Reducing Dependence on Traditional Ads Through Outreach Marketing

In the world of digital marketing, there hardly ever seems to be a need to invest in traditional forms of advertising. With all the options and opportunities present in the online realm, why would any business spend time and money on TV ads, radio spots, or billboards? Right.

Well, we’d be remiss not to say that there’s always a time and a place to focus on more traditional forms of advertising and that they can deliver results, too. The main issue here, however, is that conventional ads are expensive, time-consuming to create, and often less effective than their digital counterparts.

And when we’re talking about digital ads, you may not need to rely on those nowadays as much as you used to. All of this is thanks to outreach marketing, which we’ll dive into today, in order to give your business a new way to reach quality prospects, attract clients who share your vision, and reduce financial waste in the process.

Let’s take a closer look. 

What are Traditional Ads?

Traditional ads encompass all offline media used for advertising purposes, but nowadays, they also encompass digital advertising and PPC, which companies large and small are spending vast resources on. 

For brick-and-mortar companies, traditional ads still represent a significant portion of their marketing efforts, and rightfully so, both online and offline ones. In the US alone, traditional ad spending has been steadily increasing over the last few years, for example.

So yes, there’s a time and a place for all types of ads, whether they’re traditional or digital, but not so much for small businesses—more so for companies with money to burn.

When it comes to your business, your marketing and advertising dollars might be better spent elsewhere, where you can have a higher reach and can create highly personalized and targeted outreach strategies that will attract the right prospects.

What is Outreach Marketing?

Outreach marketing encompasses the tools and tactics you use to position your brand in front of the right people by reaching out to them via relevant channels and influencers. These channels include LinkedIn, which has a 3x higher response rate than email, other social media, as well as email outreach.

The word “influencer” is important here because we are not just talking about external influencers, like popular bloggers or social media personalities in your industry.

In outreach marketing, you can generate qualified leads by reaching out to the right prospects at the right time to pitch a unique solution to their problems. It’s one of the best ways for B2B companies to boost lead generation, but it also has its place on the B2C scene and traditional social media like Instagram and TikTok.

Now that you understand what it is, let’s take a more in-depth look at outreach marketing and how to do it right. This will save you money and time while boosting lead generation.

Start with Internal and External Influencers

Here is one thing companies tend to overlook when it comes to effective outreach – you need to assign and identify the best internal and external influencers for your campaigns.

Typically, business leaders will try to focus solely on internal personas when it comes to B2B, for example, in order to leverage the influence of their CEOs to generate interested replies and leads. That’s great, and it should be the main part of your campaign.

On the other hand, you would be missing out if you didn’t also identify potential outreach influencers outside of your organization who could do the outreach for you. Combining both options gives you maximum reach and allows you to use the combined influence of your internal and external authority figures to attract, generate interest, and sell.

To start, you need to identify the main outreach persona in your organization. This will typically be the CEO, as these figures inherently pull the most weight with their status in the industry. You can also assign several other high-level positions in your company for outreach.

Externally, you need to research your field to find notable personalities you can collaborate with. These people can reach out to their audience and individual prospects, spark their interest, and incentivize them to book a call with your sales reps.

If the deal goes through, they would typically get a commission.

Connect with Quality Prospects on LinkedIn

LinkedIn remains the best platform for expanding your professional network, both as a business leader and as a brand. 

Once you have your internal and organizational personas and external influencers, you can start sending out connection requests to qualified leads. However, for LinkedIn outreach to work, you need to build a list of prospects that match your brand’s goals, focusing on the ideal potential customers.

This is one of the areas where LinkedIn automation comes in handy. It allows you to automate prospect research and send out connection requests automatically to the right people. It’s a great way to save time and money, minimize the risk of error, and actually spend your time on the right, high-value prospects.

You can then research individual prospects and craft personalized outreach messages, which you can send via your CEO’s and other influencer’s profiles. This is what hyper-targeting is all about, and it allows you to personalize your messaging to address the needs and pain points of the prospects in a particular industry and niche. 

Outside of LinkedIn, outreach marketing is a powerful way to connect with potential customers on non-professional social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and others.

On these entertainment-based social platforms, you have an opportunity to connect with influencers who can disseminate your brand and its message to a wider audience. This is good for brand building and improving your reputation in the eyes of potential customers, allowing you to reach out in the DMs with special offers, promo codes, links, and more.

Another good thing about non-professional social media is that influencer posts tend to get a lot of engagement. Likes, shares, and comments, as well as clicking on links in their bios, are all opportunities for you to pitch your products or services to potential customers. 

With the added benefit that video content brings to the table, you can use influencers to effectively build outreach strategies on video-based platforms like TikTok and Instagram. The purpose of these influencers is to help build your brand’s image and trustworthiness so that potential customers respond positively to your outreach.

Build a Powerful Outreach Email Strategy

Email outreach is still one of the most powerful and fruitful ways to get people to interact with your brand and generate interested replies. Your goal is to get a qualified lead to click on a link to learn more about you or to agree on a call with your sales rep.

The latter can take some time and several follow-ups, but the initial point of contact needs to be powerful and personalized enough to engage the recipient.

Email outreach relies heavily on the quality of your subject lines, which need to be concise but impactful enough to spark interest. It’s also imperative for your team to compile a list of email spam words to ensure that your emails don’t get flagged as spam and actually end up in the prospect’s inbox. 

In the email body, you need to introduce yourself and explain what you do, as well as why you think you’re the best solution for the customer, in only a few short sentences. You need to have a strong call to action, inviting the lead to a meeting or to learn more about your offer. 

Always be Building Your Brand’s Authority

In order for outreach marketing to produce the desired results, and allow you to gradually veer away from traditional advertising, it needs to rely on a powerful brand identity. This includes your corporate brand and your personal brand.

If you’re a business leader, you need to build your network, your social proof, and your personal brand in order to let your social proof speak and act for you. Rest assured that any prospect you reach out to will research you online before deciding to reply, so you need to make sure that they can find encouraging information and a proven track record.

To that end, you need to build quality content on your website, you need to post on your social media, and you need to diversify your content. Create as much value-driven content as possible, such as case studies, whitepapers, guides and templates, and other resources that the prospects might find useful.

You can then use that content as lead magnets to inspire the prospects to learn more and even get back to you. Above all, always share quality content for free and disseminate it online to build your authority, as well as your corporate and personal brands. 

Over to You

There are many reasons why outreach marketing should become your focus and a main driver of lead generation in 2024 and beyond. It’s cheaper, much more effective because it’s hyper-targeted, and, most importantly, it connects your brand to the right people. 

Not just anyone – the right people.

In order to build, disseminate and capitalize on outreach marketing strategies, however, you need to follow the rules we laid out above. Building and maintaining a powerful brand identity and focusing on social proof is one of the best ways to make your outreach campaigns more effective.

Follow these rules, and you’ll reduce your dependence on traditional and even digital ads while saving time and money and getting results from outreach.