Seven Outbound Marketing Strategies You Need to Hear About

Things can get confusing when choosing which strategies you have to use for your business. With so much information about the different types of marketing, picking one or two ways to do it and sticking with them can be extremely difficult, especially if you don’t have a ton of experience.

If you’ve ever wondered whether outbound marketing is a strategy that will help your business grow, then this article is just for you. In it, we will be taking a closer look at what outbound marketing is, whether it’s still relevant, and some strategies that you can try for your brand.

Without keeping you waiting any further, let’s dive in.

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is an approach where you as the business are the one to initiate conversations with potential customers in hopes of attracting them to your brand. This typically happens through TV commercials, cold calls, direct mail ads, and paid advertising campaigns.

Outbound marketing aims to help you build an authentic relationship through targeted communications, engagement, and putting your company in the right place on the right occasion.

With all that said, in the last few years, inbound marketing has grown in popularity due to the fact that it has helped produce incredible results. However, marketers shouldn’t forget about outbound marketing or underestimate its power, as it still makes up about 90% of most companies’ marketing budgets due to its high cost per outreach.

Is Outbound Marketing Still Relevant in Today’s Market?

As a business owner, you surely love to cut down on costs. However, when you’re the customer and you get the 100th sales email that you immediately delete, you may start thinking about why companies persist with this sort of ineffective strategy. In such scenarios, it’s likely that the business has a huge mailing list that it sends all the promotions to, regardless of whether the person is actually a part of their target audience or not.

Why do they do that? Well, most likely because they spent effort and time into building a mailing list and because this type of outbound marketing still produces results. For example, it’s incredible at creating brand awareness, maintaining brand relevance, and introducing new products and services to potential customers. Most of all, it helps a brand stay relevant in the minds of customers, leading to word of mouth marketing and lead generation.

Inbound marketing is excellent for products that are already known, but if the customers don’t know you exist, then they won’t know what to search for. On the other hand, outbound marketing guarantees that you reach people. Even though it’s sometimes expensive, it still provides a good ROI if done correctly.

Seven Outbound Marketing Strategies You Need to Know About

When it comes to marketing success, it’s most likely to occur when you combine a few good strategies together. Whether they’re inbound or outbound doesn’t really matter, as long as they’re able to reach your target audience and deliver a strategic message. With that said, if you’re looking for inspiration for some outbound strategies, here are some of the ones we can recommend.

Try Sending Out Cold Emails

Some consider emails to be an old-school strategy, but the reality is that they’re still incredibly effective at driving ROI for marketers. We’re all now used to receiving dozens of emails from a company – promotions, newsletters, etc. – but we seem to have forgotten one very key outbound strategy: cold email.

If you don’t know, cold emails are basically unsolicited emails you send to potential customers. Because you’re the one initiating the interaction, it’s undoubtedly an outbound marketing strategy.

Now, you may be thinking, “This doesn’t make sense. Everyone hates getting those emails. They feel like spam.” Well, then think about how you can make them sound better. What if, instead of using templates, you came up with something original that’s personalized to the customer instead of offering him a “life-changing product”?

Outbound marketing doesn’t need to be pushy, sales-based, or impersonal. You can use all the creativity that you put into inbound marketing: the understanding of your target audience and the personal approach so that your cold emails trigger a response and create leads.

Here’s a list of things you should concentrate on whenever you’re writing your cold emails:

• Clean up your mailing list – make sure you’re reaching active email addresses.
• Write engaging subject lines that make people want to click on your call to action buttons.
• Make the emails more personal so that the reader doesn’t find them as generic.
• Offer value – what can you do for that potential customer?
• Frequently perform A/B tests on subject lines, signatures, CTAs, and the copy itself.

Remember, small details make a big difference, so make sure you optimize all the emails you send out. Otherwise, you’re wasting both time and effort.

Do Direct Mail

Okay, this definitely will feel too old-school for some of you but hear me out. Even though we spend a ton of our time online, we still live outside of the internet and get mail. It looks like people still enjoy seeing something in their mailbox that has their name on it, and it’s a surprisingly effective way to do outbound marketing.

Just think about it: we’re so used to receiving emails from brands that we don’t even pay attention to them half of the time. However, getting a letter in the mail is something that’s so unlikely to happen that people will almost definitely be curious to open it and see what’s inside. That’s what makes it a great way to drive brand awareness and make people know what your company does and what products it offers.

When doing direct mail, it’s vital to remember

• To have a targeted approach and a segment of people that’s based on their location, demographics, and past purchases.
• To make your ad stand out and make an impression. Think outside the box and explore your creative side.
• To include a way to track the success of the campaign – for example, with unique codes that clients can use when buying something off the website.

Even though this outbound marketing approach may seem a little out of place, it still remains valid.

Invest in Paid Search Ads

Most marketers view paid search ads as an inbound and outbound marketing mix. That’s because, in such scenarios, the targeted users have likely searched for your products, but at the same time, you’re still the one placing the ad in front of them, which is an outbound marketing approach.

Search ads are perfect for your strategy if you’re looking for instant success. Unlike SEO, where you write an article and then slowly watch as the search engine starts to rank it, paid search ads give your company an immediate presence, thus guaranteeing you traffic. But the downside is that you will have to pay for each of those clicks, unlike SEO, which is free.

The fact that you pay for each click means that the most important thing about search ads is their optimization. That’s why you should be clear on what you want to achieve with your paid ads and then be sure that all your actions are pointed towards that goal. Small details such as a slow checkout page can hurt your conversion rate and make a big difference to your search ad’s ROI, which means you should make sure your website is running smoothly to avoid any potential setbacks.

Start a Social Media Ad Campaign

The average user is on social media for two hours and 25 minutes every day. Billions of people use at least one social media platform throughout the course of their day. Knowing where your customers are is vital when it comes to marketing, and as per this data, they’re on social media.

That means not being on social media is a huge mistake, and running ads there might be a huge bonus. Nowadays, social media is becoming a “pay to play” marketing tool, which makes it fall into the category of outbound marketing tools. Some of its benefits are

• that it’s more cost-effective than organic social media.
• that it increases brand awareness.
• that it improves reach.

Paid ads on social media allow you to reach a huge audience, which is targeted – meaning you get to choose the group of people the ad will be shown to. You can do that by determining their age, gender, interests, and more, thus making sure that your content reaches only people that will likely be interested in it.

Attend Events and Trade Shows

Even though most of our marketing efforts are now digital, that doesn’t necessarily mean that going out there and meeting people is a dead art. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to present your company to new audiences that are already interested in the industry.

With that said, attending trade shows and events has a massive upfront cost, so it might not be the best option for businesses that are just starting out; however, if you want to establish new connections, it’s 100% worth it. Along with that, if you want to maintain brand relevance, attending shows and meeting people is a great way to do it.

Make Cold Calls

Part of the bad reputation of outbound marketing comes from strategies such as cold calls. However, it’s undeniable that cold calling truly works for many businesses.

That’s because cold calling does what sales and marketing are supposed to do – help you reach new audiences and start conversations with them. Of course, there are good and bad approaches to this kind of strategy. It’s easy to look at cold calling and just think about the numbers. Sure, it’s heavily reliant on volume, but the most important aspect remains quality, and in such cases, the quality of the conversations you have.

That’s why you should move away from scripted sales pitches and move towards more personalized approaches that are focused on helping the client solve his problems. If you’re strongly considering using cold calling as a part of your strategy, then you need to keep these points in mind:

• Your brand image – don’t be pushy; try to work on building relationships.
• Use the right software – this will make you more efficient.
• Respect the people that you talk to; if someone doesn’t want to be contacted, listen to him.
• Make sure your prospect list consists only of people that might be interested.

Consider Radio, TV, and Print Ads

I’ve met a lot of marketers who believe that traditional marketing is dead. However, even though online marketing has transformed the way we do advertising, that doesn’t mean more traditional forms don’t still hold their place.

Many places allow you to advertise your business and grow your brand more traditionally. Typically, TV and radio ads have a higher cost than other standard marketing practices, but they may lead you to success depending on your industry.

For example, amongst older generations, TV consumption is still higher than their social media consumption. In fact, most people over the age of 50 are likely to spend their nights watching television instead of scrolling through TikTok. This means that if your demographic is in that age group, TV ads are actually something that you should consider, as these people are much more likely to be influenced by TV ads.

The Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing

There are several differences between outbound and inbound marketing. Typically, outbound marketing involves a more proactive approach, where you reach out to the customers in an attempt to get them interested in your product/service. On the other hand, inbound marketing is all about making and publishing content that draws people to your website and makes them aware of your brand.

Key Takeaways

Hopefully, this article has motivated you to dig into outbound marketing strategies and start using them for promoting your own business. Remember that just because something has existed for a long time doesn’t necessarily mean it’s outdated or doesn’t work. Sometimes, the things that have stood the test of time actually did so for a reason.

So our advice is don’t be prejudiced, be willing to learn something new, and experiment. You never know what you might end up achieving.