What Is Outreach: All You Need to Know

The goal of every marketing strategy is to attract potential customers and convert them into paying customers. Nowadays, marketers are abandoning outbound marketing strategies and switching to a more personal approach. 

Outreach marketing is used to connect with organizations and individuals interested in your company with the purpose of promoting your business and generating revenue. It’s a great way to build relationships with people in your niche, connect with popular bloggers, influencers, or journalists, and get valuable links. 

If you want to know more about how this type of marketing works, keep reading.

Find in this article

• How is outreach defined?
• Is outreach costly?
• What strategies are used in outreach marketing?
• What’s the difference between email outreach and marketing email?
• What kinds of outreach campaigns exist?
• How to run outreach campaigns

What Is Outreach?

Outreach is a marketing strategy that aims to discover influential individuals and organizations that can help you earn backlinks to your website, get passive website traffic, and reach a wider audience. 

The idea behind outreach is to offer an incentive in exchange for a favor—both parties benefit from it. Outreach can help you with link building, content marketing, reaching influencers and bloggers, and establishing relationships with brand ambassadors. 

Now that you’ve learned the outreach definition, you can see that it’s one of the important aspects of any digital marketing strategy. As such, it can help you improve your position in SERPs, promote your content, expand your network, and raise brand awareness. 

However, on the flip side, you’ll have to work a lot more because it requires some time and effort. Creating an outreach list, looking for email addresses, crafting your emails—all of these things are time-consuming. Still, outreach is a great way to gain a competitive advantage. 

How Much Does Outreach Cost?

Running outreach campaigns can be costly. But how costly exactly? 

On a side note, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t spend money on advertising. However, you might want to cut advertising costs if outreach turns out to be effective. The bottom line is that you need to spend some money to get something in return. 

A rough estimate suggests that outreach marketing can cost around $6,864 a year, including content discovery tools, email finder tools, email automation, and manual data mining. Of course, this doesn’t include employee expenses to cover the hours needed to perform their duties. All of this can drastically increase the overall cost. 

There are many software solutions that can help you run an outreach campaign. Some of them even offer free trials, while others provide a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you don’t like the tool within the first month of using it, the company may refund 100% of your payment. Moreover, you can choose to pay monthly or yearly. Some even allow you to customize the plan or cancel it at any time. Additionally, there might be an option to resume your account to create campaigns.

What Are Examples of Outreach Marketing?

Outreach is exceptional—it helps you learn what people in your niche best respond to and gets your brand recognized. However, reaching out to your potential business partners, influencers and bloggers can be pretty tricky—you’ll want to find someone to make you stand out from the rest. 

There are a lot of outreach marketing examples that can help you establish a relationship with your prospects and improve sales. Picking the right communication channel is one of the essential strategies for successful outreach. Some people prefer email, while others like a more personal touch, such as a phone call. So, make sure to find the right platforms that your partners use.

Organizing an influencer event is also one of the most productive outreach marketing examples—this way, influencers can better understand and promote your products and services. Blog posts can help build a genuine relationship with your target audience. Moreover, by segmenting your target audience, you will be able to personalize your message based on various parameters (demographic data, past purchasing behavior, spending habits, etc.).

Email Outreach vs. Marketing Email: What’s the Difference?

The difference between email outreach and marketing emails is that email outreach focuses on people familiar with your business, while marketing emails are sent to specific audiences that agree to receive emails. 

Cold email outreach messages are meant to acquire new customers. For example, you can find these prospects by sending targeted ads to those visiting your website. The outreach marketing company can also start doing outreach on social media platforms or reaching out to influential people in target companies. 

On the other hand, marketing emails are messages sent to people who signed up for a free trial, visited your site before, subscribed to your newsletter, or are already your customers. They are not pushy, sales-focused emails because most recipients aren’t looking to buy yet. Instead, these people are looking for helpful information—something that would solve their problems. 

What Are the Main Types of Outreach Marketing?

There are four outreach strategies most businesses use. Each of these types brings specific benefits, but you need to know how they apply to your business. 

• Cold sales: This strategy is ideal if you have a B2B or service-oriented business. It helps you build trust and gives your potential clients direct access to you. Social media platforms like LinkedIn are great for generating new leads and sales. You can find email addresses and introduce your business to potential clients with just a little research. 
• Networking: The purpose of this campaign is to build your network and find new, like-minded businesses and individuals. The list can include people in the press, potential collaborators or partners, thought leaders in your industry, bloggers, podcasters, etc. 
• Link building: This is one of the essential outreach methods for businesses. The goal is to generate backlinks to and from other websites. If done correctly, you can expect impressive results that help rank you on the first page of Google and improve SEO.
• Blogger outreach: Bloggers, influencers, podcasters, and vloggers are the press in today’s world. With the right people, you have the opportunity to create a solid marketing outreach plan and reach a wide audience. The goal of this tactic is to connect with those who have a strong online presence. They can feature your guest post on their websites, invite you to their podcasts, and review your product. 

Regardless of which outreach strategy you choose, it’s important to center your strategy around your business and create content that adds value to your audience. 

How to Do Outreach Marketing

We live in a digital world where you need to make the extra effort to ensure business success. If you want your outreach strategy to be fruitful, you need to learn important tips and tricks. 

Everyone is doing outreach nowadays, but most people struggle to do it right. Whether you’re a beginner or an established professional, these strategies will help you get your message across. 

Here’s the best approach to organic outreach marketing.

The first thing you need to do is find out what works for your business. It’s also important to improve your communication skills to build relationships with bloggers and influencers who can promote your brand through their platforms.

Personalization also matters—everybody loves to feel special. So, make sure to send personalized emails to increase the chances of your favorite blogger doing content outreach on their platform. 

Another important thing to remember is to provide value to your audience by creating unique content. That also means that your content needs to address your audience’s pain points. 

Additionally, you should seamlessly add a call-to-action and monitor your campaigns to make sure you’re on the right track. 

SerpWatch can help you start tracking your rankings, but it’s also packed with features that can rank you high in SERPs. 

How Do You Create an Outreach Strategy?

If you want to take advantage of those link-building and relationship opportunities, you need hyper-personalized outreach. That’s why you need a step-by-step guide to create an effective outreach strategy. 

So, how to create the best outreach marketing strategy for your business? 

The first step of any successful outreach plan is defining the main outreach goals. That often means generating high-quality backlinks to your website content, getting good reviews from top bloggers, and using guest posting to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your site. 

Next, you need to know your target audience and what type of contact to use for outreach. Once you’ve established that, it’s time to collect target websites. You can use an outreach marketing tool to manage each step of the process and track your progress. 

If you want to do business with these people, you need a compelling email. The best way to do that is to mention something about their article. That way, you’ll show them that you’ve put some extra effort into studying their content. Moreover, a personalized outreach strategy only works if you are unique and genuinely care about their content.

Finally, follow-ups are critical to all marketing outreach strategies. Sometimes you’ll need to send a second or even a third email, but make sure not to be too intrusive. 

The Takeaway

Email—you can love it or hate it. Marketers love it because it lets them connect with new prospects and generate leads. However, customers usually find it frustrating since they’re overwhelmed with the sheer volume. 

Outreach marketing takes some time and effort, and we all know how annoying it is when someone doesn’t open your email. So, if you are looking to appear on podcasts, write guest posts, or build backlinks, creating a solid outreach strategy will get you there.