Outreach marketing strives to unify the present era of marketing with the conventional method. The focus of this paradigm is a human-to-human connection. Because of this, outreach marketing excels in bridging the gap between consumers and sellers.
With so much happening in the marketing world today, it can be a tad bit hard to keep pace with events. This is especially true when you consider all the trends and buzzwords at play.
Objectively, outreach marketing goes back to the basics. Instead of focusing on the marketing aspect of the business, the focus fully shifts to forming close ties with consumers.
What is Outreach Marketing
Outreach marketing shines the spotlight on influencers. Their job is to build a strong relationship with brands and their target audience.
If you’re looking to venture into this, it’s best to look for individuals and organizations with similar interests. Once you find them, you can proceed to pitch your ideas for promotional purposes.
Ideally, the influencers you seek should have hundreds of thousands of social media fans or penmanship rights to a popular blog. By referencing your brand in their conversations, they can massively drive traffic to your website.
At the same time, they will be helping boost brand awareness whilst promoting your credibility.
As research has shown, about 83% of consumers trust recommendations made by their peers over advertising.
That said, it’s now time for the rubber to meet the road. Here are 10 actionable outreach marketing tactics for success in 2019.
1. Reach out to bloggers in your niche
As alluded earlier, people are naturally wired to trust 3rd party recommendations. While there’s always going to be a temptation to toot your own horn it’s best to practice restraint. Even when you’re fairing fantastically well.
By liaising with bloggers in your field of interest, you’ll be able to form genuine connections with prospects. You can collaborate with such bloggers on content like product reviews or the occasional name drop.
Many brands usually issue a product or provide a service to bloggers as an incentive for them to promote them online.
While most bloggers issue a disclaimer about “all opinions being of their own”, it’ important to learn where to draw the line. Pragmatically speaking, it’s impossible to fathom a situation where a blogger would burn a recently established bridge.
In your pursuit of the right mold of bloggers to hire, there are a couple of key takeaways we need to mention. First off, take your time to study the writer. Ideally, you want to contact bloggers who specialize in your niche of interests.
Anything else, and you may just realize that you’ll be wasting each other’s time.
Having found the right subset of writers, you need to ensure that your message is simplified. This ensures that they are ready to go right from the word go. It also doesn’t hurt to be passionate about your products as you pen your outreach email.
2. Organize influencer events
Hosting influencer events is a great way to generate buzz about a product or service you’re looking to promote.
Easy as it sounds, there’s a lot more involved in hosting such events than simply booking a banquet room. While offering meals to influencers is the universal approach embraced by many, you can always take it a notch higher.
To streamline your strategy, you’ll first need to identify what your objectives are. Having a clearly defined map of what you want to achieve from the event is vital.
You may simply want your brand name on people’s lips, or you may be out to make connections with influencers. It could be anything really, just make sure that you’ve pinpointed what you want to gain from such gigs.
After establishing what your objectives are, you’ll find it easy to approach the right influencers.
Importantly, you should always be ready for the unexpected. Outdoor events need to have a contingency plan in case the rain comes down. It also wouldn’t hurt to have extra pens at the event. Crucially, you also want to ensure that the number of invited attendees show up.
Therefore, about a fortnight before the event, be sure to send out email reminders.
After the socialization, you want to go above and beyond the typical recap blog post. It’s always a good idea to personally follow up with each attendee. To keep the conversation going, make sure you host contests or giveaways to members of the audience.
Sharing content like images from the event plus some information about your company would also hurt. As a parting shot, make sure you take in feedback from the attendees. This will prove invaluable as you formulate the next influencer event.
3. Be authentic
Contrary to popular opinion, sharing your flaws with your audience can actually help you score some points.
While presenting a façade may have its shining moment, nothing really beats authenticity. When consumers really see your brand for what it really is, flawed just like human nature, they may actually embrace it.
On the flip side, project a near perfect image may inhibit the ability of prospects to connect with you. A good middle ground should be struck between the two extremes. An honest approach may be just what your brand is missing out on.
Unsure about what you should talk about? Well, just think about a moment you’re not especially proud of. It could be anything from a time you made a judgment error to lessons you learned from. At the end of the day, you want to reach out to the masses and establish a strong connection.
Notably, authenticity is the one selling point that sets influencers apart from the masses. If you’re not being authentic in your communication to prospects, then, you’re probably doing it wrong.
You need to always trust your influencers in terms of how they communicate your message. Your job ends once you set the agenda. Following up on the tiniest of things may actually mess up the delivery of the message.
4. Implement a network focus
A network focus can be much more effective than the best of campaigns. Essentially, you need to devise an excellent marketing campaign able to tap into more than one digital shout out.
The central theme here is networking. This means that you need to device a way to partner up with numerous social influencers on a regular basis. It can either be once a month, every week or after 3 months. In summary, just try to keep the number of influencers you’re working with at a minimal. That way, you’ll be able to compensate them for penning multiple pots.
This system tends to work because ongoing mentions are usually much more trusted than the occasional reference. The more the number of mentions, the better for the brand.
5. Appreciate influencers
Rewarding your top influencers every once in a while keeps them motivated. While it’s perfectly logical to reward them whenever they fair well, you should also try an impromptu approach.
This “just because” tact is a freestyle concept that motivates influencers in your team. Truthfully, we can all agree that having passionate advocates for your cause wouldn’t hurt your odds with prospects.
Through their word of mouth recommendations, you can go from strength to strength. This is especially true once you factor in the fact that humans love a good yarn. Who better to spin it than someone who passionately believes in the project you have going on?
Of course, some of the narratives may be told in jest. Still, they will get the masses talking about your project. At the end of the day, you want to have maximum brand exposure as a stepping stone to success. Right?
6. Resource series
While influencers are there to help you achieve your objectives, you can always converge in the middle. Instead of being fully dependent on their services, how about thinking of ways to help them with their duties?
By this, we mean crafting a guide that breaks down how you would reach out to prospects. You can include a couple of pointers, an instructional video or anything you believe will be helpful in their endeavor.
Basically, you need to conceptualize a pain point that many of your clientele encounter. Doing this will help you frame the best actionable tips for your influencers.
Ideally, all your influencers should have this resource series as part of their marketing arsenal. Not only will it get them in tune with how your prospects want, but it will also reduce the time they spend researching. This means that they will have plenty of more time interacting with audience members. A win.
7. Happy and you know it
Don’t hold back on all the fun you’re having while looking for prospects. Showcasing a different side of your nature will play well in the books of your prospects.
With your personality on full display, you’re bound to realize a considerable surge in engagement levels. The good thing about this is that you can play around with the message you dish out to prospects.
It can really be anything from a happy hour offer, a historical fact or an interesting quirk at the office. There’s really no limit to the imagination.
Don’t hesitate to radiate this feel-good factor to both your prospects and the influencers you have on board. In the long term, it will massively boost your brand image.
8. Demonstrate all the way through
Sure, having influencers in tow greatly aids your campaign. Still, you need to play your part by highlighting how you use the products your selling to the masses. If possible, you should have your co-workers join you in this venture.
By demonstrating how you interact with your own brand, you’ll be smartly showing how valuable the product can be in their lives. While at it, don’t be afraid to mention your personal likes and dislikes about specific products.
A good demonstration about how you use the brand products will get the item flying off the shelves. By standing behind your brand, you’ll be motivating members of your marketing team to keep stretching the limits. A united force always brings home the bacon.
9. Quotes and testimonials
To beef up your marketing strategy, make sure you gather some interesting quotes and testimonials. These can be particularly helpful in your campaign since people like being associated with success.
For maximum effectiveness, pick and choose only the best ones for your marketing material. You can choose to display them on your homepage or even come up with interesting SlideShare presentations.
Just remember to never be blatant about what you want to achieve.
A little finesse is necessary. You want these to be the takeaway about previous client interactions.
10. Proper outreach
As you market your brand, you want to be certain that you’re communicating with the right people. This is all made possible by mastering your sense of timing.
In an ideal scenario, you want to include influencers with a large following who have a voice within your niche. This set up also works well with happy customers who are willing to recommend your services to others.
As such, your marketing efforts need to be centered on getting through to such individuals. To do this, you need to formulate ways to track the people who are actively talking about your brand.
Once you’re able to connect with them, you’ll be better placed when it comes to reaching out to prospects.
To wrap up…
Always try to contact your list of influencers whenever you publish topics of interest. During the initial stages, outreach make take some time before you establish a subset of influencers you can count on.
At times, you may find yourself sending out 50-100 emails without getting a standout response.
It’s part of the business.
You shouldn’t be discouraged by this. Instead, make sure that you’re focused on building relationships more than getting shares, likes, and comments.
As your circle grows, you’ll discover that outreach is much easier. The connection you develop with influencers will greatly determine the trajectory of your business.
Once you’re comfortable, you can proceed to implement the listed oureach marketing tactics to achieve success.
