Outbound Predictive Dialer Featured Articles

Once upon a time, before even television, marketing was done in magazine and newspaper advertisements and door-to-door-sales. Carpet cleaners knocked on the doors of people before they even knew whether those people had carpets in their homes. Magazine sales were skimmed by a lot of eyeballs before they found a pair that might even be interested in a product. Business-to-business sales teams showed up on the doorstep of companies they knew little about and hoped for the best.

That was then and this is now. Today, we have about ten thousand ways to target advertising to people, particularly in the b-to-b world, thanks to the Internet and mobile marketing as well as more old-fashioned channels such as the telephone. The “right” companies are able to ensure they are making contact with “the right” customers before any telephone call is made or e-mail is sent. This benefits the sales person, but it also benefits the person being targeted, according to a recent article by Matt Ford on Business2Community.

“From a prospect perspective, targeted marketing actually offers them a chance to live in their own little world (whether they know it or not),” writes Ford. “They’ll only get the content that they’d like to read/listen/watch. They get to choose what gets their interest, and what really gets them buying. This isn’t just for ads. In the B2B context, excellent targeting means content that is only directly related to a prospect’s job, their industry, and keeps them focused on the work at hand.”

Just as with Internet news we can view only what interests us and with social media we can customize what we read about our friends, properly targeted marketing allows companies to personally “world build” for prospects and provide them with precisely what they need and want. (The tricky part, of course, is determining what they need and want, but social media can go a long way toward that.)

“A prospect that is eager and open for your solution/services/products is easier to work with,” notes Ford. “It’s simple logic really. Why would you want the world surrounding your business to include customers who are unhappy, unsatisfied, or undesirable? Targeting saves you the drama of dealing with difficult prospects and keeps your resources spent only on the ones who are worth serving.”