With all the technological advances causing shifts in the market and shaping customer expectations, the concept of marketing took on a new digital turn. Marketing, in the past, used to be “telling and selling”; but that has changed today. Modern-day marketers don’t just want to get sales, they want to get involved in their customers’ journey- not just by interacting with them but also by finding ways to enrich their buyers’ experience with their brand.
Some of the strategies that marketers find impactful in their mission to help the customer live their brand are Telemarketing and Digital Marketing. Whether you’re a B2B company or selling products and services to B2C markets, the lifeline of your business relies on your customers. How would you fulfill your goal to delight them if you don’t attract them and convert them into actual buyers?
This is where the importance of telemarketing and digital marketing comes in lead generation and conversion. Both of these provide the opportunity for businesses to connect with potential or current customers and initially used telephone calls as the core communication tool to reach out to customers. Digital marketing, however, took a more advanced form.
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Digital Marketing vs. Telemarketing
The difference between Digital Marketing and Telemarketing comes down to which manner you want to interact with your customers- either through phone or text messages or mobile apps, respectively.
Let’s look into a more detailed comparison between the two:
Digital marketing, or online marketing, refers to the promotion of brands to potential customers through the Internet and other digital communication tools. These tools include social media, email marketing, webinars, web design, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Digital marketing made everything from lead generation, and customer service, to announcements more accessible to consumers, making it one of the most powerful forces that shape the business landscape.
Typically, it refers to marketing campaigns that you can see on your devices like your phone, computer, or tablet and takes on many forms: display ads, online videos, search engine marketing, social media posts, paid social ads; and lead conversion like signing up for webinars, newsletters, and filling out online forms.
While there’s no shortage of potential leads for your brand, the real challenge lies in looking at the right places and using the right marketing channels to harvest leads and prospects that are ripe for picking. Conversion marketing strategies help convert potential customers into paying ones. These are digital marketing strategies that pay particular attention to the percentage of site visitors who perform specific actions. It entails all other digital marketing strategies mentioned above.
Telemarketing, on the other hand, refers to the selling of products or services through telephone calls, direct contact, or in-person meetings. Cold calls, selling directly in person, over the phone, or via email all fall under the telemarketing category.
It might be considered a traditional way of doing sales, but telemarketing is still relevant due to the human connection it entails. Personal rapport given by real people handling the buyer throughout his journey is something that can’t be replaced by technology.
Simply put, telemarketing doesn’t make use of digital tools while digital marketing uses all of them in one way or another.
The Power of Telemarketing in the Digital Age
Telemarketing is used by businesses to generate leads, make sales, and other marketing tasks that require the use of phones to call customers. It formerly meant cold calling prospects to sell products or services but has recently evolved into more interactive sessions between the salesperson and the customer like video conferencing calls.
The rise of new technology, as in digital marketing, dulled the relevance of telemarketing and replaced it with social media and content marketing. Customers aren’t now very much interested and appear annoyed when receiving calls, given that they can block them at any time.
Despite the challenges and criticisms, many B2B companies still trust telemarketing to effectively generate leads. In fact, over 50% of B2B marketers name it as one of the most reliable and productive methods in sales generation.
Telemarketing finds its place in the digital age through the level of personalization and exclusivity it provides its customers. In the automated and fast-paced world of digital marketing, telemarketing gives customers a sense of connection through one-on-one conversations with the customers.
Related: Telemarketing in Today’s Digital and Multi-channel World
Telemarketing as an effective marketing strategy for B2B
Business-to-business (B2B) is defined as the business that is conducted between companies, rather than between a company and an individual consumer. Telemarketing, meanwhile, is the act of selling, soliciting, or promoting a product or service over the telephone.
“B2B Telemarketing” means using calls as a channel for B2B commercial transactions like lead generation, customer profiling, following up on emails, and event telemarketing. It’s also used to sell products or services and establish rapport between companies.
Marketing, being a highly competitive industry, depends on its survival in telemarketing. The thing about B2B telemarketing that makes it important to businesses is that it helps you find and filter people you want as customers. It also allows you to raise brand awareness and build your credibility and image, making you stand out among your competitors. It also directs you to new business growth opportunities and lets you create relevant dialogues with your current partners. B2B telemarketing is a strategy every business needs to generate leads and increase conversion rates to maximize business returns.
Related: Closing the Deal: Effective B2B Telemarketing Tips to Drive Sales
The perfect balance between the old and the new can be the best way to achieve incredible results. Old methods of marketing were proven to be of great value over the years, especially when it comes to generating leads, turning them into customers who pay, and keeping them satisfied so they come back. The modern ways introduced by digital marketing enable businesses to focus on their target niche and connect the audiences to all their digital channels.
Here are some examples of how the digital marketing activities or tactics employed by companies are supported by telemarketing:
Email Marketing
Part of the B2B telemarketing campaign is sending out emails containing company information or offers to prospects. When sending an email, one has to make sure that its content is relevant to the prospective customer. This will increase the chance of your email being opened and read compared to other promotional emails. Also, including a clear call-to-action in your email will give your prospect a head up on what steps to take next.
After sending your email, it’s ideal to wait for a day or two before calling your prospect who has clicked your email first. This gives your prospect enough time to read and remembered your email. The thing about B2B telemarketing is that it involves direct human interaction with your prospect, so it’s easier for them to trust your brand.
Related: 7 Stats that Says Email Marketing is the BEST Among Other Channels [INFOGRAPHIC]
PPC Campaigns
PPC or Pay-per-Click advertising, together with Google AdWords, allow you to reach your target customer with the right time and ad. Having relevant advertisements in your PPC campaign gives space for better-quality prospects to click on your ad and convert to your website.
Let prospects who click on your ad interact with your website by filling in forms or signing up for newsletters. It’s important to make sure that the landing pages you link to your ads have a clear call to action.
How telemarketing applies here is simple: After your prospect clicks your advertisement and interacts with your site go ahead and call them. Identify their pain points and let them know how you can solve them.
LinkedIn Activities
A study by Kinsta revealed that 40% of LinkedIn users check the site every day 690 million users. Marketing using social channels does a lot of help in promoting and building awareness of your brand, tapping with LinkedIn is especially effective in advertising and creating rapport for B2B companies.
LinkedIn offers businesses a variety of paid and organic ways to present their value to their target market through posting relevant content that show your company and solutions. Making calls to prospects who interact with your brand on this site will most likely lead to good-quality conversations as they are already familiar with your brand.
Related: How to Improve Your Sales Prospecting on LinkedIn in 3 Simple Steps
The Telemarketing and Digital Marketing tag team for your brand’s success
Telemarketing and Digital Marketing are two diverse marketing strategies, but when used properly, you know you can have the best of both worlds – digital marketing allows wider audience reach with minimal efforts, while telemarketing adds a personal touch to these transactions. A combination of both can lead to successful lead generation, and conversion rate optimization, and boost your business’ sales.
Here are four reasons that prove that make digital marketing and telemarketing are a powerful duo:
Digital marketing helps you connect with your leads. Telemarketing gives it a personal touch.
Digital marketing is all about identifying the right target audience and reaching out to as many of them as quickly as possible. Thanks to modern technology, quick and efficient connection is possible. After connecting your potential customers online, telemarketing takes the transaction to a personal level through phone calls.
People usually feel cautious when receiving cold calls because they are clueless about who calls and what it is about. Online interaction, through emails, chats, webinars, and SEO, familiarizes the customers with your brand and eases their hesitancy to take your calls. While digital marketing focuses on brand recall, telemarketing emphasizes building rapport and personal connection. Both factors are important for your conversion rate optimization.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the conversion percentage from a mobile app or a website. It allows your brand’s customer acquisition costs by getting more value from the website visitors you already have. Digital marketing and telemarketing are effective ways of guiding your visitors through their digital buyer’s journey and encouraging them to feel a connection with your brand, eventually making a decision to purchase (the conversion).
More accurate data for improved social media advertising, emails, and PPC campaigns.
Marketing research and data are both crucial factors in creating a digital strategy, and 75% of its success depends on data accuracy. Before planning and executing a strategy, knowing who you’re targeting and what exactly interests and bothers them determines your efficiency; so when expanding into new markets and reaching out to new audiences, you will need to gather as much new and reliable data as possible. Telemarketing can be used to do market research for this purpose.
The depth and precision of the data gathered in this research directly reflect the potency and price of paid social media ads, email marketing campaigns, and how accurately you can target the right audience through regional PPC campaigns.
Telemarketing provides opportunities that can be addressed through digital marketing channels.
People, when asked the right questions, are more comfortable revealing valuable information over the phone rather than in personal encounters. This is the reason why telemarketing is a good way to uncover opportunities that can help you attract more leads and gain more sales.
An awareness of your customers’ most common problems helps you see which products are suited for their needs. Digital marketing helps a lot in this aspect, given that information is constantly shared through social media, websites, and blogs. With the use of digital marketing tools, you can reinforce your standing in the industry.
Digital marketing helps you gather information about your target audience so that telemarketers can have a better understanding of their needs.
This goes back to number 2. As marketers, it’s a crucial part of your job to listen actively to what your prospects say on social media. While telemarketing is a great way to establish good rapport and gather information about your customers, the data you gather on social media also works the same magic for your brand. Being informed and aware of your customers’ demands is a must in any marketing platform you use since it allows you to better understand and provide proper solutions to their needs. In this case, conversion marketing is used to focus on tactics that increase conversion among your existing website traffic rather than only trying to grow your website visitor counts.
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It’s in with the new, and the old too.
Now that you’ve understood the concepts, differences, and functionalities of telemarketing and digital marketing, here comes the real question: Can telemarketing complement digital marketing?
Telemarketing has come a very long way since businesses used telephones to contact leads. Although digital advances seem to diminish the relevance of phone calls and personal interactions, it can’t be denied that human connection is the driving force behind the success of every business.
Digital marketing tools may help make lead generation and qualification and data research and collection wide, quick, and reliable, but it’s telemarketing that actually converts leads into prospects and actual buyers. Without establishing a connection and relationship with your customers, your brand will be of less to no value to the market. After all, marketing isn’t all about making sales and closing deals, it’s about having a brand with products and services that relate to your customers’ needs. Customers who value and trust your brand are worth all the effort you put in and out.
In conclusion…
Both B2B telemarketing and digital marketing have their pros and cons. B2B telemarketing can be pricey and time-consuming and relies on proficient sales reps to yield outcomes. Digital marketing, in contrast, can be a more cost-effective and expandable option but needs to be supervised to optimize returns of investment.
No matter the case, the importance and benefits of both strategies can’t be overlooked, especially in the B2B setting. With the combination of telemarketing’s personalized approach and digital marketing’s extensive reach, businesses can formulate a powerful sales and marketing technique that generates results.
Here at Callbox, we have a team of B2B lead generation experts that work together to help you gain quality leads and drive results in the end. With our Multi-Touch, Multi-Channel approach, we make sure to maximize the telemarketing and digital marketing efforts to reach out to more clients via Email, Voice, Social Media, Webinar, Web, and Mobile channels.
Our digitally-powered telemarketing services can be availed with flexible and tailored pricing according to your business needs (request for pricing).
Secure leads and gain revenue by partnering with the trusted lead generations provider by companies across multiple industries worldwide. Contact Callbox and book an appointment with us now!