No business can prosper, or even thrive without marketing efforts. When someone comes up with a business or product idea, they need to create a marketing plan that works, or else it won’t be possible for them to commercialize their idea.
A marketing plan begins with market research, where you collect information to get an insight into your potential customers’ mindset, lifestyle and needs. Once you have this data, you are ready to come up with your idea or product’s unique selling proposition.
Your product’s unique selling proposition is what sets your product apart from all your competitors. It is the specific problem that you know your potential customers have, and you know your product can solve.
Next, you estimate your budget and costs. This is essential because, no matter how many funds a business has, the finances need to be allocated wisely to ensure it doesn’t run out of funds in case the business is not able to get off the ground over the first few months.
Once you are done with all these steps, then this is the time to actually implement your marketing plan.
A marketing plan is only put into practice when outreach marketing begins. So what is outreach marketing?
What is Outreach Marketing?
Before answering that, let’s answer a simpler question: what is outreach? Outreach simply means reaching out to people in order to gain a mutual benefit.
Outreach marketing is the process of putting out the word about your product or service to the public, or more specifically, to that portion of the public that you presume has a high chance of being interested in what you’re offering. This portion of the public is referred to as your target audience.
A large part of outreach marketing includes direct marketing, which is a marketing technique that really never gets outdated.
Outreach marketing is critical for any new product to thrive in the market. And that only makes sense because if your target customers don’t even know about your product, they cannot possibly consider buying it, let alone spreading the word about it. But merely informing your potential customers that you have something to offer is not enough. You need to give them an incentive to buy from you. This is where an outreach marketing strategy comes in.
An outreach marketing strategy is an action plan designed by a business to offer a product or service to its target audience, at a price that allows the business to make a profit. The offering must be able to solve a problem that the target audience is facing. The bigger the problem, and the more convinced the audience is that your product can solve it, the higher would be the perceived value of your offering. If your product has a high perceived value, you will be able to charge a high price for it. But if your product has a low perceived value, then you’ll need to look into more complicated pricing strategies in order to boost your sales.
Image taken from Strikingly
The rule of thumb for an effective outreach marketing strategy is that it needs to be subtle. Anyone who is approached through your outreach campaign should not feel that you are pushing the product in their face, or that they are being forced in any way to buy from you. They need to be able to see the true value in it for them, which is why an effective outreach campaign is always implemented in phases, using different media or platforms at each phase.
Characteristics of a Good Outreach Marketing Campaign
In the competitive digital world that we are living in today, it is crucial for any outreach campaign to be mindfully designed, or else the business would undergo numerous sunk costs.
Following are the characteristics of a good outreach campaign.
1. It mentions a problem statement before the solution is presented. This means before introducing your product, you need to put yourself in your customers’ shoes, and see what is in it for them. This is a good practice to do even when you are brainstorming new product ideas. The best form of outreach marketing is one in which you ask a clear question and tease the solution. You do not straight away give the full-fledged solution, at least at the initial phase of your outreach campaign.
2. It makes use of different kinds of marketing media. Understanding the art of mixed media is key to successful outreach marketing. Different kinds of products require different kinds of platforms to be advertised on most effectively. However, some media are such that they pretty much need to be used for promoting almost all kinds of products. A good marketer needs to be aware of all the available media, and particularly the rising digital media when coming up with a good outreach marketing strategy. These include social media, a good corporate or brand website, emailing, and even cold calling.
3. It always includes a call-to-action. An outreach campaign could be as convincing as you make it to be, but it won’t be of any use if your target audience doesn’t know what to do, or what initial steps to take, if they feel interested in your product. This is where a call-to-action guide comes in. A call-to-action is usually in the form of a button that leads your customer from one part of your marketing funnel to another. Successful businesses are those that know how to use the call to action button best practices.
Social Media Outreach Marketing Strategy
For building an effective marketing funnel, you definitely need to use social media as your first point of contact with your target audience. This could mean one or more of the following.
- Uploading a video on Youtube to introduce your company
- Starting a Facebook page to promote your brand
- Creating an Instagram account for establishing your brand image
- Posting regularly on Twitter about your upcoming products, offers and deals
The benefit of using social media is that each social media platform has its own algorithm, which can really help you in filtering out the non-interested people from your pool of audience at the initial phase of your outreach marketing.
For instance, if you are selling a beauty cream, any video you upload about it on Youtube will only be recommended to those Youtube users that normally search for or watch videos related to such beauty products. If you are selling a diet plan or diet meal recipes, any post you make about that on your Facebook page will mostly appear on the newsfeed of those Facebook users who not only follow your page, but also usually post about or react to diet-related content.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Because of the filtering mechanism of Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter and other social media platforms are a very good place for businesses to start their outreach marketing.
After a product or service is introduced on social media, it is usually best to bring the potential customers to the website or landing page of the brand or business. Having a website landing page that generates conversions is also a crucial characteristic of a good outreach marketing strategy.
Using Your Website for Outreach Marketing
It is simply a must for any business that wants to thrive and grow to have a website, or at least a landing page, which plays a major role in its sales funnel and outreach marketing. Even new businesses that are restricted in their funds also spend on their website to get off the ground.
It is now easier and more cost-effective than ever for a business to create a website, and that’s because of the presence of ready-made website templates and super-simple website builders.
Image taken from Strikingly
One such website builder is called Strikingly. At Strikingly, you can build your website in just a few minutes. And the best part is, you don’t even need to have any coding or programming skills. You simply drag and drop items onto the interface, and type in the text that you want to insert as your web content on each page.
In other words, say goodbye to the humongous developer cost and build your website on your own, with complete freedom to edit it anytime you want. When you are off the hook from dealing with all the technical complications, you will be able to better focus on creating great website content, which is a key factor in determining the success of your outreach campaign.
Image taken from Strikingly
Smart entrepreneurs use tools like this to be a step ahead of their competition. By using Strikingly, they not only save on web development costs, but also on promoting the website on a tight budget. By attaching a blog to your website, you can publish tons of content that would actually put your outreach marketing on auto-pilot. Anyone who reads the articles posted on your website’s blog will be automatically introduced to your domain, your product and your brand. This is a far simpler method of outreach marketing your business than any other way that has existed in the world of marketing before.
It is completely free tosign up for a Strikingly account, so do it today!
