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| TELE-MARKETING |
Telemarketing is one of the methods of direct marketing of products and services offered by the marketer. Telemarketing is a process of persuading prospective customers to buy products or services using telecommunication technology. Telemarketing is interactive marketing medium, and it helps the marketers to address the prospect customer’s questions, concerns, and overcome their objections. There are different methods of telemarketing and each of the telemarketing method includes a different function. In order to obtain the best results, most businesses use telemarketing methods depending on their diverse business needs. To achieve the favorable results, marketers can adopt one or more telemarketing methods separately. The following are different variants of telemarketing.
Tele-Marketing Methods
- Interactive voice response
- Voice chat
- Voice & text messages
- Tele Shopping
- Call Centers & BPOs
- Inbound
- Outbound
- Broadcast Fax
INTERACTIVE VOICE RESPONSE
The Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) can turn out to be an effective tool of marketing if designed and used in the right way. IVRS has many applications in marketing. It can be used to answer frequently asked questions about products or services through prerecorded messages through IVRS round the clock. The IVRS enables automatic reading of basic information about product or a service for the callers. The IVRS can also be programmed to allow the callers record their messages or queries about products and services.
VOICE & VIDEO CHAT
After the emergence of internet as a medium of communication online, voice chat programmes and video chat networks were mainly used for personal entertainment like popular dating and to make international phone calls. For a long time, voice chat platforms were besieged by poor technical quality, relatively high pricing for service. On account of technological developments and easy access to this technology at affordable prices, voice chat has become really accessible, affordable, and feature-rich; and better-suited for business-to-business and business-to-consumer correspondence.
VOICE MESSAGES OR VOICE MAIL/SMS MARKETING
Voice /Text message refers to message sent or received using media such as cellular device or using internet. The main benefit of marketing product &services using a voice/text mail or message is that it can generate thousands of ready-to-buy respondents with customer subject to customer’s interest in the product, further implement a new promotion in limited time span voice mail marketing can be handy, resulting in an increase in marketing return on investment and voicemail marketing is also cost effective to reach target customers directly, by voice. Voice messages are popularly used by mobile phone network providers such as airtel, Vodafone and idea, etc., to market their product and services.
TELESHOPPING
Teleshopping involves marketing of goods and services by customers using a telephone or using computer aided devices or televisions or combination of these. The main advantage of teleshopping is convenience for customers. The customer can purchase a product without visiting the seller. This saves valuable time, effort and money. However, teleshopping suffers from certain limitations which includes, lack of efficient customer service, problems with the product delivery service, loss of social contact and lack of visual stimulation.
BROADCAST FAX
Broadcast faxing involves use telephones and fax machines to send multiple recipients, however it is not popular these days, in the past this method was widely used in developed countries mostly for business-to-business marketing campaign. If a recipient asked to be excluded from future broadcast, then that recipient fax number was placed in DO NOT FAX list. Due to the emergence of a variety of new digital communication methods, the overall use of faxes is less than in the past.
CALL CENTRES
Marketing these days is usually done through marketer owned call centers or through an outsourced call center. Call center is a centralized office meant for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. Call centers are primarily established to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from customers and outgoing calls for telemarketing. Inbound call center is exclusively handling inbound calls (calls initiated by the customers). In outbound call centre, the call centre employees make outbound calls to customers or sales leads.
Tele-Marketing Pros & Cons
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Pros |
Cons |
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Economical in terms of cost |
Telephone marketing is seen as a nuisance by customers |
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Provides employment (outsourcing) |
Risk of exposing confidential data by call centre employees |
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Direct interaction with customers |
Hidden costs |
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Helps in nurturing existing customers |
Lack of customer focus. |
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Brings
technology and thus saves time |
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