14. Telemarketing

Telemarketing is marketing conducted over the telephone. Most telemarketing calls are "cold calls," meaning the recipient of the call has not requested that the telemarketer contact them. Telemarketing is one of the most controversial types of marketing. The purpose of telemarketing is to make a sale. Sometimes telemarketers have personal information when they call a customer, knowing the person has purchased products similar or related to theirs from other vendors or outlets.

The two major categories of telemarketing are Business-to-business and Business-to-consumer. Subcategories: Lead Generation, the gathering of information. Sales, using persuasion to sell a product or service. Outbound, proactive marketing in which prospective and preexisting customers are contacted directly. Inbound, reactive reception of incoming orders and requests for information. Demand is generally created by advertising, publicity, or the efforts of outside salespeople.

Some older practices of telemarketing inadvertently caused fear. One common type of automated telemarketing program would dial numbers to check for answering machines in order to leave a pre-recorded sales pitch. If a person answered, the program detected a real voice and hung up. Many people were frightened by the unexplained hang-ups, some fearing they were being stalked. It is now illegal for a telemarketer to leave an automated sales pitch on an answering machine. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing. Telemarketing has come under fire in recent years, being viewed as an annoyance by many.

Telemarketing may be done from a company office, from a call centre, or from home. It may involve either a live operator or a recorded message, in which case it is known as "automated telemarketing" using voice broadcasting. "Robocalling" is a form of voice broadcasting which is most frequently associated with political messages. An effective telemarketing process often involves two or more calls. The first call (or series of calls) determines the customer’s needs. The final call (or series of calls) motivates the customer to make a purchase.

Prospective customers are identified by various means, including past purchase history, previous requests for information, credit limit, competition entry forms, and application forms. Names may also be purchased from another company's consumer database or obtained from a telephone directory or another public list. The qualification process is intended to determine which customers are most likely to purchase the product or service. Telemarketing techniques are also applied to other forms of electronic marketing using e-mail or fax messages, in which case other people frequently consider them spam.