How to Be the Perfect Marketing Manager
Traditional marketing has grown to include much more than just the 7 P’s. Digital practices have become a necessary part of any sales and marketing plan. Within the past couple of years, privacy policies and laws have been adapted to protect individual’s rights to privacy in a way that has never been done before. Today, marketing involves many elements and expertise such as technical, creative and analytical. A good marketing professional knows basic HTML coding, Adobe Creative Cloud apps, CRM (Customer Relations Management) and CMS (Content Management System) platforms such as Mailchimp and WordPress and Google Analytics. Adding to that list is the ability to sell through cold contact and, more importantly, a complete understanding of legal compliance in digital marketing. It’s not just a case of inventing a catchy phrase that relates to a product and presenting your ideas in a boardroom, rather it’s much more of thinking outside the box and from every possible perspective. Your ability to bring innovation and empathy for the audience is key but today, that is just the tip of the ice burg.
The biggest change to digital marketing practices has been the implementation of GDPR and its reference to direct marketing. This has caused some concern and rightfully so. Simple web items like a contact form must be compliant. And a website can no longer just contain a contact form, there must be clear text indicating email address to contact the business. There are many other parts to the new regulation that involve such things as storing a person’s data for an indefinite length of time or cold calling.
To clarify; GDPR regulations have defined six lawful bases under which a business can use personal data legally as part of their business activities. At least one of these must apply whenever you process personal data. Four of the six clauses cover very specific situations and clear on how and when they apply. Clauses a) and f) are the two that are most relevant in reference to direct marketing.
Consent(a): The individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.
The word ‘clear’ is important and the regulations expand on this to say consent must be ‘explicit’; meaning it doesn’t just need to be clear to the individual that they have consented to receive marketing materials from you, they must understand what type of marketing they are signing up to and how they will be marketed to. If an individual has agreed for you to email them details of a new product, it does not mean you can phone them, even if the call relates to that same product. As ‘cold calling’ by definition means the individual is not expecting a call, it has no relationship at all to ‘consent’ based marketing.
Legitimate Interests
The sixth clause in Article 6, ‘Legitimate interests’ states: (f) the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. (This cannot apply if you are a public authority processing data to perform your official tasks.)
This clause also relates to Article 16 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, the ‘freedom to conduct a business’ which confirms the right to supply goods and services and to generate profit, provided your business activities comply with the law. Recital 47 of the GDPR clarifies further; “The processing of personal data for direct marketing purposes may be regarded as carried out for a legitimate interest.”
Self-assessment is essential to maintaining GDPR compliance and the three key elements of using the legitimate interest foundation have been identified as:
1) Identify a ‘Legitimate interest’
You must confirm what benefit you are trying to achieve for your business by processing the data. This might be a company benefit such as processing payroll or a benefit to the wider society, such as employment.
2) Show the processing is necessary to achieve this ‘Legitimate interest’
You need to explain how the processing will help you achieve your goal and why it is the best approach.
3) Protecting the rights of the data subject
In regards to cold calling; considering the rights of the individual’s privacy and not wanting to be overwhelmed by cold-calls. The GDPR regulations (and Ofcom’s guidance) require that you take care and don’t cause individuals distress through your use or misuse of their personal data. Also take into account the level of potential distress and what an individual might reasonably expect.
Warm up the cold calls
Cold calling is defined as an unsolicited call to a prospective buyer or customer. Due to the fact that no prior contact has been established, the prospect will not anticipate the contact. Cold calls have always been a contentious practice and the facts don’t lie.
Less than 2% of cold calls result in a meeting (source)
Less than 1% of cold calls result in a sale (source)
Sales cold calls are ineffective 90.9% of the time (source)
63% of salespeople say it’s the least favorite part of their jobs (source)
Despite the statistics, cold calls are still part of some B2B sales. Its overall ineffectiveness causes people to deem it dead or have opted for the less intrusive form of warm calling.
Clearly, warm calling is a much more efficient way to generate leads and boost sales than cold calling. There is more evidence of its ineffectiveness and costs quite a bit more than it should as someone must be paid to make all those calls and contacts. Warm calling is a preferred and much more efficient way to connect with prospects. For some companies, warm calling presents the following issues:
It’s less immediate:
Because warm calling starts by initiating contact through other methods than an unsolicited call, sales reps do an abundance of waiting. Bottom level companies or start-ups are typically impatience and want sales immediately.
It’s more complex
Warm calling relies on several different methods of communicating with prospects, from social selling to direct mail and everything in between. This requires coordination between multiple departments and sales reps.
What is warm calling?
Warm calling is contacting a prospect that has had prior contact the business. Because they have shown some form of interest the call won’t surprise them. It’s about beginning a conversation before speaking over the phone. There are a number of effective methods to begin the warm calling process.
By establishing prior contact with a prospect, a certain level of trust has been built. They’re more likely to listen to the sales pitch and consider if the product can fix their problem.
There 3 effective ways to warm up a potential customer before speaking with them are:
1. Clean up your data:
Cold calling is a gruelling process but doing it with bad or inaccurate data guarantees failure.
Low-quality data is the biggest problem facing B2B sales. Inaccurate contact data wastes an average of 27.3% of time. Make data maintenance a priority Rather than cramming in as many cold calls as possible, take a step back and. Without it, a massive amount of the calls you make will be dead on arrival.
2. Prioritize research
The prospect may not be prepared for a sales call and is not an excuse to be unprepared. Gather every bit of information about the company. Look at the teams or about page as well as its goals, recent performance, growth, potential needs, etc.
When faced with a long list of people to call, doing extensive, time-consuming research is not a luxury. But entering any call completely blind is a recipe for failure. It’s important to remember the personalization concept and research before contact.
3. Listen to the prospect
It’s important to remember the prospect hasn’t shown interest and pressuring them with a quick pitch will most likely result in rejection. Instead, show you care to learn their problems and in return, they’ll want to know about your solution.
4. Social Selling
Social media can be an extremely valuable marketing tool for every step of sales cycle. Failing to use social media platforms puts you at a huge disadvantage, as 75% of B2B buyers use social media in their decision-making process (source). But social selling is not limited to the popular sites like Facebook and Twitter, it must also include long read, (1500-1700 words) insight articles which should be posted at least once per month with intermittent short reads (500 words) highlighting products.
5. Referrals
Consider seeking a referral before calling out of the blue with nothing but a sales pitch. Looking for mutual connections with the prospect who can provide an introduction, is incredibly valuable since 84% of B2B decision-makers begin their buying process with referrals (source).
6. Direct mail
Email marking is not an outdated method even with current technology. Direct mail campaigns are very effective as proof in the stats:
The response rate for direct mail is 5.1% compared to .6% for email and .6% for paid search (source).
66% of people have bought something because of direct mail (source).
Sending a prospect personalized direct email before contacting them will significantly increase sales.
Whether your company already uses warm calling, or if you’re still making cold calls, there are always improvements you can make. Below are some rules to follow to ensure your cold calls are effective.
It’s best to space out prospecting into chunks throughout the week. They can be 4 hours on Monday morning, 4 hours on Tuesday afternoon, and another 4- 6hour block later in the week. The best days to cold call are Wednesday and Thursday and the best times of day to are between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. near the end of the workday. Late afternoons are 164 percent more successful than early afternoons, right after lunch. You definitely do not want to call between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m.
Every sales method has its time and place. If cold calling is part of a sales strategy but ineffective try examining alternate ways of warm calling techniques instead. Do the necessary research and make sure to include the correct data, preparation, and communication. Reach out and start a conversation about solving the buyer’s problems before speaking with them. And above all, maintain legal compliance.
