Top 5 Outbound Strategies Every Marketer Should Have
Inbounder’s Perspective for Outbound
In early March of this year, as events were canceled and investors asked to be more cautious, we knew we had to make dramatic changes to our previous plans. We developed and implemented a new strategy and voila: March 2020 turned out to be the best month of Netomi’s history for the sales pipeline. As we virtually celebrated the success of March, we collected April numbers. April beat March by 136%. And finally, May raised the bar yet again. With limited ad budget and zero events marketing, how did we achieve that much success in a short amount of time?
Outbound.
Today I’d like to share the top five outbound strategies that worked well for us:
1.Update TAM as Needed
Be Agile. Drop Weights
The moment we started to notice the decline of some industries including Travel & Hospitality, Transportation and Leisure, we dropped all Inbound and Outbound activities targeting these companies and quickly focused on new verticals. To be honest with you, we almost did a 180-degree change. We quickly identified industries that could benefit from our solution due to an unprecedented spike in consumer demand, like online pharmacy, grocery delivery, telehealth, home fitness, e-learning, remote collaboration, etc. Yes, these industries do not have NAICS codes. But it does not matter. You need to find your own targeting and segmentation based on the current environment.
2.Customize 100%
No Automation, No BS
We decided to remove our Sales Automation tool (It’s one of the Top 3 SW all “traditional” BDR teams use) from the equation. The tool comfortably sends the same messages to a list of contacts by updating tokenized input. I personally liked the tool due to its templates, reminders, cadence management, and metrics. However, I noticed it creates laziness in the team as the tool does most of the work and gives us no room for creativity if we have to write an email to a specific person from scratch. With the tool gone, we decided to connect with the individual behind the account. We researched accounts and studied each and every recipient in depth before drafting our targeted messages.
Halting the tool surely affected our total weekly volumes, but thanks to our custom emails, our conversion rates skyrocketed.
3. Leverage ABM*
Create 360-coverage
As an Inbound guy, I cannot say we developed an Outbound strategy without using any digital channels. With the updated TAM, ideally, I’d have launched a proven ABM tool like Demandbase or Terminus. But, with limited time & budget, we counted on LinkedIn and created unique awareness campaigns for our new verticals. As our outbound team reached out to the targeted accounts, our inbound team generated brand awareness of Netomi by targeting the same exact audience.
Bonus point! Even though we programmed LinkedIn to be an awareness and not a traditional lead gen channel, we still collected leads directly from the platform.
*Click here if you want to kick start Account Based Marketing programs
4. Offer Something Useful
Stand Out (or Get Busted)
One of the biggest challenges of any early-stage startup is not getting enough responses as the majority of your target doesn’t know your name, and there’s, let’s agree, a trust issue. We decided to offer a free sample of our end product. We launched industry-specific working prototypes for all key industries identified in step one and asked them to try it for free.
Even though these prototypes were limited in functionality, we selected the core functions that resonate with those who might try it. We tracked their usage from Google Analytics as well as Netomi’s built-in analytics capabilities. We doubled down on the prospects as they engaged with our prototype.
5. Diversify Your Outreach
Go Wide. Go Deep
Since day one, we have made a mandatory rule to include at least one phone call and multiple LinkedIn messages to complement our customized emails to diversify our activities. More important than the channels, we decided to go across different departments due to our limited knowledge of these newly identified industries. For some accounts, we got positive responses from our key personas. For others, while our primary and secondary personas were silent, we received significant reactions from surprising prospects, including Project Managers, C-Levels, and even Account Executives.
The bottom line is that one thing that helped us the most to succeed is not to give up on our vision of these five strategies. In our first week, we literally got zero conversions. But thanks to continuous feedback loops and our persistence, we got extraordinary results in the following weeks. Needless to say, the result of any strategy is dependent upon its execution. We would not get such a stellar output if we did not have an A+ BDR team!
Good luck and let me know how your activities pan out.
