Boost Engagement with Quality Outreach

There’s a big difference between communicating clearly and effectively with your company’s audience and spam. Unfortunately, marketers often wind up producing a lot of spam when they’re trying to write quality outreach. 

It’s not their fault, quality outreach can be complicated. But it doesn’t have to be. 

If you really want to boost engagement with your company, good outreach is critical. Here are some things to keep in mind if you want your company’s outreach to get read and boost company engagement. 

Focus On Your Customers, Not Your Offers

Most businesses know that their customers are looking for solutions to a problem they have. That leads a lot of companies to focus on pitching and sending out information about their offers. After all, a company’s offers are its solutions. 

The problem is that most customers don’t want to buy from a cold pitch. 

Instead of focusing on your products and services outreach should focus on your customers. Who are your dream customers? Who do your dream customers want to be? Only once you’ve identified those things can you start talking about how you can help. 

It’s also important to remember that not all your outreach needs to talk about your offers at all. Sometimes it’s a good idea to focus entirely on your customers, their needs, and build a sense of understanding and empathy. 

Build Relationships To Foster Trust

One of the goals of good outreach is to foster long-term relationships with your audience. Constant growth isn’t sustainable for a lot of businesses, so that shouldn’t be your only goal. 

By building relationships with your customers you encourage brand loyalty. More importantly, it’s a lot easier to convince someone who has already worked with you that they should work with you again. Familiarity bias helps bring customers back again and again, but only if you've built that relationship and back it up with great customer experience. 

Be Transparent and Honest

A lot of companies focus a lot on brand image which can only take you so far. Being transparent and honest with your customers is one of the best kinds of outreach you can provide because it reinforces the relationships you’ve already built. 

Trust is largely based on willingness to be real and vulnerable, even when it's difficult. As a business that means being honest about what you can and can't do, and communicating clearly with your audience. 

Offer Valuable Free Content

Outreach might not be where you think to put some of your best and most valuable content, but it’s a great way to build trust and earn engagement. 

Why is valuable content so great for outreach? Because it proves to new customers that you’re a company worth paying attention to you, and it reminds your existing clients of your value. 

Don’t let your outreach fade to the back of your client’s minds. If you can provide the kind of content your audience looks forward to seeing time and time again you’ll win more engagement naturally.

Address Feedback

Most people take reviews and feedback seriously. Leaving feedback takes time and effort and most people think it’s trustworthy and valuable. That means that when you get feedback, especially on outreach and in public forums, it’s important to respond and respond well. 

Include both positive and negative feedback in your responses. Thank people for talking about their positive experiences and address the real problems behind negative feedback. And, if you’re getting a lot of negative feedback, consider some outreach addressing those problems proactively. 

Taking responsibility for customer experience is a great way to tell them you’re engaged as a company, and to encourage their engagement in return.