If you do your lead tracking right, you know there are two types of leads coming in: outbound leads and inbound leads.
This article covers everything you need to know about outbound leads and how they differ from inbound leads.
We will also cover the best tactics to use to get more leads and get your return on investment (ROI) in no time.
What are outbound leads?
Outbound leads are prospects that are not aware of your business.
This means that a business must target outbound leads with proactive cold outreach efforts, such as cold emailing, cold calling, multichannel prospecting, and advertising.
These leads have not initiated contact with your business, and they require more effort to engage and convert.
Outbound leads have lower initial conversion rates than inbound leads, but they give you better reach and scalability and provide faster ROI.
Outbound leads: Main features
Here are eight key features of outbound leads:
- Require proactive outreach: Generated through direct efforts like cold calls and personalized cold emails.
- Lack of prior engagement: Outbound leads have no initial interaction or interest in the business.
- Broad targeting: Involves reaching a wide audience with varied levels of relevance to the business.
- Lower initial trust: Typically, it requires more effort to build trust, as the outbound lead is unsolicited.
- Immediate results: Growing a following the inbound takes a long time, but outbound outreach brings the results immediately. Many businesses don’t have the time and luxury to wait for their inbound leads to fill their pipeline organically. Startups and businesses in the scaling stage benefit from outbound leads in particular.
- Require lead qualification: Outbound leads require a strong qualification process to identify genuinely interested prospects.
- Higher customer acquisition cost: Outbound leads have higher costs per lead due to investment in outreach.
- Faster ROI: While getting outbound leads may cost more than getting inbound leads in the beginning, you get your return on investment way faster. In the long run, outbound leads can have more measurable ROI as it becomes the driving source for your profit.
What’s the difference between outbound and inbound leads?
Outbound leads show no initial interest in your business, and you have to engage and convert them proactively.
Most of your outbound prospects have no idea you exist.
Outbound leads are more expensive. Overall, they cost 39% more than inbound leads (State of Marketing report, HubSpot).
Naturally, the biggest challenge with outbound leads is that initially, they are less likely to purchase.
In contrast, inbound leads have shown their interest in your business.
Inbound leads are warmer and more qualified prospects that are way easier to convert.
Why are outbound leads so useful?
Outbound leads are useful because they allow businesses to expand their market reach beyond inbound leads who find them organically.
Outbound lead generation can generate immediate visibility and brand awareness.
Outbound methods enable precise targeting and messaging, allowing companies to tailor their pitches to specific demographics or industries.
Additionally, outbound strategies are very beneficial for introducing new products or services to a market that may not yet be aware of them.
Any business that wants to scale needs to generate more outbound leads, as inbound leads aren’t enough.
Why is outbound so important?
It’s a proactive lead generation.
This means that you don’t sit and wait for new leads to come to you, but you proactively chase your future customers.
Outbound leads are extremely important in the early or scale stages of startups.
If your marketing channels are struggling to fill the pipeline, it’s time to do your outbound.
How to get more outbound leads?
Since outbound leads show no interest in your business, you have to target them yourself.
Here are 4 most effective and proven strategies to get you outbound leads:
1. Cold emails
Cold emailing is the cheapest, easiest, and most effective way to target many outbound leads at once.
The most effective way to send multiple cold outreach emails is through a sales engagement platform like lemlist.
It helps you find emails from a database with 450M+ contacts and 63M companies, verify them to protect your sender’s reputation, and personalize your outreach at scale.
2. Cold calls
Cold calling is the oldest way to generate outbound leads, and it’s still very popular because it actually works.
Sales reps reach out to their prospects via phone calls to get insights on their pain points or push them to conversion.
Cold calling requires patience and experience, and it can be stressful for beginner sales reps. To optimize your cold calls and get more leads, you have to really understand your buyer persona.
Try this AI-powered Buyer Persona Generator to find out what your ICP is and what exactly you need to tell them so they don’t hang up.
B2B outbound leads are hanging out on social media channels like LinkedIn and Twitter. LinkedIn, especially, is an excellent platform to reach out to your prospects with a LinkedIn outreach strategy.
But LinkedIn has limits on how many messages and invitations to connect you are allowed to send in a given time.
That’s why you need a tool to automate and scale your LinkedIn outreach to get more outbound leads.
Use tools like the lemlist sales engagement platform to find your prospects on LinkedIn, send automatic connection requests that won’t get you banned, and contact them with a workflow campaign. You can even add steps like leaving comments on their posts for your campaign for better reach and engagement.
If you want to make your outbound strategy even more impactful, we advise you to add LinkedIn voice notes feature on lemlist to your sequence. It will make your outreach even more personalized and human.
4. Multichannel outreach
More and more sales reps are optimizing their outbound lead generation. It’s because utilizing just one lead generation tactic is no longer enough to get many high-quality leads.
A multichannel lead generation strategy is when you combine different channels like phone calls, cold emails, and LinkedIn outreach in one campaign.
This way, you have a much higher chance of prospects engaging with your outreach and responding to your offer.
lemlist, an ultimate sales engagement platform, is an excellent solution for running multichannel campaigns that are scalable, personalized, and highly effective. lemlist has several multichannel templates with results that you can get started with.
Learn more about setting up your multichannel prospecting strategy to land you more outbound leads in 2024.
Outbound lead generation: 5 key steps to follow
Getting outbound leads may seem like a tricky job if you never done it before.
For beginner sales reps, we advise to follow a 5-step framework to getting outbound leads:
- Identify target audience: Clearly define the demographics and characteristics of your ideal customer profile to focus your outreach efforts.
- Build quality contact lists: Gather accurate and up-to-date contact information through databases, social media, and networking events. The easiest way to do so is using lemlist’s database of 450M+ contacts. It allows you to scrape verified emails and phone numbers in 1-click. It also shows you exactly which leads are most likely to buy right now.
- Craft compelling messages: Develop clear, tailored messages that address the needs and pain points of your target audience. Make sure your outreach is a problem to your lead solution, addresses their concern, offers an alternative, and is truly valuable.
- Attend industry events: Attending conferences, talks, webinars, and summits is an excellent way to build your network and connect to industry professionals. Any new contact you add is a potential prospect to feed your sales funnel.
- Don’t forget paid advertising: Targeted ads on search engines and social media are a time-proven tactic to drive traffic to your website. It can be useful for both inbound leads and outbound leads since it catches the attention of new potential customers and expands your reach beyond your initial ICP.
What are the types of outbound leads?
Outbound leads can be categorized into different types:
- Cold Leads: Prospects who have had no prior contact with your business and are reached through unsolicited efforts like cold calling or emailing.
- Warm Leads: Leads that have been previously contacted and have shown some level of interest, making them more receptive to further engagement.
- Purchased Leads: Contact information obtained from third-party vendors, involving lists of potential customers who match specific criteria.
- Referral Leads: Prospects referred by existing customers or partners who may have some familiarity with your business through word-of-mouth.
- Trade Show Leads: Contacts gathered from networking at industry events, where face-to-face interactions can lead to follow-up outreach.
- Direct Mail Leads: Prospects reached through physical mail campaigns, such as brochures or postcards, intended to generate interest or prompt a response.
- Advertising Leads: Leads generated from responses to advertisements in print media, radio, TV, or online platforms that encourage direct contact.
- Networking Leads: Contacts made through business networking events or groups, where personal connections facilitate follow-up outreach.
- Partnership Leads: Prospects identified through collaboration with other businesses or organizations, often through co-marketing efforts.
- Webinar or Event Leads: Individuals who have registered for or attended webinars or events, providing opportunities for targeted follow-up and engagement.
- Sales Blitz Leads: Prospects identified through intensive, short-term sales efforts targeting a specific area or market segment.
- Cross-Selling Leads: Existing clients contacted for additional products or services that complement what they already purchase.
- Resurrected Leads: Previously engaged prospects who didn’t convert are re-engaged with new offers or pitches.
- Door-to-Door Leads: Prospects reached through in-person visits, a traditional and direct form of generating interest.
- Sponsorship Leads: Contacts made through sponsorship of events or initiatives that provide exposure to a new audience.
Who is in charge of outbound leads?
The sales team typically takes charge of outbound leads, focusing on direct outreach and engagement to generate new business opportunities.
Sales representatives or sales development representatives (SDRs) are responsible for contacting potential prospects through cold calls, emails, and other outbound strategies.
Marketing teams also contribute to generating outbound leads by providing support and resources, such as crafting compelling messaging and creating targeted advertising campaigns.
Growth and operations teams also play vital roles in outbound generation workflows.
Which one do I need: outbound leads or inbound leads?
Inbound leads are great for long-term growth through content and organic engagement, but they can take time to develop.
Outbound leads generate quick visibility and market reach but can cost more to engage and convert.
However, it pays off since you get your ROI faster with outbound leads than inbound ones.
Key takeaways
Outbound leads require proactive outreach like cold emailing and cold calling because they aren’t aware of your business.
Outbound leads provide immediate visibility and brand awareness, making them particularly beneficial for startups and businesses looking to scale quickly.
Despite higher costs and lower initial conversion rates compared to inbound leads, outbound strategies can deliver a faster return on investment.
With outbound lead generation, you can target more precisely and generate quick engagement.
Cold emailing, cold calling, social selling, and multichannel outreach are the most effective methods for generating outbound leads.
The roles of sales, marketing, and growth teams are crucial in managing outbound leads to expand market reach successfully.
