In the sales world, you will hear about many strategies to get consumers’ attention. Sales strategies fall under two main categories – inbound sales and outbound sales.
In this article, we’ll break down inbound vs. outbound sales strategies and how to maximize your inbound and outbound sales efforts.
What Is Inbound Sales?
Inbound sales techniques are built around organic traffic, naturally facilitating the buying process. You’ll typically see inbound sales used in three places:
- Websites
- Social media
- Email
Each area can provide natural ways to inform consumers about a company’s product or service and increase organic traffic.
Many companies use inbound marketing to provide industry-related information and appear as an authority in the space. Branding statistics have shown that 46% of consumers are ready to pay more for brands they trust. So if you can appear as an authority in your industry, there’s a good chance you’ll have success.
What Is Outbound Sales?
Outbound sales is a targeted strategy to put your brand’s name or product offerings in front of consumers. These strategies are typically built around paid advertising or other outreach strategies like cold calling. You’ll see outbound sales used in:
- Commercials
- Website banner ads
- Social media ads
- Cold calling and emailing
- Trade shows
All of these methods help initiate the conversation with the consumer. If you use the right outbound sales strategies, it can be a highly effective form of marketing.
What’s the Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Sales?
The main difference is that inbound is considered a marketing “pull” strategy, and outbound is a marketing “push” strategy. Simply put, they use different methods to achieve the same goal of getting consumer attention to a brand’s name and products.
Inbound marketing uses organic methods to naturally draw in consumers while searching for information during the buying process. Outbound marketing uses paid traffic or cold outreach to get attention from targeted consumers who aren’t necessarily searching for information on their own. It essentially pushes the brand name out there to consumers who may benefit from the company’s product or service.
Let’s look at some examples to better understand the differences between inbound vs. outbound sales strategies.
An Example of How Inbound Sales Works
First, let’s look at how a mattress company would use inbound sales strategies.
Many companies use their website and SEO to pull in organic inbound traffic. The mattress company may decide to write a blog post on “How Do You Pick the Right Mattress for Your Needs?” In that article, they could cover the types of mattresses they offer and various use cases that would make each one the best fit for someone.
When someone searches “how do you pick the right mattress,” that blog post the company wrote could be one of the top results. The consumer searching for information can read the article, get helpful information, and learn about the company’s products simultaneously. It’s a very organic and natural way of bringing in traffic and promoting a company’s products.
After interacting with the content and downloading a resource, a lead is created and an SDR (Sales Development Representative), will reach out to them to create a sales opportunity.
An Example of How Outbound Sales Works
Now, let’s look at how that same mattress company could use outbound sales strategies to promote its products.
One outbound sales strategy they may use is paid social media ads. They could create an ad targeting middle-class individuals between the ages of 25 and 40 struggling with poor sleep quality. The company’s ad could discuss how their mattresses are designed to improve sleep quality and overall well-being.
Outbound social media ads would allow the mattress company to target the exact audience they are looking for and gain their attention. It pushes the brand’s message out to the type of consumers that will benefit from their products.
If someone struggles with poor sleep quality, these ads will likely speak to their needs and make them want to know more. It’s a great way to get attention from people who may never have heard of the brand.
Can You Use Both Inbound and Outbound Sales?
You can implement both inbound and outbound sales strategies simultaneously. It can be an excellent strategy since you can reach your target audience in different ways.
Managing both inbound and outbound sales can sound like a daunting task. However, there are many ways to make it more efficient, like boosting productivity with automation.
We live in a great time when we have many exceptional software programs available that allow us to automate sales strategies like email outreach or lead nurturing. So, the modern company can effectively use both strategies together without getting overwhelmed.
How to Reach More Customers With Inbound vs Outbound Sales
Along with automation, you can maximize inbound and outbound sales efforts in several other ways. One of the best things you can do is use CRM software. It will help you track all your data and manage many processes from your sales efforts in one place.
One hesitation many companies may have with CRM software is training sales reps to use it effectively. This is why using sales engagement tools like Bloobirds with a CRM is essential. It’ll help boost all your inbound and outbound efforts significantly.
There are also some tips to maximize inbound and outbound sales individually.
Tips to Improve Inbound Sales Strategies
Here are three tips on how you can improve your inbound strategies:
- Personalize your inbound marketing efforts. A good way to implement personalization is to show the people behind the brand or reasons why you created the solution you offer. It’ll draw in potential customers and make them want to know more, which is what inbound marketing is all about.
- Nurture your leads. When you get leads from inbound strategies, you must nurture them and grow those new relationships. It’ll help your brand stand out by showing you care.
- Use effective workflows. Many inbound sales teams have work processes that cannot be fully automated. Using CRM software and other tools can help implement workflows to improve your processes, so you can create inbound content more efficiently.
- Utilize backlinks. Backlinks connect one website to another, representing a vote of confidence and increasing a site’s SEO. You can utilize link building services to boost your content and traffic.
Inbound marketing can take time to see results since it is based on organic traffic. Just remember that if you’re implementing the right strategies, you will see results over time.
Tips to Improve Outbound Sales Strategies
Here are three tips on how you can improve your outbound strategies:
- Research your prospects or target market. One of the best ways to improve cold calling and other outreach efforts is to know your target prospects. This can help you personalize outbound strategies more effectively.
- Target key pain points. When researching your target audience, you will likely see common pain point trends. If your outbound sales efforts focus on those, you’ll likely see better results since that audience will relate to your message.
- Use lead generation software. It can feel like a time-consuming process to find new leads to reach out to, manually. Lead generation software can help you find targeted leads and streamline your outreach process.
Many companies fear outbound sales strategies are becoming outdated, but that is not the case. Modernize your strategies by researching and adapting to today’s consumer market effectively. Implementing best practices like these will get you on the right track.
Overall, both inbound and outbound sales strategies will help promote your brand. The key is making your brand relatable to your target audience’s needs. By researching your prospects, personalizing your strategies, and utilizing productivity software, you’ll be on your way to success.
