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(Note: This article first appeared on ITBusinessNet.com on April 27, 2017 under the title- Why B2B Marketers Can No Longer Afford an Inbound-Only Strategy. These types of mistakes were also discussed recently on The Price of Business with Jeb Bashsaw.)

When asked the question, “what’s the biggest mistake B2B companies make today with their lead generation?”

My initial response is that some don’t tie in their lead gen efforts to revenue growth. Specifically, they haven’t reverse engineered their funnel. They don’t determine how much revenue growth is needed to achieve the company’s top-level goals before setting targets for lead generation.

But if this answer does not satisfy, then my second default response is…

There is No Silver Bullet

Too many B2B companies are still looking for that silver bullet. That one channel, tactic or growth hack that will unleash a flood of leads into their funnel – at little to no cost I might add. This is a fool’s errand because there is no such thing. There’s no one big ‘ah-ha’ moment, launch, approach, campaign, channel, tactic or thing that will make this happen.

This is why I’m so perplexed at how many B2B businesses are still enamored with this idea. For example, take inbound marketing. For more than a decade the inbound marketing approach has been fully embraced by the business world so much so that some have sworn off other types of marketing such as outbound altogether. Now I’m not suggesting inbound marketing doesn’t have a place at the table when it comes to generating leads. But…

Inbound Marketing Takes Time (and that’s okay)

Even the most experienced inbound marketer knows this. It takes time to onboard and set up the right marketing automation software. It takes time to write content and build your audience using inbound – and that’s okay. Anybody who tells you differently is either lying or doesn’t have enough experience doing it to know any better.

The point is, don’t look to inbound or any one channel for that matter as being your “silver-bullet.” See it as something you must commit to for the long-term. Just like investing financially… be patient and it will pay you dividends in the form of leads down the road.

However, when it comes to lead generation, you can’t wait around expecting all the leads your business needs to grow to find you. If you do, either your business could lose revenue or your CEO or Board will start to grow impatient. You need to hedge your long-term goals by looking at other approaches that can help accelerate lead growth in the short-term.

How Outbound Can Fill the Inbound Gap

Once you’ve determined the few metrics that actually matter (hint: revenue growth), validated that you’ve nailed your niche and have determined that your ideal target audience is suitable for outbound, it’s time to come up with a game plan.

Here are a just few outbound methods we have found to be effective when trying to accelerate your lead generation.

Outbound Email Lead Generation

Full disclosure: One of Clickback’s products is outbound email lead generation software.

Since becoming the VP of Marketing for Clickback two years ago, more and more, I’ve come to appreciate what this “mature” channel can offer even the savviest B2B marketer. However, like everything else, it must be done correctly to see results.

So, before sending your first outbound email campaign, you must know who your ideal customer is, have a clean list with enough contacts on it to generate customers (this will vary for each business), have a clear strategy, and then experiment like crazy.

For example, as a result of our rigorous experimentation, our own email lead generation efforts improved dramatically, year over year.

In 2016…

Our email campaigns generated 143% more customers versus the previous year. We also saw a 377% increase in new monthly recurring revenues.

Now does email give us our best payback?

No, but it is well below our accepted threshold of 9 – 12 months to earn back the money invested to get a new customer (CAC).

If you are already using email to generate leads but not experimenting, you’re not fully utilizing this channel. Start by trying to improve your open rates by A/B testing subject lines (our average open rate is 5%).

Outbound Sales

Outbound sales was in the dog house for years when inbound became the new poster child for marketing. However, marketers are now giving it some serious thought because they’re seeing how B2B companies can use outbound to accelerate their growth.

Even HubSpot and Marketo, two of the companies that started the inbound movement have teams of outbound prospectors to speed up their lead and revenue growth.

Being a long-time inbound marketer myself, outbound sales was something lesser folk did. However, after educating myself, I realized the value it had. I also discovered just how strategic and data-driven outbound prospecting can be if you do it right.

From careful targeting to role specialization (prospector versus closer), outbound sales can help you avoid being too inbound dependent. This is just one reason we started an outbound prospecting program here at Clickback. As we work to ensure our inbound efforts gain traction, outbound sales has allowed us to build up our pipeline for our new product. We still have a lot to learn but so far the results we’ve seen have given us the validation we need to scale our outbound sales efforts.

Inbound and Outbound: Better Together

As Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin put it in their latest book, “From Impossible to Inevitable: How Hypergrowth Companies Create Predictable Revenue.”

B2B businesses miss out on leads and revenue when they focus on one form of lead generation, ignoring the other possible marketing channels.

Like the authors, my experience has shown that inbound and outbound are better together – ‘like peanut butter and chocolate’ (Ross and Lemkin).