By: Craig Spooner
Marketing outreach is an awful lot like cooking for your friends: your preparation and approach all depend on who you’re feeding and what the occasion is. Sometimes you want to try something fresh and new to see what happens, while other times you play it safe by using more traditional recipes that are proven to deliver.
Success in marketing (and in the kitchen), takes a lot of careful examination of past successes, evaluation of viable methods and ingredients, weighing of your audience's preferences, and actual preparation. Before offering your leads a seat at the table, keep these four ingredients in mind to make sure you’re presenting them opportunities that will satisfy their hunger for the highest possible conversion rate.
- Don’t let your leads simmer for too long.
Marketing outreach is all about timing. Reach out too early and you’ll be flagged as a pest. Wait too long and you’ll come off as unresponsive. Deliver the wrong follow-up message and you could be dismissed forever. Make sure you’re evaluating how the lead came into your marketing funnel, and put yourself in their shoes. Would you offer steak to a friend who is vegetarian? No. So why offer a prospect marketing content or messaging that doesn’t correspond with their activity on your site? That’s just bad taste! As a general rule of thumb, use the chart below to guide the timing of your outreach:
Pro Tip: If your company uses a lead-scoring strategy, determine a point ceiling that qualifies a lead for a certain type of outreach. Make sure to assess how the timing of your outreach is received by the prospect and tweak your lead-scoring strategy to match their level of readiness.
| Conversion Activity |
Time to Contact |
Type of Outreach |
| Website “Contact Us” Submission |
Within 24 Hours |
Goals/Challenges/Needs Discussion |
|
Marketing Content Conversion:
eBook
Infographic
Checklist
Playbook
|
1–2 weeks |
Provide additional marketing/sales resources to consider, with the option to connect |
| Newsletter Sign-Up or Blog Subscription |
Delay your outreach until the prospect takes further action on your website |
N/A |
| Consistent Website Activity (*Prospect visits your site and specific service or blog pages 4–5 times over 1–2 months) |
Feel free to reach out at your leisure |
Offer up helpful, educational resources |
- Avoid ingredient overkill.
Sometimes the most basic recipes make the most delicious meals. Providing too much information, making contact too frequently, or offering too many of your services right off the bat can overwhelm prospects and make feel like they’re drinking from a firehose. Use the information you’ve gathered about the prospect to guide your outreach. How were they introduced to your company? Have they downloaded anything from your site? Can you track which blogs they read or have read? What pages they have visited and how often they are coming back? Do they even like Brussels sprouts?
By understanding prospects’ interactions with your content and website, you can customize your next outreach to their specific goals, challenges, and interests and maximize your chance of becoming their partner. The more you demonstrate an understanding of their goals, challenges, and timing, the more likely they will be to consider you as a partner.
- Choose your channels and stick to them.
Picture this: it’s a beautiful Sunday night, we’re all huddled around the fire sharing a meal and watching the Vikings beat down on the Packers. Everyone is connecting over the game and this lovely meal…until you decide to change the channel to “Antiques Roadshow.” The conversation dies down and everyone but Grandma decides to leave the room. Now why did you have to go and change the channel?
Marketing outreach is all about understanding where, when, and how to connect with your prospects. Once you find your sweet spot on social media or through email, don’t go changing! Prospects will come to expect your presence in their lives, so altering the ways you communicate with them on the fly will negatively impact their view of your outreach.
Remember, consistency across channels is key! I expect my Grandma’s Buffalo wings to taste the same regardless of where we’re watching the game because the recipe is always the same. Make sure your voice, messaging, and posting frequency all remain consistent across your channels.
- Maintain the personal touch.
When I was young, every time my family had people over to dinner my mother would force me to greet everyone as they arrived. It wasn’t good enough to just say “hi” to the group and fly away to the TV. No way, Jose. I had to personally greet and converse with each person in the kitchen until Mom was satisfied. It occurs to me now that this was actually training for my future marketing job.
Adding the personal touch to your marketing outreach makes a huge difference in the response from your prospects. According to HubSpot, personalized email messaging drives 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails and buyers are 48% more likely to consider solution providers who personalize their marketing content to address their specific business issues or challenges (Remember the whole thing about Brussels sprouts back in Point #2?)
So, the next time you’re planning on connecting with prospects (or hosting a dinner!), reference these four simple points to maximize your potential of turning that prospect into a customer!
Thanks for sharing!
