Top Examples of Outbound Marketing Strategies for Business Growth

One of the major lifebloods of business today is lead generation. When done correctly, it generates a consistent stream of clients rather than constantly forcing companies to search for their next sale.

However, you have to advertise your services if you want to produce enough quality leads to maintain a lucrative business. And one of the best ways to maintain a stream of prospective clients is by leveraging outbound marketing.

But what is outbound marketing, and how can you tap into its potential for your business growth?

Let's find out.

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What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing involves businesses contacting potential customers directly to pique their interest in their goods or services.

Businesses control the storyline of outbound advertising; they decide what to say, how to say it, and when to tell it to their target market.

The first step typically involves finding potential customers who fit the business's Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). The next step is contacting prospective clients using various outbound marketing strategies, such as TV commercials, direct mail, cold calling, and emailing.

The sales team's job is to follow up with these leads until they make a purchase from your business.

How Outbound Marketing Works

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Although every business may have a unique approach to contacting potential customers directly, outbound marketing generally consists of the following steps:

1. Identify your target audience: If you currently have clients, consider your most valuable ones and look for trends. Make a list of the use cases for your product and target the market segments that will benefit from it the most if you're trying to discover your first paying clients. It might also be beneficial to keep tabs on the kinds of clients that your rivals serve.
2. Decide on the right outbound marketing channel: The channel you choose will greatly impact the type of message you write. 
3. Develop the campaign and craft your message: Let's say you choose to send cold emails. In addition to drafting the email copy, this stage will involve setting up a company email address, purchasing an email marketing tool, customizing the email, establishing a follow-up sequence, and more.
4. Run the campaign: This step involves more than pressing the "send" button. Research the industry's best outbound marketing practices to increase conversion rates to determine the best day and time to begin your campaign.
5. Analyze the results of your campaign: Your campaign's success (or failure) will depend on the metrics you monitor and the reasonable goals you've set for them. 
6. Adjust your outbound marketing plan: Realizing your initial campaign's full potential is rare. As you proceed, your outbound strategy may need to be revised numerous times.

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Examples of Outbound Marketing

The majority of marketing successes result from combining various tactics. There are many ways to reach out to your target audience, whether inbound or outbound, and various approaches are frequently required to meet your objectives.

Below, we will look at the traditional and digital outbound marketing campaign examples.

Traditional Marketing Examples

Let us look at five traditional successful outbound marketing examples.

Print Ads

It might come as a surprise, but outbound print advertisements, among other traditional media, are still effective in a world where digital advertising is widespread. When executed properly, print ads still contribute significantly to lead generation and brand exposure.

Direct Mail

Even though so much of our lives are now spent online, we still get mail and live our lives offline. We still find it delightful to see something with our names in the mailbox, which is an advantageous use of outbound marketing.

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According to a study, those exposed to direct mail had a 70% greater brand recall rate than those exposed to online advertisements. Direct mail can still be relevant to your ethos, voice, and desired presentation; and useful for building brand awareness.

The average return on investment (ROI) via direct mail varies greatly, and like with other outbound marketing, it all depends on the success of your campaign.

Television Ads

TV ads should encourage viewers to recall the brand and message in addition to the advertisement itself. Some TV ads stick in your memory just because they are catchy. However, many commercials are soon forgotten, which should not be the case.

Unfortunately, commercials are not cost-effective unless they produce leads and sales.

Billboard Advertising

Although billboards may appear to be among outdated outbound advertising examples, many businesses still use them. To get attention, they are becoming increasingly creative and innovative.

In contrast to other types of advertising, billboards face several challenges, wide open spaces and distances that may make them unreadable. But today, businesses are using creativity to overcome these obstacles. Their goal is for their billboards to be memorable, eye-catching, and visible from a distance.

Trade Shows/Events

Attending a trade show is one of the most effective ways to expose your business to a specific audience. Although a significant initial investment may be involved (around $100-$150 per square foot of floor space), the exposure and new contacts you create may make it worthwhile.

Having an exhibit at a significant trade show is one way you can demonstrate your ongoing dedication to keeping your brand relevant. You should anticipate the largest brands to be present at any major trade event.

Big brands may not seem required to attend these events, but they understand that being visible is necessary to stay relevant.

Digital Marketing Examples

This section will go through some digital examples of outbound marketing tactics.

Podcast

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Edison Research estimates that 46 million Americans listen to podcasts monthly. As podcasts become more well-known, more businesses seize the opportunity to market their services to this ever-growing audience. 

Additionally, more and more brands are starting their podcasts. Like any branded material, personally connecting with the customer is the secret to success.

Cold Calling

Despite its reputation, cold calling is effective for many businesses.

Reaching out to new audiences and initiating conversations remain the core of sales and marketing, and cold calling is a perfect tool for doing just that. Of course, there are right and wrong methods for doing this, so you need to think through your strategy.

It's easy to think that cold calling is just about statistics. Yes, outbound calls depend on volume, but quality remains essential. For this reason, there's a shift away from sales pitches and toward strategies that emphasize helping clients solve their problems.

Cold Emailing

When written correctly, a cold email seems authoritative, helpful, and discreet. The biggest advantage of sending highly customized emails by combining them with account-based marketing is that the latter has higher open and click-through rates, which leads to an increase in conversions.

If you want your outbound email marketing strategy to succeed, don't buy (or rent) mailing lists and bombard them with countless emails.

As a lead generation company, AI bees has been resourceful in helping businesses grow their leads and convert them into customers. Amongst one of our outbound marketing case studies is Wehaa, an advertising and marketing company that sourced our services to harvest potential prospects and perform daily outreach to the leads. 

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Ultimately, Wehaa was able to secure decision-makers and relevant demos. Even with Wehaa's low sales cycle, AI bees delivered above and beyond what was promised.

SMS or MMS

SMS is a strategy for texting potential customers about your brand's offerings. Countless brands have used this tactic, which has proven effective for many. Additionally, SMS is cheap and easy to maintain.

Geomarketing is more effective when paired with SMS or MMS marketing. The latter uses location-based technologies to target individuals with messages according to their location.

Let's say you own an eatery in Houston. By promoting your restaurant and the food you sell, you can leave a message for anyone who enters the vicinity of your geolocation.

Video Advertising

One method of standing out from the crowd is making captivating videos to advertise your goods or services. These video advertisements might appear as banner adverts on various websites or as YouTube Shorts.

Making compelling and educational video advertisements is crucial. Long informational advertisements dull your prospects, while highly persuasive ones seem awkward to watch. Therefore, a hybrid strategy might be most effective.

Aside from this, you can increase your conversion rate by adhering to industry best practices. For example, if your business is B2B, you should make video advertisements for LinkedIn rather than Instagram. Since it's B2B, you must emphasize your product's use cases and social proof. 

Affiliate Marketing

This is one of the most innovative outbound marketing examples. In this model, businesses partner with individuals or other businesses—referred to as affiliates—to advertise their goods and services. In exchange, affiliates receive a commission or a portion of the revenue.

These affiliates typically have large networks and are well-known individuals. Thus, collaborating with them can help increase your business's visibility.

For many businesses, social media and affiliate marketing are nearly equally effective. However, affiliate marketing has a slightly greater return on investment than social media marketing, but both have respectable returns on investment. 

Nevertheless, businesses should take advantage of the potential of social media marketing when combined with AI-powered tailored marketing.

Display Advertising

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Display advertising is when advertisements (text, video, or both) are placed on websites, apps, games, and similar platforms.

They typically don't occupy the center of a page but rather the margins. This lessens the intrusiveness of these adverts. It also raises the possibility that your prospective clients may overlook them.

Therefore, you need to make really interesting advertisements that draw in leads. To achieve a higher conversion rate, make sure you combine them with remarketing. 

Influencer Marketing

Affiliate marketing and influencer marketing work similarly. The key difference lies in your strategic selection of content creators with a large audience and network impact. Given their significant influence over their audience, any messages communicated through them are bound to be regarded as credible.

Influencer marketing is a tool that businesses can use to engage certain audiences more genuinely, particularly if the goal is establishing brand credibility and trust.

The same strategy applies when sponsoring advertisements on podcasts or TV shows hosted by well-known influencers. By associating your brand with shows relevant to the audience, you may capitalize on the host's expertise and establish a connection with a particular demographic.

This approach is distinct since it employs a non-intrusive format to seamlessly integrate the brand into the listener's experience without drawing attention. This strengthens brand engagement and loyalty by making the podcast community feel like partners.

Search Engine Marketing

Pay-per-click advertising, or search engine marketing, involves creating adverts and bidding on relevant keywords to promote a company's message. Since most people use search engines to find information, they can be more open to messages directed at them.

PPC advertising has successfully acquired new customers and generated leads for many businesses. Bidding on long-tail transactional keywords and directing traffic to landing pages with high conversion rates is an efficient strategy for accomplishing this.

Remember that not every advertising campaign will be successful. After all, you are placing bids on keywords, and the campaign the search engine considers most valuable will win.

By examining your target audience's characteristics, interests, and demographics, your company may create advertisements that appeal to specific segments. By using precise targeting, you can be sure that the people most likely to interact with your content see it. 

Social Media Advertising

This outbound marketing proactively advertises to potential customers using social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and X. With 5.07 billion active users on these networks. Therefore,  reaching out to particular audiences is simplified by the comprehensive targeting options available.

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Social media advertising has proven to be some businesses' most effective outbound tactic.

Visually appealing material has produced above-average engagement and click-through rates, resulting in a profitable return on investment. Social media's interactive feature has made it easier for consumers to interact with brands, increasing qualified leads and conversion rates.

Due to social media's success, many businesses will use social media to generate outbound leads due to its success. Social media platforms offer the ideal audience for your business, whether B2B or B2C.

Furthermore, social media platforms' comprehensive analytics and insights enable companies to monitor and assess the effectiveness of their campaigns, thereby promoting data-driven decision-making and continuous optimization.

Retargeting/Remarketing

Outbound marketing excels at getting your brand in front of potential clients. But getting them to make a buy might take a bit more convincing. Here's where a retargeting campaign truly thrives.

These adverts may appear on the screens of those who have previously interacted with your website or campaign but did not complete the intended action. Remarketing campaigns aim to nurture and re-engage prospects by presenting them with additional helpful content.

Don't go overboard, though. You wouldn't want potential customers to think that they are being watched.

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Nailing Your Outbound Marketing With AI bees

Outbound marketing is still applicable today. It's a fantastic approach for building your brand and supplementing your inbound marketing strategy.

The most crucial thing to remember is that outbound marketing still uses many of the same inbound marketing concepts. You must still understand your target audience, add value, and solve people's problems.

Outbound marketing could play a significant role in your overall plan if you can accomplish this. However, if this has been challenging for you, let us save you the headache. We utilize AI to deliver successful outbound marketing campaigns that will grow your business.

Ready to take your business to the next level?

Schedule a demo, and let us help you secure the market share!

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