Do you want to boost your brand? 

Do you want to achieve your objectives?

Do you want to get in front of more, but relevant audiences?

Well, teamwork makes the dream work, right?

And for today’s teamwork, we’re talking about outreach marketing. How you can use outreach strategies to do Giant things.

Let’s kick off with what we mean by outreach marketing…

What is Outreach Marketing?

Outreach marketing is quite literally… reaching out to people.

Not just any people, I’m talking about companies, businesses, brands, influencers and individuals that have a shared interest or relevance in what it is you’re offering.

The act of outreach marketing can help you to build awareness and momentum for either a campaign, a product or your brand overall.

For example, if you are marketing a travel company and looking to get the word out about a super awesome deal you’re doing for trips to Spain right now, then you might consider:

• Reaching out to travel journalists, or travel-based TikTokers to ask if they’d like to go on the trip for free, or a reduced price, and write a review or make content for their platforms
• Or, write a blog about the top 5 things you can do in Spain and send this out to newspapers, bloggers and more to put on their website – linking to your offer

You see? This way you’re using the extended reach of another related business or organisation to benefit your own.

It’s important though to remember that outreach marketing tends to be tit for tat – people will rarely just promote your business or content for the fun of it.

If they can benefit from it too, then they’re more likely to work with you – and for them, that could be website sessions or a free trip on your aeroplane…

Why is Outreach Marketing important?

Growing a business or a brand can be tricky, and that’s ok – the act of outreach marketing, however, gives you the chance to boost the number of relevant people who might see your efforts.

It also gives you great opportunities to work with other brands, extending your professional networks.

Overall though, outreach marketing is important because it helps you to gain more audience, boost your visibility and gain more credibility.

So, what are the benefits of outreach marketing?

The benefits of outreach marketing are things such as;

• Boosting brand awareness
• Securing valuable links back to your website
• Increasing new customers
• Building long term relationships with our businesses 
• Boosts traffic to your website
• Adding credibility to your brand

And you can’t deny, you don’t want to be in on that action…

Ok but,

Where do I begin with outreach marketing?

When it comes to kicking off outreach marketing activity, you first need to identify your ‘influencers’ – and no, this doesn’t have to be the likes of Kim K.

If you were a bakery, for example, then you might look to identify the likes of BBC’s Good Good website or magazine as a publication to reach out to, or local food-based influencers and publications.

When identifying these outlets, look for the likes of:

• Activity (how active they are across their platforms)
• Relevancy (do they relate to your business?)
• Popularity (and remember, big isn’t always best!)
• Engagement (are they just for show, or have they got an engaged audience?)

Once you’ve identified who your influencers might be, you’ve got to build the relationships necessary to work with them!

The most obvious way to do this is a good ol’ email. In fact, we’ve covered how to write effective emails in an episode before.

There are also methods like Tweets, direct messaging, and, crazily enough… picking up the phone! 

To get their attention, you’ve got to craft a pitch, something that sells your idea or how you want to work with them, being concise and detailing the benefits for the influencer if they choose to work with you.

Remember to stand out, and to offer genuine benefits in return (such as free cookies if you’re a bakery…).

If you’re not sure where to start when looking for businesses to outreach to, then use some of the analytics tools in social media platforms, or Google Analytics to see what your current customers and audience are into. Use this as some inspiration.

So yeah, outreach marketing, it’s as simple as reaching out to other businesses to work with them to reach out to their audience too – cool, right?