What do I mean when I talk about ‘phone outreach’ when working in digital marketing?

I’m talking about using the phone instead of other means (e.g. email, or in person) to get talking to an influencer; in the hope of featuring on their blog or website. An influencer can be many things from a blogger, an editor of newspaper/magazine, an author, a politician, a celebrity, a brand…the list is endless.

Why do I want to talk to these people? Well, I want to connect my client site to influencers within their industry niche online. For me, this has two major benefits:

• From the client’s site I’m letting Google know I’m worthy or attention and authority “Hey Google, I’m awesome because ESPN linked to me”
• I’m getting that brand or site known to influencers within their industry hopefully resulting in lots of brand exposure to the right audience. This has been know to impact to sales, subscriptions, social followings etc.

So, why phone outreach? Having had a previous job in sales, I come across pretty well on the phone. I’m confident (not cocky), I understand the importance of connecting/networking with the other person on the phone, and by personal preference I’d rather pick up the phone than send a lengthy email.

I find that tailored emails take up way too much time especially if you’re planning to do this manually (no automated templates) , for example, check out Rand Fishkin’s video on creating a great outreach email.

I’ve found that phone outreach is better than email for a number of reasons. Emails are easy to ignore and easy to delet. Phone calls are more direct, more personable, and more difficult to ignore. Speaking directly on the phone conveys trust. You’re a real person with a voice; not like a generic email template that a reputable blogger/editor will have seen before

A majority of bloggers feel that they are treated less professionally by brand reps compared to traditional media on e-mail. There’s a quicker response rate to networking via the phone and offering something valuable to that influencer. I believe email has a certain unknown feeling (am I even going to get a reply!?)

At Silverbean (an award winning digital marketing agency) we get a lot of different clients through the door. They might be B2B, B2C, corporate, experimental, nervous start-ups, or conservative companies. As you can imagine, we haven’t seen it all- like people, companies are all unique. However, I have found that phone outreach just doesn’t work in some industries- but don’t fear, I’ll let you know who it does work for.

A lot of my clients in the past 6 months have had engineering in common, or are industrial companies. I found that within this company culture, these companies communicate less with email, and more by phone. In more detail their emails were somewhat shorter too or usually summing up past phone calls similar to minutes.

These B2B influential sites are perfect clients for phone outreach- all the editorial sites within their niche expect phone calls by habit, and seem to ignore long drafted/PR emails. If the client I was working with already had an on-going relationship with this target site (it may be a supplier/customer) that worked even better.

I found that for particular sites within different industries such as interior design, local news, automobile sites, tourist boards, sponsorship sites, and children’s sites worked well too. A personal approach of mine is to investigate the site you’re targeting.  If the site is big enough to have a content team and/or an editor, definitely ring them up and speak to them no matter the industry.

It looks like I’m not alone; a lot of other marketing agencies are picking up the phone. Simon Penson ( an ex-journalist) from Zazzlemedia comments “Don’t fear the phone”. Alternatively, check out Stacey Cavanagh’s excellent slideshow on Baiting Brand Signals through Content , Stacey suggests picking up the phone to reach out to higher class editorial sites.

If you need any motivation for phone outreach, I usually give these Wolf on Wall Street and Boiler Room clips a watch now and again to build up some courage!