Inbound marketing means promoting your service or business indirectly by offering solutions to the problems your target audience faces. 

The goal is to link yourself, in the minds of your audience, to helpful insights and solutions to their problems. This is indirect marketing that often leads to higher conversion. It is a vital part of marketing strategy for every company.

Many companies do this through blog posts, videos, infographics, webinars, etc. The goal is to attract the target audience by offering them free learning resources and then converting them into your customers.

Inbound marketing is all about being creative and useful to your audience. But… can inbound call centers play a part in this? Instead of pitching your inbound call center as a customer service provider, can you provide learning resources to the inbound callers and indirectly promote your company? If yes, then how?

This article talks about how you can leverage the power of inbound marketing and drive better results with an inbound call center.

Why Inbound Marketing?

Why do we need inbound marketing in a call center? Because it is the most effective strategy with a high ROI. Solving problems of potential customers is the best form of marketing because they’ll feel positive about you and your indirect pitch in the resource would prompt them to use your service because you are the one who provided them a solution.

Secondly, if you already have an inbound call center team for your company and are launching a new product or service, establishing a separate inbound marketing agents team would help you guide your current and new customers and convert them to your latest service/product.

Inbound Marketing with a Call Center

Inbound call centers offer good to great customer support services to most companies. Customers call these centers to get their issues resolved related to their product/service. The agents are already providing solutions for problems but is it also inbound marketing? No.

Tip – Know the difference between inbound marketing and inbound call centers

Inbound marketing means that customers did not approach you directly to solve their problem but they found you during their hunt for a solution. They could have either attended your webinar, read a blog post, or read some analytical report that solved their issue. In return, they came to know about you and have more chances of becoming your customer in the future. This is not the case with call centers because the callers are existing customers who called to complain about an issue in the service or the product they are using. In this case, providing a solution is not marketing.

Tip – Have a Separate Team for Inbound Marketing Calls

The second thing you need to do is separate your usual inbound call center team from the inbound marketing calls team. The inbound marketing agents are going to offer consultancy or other expert services and solutions to the callers which are potential customers.

By keeping the inbound marketing team separate, you can track their analytics separately and measure performance. They would also be experts on the set marketing topic and will not have to deal with the usual calls and complaints like the other team. 

How to Angle Inbound Marketing with Call Centers

Switch from Complaints to Advice

Switch from receiving complaints to offering advice and consultancy. Have an inbound team ready to answer the phone and offer free advice and consultancy to existing and new customers. Use the advantage of one-on-one communication to clearly communicate your business, brand, and the services it offers. Angle everything in a way that fits the solution that the customer might be looking for. Make sure that your agents are direct and transparent with customers while offering consultation, and that they sound professional. All these things will increase your conversion through inbound marketing. 

Book Appointments

Offer to book appointments in the call. Make your customers feel that your company is ready to take the uneasy steps to make sure they get the right consultation. In some cases, you can also offer free appointments if possible. This will increase the chances of customer conversion because they will have more chances of getting their concerns and queries answered.

Pitch Your Agents as Consultants

Don’t call your inbound marketing team “call center agents”. Pitch them as consultants who offer advice and set free appointments to solve customer issues. This will help your company and increase the rate of inbound calls because people are more likely to receive consultation than being sold something by an ‘agent’.

Conclusion

Inbound marketing requires creativity. How can you offer free solutions to potential customers? It requires creative thinking. Merging inbound marketing strategy is even harder but extremely effective if done right. Use our advice above to ensure that you take the right steps to increase conversion and develop your brand identity.