Approaching other businesses to offer your services

I think online marketing is as good as anything out there. I guess the younger generation are comfortable with online, whereas maybe olders folks prefer direct selling/full service.

I guess much of it depends on what nature of business you're in - certain channels work for certain industries.

I think in person, on line and mail are all good ways of marketing but I really wish everyone would stop telemarketing.

How many calls a week do you get from people wishing to offer you products or services you don't want, need or can't afford. I really don't want to be mean to the poor person who has been tasked with making the calls as at the end of the day they are only trying to earn a living like the rest of us - BUT I REALLY DO WISH THEY WOULD STOP

AMC

Always going to be down to the type of business.

Cold callings a tough one, you need a good quality sales resource. They have to get past the office guard dog/receptionist, and overcome that natural instinct that most of us don't like being cold called.

But its an age old technique, and can work really well. Guessing the problem you have with your sector is the big boys are signed up with agencies, and small firms aren't worth the overhead of having someone cold call in person?

Unless its just lead generation to get a foot in the door to dislodge an agency? Down to cost versus potential reward.

I hate cold callers and there is nothing that will make me part with money to one either. If I want something I'll go looking myself for it, rather than have someone telling me I need it. The worst culprits for cold calling are..... Have a guess!

Most every type of marketing approach will work to some degree, including cold calling, direct mail, and even door hangers - if it's done with enough volume. Target marketing to those who are searching for your services is key to having high conversion rates per capita for your marketing effort.

Cold calling can be very effective if you are looking to secure a lot of business through just one client ie. a potential for a big contract through just one call - however if each call equates to one potential sale then you could be wasting time.

I'd agree hugely with the person above that mentioned telemarketing, I probably find telemarketing the most offensive of sales approaches. I find telemarketers in many instance have no regard of what you were previously doing before they called or the fact that you were busy, 7 out of ten don't ask if its convenient to talk, I'll be honest the ones that are courteous I do give them the opportunity to give me there best pitch, despite this there hasn't been one of them that has made me separate from my hard earned cash.

I much prefer somebody to knock on my door and approach me, I find it much easier to say that I'm not interested and in the event that you are interested its much easier to get the information you need and have a good face to face with the person, on the occasions that they have been genuinely good products and the rep knew his stuff I have been known to place a order with a door to door sales person.

Again as said above it really depends on the nature of the product or service, if somebody gave me a telemarketing call to sell me a car or a mortgage they would receive an absolute rejection. However if they were selling a knife set there's a much higher chance I would be receptive.

Cold calling is not a really good marketing strategy. You shouldn't be banking on that. Instead, do search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media promotion, etc. Aside from online marketing utilizing offline methods like printed ads still work.

Its funny how many of you think that SEO is the holly grail of the (online) marketing...What if one day Google decides your website does not deserve the first page/position rankings anymore? What happens then?

Well, I'll tell you what happens: Your business goes out of business because you've been putting all your eggs into one (SEO) basket. Leads that you've been previously getting through the SEO aren't there any more!

Now before you start acusing me of talking garbage, you need to know that things like this happen all the time, especially when you're increasing your position artifically. Google is tweaking its algorithm on regular basis and SEO techniques that work today may harm your business tomorow.

I'm not saying you shouldn't go after free traffic from Google. All I'm saying is, don't take it for granted and start diversifying your advertising/marketing methods to prevent potential disasters.

Now ask yourself this: How many new customers are you getting thanks to SEO each month? What would happen with your company if all of a sudden your website lost rankings and you wouldn't getting any more customers from SEO? Would you still be in the business?

Think about it!