Thanks to the Internet, marketing has evolved over the years. Marketers no longer rely on expensive billboards and TV spots. Everyone knows that calling a prospect ‘cold’ is very difficult, because so many companies have automated phone answering making it extremely hard to get an actual person on the phone. Whether you reach out to anyone within earshot and or only call people who were referred to you, you have to begin the conversation some time. That first call is pretty darn ‘cold’ no matter how delightfully bad-ass your pitch might be.
It’s all-important how you incorporate the two disciplines. Inbound marketing is definitely critical in today’s overwhelming informational environments. But inbound marketing doesn’t work as well without outbound marketing. To grow your business, you have to reach out to people you don’t know and who don’t know you. If they are not interested in your content, then you have to try something else. Welcome to reality.
Warm up prospects by being extremely active with social media. The most reliable approach to finding new customers is to warm up the prospect before you cold call with valuable information about your products and services and by creating interest in what you are selling. Social media and email marketing are winning because they costs a lot less than traditional marketing.
Combine inbound and outbound marketing for better results. The fact is that outbound prospecting still offers results is contrary to many who claim inbound is all one needs. Our preference is a combination of outbound, inbound and referral selling. If a prospect is familiar with your products and services they will be more likely to take your call.
Some suggest that no one likes salespeople, and that even salespeople don’t like being salespeople. They may suggest things like changing your title to disguise that fact that you’re in sales. They often insist that you abandon your outbound efforts and find your way to the promised land that is inbound marketing. In their mind, the ideas are mutually exclusive: you are either an old-school salesperson or you are enlightened, social-media wielding, and non-salesperson.
The big truth is that a balance of inbound and outbound marketing is king.
Contact:
David Schwartz
SOS Business Development
760.345.5069
Email