OutboundView

P R E D I C TA B L E P I P E L I N E
S T R AT E G Y

O U T B O U N DV I E W. C O M
 Table of Contents

CUSTOMER RESEARCH:

Customer Profile

Buyer Personas

OUTBOUND MARKETING:

List Building Messaging

Software & Tools Experimentation

Campaign Execution

INBOUND MARKETING:

New Prospects

Move Through Pipeline

Distribution

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP:

Influencers

PR

Events

PAID ADVERTISING:

Channels

Fundamentals

TEAM STRUCTURE:

Role Identification

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Why Did We Write This Guide?

This guide was written to provide a high-level

overview of the key components included in a B2B
Predictable Pipeline Strategy. Each of the major
subsections covered is important to consider when
identifying and attracting new customers.

Resource allocation, with both people and dollars,

is difficult. This guide will help B2B companies set
a solid strategy and allocate resources in the most
optimal way for their business.

This guide is full of actionable steps - including

processes, technology, and tools that will help B2B
companies build a predictable pipeline.

Who is This Guide For?

If you’re a small businesses or startup that is looking for strategies to identify new sales opportunities, this guide is for
you.

If you’ve proven product/market fit, have your first 10-15 customers, and now want a strategy to scale sales and
marketing, this guide is for you.

If you’re a company that has just received funding and want to properly allocate resources across sales and marketing,
this guide is for you.

If you’re responsible for budget allocation across sales or marketing (Head of Sales or CMO), this guide is for you.

If you’re interested in learning new tactics around driving top-of-funnel activity (sales management and individual
contributors in sales and marketing), this guide is for you.

Simply put, this guide is for anyone trying find more sales opportunities for their B2B company.

What Do You Do With This Guide?

Use this guide to map out your predictable pipeline strategy and allocation of existing resources.

Use this guide as a starting point for identifying exactly where you should be making sales and marketing “bets” that give you
the best opportunity to find new business.

Use this guide to shape a 12-18 month strategy that gives your business the best opportunity to find new sales opportunities
and grow revenue.

Use this guide to implement and test new processes across sales and marketing to see what works best for your business.

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Our Approach to Client Acquisition

Every single company struggles with deciding how to

allocate sales and marketing resources. When should
you hire? Who do you hire? How much do you spend
on sales and marketing?

We fundamentally believe most companies struggle

with attracting new customers because they don’t have
a sound predictable pipeline strategy. A sound strategy
starts with knowing all the channels you can possibly
allocate resources to - smaller organizations struggle
with this because they can’t afford the $150K/year CMO
with the requisite experience.

To set a sound strategy, you must test something until

you can prove it works. Once you’ve proven it works,
you throw dollars and people at that strategy.

search execution

Sales and marketing teams need to be testing things like outbound

marketing, paid advertising, PR, events, etc. to search and find what
is going to work for their business. We help our clients test what
is and isn’t working so they can implement a sound, executable
strategy.

Too many companies try to hire their way into growing revenue.
We find countless companies that try to scale with hiring, without
having the process or proof to be scaling. They hire outside
salespeople before they truly know their customer. They hire five
inside sales reps before they have the tools and processes to make
inside sales successful. Before hiring, set the right strategy so you
know exactly what types of hires you need, and what those hires will
be doing to scale what is already working.

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 Spending Uncertainty

$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$

search execution

As you are building a predictable pipeline strategy, you should

be running hundreds of different tests to see which ideas are
the most effective. Initially, you should be running numerous
quick, cheap tests. As uncertainty in your tests goes down and
you start to see which ideas are working, spending goes up
and you go into execution mode.

At OutboundView, we help companies reduce uncertainty by

testing and identifying the best predictable pipeline strategy.
We help set the strategy, including the key resources needed
to implement the strategy, and decide where sales and
marketing dollars should be spent. The result is an executable
plan that doesn’t require a $150K/year CMO, and gives you the
best chance to increase revenue.

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CUSTOMER RESEARCH
C U STO M E R P RO F I L E

Who’s your target customer?

It’s an easy question, right? It should be, but oftentimes companies looking to scale struggle with going beyond the basics. The
most commonly used customer profiles often include descriptors like industry, revenue size, location, or employee count. We
hear prospects say things like “we target the mid-market” or “we focus on enterprise customers” – but what does that actually
mean? What type of enterprise customers should you spend the most time targeting, and which are most likely to buy from
you?

The Basics

Businesses often overlook tremendous value in determining their ideal customer profile
by neglecting to dig deeper. Within this space, you’re only discovering topical information
such as employee count, revenue, location, or industry. This is just a starting point, not
where your research should end.

Account-Based Research

What are key strategic priorities for the accounts you’re targeting? How does your solution
help them achieve their goals? What can the technology stack of your target customer
tell you? Account-based research gives you an extra level of targeting above and beyond
company size, revenue, and industry.

Buying Triggers

Which activities inside an organization indicate your solution could be a fit for them? For
example; at OutboundView, when organizations are hiring inside salespeople, it typically
means our services could be a fit. When a new VP of Sales is hired, that is a good time for
our team to reach out and discuss their lead generation strategies, because they’re typically
reviewing new sales processes. If we can tell a company isn’t getting any inbound traffic,
that tells us that the target needs outbound marketing. Identifying the triggers that drive
organizations to buy is absolutely critical for top of funnel targeting. Finding target accounts
that are showing “buying triggers” for your business should be the highest priority for your
top of funnel outreach efforts.

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 BUYER PERSONAS

Who’s your buyer? Not ideal company target – we’re talking the customer writing the checks or using your products. We at
OutboundView help our customers build buyer personas by focusing on two categories: Decision Makers and Doers.

Decision Makers are the individuals focused on high-level, strategic outcomes, and are usually writing the check for your
product or service.

Doers are your users focused on the day to day tactics supporting your product or service.

Why is this an important distinction? Each requires different strategies to spark interest in your product or service; but most
importantly, each requires a different messaging to initiate a discussion.

TAKE If you are targeting the marketing organization, the CMO and marketing manager have very different
NOTE needs and require very different messaging!

Buyer personas are the first step in the sales and marketing process. They help businesses clearly define who the key decision
makers and influencers are at a prospective company. These personas clearly establish who the targets are for your team. Most
importantly, buyer personas outline the specific value proposition, thought-provoking questions, and resources needed to lead
efforts toward an opportunity for each type of Doer or Decision Maker.

OutboundView has created a simple list of steps to follow when building your buyer personas:

1 Start small with a goal of 2-3 buyer personas.

2 Think pain points – What makes your customer’s job difficult? Keep in mind these pain points need to be related to
their overall job, not just pain points your solution solves for.

3 Perform customer interviews and ask your buyer the tough questions, don’t just make assumptions.

4 Make them tangible! Create bio pages for “Bill the Buyer”, ”Sally Seller” and have fun with it!

5 Think “Personally” and “Professionally” – How does your solution help your buyer reach their goals, both personally
and professionally?

6 Create a unique value proposition for each type of persona.

7 End with messaging – As the last step in the process, build messaging that aligns with the customer’s pain points
and helps differentiate your solution.

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OUTBOUND MARKETING
Outbound Marketing is one of the most common ways companies acquire their first client. Founders reach out to their network
through emailing, calling, or social media to start those initial conversations.

Finding a handful of initial customers via outbound marketing, is very different than building a sustainable model around
consistently finding and winning new opportunities via outbound marketing. It can be easy to assume that just hiring inside
salespeople will solve your lead generation problems. At OutboundView, we believe that having the right processes, tools, and
techniques are critical steps that need to be taken before scaling with people.

5 Keys to a Successful Outbound Sales Approach Are:

1 List Building 3 Messaging 5 Experimentation

2 Software & Tools 4 Campaign Execution

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 LIST BUILDING

G E T T I N G Y O U R TA R G E T ’ S I N F O R M AT I O N E F F I C I E N T LY & A CC U R AT E LY

List building is the number one place we see companies stumble with outbound marketing. They don’t have the processes,
tools, or infrastructure to consistently find new companies and people to reach out to.

Here are 3 options to consider when building lists:

Subscription Using Outsourcers

Services Combination to Manually Find
(ZOOMINFO, DATA.COM,
Buyers Online
DISCOVERORG)

Many of these services can be You can buy your outsourcers For $5/hour you can have dedicated
expensive ($5-10K/year minimum), licenses to your subscription service outsourcers pull prospects who
but it’s completely worth it. Don’t be and they can spend time on the fit your ideal customer profile and
the company that pays salespeople more manual tasks while your team buyer personas. They can guess their
$50K+ per year but won’t buy them continues to sell, personalize, and email, gather their phone numbers,
the tools that would make them create inroads with your targets. and provide your team with in
5X more efficient. Having the right Set your virtual assistants up as a depth research. Most companies
contact information is absolutely user. Setting up these processes for rely on their sales team team to do
critical for outbound efforts, the long term is the difficult part, this work. We believe in freeing up
because it allows you to scale your BUT, it will pay dividends as you your best talent to do what they do
campaigns. scale outbound activities and create best – SELL. Spending $5 an hour
revenue opportunities for your team. on this work is better than paying
someone $40K a year to do the same
thing. This should give your sales
team more time to execute calls
and customize emails instead of list
building.
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Building out your lists is costly in time and effort. It’s extremely manual if you’re doing it on your own. Unfortunately there’s not
just one approach that works for list building. Best case, your buyers are on one of the subscription services such as Zoominfo
or DiscoverOrg. Worst case, you have to automate a manual effort of pulling buyer information from LinkedIn or wherever
your buyers are. Most likely, a combination of outsourcers and a database purchase should be your end solution. We believe
strongly in integrating outsourcers into your outbound list building process. Whether it’s finding contacts, finding contact info,
or helping your team with research – they can be instrumental in your outbound process.

Here’s where to get started finding outsourcers:

Fiverr – Freelance services

Upwork – Freelance services

S O F T WA R E & T O O L S

Enabling the Effort of Your Sales Team

You’ve got your list, now what? Back in the day, you’d say dial until you’re blue in the face. Today, your customers
require a multi-pronged approach. This means your tools and systems must enable your teams to run campaigns over
time. Here are the technological must-haves to kick your team’s’ efforts into overdrive.

1 If you’re B2B, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a must-have for your sellers. The advanced filtering and
searching is great for both finding the right companies to target as well as the right individuals.

2 You need to have a way to manage, nurture, measure, and track your outbound campaigns. This means a
sales optimization tool. Here are a few of our favorites:

a. Salesloft (Enterprise)

b. Outreach.io (Enterprise)

c. Mixmax (SMB)

If you are familiar with marketing automation tools like Hubspot or Eloqua, this would be a similar type of tool geared
toward your sales team. They help you manage multi-touch campaigns (X number of touches, over X amount of days)
and the lists of prospects you are reaching out to. These tools help you manage your outreach campaigns by clearly
defining what you should be doing each day - email on day one, call on day three, email on day five, and so forth. The
best part is that you can see the results, optimize, and continue to improve your outreach efforts.

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What these tools really help with is list management. For example, say you have 300 new targets. You send 50 emails on
day one and get five incorrect emails, seven responses, and three out of office replies. The software can automatically
pull out contacts that have bounced or responded so you don’t send another email to people you are already
interacting with.

One of the most important things about these tools is they are sent through your sales team’s email client. Outbound
emails should look like they’re personalized for the prospect, even if they aren’t. Using tools like Mailchimp, Aweber, or
your CRM is not the same thing. Personalization at scale increases your response rate.

CRM

You need one place to keep track of everything. When you start doing outbound it will be important that you are
tracking what is happening across your campaign. There are hundreds of different CRMs out there, and they’re all
pretty much the same. If you have any doubt, and can afford it, go with Salesforce - it integrates with everything.

M ESSAG I N G

Great messaging centers around problems encountered by your buyer, personalized for them, delivered in an effective manner
which demonstrates how you can be a resource for them. It’s that simple. Here’s an example:

“Hi Ms. Target, nice to meet you. “Hi Cindy, great meeting you virtually. I came across your profile
I wanted to reach out and see if on LinkedIn and thought I’d reach out. We speak with a lot of VP
you’re in the market for (product). “Buyer Title” struggling with X Problem and I thought I’d send
Our customers love our function 1, over this interesting article that’s been getting a lot of exposure.
feature 2, and find an ROI of XXX%. Thanks for connecting and let me know if you want to speak
Are you free in the next two weeks to with one of our specialists about how we’ve helped company X,
talk about (product)?” Y, and Z with this specific problem!“

The differences are exaggerated but you get the point – the first example is focused on your company and your product, the
second is focused on your buyers problems and tries to provide value to start an interaction. Buyers today are bombarded with
information. In your messaging, consider how you’re demonstrating value to them. Are you building trust or are you ending up
in the spam folder?

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Here are OutboundView’s keys to building successful messaging:

1 Talk about problems of the buyer, not your product.

2 Be aware of the company, person, and dynamics of each. Personalization at scale yields tremendous results!

3 Build templates for your campaign early – get 80% of your campaign done before you start, then customize based on the
person receiving your message.

4 Focus on building credibility, not pushing your product.

a. Include strategic initiatives of the target firm.

b. Reiterate common job responsibilities by title.

c. Reference previous conversations with others at the company.

5 Use your buyer personas to create valuable conversations with prospects – for both you and the buyer.

6 Don’t send blanket messaging to different levels of the organization – The VP should get a different message than the
front-line job title you are targeting.

7 Follow up and reference your outreach.

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 C A M PA I G N E X E C U T I O N

It’s time to get the word out! You’ve identified your targets, built your
buyer personas, developed your campaign strategy, and your team is
hungry for some leads. Here are some tips to help you be more effective
in your outreach:

Email Be brief.

Personalization is key.

Provide a resource or insights – what are their problems now? In the future?

Earn the ask – focus on building credibility with them before you ask to meet.

Phone Know what you’re going to say before you dial.

Focus on problems solved, storytelling, and credibility.

Have a purpose – You won’t get a call back from every voicemail – your purpose could be a
quick touch base so they respond to your email.

Pick a theme and be consistent. For example, tell the same customer story in 25 straight
voicemails, to a specific niche tailored to their needs. Having consistency will help you
determine if what you are doing is effective.

Social
Media Interact on channels your buyer is actively using.

Integrate social media “touches” into your multi-touch campaigns.

Share content that your prospect has liked or shared online.

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 Direct
Mail Prospects are constantly bombarded with phone calls and emails – think differently about how
YES, SNAIL to build credibility within the target company and with the prospect. This could include:
MAIL!

Integrating direct mail with high target prospects who have interacted with your
campaigns – people who have clicked the links in your emails or forwarded your
communication to others could get some type of direct mail.

Sending a thoughtful or personalized gift box.

Writing thank you notes with starbucks gift cards included.

Multi-Touch Our recommendation is to build multi-touch campaigns that are a combination of all of
Campaigns the types of outreach listed above (and any others applicable to your business). Build a
7-10 part multi-touch campaign over a 30 day period. If you can’t get a response after 30
days, move on to someone else and come back to that prospect later.

E X P E R I M E N TAT I O N

You’ve built out everything, defined the buyer, focused on building credibility, created messaging, campaigns, and multi-
channel distribution strategies. Guess what? It’s not going to be perfect – and that’s okay! It’s important to keep in mind that
your sales efforts are constantly cycling – identifying prospects, reaching out to clients, measuring results, and repeating it all.

Rapid experimentation and learning is one of the keys to a successful outbound marketing team. The faster you can learn
what’s working and then scale it, the better. The faster you can figure out something isn’t working (which will happen a lot) and
kill that campaign, the better. Inside sales teams waste countless hours, days, weeks, and months executing campaigns that are
not performing well. Make sure you’re communicating with your teams, measuring results, and trying new ideas to attract the
right prospects.

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There’s a popular methodology called Lean Startup that can be applied to the outbound marketing process. Lean Startup is
a process for shortening development cycles by adopting a combination of hypothesis-driven experimentation and validated
learning. Here’s what that means in plain English: Lean Startup methodology will help you rapidly experiment to improve your
outbound efforts in three steps.

1 Build it (Campaigns).

2 Measure it - Scale it or scrap it?

3 Learn – What did we learn that can be applied to future campaigns?

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At OutboundView, we recommend using Experiment Boards to keep track of your experiments. Here’s an example of how the
Experiment Board process works:

You have a weekly meeting where the sales team brainstorms different campaigns they would like to run.

The team members call out who they’re targeting, what the messaging will be, how they’re delivering the message, and
a clear definition of success (or failure). This process gets sales teams in the habit of calling their shots beforehand and
thinking in-depth about the campaign.

The first half of the weekly meeting is spent reviewing past campaigns. Successful campaigns can be scaled to other
team members while unsuccessful ones are shut down immediately.

The second half of the meeting is spent designing new experiments using information learned from your successful
campaigns.

All of this is tracked. Use Excel or Google Sheets – you don’t need a specialized tool for everything!

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INBOUND MARKETING
Everyone knows they should be creating content. However,
most companies don’t know the type of content they should be
creating, and few have set any defined goals around content. At
OutboundView, we think it’s pretty simple -- you create content for
two specific reasons:

1 For new prospects to find your organization (add to pipeline)

2 To move existing prospects through the sales pipeline

More commonly though, we see companies creating content for the following reasons

Because everyone else is – marketers know they should be creating content on a regular basis because Hubspot told
them they should be

Writing on topics the founders find interesting

Because their competitors are putting out content

But, content for content’s sake is just noise, and usually a wasted effort. This type of output is only valuable if you have a built
in audience (followers, subscribers, etc.). Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time creating content that no one even views. So,
let’s refocus our efforts!

Remember, inbound marketing is time-consuming and often takes a long time to pay off. But when it does pay off, it will
probably be the highest-converting marketing channel you have.

Let’s break down the two specific reasons you should be creating content:

N E W P RO S P ECTS

Typically this section falls into writing content that is shareable and findable. What does that mean? Shareable means people
in your industry find the content interesting and are more likely to share it. Findable means when people are searching (on
google, social media, etc.), they can actually find your content before they find others’ content.

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Findable starts with keyword research.

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Keywords help you answer questions such as:

What are customers searching for?

How often are people searching for specific words or phrases?

What keywords are competitors using?

How likely are you to outrank against another websites for a specific keyword?

Here’s an example:

You sell a compensation management software to the HR department of large companies. You are
researching the keyword “compensation management software.” You find that there are 10,000 searches for
this term per month. You find that the top three websites that rank for this term are IBM, Oracle, and SAP.
All three of these companies have really high domain authority (i.e. Google thinks they are important). How
can you create a piece of content to outrank IBM, Oracle, and SAP? It needs to be great, and even that might
not be enough. In this scenario, you’ve found a keyword that gets a lot of searches but you have a very small
chance of actually ranking in the top three spots on Google for this term. So, what’s next? You could spend
thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to get into the top three for the term compensation
management software, OR you could find a more niche term to try and rank for where the competition isn’t
so stiff.

Remember - The goal here is to build momentum for your company over time. Start by going niche to get
noticed. This approach will cost you less, attract more targeted prospects, and build momentum for a high
ROI content strategy.

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 M OV E T H RO U G H P I P E L I N E

You’ve identified prospects that are interested in your solution. That’s great! And it’s just the beginning of your Inbound journey.
Now, it’s time to determine what type of content you can create that will help prospects move through the sales process. An
easy way to do this is to keep track of the questions your prospects are asking in introductory calls. What are some of the most
immediate questions that you consistently get asked? Start there, and create content around those questions (don’t forget
to pair this with those niche keywords!). Use this type of content on your website to continually inform and position your
organization as a thought leader in your space. Keep getting noticed!

An easy way to think about this is to ask yourself, “What type of information would my prospects need at each stage of the sales
process, from discovery call to close?”. Map out your sales process and you’ll find great opportunities to write content that will
help motivate your buyers. Remember: Don’t just focus on top of funnel content, creating mid-funnel content can be just as
important in driving your sales.

Ask yourself:

What type of information could you create and send to the prospect before the call to help the call go better?

Do you have the right type of information to follow up with the prospect after each conversation? What type
of information is helpful for the prospect before the demonstration, and so forth?

To accomplish both increasing the pipeline as well as funneling through, there are three distinct ways
necessary to amplify the outcome:

Distribution

Thought Leadership

Paid Advertising

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 DISTRIBUTION PLAN

So you know what to write about, where you have the best chance to rank, and the content is ready to go. Now what? For most
companies, they post it to their blog and pray – or they post it out to their social media and … that’s it.

If you don’t have a plan to distribute your content, don’t waste time creating it!

A distribution strategy ensures you are getting the most out of the content you are creating – it’s a plan to get your content in
the hands of your buyers. This means your content strategy needs more than just posting to your internal blog. Each piece you
create must have a detailed distribution plan which outlines the tactics you’ll leverage to get it in front of your audience.

These tactics are things like:

Guest posts

Paid advertising

Sharing with influencers

Promoting on podcasts

Linkedin group shares

The best inbound teams have individuals 100% dedicated to distribution. That’s all they do. We understand that not every
company has the resources to have a full-time distribution specialist - but distribution has to be an integral part of your
inbound plan.

A GOOD RULE OF THUMB:

Spend as much time distributing a piece of content as you do creating that piece.

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
You’ve determined what topics are going to engage your audience, where they’re getting their information, and you’ve
developed a good communication strategy to attract buyers and customers.

Here are some great options to get your company into the thought leadership mindset:

INFLUENCERS

Who are the influencers in your niche, the ones that speak at industry
conferences? Those influencers are an unfiltered source of trusted
information for your buyer, and you need to get their attention. Here are a
few ideas on how you can accomplish that:

Grab a networking lunch, coffee, beer with them

Do free work for them

Interview them

Ask them for advice

Cross-post to drive traffic for both of you

Offer perspectives, ideas, and opportunities to get them more exposure

Be persistent! You’re not the only one trying to get their attention

P U B L I C AT I O N S

There’s a publication for every industry (for example in

the selling world there’s Selling Power), which one does
your target buyer subscribe to? It’s important to find the
channels of information and content flowing to your targets.
If you can tap into these resources, you’re going to attract
the right customer more often. Getting interviewed in a
targeted publication can create a significant flow of incoming
leads. The key to getting into the right publications is all
about relationships and providing a unique angle. Build a
relationship with editors and writers at these publications.
This process can take a while, but when it pays off it, the
rewards will be huge for your business.

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P O D CASTS

Podcasts are a great way to get in front of your buyers. Which podcasts are
your target buyers listening to? Niche podcasts are always looking for new
guests and a unique angle. Find the right podcasts and pitch yourself on
providing value to their listeners, or, even better, start a podcast in your
niche. Interview those influencers we talked about above, and provide
your unique angle. There are a lot of great services out there that help you
manage everything around a podcast, so all you have to do is create the
recording.

Great podcasts to checkout in the sales and marketing world:

Sales Pipeline Radio by Matt Heinz

Make it Happen Monday by John Barrows

Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross & Collin Stewart

The Sales Development Podcast by David Dulany

TA R G E T E D I N T E R E S T G R O U P S

Is there a professional group that you should be in front of? For example, you sell marketing services in a local market.
Where are the groups of CEOs in that market meeting on a regular basis? How can you get in front of these folks? There are
organizations like Vistage and Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) where CEOs meet regularly – do you have value that you can
provide to that group? You can also target interest groups based on the niche you are selling to - for example, if you are selling
into HR every local market has a SHRM or ATD Meetup.

I N D U S T RY C O N F E R E N C E S & E V E N T S

We’ve all been to these. They can either be fun or a dud, but can also present
an opportunity for you to make something out of them in a way that benefits
your organization. There are a lot of ways you can build your own brand and
shape thought leadership. Here’s a few ideas for you to run with:

Join panel discussions and apply for presentation spots at the conferences.

Set up Socials. Not those boring steak dinners! Do something different like inviting CEO targets to a brewery tour,
cigar making or sushi rolling classes, whiskey tastings, the opportunities are endless. Keep it casual, informative, and
plan an event that makes their trip memorable!

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PAID ADVERTISING
Paid Advertising is a fantastic tool to find prospects who are searching for your products and services, engaged with your brand
in some way, or fit your buyer personas. The best part is that when optimized correctly, paid advertising can work really fast.
You can go from having zero leads to an influx of leads pretty quickly. But paid advertising can be difficult, especially when
trying to optimize it correctly. Paid advertising can also be really expensive, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s easy to
waste thousands of dollars.

Here are some of the major platforms, and key considerations for each platform.

Google
(ADWORDS, YOUTUBE, & DISPLAY ADVERTISING)

Obviously a major player, Google can be utilized in quite a few ways. AdWords can be used
to advertise to people searching for specific keywords on Google. You can also display video
advertising on YouTube based on quite a few different criteria including keywords, channels, and
people who have visited your website. Display advertising can be used broadly on specific websites
or general types of websites. You can also run display ads at specific individuals who have visited
your website (retargeting). There are a lot of options here, and to optimize via Google you really
need to know what you are doing. The costs are all over the board for different types of keyword
advertising, though display and retargeting can be very affordable. Typically a marketing agency or
individual expert is a great resource to effectively optimize on Google’s different platforms.

Facebook & Instagram

Facebook’s ad platform (same as Instagram) is very advanced. You can target people based on just
about anything – age, gender, income level, location, interests, etc. The level of targeting you can do
via Facebook is amazing. Once again, it’s easy to set up a few specific ads, but you will really make
your money optimizing them. It’s a must to test different images, verbiage, landing pages, and to
constantly update the feel of your ads to stay optimized. Facebook is a pretty affordable platform
given the level of targeting you can do - It’s very possible to get $1 and less per click if your ads are
optimized. The more engaged people are with your ads, the cheaper they will be. Typically you need
an expert if you are serious about implementing a Facebook/Instagram ads strategy.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn has somewhat advanced targeting – you can advertise based on job title, industry, specific
companies, company size, etc. The ad platform is nowhere near the complexity of something like
Facebook, it has a handful of select categories you can target and that’s about it. LinkedIn is also
pretty expensive – usually $5+ per click – so you’d better have some dollars to spend. There are
certain places I really like to use LinkedIn – for example, we recommend you run ads at companies
that are actively in your sales pipeline. This can be an inexpensive way to send targeted messaging
to people who you know are in the buying process.

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PA I D A DV E T I S I N G

Resources
Best case scenario is you have someone on your staff with the ability to help you test paid
advertising. If you don’t, the next best thing is finding a local expert or small agency to help you
manage your paid ads. Keep in mind, nobody knows if paid advertising will work until they try it.
The “testing” part of paid advertising is where really good resources make their money. They adjust
messaging, images, colors, giveaways, etc. to reduce the amount of money you are paying for each
paid lead. Most advertising agencies cost a minimum of $1,000 just to manage your paid advertising,
and that doesn’t include the costs you will be spending for the actual ads.

Where to Send Traffic

Many companies just starting paid advertising make the mistake of sending traffic back to their
home page or their product pages. You should almost always have dedicated landing pages that you
are sending traffic to. The goal of these landing pages can vary based on your campaign – it could
be grabbing contact information, asking for a 30-minute consultation, or asking them to download
valuable content you’ve created. There are great tools like leadpages.net or Unbounce that allow
your marketing team to easily create landing pages that can convert the traffic you are sending from
paid advertising.

Overall
There are very few B2B companies where paid advertising shouldn’t be a part of your marketing
mix. The upside can be huge from a revenue perspective. Paid advertising helps you enhance your
other marketing channels as well. Our most successful clients use paid advertising to promote their
best inbound marketing content. They use paid advertising to enhance their outbound marketing
campaigns or target specific companies when they are doing account-based marketing. Start small,
find a resource that can help you appropriately test, and scale your spending as you see results.

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TEAM STRUCTURE
You’re ready to grow rapidly and you need the talent to do it. Where do you start?

At OutboundView, we often encounter the question – “I want top talent but I can’t afford a six-figure seller or marketer. What do
I do?” Ultimately, it comes down to fit. The fit for a marketer is different than the fit for a sales person. Here’s what you should
be considering in your search for each:

The Marketer

Realistically, you have 3 options when hiring. You can hire:

1 A top level marketer for $100,000+ per year with strategic experience.

2 Someone with less experience who’s a Doer but understands the fundamentals of marketing

3 Consultants and Agencies

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each:

Type of Hire Advantages Disadvantages

Cost to hire ($100k plus)

Can do everything (and has!) Startup culture vs corporate culture fit
Experienced, strategic hire Startegic experience May struggle with lack of resources
Experience developing a team Seeking equity or leveraged contracts
because of experiences

Cost effective Ramp time is longer than experience

or outsourced — If you need to make
Understands the fundamentals of
something happen in the next six
marketing
months, you may be in trouble
Doer — some experience
Able to figure it out over the long-term
Lack experience, technical knowledge,
Can grow with the company and network to get things done
Nimble — eager to figure it out! May struggle with volume of tasks

Project based work Need to supplement outputs with team

Can help develop processes/campaigns members to run the day to day.
to pass onto your inexperinced teams Hiring can be risky — only use referrals!
Outside consultant or
agency Experienced You’re not their only customer
Higher cost per hour Projects are not as nimble as your
Portfolio of work to review organization

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Sales Teams

Finding the right sales talent that matches your organization’s maturity can be very difficult. Just because someone has shown
success in another organization doesn’t mean they will be a good fit for yours. Companies need to sit down and consider how
and why they are trying to scale the sales department. Is the Founder/CEO too busy to close deals or too tired of doing sales?
Did you just get funding and assume the first hires should be in sales to help you start growing?

Companies often hire salespeople before they are ready. More salespeople doesn’t always lead to more sales. Before you hire
anyone, make sure you have the right structure and processes in place so you can accurately predict what plugging in a new
salesperson will net you. Hiring salespeople to “figure it out” is not a scalable model. You will burn through your cash much
faster than you can acquire new revenue .

Inside Sales vs. Outside Sales – What makes the most sense for you today?

It’s difficult to do both inside and outside sales – you don’t find very many people that are good at both. If your existing team
is overwhelmed with leads or can’t follow up appropriately and in a timely manner with prospects, you probably need to focus
on closers. On the other hand, if you don’t have an inbound engine or paid advertising that is working, a good inside sales team
can generate those much needed leads for your seller to close. Lean on your executives to close as much as possible when the
organization is young, they usually close at a much higher rate than any outside sales hire will. Before you hire salespeople,
make sure you have the right tools and processes to make them successful.

Hiring Considerations

Where’s our bottleneck in the sales process? Are we struggling with lead generation, client follow-up, closing
deals, or something else?

Do we want top talent at high cost or someone with the capacity to succeed at a lower cost?

Is it necessary to hire someone with industry experience?

How long will it take to ramp a new sales hire?

What is the right structure of inside sales vs outside sales?

What’s going to set us up for success in the next 6 months to 2 years?

What do we consider to be a great fit for the company, team, and our future?

“
“Growth doesn’t just come through headcount”
- THE SALES DEVELOPERS’

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Too many companies try to “hire” their way into new clients - before
hiring, set the right strategy so you can scale a proven process.

Our Process

RESEARCH
We work with your team to get a strong understanding of buyer personas
and define the ideal customer profile. This research is the basis of who we
will target and how we will build messaging to be effective. We also detail the
competitive landscape including how your key competitors are deploying
marketing tactics and where there are opportunities to exploit the market.

EXPERIMENTATION
After we have researched the industry and identified opportunities, we run
hundreds of tests across various sales and marketing channels including
outbound marketing, inbound marketing, paid advertising, thought
leadership/PR, and events. Our team dives in and builds lists, executes
campaigns, and analyzes results to start understanding exactly what will and
won’t work in your niche.

SCALE & TRAIN

Once we are confident that the results are scalable, we detail an executable
plan including where your team should be allocating resources and making
key hires. During this process we are training your team to be able to execute
key components of the client acquisition strategy as well as identifying
outsourcing partners where applicable.

The entire process of building a Predictable Pipeline Strategy with OutboundView typically takes 3-4 months depending on
your organization’s sales and marketing maturity.

What you are left with is a proven plan that your team can execute on, all without making a single hire.

For more information about OutboundView you can visit

www.outboundview.com

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