I know this title might be a bit shocking to all you content marketers out there – but don’t let it put you off just yet. 



The world of marketing has undergone a major shift – from outbound to inbound marketing. For those who don’t know, the difference is this… Outbound marketing is broadcast based, traditional marketing, also known as “interruption marketing”. Inbound marketing is focused on getting found by customers through search engines and social media. 

However amazing inbound marketing is, there are times when it’s simply not enough. What happens when people don’t know anything about your product or service, not even to mention your company? Let me explain – what happens if potential clients don’t know to search for you? This is where outbound marketing steps back into the picture.

According to Aaron Ross, author of Predictable Revenue, outbound prospecting as well as inbound lead generation is necessary to keep your sales force busy. Can your inbound marketing system supply your sales team with enough hot leads? What about those dream clients? In the business world, especially B2B, there are those much sought after high value clients. Are you going to wait until they decide to do a Google search and hope that they find your company page? You might be waiting for an awfully long time. 

Ross states that a company can increase its leads dramatically through outbound prospecting and the method is well described in his book. At Salesforce.com Ross put together a team that used outbound prospecting to enable them to add over $100million in incremental recurring revenues over only a few years.

Who Should Be Doing What?

The sales team should not be doing their own prospecting. A specialised team should be appointed for this, and it shouldn’t be the same team that handles inbound marketing. This, as we know, is a highly specialised area in its own right. Read more…

The outbound prospecting team will accumulate new contacts with prequalified individuals. According to Ross, an outbound prospector can send up to 20 already qualified leads through to a sales team in one month. Outbound prospectors don’t sell; they make contact and initiate relationships. The farming process, or lead nurturing process, should also be managed by a separate team. 

The fact is that today’s customers do not like advertising, so cold calling just doesn’t work. Outbound marketing initiates client relationships and moves them closer to the warm side of the relationship spectrum, in other words, closer to the company. 

The point is this – inbound marketing combined with outbound marketing is a recipe for success. As long as you have different, specialised teams handling different departments you can’t go wrong. Your inbound marketing should be supplemented with outbound marketing. Content from inbound efforts can be used as follow up material to warm up leads later on. 

To make this point even clearer, Ross mentions that two outbound prospectors can keep five sales reps busy at one time. 

Keep an eye out for next week’s article in which I’ll cover the methods of outbound prospecting.


Sound Idea Digital is a full service digital marketing agency that specialises in content marketing.
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