Mackenzie | February 25, 2020 | Digital Marketing
We've talked about outbound marketing a lot. At this point, we hope you're on board with it. Outbound marketing, when created for 21st-century consumers, is effective. It's the creating part that's hard, though.
If done without research or data, your outbound marketing strategy can be both broad and expensive. Read: you're spending a lot of money on leads you don't actually want.
That's why it's so important to put in the time up front to develop an outbound marketing strategy that delivers qualified leads. If you're struggling to build an outbound marketing strategy that pulls in more money than you spend, here are a few ways to turn it around. If you haven't even begun your outbound marketing strategy, this will help you start off strong.
Here's what you need to do to develop an outbound marketing strategy that delivers qualified leads:
The first step to developing an outbound marketing strategy that delivers qualified leads is understanding who your qualified leads are. The thing about outbound marketing is that it usually costs money. You don't want to spend on a campaign that's not hitting the right audience.
Before you even think about building an outbound marketing strategy, you need to fully understand who you're marketing to, and why. This is called developing your buyer personas. And in case you're new to buyer personas, we've put together an entire step-by-step guide to creating your buyer personas to help you out.
No matter what your outbound strategy looks like, it's important that you've started with clearly defined buyer personas. When you know your audience, you can better develop ad campaigns and outbound strategies that speak directly to them.
You also need to figure out your goals before you launch, or even build, your outbound marketing strategy.
What are you hoping to achieve with outbound marketing? If you're reading this, my guess is that you want more qualified leads. In that case, how many qualified leads would you like to generate from this strategy? Where do you want those leads to go?
If you're planning a specific ad campaign, what action do you want those leads to take? Like your Facebook Page? Convert on your content offer? Or are you launching a remarketing campaign that you'd like to end in a sale?
What you'd like to achieve with your outbound marketing strategy doesn't matter so much as having a reason for your outbound marketing strategy. You shouldn't be running ads just to run them — that's a quick trip to an unsuccessful campaign.
Set your goals for your outbound marketing strategy, whether that's to build brand awareness or draw in more of a certain type of lead, and then you can get started on building the strategy itself.
What sets outbound marketing apart from inbound marketing is that you have a massive amount of data at your fingertips. Inbound marketing is exceptionally successful, but you don't see results immediately, and some tactics can be tough to master.
This is why an outbound marketing strategy is such a great complement to a quality inbound marketing strategy — it gives you the data you need to make specific, targeted marketing efforts.
Use data to build your outbound marketing strategy. Here are a couple of examples of what I'm talking about:
It doesn't matter if your outbound marketing strategy is built of paid search campaigns, social media advertising, email marketing, or a combination of those three and more. No matter what tactics you use, you need to have quality information behind every single campaign.
Ad campaigns have to lead to a page that's helpful and informative.
Emails should provide content that helps those warm leads learn more about your product, determine which product or service is best for them, and make a purchasing decision.
This is a big component of a successful outbound marketing strategy. If you're developing ad campaigns that just lead visitors to your home page, you're missing out.
Check out this blog about landing pages to learn more about optimizing outbound lead conversions with the right content.
People have volunteered in some way to get your emails. Whether they subscribed to your newsletter or gave up their email address in exchange for a content offer, they made a conscious decision to receive email from you.
It's your job to ensure they don't regret that decision.
If email is a part of your outbound marketing strategy (it should be, it's useful!) you need to have a purpose for every email you send.
Before you press send, ask yourself:
If you have an answer to all of those questions, and the answer to the third question is yes, then you're doing email marketing right.
Outbound marketing doesn't stop when you get a new lead. In fact, outbound marketing is often most successful when it's used on visitors you already know are qualified leads.
The people in your email list, those visitors who have shopped around your site a few times, and the leads who keep downloading your content offers are all great opportunities for your outbound marketing strategy.
The goal of any marketing strategy is to generate leads that turn into sales. You can't abandon leads after you get them to your site.
You can continue using your outbound marketing strategy to pull those leads closer to a sale with lead nurturing.
Believe it or not, lead nurturing is an essential component of any outbound marketing strategy. While there are plenty of inbound lead nurturing tactics, like publishing helpful content that addresses every stage of the buyer's journey — outbound lead nurturing is particularly effective, since it gives you the opportunity to speak directly to leads you know are already interested in your product or service.
Two great lead nurturing tactics to add to your outbound marketing strategy include:
Remarketing is a form of digital advertising. When people come to your site and browse your products, cookies track their activity. When they make it to a page on your site that indicates they're close to making a purchasing decision, they get thrown into your remarketing ad campaign. Then, ads for the product or service they were just browsing pop up on other websites.
If you've ever gotten ads for that pair of jeans you were looking at on your Facebook page or Instagram feed, you've gotten remarketing ads.
These are a super-effective way to draw warm leads right back to your site. They're a good investment for any outbound marketing strategy because they tend to have a solid success rate.
Email workflows are an intuitive, easy outbound lead nurturing strategy. You'll have to take a little time to get them set up, but once they're going, they're seriously helpful.
When we talk about email workflows, we're talking about a succession of emails that kicks off when a lead takes an action.
In general, email workflows are about three or four emails long, with about two or three days between emails.
They are so useful for nurturing leads.
First of all, your sales team doesn't have to remember to send all of those follow-ups — you can automate them with most email software services.
Second, it helps pull those leads through the buyer's journey with relevant, helpful information.
When done right, everyone's happy.
The takeaway here is that your outbound marketing strategy should always include tactics that nurture leads once they've come to your sales or marketing team. There's not much point in generating leads if you don't have a plan to help them convert to a sale.
The key to an outbound marketing strategy that meets your goals?
Constant analysis and optimization.
Your outbound marketing strategy is never done. You should always be analyzing your results, and applying what you've learned to new ad campaigns and email marketing workflows.
The best way to continue growing is to continue working. Keep a close eye on your outbound marketing strategy, and make changes as you can.
While it's not a good idea to stop and start ad campaigns all the time, or change your email templates every month, there's a lot you can learn over time. Small changes often have the biggest impact.
The data you get from your outbound marketing strategy is right at your fingertips, and it tells the story of your success. Use it to keep improving.
And finally, I'd like to leave you with a quick reminder. The most successful outbound marketing strategy is the one that complements an inbound strategy.
Inbound and outbound marketing go together like peanut butter and jelly. They each fill in the gaps of the other strategy. While they're both strong ways to grow your business and pull in qualified leads in their own right, you'll see the biggest success when you use them together.
Check out this blog on how Inbound and Outbound Work Together for more info on developing a cohesive digital marketing strategy.
A quality outbound marketing strategy takes a lot of work upfront, and quality maintenance to keep it going. Let us lighten the load. For more info about optimizing your outbound marketing strategy to pull in the right leads, or for help getting your paid ad campaigns off the ground, just drop us a line.
At Evenbound, we're all about helping our clients grow. We use inbound and outbound marketing strategies to deliver you the qualified traffic and leads you need for serious growth. And we have a lot of fun doing it.
hello@evenbound.com
(616) 215-0626
12 Washington Ave. #280
Grand Haven, MI 49417
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