Telemarketing

Telemarketing has been around since the 1950s. Since then it has become one of the fixtures of the marketing industry. Businesses hire telemarketing companies for several reasons including lead generation, sales, outbound and inbound marketing. The role played by telesales firms had remained fairly constant in the business community until a few years ago when larger numbers of companies realised that they could save money and resources by farming out all of their customer service requirements to telemarketing firms. Telesales companies were more than happy to meet the growing demand for competent and reliable phone representation being required by businesses. Hence, the telemarketing industry exploded and is now a multi-billion dollar industry that is helping fuel the economies of several third world countries.

Telemarketing is now far more than just basic sales. Telesales services have honed their offerings to a science that can help businesses predict just how well a campaign is going, how effective the script being used is and when a follow-up campaign would be most beneficial. Today businesses can buy targeted call lists that contain the numbers of the right demographics for whatever your company is selling. If you are trying to target a certain age-group, gender, ethnicity or business community, you will be able to find the call list to help you zone in on your clientele.

Before the boom being experienced now in the telemarketing industry, it was forced to undergo a fundamental shift in the way that it did business. With new regulations in place in several countries protecting consumer privacy rights and with the new consumer-centric forms of marketing taking hold of the business arena, it was necessary for telemarketing companies to change the nature of the cold call. Instead of just a one-way pitch, the call became a conversation in which the telesales agent would try to glean what the customer wanted. It became far more specific and much more effective. Furthermore, telemarketing companies began weaning off the cold call and replacing it with a event-based or trigger-based telesales campaigns. Basically what this means is that telemarketing companies would call a client based on an action that they had taken – for instance filling out a company coupon at a trade show. The effectiveness of such calling is far superior to the traditional cold call and produces better results for the companies retaining the telemarketing services.

Another change that was instituted was calling customers who had done business with the company in question in the past 18 months. Additionally telemarketing companies began calling customers who specifically requested information on a company or service.

Predictive marketing was another big boon to the telemarketing company. Technology that helps to predict patterns in demographic behaviour has helped to further refine the effectiveness of telemarketing campaigns. Using predictive marketing methods you can predict the most receptive time of day to call your clients as well as the most ideal level of service that your customers will require.

The demise of the telemarketing industry has been foretold several times. However, the effectiveness of telesales means that it will be around for a long time. The changes that the industry has already made to meet the changing consumer marketing landscape also means that the industry is willing to change to stay viable and effective.

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