What is Outreach Marketing? 6 Tips for an Effective Outreach Strategy
One of the biggest drivers of your product or service is satisfied customers. Through good recommendations, your brand can position itself correctly. It is clear by now that the credibility and the opinion of people – especially if they are followed or admired – influence our purchasing decisions. This is why outreach is becoming a vital aspect of the online marketing game.
The virtual world is one of the determining channels to implement outreach. Before television was the main influence, but now the internet gives us multiple channels through which more and more people enjoy the admiration and respect of the public; it is through them that you can reach more interested people in what your brand has to offer. Forging a relationship with people who find your services and products relevant to them, by conveying your central brand message with the right words, can increase brand visibility as well as get leads and conversions.
What is outreach?
Outreach is an integral aspect of any marketing strategy because it focuses on connecting people with the brand and gaining loyalty and trust by building a relationship with the relevant target market of a brand or business.
It is a very active form of marketing that takes a lot of time and effort but can yield great brand exposure, build strategic partnerships that could catapult your brand to the top, and drive incredible leads and sales
6 Tips for an Effective Outreach Strategy
Outreach is a very effective content marketing strategy that relies on getting like minded persons to share your content to their own network of followers through different channels that they use to communicate with their followers. Here are six effective outreach marketing tips that can be effectively implemented with the help of a content marketing agency.
Have an engagement plan
Having a plan is the most crucial aspect of any successful outreach strategy. Plans are meant to guide the overall outcome of the strategy making it easier to measure the performance of the strategy.
First, think about what is your purpose for outreach? Do you want more traffic to your website? Do you want to get the attention of brands or persons who are likely to collaborate or partner with you? What is so spectacular about you that should make others want to share your content within their network? These are the kind of questions you should ask yourself to give a very honest response. It will shape every other aspect of the strategy you are going to develop to make the outreach successful.
Find the right engagement type and reach out
Knowing your target audience is key to understanding the best people to reach out to. If your brand offers services or products relevant to married couples, you should not be reaching out to a high school or college audience. Write out a list of persons you want to reach out to. Research well about what they do, to be sure that their platform would be the best options for your outreach.
You also need to decide which outreach type would be best for what your overall objective is. Do you want to use a radio station? A TV station? A blog site? A YouTube channel? Social media influencers? You also need to think about the outcome of that contact. Do you want mentions (talking briefly about your brand) during an event or smaller gatherings? These are essential outreach factors you need to consider carefully before reaching out to the persons behind them.
Create a catchy and persuasive content
Content, they say, is king! So if your outreach strategy is going to be successful you need to let the king out! First, have a good title. This is the first point you can easily draw the attention of those you are reaching out to. How many times have you opened an email with a catchy title? More than you can count right? Think of your content title as an elevator pitch. It is the first point of contact those you are reaching out to are having with you. So you want to make sure you make an excellent first impression that will make them curious enough to read the rest of the content you are sending to them.
The next step is to highlight the value that your brand will bring to theirs. Except of course, if you have done a favor for the person you are reaching out to in the past, then you might not really need to sweat on this because the person knows he or she is returning a favor. (If you have done something for the person before, this would also be a good time to mention it, just to tickle the person’s memory).
If otherwise, you need to sell the value of the brand to the person, you will need to think about how does it benefit them? How relevant is your brand to the person and his or her target audience? What other benefits are there besides the obvious ones that you have mentioned earlier? You also need to be persuasive in your style of writing and choice of words. Your call to action (the action you would like the user to make to further convince them about the value you are bringing to the table) must be great. It must also have a second call to action that will guide them on what to do next when they decide to work with you.
Track and follow up those you reached out to
You do not need to stalk. No! Just keep track of those that you sent an email to. You can set up a “read receipt” feature on your email. This will alert you when anyone has read the email you sent to them. So you can give them a 3 to 5 working days space before sending a follow-up message (keep it short, simple, friendly and light so it does not look like you are pestering the person).
For those who do not reply, reach out to them on other channels like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to send a follow-up message. In fact, you can even search them up on LinkedIn to understand if you have any close third-party connections with them. With this, you can kindly request that they introduce you to the person via a message.
The idea of tracking and doing a good follow-up is to casually remind the brands you are reaching out to of the message you sent earlier hoping that it triggers a positive response from them.