How can market research help my B2B marketing strategy?
Posted: November 15, 2011 Filed under: market research, telemarketing 1 Comment »Market research is fundamental to any B2B marketing strategy. The starting point for any marketing strategy is to know your market and how to meet their needs.
So how does market research address this?
Customers- Who are they? What are their business drivers? What issues affect their industry? What legislation/regulations are they governed by? What are their purchasing cycles?
Existing Customers- what are you doing well? Where could you improve your service? Look at your potential customers – where have they experienced excellent value? Who delivered it? What would it take to make them switch suppliers?
Brand– what is your recall? What do people know about your company, or think they know? What is your market position?
Competition- what do they do well? What do they do badly? How does their offering compare to yours? What opportunities are out there?
Through telephone calls, online surveys, customer satisfaction questionnaires and focus groups, market research can effectively create the basis for your company’s entire strategic direction.
What is Telemarketing?
Posted: November 1, 2011 Filed under: Appointment Setting, B2B Marketing, Data Cleansing, Lead Generation, marketing, telemarketing Leave a comment »Telemarketing gets results. In B2B marketing, it is one of the most effective ways to achieve your goals. Your telemarketing strategy needs to be detailed and focused, identifying your objectives and linking these to specific outcomes.
The key is to pinpoint your relevant target market, and understand how to communicate most effectively, engaging with your audience in a way they find relevant and compelling:
- Data cleansing – is your data robust enough to get to the right person, first time? What information do you need? What is essential/desirable?
- Lead generation – are you looking to generate a marketing list? Populate a market research tool? What information constitutes a strong lead?
- Appointment setting – be specific. Who are you targeting? What will make them agree to a sales meeting? What do you know about their business that will guarantee an hour of their time?
Good B2B marketing creates contacts. A great B2B telemarketing campaign will create strong relationships from first point of contact by delivering a consistent, meaningful dialogue, immediately highlighting the benefits to either them or their organisation.
Make yourself an expert and create a community
Posted: October 26, 2011 Filed under: B2B Marketing, Lead Generation, marketing, telemarketing Leave a comment »How do you build and maintain relationships when you face a long sales cycle that can last many months if not years?
One of the areas you can consider is building a community of contacts from within your target market. They become a community when there is a sense that contacts are members of a group with shared interests, so you have an opportunity to engineer this and bring contacts together.
You are able to appoint yourself as the trusted expert in your field and use the community to inform and education members. This and the fact you are the organisers, raises your profile and keeps your name in your prospects’ minds for the time they’re in the market for your solutions.
There has never been a better or more affordable time to do this with the rise of social media such as LinkedIn groups and tools such as webinars.
Lead generation 2.0: Technology-led telemarketing
Posted: October 11, 2011 Filed under: B2B Marketing, Lead Generation, telemarketing Leave a comment »Marketing is changing very rapidly. Mediums used to communicate marketing messages are becoming predominantly digital. 40% of UK b2b marketing budgets are now spent on digital marketing* and in the US, online advertising spend has doubled in the last five years**.
The last 18 months, Prospect Research has seen big changes in terms of how we are approach telemarketing for clients and ourselves. However, the one thing that hasn’t changed and I don’t envisage changing no matter how much we tweet, blog and email is the fact that we need to talk to people; people with attitudes, opinions, priorities and personalities that can only be uncovered in conversation.
There’s no denying that telemarketing needs to adapt to what the digital world brings. However, if you can adapt, the digital age will simply enhance telemarketing and lead generation.
There is a spectrum of business leads, from the hottest enquiries you receive to totally cold prospects. Leads from the entire spectrum can feed into your telemarketing pipeline.
The most exciting thing about digital marketing is that it gives you a new middle ground of warm leads. These warm leads come from being able to identify prospects that have shown through their online behaviour evidence they may have an interest in your services. This allows you to target more effectively and in turn be more efficient with your budgets.
Below are some ideas about how digital marketing methods can enhance your lead generation.
1. Tracking visitors to your website
Software is available to give you the ability to identify the companies that have visited your website, as well as showing how long their visit was and what they were interested in. To use this effectively, you need to establish rules to help you identify who the genuine prospects are, as you will find competitors, suppliers, clients and unsuitable prospects that will need filtering out.
The filtered leads can feed into your business development team’s call list, allowing them to tailor their sales message to reflect the web content the visitor was most interested in.
The software also allows you to track the source of the website visitors which can give you data to feed into your web strategy.
2. White papers
Offering downloads of topical white papers, industry information and newsletters on your website shows expertise in your field. You can also build a pot of prospects by recording the people who download it, and making follow-up calls to gauge their interest in your product/service.
3. Business news feeds
Some of our clients subscribe to news feeds that give details about forthcoming projects. This includes public tenders, building projects, new retail stores, office moves and lease expiry dates.
Telemarketing can be used to qualify details about contracts, the correct contacts to engage with, and how to get on preferred supplier lists.
Over last few years, this information has become more accurate and accessible. However, again, you need to put rules in place to identify the best opportunities to pursue.
4. E-marketing
Email software can track people who have read your marketing emails and also who have clicked through to your website. This can indicate a level of interest although we have found on campaigns the most relevant leads come from people who have opened an email five or more times or have clicked through to your website.
5. LinkedIn
Anyone who has used LinkedIn for direct lead generation is probably still nursing a slapped wrist as this is generally seen as going against accepted etiquette. LinkedIn is primarily used for brand awareness, making contacts, nurturing relationships with contacts that your refer work and showing expertise.
However, it can still be used as a tool for telemarketing. It is great for obtaining decision maker names as these are increasingly publicised on the web. It is also good for profiling prospects as it allows you to see what they are saying about themselves.
If you spot sales opportunities, consider using methods outside of LinkedIn to contacts the prospects.
Conclusions
- Companies need to adapt their telemarketing approach to sit alongside digital marketing.
- There is a need for create effective rules and boundaries to use to identify the best prospects.
- There is an impact on the calibre of telemarketers you employ as you need people who can adapt their approach as digital marketing throws out a wide variety of prospects.
- The digital age has enhanced telemarketing’s filtering techniques.
- Long gone are untargeted phone calls with a generic marketing message.
- The two way conversation that telemarketing gives you with your prospects also allows you feedback their opinions into your overall marketing strategy.
To find out more about our work, visit www.prospectresearch.co.uk
Sources
* Survey from B2B Barometer – www.b2bbarometer.co.uk
** Survey from emarketer.com – www.emarketer.com
Corporate Social Responsibility and Fundraising with SMEs
Posted: September 13, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Read our blog about how SMEs can get involved with CSR and raising money for charity http://ow.ly/6rExj
Raising money, awareness and morale: CSR for SMEs
Posted: September 12, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Charity work, CSR, SMEs Leave a comment »
The 'Prospect Pirates' at the 2011 Cambridge Dragon Boat Festival
Prospect Research don’t raise thousands and thousands for charity. Far from it. In four years, we have raised £6,500 for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices. Many more companies would have raised much more than us, but that’s not the point. We’ve been able to donate something towards the hard work of an amazing charity, had a great time fundraising, and it’s brought us together as a team to have some fun.
Lots of SMEs do great charity work. Like us, it’s just part of what they do every year. But there’s plenty that still dismiss CSR work as being too much hassle on top of their already heavy work load. We’d like to say that it doesn’t need to be.
Here are our five top tips for SMEs who want to get involved with raising money for charities.
1. Get your team’s feedback about who you should support. Come up with a short list of charities, and get a couple to come in and have a chat with your team about the work they do. Corporate fundraising teams are normally more than happy to do this. Then your team can choose who they want support. This will get their buy-in when they come to asking others for donations, and give a purpose to your charity work.
2. Be realistic about what you can achieve each year. If you only have the resources to support/organise one event a year, just do that. Don’t stretch yourself. Put everything into that one event.
3. Get all of the team involved. Divvy up jobs. Ensure that everyone’s on task at the event to networking, provide event support.
4. Utilise the PR opportunities. This is a somewhat un-talked about part of CSR. How uncouth to speak about PR when you’re raising money for a good cause. But charities know that this is a bit part of a company’s involvement, and they are more than happy to provide quotes for you to include in press releases. You can use your involvement with charities to include in press releases, encourage new recruits and add to tenders to show how your team work together.
5. Have fun!!! Choose events that your team enjoy. Don’t pick a charity parachute jump when only one of your team really wants to do it, and the rest are quaking in their boots. CSR can be a great way to work together to achieve something as a team.
New business from old contacts
Posted: August 22, 2011 Filed under: Data Cleansing | Tags: B2B Marketing, Data Cleansing, Market Research, Telemarketing Leave a comment »Customer relationships vary enormously from business to business. Some customers might see you as an extension of their business; others will treat your service as a transactional affair and barely remember you the day after they worked with you.
If you have over 500 customers/past customers but you don’t have an extensive account management or outbound customer service team, you might be struggle to find the time to maintain regular contact, to learn about their ongoing needs, get feedback about your service, and to find out how you can work with each other again.
Emails and newsletters do help, but they don’t give the immediate two way feedback that a phone call does on contacts’ current requirements and how they view your company. A personal phone call also shows that you care and are keen to continue working with them.
Read more about Prospect Research’s telemarketing services that keep you talking to your customers »
