Just because your current marketing strategies are working for you doesn’t mean they can’t be improved further. At New Breed, we believe there is always room for further optimization and improvement — and one way to do that is to incorporate some outbound tactics into your strategy.
When you consider initiating outbound tactics, carefully identify specific targets to use those tactics on. Outbound will cost more in terms of money and time. Instead of organically attracting people to your website, you have to pay to put your content in front of people. Additionally, that outreach should be personalized to those specific viewers, which requires more strategy in its creation.
Developing a list of ideal prospects to target is essential for obtaining ROI with any of these strategies.
1. Get the Most Out of Social Media
Complement your inbound, awareness stage-focused social media efforts with targeted outbound outreach by utilizing paid ads or going after specific accounts.
You can start targeting specific accounts by tagging them in your posts to gain attention and interact with their content on their profiles.
On LinkedIn, you can send connection requests to employees at companies you’d like to work with explaining why you reached out to start a conversation. On Twitter, you can follow prospects in hopes of them following you back and engaging with the relevant content you share.
This targeted use of social media works at the intersection of marketing, sales, inbound and outbound. Marketing generally is targeted at a wide audience as opposed to a single person, whereas sales speaks to individuals directly. Account-based marketing is a strategy in which marketing starts a conversation with a specific person or company and then transfers that conversation to sales.
Paid social media is another extension of your inbound social media strategy. Instead just promoting your content to your entire audience, you’re promoting a specific ad to people within a particular company or industry.
2. Generate Conversations with Swag
A classic approach to marketing is mailing things to people. While that still happens, the rise of digital content has made physical mail unexpected and in some ways disruptive to what people expect. Because of the novelty of physical mail in the B2B world, people tend to spend more time with the physical mail they receive than with its digital equivalent.
When considering what swag to mail out to people, think about what people actually want. Send branded items that can be useful, not clutter. Branded reusable tote bags, coffee mugs and stickers tend to be safe, universally appreciated items.
To up your swag strategy, try to target your swag towards your specific contacts. Swag isn’t universal. For example, Guido Bartolacci, New Breed’s Manager of Acquisition and Strategy, would love to receive a branded hat, but I don’t wear hats, so that’d be a useless offer for me.
When creating your swag packages to send out and give away, start with a standardized collection of bags, t-shirts, cups, pop sockets, stickers, books, etc, and then personalize each bundle for its recipient.
Business cards are a creative way to incorporate swag without giving people more than they want. A windshield replacement shop with a business card that doubles as a pocket sized ice scraper or a graphic design firm that includes a ruler along the bottom of their card gives someone another reason to hang onto your contact info (other than keeping in touch).
One of New Breed’s sales reps used to send out metal business cards that doubled as bottle openers with a bottle of Vermont Beer. That package effectively provided her contact information, a useful item and a reminder of our company.
After you send out swag, have a follow up plan in place, so you can continue the conversation you started with the swag. Don’t just wait for them to get back to you, reach out and ask how they liked the items you sent.
3. Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Target Audience
Utilize personalization tokens and smart content across your marketing content to speak directly to your target accounts and create a personalized experience across your website.
Use smart CTAs to make sure site visitors aren’t being directed to content offers they’ve already downloaded. Design your chatbot to include a person’s name or company in its greeting.
Your customized experience can extend beyond your website too.
For example, you can create email workflows for specific companies where you personalize each email with copy that will change to suit the recipient’s company. You can use that smart content to pull copy from their website and lay out how your product or service can help them achieve their goals in a specific, personalized way.
Those emails aren’t fully outbound; you’re not cold emailing people, but rather as soon as they convert on your website they start receiving these targeted emails.
4. Find a Way to Get Facetime
Face-to-face interactions make a lasting impression. To achieve them, you can bring people to you, go to them or meet virtually.
You can host events to bring prospects to you or go to industry events and conferences to network with target accounts. You can also visit prospect’s offices if that’s geographically feasible.
When traveling, make the most of those trips. If you’re attending a conference in a major city or visiting a partner’s office, reach out to any of your targeted companies who are nearby and try to book a meeting with them too.
5. Expand Your Reach with Digital Events
It’s not always easy for people to get to you physically or for you to travel to them. A way to ease that geographical distance is to connect virtually.
You can create digital face-to-face interactions through virtual events like webinars, virtual conferences and social media Q&As.
While those digital interactions aren’t as personal as an in-person meeting would be, you’re still making a stronger connection than you would through an email.
Virtual co-created content that both creators promote is a great way to get your content in front of an audience outside your database.
Working with partners to co-host webinars and on-demand sessions can increase the reach for everyone by allowing each company to communicate with people in the other’s database while utilizing the subject matter expertise of everyone involved.
The Takeaway
Demand generation strategies look to generate demand through any means necessary, and one of the main demand generation fundamentals is brand awareness. Supplementing your inbound marketing efforts with some outbound tactics can increase your brand’s reach, provided you do so in a highly targeted way.
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