Outbound Marketing
A good outbound marketing system is the final piece to your digital marketing puzzle. Once you get visitors coming to the site either through inbound marketing or from organic SERP clicks you need to make them a client or capture their data. This allows you to effectively market to them to convert them to paying clients. Email used to be the only digital way but now social media and even text in the right circumstances can help grow the bottom line.
DATA IS THE CORNERSTONE OF BUSINESS
Data is crucial so you need to have good data from your inbound marketing. This is the foundation for your outbound marketing. Like everything in life, you want to take your time building a good foundation and then everything else works better. You want to collect at least their first and last name along with an email. Some industries it is OK to ask for a phone number but generally I do not make that required but always put it on a form because if someone wants you to call them that is one of the quickest ways to convert them to a customer, talking to them. Earning their trust.
DATA IS A PRIVIDLIDGE
But don’t make the mistake of taking them for granted and over use the privileged of being able to market to them. To keep them interested in your brand it is important to provide not only quality products and or services at a competitive price but you need to engage your clients and provide them with useful information for them. It is important to make them more than just a source of income. Personalize it as much as you can. Make them feel important and a lot of this can be added to and tracked in the database in their customer profile.
PERSONALIZATION IS THE KEY TO DATA
Ideally, you want to market the specific items or services to your potential client that they have expressed interest in. If they didn’t buy the first time then use this opportunity in incentivize them to become a customer. Use cookies to track them so that you know what they were looking at so you can send specific incentives to buy the product they were looking at.
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW OUTLET
A dedicated social media person in today’s market is important. Use social media to reach out on special occasions and offer incentives. Share interesting or important information about your industry. And if appropriate for your industry, share items relating to your company and personnel to humanize you. People do business with people they like. Become a part of your clients and potential clients businesses and lives and you’ll have a customer for life.
B2B Outbound Marketing
Most small businesses online are trying to reach their customers directly for a sale. But what if your targets demographic isn’t is the business world? That is where the competition really kicks up a notch. You’re going up against other businesses trying to get a sale. How can you compete?
Cold Email
Ever hear of it? If you don’t know what it is when you first hear it described many think it is SPAM. But it isn’t.
In order to email a private party, an individual person, you need to have what is called a “double opt-in” email address. That means a person has to take 2 steps (double) to verify they want to get emails from you (opt-in). But in the business world it is different.
In the business world we have what is called “Cold Email” is a fine line between it and SPAM and that line is that it is perfectly OK to email Business to Business email as long as you adhere to the ICANN SPAM Act that offer a very simple and plain way to opt out of future mailings.
Sounds easy right? You realize there is more to it. You can’t just start sending emails from your outlook that is your business email to any list you buy off the Internet. There is a long and complicate process of setting up domains, emails and doing what is called “warming them up”. Because you can’t just start sending emails in patters that a real SPAMMER would do. You need to nurture the email account so that it can eventually be used to cold email. It is about a 90 day process and if you don’t follow the rules and get complaints you can burn that email and domain. Meaning it will get put on a black list and you need to start all over.
Lead Management
Once you have the leads coming in you’re going to need some kind of system to manage them. If you have not invested in SalesForce there are less expensive options to get started such as Zoho to get started. It has all the functions you could possibly need to start and grow your business.