Building Relationships Through On Hold Marketing
The key to having consistent revenues coming in is your ability to form relationships with your prospects along every step of the way. That is why businesses today emphasize social media marketing, blogs like this one, and any other way that they can so that relationships can begin to form. One of the most overlooked methods of marketing, however, is on hold marketing.
How Does Sitting On Hold Form a Relationship?
How many times have you sat on hold, listening to some tunes best classified as easy listening, with a constant reminder every 30 seconds that your call is important to the company that has you on hold? How important do you really feel when the music you’re trying to hear is constantly interrupted with the same recording? Now think about what you’ve got for your prospects who are sitting on hold, maybe now. Is this how they feel too?
On hold marketing changes the identity of your business when it is used effectively for one simple reason: it makes your prospects feel valuable. It’s a chance for you to begin building a new relationship that will potentially create a brand loyalty to you! The more value that you provide to each person on hold, the fewer problems that you’ll have when you finally get a chance to talk to your prospect in person.
How Can You Create Value In a Message?
The on-hold message is very similar to the e-mail marketing message that gets delivered to thousands of spam folders every day. Effective e-mail marketing follows three key principles:
- It instantly relates to the person so they’ll want to read the e-mail.
- It provides immediate value by helping the reader improve their life in some way.
- It doesn’t force people to buy anything.
When you’ve got a prospect on-hold, listening to music, are any of these three things happening for you? Of course not! You’re just placating someone and hoping they won’t hang up on you. No one is saying that you need to provide thousands of dollars of free advice… just give your prospects a taste of the value that you can provide and let them implement it right away. Do that and you’ll have people wanting more – guaranteed.
What’s the Key Point to Remember?
In any marketing scheme, the problem that the average business faces is that they try to sell too much through the content that they provide. No matter what the medium happens to be, from e-mails to the on-hold message, selling too much will drive people away. So how much is too much? A lot of that depends on your industry, of course, but a good rule of thumb is to limit your sales messages to every 1 in 4 messages at minimum.
Today’s consumer is smart, savvy, and looking for a great deal. Provide them with value and your product will suddenly have more value than your competitors! That’s how you can make your on-hold message a powerful marketing tool that can give you the cutting edge in your industry almost immediately.