Over the past decade and a half, email marketing and social media marketing have largely changed how companies tell their brand story. In addition to working with a set of digital channels for distribution, there have been significant improvements in the ability to specifically target an audience.
Digital marketing options have opened up new opportunities for buyers to conduct extensive online research before they buy a product, which also changes the timeline for how quickly a buyer will make contact with a company. Buyers are able to collect information independently that, 15 years ago, would have required a conversation with a sales representative.
With all of these advances in the marketing world that highlight digital resources, itÂ’s important to note that traditional marketing options shouldnÂ’t be overlooked. In fact, while digital tools like email marketing and engaging in social media are effective channels, traditional channels are still also highly effective.
As discussed in an article posted on Website Magazine, there are some interesting trends in how marketing efforts have shifted. One notable result is that there have been new marketing companies that focus solely on digital marketing, while some existing firms have dug in on traditional marketing, deciding not to pursue digital methods.
The article points out, however, that traditional and digital marketing are not doomed to be in opposing corners.
This approach acknowledges that the most effective use of your marketing dollars is not the rejection of one type of marketing in favor of another, but instead itÂ’s the combining of the best tools for your industry and product or service. You need to determine where your target audience consumes marketing materials, and then invest more of your marketing budget there.
What Tra-Digital Marketing Looks Like
A great example of the use of tra-digital marketing is the combined use of social media and telemarketing. Telemarketing is a more traditional marketing tool, widely used for decades to connect with potential customers to communicate a brand message and increase sales.
Telemarketing has become no less valuable since the advent of digital marketing. Instead, like other traditional marketing tools, it offers some benefits that cannot be achieved using a digital method. Here are just a few examples of ways that telemarketing augments digital marketing efforts, and, in particular, the use of social media:
Helps you to qualify your leads effectively:Â Telemarketing allows you to engage personally and to address value points, identify contacts that are interested in more information and answer questions. It is a cost effective way to deliver qualified leads.
Telemarketing is also an effective tool to identify the influences and decision-makers in B2B sales lead opportunities. It helps you provide actionable and qualified leads to your sales team with the valuable information they need, delivered in real time.
Helps you refine your social media content: Whether youÂ’re simply posting conversation-starters in a status update or distributing white papers on LinkedIn, you often reside in a passive position of posting and then waiting to see whether anyone will engage.
With telemarketing in the mix, however, you receive immediate feedback that allows you to refine the content, format and quality of your social media posts. In a telephone conversation, it’s easy to ask a question like, “Did you read our recent white paper we posted on LinkedIn?” and receive information about whether they read it, and what they thought about it. You can gather a lot of information about the type of information your contact prefers, as well as the format and timing used to deliver it.
Identifies your target audience with more precision: Traditional or digital marketing alone can send out one item of content after another, with no real idea whether the right people are receiving it. When you engage in tra-digital marketing that includes telemarketing, however, you can collect valuable information about the target audience youÂ’re after.
For instance, consider that few B2B transactions involve only one buyer. When you post on social media, are you engaging with all the decision-makers and stakeholders involved in a decision? For many years, marketers have behaved as if the buy cycle was a straight line with one person making a decision. In fact, the buying process may look more like a web, with many people influencing the purchase of a product or service. You need to target every person involved with that decision, not simply the person that was identified as the buyer on a database.
Telemarketing offers an opportunity to have a conversation about whoÂ’s involved with a buying decision. Through a phone call, you eliminate the guesswork about who you should be targeting, and instead improve your precision in your marketing efforts.
Another way to distribute your content: Content marketing is a big focus for your team, and you know that building your reputation as a trusted leader in the industry is critical to your success. However, have you considered that tra-digital marketing can aid you in distributing your content?
Thinking of telemarketing as a content syndication tool may work against your ideas of content distribution. When you consider, though, that when you call a customer, you are telling your brand story in yet another way, as well as gathering critical information about their content consumption, you see that telemarketing is, indeed, an exceptional content marketing distribution tool.
Telemarketing is a tra-digital marketing tool that fits perfectly with this concept of combining the best of traditional with the best of digital marketing. Telemarketing gives you all the personal, one-on-one conversation thatÂ’s missing with digital media, while still working to promote digital engagement with the customer. YouÂ’ll have a conversation with the potential buyer, gathering information about where they are in the buying cycle and other important details, while working to encourage them to invest more time consuming your digital content.
Digital tools like social media and email marketing are not passing trends, they are here to stay and improve your ability to promote your brand and grow your business.ItÂ’s important to note that traditional marketing is no less effective now that digital marketing is on the scene, either. Instead, the most successful marketing strategies identify the mix of tra-digital options that most effectively increase attention for their brand, and ultimately, grow their business success.
To find out more about how to engage in the more comprehensive model of tra-digital marketing, give Blue Valley Telemarketing a call.
Last Updated on September 14, 2023 by Ronen Ben-Dror