Business advice Archives

4 great ways to improve motivation in B2B telemarketing

Posted on 10 August 2020 by bluedonkey

Most of us have had times where we need our B2B telemarketing to do great things. We know leads that come from telemarketing endure, we know the best relationships often start with a cold call. However, despite this, even the best of us have days where we just can’t summon the motivation to phone strangers.

So what do you do if you have a whole team of people on the phones? When the sole purpose is creating B2B telemarketing leads, it’s worth knowing about the tools you can use to help. At Blue Donkey, our managers have some great ways of keeping our family of eager beavers motivated to go the extra mile.

1. Get a bit of friendly competition going

Getting a little of the right sort of competition going is a great way to inject some energy and fun. League tables, sharing team achievement in bulletins or a whiteboard or having a table of treats for small milestones. These will all help raise the spirits of your B2B telemarketing people and inject a bit of friendly fun.

Do incentivise and reward the right behaviours. For example, at Blue Donkey we reward the number of dials, decision makers reached, or number of completed surveys. And feedback from a client, about an individual’s good work, is big news, we stop the bus for that!

Leads, sales, appointments – in other words, the objective of the project, are not heavily incentivised. They may have a small element of reward but this won’t on its own make people hungry to achieve it. This is because it’s important to manage the message you send out. Over incentivising B2B telemarketing teams can skew thinking, making people more determined to sell. This presents a risk of excessive goal seeking behaviours creeping into your team. The moderate reward for all-round performance is far more likely to result in team achievement, customer satisfaction, and fun.

2. Catch people doing things right

Ever had a manager who appears as if by magic, every time you stumble or make a gaffe? And the boss who, no matter what your achievements, will manage to find something to nit-pick in your review. These managers have an extraordinary superpower – they always catch people doing wrong.

Ken Blanchard bestselling author on management, motivation, and ethics said managers should catch people doing things right. “Catching people doing something right is a powerful management concept to use with direct reports. It can also be a great way to build trust and camaraderie with others. Think about the last time you were recognized for your efforts. I’ll bet you felt pretty satisfied and encouraged to keep up the good performance. No matter what your role, you have the power to ignite that same reaction in others”.

The managers that stick in our hearts and minds through our careers are those that helped and believed in us. Helping and supporting others, especially B2B telemarketing teams, given the effort that entails, is a great way to give back.

3. Create a learning and caring atmosphere

Graphic tools, flow diagrams, and cartoons are a good way to inspire and propagate learning in B2B telemarketing. Providing someone with a script or prompts for what to say tells them you don’t trust them. It’s disempowering and serves to knock confidence rather than build it. Visual tools get people thinking creatively. They help inspire teams to use their own unique resources and thinking. After all, these are the reasons you hired them in the first place.

Additionally, asking about people’s family, remembering a special occasion, or taking a moment to sit and chat as you’re passing. All these tiny touches, and sentiments, help make yours the team that people want to be a part of. They also help managers win respect, support, and become their genuine authentic selves at work, not automatons.

4. Ask people what they want

You’ve heard the expression; with every hire, you get a free brain. This is as true in B2B telemarketing as it is anywhere else. Accepting help is not a weakness, it’s a strength. People get more satisfaction and growth from being given an element of control over their work life. It’s also more enjoyable being in a team that feels included and important in the making of decisions.

Of course, leaders must lead, but asking staff what their preferences, ideas or views are, can only be positive. It helps highlight hidden strengths in team members, that might otherwise have remained untapped. The team share power and responsibility for their work, which is great for building pride and managing positive mental health.

Our 22 years make Blue Donkey one of the most established B2B telemarketing companies around. Talk to us today about how our expert teams can help you reach your next gamechanger client.

5 things we know about great lead generation marketing

Posted on 4 August 2020 by bluedonkey

We’ve all met someone who thinks they’re great in business. And while they often boast about their sales prowess, their confidence doesn’t always translate to success in the boardroom or on the sales floor. Why the mismatch? Doing a good job in sales relies on prioritising the needs of potential customers, more than our need to sell. Sensitive people might not always get the highest sales, but they keep customers for longer and make connections for life.

These lifetime customers are becoming more and more important in the saturated markets most of us work in now. And they become part of our army of advocates, who write great Google reviews and recommend us to friends. So how do we model their success in our lead generation marketing?

1. Welcome the contribution of others

Passionate, excited sales people often interrupt each other, and even potential customers when trying to make a sale. Whilst most people are not harsh judges, interrupting does make it more difficult to build rapport. Lead generation marketing is about building new pipelines of interest, so inviting contribution and listening to the response is important. Although it may seem counter intuitive, listening is often more important than your pitch. Customers want to know that a business is genuinely interested in their needs and requirements, so working too hard to get your point across can do more harm than good in the long term.

2. Take responsibility

Another principal of those clever people who are able to build relationships that last, is taking responsibility. Whether that’s taking the trouble to call clients regularly, asking the right questions, or following up on queries or requests. Being first on the phone is not a bad way to show customers you care.

Equally, when things go wrong, accepting responsibility and offering solutions, rather than shifting blame or providing excuses, will work wonders. As most professionals will know, passing the buck is a very poor business tactic. People respect a company and its sales team more if they take responsibility when things go wrong. In fact, the way you respond in the face of a problem can cement customers to you for life. Besides, lead generation marketing is so much easier if you feel good about the way your business treats people.

3. Timing

You should always meet deadlines promptly in sales. If your lead generation marketing includes making follow up calls, do them on the date and time you agreed. If you are due to meet someone, turn up in plenty of time to walk through the door calmly, composed, and ready. Sales people sometimes feel they’re not important enough for their promises to be remembered. Not true. If you commit to something, do it. Customers appreciate reliability. No one likes to be kept waiting, and it says great things about you and your brand when you’re reliable.

4. Show care

By keeping your message clear, your lead generation marketing will engage potential buyers and convey how you can help them. It’s important to keep their needs and the needs and requirements of their business front of mind at all times. Having genuine care, for the advantages your product or service can deliver for them is the best technique available. Open questions are a great way to help you uncover their needs. Graphics illustrating the benefits your business offers will also help keep your excitement up.

According to experts at Great Place to Work, having a culture of care in an organisation builds brands that people want to be part of. They say “Trust. It’s the main ingredient in building a great workplace for all. Establishing a foundation of trust in the workplace culture is the smartest investment you can make for your organization. They also stress that employees in a high-trust culture, who experience a caring workplace are also 44% more likely to work for a company with above-average revenue growth.”

5. Patience

Customers don’t like being pushed or rushed. Your lead generation marketing should always have the ability to adapt to the buyer’s agenda. Whether that means you’re following up calls with written information or calling back in a few months.

Good lead generation marketing should never be a ‘burst’ of activity that finishes when the campaign ends. That kind of marketing is out of date. As is the ‘I’m in your area’ type close used to get someone to agree to meet before they’re ready.

Sales teams should ensure that they know their products inside out and that all claims can be supported with data. If a potential buyer needs more information or has a particular query, they should be prepared to provide it. Only by taking the care and time to build interactions around the buyer will lead generation marketing create enduring relationships.

To discuss lead generation marketing or improving the quality of your company’s sales approach, call us today. We’d love to hear from you.

Herzberg’s two-factor theory and contact centres

Posted on 28 July 2020 by bluedonkey

Contact centres have a reputation for providing mundane or entry level work. In years gone by that may indeed have been the case, however, things have changed. The two reasons they’ve changed are unlikely to revert back any time soon because they are deep-rooted, global and industry wide.

Brand image and the contact centre

One of those reasons is to do with the complex area of brand image. How your brand touches your customer, or potential customer matters more now than it ever did. Most markets are to some extent saturated, so if you’re not providing great service, you’ll get found out pretty quickly. Contact centres and their staff sit at the heart of that customer experience. This means that how your staff feel, will impact how the customer feels. Reviews are playing their part. If we don’t like the way we’ve been treated, we’re empowered to tell the world. Power indeed, since reviews have become an intangible company asset, and brands can rise or fall on the back of them.

Changing conditions

Contact centres are also becoming increasingly important to companies with the new lack of face to face contact. Since the pandemic, the way we work has adapted so more of us have become desk based and habits change. The way companies resource their teams will change too as we adapt to the new normal. Car sales have already seen a dramatic decline and this is expected to continue as fewer companies and consumers invest in cars. According to ABC News the pandemic might change the car business for good. “The Great Recession nearly brought the automotive industry to its knees. A decade later, carmakers are reckoning with a new threat: the novel coronavirus, an unforeseen force that has halted production, disrupted sales and caused financial pain to an industry that was able to bounce back from its nadir in 2008”.

So how do we get more from our phone based workers? In previous posts, we’ve looked at how Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory can be applied to boosting motivation in the workplace. His thoughts on the elements that motivate workers by their presence and those that de-motivate by their absence can be applied to companies around the country. And it could help managers in all industries to get the best out of their employees. However, as well as being relevant to motivation methods, Herzberg’s theory can be applied to the contact centre. By looking at the motivating factors and the hygiene factors he identifies in his theory, we can see how contact centre staff can gently motivate a customer to buy a product from their business instead of from a competitor, and how qualifiers can be used to help.

Hygiene factors in sales

In his motivation theory, Herzberg discusses the need for hygiene factors to be present in order to maintain a certain level of motivation. These hygiene factors are essential provisions that all employees should expect to benefit from when in the workplace. These include things like adequate pay, safe working conditions and fair treatment from supervisors. When you translate this theory to sales you can see that hygiene factors are essentially qualifiers – the features that buyers expect to be present in a product or service. Although the presence of these qualifiers won’t necessarily help to push decision makers into buying from your business, their absence could put customers off. Understanding these qualifiers can influence and motivate your potential buyers, and working this theory clearly into your sales strategy, could help your contact centres improve the results of their telemarketing campaigns.

Motivators in sales

Motivators complete Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory. It’s these extras that can help to motivate workers in your contact centres to push themselves that little bit harder. This ‘discretionary effort’ is infectious, so can help stimulate your whole team to become more productive and dedicated. Motivating factors include recognition of achievements, fulfilling and meaningful tasks and increased autonomy and independence in the workplace. In contact centres, these motivating factors can be directly compared with Order Winners. These little extras help to make a product or service more compelling for the decision maker and can easily swing a deal. If salespeople know how to use these Order Winners correctly, and how to combine them with qualifiers, they will make their calls more persuasive. The level of staff satisfaction in your contact centres make a huge difference to the experience your customers will get from your contact centres. As ever, happy staff make happy customers, so it’s worth taking the trouble to get those little extras right.

To find out more about one of the best contact centres around or to improve the quality of your sales calls, get in touch with a member of our team today.

The benefit of Investors In People for the lead generation agency

Posted on 16 July 2020 by bluedonkey

Staff and their performance is a key success factor for any lead generation agency. You really are only as good as the teams you have working for your brand. Investors in People, or IIP, is a standard for people management that offers accreditation to organisations observing specific criteria. Developed to help companies achieve excellence in management, IIP standards have helped thousands of organisations demonstrate their competitive strengths.

One of the biggest benefits of working towards IIP accreditation is that it helps to bring employees together to raise standards. It builds a cohesive and productive workforce, by demonstrating care and prioritising learning. For an outsourced provider like the lead generation agency, IIP helps achieve potential by bringing formalised structures into performance improvement. Not only does this create and shape the workforce, it gives the agency transparency to differentiate how they are better than competitors

The Investors IN people Standard

The Investors in People standard is based on three core areas: leading, supporting, and improving. Each of these categories is then further divided into subsections, giving business leaders a clear framework on which to build. A lead generation agency has to work hard to incorporate the specific ideas of the IIP standard into the business. Only then will they receive accreditation from the governing organisation. The highest level of accreditation is Platinum followed by Gold and then Silver.

According to IIP the “purpose at Investors in People is to make work better. Developed and refined over nearly 30 years to help companies, leaders and employees work together to create better, more productive workplaces. We have accredited more than 50,000 organisations and we are recognised in 66 countries around the world, making it the global benchmark when it comes to people management.”

Management

The ‘leading’ element of the IIP standard is divided into three areas. These are leading and inspiring, living the organisation’s values and empowering and involving people. Incorporating these ideas into a lead generation agency’s daily operations has helped the Blue Donkey leadership to share clear objectives. It has helped inspire the whole organisation to deliver high performance, and subscribe to a culture of complete trust.

Supporting

Creating a supportive environment is essential for businesses that want to get the best from their workforce. The IIP standard outlines three core areas that are key to achieving excellence in the area: managing performance, recognising and rewarding high performance, and structuring work. When a lead generation agency’s workers feel supported, they’re much more likely to commit to an organisation, come up with innovative ideas and work effectively with other members of their team. At Blue Donkey, morning meetings incorporate these principles into a timetable of ‘plan act review’ processes controlled by everyone.

Improving

As successful business leaders will know, organisations that want to succeed need to be constantly looking for ways to improve. Within the IIP standard, improving is divided into building capability, delivering continuous improvement, and creating sustainable success. Creating a culture where constant improvement is expected and encouraged is essential for businesses that want to achieve their potential.

IIP and your workforce

The IIP standard gives organisations a clear and practical framework on which to build their management structure. Employing these standards, and working to reach the highest possible level of accreditation, can help companies of all sizes. For a lead generation agency, it’s invaluable for boosting morale and getting the very best from employees. At Blue Donkey we’ve built a workforce we’re proud of and proud to be part of.

To learn more about our lead generation agency, or for more information on practical and effective management techniques, contact us today.

Why being a carer not a seller is best for today’s appointment setter

Posted on 1 July 2020 by bluedonkey

For years, sales people and appointment setters looking to fill their diary have been using pushy techniques. From the sympathy close to claims that ‘I’m just in your area’, customers were forced to comply when they might have preferred not to. And while for many, these unsavoury traits were revered, thankfully, now they are totally rejected. Today, companies value their reputations and care about what customers think of them. For most organisations, the hard sell is simply not worth the risk. More than that, we expect to work for, or with a company with values and standards that reflect our own. So whether we’re buying something from a business, or working for them as an employee, we want them to care.

The modern sales landscape is changing. Prospects are becoming savvier and decision makers are now more careful about agreeing to appointment setter requests for facetime. This means the ‘foot in the door’ technique is no longer guaranteed to produce results. In fact, a very different approach may now be more appropriate for today’s business developers.

Hungry sellers

The term hungry is often used to describe a sales person or appointment setter that seeks out opportunities in a voracious or eager manner. While this word still seems to appear in job ads, most professional organisations would steer away from modelling their roles on this kind of behaviour. Yes, they might get sales, but over-goal-seeking behaviours are loaded with peril. By having these personalities on your sales team, the risk they present may not be worth the gain, even if they’re your best appointment setter.

The ‘carer’

At Blue Donkey, our unique brand of intelligent telemarketing is reliant on team members putting the customers they are speaking to at the heart of their call. At the interview stage, situational interviewing techniques are used to assess how candidates handle real world situations. They are questions that often begin “tell me about a time when you …”. These methods help Blue Donkey recruiters select a potential appointment setter who displays signs of the carer personality trait.

According to Indeed “These questions help the hiring manager gain crucial insight into how you react in specific circumstances on the job. You can use your responses to demonstrate how you’ll overcome specific obstacles and help the company meet its objectives.” Situational interviews are also referred to as behavioural interviews.

Instead of working a call to suit their own objectives and goals, our intelligent telemarketers place the prospect’s needs and requirements at the centre of the conversation. Rather than making the call solely about closing, the appointment setter will uncover specific requirements. The call and outcome are then tailored around the customer’s needs. By genuinely caring about customers, and by listening attentively, telemarketers can build trust and lay the foundations for a productive business relationship.

Why the carer is good for business

In the long run, this approach can be far more beneficial than the pushier ‘foot in the door’ technique. By caring about prospects, working to meet the needs of a decision maker and listening to objections, queries and questions, the appointment setter can begin to build a trusting and productive business relationship. These types of relationships often last longer than those built on ‘foot in the door’ sales calls. This means that over time the prospect may become a more lucrative lifetime customer.

Using a caring personality in sales calls is often more beneficial to the telemarketers as well. Rather than forcing them to sell, sell, sell, it allows them the time and space to properly connect with the prospect and to adjust their sales approach.

To find out more about modern approaches to telemarketing or for hiring Blue Donkey as your appointment setter, get in contact or explore our site today.

Quality management frameworks to help the telemarketing company excel

Posted on 30 June 2020 by bluedonkey

For any business, performance is important. For the telemarketing company to achieve recognition in its market, it has to achieve better outcomes than clients could themselves. Not only does the achievement have to outperform the client, it has to do so in a way that underpins the very best practice. So databases, training, systems, and all customer touchpoints must be adding value in some tangible way.

It’s not just about picking up the phone

In the old days anyone could set up as a telemarketing provider. All you needed was a phone and a bit of pluck. Nowadays to survive, the telemarketing company needs a whole range of systems and processes for the making and taking of calls. Everything from processing data, to the transparent and seamless flow of information. For the client, the calls have to be special. And it needs to feel like the service is happening in the next room.

Blue Donkey is heavily subscribed to the notion that recognised quality frameworks and standards are the only way a small family business can compete. Having enjoyed both ISO:9001 and IIP for over 15 years, Blue Donkey has become the telemarketing company that blue chips come to because they know their precious brand is safe in our hands.

Quality management system

One way to demonstrate an unswerving commitment to quality is to have a formal quality management system (QMS). Coined in 1991 by British management consultant Ken Croucher, the term ‘Quality Management Systems’ refers to an organisation’s formalised approach to maintaining high standards of practice.

An effective QMS has to touch every single part of a business. It’s a set of policies, processes, and procedures required for the planning and execution of each core function of the telemarketing company. Anything that can impact the organisation’s ability to meet its service promises is analysed and documented. This then becomes the bible by which everything is done, measured, and reported.

A robust QMS is the best way for a company to demonstrate excellence across all areas of its business. One of its key benefits for the telemarketing company is that by developing a quality management system that everyone lives by, the organisation can define what exactly it is that makes it stand out from the crowd.

ISO:9001

ISO 9001 is probably the best known QMS around at the moment. An internationally recognised quality management system, it’s based on eight quality management principles. These principles cover all areas of management including customer focus, leadership, continual improvement, mutually beneficial supplier relationships, and fact-based decision making. By adhering to these principles, businesses can ensure they’re constantly improving and driving standards ever higher.

Defining a QMS can also help business leaders to focus on their company as a whole. This means they can move the entire organisation forward with all staff and stakeholders fully engaged and committed to the picture of excellence, as standard. According to the British Assessment Bureau, “Companies and organisations are now expected to prove competency across an increasing number of disciplines in order to win contracts in both the private and public sectors. A quality management system (QMS) is one of the best ways of reassuring potential clients that you can meet their projects aims and objectives”

Investors In People

The Investors in People standard (IIP) is a framework for improving business performance, and competitiveness through a company’s people. It’s ideal for the telemarketing company because it’s a planned approach to setting and goals and developing people to meet those goals. IIP is essentially a standard for people management. It provides recognition that an organisation cares about staff, links people’s welfare with performance, and customer satisfaction.

Companies that are awarded IIP are those with the highest commitment to improving and supporting their teams towards better performance. The telemarketing company adopting this standard will understand only too well, that to realise tough client objectives, the management, and development of staff is a critical success factor.

Externally audited

One of the most reassuring aspects for clients using an ISO:9001 and IIP B2B telemarketing agency like Blue Donkey, is that the business is audited annually by an external awarding body. These are independent, third party professionals who perform an impartial review of the telemarketing company. This quality audit is a process of systematic examination of a quality system to determine if the organisation complies with the defined quality system processes. This process involves a great level of detail and strictly follows international accreditation standards.

To learn more about how quality management has made Blue Donkey the telemarketing company that gets results, speak with one of our team today.

How telesales companies grow relationships

Posted on 23 June 2020 by bluedonkey

Telesales companies like Blue Donkey, use the phone to reach new potential buyers. They create a well profiled list of appropriate companies, find the most senior decision maker, learn everything that’s compelling about the product or service offered, and then they use this to engage in a positive, intelligent way.

Nurturing new relationships is an important part of survival and growth. The best telesales companies put time and resources into growing business relationships that their clients rely on, to get new sales, generate brand awareness, and improve corporate image. This empowers companies to grow, boost revenue, and achieve their business goals.

First impressions last

The basis of good business relationships is often a strong first impression. The initial contact between a company and a prospect should be friendly, insightful, and professional. This helps build credibility and trust from the get go. Good first impressions whether they’re from professional telesales companies on a client’s behalf, or from an in-house sales team, will help potential customers become more inclined to work with them.

Qualify

In most cases, prospects will want to know more about a business, its products, and services before agreeing to meet or transact. After the initial contact, telesales companies will carefully qualify the lead. They’ll ask intelligent questions and provide information according to the buyer’s answers to the questions. It’s important not to use a prescribed ‘patter’. The caller should be building a free fall dialog based on what the buyer says.

At this stage, telesales companies answer questions and deal with objections. For them, this conversation is an important part of growing a business relationship as it offers telemarketers the opportunity to build rapport and demonstrate understanding.

By uncovering the specific needs and requirements of the business they can gently probe what’s important, and provide information that’s robust. This needs to be capable of not only generating a sales lead but one that’s concrete enough to have a good chance of success when the lead is passed to the client.

Communication

Once a prospect has turned into a customer and has begun buying from a business, it’s up to that business to ensure they’re meeting their clients’ needs. The most effective way to do this is to develop clear and convenient lines of communication. If customers know that they can contact a business with a query and that the business will be friendly and informative, it will aid in growing the relationship and building trust between the client and the business. Telesales companies like Blue Donkey will provide a seamless service for inbound or outbound customer service. This will ensure that by maintaining communication, the trust they fought hard to win is nurtured to create lasting and personal relationships.

Customers for life

The notion of the job for life has been superseded by the customer for life. Social media, and the advent of LinkedIn among others, increasingly means that for professional sales people, it’s quite possible to take customers with them as they move through their careers.

This fabulously entrepreneurial feature of our work lives means that investing in excellent relationships has lifelong payback, both personally and commercially. After all, it’s a privilege to work with people you care about. Accomplished telesales companies begin with that very goal in mind from the first dial.

According to Forbes, “If you can turn a one time buyer into a life-time customer, six things happen and all of them are good”. Your sales go up. The competition is hurt. Customers stay longer. Loyalty builds a barrier to competition. You can get customers to buy more. You get better margins.

Every telemarketing call is an opportunity to nurture the relationship between a business and its customers. This will help buyers to feel invested in the brand and valued by their supplier. Find out more about one of the best telesales companies around, talk to a member of Blue Donkey’s expert team today.

What does paid market research tell you about being a market leader?

Posted on 22 June 2020 by bluedonkey

When companies aspire to be the market leader in their sector, they’re usually thinking of things like growing sales, improving service, and innovation. Paid market research, however, paints a picture that’s a lot more profound than the simple nuts and bolts of selling more.

Understandably company owners work towards increasing their market share to the point that they’re selling more products or services than any of their competitors. The number of sales places them in a dominant position and helps ensure the long term survival of their company. And yes, sales are of course important, but paid market research tells us market leadership isn’t necessarily just about who can sell the most or make the most money. In fact, leadership is increasingly less about sales and more about influence, something that’s changing the way businesses relate to other companies in their industry.

Market leadership

Traditionally, the market leader has been the company that sells the most, makes the most money and adopts new technologies and techniques ahead of their competitors.

However, this is no longer necessarily true. Small start-ups and family-run enterprises can now have an impact on their industries without big marketing budgets, creating a name for themselves purely through the use of clever marketing techniques, excellent communication, and innovative strategies.

Why pay for market research

Market research that’s done inhouse, picking up the phone, and speaking with customers and prospects will always be absolutely vital to success. This is not really market research, it is sales. Paid market research offers something entirely different. It’s unbiased, easier for customers to say what they think without offending, or jeopardising relationships, and paid market research will put an emphasis on what others in the market are doing. These comparisons are mission critical for identifying whether a market leader leads on price, product quality, service delivery, or something else.

Authority and influence

Rather than focusing on the bottom line, when talking about market leadership, professional market research companies like Blue Donkey provide paid market research that examines important aspects of a business such as its influence on their industry. Small or niche B2B companies that take the time to build strong relationships with their customers often have more influence than much larger companies.

Robust questionnaires will deep dive the answers offered by respondents, to understand and report on features that make a company’s resonance in its market more meaningful. These ‘thought leaders’ can influence everything from the accessibility of their industry to the demographic they appeal to. By promoting best practice and being actively involved in developing their sector, they can earn the respect of both customers and competitors, something that will help to boost brand awareness and market share.

Becoming thought leaders

Experts at Grow Your Influence tell us that “The success of your business can be directly attributed to the people who work there. Your senior leadership team, technical experts, and heads of operations are real world influencers – their work actually shapes the future of your business and the customers who use your products and services. Leverage the impact of superstars on your team by sharing their knowledge, experience, and expertise with a global community of professionals on social media”.

To find out more about paid market research, becoming a market leader, or to find out how we can help you to improve your customer service, contact a member of our team today.

How a lead generation business uses influencer marketing

Posted on 16 June 2020 by bluedonkey

It’s no surprise that a good lead generation business will always be looking for ways to improve their marketing techniques and technology reach. Where once adverts and directory listings helped to determine the success of a lead generation business, these days we care very much about what people think or say to others. This ‘influencer marketing’ is especially popular online, where direct links, reviews, and mentions can grow the success of SEO in a big way.

For a lead generation business like Blue Donkey, the part played by data is still critical for achieving impressive outcomes for our clients. In fact, by combining the right data with influencer marketing we can make your strategy more rounded, more comprehensive and more powerful.

What’s influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing takes many forms, but in essence, it involves individuals recommending a product, company, or service to friends, family, and associates. This can be done through direct word of mouth recommendations, Google reviews, posts on social media, and brand endorsements. One technique that’s becoming increasingly popular is the use of individual ‘influencers’ in marketing. These are often people with large social media followings who agree to work with a particular brand to increase awareness of their products and services. The influencer might post a related video on their YouTube channel, take a photo for Instagram of them using the product, or write a blog post featuring the brand in question. A lead generation business might consider this kind of activity for a manufactured product, or scientific instrument for example.

How can influencer marketing benefit a brand?

A brand can benefit from influencer marketing in a number of ways. If an influencer has a large social media following, the company will be able to boost brand awareness among a particular demographic. The brand will also benefit from its association with the influencer. This will help the lead generation business mould a client’s brand identity since target customers will begin to think of the company through the prism of the influencer.

Combining influencer marketing with data marketing

If an organisation isn’t completely clear who they’re aiming their product or service at, any attempt at influencer marketing is unlikely to have much of an impact. The lead generation business will be able to select and use data to help identify the best target audience and assess which digital avenues may help. Data can also be used by companies to identify new trends emerging within the market. This can help brands to stay ahead of the competition and allow them to corner the influencer market in their particular niche.

According to Influencer Marketing specialists at Reachbird, 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 33% trust ads. Retention rates of customer-generated by word of mouth marketing are 37% higher than those generated by paid ads, 20% of internet user’s time is spent on content, and 74% of internet users rely on social networks to guide purchases.

Talk to Blue Donkey about how our lead generation business can combine these two powerful marketing techniques, in a telemarketing campaign to generate impressive results or explore our site today.

Common buzzwords to avoid in B2B marketing

Posted on 15 June 2020 by bluedonkey

Few things annoy decision makers more than the constant sing-song use of slogans, catchphrases, or buzzwords. Not only does it expose a person’s lack of experience, clichéd, repetitive and meaningless language also shows a decision maker that the person they’re speaking with is not equipped with the genuine knowledge to become a reliable supplier.

B2B marketing aimed at senior executives should come across in an intelligent and informed manner. Its fine to not know everything, and marketers who try and use jargon and buzzwords are often doing so to appear more sophisticated or knowledgeable than they actually are. Far better to grow and cultivate knowledge by asking questions and listening carefully to answers. This will win more respect for sure.

Plain English in B2B marketing

According to the Guardian newspaper “The Plain English Campaign says that many staff working for big corporate organisations find themselves using management speak as a way of disguising the fact that they haven’t done their job properly. Some people think that it is easy to bluff their way through by using long, impressive-sounding words and phrases, even if they don’t know what they mean, which is telling in itself” Read on to see some they don’t recommend for your B2B marketing.

Helicopter view – Need a phrase that means a broad overview of the business? Then why not say “a broad view of the business”?

Idea shower – Brainstorm might be out of fashion, but surely we can thought cascade something better than this drivel.

Touch base offline – Meaning let’s meet and talk. Because, contrary to popular belief, it is possible to communicate without a Wi-Fi signal. No, really, it is. Fancy a coffee?

Get all your ducks in a row – Be organised. Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street had an obsession with rubber ducks.

Thinking outside the box – This is a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to the process of creative thinking in B2B marketing. We say it’s a fairly unconstructive way of telling people to come up with a new, unique idea, the phrase should have been ditched years ago.

Touch base – A favourite phrase of networkers and people trying to show a light touch in management, ‘touch base’ has been winding up B2B marketing executives for a few years now. It’s recently been joined by the even more unnecessary ‘touch base offline’ which is a roundabout way of asking someone to meet face to face.

Reach out – A lot of people in business seem to think the phrase ‘reach out’ is friendlier and less intimidating than ‘contact’, ‘get in touch’ or ‘call’. This has led to the phrase finding its way into countless B2B marketing dictionaries. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before it finds its way out again.

Let’s action that – Instead of saying, ‘let’s action that’ at the end of a meeting or discussion – why not just say, ‘that’s what we’ll do’?

Synergy – One of the most meaningless buzzwords out there at the moment: ‘synergy’ seems to have a huge number of meanings in the world of business. From ‘balance’ to ‘combination’ and ‘collaboration’ to ‘cooperation’, the word is thrown into the mix whenever someone wants to sound like they know what they’re talking about.

Going forward, whenever you touch base or reach out to your customers, you’ll be able to action removing buzzwords and jargon from your sales pitch. This should help to create synergy and allow your idea shower to flow freely!

To find out other ways to improve your communication skills, or get more from your B2B marketing, explore our site, or contact a member of our team.