6.0 Marketing Strategy
6.1 Marketing Objectives
A software development farm makes their business by helping other companies to magnify their service and operations. By being a software development farm, SGTL also do the same. Currently SGTL has an objective to achieve cumulative growth in net profit of at least 50 percent over the next five years. At least half of this 50 percent growth should come from new, non-manufacturing customers and from products that are nonseasonal or that are generally delivered in the off-peak period of the calendar cycle.
To fulfill the above objective there is no alternative of grabbing new segment of customers and increasing interest of customers on products. SGTL has to cultivae some specific objectives. Regular reviews of these objectives will provide feedback and possible corrective actions on a timely basis.
It is clear from the above discussion that SGTL has currently two major objectives:
i. Understanding the needs of current customer
ii. Develop a potential marketing tool for acquiring new customers
As SGTL is a new organization in Bangladesh, it has a few numbers of customers including one telecom operator. So the second objective is more important to achieve. SGTL can use the knowledge of its successes with current clients to market to new customers. SGTL should search for new customer segments like SMEs. They have to develop new products according to customer demand. SGTL has developed some SMS (Short Message Service) based software and this concept is quite new in Bangladesh. Right now there are over 15 million mobile phone subscribers in Bangladesh all having SMS facility. So an SMS based software for end users can catch the market very easily. But as the concept of SMS based service is new in Bangladesh, it requires huge initial activities to develop the market and to provide sufficient information to the customers. That’s why SGTL needs to develop a potential marketing tool for its upcoming customers.
6.2 Marketing Tools
There are different marketing tools in front of SGTL. Out of those a number of tools were take for analysis. Those tools are:
i. Website Advertisement
ii. Personal Selling
iii. Newspaper Advertisement
iv. Telemarketing (Over phone or through SMS)
From the above tools, Telemarketing is a new weapon for marketing in Bangladeshi SMEs. I did not find any example of Telemarketing where SMEs are target market. So I have analyzed this tool in depth.
6.3 Telemarketing
Telemarketing is a form of direct marketing where a salesperson uses the telephone or SMS (Short Message Service) to solicit prospective customers to sell products or services. The prospective customers are identified and qualified by various means, including past purchase histories, previous requests for information, credit limit, competition entry forms or application forms. Telemarketing is famous in many countries around the world.
While telemarketing tends to be most strongly associated with thick skinned individuals hammering their way through a list in search of sales leads, it is actually a very broad term that applies to a multiplicity of both inbound and outbound telephone marketing. The oft-quoted growth in telemarketing (40 per cent in 2004-05 in the UK and now worth around £1. 8 billion according to the Direct Marketing Association) is due largely to the huge increase in the number of call centers handling high volume inbound and outbound business/consumer calls. This work includes for example, handling responses to an advertising campaign, or calling existing customers to offer additional services. Generally a differing set of skills are required for inbound and outbound telemarketing, but this article concentrates on the latter, which tends to involve a wider range of selling skills.
6.3.1 Scopes of Telemarketing
Telemarketing can form an integral part of a sales and marketing campaign, either as a tool for gathering the data that will be the foundation for your direct marketing approaches, as a follow up to other forms of direct marketing, or as an up-front weapon for identifying your best sales prospects. The most common functions of outbound telemarketing include:
• Improving marketing data: at a basic level this may include gathering the contact details of decision makers and their usage of products and services relevant to your market, but further probing can deliver more in-depth information - perhaps on distribution channels for example.
• Telecleaning existing data: Data becomes valuable asset only if it is clean and accurate. A professional team of telemarketers can ensure that data doesn't embarrass them or let them down.
• Lead generation: using a team of dedicated telemarketers to do this tough, up-front work can make more cost-effective use of often highly paid field sales or telesales executives by allowing them to focus on closing sales rather than chasing prospects.
• Event planning: Telemarketing is an effective way to ensure the right people turn up in the right numbers. This method is often used as a follow up to a targeted mailing.
• Direct mails follow up: telephone follow up to mailings is proven to increase returns, by between three and seven times as much in some cases.
• Point of sale promotion: for those distributing products through multiple channels, regular contact with distributors or resellers has numerous benefits. It can ensure that they are familiar with the products and have the right marketing materials to sell them successfully, but can also achieve the difficult goal of keeping the product/service at the forefront of their minds.
• Company profiling: this offers the opportunity to go beyond the type of superficial prospect data held by most businesses and gain a full understanding of how potential customers operate. Information on aspects such as their decision making processes and who they currently purchase from enables much better tailoring of sales and marketing approaches.
• Customer contact: while all of the above functions are relevant to existing and potential customers, there is scope for more creative uses of telemarketing that have particular relevance to previous/existing customers.
6.3.2 Benefits of Telemarketing
• The benefits linger longer: which ever of the main services one choose, information gathered will lead to a list of call-backs for his/her diary over the next 12 months, so our input is in evidence for quite some time beyond the initial period of engagement.
• Accelerates development: external telemarketing not only accelerates the business growth, it can also respond flexibly to changing needs at different times of the year.
• Makes the Company seem bigger: pitching for the larger contracts is always competitive. What better way to profile as a Company of reasonable size than by the initial contact coming from another "member of the team".
• Immediate feedback: trends, competitive information and Clients changing requirements are a valuable bi-product of your project.
• Reduces work load: and allows the team to focus on the brightest opportunities.
• Preserves time for specialist skills: Clients in professional and creative spheres especially welcome this aspect.
6.3.3 Feasibility of Telemarketing
Some people are skeptical of the cost effectiveness of certain types of telemarketing, and many marketers feel it is most appropriate to dealings with existing customers. But those who close their minds to wider opportunities risk missing out. Steve Massie, Marketing Manager of Desktop Engineering is clear about its overall value: 'Done properly, telemarketing will give you better quality market information than any other source. The whole point about telemarketing is that it allows you to talk to people on a one to one basis and gather information of a depth and accuracy you might not otherwise be able to get.' But Steve feels too many squander these opportunities: 'The problem is that most people don't do it properly. They don't target enough and misuse the technique which only ends up annoying people.'
Wijnand Mes, Marketing Manager for IBM Software Group UK, is also unimpressed by the overall standard of telemarketing calls he receives: 'Most are of poor quality by inexperienced individuals. I think telemarketing works best when supported by a personalized direct mailing as part of an integrated marketing communications process.
So what makes for a successful telemarketing campaign? Of course the pioneers of telemarketing operated in less sophisticated markets and were able to throw together programmers of pretty much any sort to catch people's attention; they did not need the highly developed skills that today's telemarketers must have to extract valuable information from call weary prospects.
6.3.4 Requirements of telemarketing
• Planning: The organization needs to consider their budget, their objectives for the volume/quality of data they want, and their in-house resources, in terms of manpower, skills and equipment, compared to the cost of using an outside agency. Telemarketing rarely stands on its own; you need to establish how it integrates with your other sales and marketing activities.
• Accurate data: as with all direct marketing methods, accurate data is the essential foundation for success. Naturally, successful targeting rests on speaking to the right decision makers - getting data that includes this information may cost more but the outcomes are consistently more profitable.
• A good script: an effective telemarketing script is actually not a script at all but a guide for the discussion that steers the listener in the direction the organization wants their customer to go. It must be tailored to the target audience, must grab the attention of the listener within a few seconds of the conversation, and must be highly interactive; long presentations of information can be frustrating for the listener who is then less likely to focus on the issue being presented. The guide/script should be refined in the early stages of a campaign according to quality of responses received.
• Skilled telemarketers: no matter how well targeted the call is, nor how well thought out the script, a wooden and inflexible caller will not deliver the goods. To achieve the desired outcomes the telemarketer must have a good knowledge of the company and product/service they represent, be able to talk intelligently around the structure of the script without getting side tracked, absorb all the negative responses, and talk persuasively to people at all levels.
3.5 Future of Telemarketing
Can telemarketing continue to work if the volume of calls continues to rise? Some marketer feel there are problems caused by a more general information overload: 'We are approaching market information saturation point. Individuals are receiving messages from so many different sources that it becomes impossible to digest the information. I think this is already having an impact on response rates'. Some other feel that telemarketers must move with the times: 'They may need to be more imaginative in future to get past the fatigue recipients feel at getting so many calls. Traditional techniques are wearing a bit thin'.
It's not only a case of telemarketers having to develop new approaches. With the growth of Internet and e-commerce usage new types of telemarketing will start to grow. The biggest change will probably come in the handling of inbound requests for first-stage information on goods and services. Customers will expect to be able to receive such information at the push of a button on a keyboard or mobile phone. The more complex functions of outbound business to business telemarketing will still require a more personal touch, requiring telemarketers to have a detailed knowledge of the business, products and services they are representing. Growth areas will be linked to the new technologies, such as tours of company web sites - personal, responsive and tailored to the individual. Such 'high touch' services will become increasingly in demand; the emphasis will change from the quantity to the quality of staff. Businesses using external agencies will expect telemarketers to become surrogates for them.
Of course no matter how well planned and executed your telemarketing campaign, human nature plays its part; the effects of traffic jams and towering in-trays can block the most skilled approaches. But get the right people offering the right product in the right way - and the outcomes could surpass expectations.
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