Inbound and Outbound Strategies: How to Connect with More Customers

In the world of sales, you'll often hear about different strategies to capture consumers' attention. But in reality, sales strategies are simply divided into two main categories: inbound and outbound.

In this article, we are going to break down the strategies of sales inbound versus outbound and how to maximize your sales using one way or another, to attract more customers.

What is inbound sales?

Inbound It is an English word that is translated as “incoming” or “incoming”. It's a type of strategy built around organic traffic, naturally facilitating the buying process. Inbound sales are generally used in three channels:

• Websites
• Social media
• Email

Many companies use inbound marketing to provide industry-related information and appear as an authority in their industry. Branding statistics have shown that the 46% of consumers are willing to pay more for brands they trust. So if you can appear as an authority in your industry, there's a good chance you'll be successful.

What is Outbound?

Outbound or “outbound” sales are a strategy aimed at put the name of your brand or the offer of your products in front of consumers. These strategies are often based on paid advertising or other outreach strategies, such as cold calling. Outbound sales are used in:

• Commercial ads
• Web ads
• Social media ads
• “Cold” calling and sending messages.
• Trade Fairs

All of these methods help to start the conversation with the consumer. If you use the outbound sales strategies appropriate, this can be a very effective form of marketing.

Un Call Center for Salesforce can significantly enhance outbound strategies, since it allows you to automate call recording, measure the effectiveness of contacts and offer sales teams greater control over interaction with prospects.

In this way, cold calling and follow-up are no longer isolated processes and are integrated into a much more productive sales flow.

What's the difference between inbound and outbound?

The main difference is that inbound is considered a “pull” marketing strategy, that is, where customers are attracted. The outbound one “push” marketing strategy, where you go looking for customers. Simply put, they use different methods to achieve the same goal of attracting consumer attention to a brand's name and products.

Inbound marketing uses organic methods to attract naturally, to consumers who are looking for information during the purchase process. Companies invest their efforts in generating valuable content associated with their products or services, which help connect with the needs of their customers.

The outbound Use paid traffic or cold collection to attract the attention of specific consumers who are not necessarily looking for information themselves. Basically, it conveys the brand name to consumers who can benefit from the company's product or service.

Let's look at some examples to better understand the differences between inbound and outbound sales strategies.

How inbound sales work: example

First, let's see how a mattress company would use an inbound sales strategy, using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on its website, to attract organic traffic.
The mattress company may decide to write an article on its blog about “How to choose the right mattress for your needs?” In that article, they could cover the types of mattresses they offer and several use cases that would make each one the most suitable for someone.

When someone is looking “how to choose the right mattress”, this search term (if the article has good SEO), will make the blog post that the company wrote one of the first results. The consumer looking for information can read the article, get useful information and learn about the company's products at the same time. It's a very organic and natural way to attract traffic and promote a company's products.

After interacting with the content and downloading a resource, you create a potential customer and a SDR (Sales Development Representative) you will contact him to create a sales opportunity.

How outbound sales work: example

Now, let's see how that same mattress company could use outbound sales strategies to promote their products.

Such a strategy could be based on paid advertisements on social networks. They could create an ad aimed at middle class people between 25 and 40 years old with sleep quality problems. The company's announcement could talk about how its mattresses are designed to improve sleep quality and general well-being.

Social media ads would allow the mattress company to target the exact audience it is looking for and capture their attention. The brand's message reaches the type of consumers who will benefit from its products.

If someone is having trouble with sleep quality, these ads are likely to respond to their needs and make them want to know more. It's a great way to get the attention of people who may never have heard of the brand.

Can I use inbound and outbound strategies at the same time?

You can simultaneously apply inbound and outbound sales strategies. This is not only a possibility but even a necessity for companies that seek to believe. Combining both methods allows you to reach your target audience in different ways.

Managing both inbound and outbound sales can seem like a daunting task. However, there are many ways to make it more efficient, such as increasing the productivity with automation.

We live in a great time in which we have many excellent software programs that allow us to automate sales strategies such as email outreach or lead nurturing. Thus, a modern company can effectively use both strategies at the same time without being overwhelmed.

How to sell more using inbound and outbound

Along with automation, you can maximize sales efforts in a number of other ways. One of the best things you can do is to use CRM software. And if you also combine that CRM with a solution of telephony for Salesforce, you can automatically connect with leads from outbound campaigns and record each interaction to nourish your inbound.

This will help you keep track of all your data and manage many processes of your sales efforts in one place.

One question that many companies may have with CRM software is the adoption by sales representatives, so that they use it effectively. That's why it's essential to use sales engagement tools such as Harmonix AI with a CRM. This will help boost all your inbound and outbound efforts as it's a way to make your CRM more intuitive. This enables the best communication between teams and to be able to obtain greater control over the potential customers you connect with and what actions to take to turn them into customers.

There are also some tips for maximizing “inbound” and “outbound” sales strategies individually.

A key complement at this point is to take advantage of a automatic bookmark in Salesforce, which allows outbound teams to accelerate the connection rate, distribute lists of leads in an intelligent way and automatically record each call attempt in the CRM. Thus, prospecting becomes more agile and with reliable data to measure the effectiveness of campaigns.

Tips to improve your inbound strategies

Here are three tips for improving your inbound strategies:

1. Customize your inbound marketing efforts.
   A good way to apply personalization is to show the people behind the brand or the reasons why you created the solution it offers. You'll attract potential customers and make them want to know more, which is what inbound marketing is all about.
   
2. Nurture your potential customers.
   When you get potential customers through recruitment strategies, you must “cultivate” them by providing them with more valuable content, to grow those new relationships. It will help your brand stand out by showing that you care about them.
   
3. Use effective workflows.
   Many inbound sales teams have work processes that can't be fully automated. Using CRM software and other tools can help you implement workflows to improve your processes, so you can create content more efficiently.
    
4. Use backlinks.
   Backlinks connect one website to another, representing a vote of confidence and increasing a site's SEO. You can use link building services to boost your content and traffic.

Inbound marketing can take time to produce results, as it is based on organic traffic. Remember that if you apply the right strategies, you'll see results over time.

Tips to improve your outbound strategy

Here are three tips for improving your outbound strategies:

1. “Research” your potential customers.
   One of the best ways to improve cold calling and other outreach efforts is to get to know your brand to your potential customers. This can help you customize outbound strategies more effectively.
   
2. Target the main “pain points.”
   When researching your target audience, you're likely to see common “pain point” trends. Pain points are problems that afflict your customers and that your product or service solves. If your outbound efforts focus on them, you'll get better results, since that audience will feel identified with your message.
   
3. Use lead generation software.
   Finding new leads manually is really a laborious process. Lead generation software can help you find potential customers and streamline the contact process.

In general, both inbound and outbound sales strategies will help you promote your brand. The key is to adapt them to the needs of your target audience. How? Understanding your potential customers, customizing your strategies and using sales software.