What is outreach marketing? Today, I’m explaining everything there is to know about it, why it’s become an essential part of the marketing landscape and how to implement it effectively.🤩
🔎 Before we reveal all the secrets of outreach, let’s start with its definition:
Also known as “proximity marketing”, this is a strategy in which companies contact people or other companies to promote a product or service (expert, journalist, influencer…). The aim is to develop real relationships with people who can help or participate in the growth of your brand.
Ready to discover outreach? Fasten your seat belt 🚀
What’s the point of outreach marketing?
Outreach marketing is a multi-functional strategy that offers several key advantages for companies:
This emerging approach has become a new pillar offering companies the opportunity to connect directly with their audience and create lasting relationships.
5 steps to outreach marketing
1. Define your outreach objectives
Before jumping in headlong, it’s crucial to clearly define your objectives.
🎯 Would you like to :
- Expand your professional network?
- Promote your content?
- Find new customers?
- Boost your company’s reputation?
- Increase your sales?
- Achieving other business objectives?
Establishing your goals from the outset will enable you to guide your efforts effectively and avoid mistakes. You need to know what your intentions are and how you want to achieve them. In order to succeed in this mission, which may prove more difficult than expected, there is a method: S.M.A.R.T.
👉🏻 We’ve already written an article explaining all about S.M.A.R.T lenses HERE!
2. Identify and understand your target
The key to the success of any outreach initiative lies in understanding your audience. When you set up an outreach initiative, your target is the personalities, experts and even influencers who can help you with your promotional strategy. But it’s more than just a partnership, it’s a real exchange between two people!
🎯 Take the time to identify and grasp :
- Why do you want to create a bond with this person?
- What added value do you have to offer?
- What interest do these people have in helping you promote your product/service?
- What criteria do you consider essential when choosing a personality?
💡 To help you make the right choice, I’d advise you to create a buyer persona, which will give you an overall vision of who you want to work with and why.
3. What types of outreach marketing are there?
Congratulations! 👏 You’ve defined your objectives and your target. Now let’s take a look at the different types of outreach so you can find the one that suits you best.
LinkedIn outreach
LinkedIn is the B2B tool par excellence, with over 850 million users worldwide, it’s an infinite source of profiles ready to exchange with you! LinkedIn lets you :
- 🎯 Precise targeting.
- 🗣️ Get in touch easily.
- 📨 Set up automation campaigns.
Facebook outreach
Facebook is the ideal platform for awareness campaigns. In addition to its enormous user base (2.85 billion), Facebook also boasts one of the most advanced data and analytics platforms.This makes it easy for you to find influencers and evaluate their influence.
Here are a few tips to help you run an outreach campaign on Facebook:
- 🤝 Join groups and interact with other members.
- 📝 Create a list of prospects to target those likely to be interested.
- 🤓 Optimize your profile (photos, description…)
Instagram outreach
If your core business is B2C, Instagram is your ally. It’s easy to set up partnerships with influencers/ambassadors. Influencer marketing is a great way to get your products in front of the right target.
Users love Instagram for its aesthetics and creativity. Instagram influences 75%(source: Retaildive) of users’ purchasing decisions! Contacting and partnering with influencers is a great way to boost sales or your brand awareness. ⭐️
TikTok outreach
Although mainly aimed at the younger “Gen Z” generation, TikTok can be a great springboard if you’re looking to raise your profile or improve your image.
On this platform, you’ll find not only influencers, but also experts in their fields with whom you can create a powerful outreach campaign.
➡️ For example, you could hold a “live” event together so that your two communities can exchange ideas and get to know each other’s businesses and services.
Twitter outreach
Twitter is one of the best places to run an outreach campaign. Why is that? It’s where many opinion leaders are found. Here are a few tips to help you succeed:
- ✨ Look for influencers or brands with high engagement rates.
- 👀 Identify your prospects in certain publications to create a link.
- 💬 Interact with their content.
Once you’ve warmed up your leads, you can sneak into their DMs with a personalized message and offer them to take part in your strategy. 🐦
Email outreach
Email outreach involves sending a cold-email to customers in the hope of getting them to take action that will help move your business forward. With over 4.1 billion people using their mailbox daily, this is one of the most effective channels to use for your strategy. 🚀
Here’s how to run a successful e-mail outreach campaign:
- 🧐 Use an intriguing object.
- 💌 Create compelling emails.
- 🛠️ Use a good marketing tool, like Waalaxy.
- 📈 A/B test your e-mails.
One of the biggest advantages of using email as an outreach channel is that it’s easy to contact your targets. 📊
What’s the difference with email marketing?
Email marketing and outreach marketing are not the same thing. With email marketing, you communicate with people who have given you prior permission to send them marketing communications. You have a B2C or B2B relationship for commercial purposes.
In addition, you’re not going to contact them with a commercial objective, but above all a relationship one.
Tips: the people you’re going to contact are professionals, so you can contact them at their professional e-mail address without their consent.
🚨 But be careful not to spam them!
Blog outreach
The aim of this outreach technique is to get in touch with well-known bloggers so that they can help you promote your service or product. This exchange can range from simple sharing of your articles to co-writing, for example.
The objectives are :
- 👀 Increase your visibility.
- 🔗 Get quality backlinks.
- 🤩 Improve your SEO strategy with your new self-help network.
Take a look at :
- 😎 Blogger influence using tools like Buzzsumo.
- ⭐️ Domain authority.
- 🤔 The relevance of their articles to your topics.
- 💙 Its audience, do they share, like or comment on the articles?
4. Where to find our outreach partners
Shall we continue our checklist? 👀
- Objectives ✅
- Target ✅
- Outreach type ✅
➡️ Now we just need to know where to find and how to contact your future partners.
Social networks
As seen above, you can find your future partners on social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter…), but you can also contact them directly via these channels.
Although at first glance this may seem unprofessional, it’s important to remember that the primary aim of outreach marketing is to build relationships. So, by contacting them on their networks, you :
- 🚀 Create a relationship faster.
- 🎨 Can personalize your approach by making references to their work.
Emailing
Emailing remains an essential tool for outreach marketing, enabling you to make contact with potential partners in a targeted, personalized way. However, for your email campaigns to be effective, it’s crucial to go beyond simply sending mass e-mails.
💡 Our tips :
- Keep your target in mind.
- Personalize your message, clearly explaining your objectives! No teasing here.
- You need to make this person want to meet you and potentially work with you.
- A call to action can be a proposal for a call or a meeting.
If you don’t have the e-mail addresses of your potential partners, you can use an Email Finder. What is it ?
It’s a tool that helps you find the email addresses you need. Our favorite is Waalaxy‘s email finder. Its advantages are :
- ✨ No special skills are required.
- ⏳ It saves you time.
- ✅ Emails are professional and verified to avoid unpleasant surprises.
- 🫡 It is RGPD compliant.
- 📋 It helps you enrich your CRM with ease.
Sample :
Real life
Finally, don’t forget that face-to-face interaction can also be very effective. Whether at work, a seminar or an outing to the park, you can meet people with whom to collaborate. 🤗
Creating attractive content
It’s already the last step: Create content! 🤩
This is the fun part of the strategy. Depending on what you’ve agreed with your “relations”, you may well co-create the latter.
Here are a few tips to help you complete this step:
- 📆 Use planning software such as Clikcup to organize yourself both with your collaborator (meeting, task distribution…) and in the creation of your content(Content Plan…).
- 🧐 Choose a format that’s consistent with the partners you’ve chosen. For example, if you want to promote a blog post, you won’t propose this to an influencer, but rather to a blogger.
- 👩🏻🎨 Create engaging content. The aim in addition to the relational aspect is to have an exchange through collaboration. A win-win in a way. So, if someone is interested in helping you with your promotion, they need to be able to relate to the content you’re going to create. If the content isn’t of high quality and your audience isn’t there, the whole purpose of the exchange falls by the wayside. 🥲
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Best practices for a successful outreach strategy
- 💼 Build strong relationships with your partners :
⏳ Invest time in getting to know your contacts, understanding their needs and motivations, and demonstrating your commitment to helping them achieve their goals too.
🌟 Cultivate authentic, beneficial relationships to foster trust and long-term collaboration.
- 📧 Message personalization: Maximize the effectiveness of your outreach campaigns :
🎯 Use tools to send personalized messages, tailored to the specific needs of each contact, to optimize the chances of conversion.
3. 📊 Measure and analyze the results of your outreach campaigns :
🔍 Use analysis tools to monitor your performance indicators and identify areas for improvement.
Frequently asked questions
What tools are needed for a successful outreach campaign?
➡️ Here’s a selection of the best tools to help you with your outreach campaigns. ⭐️ Most of them are free, with paid versions offering more features:
| Tools | Functions | Price |
| SEMrush | Identify industry trends and keywords. | $129,95/mo |
| BuzzSumo | Find influencers / trends. | $199 /mo |
| Waalaxy | Create and send personalized emails. Manage your contacts and track your emailing performance. | Free |
| ChatGPT | Generate creative and engaging texts for your emails and messages. | Free |
| Meta | Create personalized links and track the performance of your outreach campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. | Free |
| Notion | Manage your outreach projects and centralize your information. | Free |
| Calendly | Schedule appointments with ease. | Free |
How to combine outreach marketing and inbound marketing?
Outreach Marketing and Inbound Marketing, although different, complement each other perfectly to create an effective marketing strategy.
- Outreach Marketing enables you to proactivelyidentify and target qualified ambassadors who match your personas and who will help you promote your service/product.
- Inbound marketing attracts leads naturally by creating valuable content.
Outreach amplifies your Inbound reach by targeting strategic prospects and directing them to your resources.
Inbound Marketing and Outreach Marketing are not competitors, but complementary. They work together to attract, nurture and convert prospects into loyal customers.
