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Why Outreach Marketing is Important for Your Business?

Why Outreach Marketing is Important for Your Business?
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Last updated: December 10, 2023
Reading time: 11 minutes
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Marketing your business and gaining new customers is challenging in any industry. When you’re operating a small business, it’s even more difficult to break through the noise and attract customers.  

The outreach marketing strategy combines online and offline efforts to reach potential customers in a specific geographic area or demographic. It uses tactics that are non-traditional from your standard advertising methods. 

This marketing strategy works wonders in building relationships with new clients and growing your business. So, are you curious to know more about this innovative strategy? 

In this post, we will explain outreach marketing in detail, discuss its benefits, and guide you on how to use it to grow your business. We will also mention some key and top marketing channels to launch your outreach marketing strategies. Read on!

What Is Outreach Marketing?

What is Outreach Marketing

As a business owner or manager, you might already be familiar with inbound marketing. Using this strategy, businesses attract clients through valuable content and offerings. In other words, you wait for customers to come to you by using this strategy. But outreach marketing is the opposite of inbound marketing. 

Also known as outbound marketing, outreach strategy involves reaching out to your potential customers. You take the first step by identifying your target audience, finding potential leads, and contacting them. 

It also involves nurturing leads by researching organizations and individuals that might be interested in your brand, services, or products. The following steps involve contacting potential clients through social media and other communication channels like email and LinkedIn. 

Simply, an email outreach marketing strategy requires you to get in touch with your target customers instead of waiting for them to show interest in your product or service. 

An outreach strategy can also involve collaborating with businesses and individuals that can help promote your product, brand, or service. For example, you can collaborate with influencers, bloggers, websites, or journalists to promote your product or service to your target audience.

Goals of Outreach Marketing

As with any other strategy, outreach marketing has certain goals to achieve. Below are some goals you can achieve with this marketing strategy.

  1. Promote your business, product, or service in front of your target audience and create brand awareness.
  2. Highlight your accomplishments, expertise, and services with the help of digital media content.
  3. Generate quality leads via online marketing through platforms like LinkedIn.
  4. Build strong relationships with your potential customers and clients.
  5. Increase client loyalty.
  6. Supercharge your network and link-building efforts.

How to Use Outreach Marketing

Now that you are aware of the basics of outreach marketing, it’s time to understand how to use it effectively. Before jumping into the details and examples, let’s first go through a quick outline of how to use an outreach strategy:

  • First, the business defines its ICP; Ideal Customer Persona. ICP refers to a profile that defines the characteristics of perfect customers for a business. The ICP should be very targeted and specific. Also, ICP can be a person or any other organization, too.
  • After defining the ICP, the next step is to find the point of contact to reach the customers. The ideal way to reach them is through email. Businesses can also use reliable and well-known email marketing tools to craft a perfect outreach email. If you are using other platforms like LinkedIn, you can craft direct messages.
  • And finally, you set up a flow chart of what actions you’ll take if a potential client or lead does not reply within 4 to 5 days. For instance, it can be a follow-up email or message, depending on the medium of communication. 
Outreach Automation on LinkedIn with Dripify

Benefits of Outreach Marketing Campaigns

If you are still not convinced of how essential outreach marketing is to promote your brand or business, here are some benefits to make up your mind:

One of the main benefits of using digital outreach in marketing is that it helps you build links using SEO-friendly techniques and approaches. You will notice credible sources linking to your web page because outreach marketing helps establish you as an authority in your niche. The more the backlinks, the higher the ranking of your websites on search engines.

2. Reaching Out to Bigger Audiences

Outreach marketing strategies also allow your business to reach wider and bigger audiences. For example, if you collaborate with bloggers and influencers interested in your business, they will introduce your services to their audiences. This way, your website will get more traffic and your business will make more sales. 

3. Fostering Collaborations

When we talk about collaborations in outreach marketing, it is not just with influencers and bloggers. Besides influencer outreach, it is a good idea to partner up with other businesses and brands, sometimes even with your competitors to build and foster new relationships. 

Let’s say you have a small-scale business that makes and sells bookmarks. In this case, you may want to collaborate with an online book reseller company. The book reseller company can include one bookmark of yours with every order they send. This way, you will foster new collaboration and promote your business at the same time.

4. Shows Immediate Results

Unlike inbound marketing, outreach marketing can show immediate results because of its responsive, relevant, and direct strategies.

With inbound marketing, you expect your potential customers to find you on their own from the hundreds of options available. But with outreach, you are only targeting the relevant audience that will be 100% interested in your brand or service and will most likely make a purchase. This way, you won’t be wasting your time and resources on irrelevant audiences. 

5. A Personalized Approach

Outreach marketing: Personalized Approach

Outreach marketing uses a personalized approach to reach your target customers. Personalized emails give readers an idea that you actually took out time to craft a message for them instead of just copy-pasting a robotic email. It allows you to specifically communicate with your target audience and customize the message wherever possible. 

Here is an example of a perfectly crafted and personalized outreach email:

“Hey, Amber!

Hope you are doing good. I came across your profile on LinkedIn and I must say you are sharing very beneficial and informative tips, tricks, and tools with your network. Everyone struggling with the platform is surely learning a lot from you.

With that being said, my friend and I developed a small tool to effortlessly add GIFs to LinkedIn posts and comments. The tool is very easy to use and requires a minimum effort from the user’s side. 

So, would you like to introduce this incredible tool to your LinkedIn network and allow them to enjoy endless fun with GIFs?

I can even give you a quick demo of our tool with a Zoom call this Friday. Will be waiting for your answer or any questions you might have.

If I was you, I would never hide this amazing tool from my LinkedIn Network!

Regards,”

This is what a personalized outreach email can look like. You may have noticed that it is precise, directly and personally targeting the receiver and has a call-to-action in the end! 

6. Builds Brand Authority

As a marketer or entrepreneur, you know that building brand authority is extremely beneficial for your business to grow and thrive. The good news is that outreach marketing is a powerful way to establish brand authority. When you collaborate with famous and well-known celebrities, influences, and brands, the authenticity, and authority of your business will eventually increase. The rise in your brand authority will improve your business reputation in the market and help you draw more clients.

The Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide

Outstanding Outreach Marketing Strategy to Grow Your Business

Up till now, you have gone through the top benefits of outreach marketing and the perfect example of what an outreach email should look like. Now, it is time to go through some more examples and introduce some factors you must consider to craft perfect outreach messages via email, LinkedIn, and other channels. 

According to research, 8.5% of outreach emails and messages get responses from potential customers and leads. The rest are mostly ignored and get no reply. You don’t want that to happen to your outreach campaign, right? No worries. We will help you out!

Before diving into the details, it is important to understand that your outreach messages must change according to your marketing objectives, target audience, and other factors. So, it would be best to keep your outreach marketing strategy and messages customer-oriented and flexible.

As briefly mentioned above in the email example, an outreach message should be personalized; it should say more about the recipient than you, your brand, or your company. Also, your outreach message should clearly mention the benefit your target will get after collaborating with you. 

To help you in making sure your outreach emails and messages get responses, we have outlined an outstanding outreach marketing strategy for you. Read on for the steps and types of outreach marketing.

Step 1 – Find Your Target Audience

Finding your target audience is one of the most important yet challenging parts of an outreach marketing strategy. No matter how perfectly crafted and written your cold message is, if you are not targeting the right audience, your campaign will never be a success. Now you must be thinking, “How do I find the right target audience for my outreach campaign?” This is where your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP) enters the scene.

If you are looking for a less time-consuming process, LinkedIn is one of the best platforms and marketing channels for you to find your leads and the right target audience – especially if you work in tech or B2B Marketing. 

Related article: How to Use LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation

LinkedIn is convenient to use, easy to interact with, and full of professional and potential leads. Plus, the professional networking platform allows you to perform searches by using filters like locations, positions, and industries. For example, if you are looking for PR professionals, just type the designation in the search bar and you will find relevant results. 

Outreach marketing: Step-1 Find Your Target Audience

Apart from LinkedIn, you can also find leads and target audiences on other social media platforms like Quora, Twitter, and Facebook. If you are specifically looking for bloggers and influencers to promote your products and services, we suggest you look for potential leads on Instagram. Instagram is a social media platform full of influencers and bloggers.

Step 2 – How To Prepare And Set Up Your Outreach Marketing Campaign

Now let us suppose that you want to use an email marketing campaign with the sole purpose of generating leads. Here is the process you will need to follow in this situation:

  1. Make a complete list of leads you took out from LinkedIn or other channels on an Excel Sheet with complete details like full name, email address, their profession or where they work, and how are you going to personalize the message for them (A separate personalization line). 
  2. After completing the list, cross-check and verify the names and contact information thoroughly. 
  3. Compose a standard email and cold message template with content that will work for most of your leads. The content can be the basic information about your company, product, brand, or service. Keep that content the same in every email and add personalization tags and content individually. It is a profitable email personalization strategy.
  4. Finally, review all the data and analytics of your outreach campaign and gather feedback to understand how you will conduct your next campaign.
Outreach marketing: Step-2 How To Prepare And Set Up Your Outreach Marketing Campaign

While these steps work for email outreach marketing, you can use them for LinkedIn too. But as you can see, outreach marketing involves many repetitive processes and steps, so much so that it can take much of your time and even drain your energy. This is where automation tools have your back.

For example, if you want to use LinkedIn for lead generation, you can use the best LinkedIn automation services. We suggest using Dripify, a leading sales automation tool, to put the many repetitive processes on autopilot. This tool also provides campaign designs, advanced analytics, and complete performance automation for your campaigns on LinkedIn.

Step 3 – Writing A Perfect Outreach Message To get Responses

Remember we crafted a perfect outreach email message for you above! That is what a perfect outreach message looks like to get the most responses. Moreover, you should keep in mind that there is no specific way of structuring your outreach messages; they change and vary as per the conditions and objectives of your campaign.

Still, here is an idea of how to structure your outreach messages or emails”

“Hey (First Name),

(A Personalized line to attract the reader)

(Introduction of your company/brand/product or you)

(A Clear Call-to-Action to persuade the users)

Regards, (You/Company/Brand)

Other Marketing Tactics to Consider As Part Of Your Outreach Campaign Strategy

Up till now, we have covered outreach marketing through LinkedIn and Email in detail. But these two strategies are not the end of outreach marketing. There are many more tactics and techniques you can use to execute your outreach marketing campaign. Let’s take a look at those tactics:

1. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a strategy where you ask someone outside of your organization to write content or blog for your website. This is an incredible outreach marketing tactic that can help you get backlinks for your website and boost your conversion rates. Plus, it helps your content reach new audiences if you write guest blogs for an established and authoritative website.

2. Social Mentions

Social mentions are also powerful and if you’re not using this strategy, you are missing out on some great opportunities. Instead of emailing or messaging your targets, specifically, influencers and bloggers, try to mention them on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. You can mention them in comments and stories.

If you mention influencers on your Instagram stories, they can repost your stories on their profiles. Doing this won’t only give you the chance of building connections with the influencers, but promote your page to their audience too. Here is an example of how you can do social mentions:

Outreach marketing: Social Mentions

3. Share Customer Reviews

If you are a trustworthy business, we are sure you will have some positive customer reviews and referrals, right? Well, don’t hesitate to share those reviews on your social media channels. Doing this will let your potential customers know that you are a trustworthy brand, that people have enjoyed and appreciated your services, and they can trust you.

4. Attending Social Events

Outreach marketing is not all about social and digital marketing; you can even reach influencers in person by attending social events like launch parties, anniversaries, and much more. Doing this can help you talk to potential clients in person and convince them to collaborate with you. Moreover, you can do perfect word-to-mouth publicity of your brand, service, or product to find new customers. 

5. Add Visual Elements

Most businesses make the mistake of sending simple emails and messages with just plain text stuffed inside. But did you know that most people don’t read simple emails because the plain text looks boring and is less readable? Therefore, it is essential to include some visual elements in your content to attract your leads.

These elements can include infographics, images, short videos, or even just a logo of your brand or company. These visual elements will grab the attention of your leads and they will focus on reading your message.

See The Impact Of Your Outreach Marketing Strategy

It takes a lot of patience to finally measure the impact and results of your outreach marketing strategy. Since it is a long-term strategy, you won’t see the results overnight! You will have to be consistent in building relationships with customers and influencers to finally see the results. 

Once you are sure your network is strong enough, you can measure the impact of your marketing strategy by tracking the traffic your website is getting, how many mentions you are getting on social media platforms, and analyzing the level of your overall brand recognition. 

Outreach Automation on LinkedIn with Dripify

Conclusion

We hope this comprehensive guide on outreach marketing can help you build fruitful relationships, expand your customer base, find leads and prospects and supercharge your business growth. Make sure to follow the steps and processes explained above consistently over several months and your effort will pay off gradually in the long run.

Dripify – LinkedIn automation tool

FAQ

Outreach strategies are a specific set of marketing tactics to promote and grow your business and attract new customers or potential clients. These marketing strategies are completely opposite to the inbound ones; it focuses on businesses getting in touch with potential customers via email, LinkedIn, or other professional social media channels.

A marketing outreach plan is a full-fledge strategy and set of steps to execute an outreach campaign. The plan includes your goals and objectives, identifying your target audience, what message you want to convey, how to distribute that message, and how you will evaluate the plan.

No, outreach marketing is very different from sponsored and running paid advertisements. Still, you will require some investment to execute your outreach marketing campaign effectively. 

For example, you will need to buy an effective email marketing tool and pay for other monthly subscriptions like a LinkedIn premium account for lead generation. However, the expense will still be less as compared to paid running ads.

The most common and prominent example of outreach marketing is lead generation from emails or LinkedIn. Other scenarios that can be considered as examples are:

 

  1. Collaborating with influencers and other businesses to promote your brand and market your products or services.
  2. Networking with your potential clients on social networks like LinkedIn.
  3. Creating content targeted at your customers and drawing them to your website or LinkedIn profile or page.
  4. Gaining SEO backlinks for your website.

In business, outreach is basically an attempt by a business to promote its products, services, practices, and ideas among its target audiences. Outreach in business does not only focus on increasing market share. It also aims to nurture relationships, create brand awareness, and convert your leads in the long-run.

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