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Using outbound lead generation can help you find high-quality leads to build your sales pipeline.
But so many business owners are still on the fence about how to conduct outreach without coming across as spammy.
The truth is, your target audience NEEDS your products and services. By reaching out with tailored solutions to their problems, you’re delivering value. In fact, you might say that not reaching out is a disservice to your target customers.
Let’s take a closer look at what outbound lead generation is and how it differs from inbound lead generation. We’ll also review some benefits of using it and share some of the best outbound lead generation strategies.
Ready to learn more?
Let’s get started.
What Is Outbound Lead Generation?
Outbound lead generation means proactively looking for prospects you can nurture and convert.
Think of prospects as your ideal customer profile (ICP).
This process involves using sales tactics, such as email marketing, cold calling, or direct messaging potential leads on LinkedIn.
With outbound lead generation, your goal is to identify leads that are relevant to your business.
You can then pass on your generated leads to your marketing and sales teams. They’ll use your list to conduct outbound sales activities — like sending segmented email campaigns or booking warm demo calls.
Inbound vs Outbound Lead Generation
Inbound lead generation focuses on attracting leads to your business.
Outbound lead generation focuses on finding and identifying leads for your business.
If you’re in the B2B industry, you might attract prospects to your business with SEO and organic content marketing strategies. And you might find and identify leads by using LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
If you’re in the B2C industry, you might attract prospects to your business by running organic social media campaigns. And you might find and identify leads by using social listening tools.
These are just a few examples.
There are pros and cons to both inbound and outbound lead generation. But a healthy mix of both is the best way to scale your sales approach.
Why?
Integrating both approaches helps you tackle sales from all angles.
For instance, when we run ad campaigns, we’re diligently looking for warm leads we can score and add to our list. When we publish valuable content, we generate leads that are aligned with our solutions.
With both strategies, our prospect list grows exponentially faster.
We also have our marketing and sales teams working on both ends so we can capitalize on the momentum. For example, our marketing team runs email campaigns and takes care of our SEO content. Our sales team extracts email addresses from LinkedIn, makes cold calls, and runs our Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads.
The Benefits of Outbound Lead Generation
The process of inbound lead generation allows you to attract potential customers even while you are asleep. However, these prospects may not always be the most suitable for your business. Outbound lead generation addresses this challenge by helping you find sales-qualified leads.
This shortens the sales cycle since sales reps can focus on prospects that are most aligned with your solutions.
Outbound lead generation also helps you build brand awareness.
With the right communication approach, you can build relationships with decision-makers who may not have had the chance to learn about your business.
It also gives you the prime opportunity to test and reach new markets.
For example, you might specialize in targeting B2B HR firms and project managers. Later, you might conduct outreach to see if B2B EdTech brands and ecommerce businesses could be a good fit, too.
But possibly the best thing about outbound lead generation is that you never know what big opportunity you might run into. For instance, you might come across a six-figure monthly contract possibility or find a long-term, high-paying client.
By scrutinizing potential customers and focusing on best-fit prospects, you open your brand up to unlimited success.
Getting Your Marketing Team and Sales Team to Work Together
As we touched on before, our marketing team and sales team create results at scale when they work together.
That’s why we recommend aligning these departments as you implement outbound strategies.
To unify your teams, use a team collaboration tool like monday.com or ClickUp. Create sales workflows for both departments and use automation to replace repetitive work (like submitting deliverables).
With a team collaboration tool, your teams can comment on tasks, assign projects to the right people, and track sales progress. They can also communicate about prospect lists and sync up to discuss the next steps.
In addition, effective marketing and sales training is key, as it boosts the teams’ selling skills and product understanding, directly enhancing customer interactions.
The Best Outbound Lead Generation Strategies
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, let’s review the outbound strategies we promised you.
Outbound Email / Cold Outreach
Email the right people about your solutions.
Cold outreach emails put your brand in front of aligned buyers.
When sending these, be sure to personalize your messages and choose optimal times. Look at your email marketing metrics to determine the days and times when high-quality leads are most likely to open your emails.
To save time finding email addresses, use Evaboot to grab them from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Pricing is $24 per month on the annual plan — and you’ll get 500 credits per month. (You can also pay for more credits — up to 500k per month.)
Features include:
- Graph showing follow-up sales success.
- Export accounts
- Unlimited seats
- Credits rollover
- Verify emails
- Export leads
- Find emails
- Clean data
- Filter leads
LinkedIn Cold Outreach
With LinkedIn cold outreach, you can connect with potential prospects, build relationships, and track results. You can also use Sales Navigator to hone in on aligned leads and score them with an app like breadcrumbs.io.
We also recommend using Evaboot as part of your sales process to extract emails from Sales Navigator.
This saves your team manual labor from many perspectives. For example, they won’t have to dig for the emails themselves. Or clean their prospect lists to make sure contact information is accurate.
Cold-Calling
Have your sales team make phone calls to gain valuable insights about your prospects and nurture them.
This is especially effective as a B2B lead generation strategy. While business owners are busier than ever, many appreciate a business phone call if the pitch is aligned with their needs.
That’s why it’s pivotal to personalize your approach. Your SDRs need more than just first and last names and firmographic data. They need to understand your target customers’ pain points — and how to solve them better than your competitors.
They also need to tailor their approach to each of your core customer groups. For example, your HR leads will need different solutions than your project management prospects.
It’s also important to research the best times to call, develop a trusted sales pitch, and only call targeted prospecting lists.
Try a tool such as call center software to create an efficient outbound sales approach. Salespeople can store lists there, make calls directly from the platform, and update accounts as they progress through the sales funnel.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Save time on manual outbound sales tasks by running PPC ads via Meta and Google.
With PPC, you’ll get charged for each click on your ads. While this may rack up, many brands see a return on investment. Plus, if you target your ads well, you can capture audiences that are actively searching for a solution.
You can also use adtech stacks to create highly targeted display ad campaigns. These platforms allow you to reach prospects across websites they frequent based on demographics, interests, and online behavior.
Use them to build targeted audience segments and personalize your ad creatives to resonate with specific buyer personas. This can also help maximize your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).
Multi-Channel Outreach
From direct mail to social media to email, use varied marketing strategies to target leads across multiple channels.
In B2B marketing, you can find decision makers on LinkedIn, X, and in B2B networking groups. In B2C marketing, you can find leads on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Social media gives you a cost-effective way to identify leads as part of your lead generation efforts. You can then use outbound sales strategies to contact your prospects.
Align your sales and marketing teams and have them work toward a common goal.
For example, if you’re looking to onboard beta testers for your latest productivity app …
Have your marketing team contact leads via:
- Push notifications (if you have your own app)
- Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
- Segmented email campaigns
- SMS campaigns
Have your sales team contact leads via:
- LinkedIn, X, and online networking groups
- Cold emails
- Cold calls
- PPC ads
Use tools like Salesforce and ActiveCampaign for multi-channel outreach.
Social Media Outreach
Use direct messaging (DMs) to contact potential leads on social media channels, such as TIkTok, X, Facebook, and Instagram. You might also consider linking up with influencers to spread the word about your solutions.
Focus on building genuine relationships and leading with value.
Here’s an example of a script for a LinkedIn prospecting message you can use that’s focused on value — and isn’t spammy:
“Hi, Erika! I’m looking for beta testers for my new productivity app. I thought you’d be a great fit since you’re a SaaS project manager. I’m happy to send an info link over if you’d like to read about it first?”
This script is direct but not pushy.
It explains exactly what you need and why you think the potential lead would benefit. It also gives the lead a softer way to learn about your initiative before they sign up or agree to a call.
Here’s a template you can adapt to your outreach goals when DMing on social media:
“Hi [potential lead’s name], I’m looking for/I’m reaching out because [what you need]. I thought you’d be a great fit since [reason]. I’m happy to send a [resource type] over if you’d like to learn more first?”
What We’ve Learned About Outbound Lead Gen
The outbound lead generation process often requires lots of trial and error.
Here’s what we’ve learned from testing sales strategies across multiple channels:
Follow-up
Always touch base with prospects who’ve shown interest.
You can also reach out to prospects who’ve read your messages but haven’t responded yet. They might have been busy when you first reached out, and may appreciate a reminder.
Following up is key to nudging potential prospects into your sales funnel and boosting conversion rates.
We’ve learned that some decision-makers need to hear from us at least seven times before they’ll take meaningful action. This is especially true in B2B industries where sales cycles tend to be longer.
Talk about possibilities, not just pain points
Yes, you should clarify that you understand your leads’ pain points.
In addition, it’s important to assist your potential clients in envisioning the accomplishments they’ll achieve by collaborating with you.
While some prospects need a reminder about their problems — others are painfully aware of them. This means they don’t need someone constantly poking their pain. They need someone who can show them what’s possible.
For instance …
Instead of: “How many hours have you wasted by [doing a specific task/buying a specific product]?”
Try: “What would happen if [paint a picture of what’s possible/the positive results/benefits]?”
Use automation to save time
Save time finding leads by using DM, email, and SMS automations.
For example, post on Instagram or LinkedIn, and ask users to respond with a specific comment. Then, use a tool like ManyChat to automate a DM response.
For instance, you might post …
“We just created an ultimate productivity guide for project managers. Comment “PM Guide” and we’ll send it over!”
From there, your chat tool will automatically DM commenters with a series of messages or prompts. It might greet the prospect, ask them for their email address, and ask if they need anything else. It’ll then email them the guide.
You can tailor the prompts as you see fit.
Wrapping up
Outbound lead generation can help you find quality leads, test new markets, and generate brand awareness. It’s also a fantastic compliment to your inbound lead gen strategies.
When you have both … there’s no limit to how many qualified leads you can flood your pipeline with.
Ready for clean, targeted emails?
Try Evaboot now (no credit card required) — and boost your LinkedIn outbound lead generation strategy.
Here’s to your success in generating leads!
Author Bio:
Ioana Wilkinson
Ioana is a business strategist and content writer for B2B tech and SaaS brands. She also helps aspiring entrepreneurs build remote businesses. Born in Transylvania and raised in Texas, Ioana has been living the digital nomad life since 2016. When she’s not writing, you can catch her snorkeling, exploring, or enjoying a café con leche in Barcelona!
