skip to Main Content

Inbound + outbound, your business development power duo

Generate more sales leads by combining inbound and outbound marketing

Anika Temperante
Anika Temperante
Director of Sales and Marketing

Peanut butter and jelly. Shoes and socks. Nuts and bolts. Some things work just work better in pairs!

For medtech and B2B companies, the must-have power duo for lead generation combines inbound and outbound marketing. When used simultaneously, both disciplines complement each other and lift results across the board.

Inbound versus outbound marketing

Just what is the difference between inbound and outbound marketing? According to Marketo:

  • Outbound marketing involves proactively reaching out to potential customers to get them interested in a product.
  • Inbound marketing centers on creating and distributing content that draws buyers into your website.

Inbound marketing includes techniques like articles, videos, resource guides and infographics that educate or provide thought leadership on a topic related to your business. Potential customers
encounter your content through web searches, industry influencers and social media sharing.

Think of inbound marketing as your “always on” channel that creates a steady stream of information for potential healthcare or B2B decision-makers to self-serve during their buying journey. You make it available—but it’s up to the prospect to find it, consume it and hopefully, contact you with an “inbound” inquiry that results in a qualified sales lead.

Outbound marketing includes tactics such as lead generation emails, sales calls, events and advertising that more directly connect your target audience with your company or products. With outbound marketing, you determine the appropriate message or offer, who to contact and when to reach out.

Outbound provides immediacy; inbound casts a wider net

Each methodology has specific benefits. Outbound marketing provides more control and immediacy. You can measure results quickly through email open rates, reach rates for calling and overall lead conversions.

Inbound marketing casts a wider net through social media and SEO, which helps you reach new B2B and healthcare companies. It results in brand awareness and greater demand for your services, but relies on your target audience to take action and contact you. This can lengthen your sales cycle, generate unqualified traffic or result in feast-or-famine periods for sales leads.

Combine inbound and outbound marketing to boost results

Outsourced inside sales teams at professional call centers like Volkart May are outbound marketing specialists. Every day, our trained business development team makes thousands of outbound calls on behalf of leading medtech and B2B brands. Our goals is to engage busy prospects and decision-makers with relevant, helpful conversations about topics that matter to them.

But as effective as our outbound lead generation calling can be, the results are even stronger when our medtech and B2B clients combine outbound and inbound marketing.

Combining inbound and outbound tactics can be as simple as deploying one or more thought leadership articles before or after sales prospecting calls begin, or as complex as a multi-step, integrated campaign that uses numerous channels in concert with each other.

Using inbound and outbound marketing together yields many benefits:

  • It extends your reach in the marketplace.
  • It amplifies your message with your target audience.
  • It multiplies your lead generation results.
  • It shortens the overall sales cycle.

One of the easiest ways to combine inbound and outbound marketing is with content marketing and sales prospecting calls. This gives medtech, healthcare and B2B buyers multiple touchpoints with your brand over a short period of time.

Try these examples of inbound and outbound marketing

A combination inbound and outbound campaign could work in two ways:

1. Outbound supports inbound

In this scenario, your medtech or B2B company publishes one or more pieces of educational content, such as offering a free resource guide through your website and social media channels. Every time an interested buyer downloads it, you receive their contact information. That’s inbound marketing at work.

Once you receive that contact information, outbound marketing steps up. Your marketing team sends a follow-up email, then inside sales makes an outbound prospecting call to dig deeper into the audience’s specific challenges.

The call at this point should be a soft engagement—not a hard-selling, deal-closing push. Your outbound calling team should validate basic information about the prospect, answer any questions related to the content and probe for where the individual is at in the buying process. It’s critical that your inside sales team or outsourced call center representatives have a clear set of profiling questions and next steps to keep the prospect moving forward in your sales cycle.

2. Inbound supports outbound

With this type of campaign, your B2B or medtech company gets things rolling with a series of lead generation emails and sales calls. This is a great technique when you need to fill the sales pipeline quickly, generate awareness for a new product or service, or gain traction in a new sales territory. All it takes is a prospect list and the right resources to handle lead generation calling.

At the same time, you can increase results by adding inbound techniques. This boosts your market awareness. Your content could be an article, infographic or series of social media posts on the same product or topic you’re promoting via outbound marketing.

As your sales team engages prospects, they can use the article as a follow-up (creating another touchpoint for your brand). Prospects will also encounter your content naturally through their own networks, with your brand resonating more strongly because they’ve already connected with your outbound marketing.

Scale quickly with outbound marketing experts

Deploying both inbound and outbound marketing techniques may be more than your internal resources can handle. Or, your B2B or medtech company may need to scale quickly, without the time and expense of hiring, training and managing an internal sales team.

Outsourcing to experts can fill these gaps. Professional healthcare and B2B call centers like Volkart May deliver lead generation and outbound marketing services quickly and cost-effectively, working at all stages of the sales funnel. Learn more about our services, or contact us for a one-on-one discussion of your project needs.

See previous article
See next article

Stay connected

Keep current with medtech and B2B lead generation tips and news.

Back To Top