An appointment setter is essentially a telemarketer whose aim is to arrange appointments for you or your team to follow up on. They start with a database of contacts, ideally developed from your own lead generation strategies, and phone to arrange an appointment.
They serve as the middle of three stages in your sales process:
Lead generation is an important part of marketing your business, but setting business appointment is an equally important part of actually selling your product or service – especially where you have a more complicated product or service which requires a personal selling approach.
Using a telemarketer to schedule appointments leaves the sales people free to focus on closing sales. Skilled telemarketers are well trained to weed out unqualified prospects or those who are not in a position to buy. Provided they are given the right instructions, they can be used as filters – putting individual prospects into the right groups based on their readiness to buy.
Some prospects will require a sales visit. For others this would be a waste of everyone’s time. A skilled telemarketer can, instead, arrange for further information to be sent to this prospect or move them into a file for future contact.
If your existing database of prospective clients is a little thin, you may consider using a rented or purchased list of contacts. These lists can be tailor made to your industry and target customer. Make sure to buy from a reliable service that has taken the necessary legal precautions in putting together and managing its lists – a good telemarketing company can advise you.
In short, if you want to improve the productivity of your sales efforts, try using an appointment setting service for your next campaign.
We do it for you:If you need help designing a marketing tool that promotes or sells your products or services online, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide.
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report
Go to Lead Generation Techniques
Back to Lead Generation Home
List Building Strategies & Setting Appointments & Telemarketing
Can Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) really help your business? How does it work?
PPC advertising is a simple method of using search engines like Google to deliver qualified prospects to your website. It is cost effective, simple to use and can be started with a very small budget. This article is designed as a simple introduction to PPC advertising but if you would like more help in setting up your own PPC campaign, please check out our services page.
Pay per click advertising is an online advertising model where you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement and visits your site. It doesn’t matter how many times people see your ad or how often it is displayed – if nobody clicks on it, you pay nothing.
The most common PPC advertising example is Google Adwords. When you type something into Google it searches the web and then displays the pages it thinks are most relevant based on the terms you typed in (your keywords). For example, if you type in ‘tropical fish’ it will give you a list of pages that use the term ‘tropical fish’ in order of relevance and importance.
There are lots of thing that you can do to get your website to the top of the list for keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business – you can find a good introduction to these in our free report on Search Engines in Plain English.
However, search engine optimization takes time and you might be up against some pretty big players.
Google’s PPC advertising lets you buy your way onto the first page of the results in the form of the small text advertisements that you see along the right hand side of the screen, and under the heading ‘sponsored results’.
Opening Your Account
To start a pay per click advertising campaign you will need to set up an account. With Google, you can do that at the Adwords Sign Up Page. Once your account is opened you can create a simple text based advertisement – usually a headline plus two additional short lines, using select keywords, of course.
This is the ad that will be displayed next to your chosen search terms. You will also be able to select which countries your ad will be displayed in. In fact, if you sell to a local market only you can even select a county or city.
Choosing Your Keywords
The next step is choosing the search terms that you want your ad to appear next to. Using our tropical fish example, you might want to show up when someone searches for ‘tropical fish’ or ‘Japanese fighting fish’ or any number of terms.
Before you start typing them in, do your homework and find out the terms that people are searching for – Google has tools to help you do this.
Setting a Budget
The next step is to set a budget – both for the total amount that you are prepared to spend and the amount you are prepared to spend per click. For example, there may be 10 businesses that would all like their ads displayed next to the term ‘tropical fish’. So whose ad does Google put first in the list? Google ranks the ads by combining two factors:
You can decide how much you are prepared to ‘bid’ for your terms starting from a few cents. Based on your business, select an amount that you are willing to pay – it can always to be changed later. At this stage Google will show you your estimated position and the average number of people you will attract each day. If you’ve ‘bid’ $0.10 per click for the term ‘tropical fish’ and attract 10 clicks per day, that’s means you will have spent $1 per day on your ads. If nobody clicks you will have spent nothing. Based on these estimates you can set the maximum amount that you want to spend in any day or month. Once you have reached your budget your ads will simply stop getting displayed.
You will be charged by credit card or direct debit each month for the number of clicks you had.
We Do It For You: If you’d like help setting up and tracking your PPC campaign, click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report
Return to Low Cost Lead Generation
Back to Lead Generation Home
Would you like more targeted traffic to your website? Contextual advertising could be the answer you’re looking for, especially if your business targets a specific niche.
It is an online advertising model where relevant ads are displayed on websites or other online media, based on the content that is on that web page. The advertising network searches the page for keywords and then delivers an advertisement that matches those keywords. For example, if you were reading a website about sports – and they use contextual advertisement – then you would only see ads related to sports.
For the advertiser it means that their ads are being displayed on pages related to their products or services. Chances are, if someone is reading that page, they may be interested in that topic – in this case, sports. That increases the chances that they will also be interested in your product or service.
No, pay per click is a model of how you pay for advertising, not how it is displayed. However, in many cases PPC is used alongside contextual ads – for example, Google Adwords and Adsense. When you type something into Google it searches the web and then displays the pages it thinks are most relevant based on the terms you typed in (your keywords). For example, if you type in ‘tropical fish’ it will give you a list of pages that use the term ‘tropical fish’ in order of relevance and importance.
On the right hand side of the results page Google also displays what it calls ‘sponsored results’ – this is Google Adwords and is a perfect example of a contextual ad. The ads that are displayed there are relevant to the keywords that you typed into Google. In this case you would expect to see advertisements related to ‘tropical fish’ – fish tanks, pet shops and the like. Each advertiser chooses the keywords that are appropriate to their advertisements and will only show up when those terms are searched for – i.e. contextual. They only pay however, when someone clicks on that ad – that is PPC.
Google Adwords combines the two – contextual advert and PPC – to great effect and has become one of the world’s largest advertising networks. Adsense is based on the same concept. Adsense allows website publishers to put small bits of code onto their website that deliver Adwords-style ads based on the text that is on the website page. So a page about boxing would have small boxing-related text ads appear on the page. When someone clicks on these ads, the revenue generated is split between Google and the website owner.
Google is certainly not the only advertising network that uses contextual ads and contextual advert does not have to use PPC.
The purpose of contextual advert is simply to make any advertising more relevant to what is on the website. That should mean that advertisers get a better response (and more targeted leads) and customers are not annoyed by irrelevant ads.
We Do It For You: If you’d like help finding a contextual advertising solution to fit your business, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report
Return to Lead Generation Techniques
Back to Lead Generation Home
Contextual Advertising & Online Marketing Services & Pay Per Click & Website Marketing Strategy
Can Telemarketing Services Really Increase Sales?
Telemarketing services can help improve sales and increase leads generation,but you probably don’t want to turn your business into a call center.
Inbound Marketing Calls
In most cases the telemarketing that you’ll be considering will be outbound (i.e. you contacting the customer) as opposed to inbound (them contacting you). However, if you are not prepared to handle inbound calls, you may be wasting your hard-won marketing dollars. So you should train and prepare your staff to handle inbound calls effectively and keep them up-to-date with the marketing efforts that may lead to calls.
You may choose to incorporate phone contact into your current advertising, which may include:
Using a dedicated, toll-free number can be a great way to encourage prospects to get in touch, but your staff needs to be ready and prepared to handle those calls, answer questions and effectively funnel these initial leads into your sales strategy. For example, your advertising could promote a free report that customers can claim via a phone number.
Each call therefore represents a qualified, interested prospect, motivated to lift the phone.
Outbound Telemarketing
Outbound telemarketing (you contacting the customer) can be an effective tool in either:
A follow up call after a direct mail campaign can increase the open rate and also increase the number of sales. Outbound telemarketing also gives you the opportunity to up-sell your existing customers or target them with special offers.
Outsource or In-house Telemarketing
Few business owners look forward to getting on the phone and cold calling prospects (or even calling warm leads). It’s not surprising then that an industry has grown up to handle telemarketing services for small businesses. But hiring a telemarketing company is not an inexpensive exercise.
With that in mind, a good rule of thumb is for small businesses to avoid outsourcing telemarketing services- except where the value of a new client hits at least four figures.
For most businesses however, telemarketing will be done internally.
If it’s your own list, then the purpose of your call should be two-fold. Ideally you’ll have a product or service that you would like to sell.
If you have bought or rented your list then you can add an alternative goal: get them to agree to join your mailing / contact database. This will allow you to market to them again in the future.
Of course, you never started your business to become a telemarketer so ask yourself whether or not this is the best way to spend your time. If it isn’t, and you can afford to bring in some help, do so.
We do it for you: Need help with telemarketing? Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas Download our free report
Return to lead generation techniques
List Building Strategies & Setting Appointments & Telemarketing
Marketing Strategies to Improve Your Business
If you want more leads for your business then pay per lead is an attractive choice. But is it the right one and how does it work?
It is exactly what it sounds like: You pay for leads instead of paying a flat rate for advertising or marketing. There are lots of ways that this can be organized but the main benefit to you is that you don’t have to pay for any marketing that doesn’t result in new leads.
To pay for leads means you get a fixed price for each lead, which eliminates a lot of the risk that is usually associated with marketing and advertising your business. So long as you can do a good enough job of closing sales, then it’s perfectly possible to adopt paying for leads as a strategy to grow your entire business.
The way it works depends on what kind of system you set up or use. Here are a few options that might be worth looking at:
We Do It For You: If you’d like help with setting up your own pay per lead program, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas Download our free report
Return from Pay per lead Page to lead generation techniques
Back to Lead Generation Home
Online Radio Stations?
Due to their size and ability to reach niche audiences, they tend to attract a much more targeted audience than mass market, traditional radio stations.
Potentially…
This makes advertising on them an attractive proposition to marketers who target niche groups. Moreover, most Internet radio stations will also create podcasts of popular shows – recorded versions that can be downloaded and listened to at any time – creating an added attraction.
The natural starting point is an Internet search to find stations that suit your target audience. Ideally you will find stations that combine information relevant to your niche with a relevant audience. If you sell widgets, it might make sense to advertise on Widget Radio – unless, the only people who listen to Widget Radio are widgets makers like you.
Like any traditional station, online stations should be able to provide you with key demographic information about their listeners. Study this info and listen to the shows before going any further.
Depending on the outcome you want, you can choose between audio ads, onsite advertising (like banners or text links) or sponsorship. Budget permitting, you can combine sponsorship and audio ads with banners and buttons to increase visibility, CTR (click through rate), retain attention for better conversion and ultimately, increased ROI (return on investment).
One of the most attractive aspects of internet radio advertising is the simple fact that your customers are only a click away to your website. Not only can this significantly increase your ROI but it also allows exact, detailed tracking of results. By carefully measuring what works – and what doesn’t – you can more effectively plan your marketing.
Taken together, the targeted listenership, ability to combine visual and audio advertising and detailed tracking possibilities make internet radio an attractive alternative that could give you a leg up on the competition.
Online Radio Listenership Figures
“In any given week, 8.1 million people listen to radio via the Internet, either live or through a Listen Again service, and 1.87 million listen to a Podcast.” Source: Rajar/Ipsos Mori
In America alone, the number of people watching less TV and spending more time on the internet has grown by more than 400% in the past few years and more than 50% of them have consumed streaming media. Source: Rajar/Ipsos Mori
We do it for you: Interested in using online radio to generate leads? Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide.
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report
Return to Top page Online Radio
Back to Lead generation Home Page
Are you looking at buying leads for your business? If so, you might be asking yourself some of these questions:
If you are considering buying leads for you business, there is no shortage of people who are willing to sell them to you. A quick search on Google will give you over 45 million results.
Lead brokers (i.e. the people who sell leads) come in all shapes and sizes. In short, lead brokers market themselves in general terms. For example, they may advertise to people in search of insurance. They will provide general content and advice, and encourage people to provide their details for someone to follow up on. When people do provide their details, these leads are then sold to businesses that can actually provide the service or product.
Some of these lead generators will be tied to a particular company and others will sell leads to anyone who wants to buy them.
The benefits to you as a business that buys leads are clear. First and foremost you can get leads on demand.
If you know that you can convert 10% of the leads you get into new customers, buying 100 leads should result in 10 new customers. So long as you have done your research, there is no reason that you can’t buy as many leads as you want and grow your business that way.
To buy leads also gives you a fixed cost. If you market your business in the hope of generating your own leads, there are plenty of costs to consider – from creating your marketing and advertising to paying for advertising space, sending out direct mail or using a telemarketing company.
Depending on how good you are at marketing your business, this overall cost for each lead you get can vary. Buying leads can be a great way to build your business with predictable costs and predictable outcomes – once you’ve done some testing, that is.
Of course, buying leads does not come without a few drawbacks – otherwise that’s all anyone would do.
The first consideration is whether the leads you buy are of high enough quality for you to convert them into actual paying customers. If a lead costs you $10 and you convert 10%, then the cost of getting a new customer is $100. But if only 1% become customers, then the real cost is $1000 per new customer.
Before you buy leads you need to find out where the leads are coming from and how qualified they are. You should know what makes a lead a good prospect for your business – when you buy leads you want the best match you can get.
Here are a few more questions to ask before you commit to buying leads:
Even if you do get your hands on high-quality leads, there is one major problem that may be difficult to overcome – the prospective customer doesn’t know you or anything about your business. To them you are just another faceless company – exactly the same as all the others. You will need to find ways to set yourself apart from the competition before they are willing to buy your product or service.
Buying leads can be an effective way to build your business but the quality of leads can vary greatly. So do your homework, test new lead sources in small batches before you make any big commitments, and always follow up with your leads quickly. Of course, developing your own leads through a high-quality lead generation program will usually offer a better long-term solution.
Return from Buying leads Page to lead generation techniques
How to Buy Leads & Lead Generation & List Building Strategies & Setting Appointments & Telemarketing
