Over the last few years, the number of businesses and marketers who jumped on the outreach marketing bandwagon has been slowly rising. And it’s just been a never-ending competition of who can convince influencers for a spot on their blog or social profile.
Every year, the strategies used are also getting more complex. Personally, however, I’ve found that the most effective methods were also the fastest and simplest to execute.
It quickly became clear that the difference in results outreach marketers produced lies in where they were focusing on. And, not surprisingly, the results were bleaker for those who didn’t focus at all.
Outreach Marketing: Making Your Efforts Count
One noticeable trend in outreach marketing lately that has really made it a difficult field to succeed in is spam. And influencers absolutely hate it.
This is why if you want to make your own outreach marketing successful, you need catch their attention and set yourself apart. Fortunately, that’s not that hard to do.
Below are some of the best ways to increase your outreach opportunities and finally gain the success you’ve always wanted for your personal brand or business. While they may seem simple, they’re more likely to produce the results you want just because you’ve added extra effort.
1. Do Better Research
There’s so many tools available to help you find influencers in your target niche. Right off the bat, you can try FollowerWonk, BuzzSumo, and Klear.
What most marketers fail to realize is that creating the list of influencers to contact is a vital part of the entire strategy. Why? Because having too many irrelevant people on there will just end up in wasted time and effort.
Don’t be tempted to go for quantity here. As much as possible, you should invest more in building up a list that includes only the people who are relevant to your niche.
2. Build Connections Others Won’t
As long as you have a focused list of influencers to target, you can rest assured that any effort you put into connecting with any of them won’t go to waste.
Email pitches will still be a part of your strategy, but don’t limit yourself to that. Before you send anything, put some effort into really connecting with these influencers. Follow them on Twitter or LinkedIn, engage with their posts, comment and tell them your ideas, and just be real.
So many marketers today won’t invest more than five minutes to connect with an influencer. Just one simple email and they’re done. You, however, need to show that you’re different.
3. Always Think Win-Win-Win
Influencers are fed up with pitches that focus on the marketer’s own self-interest. They get that all the time, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that they view most outreach marketers as unworthy of their time.
You, however, can easily make your pitches a knock-out hit if you focus on giving value to the influencer and his audience first, and yourself last.
The end goal is still for everyone to win, but know that focusing on how they benefit from it will get you more results than by just focusing on how you benefit.
4. Create Even Better Content
There are numerous rules and advice you could follow for creating great content, and they’d all probably be right. But to create content that influencers are more likely to accept, you just need to have an eye for quality and mind for criticism.
Go over the content they already have. Try to look for articles they’ve featured as their best and gather more insight about them.
Here are examples of questions you can ask to help you analyze their content:
- What makes the post good?
- What writing style is being used?
- How are the ideas conveyed?
- How is the content being structured?
- What could have been done better?
Next, try and come up with a way to produce something that’s even better.
For example, if one of their popular posts is a step-by-step guide on how to find a good content delivery network (CDN), take things up a notch by offering to write an article that covers everything a website owner can do to speed up his page loading time, including using a CDN.
5. Systemize
One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is doing their outreach haphazardly. They don’t have a process, they don’t organize data, and they don’t measure their performance.
Failing to have a system is just like saying you don’t care if you get results or not. But I’m sure you’re smart enough to want to see results, right?
If so, then you should be paying attention more to the process you have for executing outreach marketing. From the preparations, research, connecting, pitching, and writing, everything must be followed according to procedure. And most importantly, everything must be tracked.
Some of the more popular online tools you can use for creating a system or work procedure are Trello and Asana.
Take a look at your own marketing strategy. Is there something you’re not tracking? Maybe a task that doesn’t have a procedure that has led you to skip some few crucial steps? Finetune your strategy by having a clear and concise system. Do this and you’d be surprised at the insight and results you’ll get from all your efforts.
Conclusion
The best way to do outreach marketing will always vary from business to business. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach that can guarantee you’ll get the same great results every time.
This is because several factors will still come into play, such as the amount of competition in that niche, or the willingness of an influencer to accept guest posts at that particular time. However, the ability to focus and do one particular aspect better than other marketers already greatly increases your chances of getting the green light.
For this reason, we strongly encourage others to execute their outreach in a more personal way. It isn’t just about reducing spam, it’s about putting back some integrity into this marketing strategy that gives value to you, the influencer, and the audience.
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