DUAL POWERED MARKETING › acton... · BEST PRACTICES + BENEFITS OF INBOUND MARKETING 5. BEST PRACTICES + BENEFITS OF OUTBOUND MARKETING 6. HOW TO INTEGRATE BOTH STRATEGIES INTO YOUR

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Introduction

What’s better – inbound or outbound marketing?

Modern marketers are frequently asked this question from people who want a clear and definitive, but defining these two terms is really not that simple. When you force yourself to choose which one is superior, you are ignoring the benefits they have as complementary efforts.

There are benefits to both inbound and outbound marketing that your organization can leverage to craft more effective outcomes. In today’s digital marketing world, it shouldn’t be an either/or decision.

When your organization learns to embrace both strategies, they set themselves up to reap a much greater return on investment (ROI), and who doesn’t want that? OUTBOUND

MARKETING?

INBOUNDMARKETING?

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Table of Contents

1 . W H AT I S I N B O U N D M A R K E T I N G ?

2 . W H AT I S O U T B O U N D M A R K E T I N G ?

3 . W H AT I S T H E N E W B U Y E R ’ S J O U R N E Y ?

4 . B E S T P R AC T I C E S + B E N E F I T S O F I N B O U N D M A R K E T I N G

5 . B E S T P R AC T I C E S + B E N E F I T S O F O U T B O U N D M A R K E T I N G

6 . H O W TO I N T E G R AT E B OT H S T R AT E G I E S I N TO YO U R M A R K E T I N G P L A N

7 . H O W TO M E A S U R E YO U R S U CC E S S

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What is Inbound Marketing?

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Inbound marketing doesn’t have a clear definition because it’s still a relatively new concept. The emergence of inbound marketing occurred about a decade ago in the digital marketing realm of business. When buyers realized they could choose their own journey in terms of research and product discovery, products like marketing automation began to emerge and adjust to accommodate this consumer behavior.

Rather than relying on vendors for information, consumers turned to the Web to conduct their own research on the products and services they were interested in. The closest comparison of a historical definition of inbound marketing is reflected in peer-to-peer referrals, because, at its core, inbound marketing is all about getting customers to come to your business.

Before consumers had the Web to look up reviews of your products or services, they talked to people they knew and trusted to obtain an opinion about a product or service offering of interest.

In modern times, inbound marketing can be defined as activities that are designed to attract the attention of customers and prospects with the purpose of giving them a reason to come to your business. While outbound is classified as push marketing, inbound can be defined as pull marketing because it involves implementing tactics and pushing out engaging content designed to attract the attention of your target audience.

Defining Inbound Marketing at All Levels of Experience


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Essentially, you are giving your prospects the freedom to determine their own path to purchase from you, but are leaving bread crumbs or markers along the way that allow them to find you. It’s gradual seeding of brand awareness that builds interest and pulls them in to learn more and eventually become loyal customers. While many businesses use inbound to build their brand and improve customer retention, it’s commonly used as a top of funnel tactic to attract new leads.

Unsurprisingly, inbound is one of the hottest trends in business today thanks to its many benefits. Inbound marketing helps you create value around your brand, and compel customers to come to you. What’s not to like?

“9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you.”

E A R N E S T A G E N C Y

Search …


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Inbound marketing tactics include blogging, SEO, social media, content marketing, and review/referral sites, proving you can implement an inbound strategy in a number of ways! All of these tactics offer a certain level of autonomy to empower prospects to find information on their own. If executed properly, all of these tools will help draw attention to your company.

You will learn more about best practices for blogging, SEO, social media, and content marketing later in this eBook. But whether you are looking to become more familiar with inbound marketing or simply looking for new ways to generate new leads for your business, there is ample opportunity for you to leverage this tactic for better results.

SEO

R E V I E W / R E F E R R A L S I T E S

Social MediaCONTE NT MARKE TING

Blogging

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“On average, 51% of companies are currently using marketing automation. More than half of B2B companies (58%) plan to adopt the technology.”

E M A I L M O N D A Y . C O M , 2 0 1 9

What is Outbound Marketing?

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Outbound marketing has always been about pushing your message to mass audiences. Outbound marketing is known as a one-size-fits-all approach common during the “Mad Men” era of marketing where businesses spent enormous amounts of money on a sole campaign message and pushed it to get as much exposure as possible. It is also commonly referred to as “interruption marketing” because the lack of personalization and tactics suchas cold calling interrupt the lives of your prospects.

Unfortunately, due to this common usage of outbound marketing, it’s gained a bad rep over the years. However, as technology has evolved, so has outbound marketing and the way we modernly define and employ it in business …

Defining Outbound Marketing at All Levels of Experience


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Today, outbound marketing has transformed and gained a new identity. In the modern era of marketing, we define it as a push of relevant messaging to known personas that address their pain points and interests so that your company and its products or service offering stay top-of-mind during the decision-making step of the buyer’s journey.

This significant change in the way we approach outbound marketing is due to the fact that we can now leverage behavior profiling, activity history, and marketing automation to drive success. Marketers now, more than ever before, have the ability to create personalized messages with relevant information. This allows them to reach their customers at a highly personalized level.

Consider emails, for example. As a consumer, there is absolutely nothing more frustrating than receiving an email that doesn’t apply to you, right? Receiving these types of emails feels bombarding. They clog your inboxes, take up precious seconds of your day, create more steps in your workflows, and equal frustration.


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It becomes a completely different story, however, if a company is sending you information that is timely, relevant, and interesting to you. For instance, if you download a white paper on a website and receive an email from the company that thanks you for taking the time to do so, and suggests more relevant and tailored content, you are much more likely to engage than if you got a blanketed promo message that has nothing to do with you, your goals, or your interests.

A W A R E N E S S

I N T E R E S T

C O N S I D E R AT I O N

I N T E N T

E V A L U AT I O N

P U R C H A S E

E m a i l i s b y f a r o n e o f t h e m o s t e f f e c t i v e t o o l s f o r a c h i e v i n g R O I a n d t h e p o s s i b i l i t i e s f o r c o n n e c t i n g w i t h y o u r p r o s p e c t s o n a m o r e p e r s o n a l i z e d a n d c u s t o m i z e d l e v e l a r e e n d l e s s w i t h t h e f u n c t i o n a l i t y ! S o m e o t h e r d i g i t a l o u t b o u n d m a r k e t i n g t a c t i c s i n c l u d e r e t a r g e t i n g a d s , v i d e o , a c c o u n t b a s e d m a r k e t i n g ( A B M ) , a n d m o b i l e . N o n - d i g i t a l e f f o r t s i n c l u d e d i r e c t m a i l , t e l e v i s i o n , r a d i o , a n d p h o n e .

As you dive deeper into this eBook, you will discover best practices for all these tactics as we break them down into specifics to show you how you can connect with your prospects in a more timely and relevant fashion.

“65% of consumers spend 16+ minutes comparison-shopping before making a purchase.”

C O N V E R S I O N X L , 2 0 1 9

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“81% of shoppers conduct online research before buying.”

A D W E E K , 2 0 1 9

Turn Leads into

Customers

What is the New Buyer’s Journey?

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With the evolution of technology as it stands today, there has been a substantial shift in the buyer’s journey. Today’s buyers have access to an unlimited amount of information to help them research their options and make a final purchasing decision.

Prospects are in the driver’s seat, and directing their own buyer’s journey. Consumers are in control, but that’s okay, because now consumers can do a lot of the leg work for marketers. To be successful, marketers just need to be able to track where customers are in their journey, and be prepared to respond at the right time with information to help their prospects find a solution that is right for them.

Turn Customers

Into Advocates

Turn Contacts into Leads

Turn Awareness

into Contacts

Generates Awareness

EXPANDCONVERTNURTURECAPTUREATTRACT


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According to Demand Gen Report, 78% of consumers today start their buyer’s journey with a web search, while 50% of them turn to social media and peer reviews to help influence their buying decisions. These activities directly relate to the first two stages of the buyer’s journey: attract and capture. This is what inbound marketing is at its core. You are generating awareness of your product or service, and using the momentum of that awareness to your audience and gather the necessary information to turn them into known contacts.

Even in the first two stages of the buyer's journey, modern marketers use outbound tactics to intelligently get the right messages and content in front of the right buyer the right time.

As you can see, building a relationship with customers should be a two-way street, incorporating push and pull tactics to keep the sales cycle alive and exciting throughout.

If you want an example of the benefits of outbound and inbound marketing in real life, imagine a single guy, entering the dating scene and waiting for his perfect partner to show up. He’s in the right place, and looks nice and attractive, and there’s a chance his perfect partner will materialize and sit down next to him. However, this single guy can increase his chance of success by also actively seeking out interesting candidates on dating sites, sending messages and socializing with potential love interests.

In sum, two ways of communication provide two times the opportunities.


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The dating analogy is particularly relevant if you consider the later parts of relationships. Imagine building a relationship where one partner is always the first to call or text, and the other just waits to be contacted. That’s not necessarily the best approach.

Similar to the way we nurture our personal relationships, when it comes to marketing to our prospects effectively from the attract to expand stage, we must adopt outbound strategies that help them keep moving along. This is where outbound comes to life. Outbound marketing supports the concept of keeping you top-of-mind throughout their buyer’s journey.

Just because you’ve attracted new prospects, doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy. You have to nurture them with outbound strategies in order to really see the return from your inbound tactics.

Now that you have a clearer idea about the power of dual marketing, we can begin to dive into specific tactics for each strategy in these later chapters …

“50% of leads are qualified, but not yet ready to buy.”

G L E A N S T E R R E S E A R C H

“Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost.”

F O R R E S T E R R E S E A R C H

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One of the best practices/tactics for an inbound marketing strategy is blogging. Blogging is a proven technique for attracting visitors to your website that allows you to begin building a relationship with your audience.

More importantly, a well written and informative blog can help you …

• Establish your company as a knowledgeable and helpful resource that your prospect would feel secure about engaging with in a business relationship.

• Improve your organic search results dramatically, especially when you are able to maintain a steady frequency of posts. The frequency you post should reflect your industry and business and there is no one-size-fits all frequency standard to follow. Your frequency is often determined by the size and capacity of your team.

• Stimulate social sharing to help spread awareness of your brand and put you in front of your prospects.

Managing a blog can be a challenge, despite its many benefits, and it can be difficult to keep up with the relentless consumer demand for fresh, high-quality content, especially if your company relies on unpaid contributors to submit content. It’s a good idea to assign job functionality and responsibility to an employee to maintain the blog and content calendar, and don’t be afraid to hire freelancers if you need additional help.

Best Practices + Benefits of Inbound Marketing

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To ensure a great return from your blogging strategy, we suggest following these best practices:

1. Create an editorial calendar – An editorial calendar will not only help you keep track of your blog posts and subject matter, but help you ensure your blogging efforts support other marketing efforts such as webinars, tradeshows, product launches, etc. It helps you prioritize what needs to be written first, and helps keep you organized.

2. Include social sharing buttons – We live in the age of social media and there should be no doubt in your minds about how important it is to include social sharing options on your website. Plugins like Shareaholic or Click-to-Tweet allow you to easily create social sharing messages for your audiences to send out. A good rule of thumb is to make it stupid-simple and user-friendly!

3. Update your blog at least twice a week – This may seem tedious if you’re new to blogging, but doing at least this many posts per week will provide a huge boost to your inbound SEO strategy (which we’ll cover in later chapters) and improve your chances of appearing in organic search results.

4. Keep a consistent blog schedule – A huge benefit of blogging is giving your prospects a reason to come to you and building trust in your brand. You can’t do that if you don’t practice consistency and fall short with dead airwaves. Keeping your blogging efforts consistent enables you to ensure your readers’ expectations are always met.


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5. Use keywords that match your blog copy – This is another important factor influencing the success of your SEO strategy. You want to be sure, once again, you’re fulfilling readers’ expectations. To do this, make sure keywords you are targeting for this post directly relate to your content. Volume of traffic to your blog isn’t very useful if your readers don’t find your materials useful or relevant.

6. Make sure your content is valuable to your reader – You want to offer as much useful and educational material as possible. Try to avoid ANY self-promotion. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule if you have a new product release and a lot of PR circulating about it, for example. You can certainly share about and create blog posts around this. However, you want to be sure the purpose of your content is always focused on your audience and providing them with information that promotes awareness. shouldn’t deliver a sales pitch with every post, but focus on giving your readers content that drives value.

7. Add a call-to-action – This is a subtle and effective way to generate leads through your blog. Adding in a link to gated content that is relevant to the post is a good tactic that motivates your blog readers to provide them with the information you need to begin marketing to them.

Now that you know the best practices and many benefits of blogging, you can move into the best practices and benefits of developing an SEO strategy for your brand!


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The key to success in online marketing, at its most basic form, is to capture the attention of the masses that rely on organic search for results. Your goal is to create content that provides the best answer when people are searching for information about an issue or problem that your product or service helps solve.

Quality is everything as far as SEO marketing goes. Gone are the days when you stuff your content with keywords and tricks intended to fool search engines. Search engines like Google are getting smarter everyday, and they’re onto us. Their algorithms have changed over the years with the evolution of technology. As a result, there is now less of an emphasis on mastering the traditional tricks of SEO and more emphasis than ever before on the fundamentals of good writing.


Google, for example, is now able to read and parse web pages on its own, and doesn’t need much help from humans. This means you can get further with search simply by writing with clarity and elegance.

When it comes to content and SEO, it’s all about relevance and quality over quantity. You need to build a robust website and digital presence, which serves educational content and answers the questions and solves the needs of your prospects.

“The golden rule for SEO as it stands today is to write for people, NOT search engines.”

K A R E N C A S E Y,S E N I O R M A N A G E R O F C H A N N E L E N A B L E M E N T

A T A C T - O N S O F T W A R E

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“61% of marketers say growing SEO/organic presence is a high inbound marketing priority.”

“ S T A T E O F I N B O U N D ” , H U B S P O T , 2 0 1 8

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The top five tips to optimize your website for search engine optimization (SEO), include: …

1. Know your audience and the language they use – Use keywords and phrases that are relevant to your audience uses throughout your content. Remember, your audience is the one entering the question into the search engine, so you have to put yourself in their shoes and ask, “How would I search for a solution for this problem?” Don’t be afraid to ask around the office to get opinions or ideas!

Often, the most difficult part of marketing is stepping outside of your own mind and into the mindset of your buyers. There are a lot of tools that can help with this like Ubersuggest. For any keyword you enter, it will scrape Google’s autosuggest feature and return the most commonly-used long-tail queries that begin with your keyword phrase.

2. Write quality content – This will help keep visitors on your page longer, and search engines like Google will recognize that. You should pay attention to your content, and keep paragraphs short, and break up your content with subheaders and bullets to make the copy more absorbable for your buyer.

3. Include title tags – Write your title tags to indicate exactly what is on the page. Use keywords early in your title, and keep them between 8 and 55 characters, including spaces.


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4. Use responsive design – Don’t undermine the importance of this! According to eMarketer, tablets and smartphones drive 39% of paid search clicks in North America, so you are missing out on traffic if you’re not optimizing your web presence with responsive design and make sure your website displays well across different devices.

5. Set a canonical URL – This helps reduce the number of issues you have with any duplicate content.

Now that you know how to optimize your website and build your SEO and blogging strategies, it’s time to consider social media as part of your inbound marketing plan.


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Consumers and businesses alike use social media to connect with brands, research solutions, and solve their customer service problems. According to Forrester’s Social Technographics report, 100% of business decision-makers use social media for work purposes. This makes having an active social presence mandatory for most companies today.

Most often, companies wonder where to begin when they’re starting from scratch with social media. To start, we advise you to identify the networks where your customers expect to find you, whether that’s LinkedIn, Google My Business, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. If you’re selling in the B2B marketplace, for example, LinkedIn is probably where you’ll focus. If you are selling to consumers, however, you may steer towards Facebook or Instagram first.

Next, you will need to develop a compelling content library to be able to promote on your channels. People won’t pay attention to you on social media unless you have something interesting to say that motivates them to keep wanting to learn more and inspires them to share.

That is why it’s important to develop a content strategy before executing a social media strategy. In addition to promoting things like eBooks, blogs, white papers, videos, or reports, you can also share customer testimonies and reviews and employee reviews to educate your target audience about your culture and values.


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Any links to helpful resources will help your audience find answers to their questions and begin to see you as their go-to source for information.

One of the more obvious uses for social media, of course, is for public relations. For instance, you could use social media to promote a live event or tradeshow, or announce a new product launch or new hire for your company.

The options are endless, but the point is that you are providing a method for your prospects to connect with and build trust in you.

You can’t just share anything and expecting results, though. Here are some effective tips to help boost engagements across your social media channels …


1. Develop a familiar tone that makes your audience feel comfortable and is reflective of your company culture – This is a medium for engagement, so you need to speak the right language.

2. Post questions that stimulate engagement and response – This will help prompt sharing.

3. Maintain a steady posting cadence – Different networks may require a different amount of posts per day than others. You must be mindful of the network’s tone as well as the tone of your business and how they correspond. Set an expectation for frequency, and stick to it to drive success.

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4. Use multimedia to keep your posts stimulating – Provide a variety of content types to keep things fresh on your social channels such as images, videos, texts, infographics, etc.

5. Push the envelope – Don’t be afraid to push the envelope depending on what industry you’re a part of. Social networks are expected to be free-wheeling environments, so try something out of the ordinary for your company like hosting a contest or sharing a “day in the life” post featuring a client or employee.

N e x t , w e ’ l l d i s c u s s c o n t e n t m a r k e t i n g , a m a r k e t i n g t a c t i c t h a t e n h a n c e s a l l y o u r i n b o u n d m a r k e t i n g e f f o r t s t o d r i v e t r u e s u c c e s s f o r y o u r o r g a n i z a t i o n .

“80% of social media B2B leads come from LinkedIn.”

“ T H E S O P H I S T I C A T E D M A R K E T E R ’ S G U I D E T O

L I N K E D I N ” , L I N K E D I N

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“56% of businesses reported they want to increase their content creation spending.”

C O N T E N T M A R K E T I N G I N S T I T U T E , 2 0 1 9

“92% of marketers reported that their company views content as a business asset.”

C O N T E N T M A R K E T I N G I N S T I T U T E , 2 0 1 9

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Customer education has long been an effective sales and marketing approach, but now buyers research products and solutions online well in advance of directly engaging with sellers. Marketers must provide a plentiful amount of information, on-and-offline, to inform buyers, gain their trust, and stay top of mind with them for when they’re ready to buy.

Content comes in an infinite variety, from videos to images to emails to eBooks to whitepapers to web pages, and more. The key characteristic that defines content marketing in and of itself, however, is that it serves some business purpose through insight and education, instead of persuasion. It is not a sales pitch.

Despite the value of content marketing, it can be a hard strategy for marketers to adopt and master. In fact, a recent study from the Content Marketing Institute showed that while most marketers use content marketing tactics, few believe they actually do it well.

“78% of buyers are hungry for information around their business challenge.”

E A R N E S T A G E N C Y

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The top four tips for implementing a content marketing strategy include: …

1 . A N A L Y Z E Y O U R C U S T O M E R S ’ B U Y I N G

P R O C E S S

It is important to consider what content you’ll need to attract, nurture, convert,

retain and upsell to your customers because you need to make sure it

addresses the needs of each of your persona types throughout different

stages of the buyer journey.

2 . U N D E R S T A N D A N D S E G M E N T Y O U R A U D I E N C E

This is an effective way to uncover who your target customers are, which helps

identify what topics your content should be covering. Start by asking yourself and your sales team a few

questions like:

- W h o a r e o u r i d e a l p r o s p e c t s a n d c u s t o m e r s ?

- H o w d o t h e y m a k e b u y i n g d e c i s i o n s ? W h a t a r e t h e i r q u e s t i o n s o r p a i n p o i n t s ?

- W h a t d o t h e y p e r c e i v e a s v a l u a b l e ?

When we get into outbound later in this eBook, you will see how

segmenting your audience by persona makes a huge impact and improves

your chances of success!

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3 . I D E N T I F Y T H E R I G H T C O N T E N T F O R M U L A

To do this, you need to be sure your content is doing different things for

different customers at different stages of their journey. For instance, during

the “attract stage,” your content should generate interest in your company and

establish you as a thought leader. In the ”capture stage,” you will want to

stimulate purchase consideration and position your company as a provider

they will want to work with. During the “nurture stage,” you want to subtly

continue to provide informative content that helps educate how you can solve

your personas’ particular pain points. In the “convert phase,” you will want to provide content that shows a great

customer experience and convinces your prospects that you are the best

choice. This phase solidifies your value, and is where you should use reviews and testimonials to prove your value

and worth as a business. Finally, during the “expand phase your goal is to

engage current customers and encourage them to become brand

advocates. During this stage, aim to educate them on how to utilize your

product or services to its full potential.

4 . R E P U R P O S E Y O U R C O N T E N T U S I N G T H E R U L E

O F F O U R S

We recommend that you repurpose content up to four times. So, for

instance, this eBook is based on a webinar. It could also become a blog post series or infographic series to stress the points within the original piece of content. Different people

consume content in different ways, so the more you can diversify your assets, the more likely you are to reach a wide range of consumers. You get maximum

impact and make the process of creating content much more

manageable, because you are able to reduce the number of topics you

develop and focus on the “meat and potatoes” of your story.

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Best Practices + Benefits of Outbound Marketing

Once you’ve captured the attention of your prospects, the landing pages on your website is where everything comes together and your inbound efforts really pay off. However, your landing pages should serve as the bridge between inbound and outbound. In order to gain that conversion from your landing page, you have to give your prospects reasons to engage with you on an ongoing basis.

Make sure your landing pages are optimized to drive conversions, so you can capture information on prospects and begin engaging with them using outbound tactics. As an example, Act-On Software has a landing page that invites prospects to take a video tour of its marketing automation platform.

You want to ensure every inbound CTA has a dedicated landing page; basically, anywhere you request a click or visit to a particular page. For example, if you have a lot of eBooks to offer, you should have a dedicated landing page for each one…

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Each of your dedicated landing pages should have a form to capture your prospect’s information. The length of each form should vary depending on the function and purpose of each type of content. Vary the type of information you request from your prospects so they don’t abandon your forms.

A good example of this is asking someone to signup for a newsletter versus asking them to signup for a webinar. You really only need a person’s first name and email address for a newsletter, so the fields you use should be as minimal as possible; whereas, with a webinar, you can get away with asking for more information, especially when it pertains to the topic at hand. If you are promoting your webinar on the benefits of integrating technology platforms with CRM, there will be less friction among prospects when you ask what CRM system they’re currently using because it’s a relevant registration topic/field.

You should also consider conducting A/B testing to help improve and optimize your conversions along the way. It will help you determine if your headlines, body copy, layouts, color schemes, image use, and CTAs in your email marketing efforts are actually working.

This just begins to cover how using outbound and inbound marketing together drives success. Before we dive further into those concepts, however, we have to understand how outbound specifically benefits you.

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When we look at outbound marketing benefits and best practices, we should first consider email marketing. Judging

by the size of most peoples’ inboxes, it’s easy to think of email as SPAM, but email is still a marketing powerhouse!

It’s constantly undervalued, but remains one of the most effective

methods of communication in terms of ROI (return on investment).

Email is one of the major areas Act-On users sees the most improvement in,

especially when they share relevant information that keeps their business top of mind during the consideration

phase of the buyer’s journey.

Competing for sustained attention, however, is no walk in the park today! Just think of your own cluttered inbox

…

The two best methods to put you ahead of the competition are utilizing

behavior-triggered emails and automated lead nurturing programs.

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Once you get started with this, look at patterns that indicate your prospects’ interest or needs. Is there a specific topic they keep viewing in different formats? Is there a video they keep coming back to watch? Once you know this information, identify where they’re at in their buyer's journey. Sometimes, the answer is as simple as the shopping cart or checkout process. For B2B, however, the answer can become complex in a hurry. For instance, it can be hard to tell if their at the decision-making stage when they’re on a form to setup an appointment with a sales rep or schedule a demo.?Therefore, you have to work with your team to determine what actions define each stage in the buyer journey

Once you’ve defined these areas, you can create tailored messages that directly relate to your prospects in these moments.

A behavior-triggered email is, essentially, an email that is triggered by an action or lack of an action. Basically, you trigger an email to be sent to one person based on something they’ve done. Have they visited a key page on your website that indicates product or service offering interest? Did they abandon their shopping cart? Have they been viewing the same product for weeks on end? Do they need help being pushed over the edge to be converted to customer status?

Every business is different, so it’s important for you to look at how your audience is different and how your prospects explore products.

“Trigger emails, statistically, have higher open rates and click-through rates (CTR) than traditional one-off emails, because you trigger a message when a prospect is actively engaged.”

E M A R K E T E R

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Lead nurturing is another essential part of any outbound marketing strategy. A lead nurturing program is, essentially, a series of emails that are triggered at specific points in time. It allows you to gradually warm up leads over time.

If you are in the B2B space, this is a particularly relevant concept because you don’t want your leads to forget you or lose interest, especially if you have a longer sales cycle.

“50% of leads are qualified, but not yet ready to buy.”

G L E A N S T E R R E S E A R C H

When a lead comes in that isn’t ready to buy yet, that doesn’t mean you ignore them. You want to continue to nurture a relationship with. Keep communicating with them throughout the buyer’s journey to stay top of mind.

Lead nurturing is not about making that hard sell that comes later once your leads are qualified. Nurturing is about educating and responding to their needs, and building trust with them through the series of emails you are providing. You are sending highly targeted messages based on different layers of data you are collecting, your buyer’s persona, and their stage in the buyer journey.

There are three distinct layers of data for personas: demographics, firmographics/psychographics, and behavioral data. We defined these categories on the next page!

“The average open rate for a welcome email is 82%.”

G E T R E S P O N S E

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Demographics are data most marketers already have. This refers to the location, name, and job title of a prospect, customer, or lead.

Psychographics/Firmographics refer to things like company size and revenue. The psychographic layer, specifically, refers to interest and pain points, and topics that address the needs of each of your customer personas.

Behavioral Data is what makes your lead nurturing program interesting! This includes everything from website clicks to previous email interactions, video views, media downloads, and basically any interaction a persona has ever taken with your brand. This information enables you to create nurture paths that will be relevant and timely for each segment.

T h e b e s t w a y t o e x e c u t e a n e f f e c t i v e l e a d n u r t u r i n g p r o g r a m i s t o m a p i t o u t . E v e n i f i t ’ s j u s t a w h i t e -b o a r d i n g s e s s i o n a m o n g y o u r m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s t e a m s , y o u n e e d t o m a p i t o u t t o v i s u a l i z e a l l p o s s i b l e p a t h s a p e r s o n a c o u l d t a k e .

It will make it much easier to determine what your decision steps should be and how these leads will reach sales once they’ve been warmed up and reach a specific threshold score that you’ve designated as the tipping point for them being sales-ready.


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“68% of B2B businesses will use landing pages for lead nurturing and conversions in the future.”

M A R K E T I N G S H E R PA , 2 0 1 9

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Retargeting is the next best method that embodies a complete outbound marketing strategy. Retargeting refers to the process of “cookie-ing” your prospects and using a re-targeting network to serve relevant ads to your prospects on the websites they’re visiting – even on websites that aren’t your own. It is highly likely you’ve experienced this first hand.

The benefits of retargeting are fantastic, because you can achieve a higher ROI than with your regular website ads. This is because you can control who you want to see your ads and can target your known prospects or even go as far to serve ads to anyone who has visited a particular page on your website.

The reason engagement is higher with retargeting is because it’s relevant and helps amplify your exposure! Your prospects will come to know who you are after a few exposures. It only takes a few ads for them to recognize you.


“Retargeting boosts ad response by 400%.”

C M O . C O M

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Video marketing is also a highly effective part of a solid outbound marketing strategy. It is rapidly graining popularity as it is more commonly used in ads and programs, and has become an integral part of many organizations’ marketing plans.

Video can be utilized in your outbound strategy to increase engagement with prospects across the board. At its core, it’s designed to help increase education about your product or service and promote your brand. This is very similar to the overall goals of outbound marketing. You want to educate and engage known prospects with relevant information so they are more likely to consider you in their decision-making process.

You can make a huge impact in increasing the conversion rates of your outbound tactics with video. It can provide a deeper level of understanding and education to your customers, and viewing activity history can tell you a lot about your prospects.


“Video helps increase peoples’ understanding of your product or service by 74%.”

D I G I T A L S H E R P A

37

With technology as it stands today, you can now set up alerts so that your sales team is aware of when one prospect has watched a video, and even tell your salespeople exactly how much of that video has been viewed so they have a better understanding of how to start a conversation.

Many video hosting platforms integrate with top marketing automation solutions so all video activity history becomes something you can factor into your segmentation strategy.

You can use video to increase engagement with other pieces of content by using CTA pop-ups in relevant sections of your videos. So, for example, let’s say a marketer is using a customer testimonial video in a nurture program for prospects that are moving from the nurture to convert stage of the buyer’s journey. In the video, the customer explains how much they LOVE the product. .


T h e m a r k e t e r c a n s e t u p a p o p - u p C TA t h a t a l l o w s t h e p r o s p e c t t o d o w n l o a d a n e B o o k o n h o w t o u s e t h e p r o d u c t w h i l e t h e y ’ r e v i e w i n g t h e v i d e o . N o w, t h e v i d e o h a s b e c o m e a n o t h e r c h a n n e l y o u c a n u s e t o n o t o n l y e d u c a t e o n y o u r p r o d u c t o r s e r v i c e , b u t a m e t h o d t o p r o m o t e o t h e r p i e c e s o f c o n t e n t t o s t i m u l a t e e n g a g e m e n t .

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“64% of consumers say

watching a marketing video on Facebook has

influenced a purchase

decision of theirs in the last

month.”

A N I M O T O B L O G , 2 0 1 9

ABM

39

The last important part that comprises an effective outbound marketing strategy is account-based

marketing (ABM). This really brings all of the best practices we’ve covered throughout this chapter together. Account-based marketing is a strategic

approach to engaging companies who are similar to some of your top-tier customers.

It is similar to developing buyer personas, but instead of focusing on individuals within a company, you are developing profiles for companies to create

targeted lists of named accounts.

To do this, you are going to define characteristics such as employee size, geographic location,

revenue, industry, or even competitors to your current customers and identify a list of companies

that fit the criteria you’ve selected.

Once you have that targeted account list developed, you can start focusing all of your marketing

activities on engaging these named accounts, using all of the tactics and tools discussed throughout this

eBook.

If you use third-party technology to help with lead generation, you can even provide these lists to your vendors or partners so they can begin serving your

content to these accounts as well and help you expand your reach.


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Now that you know the best tactics and tools for inbound and outbound marketing success, it’s time to learn about how to successfully integrate the two strategies.

The secret to integration is planning across the customer experience. You want to build bridges across media functions and silos, and construct your marketing plan as a whole all while considering how to move the customer along his or her buying process.

These tips for success will help ensure a successful integration of inbound and outbound marketing strategies within your organization. …

How to Integrate Both Strategies Into Your Marketing Plan

1 . D E V E L O P A C O H E S I V E

M A R K E T I N G S T R A T E G Y

Make sure to retain your brand voice

throughout all your, while ensuring the

topics and pain points you’re addressing are

relevant to your prospects’ personas

and stage of their journey.

2 . T R A C K K E Y M E T R I C S

A C R O S S T H E B U Y E R ’ S J O U R N E Y

Consider metrics like cost-per-leads (CPL) and lead-to-sales or lead-to-opportunity

conversion rates and connect your

marketing performance to sales

generated.

3 . P L A N Y O U R C O N T E N T

Content assets are used to attract prospects to your

brand and make a compelling offer to stimulate response in

outbound strategies. Make sure your sales team has

access to your content so their messaging is consistent with

your brand and they can provide relevant content for

some of the discussions they’re having with prospects.

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How to Integrate Both Strategies Into Your Marketing Plan

4 . M A K E S U R E Y O U ’ R E C O N S I D E R I N G T H E S O U R C E A N D A C T I V I T Y F R O M I N B O U N D L E A D S

Do this before you’re transitioning into outbound tactics. Meet with your sales team to see which actions generated from your inbound marketing efforts indicate

customers are more than likely ready for a conversation, and which actions imply that a prospect requires more nurturing before reaching the decision-making stage.

This will really help align your sales and marketing teams.

5 . D E V E L O P A N I N T E G R A T E D M I N D S E T

There should be no walls between your inbound and outbound strategies. They both contribute to the new opportunity to attract, convert and expand your

customer relationships.

OUTBOUNDMARKETING

INBOUNDMARKETING +

= SUCCESS

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How to Measure Your Success

We’ve covered a lot in this eBook. Once you turn the page to complete the teachings you’ve found in here and start to implement them, it’s time to measure the success of your efforts. How? The best place to start is to define your metrics for success, which will help you set clear goals for what you want to do.

Do you want to generate leads? Build brand awareness? Increase lead to opportunity conversions? Retain and expand the contracts of your existing customer base?

You should clearly define what your primary goal is, and then map your objectives to the different stages in your buyer’s journey.

Different objectives become more detailed and specific during different stages of the buyer’s journey.

You are more likely to focus on website traffic and visitors, for example, in earlier stages of your sales funnel that rely on inbound tactics, and then transition to measuring conversions and engagement of your outbound tactics.

Once you’ve identified these goals, you need to include a time period for when they should be achieved, and share these goals and timelines with your entire team so everyone is clear about what your objectives are, how you’ll measure your success, and what you can do to bring your entire strategy together.

Bring Your Vision to Life with Act-Onand Ledgeview Partners

P: +1 (877) 530 – 1555E: [email protected]: Act-On.comT: @ActOnSoftware

A C T - O N S O F T W A R E

P: +1 (920) 560 – 5571E: [email protected]: LedgeviewPartners.comT: @LedgeviewCRM

L E D G E V I E W P A R T N E R S

The Marketing Experts at Ledgeview Partners can help provide you a thorough business analysis to identify if a solution like Act-On Software is right for your organization.

With Ledgeview Partners’ Marketing Consulting Services, we can help you to define your buyer persona’s, and customer segmentation. Create alignment strategies between sales and marketing through technology integration and develop lead generation, nurturing, and customer retention programs. With a customized set of metrics and goals to measure success and ongoing training resources, your team will have all the tools they need!

Learn more about our Marketing Consulting Services at LedgeviewPartners.com/Marketing-Consulting.

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DUAL POWERED MARKETING › acton... · BEST PRACTICES + BENEFITS OF INBOUND MARKETING 5. BEST PRACTICES + BENEFITS OF OUTBOUND MARKETING 6. HOW TO INTEGRATE BOTH STRATEGIES INTO YOUR