There are several core components of Outbound Marketing.  Each of these tools can be leveraged to reach different levels of decision makers.  Implementing these aspects as a part of a complete marketing plan is vital to the success of your campaign.

Teleprospecting:  When it comes to qualifying leads and identifying those leads as being "sales-ready", there is no greater avenue than teleprospecting.  The responses and intelligence gathered during teleprospecting campaigns help to bring your sales team warm leads as opposed to cold calling.  This cuts down on the time your sales people spend on tasks better suited for your marketing team.  The responses you receive through these campaigns help to tailor your marketing messages to your target audience.  Through the use of lead scoring, your are able to identify and qualify contacts based on industry, company size and revenue, as well as several other key pieces of information.  The information gathered also helps to prepare your sales team for the upcoming call.  Appointment setting is an integral part of teleprospecting.  This provides your sales team with a qualified, interested lead, as well as a specific time to reach out to them.  Identifying specific objectives for your teleprospecting campaigns and having a properly trained team to carry out these objectives is a must for a successful marketing program. 

Email Workflows:  Email is an important part of any marketing campaign.  However, it is essential that you incorporate a work flow to maximize the effectiveness of your email campaign.  A quality email that includes an engaging subject line, personalization at all relevant points and a call to action that links to a piece of premium content is a great place to start, but it cannot stop there.  Once a prospect has shown enough interest to click on your email and then download your content, it is a must to provide additional direction to move them through the buyer’s journey.  Follow up emails that include a thank you as well as an offer to another piece of content can be enough to push a prospect further through the sales funnel, however, there are more effective ways.  Including additional offers on the thank you pages where the premium content is housed is your best bet.  These offers should be relevant to the original piece of content and be geared toward turning your prospect into a qualified lead.  Including navigation buttons that link back to relevant pages on your company website will enable your prospect to view more of your content and when it comes time to make a decision, they will remember who educated them on their chosen solution. 

Cold Calling:  Although cold calling has its detractors, it's still an effective means of qualifying potential leads.  It can be much easier to gauge interest with a cold call as your potential client in most cases will need to verbally agree to a meeting or follow up call.  The ability to feign interest is not as prominent with cold calls as most that are uninterested will tell you or simply end the call.  For the reason that callers hang up on you, it shows why cold calling is effective.  You have essentially taken that persons time and attention.  It is important to have well written, concise scripting in order to grab the prospects attention and draw their interest.  There needs to be an immediate goal with your cold calls such as an appointment for a discovery call.  Networking through a company is very important to maximize any call list you receive.  The names and numbers you have purchased are not necessarily the correct decision maker.  Be sure to hire experienced callers or contract out a reputable call center to ensure your contact lists do not go to waste.

Up next in our blog series: The Importance of White Papers, Ebooks, Infographics and Pay Per Click Ads: Essentials of Inbound & Outbound Marketing Part 3