The worst business marketing you can do
October 7th, 2009 by Ingrid Cliff
Often I share tips on great ways to grow your business, but today I am going to talk about the 100% guaranteed worst way you can market your business. It is without fail guaranteed to make you despised in the eyes of the majority of other business owners and will destroy your reputation faster than sleeping with the intern in your office.
It is of course telemarketing. Now a quick disclaimer here – back in the 80′s when telemarketing was shiny and new I was involved in this form of marketing for a time. Then it worked because people were actually excited to hear from their electricity company about anything except their bill. Now … telemarketing is the phone equivalent to spam in your email box. You just don’t do it if you want to remain credible as a business.
Yes, there have been fabulous laws passed in many countries establishing “do not call” registers for private homes. This has reduced the phone spam at home – but has passed it on to businesses. Our business is case in point – every day we get on average 5-8 telemarketing calls from people attempting to sell everything from phone plans, finance plans, toner ink, government grants and mortgages. Sure … I am keen to hand over money to people I have never met. Sort of like believing that there really is a nice man in Nigeria willing to give you millions of dollars he happens to have fallen over on a dark night.
Over the years my approach to these unwanted approaches (termed harassment in Human Resources parlance) has gone from polite to downright rude. This is one time when I am actually hanging out for additional government regulation to create a do not call register that businesses can list themselves on.
Until then … if you seriously want to market your business don’t take up telemarketing. I don’t care how attractive it sounds – it is the same as walking up to everyone in the bar and asking them to sleep with you. Your business is going to get a lot of whacks across the side of the face for every acceptance.
Until next time
Ingrid
We put your business into words
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Marketing Tips for Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 7th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Thank you for this tip. I agree, I have a small business and I find it quite annoying to stop in the middle of what I am doing to listen to someone promote a product I know I am already not interested in. It breaks your focus and is very counterproductive. I prefer to read a mail or look up something at my own time. Thanks again,
Lisa.
October 7th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
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October 7th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Hmmmm, that’s a big call Ingrid – The WORST?? – I’m not sure.
The worst thing is to do ANY marketing in an ad-hoc way -If you just get on the phone and randomly call people – yeah, good luck! You probably wont get far.
BUT, if you have a specific target, a well planned approach, and a valuable offer, why can’t telemarketing work?
I had a lot of success in my early days with telephoning prospects, it’s cheap, easy, and a fast result (one way or the other) is almost guaranteed. For example, cold calls suck – warm calls rock, good planning is the difference between the two.
So, i disagree to a certain degree –
BAD telemarketing is the worst thing you can do.
GREAT telemarketing can be very profitable.
Bren
October 7th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Ahh – there’s the difference. Warm calls work – that is the people know you and to a certain degree expect your calls. Cold telemarketing is dreadful!
October 8th, 2009 at 9:50 am
You can “warm call” strangers.
it all comes down to research & planning.
For example, if your business caters mainly to cafes, then you should know cafes very well.
You should know what motivates them, what is valuable to them, the best time to call them.
For example – if i sell cash registers to cafes.
1 I dont call at lunch or other rush times. I dont call in prep or clean up times. I call in the morning at about 1030-1130 when the prep is done and the owner is most likely sitting in the office with a cuppa, checking paperwork before the lunch rush
2 I know what motivates the owner. Better, faster, more efficient service. I gear my offer to be of great advantage to them.
3 I have an awesome offer. A cafe owner wants his cash register to work, right? If the register breaks, he wants it fixed fast, right?
So, when i call, i ask “If your register broke right now, how long would it take for your exisiting supplier’s support team to call you back?”
Answer – “3-4 hours”
“If your register broke right now, at 11 am, and we could guarantee to be on site to fix it or replace it with a loaner for today’s lunch rush, would that be of value to you?”
Good timing, know the motivation, and have an awesome offer.
Don’t give up on telemarketing, it’s not a bad practise, just not practised well
IMHO the WORST sales / marketing tactict? walking up to me in the retail store and saying “Can i help you?” – do i LOOK like im drowning?
Bren
October 9th, 2009 at 8:35 am
Bren – I think you nailed it. As long as it is strategically used, like any other marketing tactic, it can work. I would also agree with Ingrid that it can do huge damage to your brand – if it is used just as a numbers game, if used as a cold call sales tool. And if that is the case it aint the fault of the medium – it is the lack of strategy, insight into your target market, and poor “creative”. There are equally as many (more) poor advertising executions as telemarketing campaigns.