Outbound marketing, considered the traditional form of marketing, remains an essential component of any overall marketing strategy to build brand awareness and generate leads. Outbound marketing delivers faster results and is ideal for generating demand for your product or service and moving leads through your sales funnel.

But these days, not all outbound marketing methods are as effective as they once were. If you want to get into outbound marketing, you first need to determine if it’s right for your business and which outbound marketing strategies are effective for your business.

In this article, we’ll discuss the concept of outbound marketing, how it differs from inbound marketing and the nine best outbound marketing strategies for growing your business.

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing consists of various marketing strategies and techniques aimed at delivering a message to a large number of potential customers in order to increase brand awareness and generate leads on a large scale for the purpose of making sales. Examples of outbound marketing activities include advertising (traditional and digital), cold emailing, cold calling, trade shows, paid to advertise, and direct mail.

The goal of outbound marketing is to actively build authentic relationships through engagement, targeted communications, and by placing your company in the right place at the right time. Outbound marketing can be very effective when done right and it allows you to see the results of your efforts immediately, unlike inbound marketing, where prospects find you by looking for solutions to their problems, which can take months or even years.

But you should know that outbound marketing is expensive and the return on investment is much lower than inbound marketing. To improve your outbound marketing ROI, you need to allocate your budget to methods that work for your brand.

What is the Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing, as opposed to outbound marketing, is a strategy whereby the customer approaches your brand when they want and need to. Examples of inbound marketing include SEO, content marketing, email marketing, etc.

In the case of inbound marketing, by creating content or social media tactics, you are getting your brand out there so they can go to your website to get information, get interested in your product, and ultimately make a purchase. The main advantage of inbound marketing is that it’s less expensive because it’s generally easier to persuade people who have already expressed an interest in your offering.

 Customers are more likely to be receptive to your product or service because they actually need it. Research shows that inbound leads cost on average 61% less than outbound leads.

Outbound marketing remains an extremely useful tool for increasing brand awareness, maintaining relevance and introducing products to new audiences. Print, TV and radio ads, phone calls, direct mail, mass emails and more are outbound marketing methods that reach a wide audience, most of whom may not be looking for the product in question.

Outbound marketing is also more disruptive. Unsolicited calls and emails, as well as advertisements, can be very annoying, especially if you are not interested in the product.

However, outbound marketing is more expensive than inbound marketing because instead of getting traffic organically, you are paying to be the center of attention for your customers to recommend you, do word-of-mouth marketing, and generate leads. 

9 Best Outbound Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business

1. Send cold emails

One of the most effective outbound marketing techniques is cold email prospecting. A cold email is an unsolicited email sent to someone you have never interacted with before.

 Email marketing is generally considered an inbound marketing method and is known for its high ROI and for triggering quick conversions through lead nurturing. However, you can also choose to send cold emails to prospects.

In order for your cold emails to stop feeling unsolicited, they need to be highly personalized, respect your customer’s time, and offer real value. If you understand your target audience, you can craft cold emails that get responses and create leads.

To ensure your cold emails bring you impressive results, try to:

– Clean up your list: make sure you’re reaching actual emails.

– Create compelling subject lines: to make your cold email campaign a success, take the time to write a compelling subject line that is attention-grabbing and worth the click. Statistics show that 33% of people open an email based on the subject line alone.1

– Personalize your emails: Segment your list so that your prospecting emails are as personalized as possible.

– Offer value: To ensure recipients don’t view your prospecting efforts as mere spam, make sure your cold prospecting emails offer value to the customer.

2. Cold calling

Another very effective outbound marketing practice is the cold call to reach new audiences and start conversations, A cold call is an unsolicited call to someone you have never previously interacted with.

Cold calls work for many businesses and when done well, can be an effective method to bring value to the customer and generate sales. To maximize your results, try to:

– Contacting qualified prospects: To optimize cold calls and increase the chances of conversion, make sure you contact qualified prospects.

– Personalize your message: You must take the time to personalize your prospecting. Calling potential customers also lends a personal element to your brand and gives a chance to generate a higher level of trust from your prospects who hear your voice, understand who you are, and get a better idea of your personality and what sets you apart from others in your field.

–Consider investing in good software to use cold calling as part of your outbound strategy, which will save you a lot of time and make you much more effective.

3. Search Ads

Search ads are one of the most popular outbound marketing methods for generating leads and spreading awareness of your brand and offerings. Unlike inbound or organic methods such as search engine marketing, paid ads can generate results much faster.

 While things like blogging and content marketing take time to build, paid search ads give your brand an immediate presence in the SERPs, bringing you traffic and leads almost immediately, provided you structure your campaign correctly.

In addition, these types of online advertising are not only much cheaper than traditional media advertising such as TV commercials which are aimed at a wide range of people but also allow for better targeting.

Paid search ads allow you to target specific demographics, life events, personalized intents, interests, etc., and guide prospects directly to your landing pages. Statistics show that paid ads can generate a return on investment of about 20% and increase brand awareness by 80%.

To optimize your ads for high click-through rates that convert well, make sure your landing pages are up to snuff and are properly targeted. Little things can create friction points in the buyer’s journey, so invest time in testing your page to make sure it offers value and contains social proof, contains pricing information and the checkout process is as short as possible while implementing different calls to action on the same page.

Also, try to track your potential customers’ journey from the moment they click on your ads to the desired action. To optimize the conversation rates, and thus increase the ROI and the efficiency of your advertising campaign, don’t hesitate to set up A\B tests.

4. Social Media Advertising

Another highly effective outbound marketing method is social media advertising, which can help you drive traffic to your site while you wait for your content marketing and SEO efforts to pay off. Social media networks not only give you the opportunity to promote yourself organically but also allow you to create ads that are finely tuned to the users of these platforms.

The average daily use of social media is two hours and 25 minutes and billions of people are on social media every day. Yet you need a large audience to make a difference with organic social media.

Social media is increasingly becoming a prospecting tool through paid advertising. Social media ads are generally much cheaper than TV ads and often generate higher levels of engagement.

Additionally, social media and display ads allow you to start experimenting with digital ads regardless of your budget. Paid ads on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow marketers and businesses to create ads and immediately reach a highly targeted audience.

These social media platforms have very specific data on their users and can offer very refined targeting parameters for advertisers to deliver their ads to the people they will have the most impact on.

5. Boost successful Posts on Social Media

In addition to investing in social media advertising, another effective outbound marketing strategy is to boost popular posts on social media. This is simply taking a post you’ve made, and paying a little to expand its reach and be seen by more people.

This is a great way to maximize your content creation efforts. The best rule of thumb for promoting popular posts is to wait and see what content stands out in terms of engagement and sharing.

Once you see content with a lot of shares, you can start a campaign to promote them. Chances are, engagement will skyrocket and your return on social investment will seriously increase.

6. Video Ads

Video ads are one of the best outbound marketing strategies for increasing brand awareness and allowing you to create the most engaging content. Video ads on YouTube typically require viewers to watch at least one clip of your ad before they have the option to skip it.

This gives you the opportunity to convince and attract the right prospects to watch your entire ad. By creating creative and engaging video ads for your well-targeted potential customers, you will always be able to get a great return on investment.

7. Direct Mail

Direct mail is another outbound marketing technique that may seem outdated in our digital world, but it’s still a great way to generate leads especially for businesses that aren’t entirely online and they have a local presence. One of the reasons direct mail is once again a winning strategy is that it’s so underutilized, your mail is likely to stand out and catch the attention of recipients.

Direct Mail also triggers higher recall rates. Statistics show that brand recall is 70% higher among participants exposed to direct mail than to online advertising.

In addition, direct mail remains a very effective way to reach older audiences and target groups. For best results segment people based on their location, demographics, past purchases, etc. By including unique discount codes you can track the success of your campaign and see which customers respond.

8. Trade Shows and Events

One of the best ways to get your brand in front of a targeted audience is to host trade shows and events. This is a great way to connect with new prospects. It also shows that you are on par or better than your competitors.

Hosting trade shows and events is one of the most expensive outbound marketing strategies, and you may not be able to generate as many leads as with a method like cold emailing. But it does allow you to build brand awareness and trust and, depending on your type of business, can bring your brand valuable exposure and new connections that are worthwhile.

Having a booth at a trade show in your industry can make you a winner in your niche. When planning a trade show, be sure to set goals and manage your budget appropriately.

9. TV and Radio Ads

With the rise of digital marketing, old-school outbound marketing strategies like traditional media ads don’t have the same reach and adaptability as some digital methods, but they still deserve a place in your marketing budget.  The fact that fewer companies are choosing to advertise in mass media can help your brand stand out.

Traditional media ads, in particular, are an effective way to reach older people who consume even more traditional media and online channels. In particular, advertising in traditional media is an effective way to reach older people who consume even more traditional media and online channels.

Conclusion

Outbound marketing is a great way for lead generation and brand awareness. Outbound marketing methods such as cold emails, search ads, social media ads, trade shows, cold calls, and traditional media ads if you apply them correctly can be very effective and give huge results to your business in a short period of time.

Of course, not all outbound marketing tactics are applicable to all types of businesses and also require large budgets. You still need to understand your target audience, and you need to be able to provide value and help solve people’s problems.

By accompanying outbound marketing strategies with inbound marketing methods that are slower to deliver results you can drive growth for your business.