Proven Customer Acquisition Strategy: Outbound Vs Inbound

One of the ways in which a business increases sales is by gaining new customers. This can be done by persuading and attracting prospects to purchase a company’s products and services. Various strategies are implemented to gain new customers and this is called customer acquisition.

A customer acquisition strategy includes a methodology and system of managing prospects and inquiries formed though lead generation services. These could be outbound or inbound and if you are looking at call centre outsourcing for lead generation services, you may be wondering which to choose.

While there is much debate about which is the proven customer acquisition strategy, it is important to weigh the pros and cons of inbound lead generation and outbound lead generation as a customer acquisition strategy.

Inbound

Inbound lead generation is a method where the prospect initiates contact with the company. The lead generation services used by a company may use content to attract or pull a prospect to the company’s social media or website, where they can then be converted into leads.

The process of an inbound sales campaign consists of five main elements. It starts with strangers who are converted into visitors through the use of keywords and blogs. These visitors are then converted into leads with the use of calls-for-action and landing pages.

Emails and signals convert the leads into customers and events and smart content convert the customers into promoters.

Outbound

While outbound lead generation sounds like a phrase only used by sales teams, telemarketing is a phrase many of us are familiar with. Telemarketing reminds us of cold calls that are a nuisance and disruption. While this perception of telemarketing can give outbound lead generation a bad name, it must be understood that disruptive calls are not the only way of acquiring customers through outbound lead generation.

Outbound sales methods do not wait for the prospect to initiate contact. Instead, outbound lead generation initiates contact, thus giving the prospect very little control over the method and channel of communication. This is why they are often considered to be interruptive.

However, when carefully implemented, outbound sales strategies can be extremely effective. This is why many companies opt to outsource their outbound sales to call centre companies UK. A UK call centre may offer lead generation services like call centre outsourcing and customer services outsourcing. They may also give a company the option to outsource CCTV monitoring services and live chat support services.

This range of services as well as dedicated, skilled, and experienced teams make call centre companies in the UK a top choice among businesses that want to gain new customers and increase sales.

Which is the best?

Now that you have an idea about the two types of lead generation, we must look at the question of which is a proven customer acquisition strategy. There are several key factors within the customer acquisition framework and ease of execution is one of them. An inbound lead generation method may take longer in terms of implementation. Even if you outsource your lead generation services to a reputed UK call centre, inbound lead generation cannot be executed within a short time.

Outbound sales, on the other hand, can achieve quick results, especially if you have a strong value proposition. However, in terms of scaling up quickly, inbound sales can be better once the strategies are established.

Looking at growth, inbound lead generation provides the opportunities for non-linear growth as outbound lead generation depends largely on the size of the sales team.

If you are opting for call centre outsourcing or customer service outsourcing, you may also notice that inbound lead generation has long-lasting results, whereas outbound methods only acquire new customers as long as you continue your customer acquisition methods.

Lead volume and quality are also elements of the customer acquisition framework and inbound methods can give a company access to more leads than outbound methods can. This can be a huge advantage when attracting new customers.

However, outbound lead generation gives you more control over the prospects that get converted into leads and then customers. This control also means that the prospect has very little say over the timing, method, and channels of communication as contact is initiated by the company.

There are thus a number of advantages and disadvantages to these two customer acquisition strategies and the best method depends on your company and the results you are looking for.