What Is Outreach Marketing?

These days, there are plenty of opportunities that can be used to market your products and services on the web. There is social media and email marketing, paid advertising, SEO, and many other great techniques that deliver great results. And there is also outreach marketing that is known for bringing excellent outcomes too.

What is the concept behind it and how can you benefit from it? In this article, the experts from LeadsForce will answer all your questions concerning this way of marketing.

What Is Outreach Marketing?

In traditional marketing, businesses create marketing campaigns, generate leads who have the potential to buy from them or buy lead list, and reach out to potential customers with a sales pitch to convert them. Market outreach, on the other hand, works completely differently. It’s a much more passive way to get leads and traffic. Yet, it’s proven to be an effective marketing tactic that can bring tangible results.

But what does it stand for in the first place?

Outreach marketing is the process of establishing and developing relationships with people interested in your product who have access to large audiences (such as influencers, journalists, bloggers, etc.). The core goal of this tactic is to promote your brand through these people and reach their audiences with your message. As a result, you get higher brand awareness, passive traffic, and expand your audience.

Why Is Outreach Marketing Important?

Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon at all for businesses to invest lots of time, money, and effort into creating and distributing high-quality content and, still, see little to no traffic. This can happen due to many reasons. Namely, for young businesses with no following on social media or emailing lists, reaching their potential customers is hard just because they don’t notice them yet. And for large companies looking to grow, it can be hard to break out of their existing following and reach new audiences.

In both cases, outreach marketing might be the answer to the problem. With the help of this strategy, you can access your target audience and gain new fans for your business. Through influencer accounts, your brand can gain more visibility and, most importantly, credibility in the eyes of your potential clients.

These three things, which are generated through this type of marketing - visibility, credibility, and fans - are the fuel for your business growth. Visibility lets you get noticed by more people. Credibility helps build prospects’ trust in your brand. And your newly-generated fans have the potential to convert into paying customers. So, this is why outreach marketing is important.

Pros and Cons of Outreach Marketing

Now that you know what marketing outreach is and what role it plays for modern businesses, you must be wondering what are the benefits and drawbacks of this approach. Let’s take a moment to identify the key pros and cons.

Pros:

• It helps to market your products and services to new audiences;
• It boosts your online presence;
• If you choose the right influencers, you will win the trust of your prospects;
• It brings fast results;
• It improves the quality of your content;
• It’s highly effective.

Cons:

• It can drive extra costs, often high;
• It can be very time-consuming;
• If you choose the wrong influencer, you risk getting a negative effect.

Challenges of Outreach Marketing

Basically, the main cons of brand outreach are also the main challenges you will face. Let’s look at each of them in detail.

Finding the Right Partners Is Tough

Probably the biggest challenge of outreach marketing is finding the right influencers to collaborate with. If you fail to choose the right influencer, your whole campaign will fail too. Thus, it’s crucial to approach this choice carefully and wisely.

It Takes Money

Unless you know outreach marketing like the back of your hand, chances are that you will have to hire someone who will assist you with it. Even if you decide to handle this on your own, you might still need to invest in a good reverse email lookup tool to get the contact data of your future partners and in a solid analytics tool too. So, it always drives extra expenses and can be quite expensive.

It Takes Time

Using this tactic to promote your brand takes lots of time. You will need time to create high-quality content, plan your strategy, find the right influencers, and complete many other related tasks. To complicate matters, you also need to spend extra time to find the valid contact information of the right influential people, craft a winning introduction email, and foster positive relationships to get them interested in collaboration. So, it can be very time-consuming.

Successful Outreach Marketing Ideas

If you want to market your brand through outreach but don’t know where to start, here are a few simple ideas that will get you on the right track:

• Have a specific goal in mind;
• Do lots of research to find the right influencers;
• Personalize your communication;
• Use intriguing subject lines to get their attention;
• Show the value they will get;
• Never spam!

Email Marketing vs. Outreach Marketing

Many people tend to confuse outreach and email marketing. However, there is a huge gap between these two.

In short, the biggest distinctive feature is that in email campaigns you market your products and services to people who have previously opted in to get your newsletters. That is, in this case, your audience has willingly shared their email addresses (check out what valid email address format is) with you and, thus, already knows something about you. In outreach campaigns, on the contrary, you market to prospects who don’t know your business yet.

How To Do Outreach Marketing? Process of Outreach Marketing

So, you already know that combining marketing and outreach can have many benefits. Now, here are the steps to it:

1. Identify the Right People - First, you need to find your future partners. Focus on influencers from your industry and analyze them by their audiences, engagement, activity, and popularity.

2. Reach Out - After finding influencers, find their contact data and connect with them. Make sure to create a powerful pitch that will highlight how it will benefit THEM to collaborate with you.

3. Foster Relationships - Make your communication with influencers personalized enough to build up trust and establish long-lasting relationships.

4. Encourage to Share Feedback - Finally, the last step of outreach marketing requires asking them to share their feedback.

Outreach Marketing Tactics

According to studies, around 83% of consumers trust the recommendations of influential people and rely on them a lot when making their purchase decisions. That’s what makes outreach marketing so effective.

And if you want to get even more out of it, here are a few winning tactics:

• Find popular bloggers and influential people within your niche;
• Ensure that you are reaching out to the right people;
• Engage in storytelling to help prospects learn more about your business;
• Leverage testimonials and quotations;
• Create influencer events;
• Automate business communication;
• Involve a network focus.

Conclusion

Outreach marketing is a great way to market your brand to new people, build trust, and grow your visibility. Handling it might not be easy. But, after reading this article, you have a plan you can act upon immediately.