For 33% of marketers, targeted content delivery tends to be among their biggest challenge when looking to improve lead nurturing, according to Forester Research. Typically, they need to understand the customer, whatever makes them tick and use it to their advantage. While this might seem easy on paper, it requires extensive market research.
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Unlike inbound telemarketing, outbound telemarketing tends to lack this aspect. In most cases, call center agents are trying to reach out to an unqualified audience with little knowledge at times of whether their marketing approach will work. All of this changes when using inbound telemarketing.
Here is why you should embrace inbound telemarketing:
Inbound Vs. Outbound Telemarketing
Outbound telemarketing is mostly concerned with selling your products proactively. While working with an internal team or with one of the top telemarketing companies in the US, you pick the phone and call an unqualified person to try and sell them your own products. While it will work in a good number of cases, most people might perceive it as an aggressive form of marketing.
On the flip side, inbound telemarketing will need you to wait for customers to call you instead, which makes them pre-qualified. Often, such customers are in the process of making the final purchasing decision. In such cases, the call center representatives can use soft-selling to influence this decision.
This Is a Better Qualifying Process
The fact that a customer took the initiative to call your organization means that they are already interested in your brand and have already qualified themselves. As such, you will spend less time trying to reach out to a customer whose mindset you do not understand. Through the conversation, your sales team can identify the pain points that the customer raises and add these to your buyer personas.
The sales representatives can then decide whether the caller would like to make a purchase, or if more nurturing is required. If the latter is the case, they can connect them with other concerned staff members for more nurturing.
It Reduces the Costs per Lead
Callers will typically have prequalified themselves by picking up the phone to contact your organization. As such, this eliminates the concept of having to cold call leads who might not even end up purchasing from you. This increased efficiency can also help improve your outbound strategy.
By analyzing the calls that you receive, you can easily spot the pain points of your typical customer. With more visibility into your market, the strategy for qualifying leads becomes much more refined and less costly. Luckily, this can also provide you with a diversity of buyer personas from which your marketing team can come up with product tweaks that fit right into the needs of these customers.
It Promotes Customer Service
Inbound telemarketing can be pivotal in the success of companies that lack the resources to support round the clock calls. Since most third-party telemarketing companies offer their services 24-7, such companies can rely on these agents to cater to the customer beyond the typical business hours.
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This stems from the fact the customers can call your offices to complain about a product from any location and at any time, which introduces the concept of convenience. Since customers will be comfortable to pick up the phone, complain about any aspect of your business or make suggestions, and get a response from your business, then this will increase customer satisfaction rates. Remember, it is easier to retain current customers than to look for new ones.
Conclusion
Inbound telemarketing doesn’t eliminate the need for the outbound option, but it complements its use. A combination of the two ensures that you take your potential and current customers through every aspect of your services or products and entice them enough to become consistent customers. Consider combining both strategies to increase sales and improve brand awareness.
