7 key strategies for outbound lead generation success

Salespeople are told that certain outbound lead generation strategies are dead all the time.

Cold calling is dead.

Cold emailing is dead.

LinkedIn DMs are dead.

The list goes on.

Outbound sales tactics are ripped on almost as often as SEO. Although generating leads using outbound strategies is one of the oldest sales playbooks, businesses of all sizes continue to use these techniques to grow today. Outbound lead generation is alive and well. However, it has changed over time and will continue to change as the market evolves with digital transformation and prospective buyer preferences shift.

Let's explore outbound marketing, its principles, and the proven strategies that still work in 2024.

Outbound vs. inbound lead generation

Outbound and inbound lead generation strategies go hand-in-hand. Although some brands favor one over the other, they are both staples of comprehensive lead-generation campaigns. In short, outbound focuses on reaching out, and inbound concentrates on bringing leads in.

Approximately 59% of sales teams favor inbound lead generation, compared to the 16% that prefer outbound marketing. Reaching out—as with outbound marketing—means starting from ground zero, whereas inbound leads have already heard of you, putting you one step ahead.

Here are the ins and outs of these two strategies:

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing utilizes content, social media ads, and other techniques to attract visitors to your channels. The goal is to make your brand more discoverable by providing valuable content that helps your ideal prospects find you. After they’ve engaged, you can begin turning onlookers into customers.

What is outbound lead generation?

Outbound lead generation is a go-to-market tactic where salespeople send messages to anyone who fits their target audience, regardless of any prior engagement or interest. Cold calling and emailing are the two most well-known outbound strategies.

Inbound vs. outbound lead generation strategies

Understanding different lead generation strategies helps you understand why outbound marketing has a lower success rate than inbound marketing. Here’s how these strategies differ:

• Inbound: Valuable, informative content acts as bait to attract your target audience to your channels, be it a website, social media feed, or newsletter. Examples include blogs, webinars, eBooks, and white papers.
• Outbound: These strategies are direct and involve going to where your customers are rather than bringing them to you. Direct mail campaigns, cold calling, and email marketing are examples of outbound strategies.

Think of it like this: A good inbound strategy is like creating an excellent, enticing window at a small boutique and waiting for people to come, while outbound is like standing on the street, engaging with passers-by to see if they want to enter your store.

Generally, the former is more effective because you’re providing value for free, and engaging with you is their idea, not yours. So, if that’s the case, why do businesses invest in outbound lead generation despite the lower success rates?

Let's find out.

What are the benefits of outbound lead generation?

It’s tempting to superficially compare inbound vs. outbound lead generation tactics and conclude that your efforts would be best spent exclusively on inbound marketing. However, outbound lead generation has unique advantages that make it a valuable channel to explore.

The four key benefits businesses investing in outbound lead generation include:

Shorter sales cycles

Attracting leads to your content is great, but you can’t control who you attract. Not everyone who engages with your brand is the right fit for your product/service.

Outbound marketing enables hyper-targeted outreach because you choose who you target based on your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). If successful, this reduces the overall sales cycle length because you can be confident that who you’re targeting fits your ICP.

Expanded reach

Building brand awareness with inbound marketing takes months, if not years, of hard work publishing content, collaborating with other brands, and earning backlinks. In contrast, outbound marketing skips this stage because you’re actively distributing your value proposition to your target audience.

Precise targeting

Outbound marketing isn’t about mass emailing random lists of people. Successful outbound marketers leverage data to create hyper-targeted, hyper-personalized outbound campaigns. The people you’re targeting are often ready to buy, and your content alleviates their concerns from that first contact point.

Greater control over the sales process

Every sales rep is responsible for discovering their prospects’ needs and positioning your product as their number-one solution.

Outbound marketing simplifies this process by providing you with an unprecedented level of control over the sales process. You determine the content, the channel you want to target, and the talking points you want to hit in your outreach.

7 outbound lead generation strategies to generate leads in 2024 and beyond

Brands have numerous options to reach out to potential targets in 2024. However, determining what’s effective and what isn’t can result in a costly trial-and-error process. Here are the seven outbound lead gen options that still deliver results today.

1. Email outreach

Email outreach, or cold emailing, is the most basic outbound marketing technique. It remains effective because of email's popularity. According to the Rain Group, eight out of ten buyers still prefer to receive an email instead of a call.

The key to writing an effective cold email is personalization. Never write an email and then blast it to 10,000 people. Take the time to segment your contact list by industry, problem, or solution, or to create personalized mail merges, so every recipient gets a customized experience.  

2. Cold calling

Cold calling has been around for decades now. It involves calling and pitching potential sales leads at their place of business or on their cell phone. So, what’s the key to success here?

• Set a clear goal for the call.
• Perfect your pitch.
• Identify sales triggers.
• Know the best time to call your specific prospects.
• Deal kindly and swiftly with objections.

3. LinkedIn direct mail (InMail)

LinkedIn is the business social media networking platform, so leveraging it within your outbound marketing campaigns just makes sense. As of the end of 2023, the platform boasted 310 million monthly active users, making it a perfect channel for connecting with potential buyers.

Salespeople typically use two built-in tools to generate leads on LinkedIn:

1. Sales Navigator: This tool provides advanced search options and lead filtering solutions. You can also track each of your lead’s activities on LinkedIn.
2. InMail: This is LinkedIn’s direct messaging function. Reps can send longer outreach messages to prospects than ordinary users can.

Essentially, LinkedIn direct mail works similarly to cold emailing. Focus on personalization rather than generalized blasts.

4. Prospecting quality leads on Facebook and LinkedIn groups 

Leads can be found just about anywhere, including within Facebook and LinkedIn groups. Hundreds of thousands of these public groups exist on practically every subject, which makes them a brilliant way to establish relationships with prospects.

Sales and marketing teams should be aware that most groups have strict rules on directly selling to their members. Instead of throwing out pitches, focus on being helpful and learning about your prospects before ever sliding into their DMs.

5. Paid advertising campaigns

Paid advertising campaigns represent the paid component of outbound lead generation. These targeted ads show up across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google, thanks to their Pay-Per-Click (PPC) platform.

6. Cold outreach on social media platforms

Basic cold outreach on social media platforms is an outbound tactic, but it’s rarely effective. 

The truth is this: Cold outreach on social media has one of the lowest success rates because platforms like Facebook actively hide messages from people you aren’t connected with. However, if you’re operating on a lower budget, exploiting your network or targeting the memberships of certain groups can give your sales team a kickstart.

7. Referral marketing

Use your existing customers to expand your network. Start the process by contacting your customers for names you could get in touch with. Whether these are friends or business connections, outbound marketers know these could be their next customers.

Key elements of successful outbound lead generation

Wondering what makes for a successful outbound lead generation campaign?

Surprise: It’s the same elements you’d use for an inbound lead generation campaign. Despite their differences, outbound and inbound lead generation campaigns share many of the same foundations of success. 

So, what should your sales team focus on to make their next outbound campaign successful? 

Clear customer profiles and buyer personas

Who are your customers? Lead generation relies on knowing who your customers are better than they do, and that’s where ICPs prove their worth. ICPs are representations of the perfect customer. 

They often include basic demographics, like age, gender, and location, but your buyer personas should go even deeper, incorporating:

• Goals
• Challenges
• Buying triggers
• Motivations
• Past experiences

Analyze your happiest, most loyal customers regularly and update your ICPs to match those personas to make sure your sales messaging and playbooks are both current.

Accurate, up-to-date lists of prospects

Outdated contact lists waste your sales team’s time and effort. Streamline your operations by ensuring your lists only include the latest information—and purge entries that are no longer relevant.

Targeted content tailored for each stage of the sales funnel

Generic messages yield generic results.

Build targeted content for your prospects based on each phase of the buying journey. For example, a particular customer segment may be at the very top of the funnel, whereas another may fall halfway down initially.

Likewise, your content will change as each outbound lead moves through your sales funnel. Ensure every communication is tailored to their current needs.

A seamless multi-channel experience

Multi-channel selling is a cornerstone of outbound marketing. 

This may look like pursuing the same prospects with:

• Email outreach
• Follow-up calls
• Lead retargeting to content on channels like Facebook
• LinkedIn messages to support email outreach

Multi-channel selling gives prospects multiple touchpoints to interact with sellers, increasing the likelihood of generating interest, and thus turning cold leads into warm ones.

Data-driven lead nurturing workflow

Lead nurturing workflows empower your agents to build relationships with every potential customer during every step of their journey. A solid lead nurture process makes this happen.

Follow these four steps for the ultimate lead nurturing workflow:

1. Define your customer journey.
2. Deploy behavioral segmentation.
3. Create valuable content to keep your leads hooked.
4. Analyze and optimize.

Collect and analyze data to figure out which moments within your nurture sequences trigger potential leads to take the next step—and do more of that.

Robust software to manage the entire campaign

Like most sales functions in 2024, intuitive software solutions form the backbone of the outbound lead generation strategy.

All sales teams will have their own tech stacks, but a CRM is vital for building and managing relationships with outbound leads. For example, Streak is a dedicated Gmail CRM that keeps email inboxes organized and sales teams on track.

Revamp your outbound lead generation tactics with Streak

Outbound leads turn into customers—but they won’t make the first move. To bring them into your pipeline, you need a CRM to manage your outbound lead generation workflows and simplify your cold email outreach.

Streak makes it simple to nurture leads with its versatile pipeline templates. You can keep your prospects organized, categorize them, and track their behaviors without ever leaving your Gmail inbox.

And the best part? It’s completely free to try out. Request a 14-day free trial of Streak to see why 750,000+ happy customers trust our CRM.

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