Marketing leaders are leveraging digital strategies now more than ever before to maintain brand awareness, relevance, and continuity, while capturing leads. While there’s no arguing digital is a critical component of a successful marketing strategy, marketers need to be careful not to swing the pendulum too far to the digital side and risk eliminating human-to-human contact. The most successful marketing strategies utilize a balanced mix of digital and human interactions to move buyers into the funnel.
A recent effort combining digital and tele highlights the benefits of using a balanced mix. TeleNet implemented a tele-campaign targeting prospects who had received our client’s digital content, with the goal of qualifying prospects and scheduling sales meetings. Prioritization was given to prospects who had engaged with our client’s content, resulting in a strong 19% lead rate once tele was integrated. Next, TeleNet focused on prospects who received digital content, however, had not engaged with it. Unexpectedly, TeleNet saw an even stronger lead rate of 28% among this group of prospects, thus reinforcing the effectiveness of adding a “human-touch” tele-outreach. Had our client assumed lack of digital engagement signaled lack of need, nearly two-thirds of the qualified leads would have been missed.
Examples like this showcase the synergies when marrying digital and tele outreach. Here are some ways in which the human touch of teleservices can complement your digital strategy and bolster your pipeline.
Enhance Your Knowledge and Shorten Sales Cycle
Commonly, digital marketing strategies utilize a scoring model in which prospects must engage with multiple emails and online content before obtaining a score to necessitate sales engagement. Depending on your methodology, it can require considerable time for a prospect to reach your desired digital score. However, adding a proactive tele-outreach can help marketers more quickly uncover valuable insight into the identity, motivation, and situation of the prospect. Just like in the example provided above, immediate sales opportunities will be identified, shortening your sales cycle.
Create a More Robust Nurturing Strategy
By adding tele-outreach, marketers will gain a thorough understanding of the intention behind their prospect’s digital journey. This intelligence will allow the creation of a more robust nurturing strategy for those prospects who are not yet sales-ready, customizing future digital content to their situation.
Mitigate Pipeline Leakage
As digital leads progress through the sales process, pipeline leakage is always a possibility. Depending on your solution, a sale can take months or several quarters to close. During that time, some opportunities may slip through the cracks. Tele can be used to reengage opportunities; a well-timed phone conversation with a prospect that has gone dark can make all the difference in earning their business or closing the file.
Had our client assumed lack of digital engagement signaled lack of need, nearly two-thirds of the qualified leads would have been missed.
With the reduction of in-person events and face-to-face sales interactions, the role of teleprospecting is more important than ever before. The synergistic effect of combining digital strategies with a tried-and-true human touch will result in enhanced knowledge, more sales-ready leads, and fewer missed opportunities.
In addition to using tele to complement your digital marketing strategies, you can also leverage it to understand digital intent. Contact an Account Executive to create a campaign to strengthen your digital strategy today!