By Matt Ford, Published October 12, 2014
In general, marketing has come a long way from newspaper ads to targeted online advertising. But in spite of the history, it’s hard to tell how often B2B marketers stick to the old or go with the new. One moment, you’re making a few rounds of telemarketing calls. In the next, you’re looking for prospects on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Now is this really so bad? Actually no. Multi-channel marketing is arguably the true force of innovation in modern B2B lead generation. The challenge of course is how to have enough time, resources, and tools to tailor tweets and telemarketing to the rest of your overall prospecting strategies.
The first step is to always clean up the misconceptions people have. No, using Twitter doesn’t mean your social media marketing campaign should be in the hands of a Millennial intern. (You’ll need more than intern’s skill to maximize social media’s impact.) No, a telemarketing campaign doesn’t make your company into a dinosaur. (Unless, you don’t ever plan on having a single conversation with a prospect during the sales meeting.)
The next step is aligning the information you generate from either channel and put them under a single prospect’s profile.
- Did they come to you or you to them? – Were they drawn by the information you put out on your blog? Did you actively follow them on Twitter? The answer will help you determine what step to take next. You can use Twitter as a sort of ‘buffer’ for prospects still in need for more lead nurturing. Telemarketing can be a tool for confirming other prospect details.
- What do they frequently mention most? – Discovering a problem is an integral part of the lead generation process. What issue do they give the most attention to(both from their tweets and your telemarketing calls)? Is the problem really as big as they make it sound? Do you see other problems they might be underestimating?
- What can and cannot be discussed? – Sometimes you can only discuss certain things in private conversation and vice-versa. For example, your prospect’s agenda for next month could be better off discussed in a private phone call than in an open Twitter conversation. Or maybe, making your discussions open could benefit both parties just as an audience benefits from similar discussions on T.V.
And naturally, there’s always that handy tactic of leaving your contact number on occasion for those who like to talk more. There’s really not much difference between yesterday’s marketing and today’s marketing other than you’ve got more ways to talk with prospects.
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