Are you struggling to generate new business leads? An outbound marketing campaign may be your answer. While B2B marketing strategies are constantly changing, it’s essential to keep up with business growth trends that align with today’s market and your target audience. When you implement an outbound marketing campaign into your everyday operations, you can expect:
A Streamlined Sales Process
When you start your outbound marketing campaign, you should expect an optimized sales process from both of your sales and marketing teams. Many B2B companies have the misconception that they need to choose one business growth strategy—whether it’s inbound or outbound marketing—over another. However, when you integrate both marketing and sales operations, you have the opportunity to maximize your sales pipeline.
While your sales teams focus on cold calling, your marketing experts can focus on contacting potential buyers that may not be easy to reach over the phone. Once your sales teams cleanse and qualify leads in the sales pipeline, your email marketing specialists can prioritize crafting the perfect sales email to send the lead. In these email marketing assets, they can send leads relevant content marketing materials (such as blog posts, case studies, landing pages, social media profiles, and more) that align with their industry needs and buyer personas.
New Potential Customers
Outbound marketing is a great business growth strategy because it enables sales development reps (SDRs) to reach out to prospective businesses that may not have the ideal B2B product or service solution in place. This business growth strategy encourages prospects to rethink their current solution and evaluate how it could be better.
Outbound marketing allows SDRs to reach out to prospects who may or may not know your company’s product or service offerings. Even if the key decision-maker (KDM) is not in a position to make changes at the time, at least your email marketing and lead nurturing efforts will help keep your business at the forefront of their mind. If and when they are ready to make a change, your company should be the first option they consider.
Reduced Sales Cycle Length
Think about it—the more avenues you use to engage with leads in the sales pipeline, the more likely you are to get in contact with them and send them content that’s relevant to their needs. Since you have more platforms to engage with them on, you have a greater opportunity to build those relationships and convert them from leads into sales appointments.
That being said, when you implement an outbound digital marketing campaign into your business growth efforts, you can expect the sales cycle to be reduced. As SDRs spend more time building relationships with qualified leads, they spend less time following up with prospects that would have little to no impact on your ROI. This leaves them more time to connect with KDMs who are ready to buy.
A study conducted by Klipfolio states that the average sales cycle length for B2B companies is approximately four months. If you implement an outbound digital marketing strategy into your business growth efforts, you have the opportunity to reduce the lead’s time in the sales cycle. However, as you consider this statistic, it’s essential that you compare your results to the industry standard to ensure you’re on the right track with your outbound marketing efforts.
Results in the First 2 to 3 Months
If every business growth strategy provided instant results, each small to medium-sized business owner would be a millionaire by now. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, and there is no one true way to achieve immediate results.
Outbound digital marketing efforts are highly effective. However, like all great things, they take time and patience. When you start your outbound marketing efforts, you first need to build your list of prospects and establish brand awareness.
Like anyone else, KDMs take a considerable amount of time before they decide to make an investment. On average, it takes approximately two to three months before companies generate a high-converting business opportunity. While it is possible to schedule a sales appointment and close a business deal within the first month of your outbound digital marketing strategy going live, it’s rare and you shouldn’t bank on it.
Trial and Error
As humans, we’re prone to make errors. Not every company is the same, which means not every outbound marketing strategy works the same. Outbound digital marketing is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and it requires trying new things and seeing what resonates with your target market and their buyer personas.
When you measure the effectiveness of your outbound marketing strategy, it’s essential to consider the following email marketing metrics:
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Bounce rate
- List growth rate
- Email sharing rate
- Unsubscribe rate
Additionally, you should see what readers are engaging with and how they’re navigating through your emails. Reviewing and analyzing these metrics allows you and your marketing teams to see what content resonates with email recipients and where there may be gaps in your outbound marketing process.
When your email marketing metrics are where they need to be, you’re more likely to set more sales appointments and close business deals with high-quality leads.
Key Takeaways
Implementing an outbound marketing strategy may not present you with an immediate ROI, but it does set your company up for future success. With an outbound digital marketing campaign, your sales and marketing experts have the opportunity to collaborate and expand your sales pipeline beyond the initial prospecting list.
For further insight into how an all-inclusive inbound and outbound marketing strategy can help you grow your business, check out our blog here.
If you need a hand implementing and sustaining your outbound digital marketing efforts for long-term success, contact the email marketing experts at Sapper Consulting!
