Outbound Marketing is a set of communication tactics companies use to obtain more sales directly, highlighting the value of their products and services to persuade potential customers to make purchasing decisions.
Customer acquisition is one of the most crucial processes for any company since the customer represents the main asset and the justification for its existence.
With this in mind, prospecting becomes a constant topic of discussion among companies’ sales and marketing teams, whose main objective is to achieve goals and generate more revenue for them.
Prospecting is the first step to conquering new customers; therefore, the team’s strategy will determine the path that the potential customer will follow, from the awareness stage to the purchase decision.
Currently, there are two approaches to prospecting new customers: passive marketing, through inbound marketing, and active marketing, through outbound marketing.
Although the inbound strategy is widely used and is considered the most modern and effective form of prospecting, more and more companies continue to invest in outbound processes because they produce good results.
In this article, we will explain everything about Outbound Marketing to understand how it is not a relic of the past but has evolved considerably over time and how it complements the Inbound strategy and boosts revenue generation. Let’s get started!
Outbound Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing: Fundamental Differences
Inbound is like fishing with a rod, while Outbound is like fishing with a net.
That means Outbound Marketing is the active prospecting strategy, while Inbound Marketing focuses on passive prospecting.
While Inbound establishes mechanisms to attract potential customers, Outbound identifies those with the potential to become customers and takes a proactive approach.
When discussing active prospecting, many dismiss the idea by associating it mainly with telemarketing. However, it is crucial to understand that this is just one example of active prospecting.
Other examples include billboards and banners on websites, radio ads, television, YouTube, Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, and more.
Outbound Marketing is more present in everyday life than you might think and features prominently in business investments.
The Evolution Of Outbound: From Traditional To Outbound 2.0
It is undeniable that the advent of the Internet has transformed the dynamics of marketing.
With the introduction of search tools such as Google, any company that optimizes its Search Engine Optimization (SEO) achieves a prominent position in the results, thus being easily found by its audience.
This strategy is considerably cheaper than investments in television advertising, for example, and its performance is more quantifiable thanks to tools such as Google Analytics, which measures the success of these actions.
Subsequently, the need arose to generate quality content capable of attracting more visitors to the website and, therefore, increasing sales.
The implementation of content marketing allowed companies to attract customers passively. As a result, Outbound Marketing was perceived as a less effective strategy.
While it required a large team of sales experts to deliver results, Inbound offered returns with a smaller investment in human resources.
However, everything changed when engineer Aaron Ross took over the leadership of the sales team at Salesforce, a leading U.S. software company, revolutionizing results through a strategy called Outbound 2.0.
The new outbound approach focuses on segmentation and specialization of the sales team based on the following principle: A sales team comprises salespeople with diverse profiles, some excelling at prospecting customers and others at closing accounts.
Experienced salespeople often need help in prospecting, while good prospectors face challenges in keeping up the pace after reaching a certain number of customers.
Assigning salespeople the responsibility of taking care of every customer throughout the buying journey overburdens the team and squanders the specific skills of each contributor.
That is why Aaron Ross proposed segmenting the sales team to avoid a single salesperson having to handle the entire sales process.
Thus, some salespeople were dedicated to prospecting for new leads, while others were in charge of closing sales.
This strategy allowed the company to gain scale and operate with a team of specialists, and it was so successful that it earned the company $100 million in just a few years. Thus, the new Outbound became a trend.
Benefits Of Outbound Marketing
Easier To Find Area Professionals
The traditional sales market has existed for millennia, and there is an abundance of salespeople worldwide.
The one area that has yet to be explored is Business Intelligence, a relatively new process.
The other functions are well-known to professionals in the segment, making finding experts in the area easy.
Faster Return On Investment (ROI)
While Inbound Marketing requires time to generate results, as SEO building is a medium to long-term process, Outbound manages to reach your audience from the moment the company decides to start prospecting, being able to bring customers in as little as a week. That translates into a faster return on investment.
Speed To Validate Premises
In Outbound Marketing, by contacting a thousand leads in a month, you already get a large enough sample to validate whether your buyer persona, pitch, and communication are correct.
In comparison, the average time for the Inbound process to fully mature in a company varies from 6 months to 1 year.
That highlights the importance of actively going to market, even to validate passive prospecting strategies, saving the team time and effort.
More Straightforward To Measure Results
It is essential to obtain data from the buying process to generate a complete analysis, considering information such as purchase seasonality, customer behavior, etc.
By tracking this data, strategies can be better targeted, and more favorable conversion rates can be achieved.
Because Outbound generates fast results, data on the buying process can be analyzed in less time, validating assumptions and making decisions based on quantitative and qualitative data.
Contact Assertiveness
In the new Outbound, you objectively select who you want to talk to. Contact personalization in sales increases the final conversion since the buyer interacts directly with another person.
In complex sales situations, outbound is ideal, as people are more likely to purchase when the consultative process is conducted.
An Outbound rep can effectively leverage this strategy by positioning yourself as a market expert, aware of your target’s pains and objectives.
