Meaning & use
telemarketing
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
The business activity of selling goods or services or asking for donations by calling people on the phone.
Grammar: No plural; used like 'marketing' or 'advertising': a telemarketing company.
Patterns
- telemarketing company
- telemarketing call
- work in telemarketing
She got a job in telemarketing after finishing college.
The charity uses telemarketing to raise money for its projects.
Many people hang up as soon as they realize it is a telemarketing call.
Common combinations
- telemarketing call
- I received a telemarketing call during dinner.
- telemarketing company
- He works for a telemarketing company that sells insurance.
- telemarketing campaign
- The telemarketing campaign reached thousands of homes.
- do telemarketing
- She used to do telemarketing before moving into sales management.
Synonyms and how they differ
- cold calling
- Focuses on the act of phoning people who were not expecting the call, rather than the whole business activity.
- telesales
- Similar but usually refers specifically to selling over the phone, not to asking for donations.
Word family
- telemarketer noun
- A person whose job is to make these sales calls.
Commonly confused: telemarketing or teleselling?
telemarketing vs teleselling
A less common word that only means selling by phone; telemarketing also covers asking for donations.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'telemarketing' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Telemarketing' is an uncountable noun for the activity, so 'works in telemarketing' fits. Option 0 uses it as if it meant 'testing' or 'approval', option 2 uses it as a verb, and option 3 wrongly treats it as a plural countable noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “telemarketing”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.