The old method of cold calling doesn't work anymore. No one likes being disturbed by unsolicited sales calls. It's unpleasant, to say the least. If your marketing strategy relies on this type of call, you're also harming your brand image.
Similarly, the typical online advertising strategy no longer yields the expected results in 2023. Ask yourself, do you often click on ads?
A common challenge for many companies is generating growth in a predictable way. Growth that rollercoasters is hard to manage and creates unnecessary stress.
Finding a scalable and predictable marketing strategy that works for your business is a real challenge. Technologies change, platforms evolve, and you're probably too busy to keep up.
In this article, I explain a marketing strategy that works for 9 out of 10 SMBs and requires no cold calling. The method has been proven by, among others, Salesforce.com, which increased its revenues by $100 million in 5 years.
Table of Contents
B2B Lead Generation Method to Get a Continuous Flow of Quality Leads
Getting quality opportunities should be a predictable process, not something left to chance.
The method proposed by HaCoeur:
Works. Period.
No niche is too specific.
Can be deployed 100% externally or taught to your teams.
Proven by Salesforce.com, generating $100 million in new revenue in 5 years. (the book Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross describes the method)
What People Imagine About Marketing...
It’s the classic approach to digital marketing. Looks cute on paper, but far from reality in 2023.
What Really Happens...
Two extremely inefficient and costly processes that can be significantly improved
Specific Web Problems in a B2B Context
Problems | Solutions |
Can't really target who we want with advertising. | Creating custom audiences. |
Very few people click on calls to action (buttons, whitepapers, gated content, etc.). | Send contacts of qualified companies that visited the site directly to salespeople (de-anonymizing traffic). |
100% of the work relies on the website. We're really hoping they fill out forms. | Multi-platform approach where contacts (pre-identified) can be solicited by advertising, email, sales activities, etc. |
Advertising on LinkedIn is very expensive | Custom audiences allow advertising on Facebook, which costs 5X less (for exactly the same people) |
Cold email/call doesn't work (low open rate), decision-makers are highly solicited and protective of their time. | We ensure they have a positive opinion of the company via branding ads before soliciting them with a "research" approach. |
The Process Summarized
| 2. Branding | 3. Email Sequence |
We make a list of your ideal clients for prospecting with your criteria. | Prospects on the list see ads on the web (LinkedIn, Google, other platforms). | We send a sequence of emails to the prospects on the list (with the Cold Call 2.0 approach) |
Step 1: Identifying Ideal Customers
We compile a list of contacts according to your parameters. This list contains everything needed to:
Create a custom audience that can be uploaded to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google
For your sales team to reuse
It’s better than Sales Navigator, which does not provide email addresses.
Step 2: Creating a Targeted Audience
We upload the list to LinkedIn to create a custom audience
LinkedIn associates an email (e.g. jean@companyXYZ.com) with a profile (Jean Thibaudeau’s profile)
It works even if the LinkedIn profile was created with a personal email or if the person has changed jobs
The matching success rate varies but is typically 75% for LinkedIn and 30% for Facebook.
We repeat these steps for other platforms.
Step 3: Branding Campaign
We create ads that will be seen by prospects on the list
The goal is for them to have a positive perception of your company before we send them an email. This increases the open rate.
HaCoeur can create the creatives or work with your current designer
Timeline: allow 2 to 3 weeks for branding to take effect
Bonus: The ads are clickable and bring targeted visitors to the site, you will start receiving qualified leads.
Step 4: Email Sequences
We create a sequence of 3 to 4 emails, each addressing a different problem that your company solves
We send the emails to the contacts on the list. The vast majority of targeted individuals will have seen an advertisement, so they will have a positive opinion of the company.
Emails are sent every 6 to 8 days automatically with a tool that avoids falling into the promotion box.
The sequence stops for a contact when a member of your sales team responds to one of their emails.
The system also makes LinkedIn connection requests.
Once in place, this system is fully automated and provides you with an ongoing flow of ideal leads.
Step 5: Identifying Visitors
A tool like Visitor Queue lets you know:
Which companies have visited the site
From which city the visit came (important in the context of large companies where decision-makers are not necessarily at headquarters)
The number of visits and pages viewed.
It’s then easy to identify decision-makers and send them to a CRM
Example: HaCoeur targets marketing directors, Visitor Queue helps determine that someone from CompanyXYZ.com visited HaCoeur’s site. We can see on LinkedIn that John Smith is the marketing director of CompanyXYZ and his email is john@CompanyXYZ.com
Step 6: Passing the Baton to the Sales Team
Visitor Queue allows you to compile a list of target companies (e.g., these companies have an ideal profile and there have been multiple visits to your site, they are interested).
The search for people to contact can be done:
Directly with the initial contact list.
By redoing a search (search for the contact details of COOs, VP operations, and factory directors for CompanyXYZ located in St-Janvier).
Everything can be sent directly to salespeople by email and/or in a CRM.
We can also use our list to do email blasts.
Step 7: Measuring Success and Feedback
The beauty of the approach is that we can relatively well validate if it works:
We can cross-reference the starting list and qualified leads to validate how much the target responded to the strategy.
Typically, we target very specific niches where the client has not been successful before (e.g., I haven't made any sales in the automotive sector in the United States). An increase in leads in the targeted sector is a clear indication that it works (e.g., I have 2 leads in the automotive sector in the United States since we applied this method).
Conclusion
This method, which we call Cold Call 2.0, generates a constant and predictable flow of leads, ensuring growth quarter after quarter.
While the process is quite simple, sticking to it and integrating it to your business practices may not be. Change is hard for people and businesses. That's when hiring a fractional CMO from HaCoeur can free up a lot of your time, while ensuring the Cold Calling 2.0 system is being implemented at a steady pace.
At HaCoeur, our fractional CMOs master this approach, and we have adapted it to the needs of each of our clients. You can read the article Boost Your Business: The Advantage of a Fractional CMO Explained to learn more about these part-time marketing maestros.
Another point of interest, most business owners don't know they can obtain tens of thousands of dollars to subsidize their marketing project, or they think the process is complicated and not worth it.
Think again! If you're willing to dedicate two 30-minute sessions with one of our CMOs, we can guide you and set up the grant request for you. Your marketing project can be subsidized up to 90%, and your request approved in less than 2 weeks.
Schedule a free Discovery call with a fractional CMO from HaCoeur today.
