and typefaces.’ Believe it or not, I’ve heard someone say this recently, and I’ll be honest I was surprised. I know that this is the opinion of the skills of the industry from times gone by, but I actually believed that these (simply incorrect) opinions had diminished. But it looks like us marketers still need to educate people on what our skills and goals really are.

Now I appreciate that every marketer, marketing department and organisation will have a different focus, different budgets and different methods which they find successful. But I think there is an overriding change of mentality here which should be considered. What is the goal – to simply conduct ‘some marketing’ or to create a movement towards your brand.

You’ll notice that over the last few years, across the globe but especially here in the UK, we’ve felt a movement happening. It’s been across every channel that we come into contact with whether it’s, watching a documentary on TV, hearing a news bulletin, overhearing discussions between colleagues/friends/family, seeing more ‘environmentally friendly’ branding and packaging, the list goes on.

The movement I am referencing of course, is that of climate change and the impact that humans are having on the earth including plastics. You may be thinking, why is a marketing agency writing about this, unless they want to be seen to have extra corporate social responsibility (CSR) points by covering this topic.

No, that isn’t the reason for this blog.

It was brought to my attention recently that a successful movement, such as the climate movement, has all the same ‘ingredients’ that you require for really powerful and effective marketing movement. So let’s look into that:

MESSAGE

A strong, clear message that people want to be part of, get behind and believe in. For any marketing movement, the message needs to be truthful (we’ve all seen a car wash garage who are the best in the UK, then you drive up the road and see another, how many are there claiming to be the best) and uncomplicated (people need to remember your message to get behind it).

AUTHENTICITY

There are so many messages trying to capture our attention every day, how do you get a message to people that will actually get heard and make a difference? This is where authenticity makes the most impact. People are inherently less trusting in this digital age, so you need to gain peoples trust and find a way to ensure people care about the values behind a marketing movement. People put more research goes into the why before any form of engagement can begin, especially the younger generation, as they want to align themselves with brands who share their values and who they truly believe are authentic.

CHAMPION

Putting ‘a face’ to a brand adds to your authenticity, providing it is a carefully chosen and seen as the right face. Don’t purely pick the person with the most followers, the cheapest or the one that the MD likes the most – find the champion with the most affinity who can really drive your marketing movement forward in the right way.

DELIVERY CHANNELS

You’ve got your message, your champion and you’ve established your point of authenticity, now you need to get this out to the public. Deciding on the most effective delivery channels to get your message in front of people to form your following is something that can be a struggle. It all takes time and in many cases costs money which can be restricted for some brands. There are so many delivery channels available meaning it is important to conduct the right research to discover the most relevant channels to utilise for your key audience and even why they use those channels – are they listeners, are they active, do they just utilise it for research etc. Social media, videos, TV, snippets in magazines, posters, gathering protests; are all examples of delivery channels available to your brand.

FOLLOWING

The way that any brand can make a difference is by creating a strong and loyal following. If a following isn’t established, you just become another noise in an already noisy world.

As a brand your aim is to create a movement, give your followers something strong to grasp hold of, keep them aware of everything that you are doing and give them a reason to stay passionate about your brand.

Not every brand can afford to create a movement like that of the climate movement, that I know. However, what I take from this is that for marketers to really hold their ground within organisations and at the board, we need to be able to demonstrate the value that we hold. We have the ability to create a movement, with the right ingredients and the right budget, and with this in mind the skills that we bring to the table should be not only utilised but appreciated. Every brand would love to reap the benefits of starting a movement – so is it time for us to rethink how we market?

I’ll leave you with one last thought:

“It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.” ― Greta Thunberg

Opinion piece by Head of Marketing Services, Verity Studley-Wootton.

It’s no surprise that when clients begin working with us, and throughout our partnership, their top concern is leads and building a strong pipeline. Even though leads are important, they are only worthwhile if they are of good quality. So, whilst businesses may want to generate leads as quickly as possible and build that pipeline over a short period of time, at Air our top priority is reminding prospects and clients that this takes time. Quality leads don’t appear overnight.

Definition:

When a client begins working with us, the first step is to put a defined strategy in place, including an in-depth criterion which highlights what a quality lead looks like to the client. Ultimately, we can sit and dial as many people as a prospect would like us to, but if we don’t fully understand their target audience and we therefore ring unqualified data, the leads won’t convert – they may not even appear.

In order to help both us and our clients fully understand what defines a quality lead, we’ll sit down and discuss the target audience. There are a number of defining factors we would look at to qualify leads, including:

• Budget
• Contract Length
• Seniority of Decision Maker
• Geography
• Industry
• Company Size

Training:

In order to make sure that the defined lead qualification criteria are adhered to, we implement various processes following on from our initial conversation. Perhaps the most important one being training.

Training is central to everything we do at Air, as we understand that by investing time into growing the overall knowledge of our team, we will produce higher return for our clients. Each individual has the same access to training on a client campaign and an individual training budget for anything else they feel they need, whether that’s confidence, gate keeper or closing training, for example. With everyone working from the same level of training, we know that understanding is uniform, and leads are quality guaranteed.

For general campaign training, we welcome input and love for our clients to visit the office and get involved – after all, if you want leads for your business, no one has more insight than those within it. From initial campaign training, to on-going training provided by our Account Directors and Executives throughout a campaign, we know that it is vital that everyone is on the same page, understanding exactly what qualifies a lead and ensuring that the correct channels of communication are in place if any changes arise.

Transparency:

From the get-go, we are transparent. You know exactly what stage we’re at and how your campaign is performing. We know that this is key to providing you with quality leads as you are able to provide us feedback throughout the campaign and work to fully optimise your results. In the same vein, we can also make suggestions as we go along and develop a strong, beneficial, two-way relationship that will provide you with a pipeline of quality leads. If you feel that you need help building and maintaining a strong pipeline of quality leads, get in touch today. Our expert team will work with you to fully understand your business before implementing a quality focused campaign. Call: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-maketing.co.uk

Dependant on your business and the goals you want to achieve, there are a number of things to consider when running a successful telemarketing campaign. We’ve complied our top 10 tips for successful telemarketing below, with links to our blog archive for more information.

1. Understand Your USP

Today, very few businesses are totally one-of-a-kind. So, it is vital that you develop a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to help you to highlight what makes you a little bit different and stand out amongst the crowd. It helps if you can encapsulate this in a snappy slogan:

FedEx Corporation

“When it absolutely, positively has to be overnight”.

A strong USP will:

• Make the customer feel valued: what pain points can you solve for them that others in the industry can’t, or simply don’t look into?
• Avoid the superstar effect: don’t simply claim to be the best. Companies often strive to be the best, but the first thing your USP should strive for is a point of difference.
• Help to sell your product: it’s a form of differentiation that needs to be built around selling more products and services, not just to make your business a quirky brand that stands out but can’t get traction.

2. Know Your Audience and Utilise Market Segmentation

A simple and effective way to build a trustworthy brand is by implementing a segmentation strategy, however 20% of respondents to an Avention survey felt 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 this.

3. Gather Quality Data

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. Understanding the target market, key message and goal for our clients will help us to gain the correct data. With data that has been cleansed, we are able to do this in an efficient manner.

4. Place an Importance on Ethical Selling

At Air, we are honest and transparent, we never sell to a prospect who we know we can’t deliver for, whether that’s based on their budget or our capabilities, and this should be universal. Sales people often end up being tarred with the same brush, of being arrogant and pushy, driven by commission and not caring for their clients.

Businesses who demonstrate a clear focus on working with their clients for the long-term and help them to make smart business decision, will fare far better than those who are pushing for a one-off sale, clearly without taking into consideration the needs, values or constraints of the potential client. 

5. Hire Strong Telemarketers

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. Your team need to be able to:

• Absorb campaign training and fully understand the product they are selling.
• Stop talking and listen to what the prospect is saying. They may have the ‘gift of the gab’ but if they aren’t able to fully understand the needs of the prospect, they won’t be able to sell to a truly qualified lead.
• Lead intelligent conversations, ask questions and delve a little deeper. Those that give up at the first gatekeeper or objection will hinder campaign progression.
• Put mind over matter. Many of their conversations will end in a no, but if they let this wear them down, their motivation will fall and that golden opportunity may just pass them by.

6. Clearly Communicate the Value of Your Product

An inability to communicate their Value Proposition is one of the biggest inhibitors to businesses when looking to attract new customers and reach sales targets, with only 24% of organisations agreeing on the definition of their target audience. So how can you avoid that and make your value known?

• Make sure that you and your team fully understand your offering before you sell.
• Be customer-centric, demonstrate that you know your market and their needs.
• Hire professional sales people with experience in your industry.
• Use the human voice and make use of those telemarketing calls – don’t use automated systems.

7. Invest in Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is a great way of introducing your product or service across multiple touchpoints, 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.

8. Be Transparent Throughout Your Customer Journey

At Air, we provide our clients with live time reporting through a client portal so that they can see campaigns unfold to the minute and all call recordings. In doing this, we are able to build a relationship based on trust and accountability, and we encourage our clients to extend this to those that they on board through us. At the end of the day, in sales trust is key. People won’t part with their money if they don’t fully buy into both you and your product/service.

9. Manage Your Growing Pipeline

When developing your sales pipeline, it is essential that you have a definitive sales process. A few basic steps to follow when implementing a sales pipeline are:

• Clearly outline the stages your sales process will follow.
• Define the number of leads that you require to reach your sales target. From there, work out your average conversion rate. This will then allow you to outline how many leads you need to generate to enter this process in order to hit your target.
• Analyse what all of the converting leads have in common – how were they generated and converted which includes the activities of your marketing team, the actions your sales reps take and the feedback from your prospects, to help you shape future work.

10. Listen to Customer Feedback

Listening to customer feedback is especially vital for telephone-based sales professionals who are representing start-ups, businesses choosing to release a new product or service, and those marketing an existing product or service to a new audience. Asking customers, or potential customers, for their feedback is a key step in the process of reaching a sale, enabling you to assess your product/service, refine its offering and match to the customers’ requirements.

If you feel that you could use our help implementing and conducting a successful telemarketing campaign, get in touch. Our expert team have years of experience across a range of industries and we will be able to help you reach your business goals. Call: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk

We live in a digital world where browsing the internet, especially social media, on a daily basis undeniably shapes and influences our lives. As marketeers, we have the power to use social media to make a significant difference to business performance – not only in the soft, traditional sense of building brand awareness but by Digital Lead gen – generating valuable marketing qualified leads.

Leads are a form of data identifiable through unique information such as a name, email address or phone number. Generating these leads is a primary goal of sales-driven businesses, aiming to maximise the amount of people from their target audience in their sales funnel. Leads tend to enter the funnel fairly cold and, once sent information that is relevant and of interest to them, alongside conversations are nurtured through to encourage conversion.

In this blog we discover why so many businesses use digital lead generation and provide you with our top 10 tips for success.

Why so many businesses use digital lead generation:

A high number of quality leads: Intelligent audience targeting and geotargeting combined with a vast number of users means that with the right content and budget, this type of marketing activity is an effective way to generate a high number of quality leads. What more could you want?

Cost-effective: With most social media lead generation activity on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, you only pay for activity. This is a great way to easily manage your budget and monitor spend against return-on-investment (ROI).

To track conversions: By integrating social media accounts with your CRM, you can track where your converted leads have come from and use this information to inform ROI. Real-time delivery of results also means that you can engage with leads immediately.

Optimisation: As changes to most social media channel algorithms now make it difficult to gain organic reach, businesses are always on the look out for other ways to optimise their social media accounts – paid activity is a fantastic way to do so. Additionally, being relatively easy to monitor and report, digital lead generation can be optimised through A/B testing to ensure budgets are efficiently spent on the best performing ads or LinkedIn InMail messages.

Top 10 tips for success:

1. Implement persona marketing to refine your target market.
2. Use visual content and copy that is relevant and interesting to your target audience.
3. Produce gated content (e.g. whitepapers, case studies, vlogs, infographics, webinars) and email opt-ins to capture lead data.
4. Include a call-to-action, directing leads to take actions that are going to be of value (e.g. form completion).
5. Consider what activities you are going to do to directly remarket to your leads and nurture them through the sales funnel (e.g. email marketing, direct mail, telemarketing and appointment setting).
6. Allow activity to run for 2 weeks, then set aside time in your schedule to regularly review and optimise.
7. Mix-up your strategy – use paid activity to complement organic outbound and inbound social activities.
8. Find and engage directly with leads on social media.
9. Stay up to date with the latest social media trends and channel updates – implement them to stay ahead of the game.
10. Outsource to the experts.

Is digital lead generation a part of your marketing strategy? Understanding your business aims, marketing goals and sales objectives, the Roots to Market team can help you shape your digital marketing to get the most out of your investment. We will advise you on the best strategy for your target market and your budget. Schedule a call with us to learn more: 01392 796 702 or email contact@roots2market.co.uk