Marketing on the Outbound
Outbound marketing or lead generation is used to directly contact 'cold' prospects through tactics such as direct mail, email, events and teleprospecting.
Depending on the size of your target audience, the spectrum of programs could vary from either a mass direct marketing program targeting small businesses with a volume sale type of solution or a high touch, account-based marketing program targeting enterprise accounts with a complex sale solution.
Despite the noise in the marketplace, most B2B marketers are looking to develop an optimal mix of outbound and inbound marketing, where each type of marketing works together to enhance results.
Today I want to highlight (not hype) some of the key benefits uniquely associated with outbound marketing. The first benefit, marketing ROI, provides an immediate payoff on outbound marketing while the remaining benefits pave the way to success for future marketing programs.
Marketing ROI - For most B2B organizations, especially those selling complex solutions, outbound marketing can deliver a sizable return on marketing investment (ROMI).
The higher costs of outbound marketing are affordable for organizations selling complex solutions that often start at $10,000 (or much more). By focusing on well-defined, high potential segments with large deal potential, just one close will pay for the outbound marketing program many times over.
Primary Market Research - What if you could define a vertical market segment comprised of 1,000 accounts in a region and be provided with a detailed report on that market? Unfortunately most technology analysts are unable to drill down to small-sized market segments in their research efforts.
By conducting an outbound marketing effort, you can profile segments in a precise way and use criteria that are meaningful to you. This insight gained is a bonus spin off from the core goal of generating qualified leads.
Market Segmentation - An outbound marketing program can provide very actionable information for B2B marketers to segment their markets and generate higher yield programs.
This information can be leveraged for trigger marketing and solution selling.
Accounts that are not converted to leads can be used for segmentation and are often profiled using the following criteria:
- pain points or needs
- buying criteria
- future date for evaluation
- satisfaction with competitive solutions
- date of installation of competitive solution
- use of in-house or custom solutions
Robust Database - A clean, well-profiled database provides the foundation for future marketing programs. Given that 20% of a list decays over a year, marketers are well-served if data can be cleaned as a by-product of outbound marketing efforts.
Less wastage on marketing to poor data and the cumulative impact of relevant messaging creates a compelling case for frequently touching key prospects through outbound marketing.
This database provides intelligence should a prospect respond through inbound or outbound marketing efforts.
What unique benefits do you associate with outbound marketing?
Photo Credit: jot.punkt
Labels: database marketing, inbound marketing, lead generation, outbound marketing, ROMI
posted by Robert Lesser @ Tuesday, August 11, 2009
11 Comments
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11 Comments:
Hi Robert,
You've made some great points in this post. I'm wondering if you can share your thinking about how marketers would collect the profile information you list in your bullet points, above, regarding segmentation.
Thanks!
Ardath
Thanks for your comment Ardath.
The profile information can be collected via a form such as an online form or BRC (business reply card) or during a discussion (telequalification or teleprospecting call).
The most effective (and costly) approach is to converse with prospects over the phone.
Hi Robert,
I've spent many years in technology sales, then transitioned into marketing in technology. Most of my corporate career was spent doing outbound marketing with some success (in the 80s and 90s). As you know, in more recent years I've become an inbound marketing evangelist. My inbound marketing agency, Find and Convert, is my bread and butter.
Contrary to what some may think after reading my book, Marketing 2.0, I'm ok with outbound marketing when it's done with a "marketing 2.0" mindset. I firmly believe that outbound marketing that aims to educate, enlighten or entertain is effective. When the goal is a lead but the activity (e.g., direct mail) offers content such as a free e-book on a relevant topic, this action can build trust, credibility and result in leads, especially if the e-book offers contact details and reasons to create contact.
I'm very much against outbound tactics that are purely selfish on the part of the marketer. People are too smart. Their behaviors have changed. They'll tune out your outbound message.
In summ, I'm ok with most outbound tactics when they aim to build relationships through the three E's: educate, enlighten or entertain. Relationships lead to sales opportunities.
Cheers,
Bernie Borges
@berniebay
Hi Robert,
This is an interesting way to look at an outbound marketing program. It would be helpful if you could explain how a program can help "profile segments in a precise way." Clearly marketers will want to use the information they already understand about their prospects to offer them meaningful content, but I'm wondering what you're referring to when you say they can conduct primary market research through their efforts. Are you saying a marketer can start building a profile based on a reader's response to various content offers?
For what it's worth, Marketo recently blogged about the difference between drip and closed loop marketing. I think it's a good complement to your post: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2009/07/the-difference-between-drip-marketing-and-closed-loop-marketing.html
Thanks!
Stephanie
@bernie
I wholeheartedly agree with your perspective on the need for relevancy, authenticity and value in marketing messages.
The culprit here is not the medium (outbound vs. inbound) but ineffective marketing.
Every medium is tarnished by poor practitioners. It's easy to summon examples of deficient practices in direct mail, email or telemarketing. As time has moved on we are seeing issues with new media arise: low value online content, sponsored blogs without disclosure and blackhat SEO tactics.
In other words, I agree with your comments but all of your criticisms can also be applied to new media as easily as old media.
@Stephanie
Re: your question on profiling segements in a precise way.
An example from one of our programs might help to illustrate my point.
By integrating various outbound media you can optimize by generating leads, cleansing data and gathering profiling information.
The below program is one where our client needed to fill pipeline with qualified leads but also required market insight.
The first phase of one program was as follows:
1. Teleprosecting - Generate leads, cleanse data, profile accounts
2. Dimensional Mailer - mailed to cleansed list
3. Teleprospecting - follow-up to mailer
The goal was to maximize the value of every touchpoint.
This relatively expensive program can be followed up by less invasive media such as direct mail and email (with limited teleprospecting) that leverage off the profiling information gathered in the first phase.
It's a far cry from predictive modeling but based on extrapolation on the profiling data, you can define segments for future marketing efforts.
With clean data, opt-in prospects and data segmentation, you can then more effectively move to what Marketo describes as closed loop marketing.
Hi Robert -
What's to prevent a company like Dell from backwards integrating into this space?
Hi Ann,
I am not sure I understand your question. Could you re-phrase it form me?
Why outsource B2B lead generation? For a company like Dell, what is to prevent them from hiring people to do this work in-house?
@Ann
Outsourcing to a specialist brings expertise that may not be available internally in areas such as targeting, messaging, contact strategies or in teleprospecting.
As well, outsourcing allows the internal inside sales team to focus on low risk, high potential activities while outsourcing the rest.
Finally, outsourcing allows organizations to quickly build extra capacity to address peaks in business or new initiatives.
I like to say that our biggest competitor is our client and not other B2B outsourcers. Its our client who can easily bring lead generation in-house unless we bring value in augmenting their inside sales team.
Hi Robert,
I think you've made the point, but I think the thing to take from all this is that the line between inbound and outbound isn't all that clear. I think that all the outbound buyer types you describe are in the epiphany stage of the buying process, where they have not articulated their business need yet are are simply trolling looking for ideas. I think that requires a mix of techniques. You need to do research to discover the type of buyers you're looking for, and then hit them with thought leadership that targets their interests and gets them to opt in.
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