Unlike other business operations that have been traditionally outsourced, marketing is something that  has remained a very well-protected domain. However, now that everything is being outsourced (and quite literally), marketing can be no exception. In fact, it actually makes a lot of sense for businesses to outsource marketing, and the smart ones have already made their move.

Here are some of the plenty of reasons, why marketing can be, and should be, outsourced -

1. You can get started immediately. When you let the experts do it for you, that too at a fragment of the cost you bear for an in-house marketing team, you are bound to get good results in no time.
2. Outsourcing marketing operations helps people focus on their core activities. You can spend your time on developing your business and consolidating your operations by hiring offshore teams to take care of your marketing and other office work.
3. Businesses can save as much as 70% on marketing costs, when outsourced to offshore teams.

The Current Scenario

Various corporate functions have been outsourced for many years now. But marketing, especially when it goes beyond advertising, is relatively new. In a recent poll conducted by the Harvard Business School, marketing executives were interviewed, and as many as 53% revealed that they were planning to outsource the majority of their marketing functions in near future.

Also, one-to-one marketing has become more vital to businesses than ever. Such a situation often calls for outside expertise which most medium and small businesses lack. With widespread media fragmentation and mass marketing becoming redundant, communicating with your prospective customers has become highly complicated. In such times, outsourcing seems like the only way to reach out to your target customer base.

Which parts of marketing can be outsourced?

If a company lacks in-house skills for a particular operation, for example analytic functions or online marketing, they stand to benefit considerably by outsourcing. You can hire an offshore team to conduct your surveys, take care of your CRM activities, and so on. However, there are a few aspects which directly affect your marketing strategies. These parts are better retained by the company, especially when there is a risk of your competitors using that sensitive information.

Another thing which should not be overlooked is the importance of marketing personnel. Even though computer aided analysis is pivotal in driving your marketing operations, the marketing managers (and even the CEO) need to meet with customers and strengthen their relationship with them. Companies will always need their marketing officers to keep the marketing intact and handle major accounts.

How can one successfully manage outsourced tasks?

The key to having healthy relationships with your associates is to see them as partnerships and nurture them. Regarding your vendors or suppliers as mere contractors is unhealthy because it removes all scope for growth and a long-term and on-going relationship.

It is the responsibility of the marketing managers to ensure that they share a fruitful relationship with their service providers. This requires patience, good communication skills, an ability to negotiate, and above all, being able to motivate people to perform and deliver their best.

How can you outsource?

As businesses all over the world are becoming increasingly open to all kinds of outsourcing, marketing is also undergoing a similar shift. Numerous marketing companies are offering their services and skills at affordable prices.

WorkMonk.com can help you connect with the right company you can outsource your marketing operations too, that too completely free of cost!

Outsourcing Your Marketing: Why and How? is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner

1. Caller’s Emotional Analysis:

Perhaps the most crucial of all trends to look for, this one really deserves special mention. What we are witnessing is that almost all companies are prioritizing callers according to how emotionally heated up/angry they are at the time of making the call. The reason why this technology is being internationally adopted is because of its positive impact on the caller experience and call center key performance indicators (KPIs). This is mainly an automated way to analyse a caller’s emotional status by taking into account various factors like their pitch, timbre, tone and also how quick they speak.

2. Call it the “Social Network”

Gone are the days when call center agents simply carried out phone calls. With the advent of the world wide web, many of those started communicating through e-mails and other such devices. Now, more customer service channels means added burden on the agent which again calls for more sophisticated software. But the whole scenario took a mighty turn with the arrival of the social media craze. Consumers across the world are now using social media tactics to research about products, express opinions, influence brands and reach out to companies, so agents are expected to interact with customers on social channels like Facebook Twitter etc.

3. Internalized Universal Customer History Record:

With the ever-increasing demand for personalised services and more caller friendly services in the call center industry, companies worldwide would not hesitate to walk that extra mile to gain access to the full history of a customer’s past history and prior interactions over the important communication channels viz. voice, electronic channels like chat, IM and email, and also social media channels kike Facebook and Twitter. Moreover, it is very likely that companies will strive indefatigably to achieve a more formalised business process and governance structures around managing social inquiries. This means that marketing departments will gradually be spared of this responsibility and the onus will be upon customer service centers.

4. Use of Virtual Assistants:

Bridging the gap between the web and the call centers has always been the modus operandi of all the call center companies. While this was not an easy task to accomplish, the popularity of effective virtual assistants has definitely narrowed this gap and has worked towards better connectivity between the ever-expanding internet and the call centers. In the coming months, we shall witness an even more usage of virtual assistants which easily support customer service operations by interacting with web surfers, helping customers to navigate their way through interactions, and share crucial information. With innovative technologies slowly surfacing their way to popularity, the use of virtual assistants has taken a new turn with extensive benefits from advanced text recognition and speech generation technologies.

5. Enhanced Cloud Computing usage:

Recently, it has been widely stated that the size of the Cloud Computing Market will grow four-fold and reach an all-time high record of $150 billion. With such vital statistics to take into account, cloud computing can definitely play a very crucial role in helping contact centers to operate more efficiently, and can help organisations maintain the right balance between traditional on premise resilience and the flexibility offered by the latest state-of-the-art cloud enabled technologies.

6. Better Knowledge Management for increased ROI:

Last but not the least, a better and a more organised approach in aligning their knowledge management solutions is another important option which many call center companies would opt for without much hesitation. Investments in such knowledge management solutions are likely to shoot up in the coming months. Moreover, enough focus will be showered upon increasing the agility and sociability of knowledge deployments which will result in further growth of the content and also with minimal management overhead.

7. Smart phones and Social Network:

And yeah, the grand success of smartphones has kindled a number of crucial changes in the smart phone customer service channels and thus making it the key mode of availing such services for many customers. Trusted sources predict that 46% of Indian smartphone customers shall use their devices to access the Internet in the next three months.  Also, predictions suggest that companies shall exude more familiarity with social networking tactics and be able to provide us with a more personalised experience based on customer account and locations details.

8. Rise of Next Gen Collaborative tools and End-to-End Customer Feedback:

Last but not the least, who can deny the fact the end-to-end feedback processes are extremely important for increased efficiency and productivity of any call center company? Well, this obviously means companies, small and large alike, will exacerbate their efforts to put end-to-end feedback processes in place across all communication channels — both traditional and social. Hence, a very wise prediction that we can make is that vendors will start providing the next generation of collaborative communication tools, sentiment analytics, and the ability to close the loop with the user.

Top 8 trends to watch in the Call Center industry in 2012-2013 is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner

Businesses often employ call center services so that they are better able to focus on their core competencies while outsourcing other tasks such as marketing and customer care. Call center services are primarily classified as inbound and outbound. When the company calls potential customers for sales and marketing, it falls under the outbound category. On the other hand, when customers call the call center for information or assistance, it is known as inbound service.

Inbound call center services are employed by companies which get a huge communication inflow from their customers. Often it is very difficult to handle so many customer requests by having dedicated in-house customer support staff. In such cases, it is not only cost-efficient, but also more productive, to redirect these customer requests to an inbound call center.

Why businesses should use inbound call center services?

Answering calls is a big task a company is responsible for – it is the key to retaining your customers, generating feedback, and boosting your sales. Should such a crucial part of an organization’s functioning be assigned to a third party? While some may be speculative at first, those who opted to outsource customer support to inbound call center services have reaped huge benefits. Listed below are few of the many prominent features that encourage businesses to outsource to call centers and BPO companies:

1. Quality – The main reason why businesses are hesitant to employ call centers is because they are unsure about the kind of quality they will receive. As a matter of fact, call centers all over the world employ the most competent of people and enforce the strictest quality control guidelines to ensure the deliver the best. It also makes sense to let these professionals answer your calls because they are trained, know how to handle different types of customers, and pay a lot of attention to voice attributes such as accent and modulation while being polite and courteous at all times.
2. Reduction in Workload – By allowing a BPO company to answer your calls, you can save a lot of precious time and resources and utilize those to focus on your core competencies instead. In some businesses, customer calls account for the maximum amount of overheads. For example, ticket booking companies operate mainly through telephonic calls. When such operations are outsourced, a company can focus on strengthening its other operations.
3. Customer Satisfaction – Customer satisfaction is old fashioned, the in-thing is customer enthusiasm. With inbound call center services, you can reduce wait times, meet callers’ needs, and increase customer retention. And BPO companies know exactly how to get the most out of your customers.
4. 24×7 support - Nobody likes to wait or dial a number only to know that it is busy or not available. When your calls are received by a professional inbound call center, you can guarantee your customers seamless service which is available round the clock, every day of the week.
5. Huge Cost Savings - The cost advantage inbound call center services provide is far too huge to ignore. Many companies have been able to save as much as 70% of their overall operational costs simply by hiring a BPO company to take over some of their tasks. Outsourcing is simple and advantageous as it gets!

To get in touch with the leading BPOs of the world, and find one that perfectly matches your needs, contact WorkMonk today. It’s free!

Inbound Call Center Services can Help You Increase Profits is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner

For the past two months, WorkMonk has successfully organised a very apt and an efficient platform of hundreds of BPO’s and call centers in India. While most of them are based in major Indian hubs like Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Kolkata, many of these excellent BPO companies are able to provide you with all state-of-the-art facilities which include available spaces of over 10000 sq. feet and seating arrangements for at least 500 full time employees.

If this is not enough,think about the fact that all of them have existing clients and are already managing plenty of inbound and outbound work. As such, all you need to do is to choose us as your partner and then you can rest assured that we will deliver the kind of quality we promise.

So,what are you waiting for? Do drop us an email at sales@workmonk.com and we shall be able to help you – completely free of cost!

Looking for a Call Center partner in India ? is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner

Throughout the decades, wise men from various cultures and especially India have all the more preached that although certain methods of business thrive in certain environments, it’s not long before they are proved futile by the ravages of time. Though India has managed to position itself as a major outsourcing hub, questions about its future in outsourcing continue to re-surface in industry circles.  However, it is evident in the case of outsourcing that careful observation and analysis of the recent trends are of utmost importance if we want to avail of the benefits of outsourcing for long. I have prepared a list of five of the most crucial trends in the outsourcing realm of 2012. They are:

1. Plummeting larger deals: While we have observed a continuous decline in the size of IT services contracts, the number of those contracts worth $100 million or less has increased three-folds according to outsourcing consultancy information services. However, the number of big sized deals and medium sized contracts awarded each year has plummeted to some extent after remaining fairly stable till 2009.

2. Fresh Pricing Models: With outsourcing strategies on the verge of getting saturated and continued pressure on their profit margins, outsourcing service providers are building even more innovative and oft riskier engagement models, including joint ventures, business-outcome based pricing, revenue-sharing arrangements, and dedicated centers of excellence.

3. Growth of multi-sourcing opportunities: Most outsourcing companies these days are totally rejecting single source deals in favour of more pragmatic outsourcing models that use  a variety of specialized firms. However, with all the increased burden on such multi-sourcing companies, they have started to panic and are striving hard to survive such tumultuous environments. Meanwhile, IT organizations are hiring more people to cater to the necessary management skills required. Only time can tell how these new strategies in outsourcing will play out.

4. Critical Security issues: “Many outsourcing companies have already started complaining about breaches of public security and it won’t be long before a company suffers a major public security breach. The only way to secure and protect company data is to look for  better alternative solutions”–says Pushkar Gaikwad, CEO of outsourcing giants WorkMonk Bangalore.In the meantime, security liability limits have become one of the most contentious negotiation issues between outsourcing customers and vendors today.

5.  Indian Outsourcers Setting up Shop in the U.S : Again, it has been observed lately that many Indian as well as Chinese outsourcers are keen on setting up comprehensive U.S operations. This subtle but crucial observation recognizes the fact that you need to be in close contact with your customers and especially when you are serving at the highest levels of the value chain. Alleviating attrition related problems is also one of the major motives behind such migration. After the U.S suffered their recession, there arose serious problems regarding the diminishing cost structure advantage of offshore business. At the same time, it also put a tremendous amount of pressure on companies to find out more effective ways to cut down costs in order to maintain profitability. This, without doubt, proved to be a tenacious incentive for companies to search for alternative solutions.

6. Potential Cloud-sourcing opportunities: Recent surveys conducted by various credible web analytic agencies suggest getting boosts from next-generation delivery models as cloud offerings and remote infrastructure management. Service providers are trying to address some of the technical and perception issues that have delayed widespread adoption of cloud services

6 Outsourcing Trends to Watch in 2012 is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner

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Download Free Time Tracking Software is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner

1. Use Social Media – You probably expected this in the first place, but  isn’t it obvious – given the relative importance social media has in business promotion. Every time you write a post, share an excerpt on Facebook, and share the link on other social media sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn. Have your blog’s accounts on all these sites as that is more professional as compared to using your personal accounts.
2. Link to other blogs in your posts – I know a lot of people who use this trick to drive a lot of traffic to their blogs. This is not a very evident way of blog promotion, but is a very powerful one. When you link to other blogs, they are able to see which sites are sending them traffic, and this way you get to be on their radar. This way, some of the finest blogs get  to know about you and approach you for guest blogging, interlinking, etc.
3. Comment on other blogs – Comment only on those blogs which are relevant, and have meaningful comment threads associated with them. A large number of people comment on random blogs and in a very haphazard manner too. This is how a lot of paid blog promotion ends up as irrelevant and spam comments on completely unrelated blogs and forums. When writing a comment, make sure it is useful, and if possible, try and include a link to a related post on your blog or include a short bio/introduction about yourself in the comment.
4. Post frequently – Don’t abandon your blog for weeks altogether. It is best to have at least one new post everyday. When people like your blog and come back to it the next day, they should have something new and interesting to keep them hooked. Stale pages will only make you lose your loyal followers.
5. Include blog information on your business card - In fact, not just your business card, even your online signature. Having a link handy at all times ensures a higher probability of getting readers than having no link at all. You can include the link on your personal social media pages as well.
6. Interlink all your websites and blogs - If you own multiple websites and blogs, interlink all of them into one network. If even one of them is getting very good traffic, it translates to heavier traffic for the rest of your pages as well. Moreover, you get a lot of free advertising space for your other websites.
7. Guest blog – This one sounds a lot easier than done. It is very difficult to find high-traffic blogs to allow you to post as a guest blogger. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying. If your friends or colleagues have a blog that gets more traffic than yours, you can request them to let you guest post. At the end of the post you can include a short description about yourself and your blog.
8. Participate in online forums – Your presence on forums across the web will automatically invite a lot of people to check out your blog. When you sign up on any website, do not forget to include a link to your blog on your profile page. People love to visit other people’s profiles, and when they are visiting yours, they should be able to find your blog.
9. Join communities – You can join various online blogging communities such as MyBlogLogJoin, Bumpzee, Blog Catalog. These platforms will help you learn a lot of new things and you can also come across some great bloggers and learn from them. Joining blogging communities will also provide you a lot of insight into latest blogging trends.
10. Submit to article directories – The posts that you write can also be submitted to article directories like Ezine and About. The problem is that the content may not rank very well in search engine results. But on the bright side, you get a lot of back links, and hence a lot of traffic for your site.
11. Business directories – Make use of business directories like dmoz and business.com. You can submit the link to your blog or website on these websites along with a short write-up about your services.
12. Classifieds – Classifieds are free and there are plenty of them out these. These are one of the best free blog promotion tools and generate very highly targeted audience. You can use free classifieds websites like craigslist, and local websites like sulekha, etc.
13. Invite your contacts – Email all the addresses on your mail and social networking sites and give them a link to your blog. Inviting personal contacts is a great way of spreading word about your new blog and goes a long way in promoting freshly launched blogs.
14. Stay in touch with your readers – It is important to have an email marketing campaign, especially in the initial stages of blog promotion. Send every new registered user a thank you note, contact them every month with an interesting newsletter, get a customer relationship management software if you must.
15. Forums – Forums are another excellent way of building contacts and promoting your blog among varied audiences.Although they are not as popular as blogs are these days, they still retain a massive loyal user base. You can easily find a lot of forums which pertain exactly to the kind of audience you are looking for.
16. Social bookmarking sites – A lot of bloggers submit some of their best posts to social bookmarking sites like netscape, digg, stumbleupon and reddit. Good articles, when bookmarked, assure you long lasting traffic and readers who keep coming back to your blog. Social bookmarking sites are indeed one of the best blog promotion tools you can have.
17. Portfolio sites – If you are an artist or a designer and want to promote your blog, you should have samples of your work on popular portfolio websites like deviatart, behance and portfolios.com. While browsing through work, people often like to read about the contributor, and when they look up your profile, they are also very likely to check out your blog.
18. Tutorial sites – Creating tutorials – presentations, videos, or even articles – on tutorial websites is a great way of getting your blog in the limelight. For example, if you are expert at something, you can create several how-to articles and submit them to websites like ehow. All these websites require you to submit a short bio about yourself where you can include your blog link. If readers like your tutorials, they will also want to come to your blog for more.
19. Youtube video – A lot of bloggers, especially those who also have small businesses associated with them, have a short youtube video that highlights their features, how they work, and how they can make a difference to their users. Moreover, videos are likely to attract more views as compared to lengthy articles and newsletters. So it is important that you have a professional video about your blog. You can link the same to your other social media pages.
20. Link exchange with fellow bloggers – While some might see it as competition, a few smart bloggers have made great business by teaming with their rivals. You can actually share posts from your competitors’ blogs if they agree to share yours in return. It is not only a great blog promotion tool, it also gives your readers a lot of variety in content.
21. Free ebooks – This one always works! Have a few good titles up for grabs on your blog. People take everything that is free, and when it something useful, you are bound to get tonnes of hits.
22. Press releases – Press releases are another age old method of promoting blogs and websites. Getting coverage in a local newspaper, magazine, or even having another website to publish a story about your blog can promote your blog by leaps and bounds.
23. Free downloads such as themes – Just as with free ebooks, if you are a designer of developer, you can have free giveaways such as phone and desktop themes, games, and applications. Freebies are definitely one of the best ways of promoting your blog or website.
24. Interactive blog – Having quizzes, contests, and polls on the blog will make users participate more actively.
25. Hire someone – All the above mentioned ways of promoting a blog take a lot of time and patience. If you are busy handling multiple blogs, or run a blog as a hobby/part-time job, you can actually hire someone to do the blog promotion for you. WorkMonk offers blog promotion services such as international and local search engine optimization, on-page and off-page optimization service, SEO reporting service, and link-building at the most affordable rates.

25 Free Blog Promotion Tips and Tools is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner

Hiring on WorkMonk is easy, just post a job and receive competing proposals from service providers all over India. You can post your Freelance Jobs at WorkMonk.com/freelance (post the freelance jobs/tasks by filling this form).

No registration is needed to hire freelancers (at least not now, we will see how things turn out and add more features as we go in next few days). Our motto is to connect you with the freelancers to get more work done faster and with quality assurance.

If you need any help or have any suggestion to make the process even better, drop a message to notify(at) workmonk.com. We’d be happy to receive feedback.

Post your Freelance Jobs for FREE at WorkMonk is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner

Every small business must use CRM software because it centralizes all your contacts, tracks everything in one place, alerts you when it is the right time to follow up your customers, and helps you make a perfect and lasting impression.

There are various types of CRM tools available. Some of them are -

1. CRM Sales Force Automation
2. Marketing Automation CRM
3. Work flow Management CRM
4. Customer Service & Support CRM
5. Customized CRM
6. On Demand CRM

You can communicate with your customers via SMS and email. CRM software that have collaborative and social features take your customers’ interactions a step beyond email marketing. With these, you can share tweets, view blogs, exchange pictures, and do much more. Such interactive CRM allow heavy customer participation and bring in a lot of inputs and feedback. However, such social features are often missing in the ordinary CRM tools that you come across. And this is why small businesses and start-ups need customized CRM applications that fit their needs perfectly.

Another major advantage of having a CRM system developed for your business is that it is very cost effective. Most web based CRM tools cost about $30-50 per user per month. Microsoft charges a whopping monthly fee of $65 per user. Assuming that a small business has about 5 users, you will end up paying hefty annual charges of at least $2500-3000 every year. A small business can actually use this money towards the development of its own CRM application, which is tailor-made to suit its needs. What’s more, it’s a one time investment and then you can continue using the software for years!

Businesses and enterprises can choose from the following two ways in which the applications run -

1. Traditional off-site CRM applications – these require data synchronization and have the problem of multiple replicated databases due to independent/off-site use.
2. CRM as a web hosted application – removes the burden of IT support and uses one common database.

WorkMonk is one of the market leaders when it comes to CRM, marketing automation, and email marketing – and we can help you develop your custom CRM application in the most cost-effective and timely manner.

CRM Software Systems for Small Business is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner

The following is a brief list of reasons why all small businesses, even home-based businesses, should have their very own website.

• Convenience – Unlike other promotional materials that you use, such as printed business cards, a website is highly accessible. If your customer has to recommend your business to someone, he might not be able to find your business card or have your phone number handy, but he will always lead them to your website.

• Competition – Simply put, all of your competitors already have a website – even manufacturers and suppliers do. And when you don’t, your customers are likely to move on to your competitors. With a website, you can communicate with your customers, inform them about new products and services, and involve them in upcoming events.

• Credibility – A professional designed website gives a good first impression. When your customers view your website, they can see your commitment to your business and how important they are to you. Don’t just try and make do with a minimalistic brochure-like website. Hire good web design services and get an engaging, user-friendly, and aesthetic website.

• Advertising – Your own website is your best bet for advertising your products and services. Newspaper and TV ads are way too costly and pamphlets are plain inconvenient, if not entirely obsolete. Switch to your website instead. It is free, absolutely convenient, and targets just the right audience.

• Building Relationships – When you post pictures, stories, or anything that makes your customers feel valued, you gather loyal supporters. Building such strong relationships is very important to small businesses, because for them every single client matters. A website will help you stay in constant touch and keep your business buzzing with activity.

People often have a lot of myths about having their own website. Many think that it costs tens of thousands of dollars to get a website developed. They think SEO is a hard to understand concept, or that they don’t have the technical knowhow to run a website. As a matter of fact, the developers do everything for you and there is nothing you have to worry about. Also, you can have a very good website developed for about $3000. An advanced website, such as ecommerce sites, might cost up to $5000. You do not even have to worry about what language the code will be in. When you approach web design services, they will usually ask you to describe your business needs, how you want your customers to interact with you, the features that can benefit your business, etc. and choose an approach customized just for you.

So get a website today, don’t lose out on customers searching for you!

Web Design Services for Small Business – Are You Missing Customers? is a post from: WorkMonk Blog - Your B2B Partner