Integrating Inbound Marketing with Outbound Sales is Essential

People say outbound lead generation is dead (cold calling and the like). You’ll also have heard a lot about inbound marketing and how buyers complete 57% of the buying process without salespeople. Here’s the rub, not only is outbound marketing alive, but in many ways it’s better than ever. Why?

Because if you integrate them properly, Inbound Marketing makes Outbound more powerful.

So, what are the benefits?

• First and foremost, inbound informs outbound and allows your salespeople to have conversations with prospects, about business pains, from a position of knowledge. Why? Because they know what content the prospect has been downloading, what they’ve seen on the website, even what questions they’ve been asking on social media. It’s easier to be helpful and to influence when you already know your prospect’s interests.

• Informed outbound is the personal touch that cements the relationship with your company. Remember how we talked about making sure your company blog really speaks in the ‘voice’ of your business. That’s because people really do buy from people and that journey starts with the digital, but it culminates with a salesperson. If the digital and the human speak the same way, with consistent, cohesive messages, you’ve got a very powerful customer acquisition machine on your hands.

• Inbound-outbound integration fosters brand familiarity, because prospects hear the same messages about your brand frequently, through different channels, including outbound. Even if they’re not interested now, when the time comes, they’re already having positive thoughts about your company.

• Frequent and direct communication between sales and marketing means cohesive messaging; mutual accountability; and more effective lead generation, handover and closing. In short, everything that people mean when the say ‘aligning sales and marketing’.