Telemarketing is so 50 years ago, switch to PPC
Being a member of various marketing associations including the Canadian Marketing Association, I see a lot of news about the rules and regulations that are in the works for a National do not call list. I also get frequent e-mails about how to effectively use telemarketing to drive sales continue to wonder, is it even worth it anymore? Telemarketing has been around since the introduction of the telephone, and I’m betting Alexander Graham Bell is turning in his grave because of it.
Yep, this is a rare Saturday post, but I do it because the exact people I want to address are sitting in cubicles somewhere, inputting my name and number into their predictive dialers and driving me and endless throngs of frustrated citizens up the wall.
Why bother with telemarketing anymore? A telemarketers only prospect that will spend more than ten seconds on the phone with them is either:
- Too young to legally sell anything to
- A senior citizen that is unlikely to even understand what your peddling, and therefore be disputed shortly after by wary family members
- New-school marketers like me, that play with you to waste precious time and put you through a wild-goose chase, only to find out who you work for and to be dropped into the do not call list
And let’s look at the costs involved:
- Facilities cost a lot because of technology such as predictive dialers, computer terminals, telephone equipment, switches, and utility infrastructure.
- If you have remote agents, you probably don’t have to spend money on building maintenance, heat, electricity and other expenses, but you also have less control over call quality and time management.
- Looking to outsource? Good idea, you can save some serious money, but guess what? Consumers dislike foreign telemarketers worse than their domestic counterparts.
- Muddying your Corporate image can be irreversible.
Perhaps an example will hammer home the point that telemarketing is going the way of the do-do.
Rogers, a cellular and internet company here in Canada, recently gave me a call (on my cell phone, arggh!) asking if I wanted to become a customer with a promo on cellular, cable, and internet bundles.
Now, I’ve been a moderately happy Rogers wireless customer since 1994, but their cable packages are really expensive, and their cable internet is slow, is capped, and oversold in our area (frequent outages).
Their first mistake is calling me on my cell phone, which they currently provide me service for. Their second mistake is assuming I’m not a customer. Their third mistake is not doing their homework about where I live, and the service problems associated with their internet packages. Their fourth mistake, and this is a doozy, is not respecting my privacy preferences as indicated by me through their customer portal.
With number portability, it’s now just as easy to say, nope not interested in your bundles, in fact, because you called me today I’m switching to another provider.
Why, oh why, does this telemarketing madness not just go away completely? I have a feeling I might know. Because the minute an entrepreneur gets a cold-call, or reads a get rich quick scraper blog post, the wheels of innovation start turning. I’m being sarcastic, of course.
Get Smarter, Go with Pay-Per-Click
I don’t know, maybe it’s just that no one has really introduced small business owners to online marketing, and how it can be a very cost effective, and sustainable long-term revenue generator. Several years ago, I was blind to sponsored search because I thought it was invasive, muddying up my otherwise clean Google search results pages. But now things are different:
- Search engine optimization is not necessarily getting harder to win, it’s getting harder to win consistently. Search results are now blended with all kinds of other stuff, like video, news, local content, etc.
- Sponsored search results are credible. Google has done a fine job setting the defacto standard in advertiser quality, filtering out the unsavory sites that don’t do a good job of catering to visitor needs. In some ways, sponsored search results are actually better than natural results!
- Lots of people that use search engines are cognizant that sponsored search are a credible source of information, that advertisers are screened, and that they can feel safe purchasing from those advertisers.
Getting started with a pay-per-click campaign is easy. You don’t necessarily have all the upfront costs involved in direct marketing and telemarketing. All you need is a decent landing page, but I’ve known some advertisers convert with just a telephone number or address on their ads!
Telemarketers, do the world a favor and just stop. Your customers will thank you, and so will your bottom line.
