Inbound or Outbound? How to Incorporate Both Into Your B2B Lead Generation Strategy

Most B2B companies have leaned too far in one direction. They either double down on outbound or rely solely on inbound — without realizing that a lopsided approach can stall growth. 

To keep your pipeline consistently full, you need a B2B lead generation strategy that blends both. 

How do you know if you’re over-indexing on one? And how do you find the right balance for your business?

Tried, tested, and recommended by experts, these full-cycle lead gen strategies are built for teams exploring how to blend inbound and outbound lead gen for maximum impact.

Like most things in sales, B2B lead generation is simple in definition, but more complex in practice.

It's the process of finding and engaging businesses that may find value in your product or service, or have shown interest in what you have to offer. The goal is to build a list of prospects that your sales and marketing team can nurture and eventually turn into customers.

One of LinkedIn's top sales voices, Zoë Hartsfield, puts the importance of B2B lead generation bluntly.

“If nobody is even interested in talking to you about the problems you solve, you can't sell the thing that you sell, and if you can't sell you can't make money. And if you can't make money, your business dies.” 

The B2B lead generation techniques that keep business alive falls into two main categories.

Inbound lead generation

Inbound lead generation is about attracting prospective customers to your business — pulling them to you. It draws them in and builds awareness of your brand, giving answers to their questions and information they need to answer questions that are top of mind (and surface your solution as the answer).

Outbound lead generation

Outbound lead generation takes a more direct approach. Your team reaches out to prospects that fit your ideal customer profile, trying to actively spark their interest in your product or service and nurture that interest until they’re ready to buy. 

Want to learn how to identify who these "ideal customers" are? Jump straight into it with “Tip #1” in the sidebar 👈

Most successful B2B businesses invest in a combination of both inbound and outbound motions to generate leads. And for good reason.

According to Gartner, B2B buyers are 1.8x more likely to complete a high-quality deal “when they engage with supplier-provided digital tools in partnership with a sales rep.” 

Apollo’s Director of Paid Acquisition, Cameron Thompson challenges the ingrained assumption that inbound and outbound are “cannibalistic rather than complementary.”

But the exact ratio of inbound and outbound you choose to focus on will depend on your specific B2B business and the audience you’re trying to reach.  

Let’s take a closer look at both.

In inbound lead generation, your prospect makes that initial contact.

They may download a guide or attend an event because they’re on the hunt for more information on a problem they’re trying to solve. But without a proper nurture, the buck may well stop there…

To understand what that looks like, Cameron points to a prospect who submits their email and phone number to download a whitepaper, but doesn't take any further action beyond that. Offering the whitepaper is an inbound motion. Sending the prospect a personalized follow-up email or phone call that encourages the prospect to learn more about your product or company is outbound.  

“That's where it becomes really important to have both efforts in tandem, working harmoniously,” Cameron says.

Take our team at Apollo as another example.

We use certain signals — like when someone attends a webinar or visits our demo request page — to identify high-intent prospects. Then we add those prospects to specific outbound campaigns. 

This is part of a larger product-led sales motion that’s helped us generate 3x more meetings and increase sales-qualified opportunities by 23%.

But that’s us. How do you know how much to focus on inbound? 

To figure out how much to invest in inbound, start by looking at your Total Addressable Market (TAM) — that’s the full revenue opportunity if you captured 100% of your potential market.

Within that market, inbound leads are the people who are actively searching for solutions or information related to what you offer. (They fall somewhere in those “3% buying now” or “7% open to it ”buckets.)

If your buyers are the type to do their own research and discover solutions organically, then inbound tactics—like content, SEO, or webinars—should be a core part of your sales strategy. (Think: long buying cycles, lots of comparison shopping, and buyers who start with a Google search.)

But if your audience tends to wait to be approached or rarely explores new vendors on their own, inbound may play more of a supporting role. In those cases, outbound tactics or relationship-based selling might get you further, faster.

That’s why the best B2B lead generation strategy starts with understanding your buyer’s journey and meeting them where they are…

To build effective inbound motions, start by mapping your customer journey from first touch to closed deal. In B2B, that journey often includes multiple stakeholders, long consideration cycles, and a need for trust at every stage.

Research by Forrester shows that B2B buyers experience an average of 27 interactions throughout their buying journey. And Gartner found that the average enterprise B2B buying group consists of five to 11 stakeholders.

Your goal is to support that journey with the right content and experiences—tailored to the questions and concerns your buyers have at each phase. That could mean thought leadership and SEO content at the top of the funnel, product comparison guides or ROI calculators in the middle, and detailed case studies or integration documentation at the bottom.

How do you know when the time is right? Intent data — the secret sauce of inbound.

Intent data tracks signals that indicate when a prospect is actively researching or showing interest in solutions like yours. By analyzing these signals—such as content downloads, website visits, or specific search queries—you can pinpoint exactly when they're ready to engage. Workflows that are based around intent data are actually proving to book 4x more meetings for teams that lean in.

For inbound lead generation, timing really is everything.

• Host events  
• Create an online community 
• Send nurture emails 
• Publish content like blog posts and guides 
• Post on social media channels like LinkedIn
• Create a podcast

Watch “The Ultimate Inbound Sales Process” webinar to learn how to pull these ideas into a full campaign 👀

1. An inbound play — like a blog post or guide with a submission form at the bottom — can continue to capture leads years after launch. Inbound motions like this are “always on,” raising hands-off brand awareness (and hopefully leads).

2. Because inbound lead generation has that longevity in its favor, a stronger focus on inbound lead generation strategies can mean a lower cost per acquisition over time.

3. By focusing on motions that align with your buyer’s specific journey, you let prospects set their own terms, moving through the buying journey at their own pace. 

To know when to start introducing inbound lead generation motions to your sales and marketing program, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do I have the resources and budget to create marketing assets that will attract potential buyers? Inbound takes upfront investment—content, SEO, design, and distribution—but those assets can generate leads long after launch, lowering your cost per acquisition over time.

2. Am I willing and able to invest in long-term programs, not just short-term wins? Inbound doesn’t produce overnight results. But if you’re building a pipeline that compounds over time, inbound is a foundational pillar for sustainable growth.

3. Do I want to increase brand awareness as well as generate leads? Inbound lets your buyers find you on their terms—through search, content, or social. It builds trust before your sales team ever reaches out.

If you answered yes to any or all of the questions above, consider introducing inbound motions to your lead generation strategy. The earlier you start, the faster it scale.

If inbound is about being found, outbound is about finding — reaching out to the right prospects before they know they need you.

Take Dhara Patel, CEO of Outer Realm and the very definition of a strategic “hunter”.

Using AI prompting that scans builder websites, industry news, and planning documents to surface pre-construction projects, she runs multi-channel outbound plays to go straight to the folks who need her — right then.

👉 You can try Dhara’a outbound template here for free to go all in on data-backed outbound.

While a combination of both B2B lead generation strategies is always ideal, outbound is particularly beneficial to businesses with a smaller, more specialized audience.

Take a product with a total addressable market of 50 people as an example. By leaning more into outbound B2B lead generation, you can reach out to each of those prospects individually with messaging personalized specifically to them. 

The benefit of that kind of targeted approach — and outbound lead generation in general — is that you can get early wins, bringing in bigger deals.

How you apply outbound lead generation strategies again depends on your customer journey.

Just like with inbound lead generation, your outbound efforts should be tailored to your customer journey. And also like inbound, the exact number of touchpoints you should expect from your outbound strategy will vary. 

In fact, in his book, Fanatical Prospecting, renowned sales executive Jeb Blount — CEO of Sales Gravy — says that the exact number can range anywhere from one to 50 touches. He breaks it down like this:

• Inactive customer: 1 to 3 touches
• Familiar prospect in buying window: 1 to 5 touches
• Familiar prospect not in buying window: 3 to 10 touches
• Warm inbound lead: 5 to 12 touches
• Somewhat familiar prospect: 5 to 20 touches
• Cold prospect: 20 to 50 touches

Notice the “warm inbound lead” in the middle of the list?

That’s someone who’s already interacted with your brand through your inbound lead generation efforts. Because they have some experience with your brand already, they require fewer outbound touches to close the deal.

It’s just one example of how inbound and outbound work together, and why both are critical to your strategy as a whole.

Even when it comes to outbound alone, though, the most successful strategies will use a multichannel approach, putting a variety of tactics together to maximize outreach — for instance, social selling and cold emailing paired with cold calls. 

As covered in our book, Outbound Sales: “Generic one-off emails and phone calls are far less effective now than they used to be. With massive competition for your prospects’ attention, it takes more to break through the noise.”

Here are several proven outbound tactics that, when executed well, can drive high-quality leads and real pipeline momentum:

• Account-based marketing. Hyper-targeted campaigns focused on high-value accounts, combining personalized messaging across channels.
• Cold calling. Still effective when done strategically—especially when paired with pre-call research and timely outreach.
• Cold emailing. Craft thoughtful, relevant messages that cut through the noise and spark meaningful conversations.
• Social selling. Build credibility and relationships by engaging with prospects directly on platforms like LinkedIn.
• Paid ads. Use targeted ad campaigns to warm up key accounts or drive engagement that supports outbound outreach.

When these strategies are all paired together in a multichannel outbound strategy (rather than focusing solely on email), we found that sellers are increasing their chances of booking a meeting by 24%.

1. You control the targeting for outbound, going after exactly the right audience with the right messaging. This is especially important for sales motions where you need to get in front of decision-makers.  

2. Outbound allows you, as the seller, to personalize your outreach and build one-on-one relationships with the prospects you’re reaching out to. 

3. Outbound gives you instant (or almost instant) feedback. If someone answers your cold call and says they’re already with your competitor, you’ve immediately gained important information you can quickly act on — like adding them to an email sequence that explains why you’re better than the specific competitor.

Not sure if outbound lead generation should be your focus? Ask yourself these key questions—each one reveals whether outbound is the right strategy for your goals.

1. Do I need to generate new business quickly? Outbound is the fastest way to engage with high-potential prospects. If you're under pressure to bring in new clients in a short time frame, outbound tactics like cold calling, direct outreach, and account-based marketing (ABM) can put you in front of decision-makers fast.
2. Do I have a budget to launch ads and keep them running long enough to A/B test? Successful outbound often requires paid media. But ads need time to optimize and A/B test. If you have the resources to keep your campaigns running and tweaking for maximum ROI, then paid ads paired with targeted outreach can produce valuable, quick wins.
3. Do I have resources like SDRs and AEs to execute my outbound motions? Outbound success relies on a skilled team, whether in-house or outsourced.
4. Do I work in a saturated market and rely on one-on-one interactions to stand out in the crowd? In competitive industries, your messaging must break through the noise. Outbound allows you to cut through the clutter with personalized, targeted communication to prospects who might not yet know they need your solution.

Again, if you answered yes to any or all of the questions above, consider focusing on outbound more heavily to generate leads.

Whether you lean more towards inbound or take an outbound-first approach, you need to understand your prospective buyers before you can target them.

What are their needs and pain points? How does their industry work? What do they prioritize in their business? 

As Cameron puts it:

“You have to live a day in their life to understand what their motivations are.”

Thankfully, you already have another group of people at your fingertips who can help you accomplish that. Your customers. Here’s how your existing customers can help you start building your buyer personas and understand your prospects’ buying intent. All in three easy steps.

Step 1: Interview your existing customers

Start by conducting interviews with your current customers, asking questions that will get to the root of their initial purchasing decision. Questions like:

• What pain point were you trying to solve for? 
• How did you first hear about us?
• What made our product or service stand out? 
• What is it about us that inspired you to stay loyal? 

An analysis of market trends and your own sales and engagement data will help round out the answers. You can then use that information to map out your customer journey. 

Step 2: Look for patterns in your customer profile

Use the information above to create a wish list of attributes you’ll want to look for in the new prospects you target — otherwise known as your ideal customer profile (ICP). Hint: these prospects will be businesses with the same challenges and needs your existing customers had when their journey started.

To do that, Zoë suggests starting with your top 20 to 30 existing customers — those with the highest net promoter score (NPS) or the highest lifetime value, for example. Then dig into their details to see where there are similarities between those customers — whether it be industry, job titles of key decision-makers, or something else entirely. 

Zoë adds: “You're going to find those trends, you're going to find those patterns. Then I would actually start building my list from that set of data.” 

Step 3: Search for prospects that match

With step one and two completed, you can start putting together a lead list of prospects that share the same attributes you’ve identified.

A sales intelligence tool can help you find the contact information of potential customers that match that ideal customer with information like:

• Title
• Company
• Number of employees
• Size by department
• Recent hires
• Revenue
• Location

Better yet — look for ones that let you stitch together these attributes to build out your buyer personas and search against them in a third-party database.

The best organizations prioritize leads by opportunity size, conversion likelihood, and available intel—and a lead scoring model helps standardize those priorities across the team.

Lead scoring lets you rank prospects based on real signals—like company fit, engagement, and timing. When done right, it aligns sales and marketing, speeds up handoffs, and keeps your team focused on the highest-value opportunities.

AI scoring tools make this process infinitely faster, easier, and more accurate.

It can delve deep into your team's past prospecting efforts by tapping into your data history to identify the contact and account features that drove your previous successes. It will pull out the critical criteria of your best customers to signal which new leads fit this picture.

Mark Turner, VP of Revenue Operations at Built In, found that a higher Apollo AI score on a lead directly corresponded to double digit increases in both win rate and ACV.

“Building out an Apollo scoring model was very simple. What we saw was a higher Apollo score corresponded to a higher win rate and a higher ACV.” — Mark Turner, VP of Revenue Operations at Built In

Lead scoring, when applied correctly, is a lead gen hack that can’t afford to be overlooked.

“Generic content just is not going to cut it,” Cameron says. 

But Zoë adds some depth to the importance of pertinent content: “Personalization is not the same thing as relevance, and you really need both. You could mention my dog's name in a personalized email, but also mention a solution that has nothing to do with my pain points or job.”

Both personalization and relevance start by knowing your prospects and their intentions. So by understanding more about them, you’re already on the way to creating personalized messaging that’s also relevant. 

Take tech company Smartling, for example; a team that takes the meaning of “relevance” to new heights.

They created an AI prompt that performs “always on” research for their biggest signals. They use what they find out directly in their messaging.

The result: more personalized cold emails and the boost reps needed to become 10x more productive overall. 

Capture your best B2B leads in one platform

Generating leads and keeping your sales funnel full doesn’t have to be overly complex. With a combination of both inbound and outbound motions, you can find the right approach for your business. And the right B2B lead generation tools and services help make that happen.

For instance, Apollo’s end-to-end AI solution keeps everything running smoothly, letting you:

• Research your prospects with the help of AI, so that you can target the right leads and create relevant, personalized messaging
• Score your leads with Apollo Lead Scoring so that you can prioritize the best prospects for your business
• Write and personalize your outbound messaging with Apollo’s AI assistants and automation tools
• Get your timing right by identifying intent with Apollo’s intent signals and website visitor tracking

Through the right tools and proven best practices, you can create lead generation strategies that stand out — and start meeting your sales quotas every time.