10 Reliable Outreach Marketing Steps For Link Building

This article will show you the most effective outreach marketing strategy for link building in 10 steps.

Why Reaching Out?

In today’s era, outreach marketing is about gaining attention and trust to build meaningful connections and drive brand engagement. That is, this approach is not only for link-building but also for relationship-building. 

At the forefront of this approach lies outreach email marketing, a way to deliver personalized messages directly to the targeted people. Personalized outreach email marketing helps you build a solid emotional connection by genuinely understanding your prospects’ interests, pain points, and aspirations. It enables you to boost open and response rates and will allow you to optimize the conversion rate.

The Benefits of Outreach Marketing

Outreach marketing enables you to improve SERP ranks, increase organic traffic, enhance domain authority, expand brand awareness, and speed up indexing and crawling.

The benefits of outreach marketing are numerous. You must be patient and do your homework before reaching out.

10 Steps of Outreach Marketing Strategy

Ensuring that every outreach email you send is relevant to your recipient’s point of view is vital. Finding contacts by keywords and then sending bulk emails to those who don’t work anymore in the present year. Instead, it seems spammy in your recipients’ inboxes without personalization.

93.8% of link builders believe link quality is more important than link quantity.

Here, personalization is the key! It will allow you to make the most effective communication.

Personalizing your outreach email content needs a proper strategy and hard work. Here is the most reliable outreach marketing strategy with the Foot-in-the-Door technique described in 10 steps.

1Target Topic

First, you need to focus on a specific topic for which you want to build networks and engage the audience. While targeting a particular area, you must ensure that it is highly relevant to your brand’s personality and will probably have the best conversion rate.

2Target the Types of Backlinks

Before reaching out, you must think about exactly what types of backlinks you need to boost your web performance in the SERP. Your targeted types of backlinks will let you know what kind of communication it requires for outreach marketing.

Here are nine types of backlinks that are highly effective.

Editorial Backlinks

Editorial backlinks are natural links earned from high-quality and authoritative websites. Search engines consider editorial links the most important while measuring the trustworthiness of your brand. Targeting broken links or unlinked brand mentions also works if it comes from higher authoritative and relevant sites. It’s worth noting that the most valuable thing requires maximum effort.

Guest Blogging Backlinks

Backlinks from a guest blog are a win-win approach in outreach marketing, where you offer your prospects fresh content. In exchange, the host site will link to you from that content.

One of the best ways to find those accepting guest submissions is using Google Search Operator, which is pretty easy! Copy-paste the text below in the Google search field, and then replace the “Keyword” with your target keyword.

Keyword 1 intitle:"write for us" inurl:"write-for-us"

Here is an example with the keyword: Outreach marketing.

Business Profile Backlinks

Business profile backlinks come from creating profiles on online platforms like business directories, social media, and review sites. These links also boost your local SEO efforts and enhance your online presence.

Webinar Backlinks

You can obtain webinar backlinks by hosting or participating in webinars within your industry. They provide an excellent opportunity to showcase your expertise and connect with a broader audience. These backlinks are precious due to the increasing popularity of webinars as a content marketing strategy.

Free Tool Backlinks

Offering free, valuable tools or resources on your website can attract backlinks from other websites that find your tool helpful. Such backlinks enhance your SEO and establish your website as a reliable resource within your niche.

Acknowledgment Backlinks

When other websites reference your content, research, or expertise without linking back to you, it creates an opportunity to reach out and request an acknowledgment link. This type of link is also known as “Unlinked Brand Mentions.” These backlinks are valuable now, indicating authority and trustworthiness to search engines.

Guest Post Bio Backlinks

When contributing guest posts, you often get an author bio section to put your website link. These bio backlinks are valuable for establishing your authority and driving traffic from readers interested in learning more about you or your business.

Badge Backlinks

You can earn badge backlinks when other websites display a badge or widget provided by your site. These badges usually signify achievements, certifications, or partnerships. They generate backlinks and build credibility and trust in your brand.

Comment Backlinks

Comment backlinks are acquired by leaving valuable comments on relevant blogs or forums with links to your site. While they are less potent than other backlinks, they can still help drive referral traffic and signal engagement to search engines.

3Target Prospect’s Type

After choosing the desired backlink type, you must determine which prospects to contact. Moz can help you with that for free with the Domain Authority (DA) metric.

65% of marketers aim to check the site’s DA metric to measure the backlink quality.

To get this, install MozBar as your browser extension. After installing and creating a free Moz account, you can find the DA rate at the SERP.

Here is an example, again, with the keyword: outreach marketing.

You can classify your target into four categories with Domain Authority.

Giant

This type of target has a massive audience and numerous achievements. They can give you thousands of audience even with a single tweet. But they don’t usually check emails from strangers looking for backlinks.

Big

This type doesn’t have a wider audience like the “enormous” class, but they can still impact your website. You can classify websites with DA 50 to 80 into this class.

This type needs help to be in the enormous class. Thus, this class aims to build relationships with those creating quality content relevant to them. In this case, you must personalize your outreach marketing content as much as possible to be on their radar.

Average

Websites with DA ratings from 25 to 50 are in this class. They don’t have a big audience yet, but they are struggling. That means they can collaborate with other businesses to empower their sites.

You can target this kind of audience for the best response. Backlinks from these sites won’t be as effective as the “enormous” or “big” class. But still can have a positive impact.

Small

Websites with DA rates below 25 can be considered a “small” class. They just started their journey and are more responsive when you contact them. Although they are the sure shots, they will have less (or no) impact on your website. Why would you want something useless even if it’s free? Moreover, you might get harmed by their spammy activities.

4Investigate Your Prospects

It’s time to investigate your targeted audience for relationship-building from various perspectives. The more you understand your prospects, the more personalization your outreach content will be, leading to the maximum conversion.

Here are some specific areas to focus on while investigating.

Interest

Finding your targets’ passions will let you know how much effort they put into making their content practical and relevant. It’s always wise to choose those with maximum effort.

Medium

Finding the top mediums your targets publish their content will let you decide where to put the first impression. For example, if your targeted content creator is primarily available on LinkedIn, you must investigate their activities on LinkedIn to understand their communication pattern.

Pain points

Pain points are the challenges your targets are facing. Researching the target’s pain points will help you create personalized and relevant outreach, addressing their needs. It enhances the chances of successful partnerships and increases the likelihood of receiving positive responses.

Content Gaps

Content gaps indicate the areas where the ideas of your target are incomplete. Finding out the content gaps will lead you to take the initiative to fill them with your valuable information.

Trends

Staying tuned with the trends within your niche can help you attract more attention. The more you focus on the trendy areas, the more updated and relevant your content will be.

Influencers

Find out which influencers have significant impacts on your targets and how. It will help you understand which areas your target brands prefer to focus on influencer marketing.

Demographics

Demographic information, such as age, gender, location, etc., will help you write more personalized content.

Language and Tone

Understand the tone and style of your targets’ language in their marketing content. It will help you get the maximum responses, matching your tone with them.

Specific Industry Jargon

If your niche has specific industry jargon, use it appropriately in your content and outreach. It can help you connect with industry-specific websites and gain relevant backlinks.

5List Down the Focus Area to Present

At this stage, you might have the minimum understanding of how you can be on your targeted brands’ radar. You can focus on how to make your content more relevant to your targets’ frame of reference. 

Focus on the areas given below.

• Personalization: Address the recipient by name and show research to connect personally.
• Value proposition: Clearly convey benefits and what’s in it for them.
• Relevance: Tailor content with interests or industries for better engagement.
• Brevity: Keep email concise, respecting the recipient’s time and attention.
• Clear call-to-action: Explicitly state the desired next steps for the recipient.
• Social proof: Testimonial advertising helps build credibility and trust.
• Benefit-driven language: Focus on how it helps the recipient, highlighting advantages.
• A/B testing: Experiment with elements to optimize email effectiveness.
• Follow-up plan: Mention the intention to follow up for continued communication.
• Professional tone: Maintain a friendly yet formal approach.
• Proofreading: Check for errors to ensure a polished email.
• Email signature: Include contact info and links for accessible communication.

6Communicate Through the Social Media First

Initiating communication through social media before sending outreach emails can improve your link-building success by building familiarity, trust, and credibility with potential partners and enhancing the personalization of your outreach efforts. 

Here are the benefits of making the first impression on social media.

• Establishing Familiarity: Engaging with potential partners on social media platforms allows you to familiarize yourself with their content, interests, and values. This information can be valuable in tailoring your outreach email to resonate better with their specific needs and preferences.
• Building Relationships: Social media interactions provide a more casual and informal setting to initiate conversations. By commenting, liking, or sharing their content, you can build rapport and trust before making a direct pitch through email.
• Enhancing Credibility: When you interact publicly on social media, it gives your brand a sense of authenticity and transparency. Prospective partners may be more receptive to your outreach emails if they recognize your name or brand from previous social media interactions.
• Identifying the Right Contacts: Social media lets you identify key decision-makers or influencers within a target organization. This knowledge can help you address your outreach emails to the proper individuals, increasing the chances of getting a positive response.
• Warming Up Leads: By engaging on social media first, you warm up your leads and make them more receptive to your outreach emails. They will be more likely to recognize your name and open your email if they see your social media interactions.

7Offer Something without Expecting Anything

Relationship building is all about gaining trust, and trust will let you get your desired organic link anyway. To gain trust, offering something without exchanging anything can be an excellent start for you. 

Through this step, you can 

• Address pain points to gain trust.
• Get organic links for long-term value.
• Create user-focused content that drives engagement.
• Advertise social proof and virality to expand reach.
• Collaborate with experts to grow the network.
• Avoid penalties and prioritize quality.

8Find Opportunities for Building Links

Now, you must analyze all your data during the investigation to find the most suitable areas of your target’s content from where you want to get links. If you can come this far, you must understand your target well. 

List all the link opportunities first to find out the most desired area. Then, you can rank them based on relevance, trends, pain points, etc. Afterward, you can personalize the top-ranked opportunity with your investigated data.

9Write the Hyper-personalized Outreach Email

If you have too much data on your list for personalization, it’s better to reduce it and keep the most relevant ones that will surely resonate with your recipients. It will help you shorten your content to your recipient’s time. 

According to EmailAnalytics, emails within 75 to 100 words have the best response rates, above 50%! 

When you finalize the personalized data you want to mention in your outreach email content, one last thing you should do is arrange them in the best chronological order. After that, you can outline the content.

Finally, you can create your desired outreach content with the best response rate. 

Before sending, you must know the best time to reach out. According to research, the best time to send outreach emails is 9:00 AM to 11 AM, as most offices start at this time, and 53% of outreach emails are opened during the first hour of office time. That research also says that Tuesday and Wednesday have the most open rates. 

Here is a complete guide on how to write a good outreach email.

10Write Follow-up Emails if Avoided

According to a study, outreach emails have 75% open rates within the first hour, and 40% get a reply. 

You will get the best results within one hour of reaching out. Some potential recipients might need to remember to check their inboxes within the exact time. Most marketers prefer to wait three days to send follow-up emails, mentioning that you are waiting for their replies. 

Another study shows that the first follow-up outreach email increases the response rate to 40% compared with the initial email. 

After three days of sending the outreach email, you can send your first follow-up emails. If you still need to be addressed, wait another three days to ship your second outreach email. 

It’s best to assume that if your prospects ignore you three times, they are uninterested. Just stop bothering them after sending the second follow-up. Otherwise, they might stop receiving your emails altogether, marking them as spam!

Things to Avoid While Reaching Out

Some bad practices of outreach marketing are worth mentioning so you can avoid them at all costs.

Sending Generic Mass Emails

Recipients are more likely to ignore or even mark such emails as spam when you send out generic mass emails to an extensive list of recipients without personalization.

Ignoring Relevance

Failing to research and understand your target audience’s interests, preferences, and pain points can lead to irrelevant outreach attempts.

Neglecting Relationship Building

If you focus solely on sales pitches without fostering genuine connections, you risk alienating potential customers.

Depending on Over-automation

While automation can streamline your outreach efforts, relying too heavily on automation tools can lead to robotic and impersonal interactions.

Ignoring Opt-Out Requests

Ignoring opt-out requests or sending emails to unsubscribed individuals can damage your reputation and lead to legal issues.

Unsolicited Social Media Tagging

Tagging individuals or businesses in social media posts without their consent can be spammy and invasive.

Neglecting Personalization

Addressing recipients by their names and referring to previous interactions can enhance the personalization of your outreach efforts. Failing to do so can make your messages seem generic and disconnected.

Overpromising and Underdelivering

Exaggerating claims or promising unrealistic results can lead to disappointment and distrust among your audience.

Ignoring Analytics

Not tracking and analyzing the performance of your outreach campaigns can hinder your ability to refine your strategy.

Wrap Up

These ten proven steps of outreach marketing strategy illuminate the path to success, enhancing brand visibility and connections. 

The best practice is embracing innovation, adaptability, and data-driven insights to optimize your outreach marketing ideas. You must elevate your link-building game through strategic outreach marketing, propelling your brand toward sustainable growth and online prominence.