Creating an Effective Outbound Marketing Plan

A Guide by Sella

There is a common misconception that outbound marketing is dead and buried as a viable selling tool for companies. With the rise in popularity of inbound marketing and the negative connotation associated with outbound because of its ability to ‘interrupt’, it’s been easy to forget why it was such a trusted strategy for many decades in the business world.

Outbound marketing is a crucial way of generating leads. According to Webstrategies, around 84% of mid-sized B2B businesses believe a combination of inbound and outbound marketing are responsible for generating revenue. They also say that inbound marketing tactics receive 44% of a marketing budget compared to 48% for outbound marketing. This is because inbound can have long-lead times whereas outbound has the potential for greater speed and directness.

This guide will help set-up a simple outbound marketing plan so you can start nurturing those leads and close those sales ASAP.

1.   Define Your Buyer Personas

Before you begin any level of marketing, inbound or outbound, it’s important to map out and understand who your ideal customer is. This will allow you to tailor your workflow in a way that better reaches those who are most likely to buy from you without wasting as much time on probable ‘dead’ leads.

A buyer persona is a method of mapping out how you would distinguish your ideal customer from the rest of your target market. Your target market will contain a variety of different roles, goals, and interests. You can use previous sales data or even conduct a quick analysis of your current leads to generate an idea of what characteristics your likely buyers have.

Sella has developed a persona template that you can use to develop your ideal buyer. The template includes the criteria we at Sella use to distinguish between our customers when determining who we are most likely to sell to. You can download the template here: Buyer Persona Template

2.   Set up a Lead-Scoring System

Once you’ve developed your personas, it’s time to determine when you should be reaching out to them. We recommend you do this through the introduction of a lead scoring system.

A good lead-scoring system will help you distinguish between your leads who are ready to become clients and those who are just browsing around. It also stops you from reaching out too early and deterring them away from a potential sale in the future.

Check out Sella’s 4 Step Introduction to Lead Scoring to see how you can easily set this up using your personas you have created.

As your business progresses and you develop more detailed leads and sales data, it is important to continually revisit your lead-scoring system and update it to better reflect where your successes come from.

3.   Set Your Outbound Marketing Goals

The next step should be ensuring you have the right metrics in place to gauge the success of your outbound marketing campaign. Goals should utilize the SMART framework in being specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely.

Metrics you should look at (but are not restricted to) include:

• Cost-per-lead
• Number of new leads
• Prospect to lead conversion rate
• Lead to customer conversion rate

Don’t forget that you should indicate a consistent amount of time across measuring each of these metrics. Sella recommends reviewing your metrics monthly.

We’ve developed a Leads Calculator to approximate how many prospects need in your pipeline based on how many leads and customers you should expect to generate from your outbound marketing efforts. Use this calculator to set more attainable and realistic goals.

4.   How Will You Reach Out?

For an outbound campaign, there are several different strategies you can use to reach out to your newly identified buyer personas.

Traditionally, outbound marketing was heavily associated with the ‘cold-call’, mass calling numbers or sending emails with a generic message. But long gone are the days of the cold-call with the arrival of tools such as LinkedIn and MailChimp.

LinkedIn has given you unprecedented access to a growing database of working professionals complete with all the necessary details you need to score them as a potential lead. You can use it to reach out directly using your own LinkedIn pages or by simply building your own mailing database. Sella has developed a Step-by-Step Guide to Improving your LinkedIn Profile to ensure its in optimal condition to reach out and grab some sales.

You can then combine this information with the array of email automation tools that are now readily available to you to reach out to your prospects in a personalized and engaging manner.

MailChimp is one of these automated emailing tools that we use. It utilizes the information you have gathered from your prospects to send out emails based on the criteria you have given it and the level of engagement the prospect is giving back.

Be sure to also check out Optinmonsters list of the 31 Best Email Marketing Automation Tools if MailChimp doesn’t appeal to you.

5.   Build a Lead Nurturing Workflow

You’re now ready to reach out and start talking to some prospects. This is where you need to develop a workflow. A workflow in its broadest sense is the interactions that will take place with each potential lead based on their engagement with your initial contact.

It’s important to develop and flesh out these workflows as they allow your prospects to receive more personalized and timely messages as opposed to the traditional form of generic mass messaging.

All workflows should begin with a simple introductory message inviting the prospect to learn more about your offering. Let’s look at an example of this:

‘Hi <First Name>,

It would be great to talk further about our ideas

Thanks, <Your Name>’

Now the prospect could react in three ways to this message. They could react positively, negatively or not react at all. Therefore, we develop workflows. To ensure we are prepared in the case of each of these reactions.

Let’s look at an example workflow for a new prospect that has reacted positively to your initial outreach:

‘Thanks for getting in touch <First Name>.

 It would be great to talk further over the phone if you’re available?

Thanks, <Your Name>’

From this you should be prepared for them to either jump straight to a scheduled phone call, they might want to know more about your offering before committing to talk further or they might become hesitant.

The situation to be most prepared for is the no reply. Often this will be their reaction, however, this does not mean the lead is dead. For example, you could set your workflow to send a follow-up message after a week that says the following:

‘Hi <First Name>,  

I see you're currently working with <Their Industry> and would love to chat about your <Your Solution>. Are you available to talk anytime this week?

Thanks, <Your Name>’

In all cases, it is important to continue to flesh out your workflow and be prepared for all reactions. As the prospects work their way through your workflow you are able to qualify them into the different types of leads and therefore make more educated decisions on how to close a deal.

6.   Implement an Outbound Marketing Platform

You might think that you’re now ready to test out your outbound strategy but you shouldn’t overlook the number of automated programs that are now available to you.

There are programs that will take your newly crafted strategy and automate your prospecting/workflow processes. This allows you to focus on other areas of the business rather than dedicating all your time into what can be a strenuous process.

Check out how Sella can automate these processes for you in this video.

You might want to use our Lead Generation Spend Calculator to assess whether your current platform is generating any value for you or whether you need to change it up.

7.   Recruit a Team of Outbound Marketing Experts

Alternatively, you can look to bring in your own outbound sales team. Ideally, they will house a skillset that allows them to work through the steps we have previously described. These skills might include:

• Prospecting
• Data qualification
• Results tracking
• Sales development
• Industry knowledge
• Communication

If you’re confident in many of the areas we have described, you might even consider outsourcing one or two of the steps in this process as opposed to the whole execution.

Conclusion

The best sales teams are going to be the ones that properly utilize the benefits that both outbound and inbound strategies have. This guide serves to generate the benefits of an effective outbound campaign and when implemented correctly will begin to generate and nurture your leads and ultimately, close more sales.

Here at Sella we help small business owners or sales teams who need to boost their pipeline and spend less time finding leads through our platform which generates and nurtures quality leads for you. Find out more about how we can help you close more sales at sella.io

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