8 Telemarketing Strategies To Attract More Local Customers
There are several things business owner can do to attract more customers. For one, companies can showcase their products and services via billboards on the side of the road. Business owners can also pay for television ad vacancies so thousands of people can see their business. These are two of the most commonly-used marketing strategies as it reaches a lot of people within a short period of time.
Unfortunately, these strategies are often quite expensive, which is why most commercials on TVs and billboards come from established companies. But that’s not to say you won’t be able to attract more customers if you’re managing a small or medium enterprise.
Apart from traditional commercial and billboard marketing, you can use alternative marketing strategies, one great example is telemarketing.
A Brief Overview Of Telemarketing
Telemarketing is the process of promoting one’s products and services to an individual via phone calls or web conferencing. Originally, the process starts when the telemarketer dials a number and tries to convince the prospects to buy from their business. Telemarketers can do this with or without pre-determined responses. However, times have changed, and just like any other marketing strategy, telemarketing has become a lot more advanced.
To be precise, telemarketing can now involve an autodialer–a program that automatically dials numbers of prospective customers. Autodialers tend to have additional features as well. Take Drop Cowboy, for example. In this, users can set up responses for specific messages from the prospect. By doing so, a business owner can fully automate the telemarketing process.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t change the fact that telemarketing is essentially the opposite of billboard and television commercials; instead of advertising to numerous people at once, telemarketing involves promoting the business to one person at a time. At first glance, it may seem inefficient. But with the right strategy, telemarketing can be highly profitable.
Alas, if you intend to target local customers, you’re going to have to take your telemarketing game up a notch. On that note, here are a few strategies to get you started:
1. Decide How You’ll Approach Telemarketing
The first step to telemarketing is to determine your target audience. But considering how you’re focusing on local customers, that seems to have already been settled. The next step would be to decide how you’ll approach telemarketing.
For this, you have three options:
- In-House: Your first option is to accomplish your goal all by yourself; that is, using solely your resources and employees. This is the most challenging option since you’ll need to figure out telemarketing first or at least create a team dedicated to the task.
Fortunately, in the event where you or the team succeeds with the project, you won’t have to worry about anything else, which is often a problem with the other options.
- Outsourcing: The second option is to hire an agency to do all the telemarketing tasks for you. Of course, this can cost a hefty sum of money, which is one of its cons.
However, since you’ll be handing over the responsibility to the agency, it’s likely that you will no longer have the authority to influence their decisions.
- Software-Based: If your business is busy enough as it is but you’re not willing to pay and hand over control to another agency, you might want to consider purchasing specialized software. By doing so, you still retain control over the telemarketing endeavor while still being more efficient than you would’ve been if you chose the first option.
If you chose the first, the succeeding strategies should be more than enough to get you started. If you’re leaning towards the software option, you need to look for reliable auto dialer software. Call Cowboy might be an excellent place to start if that’s the case. But if you chose to outsource your telemarketing department, you need to be thorough when looking for a suitable agency.
2. Choose A Telemarketing Agency Wisely
While there’s a considerable chance you chose the other two options, it’s still important to recognize the importance of selecting a telemarketing agency. After all, you’ll be handing over the responsibility to them, so you don’t want to hire an irresponsible agency.
Ideally, when choosing an agency, you want to look at the following factors:
- Budget: First of all, you need to figure out if their price is up to your budget and if the costs would include everything you need. You don’t want to hire an agency that would barely be of help even if their services are the most affordable in the area.
- Control: Two, you need to ensure that you’ll still have the authority to make a decision even after they’ve taken over the telemarketing responsibilities.
- Communication: You must also make sure they’re very open when it comes to communication, and you can contact them once in a while to check in on their progress.
- Additional Services: If you’re going for affordable telemarketing agencies, chances are they’ll offer the bare minimum required services. But some agencies tend to go above and beyond. These types of agencies are what you should be looking for.
With these considerations, you should be able to at least find a reputable telemarketing agency. But if you’re going for the other two options, the following strategies should be of great help.
3. Figure Out How You’ll Contact The Prospects
Just like how there are different ways to approach telemarketing, there are also several approaches to contacting your prospects. Here are some examples:
- Traditional Mail: Sending mail to your prospect’s mailbox is ideal if you want to send a postcard, brochure, or any type of physical form ad.
While traditional mail has a lower chance of getting opened, it sets your business apart from other brands that contact their prospects via emails or phone calls.
- Email: The alternative to traditional mail is email. The beauty of emails is that you can attach images and other multimedia, which can be useful in convincing prospects.
- Phone Call: This is perhaps the most common way of contacting prospects. It has the highest chance of getting a response, and you can converse more easily.
It’s essential to figure out how you’ll contact your prospects, and this should be based on your or your team’s capabilities. For example, since you’re aiming to attract local customers, using direct mail is an interesting option since they can check the sender’s address, which would give them an idea of where to look for your business if they ever feel the need to.
4. Prepare A Well-Written Script
Most telemarketers don’t like the idea of following a script as they claim that it would only make the conversation unnatural, so it’s obsolete. While it’s somewhat true, that’s not always the case since this issue is due to the lack of craftiness in the script rather than the obsoleteness itself.
On that note, if you want to make your telemarketing more effective to your audience, be it local or not, you need to upgrade your telemarketing scripts. Here are a few tips to help you out:
- Start by identifying your business: Before anything else, the telemarketer must introduce the business, or at least its products and services, to the customer.
- Adapt points to the target audience: Make slight changes with your points according to your target audience. So, for example, you’re talking to a local prospect, use the local dialect and accent. You can also mention anything that can establish familiarity between you and the prospective customer.
- Slowly get to the benefits: While businesses often encourage their telemarketers to emphasize the benefits of their products during calls, you don’t have to do the same. If you want your telemarketers to sound as natural as possible, they should slowly get to the benefits instead of rushing to that point of the call.
- Understand pain points: After introducing the benefits, telemarketers would then help prospects understand how their problems (pain points) can be solved with the benefits brought by the business’s products and services. But other than that, it’s also crucial to take a few seconds to explain that you understand their pain. By showing genuine concern over their problems, they’ll be more inclined to look into your business.
Scripts are, without a doubt, a powerful tool in telemarketing. It saves telemarketers time that they would’ve spent thinking of things to say to the prospects. A script also allows you to set the standards for the telemarketing team.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll always get your intended results by using sales scripts. In fact, a sales script may even be what makes customers uninterested in your business, especially if the script flows unnaturally.
5. Look At The Right Places
Normally, to build up a list of prospective customers, telemarketers would use services that collect user contact numbers. Then, they’ll dial these numbers in hopes of finding one that’s interested in their business. However, since the telemarketer got the numbers from who knows where, the telemarketer would know nothing about the prospect, and you should know very well that information is the primary weapon of telemarketers when speaking to a prospect.
Since that’s the case, once the telemarketer and the prospect engage in a conversation, the telemarketer would have no weapon to use in order to convince the prospect.
That’s why you should avoid platforms that sell user data as much as possible. Not only are they unreliable, but you also have no idea who you’ll be reaching once you dial the number. Instead, when building your list of prospects, you should look at the right platforms, such as social media, review websites, or you can ask for referrals from your current customers.
6. Research About Your Prospects
So, you know where your prospects are from, but that’s probably the only information you know about your prospects. If you truly want to maximize the chances of successfully converting a prospect into a customer, you need to know as much as possible about each of them. The good news is that it’s now possible to research about your prospects.
For starters, if you look into the social media profile of your prospect, you can find out some basic information about them, such as their age, occupation, hobbies, and interests. With this information, you should be able to figure out a better way to persuade them into buying your products and services.
7. Follow Up Even After Hearing No’s
During the entire telemarketing process, you’ll hear a lot of no’s from many prospects. But you have to remember that while some no’s are firm, some aren’t; failing the first time doesn’t mean you have zero percent chance to win them over. That’s why follow-ups are crucial when it comes to telemarketing. Make sure you always follow up with prospects, but of course, you should spice up your attempts at persuading them if you want to have a better chance.
You can follow up with prospects by sending an email or even just a simple text. The best part about follow-ups is that you can automate the process by scheduling the email or text message.
If you keep it up, who knows, you might be able to get a loyal customer on board by simply scheduling a pre-written email. However, you should also practice ethics by sending your follow-up in intervals of months rather than just days or weeks. Otherwise, they might get annoyed and cancel their email or SMS subscription with your business instead.
8. Get Feedback From Current Customers
No matter how confident you are in your telemarketing strategy, you can’t guarantee a 100% success rate. Sure, some will say yes, others will ask for some time to think about it. But most of your prospects would say no, which is normal. If there’s anyone who knows the efficiency of your telemarketing strategy, then it would be the prospects-turned-customers.
So, if you want to further improve the effectiveness of your telemarketing, considering getting feedback from your current customers, ask them what they liked about your business, and why they became a customer in the first place. You can also ask if there’s anything that would be worth changing in the telemarketing process.
Conclusion
Attracting new customers has always been one of the major difficulties when managing a business. Sure, you can use telemarketing to achieve your goal, but that, in itself, is also frustrating. It takes a lot of time, and there’s no guarantee you can convert every prospect into a customer. However, with these tips, you should be able to at least maximize your chances of getting more customers.
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