How to Leverage Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing to Generate More Leads

Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing has been around longer than inbound marketing, which has become more popular and more effective. The success of inbound marketing is largely because it focuses on drawing in prospects rather than a mass distribution of content and advertising messages typical with outbound marketing. But does this mean outbound marketing should be discarded?

The answer to that would be no because when combined strategically, both inbound and outbound marketing can yield truly amazing results. Marketing, in general, requires that you identify key strategies that produce the best results for your businesses and focus on those, and hardly does this involve concentrating on just one strategy.

What is outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing is a traditional marketing model that pushes messages out to a large number of prospects through many advertising channels, such as TV commercials, email blasts, billboards, print ads, and cold calls. Outbound marketing is not so common in use today because it can be expensive, and produces lower-quality leads. HubSpot reported that only 16% of marketers who practiced outbound marketing could generate the highest quality leads for their sales teams.

The reasons that account for this disparity include the fact that many people see sales calls as interruptions; the outbound marketing model lacks personalization (since it is the same message that is pushed out to many people); and mostly because of the cost involved. Inbound marketing costs 61% less to generate quality leads than outbound marketing. While outbound marketing focuses on printing ads, TV commercials, billboards, etc., inbound marketing only uses personalized messages to reach prospects.

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing, on the other hand, uses a more targeted and personalized marketing approach to attract customers and keep clients engaged. For instance, the inbound model employs blogs, inbound emails, content marketing, paid advertising, and SEO to deliver valuable and relevant content to customers who are looking for what you are offering. This strategy leverages the awareness that people, especially managers and decision-makers, are looking for what you are selling.

Inbound marketing cuts out the waste associated with mass marketing or mass distribution of content. By creating content that addresses the specific needs of the defined audience, you attract highly qualified leads that are already looking for your products and services. Ultimately, conversion is easier with inbound marketing.

But did you know that with outbound and inbound marketing combined, marketers can achieve more results, build more engagements, and generate more leads? Here are effective ways by which you can maximize both strategies

Best approaches for your Business

1. Use account-based marketing

Account-based marketing (ABM) is the most efficient and cost-effective form of outbound marketing. This approach allows you to reach out to prospects that you have already identified as potential customers rather than waiting for them to contact you. Chances are, they are too busy to even see your content, especially as most people are bombarded with too many messages from different brands daily. ABM, on the other hand, puts you in the same room with them.

ABM marketing campaigns target specific companies, rather than individual leads. Since you understand what this set of people are looking for, you can easily personalize the content based on their specific needs and present it to them in person. This stands you out not just because the message is personalized, but also because they’ll be meeting with you in person. ABM uses the buyers’ persona to deliver sequenced and coordinated messages that educate the prospects along their buying journey. This essentially delivers a better user experience to prospects and more highly qualified leads for your business.

2. Create and push content through inbound and outbound channels

When it comes to maximizing the reach of your content, combining outbound marketing and inbound marketing is one very effective way to make the most out of your content. With inbound marketing, you can push out relevant and valuable content on your blog, social media, through email newsletters, etc., and attract the right audience.

Then, with outbound marketing strategies such as cold calls, LinkedIn outreaches, outbound emails, direct mail, etc., you can package your content in the form of ebooks, white papers, printed newsletters, etc., to engage the prospects. Since you already know what they are looking for, you use content marketing to deliver targeted and personalized content. But instead of waiting for them to come to you, you send the content directly to them.

3. Use outbound tactics to build your blog audience

Blogs posts are great inbound marketing tools. While you stay up-to-date on important topics and trends, you also get to share rich and digestible information with your target prospects. In fact, you mix this with SEO and paid advertising for added effects and more results. The more you deliver content over time using the right keywords, the more prospects you will be able to pull in over time. But you can also include outbound models here. To build more following, marketers can create a customized email blast targeted at existing clients, potential clients, and business/work colleagues, letting them know about your blog and asking them to subscribe to it. This perfect mixture of inbound and outbound marketing can be used to promote any type of content.

4. Use Calls to Action (CTAs)

You cannot underplay the importance of calls to action. Whether you are running a PPC campaign, email marketing, sharing blog posts, posting on social media, or even using print media and other hard copy materials, CTAs help direct prospects to where you want them. This helps to fill your sales pipeline when done correctly. CTAs are integral in any effective lead generation strategy. For every marketing material you share, make sure you include a compelling CTA that will draw prospects to take the right actions. This may be downloading an ebook, signing up for your emailing list, watching a video on your site, etc.

Not Sure How to Start?

If you have further questions regarding how to deploy the best inbound and outbound marketing for your business, feel free to contact us today. We are happy to provide you with more insights and expert guidance on improving the results of your marketing campaigns. We use our digital marketing expertise to help businesses like yours successfully implement the best growth strategies.

At Mission HR, we also provide industry-leading PEO, HR, payroll, and benefits outsourcing solutions. We offer result-oriented services for small and medium-sized organizations and government contractors, serving as a trusted partner in integrated human resource compliance, risk management, employee benefits, employment practices liability insurance (EPLI), and payroll processing.