5 Steps That Will Help You Kick-Start Your Outbound Demand Generation

It can be challenging task initially to kick-start an outbound demand generation campaign to support inbound marketing programs. You need to consider some very important aspects across partners and channels. Some of them are:

• Assessing your funnel demands such as the number of leads you can achieve beyond the inbound campaigns.
• Determining, picking, and onboarding preferred media partners with the required audiences to augment overall reach.
• Constantly interacting with each partner individually in terms of the necessities of a particular campaign, generally through a phone call or an email.
• Developing, organizing, updating, and monitoring content for the campaigns.
• Evaluating campaign efforts on variables such as media partner, type of content, firmographic, demographic, targeting partner, and messaging among others.
• Adjusting campaigns across selected partners depending on the performance of key metrics.

All these above elements can look daunting at times, however, it is necessary to scale up the pipeline and generate leads for the sales team on – as just inbound efforts will not give the desired results.

Here’s help! We have figured out 6 easy steps that will help one seamlessly set up an outbound demand generation effort:

1. Set KPI objectives based on the metrics of inbound efforts

It can be a bit difficult to establish fundamental metrics while just initiating an outbound demand generation effort. However, there is still a need to set few yardsticks, before launching any campaign. The perfect way to start is to measure the previous performance of inbound efforts based on:

• Content or assets such as case studies, white paper etc.
• Channels used
• Account targeting
• Any other metric

Though the performance will most likely be different in an outbound effort, it is better to understand which accounts and assets are generally converted at higher percentage. This helps to set parameters for evaluation of the value of the outbound demand gen efforts by different media channels and partners.

With this information, one can now set realistic KPI objectives such as:

• Volume by media channel, partner, or asset
• Top of the funnel lead to sales team with accepted rate of conversion
• Pre-determined pipeline

These KPIs will work as a starting point for scaling of campaigns and will also help to organize the overall parameters of the campaign when the need to start vetting possible partners.

2. Check, Organize, and Deliver Campaign Assets

For successful demand gen efforts, one needs to be extremely organized with the campaign assets. One can start by creating a data sheet that has organized each asset in the program by media partner and campaign. These can separately include any landing page or abstract content (if required) in the same sheet. Finally, there is a need to ensure that all partners are using the right content.

3. Figure out Parameters and Expectations from a Campaign

There is no need to aggressively pursue all target accounts and use all the content through every possible channel. Instead, one needs to pick on a target account and choose a few content pieces that have previously performed well with that type of audience through the earlier inbound efforts.

4. Re-evaluate the existing database and find out what the pipeline needs

It is not possible to develop strategy and invest in it without having a reliable and clear inventory of the existing lead/prospect database. One must understand what it can deliver in terms of generating leads before making an investment with third parties. Particularly, one must reassess the existing database to identify contacts available in specific demographics; and which could fulfill the campaign objectives. Subtract that number from the amount of leads that are supposed to be handed over to the sales team to determine the remaining requirement. Then compare the derived number with the expected CPL and arrive at a budget to figure out what can be outsourced to third parties.

5. Carefully choose and vet potential media vendors

This is a very critical area and should not be addressed casually. There are some very reliable demand gen partners in the market; however they may or may not have the desired influence on the chosen target audience set. The whole point of having an outbound demand generation campaign is to reach out to an audience with relevant content and conversation. Thus, it is critical to keep the target audience in mind while choosing the right media partner. Make sure to get right references and agree on suitable payment terms. Additionally, ensure to start with just the right number of media partners – enough to compare them against each other.

This all might look daunting at the beginning, but the companies that do it correctly and learn from their mistakes have a much better chances to make solid progress in the near future.