October 27, 2020 How Industries Can Improve Their Phone Marketing

8 ways to achieve successful phone marketing campaigns.

Telemarketing and cold calling are two marketing practices that have been used by several businesses, regardless of size, throughout the years. The phone makes it relatively easy to reach potential and existing customers without worrying about travel time and costs. But, it doesn’t mean you can improve your phone marketing campaigns to the next level. Enhancing your business’s marketing practices may open doors to better opportunities for growth.

How To Improve Your Phone Marketing Practices

Some companies, particularly startups, might find it challenging to search for solutions to improve their phone marketing campaigns. If you fall under this category, consider reading this article to know eight ways to achieve this particular goal.

1. Use Ringless Voicemail

As its name implies, ringless voicemail allows you to send voice messages straight to the inbox of the receiver without making the phone ring.

Traditionally, you’d have to make the phone ring before you can leave voicemails. On the other hand, the non-invasive approach of ringless voicemail services, like Drop Cowboy ringless voicemail, presents businesses with numerous opportunities to enhance their phone marketing campaigns. One of these benefits is its savings. Ringless voicemail services tend to be quite inexpensive, which makes them an excellent marketing option for starters or organizations on a tight budget.

For instance, sending one message costs USD$0.09, hence, sending 100 voicemails for one campaign will only charge your company with USD$1. You may also avail of package deals wherein the price lowers if you prepay for a specific number of messages to send.

Additionally, using ringless voicemail as part of your phone marketing campaign allows your representatives to deliver the perfect pitch every time. In contrast, live calls might make your marketing staff commit some mistakes, thanks to human error. Humans, as imperfect creatures, tend to commit several mistakes, particularly during calls with potential and existing clients. One error that may happen is when your representative calls the listener with the wrong name. Although some people might not mind being called with the wrong name, some folks might take this instance to heart.

Fortunately, a ringless voicemail lets your marketing team record and fine-tune each recording before sending it out. Therefore, it’s possible to significantly reduce common mistakes that might otherwise happen during live calls.

2. Outsource To A Third-Party Service

Phone marketing can be an effective tool to gain new customers and sustain a loyal client base. But, various organizations need to deal with different requirements before initiating the marketing operation. You’d need to hire representatives, train them, and prepare additional computer units for each employee.  These requirements may take time, effort, and money, and the severity of these needs may depend on the scale of the campaign. Hence, it might be wise to skip the in-house marketing staff and opt for outsourced services instead.

Various reliable third-party marketing services are ready and willing to take your campaign from your hands. Adept industry professionals already have the training to speak with different prospects and existing customers. Also, you may decide to stop hiring for new in-house marketers, which would otherwise cost extra money from your company’s funds.

Additionally, trustworthy third-party services offer transparency and provide measurable results during set intervals. These reports allow you to monitor your outsourced team’s performance, so you’ll always know if something’s amiss with your campaign.

3. Create And Follow A Script

Many phone marketers often make the mistake of talking to sales leads and clients without a script. Marketing staff, especially newbies, may commit irreparable mistakes that might cost your company valuable sales conversions.

Creating and following a script offers phone marketers with a starting point. It should offer key points that talk about your company’s offerings, while tailoring to the specific needs of potential and existing customers.

Here are some quick tips to help you develop a good calling script:

• Define the objective of the call from the start. Beating around the bush may only give you annoyed responses from listeners.
• Always keep the message short and concise. Remember to put value into the listeners’ time.
• Maintain respect. Keep a calm composure, even if the person on the other line is already shouting at you.
• Fill the need. Communicate with your listeners by stating valid business reasons.
• Share important insights. Increase the likelihood of converting cold leads to long-term customers by sharing information that might pique their interests.
• Present a call to action (CTA). Tell listeners the possible steps to move forward so as not to leave them hanging.

While you’re writing a script, one important thing you want to keep in mind is its outline. It’ll help you or your marketing staff follow an efficient flow from the beginning of a call to its end. Moreover, break the outline further once you have a rough sketch. In turn, you’ll get an idea of statements to use during the call.

Deviating from the call script might make it challenging for some marketers to deliver certain messages. Stammering or stuttering might happen more often than intended during the call. Note that these habits might become clear indications that the caller may not have confidence in marketing through the phone.

Tell your marketers to adhere to the script. However, it doesn’t mean that you or your staff can deviate from it to satisfy certain situations.

4. Personalize Each Message

Sticking to a cold calling or telemarketing script may present marketers with starting points for calls. But, it might be safe to say that it’s almost impossible to predict the exact course of the call until the events happen. Therefore, you can customize the statements in the script to help fulfill certain requirements during calls. For example, your developed script has statements promoting your products. But, the lead cuts you in the middle of the conversation to ask questions. At this point, you can change the script to answer those inquiries.

Offering personalized modes of communication may help promote repeating customers instead of fly-by-night clients. Perhaps, one of the reasons behind this concept is because many people don’t like talking to ‘robots,’ which might be a common mistake performed by many beginner phone marketers.

Sounding robotic over the phone implies that the marketer is sticking to a script as if they’re reading a news report. Thus, emotions seem limited, which may make the conversation sound boring. In contrast, flexibility and personalization can become vital components to pique the interest of listeners. For instance, sounding excited while explaining your product’s features may, in turn, make the listener exude a similar feeling.

In summary, resonating with potential and existing clients by sounding as human as possible throughout the call may increase the likelihood of leads turning into loyal consumers.

5. Handle Rejection Properly

Perhaps, one element that’s apparent in various phone marketing campaigns, regardless of the industry, is rejection. It might be challenging to reject rejection, especially during marketing calls. If a lead delivers a strong ‘No’ during a call, a marketer might cower in fear, making them more prone to committing errors than before.

The first step to improving your company’s phone marketing campaign is to let you or your staff embrace rejection. The human brain tends to thrive in comfort, and rejection may deliver an imbalance to that comfortable feeling. Thus, instead of trying to discard rejection, remain neutral throughout the call. Also, don’t sound disappointed. Acknowledge the receiver’s refusal and move on to the next contact.

Here’s an example of sounding neutral after being rejected by a potential lead: ‘Thank you for your thoughts. The company will use your feedback to improve its services.’

Also, take the time to get your emotions under control. Take a relatively quick but deep breath once you hear the rejections. Filling your lungs with air may help relax the mind of the sudden clutter of thoughts bombarded to you by the person on the other line. Additionally, taking a deep breath may help you gain mental clarity to provide neutral sounding replies to certain dismissals.

Remember, one person’s rejection might not be the end of the world. If one lead dismisses your offer, that’s only one individual out of several others in your contact list. Take this refusal as an opportunity to learn so you’ll do better in the next call.

6. Ask The Right Questions

Fulfilling the needs of leads and clients might be challenging, especially if you don’t know their specific needs. Probing questions allow your marketing efforts to identify those requirements so you can deliver the correct solutions.

Some inquiries you may consider are:

• How long have you been with the company (for B2B leads)?
• What’s your experience of using this product?
• What do you think are the most enjoyable traits of using the said product?
• Do you have a negative experience with the service?
• If given a chance, what would you like to change about the service?

These inquiries probe for answers that may help you offer an appropriate product or service to fulfill specific needs. Moreover, these warm-up questions prepare conversations to move leads to the next steps in the sales funnel.

Don’t forget to document all critical information delivered by prospects or consumers. Also, don’t rely on memory to help you remember vital points in the conversation. The human brain tends to only remember things up to a certain point. Forgetting vital information because of the negligence to jot down data may lead to potential sales losses.

7. Consider Using Other Marketing Techniques

One advantage of using phone marketing is its ability to integrate into other branding techniques.

Consider not limiting your marketing efforts to telemarketing or cold calls, and integrate these methods to other campaigns. For example, you may use social media to capture contact information from potential leads. Then, collect and refine the data into a calling list. Next, use the contact list in a phone marketing campaign to help cold leads convert into loyal consumers.

Another option you can use with phone marketing is mass text messaging. For this technique, you may use social media again to capture contact information from interested buyers. Then, collect the data into a cohesive contact list. Use the said list for your business to send messages to the leads. Next, wait for the positive replies before calling these individuals.

Consider experimenting with different strategies for the integration of phone marketing. However, ensure that you have a detailed plan to go about this process. Otherwise, your marketing efforts might have a high risk of failing.

8. Politeness Can Go A Long Way

Telemarketing and cold calling may intrude upon the valuable time of the call’s receiver. If your business calls at the wrong time, the person picking up the phone might be annoyed or infuriated by the interruption.

Start and end the call with a polite tone. Here are some statements that you can say to convey respect throughout the conversation:

• Thanks for taking the call.
• Asking for and saying the leads’ or customers’ names.
• Saying ‘Yes’ instead of ‘No problem’ or ‘Promise.’
• ‘Pay a visit’ instead of ‘set an appointment.’
• Thank you for your patience.

A little politeness during the call may let you offer the extra mile that’ll convert annoyed leads into thankful consumers. But, it would help if you also consider staying away from using certain statements, such as:

• Is now a good time?
• Sorry for bothering you.
• How are you today?
• Cheap
• Trust me.

Saying, “Is now a good time,” or, “Sorry for bothering you,” denotes that you know you’re intruding. Don’t press this matter further as it might cause the potential buyer to become more annoyed than before. Also, asking “How are you today,” is beating around the bush. State your matters immediately so as not to waste any more of your lead’s time.

As for ‘cheap’ and ‘trust me,’ these terms coerce listeners to put blind trust in your business. Note that several people are already skeptical about talking with phone marketers. Don’t aggravate the situation by saying these words.

Remember, pay respect and stay polite throughout each call. But, don’t sound too polite as it might cause the listener to feel agitated. Instead, sound professional while still portraying a well-mannered demeanor through the conversation.

Final Words

Follow the tips mentioned above, and you may find improvements in your phone marketing campaign soon. Consider experimenting with ringless voicemail, questions, or outsourced third-party services to help your company grow. Remember, success might not happen overnight; use these techniques appropriately to increase the likelihood of your campaign’s success.

Lloyd Green is a successful blogger who writes articles on business. Lloyd’s blog is filled with content to help his readers start their own businesses, and come up with solutions to help them with common business-related problems. 

Aside from producing informative articles on his blog, Lloyd also submits guest posts to other websites.

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