Pay Per Appointment Telemarketing

[Titus Accounts Ltd]

Hi everybody,
I'm interested in a pay per appointment telemarketing campaign and am wondering the best route. I guess I have two options - one to pay a company but not sure how many offer a pay per lead solution. Or two, to find somebody who would like some partime / fulltime work and for whatever reason is not currently in full time employment (i.e. could be retired).

We have used telemarketing companies on a day rate before and they charged a small fortune for no return.

The company is not in a position yet to pay somebody a salary or engage on upfront costs of a telemarketing campaign.

Any thoughts appreciated as to the best route.

We run an accountancy practice based in Surrey.

 

[james_firmsites]

Out of interest, sorry if off topic, why are you considering telemarketing which has the potential to not only annoy potential customers but also fall foul of GDPR if not done in a very specific way when solutions like Adwords exist to get better ROI?

 

[Titus Accounts Ltd]

We are using Adwords at the moment, but don't seem to be getting any return.

 

[fisicx]

We are using Adwords at the moment, but don't seem to be getting any return.

Then you are doing it wrong.

It will be the keywords, the adverts or the landing pages that need sorting. Once you know which bit to fix the enquiries will start coming in.

 

[james_firmsites]

Then you are doing it wrong.

It will be the keywords, the adverts or the landing pages that need sorting. Once you know which bit to fix the enquiries will start coming in.

yeah agree, am trying to determine over a PM what exactly is up with their adwords campaign as it should easily outpace phone marketing for most businesses.

 

[Titus Accounts Ltd]

Any recommendations for companies that can help with landing pages etc?

 

[james_firmsites]

There are lots of web design/marketing people on here who can provide services including me, but regardless of who you choose I would look for someone that can do both Landing pages AND the adwords. As the two really need to work together and I think a properly configured adwords campaign will be a much more effective use of your money than telemarketing. Just my view though, I'm sure a telemarketer will show up soon and point out why I'm wrong

 

[Mike Herberts]

Here I am right on cue.

Actually I do sales AND marketing so I have experience with telemarketing and Adwords/FB.

Both work. For some industries one will work better than the other.

The trick is to find the sweet-spot where you get maximum return for the activity. In some situations, a 'properly configured adwords campaign' would be disastrous compared with a well managed and highly skillful telemarketing campaign.

Which method you use depends on several factors...the nature of the industry, the type of potential customers, age, activity, the product....and others.

Adwords may [or may not] get a better ROI than telemarketing...it depends.

I certainly wouldn't suggest you use an outside source to do your telemarketing though, whereas I would be happy to outsource an Adwords campaign.

 

[Frimley111R]

Adwords is reactive, you can never know what you are going to get. TM is proactive and whilst results can vary, as with PPC, once you're up and running you know what you can expect every month / week. We use both as if it gets quiet on PPC we don't have leads but TM will always be generating leads.

 

[pbdesigns]

My understanding is that telemarketing success also comes down to the data.

Where are you sourcing your data from? I assume you're providing the telemarketing companies in the past with data?

Is your offer strong enough? Is there demand/need for your product/service? As in, are you creating the need? Accounts is a funny one - it's hard to get people away from existing accountants.

Google Ads should work well for you, taking those who are actively seeking an accountant. But what is the destination for the ads? Is it being run by a professional, or are you doing Google Ads in house?

 

[Acarvil7]

Hi

A colleague of mine has just started a company in which it is a sales function for small businesses who don’t want or have the knowledge for sales/lead generation. He mentioned it is commission only so I know there is not a day rate.

I can give you his number if you want to have a chat with him?

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

I recently did something for an accountancy firm which has recently grown from 20 to 200 staff and asked them how they did it. This is an advert for a CRM firm but the accountancy partner talks a little about how they generated a ton more customers ranging from small to huge.

Note: The accountancy firm isn't my company and neither is the CRM firm.

They did it primarily through:

- Email marketing with calls to follow-up.
- Warm Calls
- They now have some kind of website analysis so they can see who's on there and respond appropriately
- They used a CRM system to co-ordinate all of this.

At no point did they mention cold calling or adwords but did run 'soft' calling campaigns designed to find out who decision-makers were and targeting them through email.

That being said, if you want a commission-only cold caller, I know someone who would do it for a small fee plus commission. You'll need to cover his phone and leccy bill, also providing him with the data.

 

[Frimley111R]

Interesting, thanks. I suspect warm calls were to old leads/enquiries or clients who had gone elsewhere (otherwise they'd be cold calls). Or, potentially, they called up with a few gentle questions, got talking and generated leads that way.

The website tool is not new but if working in B2B it can show you which businesses have visited your website and then you can call them/mail them. One example is Lead Forensics but there are others. They just match the IP address to the physical address, simple and effective.

Any business that size is going to need/have a CRM as there is too much going on not to.

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

Interesting, thanks. I suspect warm calls were to old leads/enquiries or clients who had gone elsewhere (otherwise they'd be cold calls). Or, potentially, they called up with a few gentle questions, got talking and generated leads that way.

The website tool is not new but if working in B2B it can show you which businesses have visited your website and then you can call them/mail them. One example is Lead Forensics but there are others. They just match the IP address to the physical address, simple and effective.

Any business that size is going to need/have a CRM as there is too much going on not to.

Just on the 'warm calls' part, it's about old stuff and it's also about warming leads with an email campaign before calling. So when I started in telesales, marketing campaigns warming up the prospects made it so much easier to make successful calls and sales. It turns cold calls with low hit rates into warm calls with about three times the hit rates, if not more.

My customers do it with video (we do the vid for them). The reason is they can combine all the tech so they can see who's been looking at the vids, how many times, which vids they're most interested in etc... So when their telesales team call up, they know what interests the prospect, how interested they are and can target interested prospects instead of a zillion uninterested people.

 

[Frimley111R]

Just on the 'warm calls' part, it's about old stuff and it's also about warming leads with an email campaign before calling. So when I started in telesales, marketing campaigns warming up the prospects made it so much easier to make successful calls and sales. It turns cold calls with low hit rates into warm calls with about three times the hit rates, if not more.

My customers do it with video (we do the vid for them). The reason is they can combine all the tech so they can see who's been looking at the vids, how many times, which vids they're most interested in etc... So when their telesales team call up, they know what interests the prospect, how interested they are and can target interested prospects instead of a zillion uninterested people.

A tried and tested technique over many years. It was once mostly a DM and call but today it's email or even SM and a call. At least now you can tell who is interested, unlike with DM.

Do they call only those who clicked on the emails or those shown as opening them? I imagine that if you're looking at those who just clicked/watched that they're sending as lot of emails out? Opens are obviously pointless to follow up.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

They just match the IP address to the physical address, simple and effective.

My IP address resolves over 200 miles north from where I actually live

 

[Frimley111R]

My IP address resolves over 200 miles north from where I actually live

Well I didn't say it was foolproof but most big/bigger businesses have their IP addresses at their locations

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

A tried and tested technique over many years. It was once mostly a DM and call but today it's email or even SM and a call. At least now you can tell who is interested, unlike with DM.

Do they call only those who clicked on the emails or those shown as opening them? I imagine that if you're looking at those who just clicked/watched that they're sending as lot of emails out? Opens are obviously pointless to follow up.

Very true. When I started in telesales, it was 30 years ago and it always makes me laugh when marketers propose 'new' solutions as if they're really new! The reality is the tools have changed but the fundamentals are identical. Warm up the leads and / or find out who's hottest, call them and that produces much better returns than just calling them cold.

In answer to the question about calling only people who'd clicked on the link, it depends. For the accountancy firm I showed, I simply don't know. I didn't ask! However, I can give an example of another customer.

For example, we shot some video for a customer, an MSP for email campaigns. Their BDR started with people who'd watched the a vid multiple times, shared them and then started working their way down the list to, for example, prospects who'd just watched it once. I remember sitting next to their BDR and they really just seemed to focus on the warmer stuff.

I don't know what the return was for prospects who'd just watched it once but for the 'multiples' and 'sharers,' it was pretty good. For example, one vid about VOIP was watched 15 times at the same company and the sales guy just bypassed the BDR and called that company directly because that lead was hot as hell. Turns out that lead was an organisation that they'd talked to in the past, given up on and was then worth re-opening because they were clearly interested again.

The other element is BDRs could see what hit home. For example, some of the vids were about lease lines, or VOIP or Slack or hosting etc... So they could see, for example, if a prospect opened vids about lease lines but nothing else so when the BDR called, they could hone in on the right thing and everybody wins.

The principle of warm calling over cold calling is exactly as you say. It's nothing new. Why waste time calling disinterested prospects? It takes time, eats your phone bill and p!sses people off. Why not instead just hone directly in on prospects who want to buy your solution?

 

[TheoNe]

I would stay away from pay per appointment telemarketing - it does cost a fortune as you have pointed out & the aggressive approach employed by many companies might end up damaging your brand. I think you should combine two approaches.

Local Marketing - if you are a 'newish' businesses, then you want to become well known in your immediate area. Presuming you already have an active Google My Business listing complete with current photos, contact information and your website URL, you could direct mail clients in your general geographical area and link back to your website, attend local chamber events, guest contribute to your local newspaper, and even make a small contribution to a local charity to earn some attention.

Hire a Sales Person - you should also hire a sales person (part-time) to make follow-up calls in the wake of a direct marketing campaign to set-up meetings with potential clients.

I hope this helps.