Outreach is a part of any brand’s overall marketing strategy. Whether it’s a small business, non-profit, global corporate enterprise, or even a social media influencer, success relies on online communications and successful outreach strategies.
A communication outreach strategy is to deliver a message to prospects and users online that would not otherwise come across your brand. With that, identify a communication outreach goal. This goal should inform your CTA, typically defined by how you’re going to measure conversions. By knowing what you’re chasing and how to measure it, you can gauge whether a strategy is proving successful or not.
When putting together a digital outreach strategy, here are the 11 best practices that you should consider:
1. Success relies on you knowing your audience
In your communication outreach strategy, create buyer personas. Build out personalities for your target users. Know what motivates them. Learn about their demographics. Record the language and tone they use when they talk. Generating outreach messages that resonate with your audience relies on you having a fundamental understanding of what’s important to them.
2. Use the right communication outreach channel
To do outreach, you need to find your target users online. Look at social media, forums, and influencers for hints on where your target audience is. It may be a combination of online communication platforms you have to use to hit your outreach strategy goal. If you aren’t marketing in the right places though, your strategy is already dead in the water.
3. When you interact, your users engage
On social media, it is especially important to interact with your followers. Answer comments. Don’t ignore any negative feedback you receive. Respond to reviews. Whenever you see an opportunity to engage, do so. This lets users know you’re listening and makes a positive impression. Keep on top of social media platforms and any other outreach channels you have open.
4. Be attention-grabbing with communication
The average person processes 34GB of information every day. Your outreach message has to somehow cut through all that and be unique enough to be memorable the next day. The audience you’re targeting holds all the answers as it pertains to what’s interesting and eye-catching to them and what isn’t. Be one-of-a-kind. Be engaging.
5. Use existing users to reach new prospects
Word-of-mouth is still one of the most powerful types of marketing. Consumers trust their peers more than they trust any form of advertising. Encourage your existing users to share your messaging. Get your existing audience excited about your brand by running a user-generated content contest. Think of how many people are connected on social media to any one user. Tapping into the users you already have, you can reach immense networks of prospects in seconds.
6. Consider using an influencer for outreach
Influencers are typically social media personalities with large amounts of followers willing to advertise your brand on their social media accounts for a fee. This can be something like a mention at the start of a YouTube video or a sponsored social media post. Influencers your audience already follows exposes you to potentially thousands of people with a single mention, generating instantaneous brand awareness.
7. Personalize your messaging
When a message is personalized to the target user, it is more likely to be successful. Humanize messaging, attaching an emotional component to it. For example, some of your users will be parents. Use that. Consider how your brand impacts parents and their children, and showcase that. This is just an example. Every brand will be different. A personal touch works though.
8. Don’t be ‘too much’ with your marketing
You don’t want your brand to appear as spam. Be persistent with your strategy but without crossing the line into annoying. Especially if you’re using the same channel for outreach as retargeting or servicing your existing users, be careful with how often you send out outreach messages, what they contain, and their repetitiveness.
9. Find a high-performance outreach strategy
Do some A/B testing with different outreach messages. Use those that work best. A high-performance outreach strategy may involve something like offering a discount or free item, incorporate a sense of urgency, have a teaser of something, communicate social proof, or stimulate intrigue. An outreach communications message shouldn’t just be general content. Subtext is important.
10. Adapt to trends in online communications
Politics is a great example of this. Politicians want votes. To get those votes, they have to go wherever the votes are. This is why 2021’s politicians are engaged in influencer marketing, Instagram, YouTube, and online channels way, way more than politicians even a decade ago. Don’t wait to jump on board with trends, especially as it pertains to finding your target audience where they are.
11. Look at case studies for inspiration
If you’re low on online communication outreach strategy ideas, look at case studies online. Numerous case studies exist, providing some insight into what’s worked in the past. You can also look at any social media platform for examples on how brands are using outreach to reach customers new and old, engaging them in likes, shares, and comments. Consider what can be applied to your brand.
