Copywriters can spend a great deal of time crafting the perfect sales-y pitch that will get you hired, but then they often miss the mark by neglecting the equally important work of convincing the hiring manager that you’re not a fraud.
Outbound marketing is a method of attracting new customers by contacting them when they are already engaged with other brands. In other words, outbound marketing is the opposite of inbound marketing. Outbound marketing is a method of attracting new customers by contacting them when they are already engaged with other brands. A customer who has been contacted by an outbound marketer is called an “outbound prospect”.
Go out of your way to sell things to people who have never heard of your business, and you will find that most sales are made from people who do not live in your area.
Is outbound marketing appropriate for your company?
How do you know which techniques will help you develop your business?
You’ve come to the right place if you have questions about outbound.
What Is Outbound Marketing and How Does It Work?
Outbound marketing is when you (the company) start a dialogue with a consumer in order to entice them to your brand. Outbound marketing includes things like TV commercials, cold calls, paid advertisements, and direct mail.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, occurs when a customer approaches you and establishes a conversation. They might go to your website, read an ebook, or download a white paper, for example.
Outbound marketing’s purpose is to actively establish genuine relationships with customers through involvement, targeted messaging, and positioning your brand in the right place at the right time.
Inbound marketing has undeniably gained in popularity in recent years (and with good reason, as it produces tremendous results.) However, due to the high cost per outreach, outbound marketing still consumes 90% of marketing spending.
To increase your outbound ROI, you must allocate your cash to the strategies that are most effective for your business. We’ll go over some tactics to attempt below, but first, let’s talk about why they’re relevant.
Is Outbound Marketing Still Effective in Today’s Market?
Every business owner enjoys saving money. You might wonder why a company would continue to use an outbound approach if you, as a customer, delete a sales promotion email from your inbox without looking at it.
They’ve most likely amassed a large mailing list, and their advertisements are sent to every single email address on it, regardless of whether or not each consumer is directly in their target audience.
Why? They’ve put time and effort into creating a mailing list, and outbound marketing is still a powerful technique. It’s fantastic for increasing brand awareness, maintaining brand relevance, and introducing products to new audiences (as long as your emails aren’t too repetitious that a client hates you). It allows you to stay top-of-mind with your customers for recommendations, word-of-mouth marketing, and lead generation.
Inbound marketing is wonderful, especially for tiny and low-budget firms, but customers can’t look for something they don’t know about if they don’t know it exists in the first place.
You will reach people if you use outbound marketing. You’re not going to be yelling into the void. Blogs are wonderful for SEO and hope Google’s Algorithm will pity you, but when you pay for a TV commercial during a popular show’s half-time break, you know it will be seen.
It can be costly, but when done well, it still generates a positive return on investment and is still important as a supplement to inbound marketing today.
Try These 7 Outbound Marketing Strategies
The majority of marketing success is the result of a combination of methods. There are many various ways to reach your target audience, whether inbound or outbound, and achieving your goals will typically necessitate a variety of strategies.
Here are seven outbound sales methods to help you grow your business.
1. Cold Email
Email appears to have been around for a long time, but it continues to provide marketers with a fantastic return on investment.
We’re all used to getting newsletters from websites, yet we often overlook one of the most critical aspects of outbound marketing: cold email.
Cold emails are unsolicited emails sent to potential customers. Because you’re the one who starts the conversation, it adheres to outbound marketing concepts.
“No one likes getting unsolicited emails, and spam is the worst.”
What if your cold emails didn’t feel like they were unsolicited? What if they were highly tailored, valued your customer’s time, and provided them with something more than a product that could solve “all of life’s problems?”
Outbound marketing does not have to be obnoxious, impersonal, and sales-driven. It can use all of the inbound marketing’s inventiveness. You can write cold emails that garner answers and generate leads using your knowledge about your target audience.
With your cold emails, you should focus on the following points:
- Make sure you’re reaching live emails by cleansing your list.
- subject lines that are interesting to read: obtain a click
- Make folks feel like they aren’t the millionth person to receive this email by personalizing it.
- offering value: you’re looking for something from them; what can you give in exchange?
- Subject lines, signatures, CTAs, the interval between each email, the time you send each email, and, of course, the material itself should all be A/B tested.
Small things matter; 30% of consumers open an email based on the subject line, for example, so make sure you’re optimizing every area of your outbound marketing.
2. Direct Mail
I first advised you to use “leading-edge technology” while sending emails, and now I’m encouraging you to send people letters in the mail?
Yes, indeed!
Even though so much of our lives have gone online, we still exist offline and still receive letters. As it turns out, we still appreciate receiving letters with our names on it, and this is a successful method of outbound marketing.
In this scientific study, participants who were exposed to direct mail had 70 percent stronger brand memory than those who were exposed to an online ad. It may lack fancy metrics and the ability to embed a GIF, but it’s still a good approach to gain traction for your business and can be tailored to your ethos, voice, and how you want to promote yourself.
Take a look at KitKat’s hilarious example:
The typical return on investment through direct mail varies greatly, and like with other outbound marketing, it all depends on how excellent your campaign is.
When it comes to direct mail, it’s critical to:
- Maintain a targeted approach by segmenting people based on previous purchases, location, demographics, and other factors.
- Make your ad stand out from the crowd by being innovative.
- Include a means to track the campaign’s success (unique discount codes are a great way to see which customers are responding).
Direct mail is still a useful outbound approach, even if it doesn’t seem to mesh with the digital age.
3. Search Ads
Paid search advertising are a hybrid of inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Despite the fact that the targeted user has most likely deliberately sought for information about your items, you’re still putting your brand in front of them in a method that’s more akin to outbound marketing.
For quick results, search advertising are ideal.
When it comes to SEO, you write an article and wait for the search engines to rank it. It’s a wonderful tool once it starts bringing in traffic because you’re not paying for clicks, but it takes time and there’s no guarantee of success.
Paid search advertisements provide your brand an immediate visibility in the SERPs, almost ensuring visitors. Of course, you’ll be charged per click, therefore the most crucial aspect of search ads is optimization.
Your landing pages, like your adverts, must be on point (here’s how I make sure my landing pages are converting).
Make it clear what you’re attempting to achieve with your paid ads, and make sure everything is streamlined to get your clients to take action. Small errors like a clumsy checkout page might affect your conversion rate and reduce your search ad ROI significantly.
The average conversion rate for search advertisements on the Google network is 4.4 percent, but with your dedication, you might be able to go far higher.
To assist you, I’ve created a “Guide to Google Ads.”
4. Social Media Ads
Every day, billions of people use social media. The average amount of time spent on social media every day is two hours and twenty-five minutes.
We talk about reaching your clients where they hang out a lot in marketing, and the research reveals that this is predominantly on social media. You’re missing out if you’re not running social media ads.
Social media is becoming increasingly “pay to play,” making it a more outbound tool. Paid social media is defined as:
- organic social networking is more cost-effective
- improves brand recognition
- expands your reach
Because the average organic post only reaches 5% of your followers, you’ll need a large following to make an impact with organic social media. Paid advertisements, on the other hand, enable you to reach a highly focused audience right away.
Targeting is one of the most effective components of advertising on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. These organizations have vast amounts of data on their consumers, which you can utilize to be incredibly targeted, presenting your adverts to the people who will be most affected by them.
5. Trade Shows/Events
Although marketing has switched its focus from the physical to the digital realm, this does not imply that getting out and meeting people is a lost art. Attending a trade show is one of the finest methods to promote your business in front of a targeted audience.
This can be a significant initial investment (on average, $100-$150 per square foot of floor area), but the visibility and new relationships you gain can be well worth it.
Maintaining brand relevance necessitates a continuous commitment, and having a booth at a big trade show is one way to do so. Consider any large trade event, and you can bet the top brands will be present. What would an international farming show be without John Deere, for example?
These companies may appear to be so large that it doesn’t matter if they attend a trade show, but they understand that in order to stay relevant, they must be present.
Make sure you’re setting goals and managing your budget properly when preparing for a tradeshow.
6. Cold Calls
Outbound calling does not always have a good reputation, and cold calls are no exception. Despite this, cold calling is an unavoidable reality for many businesses.
Cold calling allows you to contact new audiences and create discussions, which is exactly what sales and marketing are all about. Of course, there are excellent and poor methods to do this, and you should carefully assess your strategy.
Again, it’s all too easy to dismiss cold calling as a numbers game. Outbound focuses on volume, but quality, in this case the quality of the conversations you can have, is still the most significant factor.
This is why there’s a shift away from scripted sales speeches and toward tactics like SPIN selling, which focuses on assisting customers in solving their problems (if you’ve read any of my inbound marketing articles, you’ll know this is something I frequently discuss).
If you’re considering using cold calling as part of your outbound strategy, keep the following in mind:
- Invest in the proper software: it will save you a lot of time and help you to be more productive.
- Consider your brand image: don’t be pushy, and focus on building relationships.
- Check your prospect list to make sure you’re reaching the right people.
- Respect people’s privacy by removing them from your contact list when they want it.
- Protect the vulnerable: take care of your consumers, especially the elderly, and provide safeguards (such as a 30-day money-back guarantee) so they can alter their minds.
7. Use Television, Radio, and Print Advertisements
Traditional advertising is far from dead, despite the fact that online marketing has changed the way businesses advertise.
You may market your business and grow your brand in a variety of internet locations. Advertisements on television and radio may demand a larger cost than other forms. They’re not as effective as PPC, but they still produce significant results.
Although the average American spends more than two hours each day on social media, older generations watch more traditional television:
- Each day, Americans aged 50 to 64 watch an average of four hours and 59 minutes of traditional television.
- The average person over the age of 65 watches for six hours and 39 minutes.
Traditional media consumption is changing, but it is still there, which means there is still a tremendous opportunity for marketers. If you understand your target demographics and use innovative language to promote your brand, you can still see a good return on your investment.
Frequently Asked Questions about Outbound Marketing
Inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing: what’s the difference?
Inbound marketing relies on the customer seeking for your brand, but outbound marketing relies on the business initiating the relationship.
Is social media marketing inbound or outbound?
Inbound and outbound social media are both possible. Outbound marketing refers to paid social media ads, whereas inbound marketing refers to organic reach.
What makes outbound marketing so successful?
Because it is immediate, outbound marketing is typically effective. You’re not waiting for people to come to you; instead, you’re putting your brand in front of them and starting conversations.
Is outbound marketing a thing of the past?
It is, in fact, very much alive. Outbound marketing is still used by many businesses to get a decent return on their investment.
What are some outbound marketing examples?
Paid search ads, social media ads, cold email, cold calls, trade exhibitions, and tv/radio/print ads are all examples.
Conclusion of Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing is still relevant in today’s world. It’s a wonderful strategy to grow your brand and a great compliment to your inbound marketing.
Marketing is a competitive profession, and you can’t always expect people to come to you; instead, you must put your name out there and ensure you obtain exposure. Cold emails, search ads, social media ads, trade shows, cold calls, and traditional media ads can all make a difference in these situations.
The most important thing to understand is that outbound marketing follows many of the same concepts as inbound marketing. You must still understand your target audience and be able to deliver value and assist them solve their problems.
Outbound marketing can be an important aspect of your plan if you can execute this well.
What is your preferred method of outbound marketing?
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you do outbound marketing?
Outbound marketing is a technique of advertising to people who are not currently customers.
What are some examples of outbound marketing?
Outbound marketing is the process of promoting a product or service to people outside the company.
How do you do inbound marketing strategies?
Inbound marketing strategies are a type of marketing strategy that focuses on attracting new customers through the use of content.
