Tuesday, January 29, 2013

IT Telemarketing Vs. Social Media – Which Will Win?


telemarketing, lead generation, IT sales leads, IT telemarketing, IT services leads, IT consulting leads, web hosting leads, cloud computing leads, IT outsourcing leads, IT telemarketing lead generation
IT companies may be wondering whether social media is really the new way to market their products and services to their customers. So what happens to other methods, such as the use of telemarketing? Is the good old calling approaching about to go down the drain as social media becomes more popular and more used by marketers?

Hold your horses! Telemarketing isn't about to go anywhere even if social media is creeping up behind it like a monster about to sink its teeth into some juicy prey. In fact, the phone is still a tool that marketers cannot be fully rid of due to the fact that it greatly helps them when it comes to lead generation. Although social media is popular nowadays, there are still some things which it isn't capable of accomplishing.

So how is IT telemarketing lead generation going to fare against social media when it comes to being part of an IT company's marketing strategy? Well, let's take a look into it.

Social media is what it is – “social”.


Sure enough, social media channels allow us to engage with prospects within our target market on a much larger scale; messages can be viewed by almost anyone and sharing good content becomes easier. We could say that by using social media we are doing lead generation a much greater levels because of the reach it has.

However, social will just be what its name implies it to be – “social”. Although you can generate leads via social media, social channels are better left to engaging and connecting with your prospects before you go in to make a more detailed offer. Social media doesn't really have enough power when it comes to converting your prospects into IT sales leads for your company – and this is something you actually want to be doing. Nonetheless, social is great for connecting with your prospects and building initial relationships.

Telemarketing converts prospects into leads – something social isn't always good for.


As said above, social media helps build relationships and is good for engaging your prospects. However, when it comes to actually converting those prospects into leads, it is a job better suited for a more direct approach. Many businesses use B2B telemarketing as part of their lead generation strategy because of its power in being able to convert prospects into leads.

Although, telemarketing doesn't have much power when it comes to actually converting prospects on the first try. Other businesses even make it a habit to email prospects their offer before setting up a call with them. Telemarketing does convert leads, however, it is best used when the prospect is already set-up for your call.

So who will win the fight in being a more effective means of generating IT outsourcing leads, web hosting leads, cloud computing leads, IT consulting leads and other IT services leads? computing leads? Judging by what we have talked about, I would say that the two stand pretty equal. No single approach is above other, and sure enough none of the two are going to be replacing the other anytime soon.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Appointment Setting Tips – Use It When Exiting To B2C

The idea of business appointment setting sounds highly corporate. And when it comes to insurance, even auto insurance firms have plenty of demand from the big business sector. On the other hand, you will always hear stories of people growing tired of the corner office atmosphere. They feel a calling to take themselves or even a part of the business to some place filled with less suits and more with just regular people. From the looks of it, things like client meetings and appointment setting strategies would seem to lose their meaning.

However, maybe you should think again. There can still be a chance for an appointment setting strategy to fit in this sudden change in a salesperson's direction.

B2B-B2C Appointment Setting: Start Focusing More On Consumer Businesses


Perhaps when your auto insurance company caters so high up the ladder, the idea of catering to consumers is a long way drop. However, you can begin your slow descent with appointment setting. There is not always a clear line between B2C and B2B. Sometimes the closer you are in the relationships between business and customer, the closer your B2B services can start transitioning. For auto insurance, this can mean starting with insurance leads that cover consumer-oriented services like taxi or bus companies.
Once you have identified your targets, that does not mean you should quickly shirk off whatever you have learned about appointment setting thus far. It may not be a good reason to cease working with your present appointment setting service. You must still remember to avoid common mistakes and plenty of the steps to working with an outsourced company can still apply.


Though speaking of steps, do remember that a drop is only a drop if you throw yourself off instead of gradually climbing down. Knowing that, here are some steps you can take to use appointment setting as a means to assist your journey down and out of the corporate culture.

  • Step 1: Identify with prospects – Setting business appointments already has this as a staple. However, the experience can differ when you have a prospect that behaves closer to a consumer. They may have a small taxi business but they are likely to take days off, get home before dinner, go to church etc. In other words, once your appointment setting process has identified your new market, you need to start aligning yourself to their image.

  • Step 2: Align with their priorities – In the big business world, priorities are numerous and complex. For regular business owners, your auto insurance offer might just give them an even bigger headache than it did you when you first started. Understand how much auto insurance really means to them. Do not belittle those who place it lower on their priorities. Avoid flattering those who you managed to take it seriously. Your appointment setting process is meant to keep you productive and it will not help if you exhibit behavior that turns off prospects with a heavy-handed corporate image.


  • Step 3: Avoid stuffing your schedule – As a final note, sometimes it helps to also work on the smaller things. There might be little point in exiting the corporate scene if you still insist your appointment setting strategy keeps bringing on the pressure. Keep it from interfering with the things you wanted try outside it. Make it clear to your appointment setting group on what days you are available and on what days you would rather spend some time off.

Appointment setting may sound like a B2B marketing process but it does not always cater to the high-end corporate culture of the business world. Who knows, maybe you outsourced a business who has just as much experience catering to more consumer-oriented services for your auto insurance sales leads.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

When Telemarketing Your Ad Services, No Sneak Attacks

Many of those in the wrong side of the telemarketing industry have a terrible habit of making sneak attacks on their prospects. Hence, both critics and bad users should alike should not complain when they get what the perceive is the typical results that the telemarketing industry is getting nowadays.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Outsourcing Lead Generation & Remaining Competitive


lead generation, IT services leads, appointment setting, IT lead generation, IT sales leads, business leads
An IT company needs an effective IT lead generation program in order for them to remain competitive in today's business world. However, when left to fend for themselves, an IT firm may not be able to create an effective strategy to help them with attracting new customers to their business. This poses as a problem as having no leads to work with means no chances of new sales.

A lead generation campaign can be said to be a way for you to wrestle away customers from your competitors. The same can be said for them. As such, your lead gen program needs to be competitive enough to give you a steady inflow of fresh IT sales leads. That, however, is difficult for IT companies that are just starting out or have no clear idea on how to generate leads.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Finding the Right Marketing Mix for Lead Generation

lead generation, sales leads, business to business leads
Having the right marketing mix will help any company to do better in lead generation. And when a business is doing well in terms of lead acquisition then we can expect to be making a large sum of profit. Of course, when you have plenty of leads to work with the chances of closing a sale are far higher. The question now is... what is the right marketing mix?

Marketers that are new to the game will not know so much about what needs to be done to help their companies they work for in terms of marketing their products and services as well as in lead generation. But with a little research here and there, even a newbie marketer will learn a thing or two about how to generate sales leads for their business and eventually will be able to come up with the right marketing mix.

What is the right marketing mix for your business?


You can ask yourself this question a hundred times over and you still wouldn't have the answer... unless of course you've already figured it out long before you stumbled across this post. Why is it that newbie marketers and business owners cannot easily answer this question? The answer is because they are just starting out and have a lot to learn.

What should you do to find the right marketing mix?


What you need to do to figure out the right marketing mix for your business is to plan, test and assess results. How else would you know if something is going to work, right? If you want to be able to turn your marketing campaign into a lead generation machine, then you are really going to have to invest time into learning what works and what doesn't.

To help you out with finding the right mix for lead generation, here are a two ideas:


  • Try the email and call approach – A lot of marketers are now using email marketing to generate business to business leads for their businesses nowadays. Also, a lot of marketers still use telemarketing in generating leads. What you can do is to combine these two marketing tactics to help you in finding new prospects. Send your prospects an email. If the response is positive, follow up with a call – simple as that!

  • Try creating content to build an email list to use in email marketing – Content marketing is great in that it helps establish your credibility and authenticity as a company as well as solidifies your authority on a certain subject matter. What it also does though is attract readers, some of which who may just subscribe to your blog. Once you have their email addresses, you can create an email list and start marketing to them.

The right marketing mix for lead generation may seem hard to discover, however, is doable when your marketing team has plenty of ideas to put to the test. Remember to plan, test and assess your marketing mix to see if it works in helping your lead generation tactics for your business.