Increase Conversions With Telephone Marketing
Online marketing is big business nowadays, but with the average company still receiving
around sixty percent of its sales leads over the telephone, this is where the true potential lies for increasing your conversions, and hence your profit. In fact, even if you do most of your business online you can still benefit from certain telephone marketing services, such as abandoned shopping carts, to increase conversions.
When it comes to sales, timing is crucial. You need to catch customers when they are in a buying mindset, and getting in direct touch with them at a time when they are genuinely considering making a purchase will lead to a much higher conversion rate than at any other point. Imagine for example that you receive a sales email when you are about to eat lunch or go out. The chances are, you will either not even open the email or at best you will only give it a quick scan through.
Then imagine that you are online, browsing through different home insurance policies and all of a sudden you receive a phone call from one of the websites that you were just looking at, offering you a great deal on their product. Not everyone will go on to make a purchase in such a circumstance, but many of them will. An immediate phone call reflects on excellent customer service and gives you a chance to speak directly with the customer, answering questions that your website alone may not be able to, and all at a time when the customer is thinking of buying your product. Wait even just 24 hours to call them back and they may already have found a better deal elsewhere.
Telephone marketing can therefore increase conversions and reduce shopping basket abandonment. A huge number of customers enter their details in at checkout, including their telephone number, but then do not go on to complete the transaction. This could be for any number of reasons and by giving them a quick phone call the moment they leave the website you have a chance to resolve any issues and to make that sale that you would otherwise have lost.
Another benefit of telephone marketing that can increase conversions and sales is to use geographical numbers, a particularly good idea for national companies or those spread across a number of regions. It is well documented that customers are more likely to get in touch with a company if they perceive it to be local, so by buying various telephone numbers with different local area codes you can present a different number to different customers based on where they live, all routed through to your one call centre number.
For example, if your call centre is based in London but you operate as far afield as Manchester, by proving a local number with a Manchester area code in any local newspaper adverts, or in online adverts that mention Manchester, you will greatly increase the number of calls that you get from prospective customers.
Call routing is available by more than just location. If you assign your clients different priority levels you can also route through calls from particularly important clients to a more senior agent, ensuring that they are not left waiting in a queue for an answer. You will improve the levels of customer satisfaction from your most important clients and it will most likely be easier to sell them add ons and extras in the future, or to renew their contract.
Finally, telephone marketing ties in well with online advertising such as PPC for businesses who sell over the phone but want to advertise online. For example, if you have different AdWords campaigns targeted at different keywords or regions but only one standard number shown on all of them, it can be impossible to tell which of your campaigns are proving most successful. Dynamic number call tracking allows you to create multiple phone numbers, all routed through to the same call centre, so you can assign for example a different number to each keyword. This helps you to see which keywords increase conversions best, just as you would use online analytics if your sales were made online.
There are many ways to increase conversions with telephone marketing, such as dynamic number call tracking or using geographic telephone numbers to give your business the feel of having a local presence. Telephone marketing need not be expensive though, as automated yet friendly services such as hosted IVR allow you to market via the telephone without needing to employ many call centre staff. It really is a win win situation.
by: Sarah Shore
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