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As a telemarketer, I am fully aware of how much people hate me. You would not believe how many angry responses I get when I call people up around dinnertime. I know that what I am doing a somewhat inconsiderate, but the American public has to understand something - if telemarketing didn’t work, we wouldn’t do it. We use telemarketing lists to target the most likely clients, but ultimately it all comes down to making a lot of cold calls. If you have a thick skin and a charming demeanor, you can sell ice to an Eskimo with or without telemarketing call lists. If not, you’ll probably get out of the business pretty quickly. Either way, I don’t feel too bad about what I do most of the time. After all, if you really hate me, you only have to put up with me for long enough to hang up the phone.

It is pretty tough being a telemarketer. The first couple months that I was doing it, I was depressed all the time. I knew that the people who were shouting at me would never meet me, and would probably like me if they did meet me, but it did not make things any better. Taking all that abuse takes its toll on you until you learn to distance yourself from it. One of the toughest things about telemarketing is that you don’t have control over who you’re calling. The company is responsible for the telemarketing lists. You don’t make the decisions. If they have bad telemarketing lists, you might get shouted at all evening. If they have good ones, you might make a killing even if you are new to the business. Either way, it is usually out of your hands.

The invention of the telemarketing no call list under popular pressure from the American public has only made things more difficult. You see, often you are responsible for your own no-call list. Rather than incorporating it with the regular telemarketing list, they leave them as two separate items for some reason. That means that you have to double check your telemarketing lists as you are making your phone calls. Not only does this take longer, but it is a poor system for catching stray calls before they go out. Basically, if you are at it for long enough you are bound to call someone on the telemarketing no call lists.

Originally posted 2006-11-25 05:16:21. Republished by Old Post Promoter

As an expert in customer relationship marketing, I can tell you that it is much more difficult than most people think. Customer marketing, in most people’s opinions, is a pretty simple matter. As a consumer, you assume that a company sends out either a flyer, postcard, or a broadsheet almost indiscriminately. They may use radio marketing, television marketing, or anything else. From the consumer’s perspective, it may be all the same, but from a business prospective, all of these are radically different approaches. Consumer marketing must be carefully targeted towards the image that the company wants to portray and the clientele that it wishes to attract.

For example, there is a good reason why Auto service centers, doctors offices, and even clothing stores often send out postcards for customer marketing. When you send out a business postcard, you play off of the perception of an intimate relationship between you and the customer. This type of customer marketing is extremely effective because it encourages brand loyalty. Although the consumers, of course, know that it is not a custom-made postcard, it still seems thoughtful. Some companies take customer marketing so far that they send out happy holiday cards to many of their loyal consumers around Christmas.

One of my favorite customer service marketing strategies is to send out targeted advertisements to consumers. This is such an effective form of customer marketing because consumers always appreciate it when you are in tune with their own interests. You can even try to educate about the products while you advertise them, speaking about the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. Usually, people assume that you do not want to ever speak badly of your own products, but sometimes it has its advantages. A few negative details thrown into a customer marketing report can give the customer the perception that you are unusually honest and concerned with the welfare of the consumer.

Of course, this is not the only type of custom marketing that companies routinely engage in. As a matter of fact, the job of a marketing consultants is to come up with new and more innovative strategies to market products. Techniques such as guerrilla marketing and word-of-mouth have revolutionized the marketing industry in the last decade, and customer marketing continues to evolve because of that kind of bright thinking. Not only does it help companies to make more money, but it also helps consumers to receive a product more carefully tailored to their own interests.

Originally posted 2008-02-24 10:32:00. Republished by Old Post Promoter

I have always felt that marketing promotions were broadly applied but not very well thought out. Promotional marketing in some ways is a pretty good idea for a wide variety of things. You can give out pens, calculators, or other little trinkets with your brand name on it. This is a way to spend little money on an advertising campaign that will generate some degree of name recognition. The question of how effective these promotional marketing campaigns are is open, however. If I open my pen drawer, I will find dozens of promotional pens and erasers in there, but I couldn’t name a single brand offhand. Unless you sell something like stationary which people associate with pens, these type of promotional giveaways are nothing but a waste of money.

In my opinion - and I always tell my clients this - marketing promotions should only be done for special purposes. Guerrilla marketing can work wonderfully depending on what kind of product you sell, but the marketing promotion must be carefully tailored. Just going out into a public square and holding a contest or giving away a product will not generate any business for you at all. You need to think strategically.

One of my favorite places to do marketing promotions is at nightclubs and bars. When people are drinking, they will do what they can to win anything. Whether you are giving away shot glasses, food, drink mixers, or just T-shirts, people will get excited about your marketing promotion. If they get to come home with a souvenir of their night, they will forever associate it with the fun of going out drinking with friends. This is what successful marketing promotions aim to do - create those kinds of positive associations around your product or brand name.

Hot summer afternoons are also a great time for marketing promotions. If you are willing to spend a few thousand dollars giving away free drinks in a crowded public thoroughfare, people will absolutely love you. Even if you are giving out something that doesn’t strictly go along with the weather - such as a salty snack - people will still be grateful as long as they get some water with it. If you can catch people at an unguarded moment, you can gain their brand loyalty before they even know what hit them. That is what successful marketing promotions are all about. Leave the brand-name pens at home!

Have you ever considered starting your own business? Maybe you’ve always wanted a chain of hotels, or a chance to open your very own restaurant. Maybe that coffee shop idea you had back in the 80s wasn’t such a bad concept after all. Regardless of your hopes and aspirations, it’s certainly easier to make them happen in this day and age. So many people look to start their own business; whether it be a cafe downtown or a home-based operation. With the World-Wide-Web at our fingertips, we can make these dreams a reality. That is why a number of individuals have begun their own web-stores and money-making sites. It’s all about the web marketing. Are you Internet savvy?

What do you know about web marketing? This is pretty much one of the largest operations these days. With cyberspace comes infinite traffic. It’s basically never ending and almost impossible to fathom. You have to remember there are around 6 billion people world-wide. Now, how many of those people do you think access the Internet on a daily basis? Let me save you the math; it’s a ton. This is why home businesses are booming. That kind of customer access is incomparable. Imagine the local marketing of a particular product in comparison to web marketing. You would have to compare the global population to that of your own town. It’s certainly not difficult to see why the Internet is such a money-maker. In fact, loads of web-savvy business folk are taking prime advantage of all this cyberspace traffic. All you need are your own web pages, which are rather simple to construct now days. Use basic web marketing to increase traffic on your websites, hence increasing your profit. Web traffic equals revenue. Just ask the person who started Google.com.

The great thing about web marketing is the cost efficiency. While in the tangible world we have to print flyers and create advertisements to entice customers and increase business, in cyberspace it’s much simpler. Shoot an ad out to a million people at once with the click of a mouse. With advanced web marketing, you can get the job done much faster and appeal to a much larger cliental. Is your personal business getting the traffic and response that it should? If not, it may be time to delve back into cyberspace and learn more about web marketing.

When a company is considering introducing a new project they may turn to a group of six to eight regular people. The groups give information regarding the products or services that sponsor the group. The moderator is there to ask the market research focus group questions and to encourage dialogue in the group. Sometimes there are people observing the group and sometimes it is taped by audio or video. Market research focus groups tend to last one hour for a session. The people who make up the market research groups are usually screened by various selection and recruitment qualifications.

The qualifications tend to be related to usage, demographics, and the participant’s behavior in using the product which is being tested. There are many research agencies that do not allow people to take part in market research focus groups if they have already been part of a focus group of the same product or service.

Participants can also not qualify if he or she has friends or family that have a professional relationship with a person who works for the company whose product is being tested. Also the participants can be disqualified for being related to someone in the marketing or advertising agency that is conducting the groups. Generally the participants in a market research focus group are paid in cash or with a gift for taking part in the group.

Those who provide for these groups generally are given verbatim transcripts of the group. This can sometimes be a short summary and in most cases the raw data such as audio tapes and video tapes. Many times within market research focus groups the clients can watch the group live as it is taking place.

Recently there has been some controversy in using focus groups in Asia as generally Asians do not talk about themselves in group discussions. But these distractions rely on the fact that regular market research focus groups do not consider the cultural aspect of the specific target group to begin with. Market research focus groups in Asia and taken part by Asians are generally a good thing as Asians prefer oral communication. By using market research focus groups with respect to aspects such as race, gender, age, ethnicity, and structure of class generally steers clear of the problems that are claimed in the use of market research focus groups.

Utilizing a group of potential consumers is a great idea for the producers of products as they will receive live feedback about the products. The groups can also be beneficial for the participants as well as they are generally compensated with money or gifts.