Outbound prospecting can and will help your inbound marketing efforts. For example, you can use outbound prospecting to secure marketing objectives like guest posts which will drive inbound leads.
Outbound includes cold calling, social selling, and email campaigns to reach out to prospects while inbound relies on content creation to attract new clients. According to one survey that HubSpot conducted in 2017, over 70% of businesses were primarily focused on inbound marketing.
In our opinion, inbound and outbound sales tactics are basically two sides of the same coin. Engage in one but at some point, you will have to fire up the other so you get the best results. Marketing and sales are a flywheel. Each channel feeds into the other.
Here are 4 ways we see how outbound can impact inbound efforts:
#1 Outbound helps with prospecting and defining your ideal customer profile
Inbound marketing will drive traffic to your website (hopefully) as prospects engage with your content. This is nice and all but you will not know the exact profile of the potential customers that are coming to your website.
That’s where outreach and lead research come in handy. It is a tactic that reaches out to potential customers with a targeted, customized message and drives them deeper into the sales funnel. As Aaron Ross, the godfather of sales development said: “Outbound is spears and inbound is nets.” With outbound sales service, you can target the exact customers you are looking for.
When you define your ideal ICP (ideal customer profile) and you start with the research, you have an idea of who to target and who your potential customers are.
Conducting outreach campaigns will help you generate interest in your service or product with the right audience. Outreach gives you the ability to test out your messaging, and see to what messages people respond the best.
Also, getting feedback from prospects about your brand and product can help you better position your business on the market and in your inbound marketing initiatives.
Creating relevant content, based on the feedback and questions that your potential clients have, will impact your inbound lead generation. You get these questions and objections through the outbound selling process.
#2 Outbound can accelerate your website content
Often, marketers forget that the ultimate goal of content creation is to drive leads to the website, catch them and convert into paying customers. Content is there to inspire, educate, raise brand awareness and attract leads. It takes time to set everything up and get the first results, but once the content strategy is in place it has the potential to drive traffic for a very long time. To speed things up and make your inbound marketing efforts scalable faster, outbound and outreach campaigns can help.
Launching outbound campaigns to promote new content to potential clients and customers is the way to stand out from the crowd. Reach out to relevant websites and blogs and see if they are interested in curating your content, or including your guide on a list of useful resources. Also, if you notice that your brand is mentioned somewhere on the web but they didn’t link back to your website, reach out to them and ask for a backlink.
#3 Outbound can help with converting website visitors
In most cases, inbound traffic is not targeted.
Many visitors are just not interested in what you are selling. Hence your ridiculously high bounce rates and oh so sad time on site stats. Ads can also be a good channel to attract visitors to the website. But, if you are targeting them by demographics (geographically or by industry), there is little chance that they will really convert.
It is all about targeting your micro-segments and your niche. Niche to get rich. With the help of outbound efforts, you can retarget the content that spikes interest in your service (or product), and ensure that you’re reaching only visitors with an intent to buy.
This can be achieved by creating lookalike audiences. You already know your ICP, and by analyzing your outreach efforts you can easily make adjustments and additional criteria for the ads.
Also, if you have a new product or service that is going to come out soon, the quickest way to get the news about it in front of your existing and potential customers is by conducting an email outreach campaign. It is actionable and will bring you new inbound leads faster. Your potential clients will end up coming to you instead.
#4 Outbound can help you with growing your online presence and reach
Many businesses rely on referrals and the power that social influencers have on potential buyers. Use outbound social selling to build your LinkedIn presence, build relationships with those new social connections, and then ask for referrals.
Outreach can help you reach out to bloggers and social media influencers, and create a relationship with them. Ask them to review your product or service, or host a giveaway and help you grow your brand’s online presence and reach.
Find guest blogging opportunities and build your authority in the industry by writing high-quality articles. This will serve as a guarantee to your potential clients that you are an expert in the field and that they can trust you.
Spreading the word about your brand and products through podcasts is also a good way to convey your message and expertise. Use outreach to connect with different podcast programs and suggest a topic that you are expert in.
In Conclusion
To conclude, these two types of marketing tactics can’t work one without the other. The sales machine must have inbound leads. And a marketing machine must be leveraging outbound spears to target the right ideal customers.
Using outbound, you can build a clear picture of your ideal customer profile and learn what content works for them and get them to engage with it and convert into a paying customer. By being in direct communication with leads and customers, you can build a solid relationship and get their feedback on the demand and competition.
In the early stages of any venture or new sales machine, you must increase the feedback loops and insights. Outbound can provide instant market feedback and give you data on key metrics like open rates and response rates, helping you position your brand better on the market.
CEO of TaskDrive
