When the 1920’s saw the first radio, experts thought it would be the death of newspapers, until television went on to surpass radio. And after all was said and done, now experts are making the claim that inbound marketing strategies are replacing outbound. But as we’re seeing, marketers are learning the benefits of integrating both inbound and outbound marketing into one. Marketers take advantage of the strengths of each and adapt their marketing strategies.
Traditional vs Today’s Successful Outbound Marketing Strategies
Traditional outbound marketing pushed a message to lots of people, think television, but wasn’t very efficient at reaching the best prospects.
Traditional outbound marketing included:
- Television and Radio
- Print Advertising
- Bulk Mail and Catalogs
Today digital outbound marketing strategies use “push” marketing with hyper-personalized targeting and messaging to scale your message to a large audience. Common examples are:
- Email marketing including marketing automation and account based marketing
- Programmatic Advertising: Hyper targeted broadcast and digital advertising
- Retargeted Display advertising
- Personalized Direct mail
- Trade Shows
These new versions of traditional outbound marketing allow you to reach out to targeted decision makers at known companies. Once you have identified them, successful integrated outbound marketing like Account Based Marketing allows you to develop a relationship with prospects over time that positions you as a strategic advisor and allows you to show how you can solve the prospects known and unknown challenges.
What Are Outbound Lead Generation Services?
Outbound marketing strategies generate quality leads for B2B companies. Here are some of the outbound lead generation services a seasoned marketing agency should offer:
- Account Based Marketing (ABM). ABM is a B2B strategy focusing your sales and marketing resources around target accounts in a specific market. You choose a company that represents an ideal customer for your business and target the decision-makers with personalized communications.
- Personalized Direct mail. Personalized direct mail includes variable or customizing printing with advertising brochures, catalogs, sales letters, postcards, and more sent to prospective customers by mail. These campaigns use variable data to personalize the mail piece and call to action.
- Sales outreach. Warm and cold calling includes both telephone and in-person calls to a prospect to offer your products or services. Sometimes called telemarketing, sales calls arestill a practical tool for B2B companies to reach out to prospects and generate leads.
- Appointment setting. Once a marketer or sales person has engagement with a prospect, the focus turns to setting an appointment to learn more about the prospects’ business and discuss how your product or service can help their company.
Outbound lead generation services are perfect for targeting known prospects and are focused on filling the sales pipeline.
What Are Outbound Sales?
Outbound sales involve moving the leads generated by your outbound marketing strategies into the sales pipeline. These leads will have shown a demand for your product or service by engaging with your outbound marketing messages. An inside or outside sales development rep will then set appointments.
A marketing agency can help your sales team focus on generating revenue. Account based marketing can have a big impact by coordinating your sales and marketing teams. This strategy generates the leads and gets your salespeople out of the trenches which frees them up to spend more time closing.
Do you need an inbound or outbound marketing agency?
How do you decide if you need to hire an inbound marketing agency or an outbound agency. The principal determinant is whether you want to reach known companies or prospects who are already looking for you.
Here are a few questions to ask a full-service marketing agency:
- What services do you offer? What advertising and marketing strategies are your strengths? Can you help with inbound and outbound digital marketing?
- How does your fee structure work?
- What platforms do you use for outbound marketing?
- How do you tie the platform to our CRM and marketing tech stack?
- How do you track the leads and report on progress?
- How does your agency work with my team?
- Can you share references to those in similar industries as my company?
Putting It Together
A full-service marketing agency will help you develop outbound marketing strategies, outbound lead generation, and outbound sales. They should be the experts with proven effective lead generation services using both inbound and outbound marketing strategies.
The most successful companies leverage both. Your best option is to find an expert marketing agency offering both inbound and outbound lead generation services.
Since lead generation is the goal of your marketing efforts, having experts in both inbound and outbound marketing puts your company one step ahead of the competition.
If you do not have the resources needed to create and execute a mix of inbound and outbound campaigns, turn to a proven marketing agency for help.
Are you curious how a marketing agency can help you generate high-quality leads and a solid ROI?
Let us show how we can help you drive more quality leads using proven outbound and inbound marketing. Contact KEO Marketing today for a complimentary marketing audit.
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