A fundamental truth of online marketing is that not every customer can be generated solely through the Internet, and even fewer will be generated by their first interaction with an advertiser. When an advertiser is able to identify a prospect from an initial interaction, a lead is born. Performance marketing allows advertisers to hedge the risk of their other marketing efforts, as they’re only required to pay once the prospect is originated and identified. At the same time, many advertisers are apprehensive about spending more incremental dollars on lead generation when there is no guarantee on lead quality. That is why we’re seeing a resurgence in companies leveraging telemarketing as a vehicle to manage quality prior to selling leads to an advertiser.
For many leads, the first step the buyer takes is to call prospects by phone to close the sale. Delivering only leads that have already been reached should result in a pool that is contactable, qualified and educated on the next step in the sales process.
A successful call-verified lead campaign should include three basic things:
- It should validate the data. Confirm that the contact data is correct so the client can reach the lead in the future.
- Verify the lead. It is important to re-confirm with each lead that he or she is indeed interested in taking the next step in the sales process.
- Qualify the lead. Get accurate qualifying data to make sure the lead fits the specified criteria. Using the education market as an example, while some colleges might seek students residing in certain ZIP codes, others are looking for those who can study online and have at least one year of college experience. By properly collecting data, a skilled telemarketer can turn a raw pool of prospects that has simply shown interest into leads that are ready to be enrolled.
The increased use of mobile phone numbers as primary contact numbers greatly improves the contact rates for telemarketing due to prospects being accessible both at work and at home. The result is a more profitable telemarketing campaign and higher verification rates. Layering telemarketing as a verification process is still a critical factor in the success or failure of an online lead generation program.
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