A customer outreach strategy refers to a set of tactics that a business implements in order to attract its leads and convert them into prospects and even paying customers.
Such a strategy needs to be carefully thought out and planned, as putting effort into the wrong resources will cost the business time and money.
Having a good outreach strategy in place is essential for customer traction. It also increases brand awareness, and most importantly, conversions and sales.
Below are a few strategies that have proven to be effective when used within a customer outreach plan.
7 Effective Customer Outreach Strategies
1. Cold Outreach
This type of strategy may have a bad reputation, however, could be a vital part in gaining customer traction. There are many different ways in which you can implement cold outreach strategies that don’t involve dialing random numbers from a spreadsheet.
For instance, you can use platforms such as LinkedIn to reach out to potential leads. Check out our guide on how to do a cold outreach on LinkedIn.
By finding relevant information about that potential lead’s current job description or work history, you can easily connect with them and send them personalized messages.
2. Determine the Most Viable Channel for Communication
There are a few different avenues one can take when communicating with new potential leads.
You could use a direct marketing strategy by communicating directly with customers via email. Something to remember about this is to always do research on the particular client to be able to customize your messages.
Another form of communicating with potential leads is to use personal selling. This entails in-person interactions with potential leads to sell your services or products.
Thirdly, your business could consider using sales promotions to gain traction. This includes providing incentives to consumers consisting of special offers, displays, and demonstrations.
These aren’t the only viable options for communicating with customers. Thanks to the internet, and particularly social media, you can become extremely creative with the way in which you communicate with potential clients.
3. Social Media
You can never go wrong with using social media to support your business in thriving and reaching its goals.
The best way to execute this plan is to do research on your potential leads and to establish your audience and buyer personas.
This becomes handy as you will have knowledge of what your target audience wants to see on the platform of your choice. It is about giving your audience what they want without putting the efficacy of your business at risk.
Knowing your competitors is just as important as knowing your target audience so that you can create content that is effective on your platform.
The next step would then be to choose your social media platform and to create a content calendar so that you can keep track of what you are uploading.
4. Automate Your Outreach
Outreach automation is a great way to make sure that your communication with your target audience and potential customers flows.
It’s also more efficient that manually sending out emails to each lead. With the help of tools such as Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign, you can upload your lead information and send mass emails.
You can create auto emails for various instances. For example, if someone signs up to your list, but doesn’t make a purchase within a week, you can send an email.
5. Create Catchy Email Subject Headlines
When sending out emails to customers as an outreach strategy, one thing to consider is creating catchy email subject headlines.
A catchy subject line will grab their attention and increase the likelihood of them actually opening the email. Most people receive dozens of emails every day, therefore it’s very important to stand out if you want your email marketing campaign to be successful.
6. Segment Target Audience
It’s always a great idea to organize the data that you have on your target audience into relevant groups that have similar needs.
The reason for using target audience segmentation is to help identify the groups that need to be reached more urgently (or more frequently) and to develop a separate strategy and messaging for them.
7. Humanize Your Messages
Humanizing your messages makes them seem more personal. You can do this by changing your tone of voice to match that of your buyer persona, and also by using emojis.
Some people may argue that emojis don’t look professional, but it’s just not the case in most instances. For example, you’d not want to use them in a contract but could do so in a text message or email.
Using emojis makes you look friendlier and more personal. Just be careful not to overdo it, otherwise, it can become annoying.
Conclusion
There are many tried and tested tricks to help you get your message across to your target audience.
It is important to do your research before devising your unique customer outreach plan. This will help you reduce wastage of both time and money. Knowing your target audience and their individual needs and objectives is a great way to do this as data never lies.
Marketing can be a very fun way to promote your brand. Creativity and diversity are two components that aid with this. Working together as a team to collect the relevant data is imperative to a successful marketing campaign. And as you can probably see from above, there are many different ways you can organize your marketing team.
Remember that if you execute a customer outreach strategy correctly, you are able to increase your brand awareness, which gains more potential leads, and, as a result of this, your revenue will increase dramatically.
