Why include CoPilot AI in your outbound lead generation

Outbound lead generation can help ensure that businesses always find another customer, but it’s not always the easiest exercise.

After all, outbound leads are about 39% more expensive than inbound leads, with just 16% of marketers saying “outbound practices provide the highest quality leads for sales,” according to lead gen statistics. Without clear strategy, outbound lead generation efforts can consume time, burn out staff, and be a costly drain for businesses.

Let’s explore the ways businesses can ensure their outbound lead generation strategies succeed, including through using tools for automating LinkedIn prospecting like CoPilot AI.

Basics of outbound lead generation

Outbound generation of qualified leads is sometimes literal boots on the ground work. It is where a company works proactively and taps into growth, social, and communication channels to bring in new leads. A resourceful business or sales development representative can bring in outbound leads from practically anywhere.

Accordingly, as opposed to more passive inbound marketing strategies, which we’ll delineate below, outbound lead generation strategies can involve any number of different efforts, including:

• Cold calling prospective leads, which has a success rate of just 1-3% for landing appointments, but can still drum up business for anyone. It takes some finesse to ride the telephonic waves, thick enough skin to be able to handle rejection, and a willingness to play the numbers game, making however many calls it takes to get a customer into the sales funnel. But it can lead to high-quality leads;
• Cold emailing, which is slightly more passive than picking up the phone and calling a possible customer, but can still require some gumption. The best cold emailing isn’t spammy. It’s about reaching out to someone who could benefit from a service and catching their attention with a unique pitch tailored to their needs.

Like cold calling, cold emailing is something of a numbers game, with response rates thought to vary from 1% to 5%;

• Working the floor at a trade show or conference, which doesn’t have to mean getting a booth at a show, even if that can be a great investment for businesses that can afford it (approximately $100 to $150 per square foot of floor space.)

The true outbound marketing strategy with trade shows would be to try to find the attendees who for whatever reason never make it to the booth, but might be on the floor for a long time nevertheless. One site made note of industry stats showing “attendees spend an average of 8.3 hours visiting all the booths and displays at a trade show”;

• Prospecting through social media channels such as LinkedIn, which is becoming easier to do with cost-effective with tools like CoPilot AI. It can be done more and more via automation tools, which help keep costs fixed for outbound marketing.

The common thread with outbound lead gen strategies is that they rely on companies reaching out to decision makers, rather than the other way around.

One other thing that should be clear here is that most of what we’re discussing here refers to B2B lead generation and that sales process. That being said, these strategies don’t have to be exclusive to B2B sales.

Inbound vs outbound lead generation

The primary difference between outbound and inbound lead generation is brand awareness. When a prospective customer receives a piece of marketing campaign collateral – say, a direct mail flyer advertising a 50% off sale for a window replacement company – their level of interest can build to the point they contact the company, be it through phone, the web, or in-person.

When an inbound strategy yields a customer call, that customer is already aware of a company and what it’s selling. They’ve maybe even done a little preliminary research, such as checking out a business’s Yelp reviews or Better Business Bureau webpage or seeking referrals to potential competitors. They are a warm lead by the time they reach a company through one of its inbound marketing channels. While they may well still require lead nurturing, it should generally be easier to convert them into an appointment or paying customer.

On the other hand, when an outbound lead effort reaches a prospect, the person being contacted has quite possibly never heard of the person (perhaps a business development representative or member of the outbound sales team), and potentially not even the business contacting them. Because of this, they can’t fully determine whether it’s a legitimate inquiry or a spam call, with the U.S. seeing a startling 56% increase in the latter in 2021.

All of this puts companies hopeful of creating leads through a little outbound bootstrapping at a distinct, though not hopeless disadvantage. The company will just want to do everything it can to increase the odds of its outbound lead generation efforts paying off. Next, we’re going to look at five solid strategies.

5 strategies for outbound lead generation

When it comes time to do outbound lead generation, it might seem a bit like the Wild West, with anything going as a company tries to mine new lines of business. It’s not quite that simple, though. In fact, taking too freewheeling of an approach with outbound prospecting.

For outbound lead generation undertakings to have a good closing rate, which can vary depending upon industry, it’s imperative for businesses to be tactful and innovative in their efforts.

Here are five strategies to consider:

1. Visiting potential customers in-person

For BDRs, SDRs, and other business representatives, in-person interactions can be highly effective. It allows prospective customers to instantly put a face to a name and know they aren’t some fly-by-night scammer. Pounding the pavement also shows a kind of earnestness that can be endearing to some potential customers.

While it’s not for everyone and it’s a bit old fashioned, getting leads by going out in-person can work for those willing to try. It can help to identify new demographics and even reshape ideal customer profiles, as businesses bring their message out into the world.

2. Ditching the robodialer

Robocalls, which hit an all-time of 5.7 billion for the month of October 2019, dipped in 2020 but are rising again. It might be tempting for businesses wanting to increase their outbound leads to think they can do it by using a robotic phone system that dials hordes of unsuspecting customers en masse and connects any who don’t instantly hang up with a live agent.

Here’s why this is a terrible idea, particularly for B2B marketers: effective outbound prospecting is about personalization. There are appealing and effective alternativesto streamline your outbound lead generation processes with the help of tools like CoPilot AI. These tools enable you to quickly show you truly understand your prospects’ pain points and challenges, and what they need to solve them..

3. Developing scripts for outbound prospecting

Speaking of personalization, one thing is important to point out here: tailoring your content to each prospect doesn’t have to mean reinventing the proverbial wheel with every single call or email marketing message. Crafting a unique approach for each interaction will only result in diminishing returns over time. At some point, you just need to have a succinct and captivating) pitch, an elevator pitch that gets your prospect excited to dig deeper..

Scripts give business development, sales reps, or even your marketing team a guide they can turn to for any phone call or email. While scripts shouldn’t be read verbatim on calls and are best used adaptively, they give reps reliable paths to lead conversions.

4. Video

Platforms like YouTube, which had around 1.86 billion visitors in 2021, are becoming great ways to reach potential customers. These are people who might not want to spend five or 10 minutes reading a long how-to article online but will happily watch or listen to videos (which have an average length on the platform of 11.7 minutes) that explain the information they need.

While video might seem better suited for content marketing or inbound lead generation strategies, there are ways to effectively integrate video into your outbound strategy. Valuable content can come in many forms - from short snippet videos (not unlike what you see on platforms like TikTok), to more in-depth material such as a webinar. This type of content also lends itself to optimization keywords labeling the video with respect to best practices for YouTube’s algorithm, other search engines, or general SEO.

Companies can also look to use video as part of their collateral for other types of outbound lead gen, such as embedding video in a cold email or through personalized videos, which can easily be created using platforms like Video by CoPilot AI

5. LinkedIn prospecting

Professional social media platforms such as LinkedIn are goldmines for outbound lead generation. An SDR or BDR can regularly build business through LinkedIn, provided of course that they know what they’re doing and have the right tools.

Similar to other methods outlined here, the key is to be as personable as reasonably possible and not take a shotgun approach, spamming or otherwise annoying possible customers.

How CoPilot AI helps outbound lead generation

When a company commits to generating leads through outbound approaches, it can be a multi-pronged effort, employing a variety of techniques to reach the most potential customers. Here’s how CoPilot AI can help its partners achieve outbound lead generation success.

A tool to maximize LinkedIn outreach

CoPilot AI is a LinkedIn tool that helps companies identify target audiences, create campaigns, and start quality conversations with potential customers. 

Our SaaS-based platform uses artificial intelligence to scour millions of profiles on LinkedIn, helping companies zero in on the most receptive potential leads. From there, CoPilot AI has a selection of messaging templates that gives companies a starting point for setting up LinkedIn outbound campaigns.

Our cloud-native, browser-based tool can also provide metrics that help companies develop personas, giving them a good idea if their outbound campaigns on LinkedIn are thriving.

Nuanced and personalized outreach

As we noted earlier, one of the key pillars to outbound lead generation is personalization rather than one-size-fits-all outbound tactics. While many businesses will undoubtedly still resort to clunky digital marketing tactics because they’re easy and don’t take much time, companies that personalize outreach will stand out and produce greater results.

CoPilot AI is committed to helping companies go above and beyond in their lead generation strategy. Our templates intuitively work to adapt to different types of customers and produce various types of communications. The result is messaging that’s both uniquely-crafted yet scalable.

Automatically email leads

We don’t just help to identify potential customers and build lead generation campaigns. We also get your conversations started through industry-proven message templates, configurations to follow-up automatically, and a centralized hub to manage your LinkedIn campaigns.

Don’t attempt outbound lead generation without a good copilot. Try CoPilot AI today.