Why Is Telemarketing Expensive?

Does Telemarketing Need To Be Expensive?

Why is telemarketing expensive, is there a more cost effective alternative?

Telemarketing has long been known to be an effective marketing tool.  Can costs be reduced?

If you engage an agency, you can have a very targeted marketing campaign focusing on clients in a specific geographical area, a specific industry sector, or any other variable you can think of.

Here are 3 main reasons why businesses outsource telemarketing.

The problem is, it is not cheap.

Why is this, why is it that telemarketing is expensive?

Simple, there are a few reasons if you care to read on just a little further:

Telemarketing and cold calling takes time

Even if you have a marketing data of (say 3,000 prospects), it will take time to contact each one.  To find the right person to talk to, pin them down in-between meetings or being out of the office and then do a phone demonstration (or chat to them) and get a yes or no.

Sometimes it can take 7-8 attempts to reach a prospect (which for most people that are not used to telemarketing means frustration and time) which may just result in a ‘no’.

Even more frustration as that is a lot of time – wasted.

Finding The Right Telemarketing Agency To Do The Calling

If you are a telemarketing company, and you have a member of staff, you will have needed to find them.

Finding someone that will sit at a computer, making call after call after call to get results (for a customer) is not easy.

Most people (normal people) would get board and throw the towel in. Many people do telemarketing as a stop gap or single parents as a bit of part time work.

Finding the right person to do calling every day is not easy.  So after an agency has spent time interviewing, trialling, firing.  They then get someone good.

They need to pay them, incentivise them and keep them motivated all the time.

If you consider the staff salary, plus bonuses, plus the cost of the agency, this is why they charge what they charge.

As with any form of marketing, if you want results, you do need to spend the money first.  You need to consider tasking the company, getting them to contact the prospects, chase them and collect results.

What About The Results?

Bearing in mind the sales pipeline:

• Prospecting
• Initial Contact
• Follow up
• Discussion
• Close

Results will take a minimum of 3 months to show (based on 1-2 days calling per week) as you need to allow the agency to work their way through the sales pipeline above.

Many people expect that the agency could work on a commission only basis however working on the concept above (finding telemarketing staff, having the staff crunch the data) the companies need to charge.

Telemarketing prices do vary from agency to agency so it is always advised to look around and compare prices.

There are lots and lots of calling companies in the UK (well over 600 actually) so there are lots to choose from.

• Do you want an agency that knows your industry?
• Do you want a small bespoke company?
• Do you want a large call centre?
• Do you want inbound or outbound calling?
• Do you want a senior level telemarketer?

These are all questions that you need to have in mind before getting quotes and finding the right telemarketing company, that is not too expensive.

A Matter Of Perception

Marketing generally can be seen as expensive, particularly if you are not seeing a return on your investment.

Advertising online via the search engines is expensive, with a click on Google costing anything from £1.00 to £10.00.

Exhibitions can cost anything from £10,000 to £100,000 depending on the size of stand you have.

Telemarketing can be considered expensive as using a telemarketing agency can cost anything from £200.00 per day upwards.

So what are the alternatives?

• Bring the telemarketing in-house, but you then have staffing issues such as hiring training and firing hoping that you find a good telemarketing person that will not leave for a better paid job.
• Ask the telemarketing company to do a cost per lead or cost per appointment rather than them charging a day rate or a rate per hour.
• Channel your spend to other forms of marketing such as social media or Google PPC.

Telemarketing is unique as it is a pro-active form of marketing where you can target specific contacts in a business.  Having good telemarketing data is also important, but being able to talk to your target prospect is a unique form of marketing.

Yes, telemarketing is expensive, but if you can get results from the telemarketing campaign and see a ROI, then it is an investment rather than an expense.

Choosing a marketing company to handle your telemarketing can be a challenge, as telemarketing prices vary quite considerably.