Marketing Tactics List

How to Use This List

No business runs all of these. The point is to see the full set of options so you can pick the 5 to 8 that match your budget, your team, and where your buyers already spend time.

Two quick definitions so the split makes sense:

• Outbound means you start the conversation. You pick the person, you reach out, you interrupt their day. You control the volume. If you want 3x the activity next week, you can do that.
• Inbound means they start the conversation. You build something useful, they find it, they raise their hand. Slower to start, cheaper over time, and it compounds.

Most businesses need both. Outbound pays the bills in year one. Inbound is what makes year three easier than year one.

How a User Story Turns Into a Tactic

Every tactic below came from a real moment in a buyer's day. Work the same way when you build your own list. Write the moment first, then pick the tactic that meets it.

• "I just got promoted to office manager and now I have to find a new IT vendor." That job change is a trigger. The tactic is signal-based outreach off LinkedIn job changes.
• "My AC died at 9pm on a Saturday and I typed 'emergency AC repair near me' into my phone." That is a map pack search. The tactic is Google Business Profile optimization plus an emergency service page.
• "I asked ChatGPT which payroll tools work for a 12 person shop." That is an AI answer, not a search result. The tactic is answer-first content and third-party mentions.
• "My neighbor said their landscaper was great and texted me the number." That is word of mouth with zero friction. The tactic is a referral program with a shareable link, or even good 'ol fashioned business cards.
• "I saw the same company three times in one week and started to be interested." That is frequency. The tactic is retargeting plus consistent organic posting.

Section 1: Outbound Marketing Tactics

You initiate. You control the volume.

Email Outreach

• Cold email. One well researched email to a named person at a named company.
• Multi-touch cold email sequences. A planned series of 5 to 12 emails over several weeks instead of one and done.
• One-to-one hyper-personalized email. Deep research on 20 people instead of light research on 2,000.
• Question-only email. No pitch, no link, just one short question that is easy to answer.
• Breakup email. The last touch in a sequence that closes the loop cleanly and can get a bump in the reply rate.
• Closed-lost win-back campaign. Reach back out to deals you lost 6 to 12 months ago. Their situation may have changed.
• Dead lead reactivation. Email everyone in your CRM who went quiet, with a new angle or new offer.
• Past customer referral asks. Ask happy customers by name to introduce you to two people.
• Newsletter sponsorship placements. Pay to appear in a newsletter your buyers already open.
• Cold email to a partner list. Outreach aimed at building referral relationships, not selling.
• Free audit or teardown offer. Lead with a specific finding about their business, not a request for a meeting.
• Spec work outreach. Send a mockup, a rewritten headline, or a sample deliverable before they ask.

Phone and Voice

• Cold calling. Still works when the list is tight and the opener is specific.
• Warm calling. Calling people who already downloaded something, attended something, or filled out a form.
• Call blitz or power hour. The whole team calls for 60 focused minutes on the same segment.
• Voicemail drops. Pre-recorded voicemails delivered without ringing the phone.
• Callback offers on ads. Ads that push to a phone call instead of a form.
• Cold outreach by phone to gatekeepers. Treat the front desk as a source, not a barrier.
• Conference call blitz. Call target accounts during a week they are all at the same event.

Social Selling and Direct Messaging

• LinkedIn connection requests with a note. Short, specific, no pitch in the first message.
• LinkedIn InMail. Paid messages that reach people outside your network.
• LinkedIn engagement-first outreach. Comment on their posts for two weeks before you ever message.
• Founder-led LinkedIn outreach. Messages from the founder pull far higher reply rates than messages from a rep.
• Instagram DM outreach. Works well for local services, retail, fitness, and consumer brands.
• Facebook Messenger outreach. Useful for local businesses and community group members.
• X/Twitter DM outreach. Best when you have engaged with their content first.
• TikTok DM outreach. Growing channel for creator and consumer brand partnerships.
• Slack and Discord community DMs. Only where community rules allow it. Read the rules first.
• SMS outreach where legally permitted. Check TCPA and state rules before you send anything.
• WhatsApp outreach. Standard in many international and immigrant-owned business markets.
• Social listening outreach. Someone posts "can anyone recommend a bookkeeper," you reply within the hour. There are tools that can notify you of keywords/phrases mentioned.
• Competitor comment mining. Reach out to people commenting on competitor posts and ads.
• Review-mining outreach. Contact people who left one and two star reviews for your competitors.

Video and Audio Prospecting

• Personalized video prospecting. A 45 second Loom showing their website on your screen.
• AI avatar video at scale. Same script, personalized opening line, sent to hundreds.
• Screen-recorded audits. Walk through their site, their ads, or their Google listing and point at problems.
• Voice note prospecting. A short audio message on LinkedIn or WhatsApp stands out in a text-only inbox.
• Video voicemail. Video link left as a follow-up after a missed call.

Direct Mail and Physical Touch

• Handwritten notes. Real pen on real paper. Almost nobody does this anymore.
• Direct mail letters. A physical letter to a named decision maker.
• Dimensional or lumpy mail. A box with something in it that has to be opened.
• Gifting and send-out campaigns. Coffee, lunch, or a small gift tied to a meeting request.
• Free product samples. Ship the product instead of describing it.
• Postcards and EDDM. Every Door Direct Mail hits every address on a route at low cost.
• Door hangers. Strong for home services in neighborhoods where you just finished a job.
• Flyers and leave-behinds. Left at businesses, gyms, coffee shops, and coworking spaces.
• Drop cards. Cards that look like folded money with your offer inside.
• Branded swag drops. Useful items with your logo left where your buyers gather.
• Physical newsletters. A printed monthly piece mailed to your best 200 accounts.
• Neighborhood "we just worked here" mailers. Mail the 20 homes around every job you complete.

In-Person and Field

• Door to door canvassing. Still one of the highest converting channels for local services.
• Business to business walk-ins. Walking a commercial corridor and introducing yourself.
• Street teams and sampling. Staff handing out product or offers in high traffic areas.
• Pop-up shops and booths. Farmers markets, festivals, malls, and event parking lots.
• Guerrilla marketing. Sidewalk chalk, stickers, window decals, and projections. Check local rules first.
• Branded vehicle wraps. A rolling billboard that works while you drive to jobs.
• Yard signs and A-frames. Placed at job sites and busy corners.
• Networking groups. BNI, chambers of commerce, and industry meetups.
• Association participation. Join the trade group your buyers already belong to.
• Alumni network outreach. School, past employer, and military networks open doors fast.

Events

• Trade show booths. Expensive, but concentrated buyer attention.
• Badge scanning and post-event follow-up. The follow-up is where the value is, not the booth.
• Attendee list outreach. Message people going to an event before it starts.
• Speaking at conferences. Also inbound. Pitching to speak is outbound.
• Hosting your own dinner or roundtable. Eight buyers at one table beat a booth with 800 badges.
• Field marketing happy hours. Low cost local gatherings near a target account cluster.
• Event sponsorship. Buying visibility at an event your buyers already attend.
• Side events at big conferences. Host your own thing across the street for a fraction of the booth cost.
• Webinar invites to a cold list. Invite, do not pitch.
• Workshop invitations. Teach something specific and useful to a small named group.

Paid Advertising

• Paid search ads. Also inbound, since you are capturing demand that already exists.
• Paid social ads. Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, etc.
• Display and programmatic ads. Broad reach at low cost per impression.
• Retargeting ads. Also inbound. Following up with people who already visited.
• YouTube pre-roll. Video ads before the content people came to watch.
• Connected TV ads. Streaming ads that are now within reach of local budgets.
• Geofencing and geo-conquesting. Serve ads to phones that entered a competitor's location.
• Native advertising. Sponsored content that matches the look of the site it runs on.
• Podcast ad reads. Host-read ads carry trust that display ads do not.
• Radio ads. Still effective for local services and trades.
• Billboards and digital billboards. Best for repetition on commuter routes.
• Transit and bus bench ads. Cheap local repetition. (Golf courses too!)
• Print ads in trade publications. Niche audiences that are hard to reach elsewhere.
• Community newspaper ads. Works better than founders expect in suburban markets.
• Sponsored newsletter placements. Pay for a slot in a newsletter your buyers trust.
• Influencer paid partnerships. Pay a creator to introduce you to their audience.
• ABM ads to named accounts. Ads that only show to a list of companies you picked.

Account-Based and Signal-Based Outreach

• Account-based outreach to named target lists. Pick 100 accounts and work all of them across channels.
• Funding round triggers. Reach out when a company raises money.
• Leadership change triggers. New VP means new budget and new vendors.
• Hiring signal triggers. A job post tells you what they are building and what they lack.
• Tech stack change triggers. They just added or dropped a tool you work with.
• Expansion triggers. New location, new market, or new product launch.
• Website visitor identification. Reach out to companies that visited but never filled out a form.
• Intent data outreach. Contact accounts researching your category right now.
• Personalized microsites. A landing page built for one account, with their name and logo on it.
• Custom research reports per account. Do the homework and give it away.
• Public records and license lists. Permits, licenses, and filings are public and highly specific.
• Local permit list outreach. Contractors, suppliers, and services can work new permits weekly.
• RFP and bid board responses. Watch the boards and respond fast.
• Government contracting bids. SAM.gov and state portals for public sector work.

Partnerships and Borrowed Audiences

• Warm introduction requests. Ask your network for a specific intro to a specific person.
• Investor and advisor intros. The fastest path into an enterprise account.
• Referral partner recruitment. Accountants, realtors, attorneys, and adjacent vendors.
• Affiliate recruitment outreach. Recruiting people to promote you for a cut.
• Reseller and channel partner recruitment. Building a partner network that sells for you.
• Co-selling with a partner. Two vendors on one call to one shared prospect.
• Cross-promotion swaps with neighbor businesses. Joint punch cards, shared discounts, shared

events.

• Podcast guest pitching. Outbound to get on shows your buyers listen to.
• Journalist and press pitching. Cold outreach to reporters with an actual story.
• Backlink and guest post outreach. Cold outreach to earn links and placements.
• Charity and nonprofit partnerships. Fundraisers and cause tie-ins that put you in front of the

community.

• Local team and school sponsorships. Youth sports, band, and school programs.
• Marketplace lead follow-up. Thumbtack, Angi, and Bark leads require instant outbound response.
• Bought or enriched list outreach. Only with clean data and clean compliance.

business.

Section 2: Inbound Marketing Tactics

They find you. The work compounds.

Search Engine Optimization

CONTENT AND KEYWORDS

• Keyword-targeted blog content. Write the answers people are already typing into Google.
• Pillar pages and topic clusters. One deep page linked to many supporting pages.
• Bottom-of-funnel service pages. One page per service, per problem, per buyer.
• Comparison pages. "Product A vs Product B" pages catch buyers in decision mode.
• Alternatives pages. "Alternatives to [competitor]" pulls people already shopping.
• Cost and pricing content. "How much does X cost" is one of the highest intent searches there is.
• Best-of and roundup content. Rank for the lists your buyers read before they buy.
• Glossary and definition pages. Simple, high volume, and easy to get cited by AI tools.
• Programmatic SEO pages. Templated pages at scale for locations, integrations, product pages, or use cases.
• Content refreshes. Updating old posts often beats writing new ones.

TECHNICAL AND STRUCTURAL

• Technical SEO cleanup. Speed, mobile, crawlability, and broken pages.
• Internal linking. Free authority you already own, moved to the pages that need it.
• Schema markup. Organization, LocalBusiness, FAQ, Product, and Article structured data.
• FAQ sections on every key page. Answers the follow-up questions and feeds AI citations specific to page topic.
• Featured snippet optimization. Short direct answers in the first two sentences of a section.
• People Also Ask targeting. Build sections around the questions Google already surfaces.
• Image and video SEO. Alt text, file names, transcripts, and video schema.
• Core Web Vitals work. Page experience affects both rankings and conversion.

OFF-SITE AUTHORITY

• Linkable asset creation. Tools, data, and maps that other sites want to reference.
• Digital PR for links. Newsworthy angles that earn coverage and links together.
• Original research and data studies. The most reliable way to earn links and citations.
• Guest posting. Publishing on sites your buyers already read.
• Broken link building. Find dead links, offer your page as the replacement.
• Unlinked mention reclamation. Someone named you without linking. Ask.
• HARO and expert sourcing platforms. Answer reporter questions and earn quotes.

Answer Engine Optimization

AEO is the practice of structuring content so AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode select and cite it when generating answers. This matters more every quarter. Google AI Overviews now appear in close to 55% of Google searches.

• Answer-first writing. AI engines pull the first one to two sentences of a section to decide if it answers the question. Lead with the answer, then explain.
• Question-style headings. Phrase your H2s and H3s the way people actually ask.
• Allowing AI crawlers. GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Applebot, and OAI-SearchBot need to be allowed in robots.txt. If they are blocked, you are invisible to that engine no matter how good the content is.
• llms.txt file. A plain text map of your best content for AI crawlers.
• Entity consistency. Same business name, address, and description everywhere online.
• Third-party roundup placement. Brand mentions are the strongest predictor of ChatGPT citation. Get listed in the "best of" articles in your category.
• Reddit and Quora presence. Both are heavily cited by AI engines.
• Statistics and citable data. Give AI tools numbers they can quote and attribute.
• Author bios and expert credentials. Real people with real experience attached to real content.
• Readable writing. Readability scores correlate positively with citation, especially for ChatGPT and Perplexity.
• AI mention monitoring. Track where and how you show up in AI answers over time.
• Wikidata and knowledge panel work. Structured facts about your business that engines trust.

Local Search

• Google Business Profile optimization. Categories, services, hours, description, images, and attributes.
• GBP posts. Weekly updates that keep the profile active.
• GBP photos and video. Fresh photos correlate with more calls and direction requests.
• GBP Q&A seeding. Ask and answer the questions buyers actually have.
• Review generation. The single biggest local ranking and conversion factor.
• Review responses. Respond to every review, good and bad.
• Local citation building. Consistent listings across the major data aggregators.
• Apple Business Connect and Bing Places. Two profiles most businesses forget.
• Location landing pages. One page per city or service area, with real local content.
• Local link building. Chamber, sponsorships, local news, and neighborhood blogs.
• Nextdoor presence. Neighborhood recommendations drive real local business.
• Yelp and industry-specific directories. Still a major discovery path in some categories.

Content Marketing

WRITTEN

• Company blog. The base layer everything else links back to.
• Long-form guides and ebooks. Deep resources that earn links and email addresses.
• Whitepapers. Formal research pieces for technical or enterprise buyers.
• Case studies. Proof that you have done this before for someone like them.
• Customer stories. Same as a case study, told like a story instead of a report.
• Templates and checklists. People download and use these, then remember who made them.
• Swipe files and examples libraries. Curated collections in your category.
• Original research reports. Annual surveys and benchmarks build authority fast.
• Email newsletters. An audience you own instead of rent.
• Email courses. A five-day course delivered by email teaches and sells at the same time.
• Build-in-public and transparency posts. Revenue numbers, mistakes, and lessons pull attention.
• Documentation and help centers. Support content ranks and reduces churn.
• Glossaries and resource hubs. Central pages that collect everything on one topic.

VIDEO AND AUDIO

• YouTube long-form video. The second largest search engine, and evergreen.
• Short-form video. Reels, Shorts, and TikTok for reach and discovery.
• Podcast hosting. Your own show gives you a reason to talk to anyone in your industry.
• Podcast guesting. Borrow someone else's audience for an hour.
• Webinars. Webinars generate leads, build authority, and create content you can reuse.
• Live streams. Q&A, demos, and behind the scenes in real time.
• Virtual summits. Multi-speaker events that grow your list fast.
• Video testimonials. Higher trust than any written review.
• Product demo videos. Let buyers see the thing before they talk to a human.
• Explainer and how-to videos. Answer the questions your support team hears most.
• Behind-the-scenes content. Shows the people, not just the product.

Owned Audience and Email

• Blog and newsletter subscription. Convert readers into a list you control.
• Lead nurture sequences. Automated emails that move new leads toward a call.
• Behavioral trigger emails. Send based on what they clicked, viewed, or ignored.
• Abandoned cart emails. The highest ROI email in ecommerce.
• Browse abandonment emails. They looked but never added to cart.
• Post-purchase sequences. Onboarding, upsell, and review requests.
• Win-back sequences. Reactivate customers who stopped buying.
• SMS opt-in lists. Permission-based texting with very high open rates.
• Push notifications. Browser and app alerts for return visitors.
• Segmented list campaigns. Different messages for different buyer types.
• Re-engagement campaigns. Clean your list and wake up quiet subscribers.

Social Media

• Organic posting on your main platform. Pick one or two, not six.
• Founder-led personal brand content. Personal accounts outperform brand accounts almost everywhere.
• Employee advocacy. Your team's networks are bigger than your company page.
• Thought leadership posts. Opinions with a point of view, not summaries of the news.
• Answering questions in Facebook groups. Be useful in the groups where your buyers already are.
• Reddit participation. Genuinely helpful answers, no pitching.
• Quora answers. Long shelf life and heavy AI citation.
• Community forum participation. Industry-specific forums still drive real business.
• User-generated content campaigns. Customers making content about you.
• Hashtag and photo challenges. Give customers a reason to post.
• AMAs and live Q&A. Open the floor and answer everything.
• Social proof reposting. Share screenshots of customer wins and comments.

Community and Advocacy

• Hosting your own community. Slack, Discord, Circle, or a Facebook group.
• Customer advisory board. Your best customers shaping your roadmap and selling for you.
• Referral programs. Make it easy and worth it for customers to send people.
• Affiliate programs. Pay a commission to people who bring you business.
• Loyalty and rewards programs. Repeat purchase and word of mouth in one.
• NPS surveys plus review requests. Ask happy customers to say it publicly.
• Ambassador programs. A small group of superfans with early access and perks.
• Customer meetups. In-person gatherings of people who already pay you.
• Alumni communities. Former customers and employees who still refer.

Product-Led and Interactive

• Free tools. Free tools attract high-intent visitors and capture leads. Calculators, graders, and generators.
• Assessments and quizzes. Score their situation and deliver a personalized result.
• Free trials. Let the product do the selling.
• Freemium plans. A free tier that grows into a paid one.
• Free plan sharing loops. Every user invites more users.
• Public template galleries. Templates that rank in search and show off the product.
• Open source projects. Developer trust and inbound attention at the same time.
• Integration and app marketplace listings. Get discovered inside the tools your buyers already use.
• Embeddable widgets. Badges and widgets on customer sites that link back.
• Public dashboards or data. Live data pages that people bookmark and cite.

Reviews, Listings, and Earned Media

• Review site profiles. G2, Capterra, Clutch, Trustpilot, and category-specific sites.
• Review generation systems. An automated ask after every completed job or purchase.
• Directory listings. Industry directories your buyers actually browse.
• Awards and "best of" submissions. Local business awards and category lists.
• Press releases. Best used for funding, launches, hires, and partnerships.
• Media appearances. Local TV, radio, and news segments.
• Local news features. Community papers love a good local business story.
• Expert commentary. Be the quotable source in your category.
• Speaking engagements. Also outbound. The talk itself is inbound.
• Conference talks. Recorded talks live online for years.
• Workshops and classes. Teach for free, sell to the people who show up.
• Office hours. Open calendar slots for free advice.

Website and Conversion

• Landing pages per offer. One page, one offer, one action.
• Lead magnets. Something worth an email address.
• Content upgrades. A bonus resource inside a blog post.
• Live chat. Answer questions while they are still on the page.
• AI chat concierge. Round the clock answers and routing.
• Booking calendars. Remove the back and forth from scheduling.
• Exit-intent offers. Catch people on their way out.
• Popups and slide-ins. Timed and behavior-based, not immediate.
• Social proof placement. Reviews, logos, and numbers near the buttons.
• Transparent pricing pages. Buyers who cannot find pricing often leave.
• Trust badges and certifications. Licenses, insurance, and affiliations.
• Retargeting ads. Also outbound. Bring back people who already know you.
• Personalized site content. Different messaging by source, industry, or location.
• A/B testing. Small changes on high traffic pages compound.
• Conversion tracking and analytics. You cannot improve what you do not measure.

Co-Marketing and Syndication

• Co-marketing content with partners. Split the work, split the audience.
• Newsletter swaps. Trade mentions with a non-competing newsletter.
• Guest expert swaps. You teach their audience, they teach yours.
• Content syndication partners. Republish where your buyers already read.
• LinkedIn newsletters and Substack. Distribution platforms with built-in audiences.
• Medium and industry publications. Republish with canonical tags.
• Joint research reports. Two brands, one data set, twice the reach.
• Joint webinars. Two lists, one event.
• Partner directory listings. Get listed on your partners' sites.

Section 3: Tactics That Live on Both Lists

These 31 tactics work in both directions depending on who starts the conversation. If you have limited time, these give you the most coverage per hour.

Section 4: How Startups Should Actually Pick

You do not need a big list. You need the right small one.

Start With Where the Money Is Today

If you need revenue in 90 days, weight your effort 70% outbound and 30% inbound. Outbound gives you control over volume. Inbound gives you compounding. In month one, control beats compounding.

Match the Tactic to the Buying Trigger

Emergency services need to win the map pack and paid search, because the buyer is searching right now. Complex B2B software needs outbound and content, because the buyer does not know your category exists yet. High ticket local services need referrals and reviews, because the buyer is asking friends before they ever open Google.

Pick One Channel Per Category

One outbound channel, one search channel, one social channel, one owned channel. Four things done well beat twelve things done poorly. Add the fifth only after the first four are running without you.

Build the Inbound Base While You Do Outbound

Every outbound conversation teaches you the exact words your buyers use. Those words become your website copy, your FAQ sections, and your blog topics. Outbound funds inbound. Inbound makes outbound easier because people recognize your name.

Watch for the Handoff Point

You will know inbound is working when your outbound reply rates climb without you changing the script. That is brand recognition doing the work. At that point you shift the ratio.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between inbound and outbound marketing?

Outbound means you start the conversation by reaching out to people who have not asked to hear from you. Inbound means you create something useful that people find on their own, and they contact you.

Which one should a startup do first?

Outbound, in most cases. It works faster and you control the volume. Start building inbound assets at the same time, because inbound takes six to twelve months to produce steady results.

How many tactics should a startup run at once?

Four to eight. Fewer than four and you have no coverage. More than eight and nothing gets enough attention to work.

Is outbound marketing dead?

No. Most of the addressable market for any product is not actively searching for it at any given moment. Waiting for inbound means giving that entire group to competitors who reach out.

How long does inbound marketing take to work?

SEO and content usually show real traction between month six and month twelve. Reviews, referrals, and free tools can produce results in weeks.

Do I need to do both?

Eventually, yes. The strongest teams blend both into one coordinated approach, where content that earns inbound trust also fuels outbound messaging, and outbound activity feeds data back into marketing.

Next Step

Pick your 5 to 8 and put a name and a date on each one. A tactic without an owner is a wish!

business.