Basic steps for an effective outbound lead generation campaign

Outbound lead generation campaigns are done to capture and pique prospects' interest in the service or product for developing leads. This will help broaden your reach and generate fresh leads. This is part of a growth marketing strategy where you proactively approach businesses (as opposed to inbound marketing, where prospects find you).

This approach may sound a bit risky at first because you will be reaching out to people who may have never heard of your business before. However, this is effective to get to people who perfectly fit the services or products that you offer. 

Also, this strategy will surely put your business right in the spot for considered services or clients without waiting for anyone to introduce your service or product to other companies. This strategy can be done by making cold calls, sending personalized cold emails, or engaging directly on various social networks.

Here are some basic steps that you can make to help you set up your cold outbound lead generation campaign

Get quality contact data fitting your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

You can get quality contacts (or leads) that fit your ICP by gathering data and making an analysis of the best-suited prospects for your outbound lead generation strategy. This may take some time, but the rewards will be worth it. Research can get you a long way. 

1. Identify the criteria to find and segment the best-fitting prospects for the offering. This is what we call the Ideal Customer Profile or ICP. It can be company-related in the case of B2B (size, location, revenue, industry, key departments, etc.) or person-related (location, gender, age, etc.) in the case of B2C.

2. Find prospects-related data based on the aforementioned ICP. The more qualitative the data is, the higher the chances of identifying potential sales or marketing qualified leads.
3. Engage with the prospects on the best suitable channel(s): it can be a combination of emails, text messages, DM on social networks, etc. The choice will depend on the business and the availability of data for each channel (emails and social media are the simplest to find in most cases). Please note that due to the data privacy laws, direct outreach to consumers (B2C) is not allowed in quite a few countries (all European countries are, for instance, concerned by GDPR).
   

Also, take into consideration the user behavior when farming out contacts. This will quickly filter out the prospects you should be reaching out to and those you should not give attention to. This can be done by using the tools and consulting professionals to get the job done. Get in touch with data-driven marketing services to help you successfully acquire quality leads fitting your Ideal Customer Profile.

Content Creation

After getting the data, the next step is to curate content tailored to their behavior and needs. The content must be relevant for prospects to check whatever you are offering. The return on investment for cold email marketing is worth it, and that’s why cold outbound lead generation is efficient and effective. 

Make sure that your CTAs are striking and prospects can’t help but click them. You need a strong CTA because you need to convince and motivate them to act upon your campaign. The CTA should be concise and direct. 

You should also get a hold of the right tools and software to ensure that the cold outbound campaign will be successfully executed. This is as important as creating personalized content. Your tools can make or break your content and data, so invest wisely in the right tools and people for cold outbound lead generation campaigns.

Note: as mentioned above, cold emailing should be primarily used for B2B sales efforts. A few tactics can be applied for B2C, but the approach is not the same.

Timeline

After sending your first cold email, the work doesn’t stop there. Studies show that sending emails twice a week is the sweet spot in cold email marketing for the B2B approach. This frequency is just right for your prospects not to be overwhelmed with emails and information. Fewer emails from you also increase your value, and they will deem that your message is important to be checked out. Usually, the right approach would be to create a sequence (or a couple of them in case you'd like to A/B test them), including a few touchpoints throughout a certain period of time.

As I repeatedly mention, get the right tools and partners to get this done if you do not have skilled enough internal resources. The right kind of software and people can increase the quality of your data and produce the needed results. Invest in the right tools and people for following up on leads. Lastly, you should also keep track of your goals and outcomes. This is to make sure that you are not throwing effort, time, and money onto the air. The key results are imperative for the success of your cold outbound lead generation campaign. 

Conclusion

When planning to have a data-driven marketing campaign like cold outbound lead generation, you should start by knowing who your Ideal Customer Profiles are - people or companies who are highly interested and likely to purchase your product or service. This data alone will help you grow your sales and business. SEOs are for specific types of people but this may also mean missing out on those to who you want to reach out. Cold outbound lead generations help you pick your ICP and directly reach out to this target audience. 

There will surely be challenges because you will be approaching prospects whom you were unknown to. However, you can use this to your advantage because you will be something new and fresh to their eyes. This is where your content comes in. Once you get in touch with your prospect, get the right gear by preparing quality content that they can’t say "no" to. 

A cold outbound lead generation campaign can empower you to grow your business by going out instead of just waiting for them to come to you. 

Measure once, cut twice

You may want to try this on your own but having people who are seasoned experts in this field is much better than spending money, time, and efforts with only minimum results to show. I emphasized that you should invest in the right kind of tools to make sure that this campaign will be executed successfully. Getting the right kind of people for the job is just as important. 

Having professionals for your marketing needs will help you rest easy and expect quality results for cold outbound lead generation campaigns. Consulting professionals are also the right way to do it to save money because growing your business will surely equate to investing or adding more capital. If you are going to capitalize on people, make sure to put your money on those who have proven experience and have the complete package for your marketing needs. 

Skief offer a variety of growth marketing services that can help you grow your business. They can customize your marketing plan by analyzing your business’ sales objectives and current conversion rates.