Outreach, and more specifically sending “cold” messages (cold messaging or cold emailing) is a strategy highly favored by B2B companies today. Its effectiveness is formidable and it is one of the most direct methods to contact the right person or people within a company.
The explosion in the number of users and active people on LinkedIn in recent years has also largely contributed to making this type of strategy one of the most powerful levers for revenue growth.
According to data from the company Digimind, as of April 2023, LinkedIn has an impressive figure of over 26 million members in France, which is equivalent to more than 80% of the country’s active workforce. Over the past two years, the platform has also seen a significant 20% increase in its membership base.
On paper, the principle is simple: find the contact details of a B2B lead that matches your persona, send them a message highlighting the benefits of your service/product, and you’re done.
What’s the point of lead generation?
Lead gen is a devilishly effective technique, but the devil is in the details.
The vast majority of entrepreneurs and sales professionals who have tried this exercise can testify that the results are not always there.
Behind the apparent simplicity of these techniques lie many subtleties that must be mastered perfectly to finally achieve the desired results.
In this article, I will give you a list of prerequisites, hacks, and techniques that we use at Kahea.io, an expert outbound and inbound agency, with our lead gen campaigns from LaGrowthMachine.
These lead generation strategies are our most effective in 2023. They will notably allow you to:
- increase your response rate.
- increase your conversion rate.
- have a more personalized approach.
- save time.
- increase your revenue.
Let’s go! 😉
Idea 1: Work in Silos and Focus on Granularity
The most common mistake we encounter at Kahea when working with a new client is the lack of segmentation.
Good to Know💡
When we offer a service or product that can be used by any type of company and sector, we are naturally tempted to want to address everyone in the same way. There is nothing more counterproductive.
We must consider that each business sector or segment will have its own codes and, above all, its own problems, also known as “pain points“.
This notion of pain point must be at the center of all your thinking. The more “painful” the problem is for your prospect, the more they will be tempted to pay for someone to solve it.
It is therefore crucial to place the right problem at the center of your message and your sales funnel to capture their maximum attention and achieve a conversion.
The level of granularity you bring to your segmentation will directly impact your results.
Example 🔍
it is sometimes better to run a campaign of 20 or 30 leads with a highly tailored message than large campaigns with a too “vague” approach. This may seem counterproductive, but it offers two clear advantages:
- a better conversion rate
- better market management (avoid exhausting your lead potential too quickly)
LaGrowthMachine offers a wide range of possibilities in terms of sequencing and personalization.
Therefore, do not hesitate to exploit them to the fullest by creating sales “silos” where your “icebreaker,” your message, your promise, your references, etc., are as personalized as possible, making your contact very relevant.
Example 🔍
Let’s say you are a digital communication agency. Your segment “A” groups SMEs with an eco-responsible positioning, your segment “B” groups luxury houses manufacturing cosmetics, and “C” groups large Med Tech corporations.
Now imagine contacting a prospect from segment C, a large corporation whose DNA is health and technology, with a message that is either too general, or oriented towards B2C and luxury (segment B) or eco-responsible (segment A).
Your message likely doesn’t address any solution to a pain point they might have, and you probably don’t respect the codes of their industry. You then have every chance of facing rejection.
We therefore advise you to create silos adapted to each segment:
- creating a database with the greatest possible depth of segmentation (e.g., founders and CEOs of luxury real estate agencies, min. €10M turnover, min. +5% recent staff, Paris intra-muros).
- an adapted message, focused on a relevant and specific pain point.
- sales support (landing page, video, pitch deck…) similarly adapted.
- using the variables offered by LaGrowthMachine to make the message hyper-personalized.
Generate More Prospects, Effortlessly!
Sending a cold email is fast, easy, and scalable!
But you’re limited to a single communication channel. What happens if your prospect prefers LinkedIn, where you’ll find 80% of B2B prospects? Or even Twitter?
That’s where LaGrowthMachine comes in! We allow you to reach your prospect on multiple channels, multiplying your chances of getting a response by 3.5!
Idea 2: Master Your Bandwidth
It is important to understand that the LinkedIn algorithm will not let you make hundreds of visits and invitations every day.
If you try to exceed these LinkedIn limits, it may sanction you with a more or less disabling “block,” hindering the use of your account for future operations. You would then have to change accounts to continue campaigns, which can quickly become tedious.
As explained above, we recommend creating the most precise databases possible.
It is better to contact a few ultra-qualified people each day than to try to “spray and pray” hundreds of poorly targeted individuals.
Spend time on the quality of your leads upstream, and you will spend less time managing unnecessary appointments, awkward situations, and blocks on your favorite network.
Good to Know 💡
Here is a step-by-step guide on segmenting and targeting your leads with LaGrowthMachine:
LaGrowthMachine allows you to import your searches directly from Sales Navigator. The strategy therefore consists of creating the cleanest list possible before adding it to your campaigns and letting LaGrowthMachine enrich the contact details of the prospects concerned.
Expert Tip 🧠
Don’t skimp on the “NOT” operators in your boolean searches. By excluding all unnecessary companies or job titles, you’ll get very clean databases with minimal waste.
Idea 3: Use Video Tools and Voice Messages
A personalized contact is a contact that has every chance of succeeding.
Today, there are many tools available to make your approach much more human, pleasant, and effective:
- Prepare a video of maximum 2 minutes using tools like Vidyard or Loom. A video is worth a thousand words, and an oral presentation conveys a lot of information and emotions that you cannot transmit in writing. Don’t forget that the majority of our purchasing decisions, 80%, are based on our emotions, while only 20% are based on reason.
Expert Tip 🧠
Be spontaneous, natural, and don’t forget to talk about your prospect (and less about yourself).
- LinkedIn allows you to send voice messages to your prospects, which is an alternative to video if you are not comfortable on camera (but force yourself, it’s worth it).
Good to Know💡
LaGrowthMachine allows you to send these voice messages directly from the Inbox. Beyond saving considerable time, this will significantly increase your response rates. A tool like Unicity will do the job well if you want to do this in “bulk.”
Voice messages:
- bring a human touch to the message,
- allow you to stand out from other requests on LinkedIn,
- and most importantly, they increase your response rate by 30 to 40%!
Idea 4: Multichannel + Orchestration, the Basis of Success
Take advantage of the infinite scenario possibilities offered by LaGrowthMachine to create masterfully orchestrated lead generation sequences.
First, we advise you to consider which channel will be most effective for the segment you wish to target.
Are your prospects not very active on social media? Then opt for an “Email Only” campaign; you’ll have a better chance of getting responses. Conversely, if your target audience is very active on LinkedIn, then prioritize this channel.
As a general rule, a “cross-channel” campaign combining LinkedIn + Email, with LinkedIn as the first step, remains the “must-have” as it multiplies your chances of reaching your prospects.
Expert Tip 🧠
Running out of bandwidth because LinkedIn only allows a few daily interactions? Create a second campaign, but this time with email as the first step, and thus multiply your reach.
Once the right channel is chosen, you need to define an appropriate orchestration.
The default settings in LaGrowthMachine are generally well thought out, however, you may want to take advantage of a larger or smaller gap between each follow-up.
Example 🔍
You are attending a trade show in 2 weeks and want to contact about 30 highly targeted leads to arrange a meeting with them there. Don’t hesitate to shorten the time between follow-ups to get a response before you leave.
Finally, consider LaGrowthMachine’s “multichannel” capabilities as an opportunity to create multiple “Touch Points” with your prospects, clients, and former clients.
Example 🔍
A prospect contacted you via a form on your website. Don’t hesitate to create a “Trigger” via Zapier + LaGrowthMachine to automatically add them on social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter) and send them a welcome email.
Here is a complete guide on using Zapier with LaGrowthMachine.
Zapier is a service that connects various tools together. For example, you can connect Typeform (a popular form service for marketing) to LaGrowthMachine to perform an action once the form is filled out.
In this example, the lead is added to a campaign after a new entry is created in Typeform
This approach will be greatly appreciated by your prospect and will be seen as a mark of dynamism and professionalism.
Idea 5: (Re)activate Your Own Network
Your LinkedIn network certainly holds hidden gems without you realizing it.
Example 🔍
You know, your friend Sophie with whom you worked in 2015 and who has evolved significantly since then. She now holds a responsible position at Hermès.
This is the perfect time to reconnect with her and arrange a professional reunion video call. She will surely be delighted to work with you again.
The goal: retrieve your own network, sort it, and create a LinkedIn Only sequence on LaGrowthMachine to reconnect with them. Guaranteed success.
Idea 6: Base Your Strategy on Interest Signals
LinkedIn is likely full of interest signals for your business, if only you knew where to find them.
Example 🔍
Here’s a possible signal of interest: you’ve just released a great production for a client (a new design, website, scenography…), the client shares this production on LinkedIn, and other people share it in turn.
List all the people and pages that have shared your work, collect people who like and comment on posts, and contact those who seem interesting. They are likely fans of your work and will be delighted to work with you!
Idea 7: Be Profitable
For those of you interested in all the strategies described above, but who lack the time, budget, or willingness to train in these subjects, the most profitable approach is undoubtedly outsourcing.
While LaGrowthMachine is a very accessible and user-friendly tool, it’s not always easy to use it to its full potential, especially if the targets you’re aiming for are in difficult-to-access, competitive, or very niche markets.
Beyond the technical aspect, which LaGrowthMachine simplifies as much as possible, there is a body of knowledge required to ensure the effective execution of an outbound campaign:
- copywriting.
- data scraping.
- sales funnel creation.
- continuous monitoring of the most effective strategies.
- CRM management
- etc.
If you are in one of the following situations:
- You are the founder or CEO of a company and do not have any internal sales staff. You are the most suitable person in the company to speak with and convince prospects verbally, however, the entire pre-sales part is too time-consuming and complex for you.
- You are the founder or CEO of a company, you have hired a salesperson, but you want to improve their productivity and find a way to boost sales, allowing them to focus on their real added value: interacting with and following up on prospects and clients.
- You are a sales manager and would like to get rid of the entire pre-sales part to have the opportunity to focus on more “high-level” topics.
- You are a startup creator and need to scale up
Then choosing a service provider with strong expertise in these areas will save you time and money.
At kahea.io, we have created one of the most effective offers on the market to solve these specific problems, in collaboration with LaGrowthMachine.
For less than a quarter of the salary of a business developer, you can rely on a team of senior marketers, each with specific expertise: copywriting, data, sales funnels, etc.
We handle all your outreach activities for you, with a radically tailor-made approach and excellent knowledge of all the tools (including LaGrowthMachine) and techniques necessary for creating successful campaigns.
You will also be followed daily by an outbound specialist who will perform a permanent analysis and monitoring of your performance. They will suggest areas for improvement over time before implementing them with your agreement.
(10% welcome bonus offered to those coming from LaGrowthMachine*)
*valid for 3 months of campaign