Get in Touch Directly with Customers
Speak Directly to Your Prospects & Get Your Message Heard
There are many forms of marketing and most if not all are good to use if you can afford them. But if you are in the financial situation where advertising, PR and brand awareness are just not a possibility you might want to try the old fashioned approach by contacting the prospect directly.
Telemarketing, Direct Mail and Email Marketing
Try picking up the telephone, sending out a letter or an email. Getting in contact direct with your customers is very effective. It is also easier for you to track the results of this form of marketing’s success and therefore your return on investment.
Pick up the Telephone
A lot of telemarketers or telesales people find this one the hardest things to do. There is a big fear of the phone. As humans we have a natural fear of rejection and you will never get more rejection than when you start telemarketing. In fact “no” will be the word you will hear the most. Because of this quite often people who are looking to do telemarketing either give up before they try or say that it was a waste of time after just a few calls.
Fear of the phone is something you need to overcome. Once you do you will actually start to enjoy the calling. In its basic form it is a numbers game. The way to get through the numbers is to focus on the people that say yes not the ones that say no.
Telemarketing is an essential part of direct marketing whether on its own or as part of email marketing or direct mail shot campaigns. The simple reason is that information changes and for your campaign to be the most successful you will need to have up to date information with the right names and addresses.
Email Marketing
With email marketing you need to be careful. It may one of the fastest and cheapest ways to make contact with your target market but if done wrong it can do more damage than good. Because of the influx of SPAM we all receive on a daily basis planning your email campaign and checking the details is vital.
Firstly as above pick up the phone and ask permission to send the email. Unsolicited emails no matter what the subject matter are considered SPAM. Apart from the legal implications there is the damage you can do to your brand. So a simple rule is do not SPAM. Either pick up the phone and gain permission or buy in a database where somebody else has made a call to gain permission.
The plus sides of email are definitely the speed of delivery and the low cost but on top of this you can quite easily track the success. You can add tracking codes to see who opens your emails and who follows links to your website. Knowing how many people visit the website or contact you directly from an email will make it a lot easier to track return on investment.
Make Your Direct Mail Personal
There is no more powerful sound than the sound of your own name. Thinking about this, if someone gets your name wrong how does it make you feel? Not important, hurt? Getting your prospects' names right and making the message you send them personal is crucial. Get it wrong and you could alienate them. Get it right and you can develop brand loyalty.
There are far too many cases of companies sending direct mail letters to people who have died. People whose names they have gotten wrong. We have probably all had a mail shot from a company that has gotten the details wrong and we all know how unimpressed we were. So getting the details right is crucial to make the right first impression.
Again the quickest and simplest way of doing this is by picking up the telephone and doing some data cleaning by asking the questions you need to profile your customers. In the process you can also weed out those prospects that do not fit your target market or would not be interested in your product and therefore safe your company the cost of sending them the direct mail.
In Conclusion
Whatever the form of marketing your chose make sure you can measure the success so that you can track the return on investment. With telemarketing, direct mail shots and email marketing it is easier as you will already have the database of customers making it easier to track where the sale came from.
The most important factor in marketing during economically hard times such as these is not cutting back on your marketing expense but making sure you focus your resource on the marketing that works for you.
What do you think about this article?
More in Business & Finance
Latest Articles