According to a recent survey in January's B2B Marketing Magazine "telemarketing remains a key part of the marketing mix for most B2B brands".

Unfortunately, the report doesn't specify the size of businesses surveyed, although I suspect most are medium and large sized companies since only 15% of the respondents relied entirely on external telemarketing agencies and "the largest portion of respondents had an internal telemarketing team"

It was interesting that the most popular reason why telemarketing was retained internally was because "the complexity of products and services makes outsourcing difficult".

The best way of thinking about this is to consider why these companies see keeping telemarketing in-house for complex sales proposition easier than outsourcing.

In my view, the primary reason why it would be seen as difficult to outsource telemarketing is the quality of the telemarketers.

Let's be honest, even the best call centres struggle retaining their people. They have one of the highest rates of employee churn than any other industry. If you have a complex sales proposition then you need to invest in training your telemarketers plus they have to be a pretty high-calibre to start with.

Therefore, when you outsource your telemarketing you run the risk of having to train and re-train telemarketers. Retention is always the biggest issue.

If you're a large company you can avoid this simply by hiring your own telemarketers and paying them above the industry average. Most good telemarketers in call centres would jump at the chance to get out.

Why do you have to be a large company to do this?

As I've blogged about previously, Outsourcing Telemarketing vs In-house, the case for in-house telemarketing just doesn't stack up for small businesses.

Simply put, it is too difficult for most small businesses to manage and retain top-class telemarketers.

So if you have a complex product or service, what are your options?

The answer is to find a telemarketing agency that retains the caliber of telemarketers you need. Almost always, this will be a small agency rather than a large call centre.

If a telemarketing agency starts talking about having 100's of employees with account managers, systems, processes, etc then you can guarantee that they're a volume body shop.

However, if they're a small outfit who can provide you with personal direct access to the telemarketers making the calls, and will invest time in training their people to understand your proposition then you're on the right track.

But then again, if you're reading this blog post then you've already found us :-)

Labels: b2b marketing, b2b telemarketing, outsourcing telemarketing

I recently found an interesting survey on marketing collateral for B2B technology vendors. "Eccolo Media 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report".

There's alot of detail in here about trends, etc but a couple of key points are that white papers are still the most influential form of collateral influencing technology purchasers and that it's "highly viral" in nature.

The last point is very interesting when you consider that the survey found "nearly as many (85 percent) share case studies; 81 percent share brochures/data sheets; 80 percent podcasts; and 79 percent video"

This seems to echo our experience where we often use white-papers, case-studies and "thought-leadership" collateral as a tool to both engage and develop relationships within a prospect organisation.

Indeed, the survey makes it clear that "collateral acts as the 'front door' to the sales process.

Another interesting area is the channel preference: "A download from a direct response campaign was the second most frequently used channel for receiving a white paper, behind the corporate Web site. This implies both the frequency with which the white papers are used as direct response offers, and the respondents' preferences to receive them through this channel"

Just as this survey has seen the use of video rise in last years. I think this is one area where social media marketing will dramatically increase. At the moment it's behind direct response but I definitely see that changing.

After all, I found this piece of collateral via the Inbound Marketers group on LinkedIn.

Labels: b2b marketing, demand generation, digital marketing, marketing collateral, social media

In a recent interactive poll for B2B marketing magazine, 80% of it's readers voted "Yes" to the question "Should B2B be focusing all it's efforts on 'pull' marketing (otherwise known as 'outside-in' marketing) therefore turning its back on 'push' marketing techniques (known as 'inside-out')?"

I find that staggering!

80% of B2B marketers think they should be focusing all their efforts on 'pull' marketing.

Whilst I'm not surprised to find myself in the minority with all the buzz and hype around how on-line and social media has changed the B2B landscape, I still find it amazing that so many B2B marketers are prepared to throw out proven push marketing tactics such as DM and telemarketing.

I totally agree that the landscape has changed, and that returns on some traditional direct marketing tactics are falling, but equally, many of the stars of 'pull' marketing, such as social media, still have to deliver tangible and robust ROI.

Like many things in life, it's seldom a "either-or" choice; it's about how you choose the best of all available options to deliver the results you need.

Labels: b2b marketing, push marketing, social media

The jury's out but, with some degree on scepticism, I've decided to start a twitter account.

As I've posted on my blog before, see Is Twitter a B2B marketing channel? I'm still trying to work out where the return is (truth be told, I'm sure everyone else is too!) but I've seen a growing number of clients, associates, prospects and organisations I know join so... who knows?

If you're interested in my 140 character musings - follow me here

Labels: b2b marketing, social media, social networking sites

I've recently finished reading the excellent Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin.

In his book Seth maps out 14 trends that are shaping the business world and suggests that the winners will be the companies which align their business model with what he calls "New Marketing".

Unsurprisingly, since this book is from the guru of permission marketing, Seth says in the executive summary that Old Marketing tactics such as telemarketing and cold calling "are all in trouble"

I didn't exactly spit out my coffee at that point but it did make me sit up :-)

The thing is that Seth's talking about telemarketing as a "mass marketing" media, since he compares it with Network TV and newspapers.

And in that sense, he's absolutely right.

Mass-market telemarketing, which is typically B2C, is dead. As I've posted about previously (see Ethical Telemarketing Companies? Now I know we're in trouble!) unsolicited cold calling to consumers just doesn't work any more.

But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Telemarketing can still be extremely effective as a marketing tactic and, in certain situations, can deliver far better results than other, often over-hyped, digital marketing tactics.

As long as it's highly targeted and relevant then outbound telemarketing can not only be effective but it can also be well received (I posted about this a year ago Google ads show us the future of cold-calling).

My view is that telemarketing is already shifting to higher value, more complex sales propositions where it can still deliver a strong ROI.

Will telemarketing ever become extinct as a marketing tactic?

I guess that if it no longer delivers a return-on-investment then the answer's yes. Or if legislation comes out to ban it's use in business-to-business.

At the moment, though, if you need to reach senior decision makers and key influencers in business, high-targeted telemarketing can still deliver.

Labels: b2b marketing, b2b telemarketing, cold calling, social media

Maybe it was the blog title "If You're an Over 40 Marketing Professional You Must Wake up and Understand the Importance of Twitter" that caught my attention because I've pretty much managed to avoid the phenomenon of twitter so far.

I must admit, I still think of twitter as an inane stream of pointless "tweets" of a "just got my morning paper" style. Who wants to know that?

Well, 4M people apparently.

So, when Salesforce.com announce that they're integrating twitter, it makes me think again.

I can see it in a service or support function, kind of a micro-blogging user group. And for major brands it must be great.

If you're a consultant, coach, trainer or some "guru" then I guess you could use it to get potential clients to follow you. I see a lot of tele-seminar tweets flying about and, to my mind, it fits well with a personality led business.

Getting your thought leadership positioning into 140 characters may be a challenge for many though.

Like other social media platforms, no doubt an MLM element is in there as I can see it's a great medium for recruiting network marketing agents and affiliates. "Just made another Zillion dollars, you must get in on this".

Twitter has certainly got the media's attention and that, more than anything, could be behind Salesforce.com's integration plans.

But, maybe that's just an over 40's perspective :-)

Labels: b2b marketing, social media