Outbound Marketing: You should already know that to sell; marketing must come first, as doing the work of promotion and presentation to the market, relationship with your contacts, and prospecting with your leads.
Different activities, techniques, and tools can be used within a marketing strategy. Outbound Marketing, which we will detail in the next topics, is one of the possible marketing strategies that your company can use.
That’s because the Outbound Marketing strategy is perfect for acquiring new customers, as it works with a more direct and active approach. This allows you to create a closer relationship with potential customers.
Please keep reading to understand what Outbound is, how it has been updated with the digital environment, what are its main differences about Inbound Marketing, how its processes work and its new possibilities, as well as how it is possible to include this strategy in your commercial team, enhancing the results of its operations within the company. Come on?
What Is Outbound Marketing, And Why Is It Important?
In short, Outbound Marketing is the active prospecting strategy for leads with research and direct contact with these profiles. Many say this is a traditional format, saturated by interruption and little context and effectiveness in the market.
However, with digital tools, new concepts, and guidelines for sellers, Outbound is also a strategy that managed to be reinvented and very well used in conjunction with Digital Marketing. To clarify the definition of what Outbound is about, it is interesting to think that, while Inbound has the objective of calling the attention of consumers, attracting them with valuable content, for example, Outbound, in turn, performs a work much more than going in search of potential customers, capturing them and contacting them directly.
Outbound then uses advertisements (paid media), sending emails, calls, flyers, billboards, and companies’ active prospecting, which is a very valuable solution for B2B businesses.
Its importance can be seen in the fact that any business that wants to grow and expand its results needs to acquire new customers. And for that, you need to start a very well-crafted prospecting job that can reach the ideal audience for that business.
This is exactly what we can observe in the Outbound strategy when there is an active approach, qualifying and selecting the best leads and identifying the best opportunities. In this context, with the Inbound Marketing strategy, actions within Digital Marketing manage to be objective and assertive in their goals.
And, of course, it is necessary to mention that Outbound Marketing activities and methods are applicable in any business, as we will describe below.
Outbound 2.0
As we mentioned earlier, Outbound has already been considered by many to be an outdated technique because it is a more traditional action about the options we currently have with digital marketing. Still, it is necessary to mention its evolution that accompanied the changes in the profile of the new consumer and the current scenario and context in which we operate.
Therefore, Outbound 2.0 is considered an updated strategy where flyers are replaced by banners and web ads, for example. And so, the other strategies were being modified and adapted.
The consultative calls became much more assertive and directed toward a qualified audience. Imagine receiving a call about a product you are not interested in purchasing that needs to make more sense in reality. This is exactly what happened with the direct approach of the traditional Outbound, and with this new redesign, the calls could be replaced with a prospecting email that is much less invasive.
This was made possible when Aaron Ross proposed a new formula for Outbound. In his book “Predictable Revenue” he focuses on segmenting the target audience and preparing the commercial team, evaluating leads, and separating them into three groups:
- Seeds: these are leads who learned about the brand through word-of-mouth marketing, through indications and references from other customers who already had a relationship with the company.
- Nets (networks): here, the focus is to attract the greatest number of leads through social networks with the Inbound Marketing strategy, using actions such as optimization in SEO and Content Marketing. Always remember to segment and qualify these leads so that it is possible to extract the maximum number of leads interested in your solution.
- Spears (spears): with Spears, the leads are cold, and that’s why they are the closest to the Outbound strategy. To reach this lead, you need to know their interests, needs, and desires very well to be assertive in your approach and direct them to the bottom of the funnel in the customer journey.
And from this selection of leads, there was also the segmentation of the sales team itself, separating them into three groups as well:
- Hunter: the one who makes the first approach and conducts a broader search on the prospecting list. In addition to analyzing the market and acting in the pre-sales stage.
- Farmer: focused on taking care of customers, this type of seller is responsible for maintaining a healthy and lasting relationship with their audience, ensuring satisfaction and an incredible experience for the customer.
- Closers: responsible for closing sales and validating the solutions presented by Hunter. This type of salesperson is the one who will most effectively show the customer the solution to their pain, gaining their trust to close the deal.
Also Read: What Is Service Marketing And Its Importance
