and rather wait for the prospect to approach you....
When I decided to have a startup that focused on Sales and Marketing services, my mentor advised me that “Your list will determine how much money you will make”.
This list was the list of email and contact details of my target audience.
And I am so thankful to my mentor who got me started on this habit of working on building my list everyday.
We at Sales Extended, not only do Outbound marketing we also leverage Inbound marketing as well.
And the list building is like a ritual for us.
In this blog, I will share some of our practices that we have around list building and using that list for prospecting and email marketing.
What is it, this list?
For those, who are starting off and totally new , List is a list of contacts with information about their name, email and phone number.
It can also contain the company name and website. So you see, it can be as detailed as possible.
The more detailed the better it is. Ask me Why?
A detailed list will give you more information about your contact as a result, when you make a contact with them during tele-calling, you can ask questions that are more relevant rather than generic ones.
As a result, you will engage with your audience better.
Where do you save this List?
In a notebook ? Actually, if it is a small list of 10 , maybe a notebook will work.
As your list grows you will need a tool that will help you store that list.
This is where tools like CRM come in.
We use Pipedrive, as our CRM as it is lightweight and extremely functional for us. And we can store as much information about a contact.
It works well for our prospecting activities in the B2B segment, when we use the Outbound approach to reach out to prospects.
Read my article Why Is CRM Essential For Your Business and Sales to understand more about this.
How do you use this List?
It depends on the strategy you are adopting to reach out to your target audience.
Are you planning to proactively reach out to them by making calls (tele-calling) ?
If yes, then this is Outbound marketing as you are proactively reaching out to them, pitching to them and trying to get a meeting with them to explore further needs and requirements that can be solved with your product/service.
You are in control of who you want to reach out to, as who goes into your list is well researched. For example - If you want to reach out to only business owners from the Automobile Industry then you will focus on building a list that has only those.
What is the advantage of such a well-researched list?
The advantage is when you start tele-calling people from this list, as it is well researched, the chances of reaching the right audience increases, hence the probability of getting a meeting with them increases too.
The whole objective of Prospecting is Getting a Meeting with your prospect.
That's all.
If your strategy is Inbound marketing then the way you build the list and you reach out to your audience may vary.
First for those who are new, Inbound marketing is all about attracting your target audience to use your product/services.
Unlike Outbound, wherein you reach out, this is completely different.
Some of you may say that this is easy as the audience is coming to you.
Well, because they are coming to you, you may not have as much control as anyone may come to you.
What does Inbound Marketing look like?
You use Website, Social Media to publish about your product/service and advertise about it. It could be paid or organic (unpaid).
If you have done enough advertising with interesting ad copy then people may get interested and curious to find out more. As a result, they may start to like you and follow you. Some may want to find ways to engage with you and hence look for more information on the ways to engage - such as a website, blog site, Facebook Messenger, ChatBot etc.
When they visit, you should have a mechanism(an Opt-in or a Landing Page) to collect their name, emails and phone number in exchange for some FREE gift, such as an ebook, a guide or a sample service that will add value to them and will not cost you much such as an audit.
This is how you start building your list.
You should have a mechanism to capture that name, email, phone number that you ask them for.
This is possible with Convertkit, a tool that we extensively use for list building for our Inbound Marketing efforts.
It is an amazing tool to-
Build Landing Pages and Opt-ins
Automated Email Marketing
Segmenting your target audience and much more.
You can prepare great looking Landing Page(s) or an Opt-In page(s) using this tool, collect details from that curious prospect, and then sends that FREE gift to their shared email id.
Simple right?
The FREE gift that you share has to be of some value.
So, find out what is that value that you can share with your prospects that is FREE, and one that will add so much value that he/she is forced to come back for more or engage with you further to learn and explore opportunities to collaborate.
If you are someone who is looking for ideas as to what could of value to your prospect then feel free to leave a comment and we will be happy to help.