Outbound marketing has been cast in both a positive and negative light depending on how it’s used. During the rise of inbound marketing, it was pejoratively referred to as interrupt marketing. Unsolicited email (spam), telemarketing, junk mail, and advertising are considered to be an outdated approach for generating leads. This is particularly true in the era of content-optimized inbound marketing techniques to get found, get leads and close deals.
Digital outbound marketing has been re-imagined in the age of inbound as a legitimate form of targeted B2B marketing campaigns. Campaigns that leverage social media marketing and personalized email communications. It’s the science of using digital channels of communication to reach out, educate and engage with prospective buyers. Basically, helping them progress through their customer journey and down the road to revenue. It’s become a highly effective means for driving new, high-value opportunities into the sales funnel.
Let’s not take anything away from inbound marketing. It’s a ground-breaking advancement in the evolution of marketing from black art to data-driven science. However, there are times when digital outbound simply outperforms inbound as a demand generation strategy. In this article, I break down the benefits of digital outbound and share some proven tips for executing a successful digital outreach campaign. If you’re a small to mid-sized company, use these tips to conduct your own digital outbound campaign.
Why and When to Use Digital Outbound
Let’s start with why. If hitting your sales target depends on driving deals at the highest volume, value and velocity, you need your marketing engine firing on all cylinders. Inbound marketing will eventually attract some buyers who meet your profile but will surely miss others. It will also attract buyers who are on the edge. And, buyers completely outside your buyer profile.
Digital outbound marketing identifies your ideal target buyers. And, allows you to directly engage with them to deliver your value proposition and initiate the sales process. This gives you more opportunities to quote and close. If you know the identity of one or more ideal buyers, why wait for them to find you via inbound marketing. Directly engage them, in a purposeful and professional way.
Here’s a quick test to see when to use digital outbound marketing in your business:
- Is part of your revenue mix derived from high-value deals?
- Do you sell B2B products and services to executive buyers?
- Do they work in a well-defined industry market segment?
- Do they have a professional profile and are active on LinkedIn?
If your answer to these questions is “yes”, you should use digital outbound marketing to grow your sales funnel. And to drive more top-line revenue. Regardless of whether or not you employ inbound marketing strategies.
How to Create a Digital Outbound Marketing Strategy
Digital outbound marketing leverages LinkedIn social media marketing and/or personalized Email to engage prospective buyers. It embraces the idea of the cold outreach to get on the radar screen of your most important buyers. Effective digital outbound marketing replaces the old notion of asking prospective buyers for their time by offering something of value. It replaces selling with sharing and self–promotion with personalized messaging.
Here’s a methodology for LinkedIn outreach. Let’s assume email addresses are not available and you’re targeting buyers you don’t know. Let’s also assume that some of your target buyers’ names exist in your contact database. You can use digital outbound techniques for them as well. Simply adapt the messaging to reflect the fact that they know you and you’d like to share something new with them via email. Always personalize your email messages, keep them as text-only (not HTML formatted). Stay away from marketing prose. Send them from your personal email account as opposed to a commercial email marketing platform. Note: they will add an unsubscribe footer to your email which will give the appearance of SPAM.
Your new target buyers will be found via LinkedIn. And the content you create will be delivered via LinkedIn messages (connection requests and InMail). LinkedIn is an amazing medium for expanding one’s professional network, sharing industry information and recruiting future employees. It can also be a vehicle for connecting buyers with sellers.
The key to success is HOW to use it appropriately. It starts by adopting this important philosophy . . .
Helping buyers understand how your solution can solve their problems and deliver value is an important message for you to share.
If you believe this, you can successfully and respectfully outreach to buyers on LinkedIn with an attitude of sharing versus selling. Let’s be more specific about what that means.
Solving a buyer’s problem is not asking this: Are you looking for a product like the one we sell?
It’s more like asking this: Are you trying to overcome this challenge in your business?
If the buyer answers “yes” to the second question, then it sets up the following LinkedIn conversation…
You might be interested in how this company, that is very similar to yours, used a new and different approach to meet this challenge. And, as a result, realized this tremendous business outcome.
When this messaging strategy is (1) expressed in the language of your buyer, and (2) illustrates the value of your solution, you have embraced the strategy of sharing versus selling. All you need is a content strategy that helps your buyer embark on their customer journey, on their terms, and in their timeframe.
And that’s where most digital outbound marketing campaigns fail. In the rush to get started and find prospects, sales and marketing people often make the mistake of overlooking the importance of having an effective content strategy. This is where inbound marketing can provide an important lesson. Understanding and applying the buyer’s journey to marketing and sales campaigns.
Sharing relevant content with your buyer builds credibility and establishes trust. It demonstrates you are interested in solving problems, not selling products. However, what you choose to share and how you share it is critically important. Successful digital outbound campaigns provide relevant content for each stage of the buyer’s journey.
Stage 1: AWARENESS
The awareness stage acknowledges that not all buyers realize the impact of a given challenge or problem and the solutions available to overcome them. Recently I published an article asking the question “Where is the friction in your sales process”? The intent was to raise awareness of the impact underperforming conversion rates have on top-line revenue. The article provided content allowing them to calculate their funnel conversion rates and compare them with industry benchmarks.
Content at this stage should be a compelling attention-getter that creates awareness for problems. As well as the impact those problems have on buyers. It should be crisp, short-form content. For example: a 1-minute video, an infographic, or a concise customer testimonial. The goal for content in this stage is to motivate buyers to want to learn more.
Stage 2: CONSIDERATION
Once the buyer becomes aware of a problem, they move to the next stage and consider various ways to solve it. Buyers in this stage are ready to invest more time in consuming relevant content. They’re also ready to hear the pros and cons of one solution over another. In this stage, you have an opportunity to educate buyers about the value of your solution. The article you are reading now is an example. It’s meant to educate business leaders on the value of digital outbound campaigns and how to execute them successfully.
Stage 3: DECISION
The third journey stage represents a buyer who has become aware of a need, weighed the alternatives, and is ready to act. A decision might be to purchase or enter a free trial for a software solution. Or, engage with the vendor to hear their story (i.e., enter the sales process). The goal of content you created for earlier stages is to get your buyer ready to take action.
Buyers won’t take action until you convince them their problems and challenges are important. And, that you have the ability to solve them and deliver value.
Your content strategy at this stage is to motivate action with a compelling Call To Action (CTA). That action could be as simple as setting the first appointment, because we have established a legitimate reason for that meeting. We’re not asking to present a sales pitch. We are suggesting a discovery meeting to define the scope of a specific problem they have an interest in solving. And to explore ways you can help them to solve it.
How to Execute a Digital Outbound Campaign
Now that we’ve covered strategy, let’s talk about execution. The first step is to establish how deeply involved you want to be in this process. And, who will be the primary execution resource. If you’re an entrepreneur and plan to execute the campaign by yourself, be sure you understand what’s involved.
The campaign owner will shoulder the following responsibilities:
- Create content for 3 buyer journey stages (awareness, consideration, and decision)
- Curate a target list using LinkedIn Sales Navigator (more about this later)
- Write the scripts used for LinkedIn messages and/or outreach emails
- Monitor your LinkedIn account daily for viewing and engaging with responders
- Track the response rate for each wave of messages (send a small batch each day)
- Be prepared to run the campaign for at least one month and then re-assess
Sales Navigator is an essential tool for conducting research, profiling contacts, building your list and running your campaign. There are tools available to automate this process. However, LinkedIn frowns on their use. There are also agencies that provide this service for a fee. They facilitate and manage the entire process including the creation of campaign content and optimization of campaign performance. As a Virtual CMO, my role is to help clients set achievable goals. Establish a messaging strategy to fuel campaigns. And, identify the most efficient resource plan to maximize the return on the marketing investment.
The advanced search capabilities of Sales Navigator are extremely powerful. It’s the modern-day equivalent of buying a target list from a list broker. The process is surprisingly simple. Identify a few prototype buyers based on your contacts that represent your ideal future buyers. Then use the power of LinkedIn to find more like them.
Study the attributes of your prototype buyers for:
- Exact titles they hold
- Level of seniority they possess
- Industry designation on LinkedIn
- Size and category of company
- The geographic footprint you cover
- Keywords contained in their profile
- Specific companies you want to approach
- Any other identifying attributes you can use
As you apply search filters, Sales Navigator will narrow the search and calculate the size of your list. You want a list with at least a few hundred names. Perhaps as many as a few thousand. Once you have curated the list, randomly spot check the profiles that are returned. See if you recognize any of the contacts’ names and companies. You should be curating a list where the vast majority of contacts look just like your prototypes.
LinkedIn Digital Outreach Campaign
You’re now ready to start your campaign. Here is a diagram of the campaign process.
For each outreach attempt, including your initial connection request and your 3 subsequent email attempts. Use this approach for your engagement response:
- If positive response: Ask if they prefer a conversation or information as a next step
- If negative response: Ask if they are the right contact and if not, request a referral
- If no response: Revisit the content strategy or target list and test some modifications
Progress through the list with daily or weekly batches of connection requests and InMail messages. Track your progress. Measure the results. Look for ways to tailor and optimize the messaging to to get the best response rate. The results will depend on how effectively you follow this formula:
The more relevant your messaging, the more it will resonate with buyers and generate responses.
Not getting the best results? Revisit your content strategy and your list. Ineffective messaging is the overwhelming reason for a lack of success. Alignment between messaging and the interests of your target buyer is essential.
Continuous Improvement and Success Measurement
What does success look like? If you bring the right message to the right audience, your investment in time and resources will pay off. Potential buyers will resonate with your messaging and this will lead to new customer acquisition and incremental revenue. Compared with traditional email marketing, LinkedIn outreach response rates are 2X to 3X higher. Below are some sample results I’ve experienced with clients who have used both. The range in response rates is based on the degree of personalization used (i.e., more personalized messages result in higher response rates).
Typical LinkedIn Response Rates:
- 25%-50% connection acceptance
- 25%-50% InMail Response Rate
- 25%-50% Engagement Rate
Typical Email Response Rates:
- 15%-25% Open Rate
- 5%-10% Response Rate
- 25%-50% Engagement Rate
The key is to measure your response rates continuously. And, refine your targeting and messaging strategy based on the results. Try A/B testing different combinations of messaging and buyer profiles. See what content resonates more effectively with different types of buyer profiles. The value of applying some key metrics to your campaign is the ability to continuously improve your outreach strategy and execution to maximize results.
Some Final Thoughts.
Digital outbound campaigns don’t have to be stand-alone campaigns. They are more impactful and yield better results when part of an integrated campaign that may include inbound marketing components. For example, you can optimize your content to rank organically and drive website traffic. Or, you can use PPC campaigns to drive paid traffic to conversion points on your website.
Targeted social advertising can provide air cover for your direct outreach attempts. For instance, if the same buyers you are targeting with direct messaging also see a display advertisement in their LinkedIn feeds, their awareness level will be heightened. And, your brand authority will be elevated. Regardless of your approach, the level of investment you make should be guided by an ROI model that maximizes your return on investment in the form of new pipeline opportunities and better revenue results.
Can digital outbound marketing help your business with new customer acquisition? It depends on whether the friction in your sales funnel comes from a lack of new sales opportunities to pursue. To find out, check out this Conversion Metrics Calculator to see if your sales funnel can be strengthened with the help of a digital outbound marketing campaign.