Combine Telemarketing And Awareness To Quickly Identify Demand

The energy industry is an industry that covers different forms, applies different sciences, and caters to different markets. Despite that, there are common, unifying, but sad traits that are faced by everyone in the industry: cost and scarcity. Awareness of these, however, can actually help things improve if combined with precision lead generation techniques like telemarketing.

For one thing, awareness of problems will help you get a general idea of how your entire market (which includes both current clients and prospective ones) is behaving towards your industry. Meanwhile, targeted telemarketing can react to this behavior and further confirm any demands as well acquire more specific information about individual businesses. Consider it a gradual descent from general information to more specific details of their needs and preferences.

Now, here are some of the following problems and perceptions people have about energy and power companies:

• Expenses – Factors such as the rising cost of fuel, the expensive research for cheaper alternatives, and even just the maintenance of current sources are just a fraction of the cost-related issues people have with this industry.

• Scarcity – Speaking of which, these costs are popularly believed to be the result of scarcity. And in fact, this can be true in some cases. If you find these cases to be though, it's constantly brought up in various political and economic discussions on the issue of energy resources.

• Inconvenience – Aside from major issues like costs and scarcity, you have minor issues like inconvenient power outages. Consumers aren't the only ones you should be worried about. A more painful backlash could come from business owners who find such outages damaging to their businesses.

Any of these could be a cause for concern for your market. The key is to first be aware of the large picture before narrowing down to different individual businesses. A few ways to maintain awareness include:

• News and current events – These issues are more than just a business' concern. It's everyone's concern from the politicians to the homeowners. Because of that, these issues usually make the news. Pay attention to any changes in prices and try and predict reactions from your market. Use outbound telemarketing to engage your customers and prospects to see if your predictions prove to be accurate.

• Event hosting/participation – Given the urgency of the issue, hosting or attending related events is not a bad idea. It gives you exposure and a large venue to exchange information on important issues. Inbound telemarketing services can be used to receive additional inquiries while outbound calls can send personal invitations to your customers.

• Surveys – Surveys can be done in numerous ways with more varying measures of size and scope. Regardless, it's another good way to generate feedback and understand what the market is thinking. Inbound telemarketing can also be used to receive additional input should participants have something more to say.

Once you've obtained the information and awareness of basic problems, you can then market your efforts to fulfill these demands and analyze the traits of those who makes them the most. This could mean a change in marketing messages or even an entirely new solution for sales to offer when pursuing targeted sales leads. Identifying demand is one of the first steps of marketing after all. Combine the power of general information and that of well-aimed marketing efforts.

Is Telemarketing Dead With The Rest Of Marketing In General?

Bill Lee of the HBR Blog Network caused quite a stir recently after publishing an entry that declared the death of traditional marketing as it is making way for a new paradigm that's customer-centric and more highly controlled by social influence. So, does this mean it applies to telemarketing as well?

Well while many in the comments are finding the article insightful, the same can also be said of the discussions among them. Some of the noteworthy ones come from those who find Lee's definition of marketing 'narrow' as opposed to the definition covering a wide array of practices (which, ironically, include the alternatives that Lee himself is advocating). So just what is it that Lee is advocating as a sort of 'replacement' for marketing? Will it truly 'kill' marketing (and telemarketing with it)?

“Restore community marketing. Used properly, social media is accelerating a trend in which buyers can increasingly approximate the experience of buying in their local, physical communities.”

It goes further on and says that social media is the medium of which businesses can start replicating the community that markets for the company instead of themselves. That might sound ideal for marketing to consumers but what about B2B? Are decision makers really the types to rely solely on peer-review? Are they just going to instantly be influenced by the words they'll read on a forum or social-networking site?

“Find your customer influencers. Many firms spend lots of resources pursuing outside influencers who've gained following on the Web and through social media. A better approach is to find and cultivate customer influencers and give them something great to talk about.”

Sure, find customer influencers. Just one question: How do you plan on contacting them? They're still customers too you know, and in B2B, a customer with that high amount of influence is going to have a very well-guarded communication line (from email to telephone) and is also not likely to be influenced by just peer-reviews.

“Help them build social capital. Practitioners of this new, community-oriented marketing are also rethinking their customer value proposition for such MVP (or "Customer Champion" or "Rockstar") customer advocates and influencers.”

Making it easier for your advocates to influence in the world of B2B might still warrant an appointment setter or at least a flexible, multi-channeled means of communicating for exchanging information. Sharing data that backs up their sphere of influence is good but wouldn't it better if you showed them how to properly use and understand that information?

“Get your customer advocates involved in the solution you provide. Perhaps the most spectacular example of this comes from the non-profit world... Using the techniques for building a community of peer influence, Florida solved it. They sought influential teen "customers" such as student leaders, athletes, and "cool kids," who weren't smoking or who wanted to quit — and instead of pushing a message at them, they asked for the students' help and input.”

If you try and make a B2B version out of this, it sounds suspiciously like getting customer feedback and the only significant difference is that it's limited to strong customer influencers. That still doesn't rule out the need for communication (the kind of which telemarketing can provide for inbound customer input).

In short, he might have a point about relying more on customer communities for marketing. It compliments the rising demand for customer freedom. Still, his proposed model requires a form of communication between the key influencers of that community and the companies themselves. Social media may not be enough for that kind of communication.

Modern Marketing Misconceptions Your Appointment Setter Must Avoid

About a month ago, the Harvard Business Review published a three part series that dealt with modern misconceptions among marketing professionals today.

But first, just what is being meant by 'modern'? It's modern because these misconceptions are not only relatively new, they're new because they're spawned from a new idea that originally was very ideal. At the same time, this ideal actually brought very positive results. The misconceptions however are the result of acting upon that ideal in the wrong way.

So what is this ideal? It's simply a strong focus on the consumer and less upon the business. It's the sort of marketing approach that is actually emphasized by channels like social media. Nobody wants a pushy salesman who doesn't care about what customers think. Everyone loves the salesman who kowtows to their demands for information and freedom of choice.