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PULL MARKETING | READING TIME: 10 MINUTES | 13 NOVEMBER

Creating Demand In a Digital Era

Global industry leader Procter & Gamble faced the consequences after being unable to effectively implement marketing strategies to stay competitive. As one of the consequences market-share dropped heavily back in 2018 as the competitor Unilever with brands like Dove outperformed them due to excellent implementations of digital marketing strategies and a strategy for communicating in the ”new” Era.

The fact that communication and marketing are key in any business development strategy is unquestionable, yet businesses can have the most amazing products or services, yet unless one is able to communicate successfully with target market, one is unlikely to see any actual results – so strategy and optimal execution of marketing is key.

In a digital age, companies are often faced with the challenge of distributing budget and efforts between engaging in digital push marketing vs. pull-marketing activities. However, effective marketing is only optimal when digital pull and push marketing practices are complementing strategies to achieve business objectives. Even then, most CMOs often hold back from using possible effective push marketing strategies in digital marketing strategies due to the common notion that most customers do not respond well to those types of activities, this is especially true in the FMCG segment (much like Procter & Gamble example above).

According to a study conducted by Chron , one will be surprised to know that more conventional push-marketing methods are still very effective when it comes to building relationships. All a marketer needs to understand is how to effectively carry out digital push-marketing strategies and combine them with pull-marketing efforts effectively! In our previous articles, we have often stressed the benefits of pull marketing. However, to give our readers a more holistic view of an effective digital marketing strategy, we will discuss the importance of considering push strategies as part of an organization’s overall marketing activities. To do just that, the first step is to fully understand what exactly digital push marketing is all about.

A Deeper Understanding of Push Marketing

While pull-marketing is all about capitalizing on existing demand, push-marketing is focused on the increase and generate demand. As such, push-marketing is also known as outbound marketing, as it pushes your communication directly to users. Typically , businesses use push-marketing tactics to promote new product (s) or offer (s).

After gaining a basic understanding of digital push-marketing, let’s look at how to execute push-marketing, in the digital space, in the most effective way?

Essentially, there are multiple ways to carry out push marketing, some of which include (but not limited to):

  • Display Advertising
  • Online Syndication
  • Online Event Promotions
  • TV / Radio Advertising
  • Trade Shows
  • Email Marketing
  • Campaign websites
  • blogging
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Social Media Advertising (SOME Ads)
  • Search Engine Advertising (SEA)
  • Telemarketing (TM)

For this article, we have shortlisted two effective activities; email marketing and telemarketing. We have chosen telemarketing since its getting more and more complex and in data shows it (still) works great if made properly. Here are some statistics about email marketing and Telemarketing:

  • According to LinkedIn, almost 90% of marketing managers claim telesales and telephone follow-up calls are an effective lead nurturing technique.
  • According to DMA, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $32.
  • According to Emarsys, 81% of SMBs still rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel and 80% for retention.

Like mentioned before, to execute digital push-marketing activities, it is important to carry it out effectively. If not, your business won’t receive sufficient Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI). To give you a better understanding of Email and Telemarketing, we have provided a couple of general parameters to help you understand the ‘WHEN’, ‘HOW’ and ‘WHY’ of email Marketing and telemarketing. In this process, we also got some vital insights from our in-house expert on the subject, Anuvinder Singh. Before joining GO MO Group, Anuvinder co-founded Inventive SMI, which focused on providing demand generation services. Within 4 years, Anuvinder grew the company from an employee strength of zero to 250 employees. Today, he leads the Online Acceleration Team at GO MO Group.

The Why, When and How of Email Marketing

Email marketing, as the name suggests, allows an organization to communicate with their existing or potential customers via electronic mail. In the digital era, it’s not surprising that email marketing has become an extremely essential tool for businesses. While the benefits of email marketing cannot be denied, when is this activity most beneficial for a business?

The “When”

  • Cost-Effectiveness
    According to a study conducted by the Direct Market Association, if a business wants to reach a large audience cost-effectively, email marketing is the way to go! The study found that on average, email marketing brings in $40 for ever $1 spent
  • Customer Accessibility
    With the help of email marketing, businesses can reach their customers fast. In today’s digital era, people access their emails not just on a computer, but on their phones as well. Hence, organizations can get almost immediate access to their customers at all times.
  • Measurability
    With the analytics available today, it’s easy to track responses to your email campaigns exactly, to work out what parts of your campaign are working and what parts aren’t. Certain things which you should track are:

    1. How many users from your email list opened the email?
    2. How many users from the ones who opened the email took the desired action, for example, filling out a form
    3. What was the bounce rate of the email campaign?
    4. What was the success rate of different campaigns targeting the same group, but had different copy and creatives?

“While the conversion ratio changes depending on different industries and niches, in my experience on average, the conversion ratio of email marketing is between 4% to 5%, which is much higher than other forms of marketing, like social media. The social media conversion rate is around 0.79%.

– Anuvinder Singh

The “How”

According to a recent study conducted by Campaigner, 49% of consumers say they receive too many emails from businesses and marketers. Hence, if you’re looking to conduct email marketing for your business, it is essential to follow certain steps that ensure your message reaches the customer and desired goals are achieved. With the help of Anuvinder’s insights, we’ve created certain steps to follow to create the perfect email marketing strategy:

  • Don’t Mail & Miss
    For for this activity to work, it is of utmost importance that you target the right people. Or else, the email will go directly to the spam folder or ‘get trashed’ before the consumer even opens the mail. Some factors to keep in mind while creating your email list are:

    1. Have the receivers ‘opted-in’ to get the email? This step is important especially in Europe to comply with GDPR
    2. Are you targeting new or existing customers? This will help you determine the tone of the email and how much information you need to provide about your business
    3. Are you branding the campaign from a first-party or third-party perspective? Success ratio might vary depending on campaign goals.

“Recently, we did an email campaign for a major recycling company in Sweden, which has a turnover of almost 1 billion dollars. The target audience for the campaign was existing customers. Based on the interests of the audience, we tailor-made a campaign, for which we received high conversions, with the open rate being at 31% and the click-through rate at 12%! Understanding the audience and tailoring your strategy accordingly is the key to success for any email marketing campaign.”

– Anuvinder Singh

  • Get Creative
    After creating your email list, you need to design a creative that caters to your target audience. Based on their interests and preferences, understand what they would look for while purchasing a product or service. Here are some basic tips to keep in mind while creating the copy and design of your creative:

    1. Content: The first thing to keep in mind is the subject line. Like any other piece of content, your subject line will determine if the user will even open your email or not
    2. Design: You don’t want your email to be just text. The design of your creative is important, hence, ensure you choose an appealing color and easy-to-read fonts.

“The creative is arguably the most important factor of your email marketing campaign. In my experience, I have seen that campaigns that have a well-made creative, on average, receive 75% higher open rates compared to campaigns with just text. ”

– Anuvinder Singh

  • Land a Customer
    Don’t just send your customers to your home page; instead, send them to a page where they can interact and connect with your organization. It is recommended to send the customer to one of the following pages to convert a lead:

    1. Service Page
    2. Product Page
    3. Contact Us Page
  • Practice Makes Champions
    Your email marketing campaign is a representation of your organization. Hence, before sending it to the target audience, you need to ensure everything is perfect. You could run an internal campaign to conduct beta testing, in which you can check for the following:

    1. Is the load time too long?
    2. Is your creative mobile-friendly?
    3. Are there any errors in the copy?
  • Success Is In The Tracking
    As mentioned earlier, a huge benefit of email marketing is the ability to easily measure the effectiveness of the campaign. Following are certain key areas that help determine how successful your campaign is:

    1. Delivery Rate
    2. Open Rate
    3. Click-Through Rate
    4. Conversion on Landing Page
    5. Unsubscription Rate
    6. Total ROMI of the Campaign

The “Why”

So, now that you’ve followed the steps and created and put an effective email marketing campaign into motion, what outcome should you expect?

  • Leads: Information of potential customers for your business that is ready to be part of your sales funnel. Email marketing can help you get the following type of leads:
    1. Market Qualified Leads (MQL)
    2. Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
  • Identify Outliers: Determine which users in your email list are not interested in your organization and stop catering to those resources
  • Understanding User Behavior: Depending on the response you receive, you get insights into what the consumer is expecting from an organization and how you can adjust your future campaigns to cater to their requirements for a better response

Another Way of Creating Demand

Telemarketing is a push-marketing activity, where a marketer solicits prospective customers through the phone or via web conferencing. It is popularly used to promote products or services, gather information, generate leads, or carry out surveys. What makes telemarketing popular is that it saves time and money as compared to personal selling, but offers many of the same benefits related to direct contact with the customer. That being said, not every business needs telemarketing. So, when should a business conduct telemarketing?

When Do You Need TM?

  • Verify Data
    With the help of telemarketing, you can verify data related to potential customers quickly, while opening a two-way dialogue between you and your consumer. The data you can verify includes:

    1. Identifying who are the decision maker(s)?
    2. Understand if the target(s) are interested in your product
    3. Validate the authenticity of prospect(s)
  • Understand Your Customer
    Telemarketing is a commonly used activity to conduct market research as it gives you consumer feedback first-hand. An organization can directly speak to the consumer, understand their issues, likes and dislikes , and develop their product and/or service according to the needs of the market.
  • Nurturing Is the Key
    After validating the data and confirming that the prospect is interested in your product or service, telemarketing can be used for the following:

    1. Scheduling a web-conference call to discuss a potential sale
    2. Set up a demo of your product or service
    3. Schedule a face-to-face meeting to fasten the sales process

“Telemarketing is very effective for organizations, especially when it comes to building a list of potential clients. While the data may vary depending on the industry, on average, 3% to 5% of the total number of people you call are willing to provide you with the information required or engage with your organization”.

– Anuvinder

How Should You Do It?

  • Preparation Is a Must
    1. Keep Things Civil: Some of your customers are inevitably going to decline your offer, and that’s okay. What’s not okay, however, is to push too far or to end the call in a way, which can cause the consumer to have a negative impression of your company.
    2. Practice Makes Perfect: You don’t want to waste the time of your customers and want to sound confident on the call. So it is recommended to conduct a couple of mock-calls before the actual call.
    3. Consider Time Zones: Timing is immeasurably important in phone conversations. One way to fail in marketing is ‘disturbing’ people late at night or during busy office hours. Therefore, plan adequately and phone your potential clients when they are most likely free or relaxed.
  • Time For Action
    To get the best ROI for all your efforts, it is important to carefully identify who would actually be interested in your product or service. Here are some considerations you could keep in mind: Focus on the Right-Party Contact (RPC)
    Ensure you have the updated information of the prospect you’re going to contact
    If you’re running a campaign in Europe, ensure you have complied with the GDPR before calling a prospect
    You should create a ‘Do Not Call’ (DNC) list to ensure you don’t call the same people repeatedly
    Ensure you create a follow-up list, where you can recall a person if they don’t answer in the first attempt. However, always keep a set ‘waiting period’ before contacting a lead again to avoid spamming them
  • Don’t Forget to Deliver
    During the call, if you make a commitment to the customer, for example sending some marketing material, you should adhere to the commitment. According to the ‘Sun Down Rule’, you should complete all the deliverables promised to a customer by the end of that working day. This ensures that the customer feels valued and is not left waiting for the information required.

“Traditionally, most marketers perceive telemarketing as a “forceful” activity that causes more harm than good. However, similar to a “weapon”, if not used correctly, you can end-up hurt yourself. On the other hand, if used well, telemarketing can give your sales funnel a major boost. 78% of decision-makers have accepted appointments or attended events that can from a sales call. For example, you can create an email marketing campaign, which caters to a very niche target audience, and within that campaign, the client can opt for a call-back to get a product demo from your team. These types of customized strategies, in most cases, leads to positive results.”

– Anuvinder