Telemarketing Lead Generation Blog

Can Your Telemarketing Program Assist with Developing a Social Media Strategy?

Posted on Jun 15, 2009 by Kathy Rizzo, Vice President of Sales and Marketing

Returning from the BMA annual conference I find myself wondering about the future of demand generation. While some of the speakers were quite interesting, the conference lacked serious discussion around metrics and measurement. In fact, the phrases “lead generation”, “customer acquisition” and “return on investment” were rarely (if ever) spoken. With the economy driving marketing departments to take a more strategic and accountable role, I found these missing elements rather disappointing.

The one area that was not missing was Social Media. In fact, it was part of nearly every keynote speech, break-out session, and hallway discussion. Marketers are clearly interested in this topic and trying to navigate the right strategy. The best piece of advice that I heard from the conference was to view social media as just one more avenue to reach and communicate with your prospects. In other words, don’t stop everything else you’re doing online and offline in lieu of social media. Instead, look for ways to integrate the media with your current activities to strengthen and expand your message.

With this in mind, here are two things you can do with your existing telemarketing lead generation & lead nurturing programs to assist your social media strategy and message integration:

1. Find out where your customers/prospects go online. While you may be researching this now, the best way to find out is by asking your customers and prospects directly. At the close of your telemarketing calls, it is relatively easy to ask which online communities and blogs they are most actively participating in. This information can be very valuable to establishing or expanding your online presence.
2. Promote relevant communities, blogs and online content. When contacting your customers and prospects via outbound telemarketing, an important component is ensuring you provide them with valuable and relevant information. Therefore, components of your social media mix can be used during the close of your telemarketing call to direct prospects to useful information as a “next step”. Alternatively, it can be used as a reason to reach out to your prospects in the first place (“based on our previous conversation, I thought you would be interested in our newly launched blog on…”). The important part is to make sure you are suggesting only relevant information based on their profile and your previous conversations.

Right now measurement of social media and in particular translating it to leads, revenue and customer acquisition seems to be challenging at best. And that is likely the reason the BMA conference lacked discussion around metrics and revenue. Therefore, it’s important that when developing leads, traditional measurable components are a prominent fixture in your strategy.

Tagged: lead generation, lead nurturing, telemarketing sales leads, telemarketing social media

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