You can learn from it, grow it faster than other channels, and it can become a steady source of leads. Outbound is the piece missing from your puzzle, which will render your marketing strategy even more efficient, and the company will be able to sustain growth. Learn the reasons why you should fall in love with outbound.
Businesses rooted in technology wish to enjoy steady growth by design. As you move forward, you’ll need more leads that will be delivered in the most predictable way possible. You may be wondering what marketing strategy you should adopt – inbound or outbound? You’ll surely need a stable and predictable source of leads. Once you achieve a certain level of growth, mere inbound may not be enough.
#1 Quick results vs. the long haul
Client acquisition using inbound is like building a castle. You slowly fortify your empire.
First, remember that growing this channel is a long-term process which unfortunately also strains the budget. Regardless of whether you want to outsource it, or manage it on your own. When you invest in inbound, you can’t expect the results to come quickly.
Second, not every business can afford an investment like that, especially in the early stages.
On the other hand, to launch an outbound campaign, say, a cold email one, you don’t have to devote as much time as with inbound. You can, of course, outsource these operations and focus more on optimizing your content for search engines, or promoting yourself in social media.
Even if you take the task of customer acquisition upon yourself, you’ll still need less time to plan and run an outbound campaign than to generate enough content to attract a sufficient number of prospects.
#2 Outbound for a strong start
When trying to expand your business, you need a steady, predictable inflow of leads. Those coming from referrals are rare. Inbound ones may be unstable at times. Especially early on.
Outbound is a channel you can use to acquire potential customers in your early stages of growth. You don’t even need to have a fully-developed company blog or a whole lot of videos on your YouTube channel.
Waiting for leads to become interested in your content won’t create a steady flow. An email campaign, for example, delivers leads way faster.
#3 Get some valuable insights
As far as inbound can employ content to attract a certain group of people, outbound allows you to reach out directly to people matching your ideal customer profile. Oh, you don’t have it defined? Outbound will help you with that too.
When setting up an email campaign, you select your target group, develop email content where you present your product or service, and establish contact. The answers you’ll get will help you understand if:
- You’re targeting was precise
- People are interested in your product or service at all
- Who and from what industry is most likely to reply
- You’ll often get feedback regarding the usability/quality of the product or your website
Analyzing the results of early campaigns you’ll get excellent insights on the customers. A well-planned outbound strategy and the results it produces provide valuable information you can use to grow your inbound.
Here’s an example. If the owners of small marketing and digital agencies are the ones who reply the most often, then you should aim your content at personas exactly like them.
#4 It’s fully measurable
After several cold email campaigns, you know a whole lot more about your potential clients. You can draw conclusions, see what’s working, what’s not, and fix the errors. Based on results and stats, you’ll be able to predict the number of leads coming in the near future. It’s pure math.
Despite the fact outbound requires involvement and persistence, in the long run, it will create a more stable inflow of leads across time. In case of inbound, both measuring and predicting results is very difficult. You need powerful tools to connect the site visitor activity with actual types of people.
An email campaign, on the other hand, involves concrete companies, addresses, and job positions. You can decide when you want to reach out to them, and not the other way round. You control the entire process of customer acquisition and see who and when does reply. Linking a particular person with a particular action is incomparably easier with outbound.
Outbound + inbound = steady growth
Working in an online-based industry you should know how important your presence on the web is. You should do everything to help a customer find you. Take good care of your website, lure in with quality blog content, be active in social media. But is this enough? I hope that after reading this post you realize the answer’s “no”.
What ensures a lead inflow early on, and then fills up the sales funnel, is the result of a well-planned outbound campaign. It’s the biggest advantage is the predictability of results. On top of that, cold emails provide client insights. All the feedback you collect helps you better understand customer needs.
Keep one thing in mind: outbound works best when it complements inbound. First, you’re reaching specific businesses, raise their interest, and then, they look you up anyway by consuming your marketing content.
