Outbound vs. Inbound Leads Explained

Kasra Dash: So today we're going to be talking about outbound versus inbound leads. I'm joined with James. Do you want to kick it off with outbound leads. James Dooley: Yes so outbound leads is where you are proactively going out and cold emailing. It could be cold calling or direct messaging on LinkedIn. If you're doing it from your actual brand you can end up getting quite a lot of one star reviews so you need to be very careful with an outbound lead generation strategy. It can work well but it's costly to get the data especially nowadays with GDPR and you can annoy a lot of people. It's like the old days of knocking on the door and asking if they want double glazing and they tell you to get away. It's not something we look to do at all at Fat Rank. We generally run an inbound lead generation model. I much prefer inbound leads because customers go out of their way to search for the product or service you offer then inquire with you. There's no hard sell. There's no trying to convert someone who's not even in the market. Kasra Dash: So inbound lead generation. You can do it on a variety of platforms. We’ll start with Facebook. One thing you mentioned is people saying I'm not even a house owner why are you trying to sell me double glazing. On Facebook ads you can target people who actually own a house so already you're much better off than outbound. It probably sounds like we're hating on outbound lead generation. It definitely does work but it's just a numbers game and there's just not enough hours for myself and James to start knocking on people's doors. You've got Facebook ads. The good thing is people think it's interruptive marketing but it's not. Facebook have spent the past five years improving that pixel data. If someone searches Conservatory Installation Company on Google then loads up Facebook they'll see conservatory installation ads. They're in market. Then you've got PPC listings. For anyone who's never done PPC before it's the top two or three results on Google and you pay per click. In some industries it's expensive especially in finance or law. You need long tail keywords not short tail ones. You need negative keyword lists. And then you've got SEO. You've got Google Business Profiles for local rankings and organic listings for national rankings. That's down to topical authority and backlinks. That's your off page SEO. James Dooley: If you're a business owner looking for inbound or outbound lead generation we hope you understand the differences. The biggest difference is conversion rate. Inbound conversion rate is much higher. At FatRank.com we run an inbound lead generation service with a pay per lead model and a commission based model. Both are inbound. Make sure you fill in the form and check it out. In my opinion inbound marketing is so much better than outbound lead generation.