Wednesday, August 28, 2013

How Can Webinars Improve Your Appointment Setting Campaign?

How Can Webinars Improve Your Appointment Setting Campaign?
Technology is so amazing, with the way it evolves today and how it influences the way we do business. If before, brick and mortar stores are the name of the game. Now, as long as you have a website and a supplier, you can make a lot of money using the online business platform. Technology has also changed the way we conduct our appointment setting campaigns, with webinars being one of the emerging tools that we can use to increase the number of sales leads that we generate.


The question here is this: how can we make it work for our business? And if we succeed in conducting one, how can we make sure that it stays that way in the future?

For the first question, the solution is rather simple:

Start with your marketing campaign itself. Make sure that the topic of your webinar is directly related to your business, as well as your overall marketing campaign. Doing that makes it easier for your team to promote the event, as well as tie up your business as the go-to source of information for interested prospects.

Plan the event well with your presenters. One of the biggest turn-offs in a webinar is appearing in front of the camera unprepared. Work with your presenters beforehand. Show the seminar materials, check their appearance on camera. Test them about their mastery of their content. Once you are satisfied, then that is the time for you to let them go live. Promote your webinars in advance. Probably it will take you one to two months to successfully advertise your event. You will need to use a lot of channels for this, like social media, telemarketing, email, and the like. Your aim here is to put your webinar in the consciousness of your target audience. Get follow-up materials ready for distribution. Do you have white papers to share, or perhaps some other business material that might come in handy after the webinar? Make sure that you send them to your audience come conclusion of the event. It might be preferable to send them ahead, though, but it will depend on the topic that you will be covering.

As for the second question, there is only one answer for that: innovation.

You need to constantly improve and change the topics that you cover in your webinars. This will add excitement and interest in the eyes of your business prospects, as well as make your event more interesting to attend. Innovation is a key ingredient in a successful webinar, which will also influence the success of your lead generation campaign. If the changes you have in mind will bring in the B2B leads that you are looking for, then there is nothing to it. Actually, just go for it.

A webinar is also very useful in building a reputation in the market, and a greater professional relationship with your prospects. They know, through your webinars, that you are an expert in the field (just make sure you actually prove it), so they will go back o you. And if there is anything that a lead generation marketer loves, it is a prospect that keeps returning.

Friday, August 23, 2013

The Five Steps To Improved Appointment Setting Campaigns

The Five Steps To Improved Appointment Setting Campaigns

You know, when it comes to business, you have to really bring out your best. And for you to be at the top of your game, you need to be constantly evolving and improving your marketing processes. This reality can be easily observed in an appointment setting campaign, where the rapid deployment of new strategies and tools can make all the difference in finding and nurturing of qualified B2B leads. While there are many methods that you can employ on this regard, you need to make sure that you are properly putting things in their proper pacing. There are steps that you need to follow to ensure everything runs smoothly. And here is how you do it:

1. Brainstorm with everyone – in planning your newest marketing strategy, for example, changing a segment of your appointment setting process, you need to discuss this with your telemarketing team first. In this way, you can identify any challenges that your team might encounter during its implementation, as well as smoothen any kinks that you might discover.

2. Test the new changes to be implemented – checking the effectiveness of the changes may require that you test first your plans. Use it in a controlled environment, so that your team can do some experimenting. Whether something works or not, there is no loss for you. At least you can make the corrections before finally putting things on a larger scale.

3. Set a time frame for implementation – time, without doubt, is a very important factor for business. You need to make sure that everything that you do is within the right time limit. You cannot waste your time on chasing after plans that will not pan out eventually. That is why you need a deadline. If, by that point, you see no progress in terms of sales leads generated, then you should stop and go for the new step in your plans.

4. Do an analysis – you probably have been able to gather sufficient data now, what with all the testing that you have done. There might be some areas of improvements that you have to do. Knowing just where you need to make the corrections will make your campaign much more effective. Just make sure that you have the most accurate data, so that you will not get wrong results.

5. Repeat – basically, you just do the process of improvement all over again. Change is a never-ending affair, one that you will always deal with if you want your business to stay afloat. The reason most firms close down is because they do not change according to the demands of their markets. Competition gets the better of them, and they have to close down, as a result.

As marketers, you need to ensure that your appointment setting campaign is able to meet the challenges posed by time and the fickle tastes of the market. Planning and implementing changes in the market is an important factor to the success in lead generation. You should not take it lightly.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

The Power Of Conversational Selling For Appointment Setting

The Power Of Conversational Selling For Appointment Setting

Generating B2B leads can be a real pain in your appointment setting campaign. This is especially true if you have to work most of the time convincing your prospect that you have exactly what they are looking for (Not to mention that this is the exact same thing that your competition is also saying). You surely would want to have an edge over your competition, right? But you should also know that whatever advantage you want to develop in the lead generation game should be something that your employees would be able to practice on their own. The solution? It is all about the conversation. Developing good conversational selling skills is an excellent way for you and your sales team to get ahead.

Conversational selling is simply that , a conversation. But this is not just any conversation. It is a conversation geared towards compelling the business prospect to sign up to your business or to simply remember your company the next time they need something. That takes a lot of skill, and you need to be personable enough to approach these prospects. You want to have a conversation with them that can build trust and confidence in your company and your prospects. While this may sound difficult, it is not really so. As long as you can follow these very important marketing tips, then you would be all right.

First, think about the dialogue. You want to engage your customers, so you should really talk to them, let them have the chance to speak their mind (and provide you with ideas that will help you clinch the deal). Bad marketers simply say their sales pitch and push their products or services to unwilling prospects. Now that is what I call a waste of time.

Second, think about integrity. Remember, you are still building trust with your prospects, so you would want to show them that you are sincere, that you can really provide them with an answer like that. Honesty is still the best policy, so to speak.

Next, focus on your prospect’s world. Not yours. This is the point that a lot of marketers, even veteran ones, tend to forget. You are bringing business to them, not the other way around. You want to make them more receptive to whatever you are offering them.

Fourth, talk about the benefits. Sure, the bells and whistles are nice to hear, but what business prospects want to hear, what they really are more concerned about, would be the benefits of them doing business with you. Explain to them then.

Lastly, be natural. Anything that sounds rehearsed or practiced can be easily detected by the prospect. If they hear your telemarketing team all saying the same thing or the same speech pattern, do not be surprised if they back off from meeting you anymore. They do not trust you anymore, or they just lose interest in you. This practically puts you back to the drawing board.

Keep the above tips in your head, and you can develop your very own conversational selling skills. This will be a great help for your appointment setting efforts.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

How Social Media Can Help In Your Appointment Setting Campaign

How Social Media Can Help In Your Appointment Setting Campaign
This is a question that a lot of business people are probably asking themselves. While there are people still in doubt regarding this business strategy, there are those who firmly believe that this is a crucial marketing tool needed to improve productivity, as well as profits, during an appointment setting campaign. The reason why a lot of businesses owners have second thoughts of using such a service is due to issues of quality and reliability. In this highly-competitive business environment, you need to get all the sales leads that you can get. Now, this is not an easy task as what some people might expect.

To be honest, generating and nurturing B2B leads can be a very stressful exercise.

For a company that lacks the necessary marketing resources, like the small and medium sized enterprises, this could be a serious matter indeed. Remember, you are not the only company operating in the market. More likely than not, you would be working against your competitors in the race to get the most sales possible. If you think this is a daunting task for your employees, imagine just how hard that can be if you have to do it on your own. That is why, for cases like these, it is best to seek outside help.

Now this is where outsourcing enters the picture. This is actually an excellent solution for many small firms, or other companies with manpower or equipment problems. By outsourcing your lead generation efforts, you can find other firms who can do the service at a good price. Aside from that, you can gain the added flexibility of through different marketing channels in a manner that only in-house marketing teams from large firms are able to enjoy. In this case, you get more marketers, more equipment, and proper facilities at a much lower price compared to actually doing things on your own. The only thing you need to worry now is how to hire the right company for the job.

Contrary to what critics are saying, outsourcing to professional appointment setting or telemarketing agency is a safe and secure arrangement. The only reason we have problems in this regard is because the outsourced firms are nothing more than frauds. This is a reality that has long hounded many outsourced marketing agencies. Imagine how hard it is find an outsourced marketing agency for your campaign, spend a lot of money on it, only to end up holding the check, or given a list of prospects that are otherwise useless for your campaign. Such a waste, right? And that reinforces the negative perception of outsourced marketing.

Still, the one who will decide on this business strategy would be you. There are a lot of things that you have to consider before outsourcing some of your work.

Just for starters, here is a question you will need to answer: Will outsourcing bring in more sales leads to my business or not? Once you answer that question, then you have a place to start.