3 Core Components in Outbound Marketing Target, Vehicle, Message

Posted by George Athan on February 14th, 2019

There are multiple core components in Outbound Marketing. From time to time people get excited about a new tool that's going to be the game changer in their business. It can be a piece of software that's going to generate an abundance of leads, a magic script that's going to get your prospects to say YES or a specific approach that will do all the above. Although these are marketed as stand-alone systems, each one of these represents a core component of outbound lead generation. By understanding what these components are, you can optimize each part and incorporate all of them into your campaign to compound your results. At that point it becomes only a matter of documenting each step to standardize a process for your organization and make sure that it is followed by all, every time. Today I will like to focus on 3 core components of outbound marketing:

Target:

This is where you're creating your ideal client profile, your buyer personas, and building your highly-targeted list. Your target is the most important component to your campaign. If you were selling steaks to a list of Vegans, you probably wouldn't do so well. Your goal is target the prospects that would be a perfect fit for your product or service, making the decision to respond an obvious one. Find the people or companies you can add the most value to and have the greatest impact on. If you can't solve their problem or you can't help them, they won't respond to your messaging and they won't become your next client. Although this is bad, I'll tell you what would be even worse. Targeting someone whose problem you couldn't effectively solve, someone you won't be able to deliver for, and they do become your client. That would be a nightmare.

Best Practice: Instead of the waterboard approach of pouring all your efforts onto just one individual in the organization, I recommend the top-down waterfall approach of reaching out to multiple decision makers in the organization. If you don't get the response you were hoping for from one individual, you still have other irons on the fi re at that company. This will dramatically increase your responses. The reason for the top-down approach of reaching out to higher level executives is also recommended because you will often get bunted down to the person that is responsible for handling that task. When you reach out to that individual and explain that their boss's boss suggested you meet with them, that becomes a relatively easy meeting to get. On the other hand, attempting to do this in re-verse and telling a higher-level executive that they should meet with you because a lower level employee suggested so, will not nearly have the same effect.

Vehicle:

We have many different delivery vehicles to choose from and deciding which to use often depends on the size and complexity of your sale. If you are trying to generate leads to reach small business owners, it can be as simple as only using cold email or LinkedIn for prospecting. If you're trying to get meetings with C-Suite executives of large corporations, you may have to use a combination of those, plus direct mail, telephone, digital marketing, and even singing telegram. I'm not suggesting the last one but the more you touch your prospect using different vehicles, the better your chances of achieving awareness. This is the first stage of the AIDA Model: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action.

Even with all the excitement surrounding cold email, the reality is it's just another vehicle. At one point, direct mail was the go-to vehicle until that became oversaturated and the term 'junk mail' was born. Cold calling was all the rage until people got tired of 'telemarketing calls'. Just as quickly, cold email is being abused and, just like fifteen years ago, more and more people are talking about getting spam. At MindStorm, not only do we incorporate cold email into all our clients' campaigns, but we also use LinkedIn in a specific way to prospect, because executives that are on LinkedIn hardly get any other messages in their InMail box. As an added bonus, LinkedIn also sends an email copy of the message to the user with almost 100% deliverability to their inbox.

Best Practice: Contact your prospect using multiple vehicles. Consider both the value of the meeting and the potential profit from the sale and adjust your spend accordingly. For big ticket sales and high value meetings, consider adding 3-Dimensional mailings to your campaign. These are physical items being delivered, which require uncommon mailing packaging. Sending someone a FedEx package will have a completely different effect, thus response rate, than sending a regular envelope, even when the exact same letter is inside. Start with easier and cheaper vehicles and then escalate to more expensive, attention-grabbing methods over time and touches. This will enable you to capture the low hanging fruit and secure many meetings at a lower cost per lead. This is an important strategy considering we are building a system that we will scale to manage volume.

Message:

When we're talking about the message, we're talking about the language used to communicate with a prospect. This can be everything from the copywriting of your landing pages or direct mail letters, to the telephone scripts your salespeople use. The message is what connects the benefit of your product to the target audience you're reaching out to. This is another vital component to your lead generation process because regardless of the vehicle you're using to connect with a prospect, without the right message you'll never move them through the next phases of the AIDA Model - Creating Interest and Desire for your services, eventually getting your prospect to Act.

When we talk about systems, we mean processes that can be repeated to get predictable results. To achieve this, certain things have to be constant so that they produce results that are consistent and therefore can be relied on. One of these constants is the message. How can you predict with certainty the outcome of a campaign if the message changed every time? You couldn't. The more variables that you make constant, the more you can rely on your expectation of the results. Even yet, with all things being the same every time, responses change because people change. What works today will not necessarily work tomorrow. With this much uncertainty and constantly moving targets, it would be impossible to generate predictable results with a different message each time.

George Athan , CEO of MindStorm, is a business growth expert, keynote speaker and international best-selling author. Athan teaches business owners and executives how to rapidly grow and scale their business.

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