In marketing, there are a lot of terms that you need to know if you’re going to create an effective sales pipeline. Two of these terms for sales or marketing are prospecting and outreach. Understanding prospecting and outreach will help you refine your sales approach, generate qualified leads, and eventually increase your revenue. Here are the basics on these two critical marketing terms and how they apply to your company.
Prospecting
This marketing term gets its name from the original use of “prospector,” which refers to people searching for gold or other precious metals by visually inspecting creek beds and mountainsides. If they spotted flakes or veins of gold, they would know that their time would be well spent digging and sifting in those areas because there was sure to be a valuable return in precious metals profits.
Today, prospecting in marketing essentially means the same thing, except instead of searching for gold, marketers are looking for the most valuable leads. They sift through lists of potential website visitors, users, subscribers, followers, sign-ups, leads, and customers to find the “gold.” Prospecting is the first step in the sales pipeline in which potential customers or “prospects” are identified.
A prospector, then, is a marketer who goes through these potential customers to find the prospects that are most likely to convert to sales in the subsequent pipeline phases. Generally, prospects have had some contact with you or your company and have expressed interest in your product or service. Your job now is to nurture them and get them to the finish line of becoming paying customers.
Outreach
Outreach is the marketing term that refers to what you do to prospects to get them to engage with your company with the ultimate goal of converting them to sales. Essentially, you are reaching out to them to see what they need from you to get them to the point where they are ready to buy your product or service, hence the term “outreach.”
Outreach efforts generally produce the top prospects that you’ve uncovered with your initial lead generation strategies. You’ve identified prospects who have an interest or need for your product or service. Now, you reach out to them with a solution to their pain points or valuable content that they can put into practice. Other outreach strategies include newsletters and subscriptions, infographics, whitepapers, webinars, and videos.
The prospects that respond to this outreach are high-quality leads that are more likely to convert to sales because they are not only interested in your product or service, but they’re also engaging with your company on a deeper level.
Many marketers also use social media for their outreach efforts because it’s simple to engage with prospects on these platforms. When you offer something of value as a post and a prospect comments on it, you have an excellent opening to engage them in a conversation about what they are looking for or need.
Conclusion
Mastering marketing is not easy because there are so many components to successfully presenting a product or service for sale. But, before you can worry about becoming a marketing expert, you have to grasp the basics, which includes understanding marketing terms like prospecting and outreach. Once you do, you will be well on your way to boosting your bottom line big time.
