The year is coming to an end, and it’s time to summarize the results. We’ve had an outstanding year, achieving significant breakthroughs. Not only have we almost doubled our revenue, but we’ve also moved all KPIs into the deep green zone. However, one improvement stands out, and that’s the number of generated leads.

Up until now, we’ve managed to increase the number of leads by 234%, and this doesn’t even include those that will be added till the year’s end.

One might question whether we didn’t have many leads last year. However, that wasn’t the case. As a company focusing on lead generation, we naturally must start with ourselves. This has worked well for us in past years, but not as well as it did this year. What did we do differently?

• How do we generate our leads?
• The magic of the right target audience
• Step 1: Finding a suitable target audience
• Step 2: Cost-effective mass outreach
• Step 3: Picking up the phone
• And the results didn’t take long to show
• What does this mean for you?

Background: How do we generate our leads?

To understand the sources we’ve used for lead generation so far:

• Google Ads
• Search engine optimization and consequently, Google search
• Outbound activities on LinkedIn and through direct calls
• Identification of website visitors using our proprietary software
• Partnerships with agencies
• Other sources that played a minor role

These methods have worked reasonably well in previous years. The number of leads has increased from year to year, with the usual and inevitable seasonal fluctuations (reaching lows in July and December).

Each of the listed lead generation methods can independently lead to successful growth. These methods are tried and scalable. For example, by reinvesting profits into expanding Google campaigns, more inbound leads can be generated. The same applies to search engine optimization, LinkedIn, or cold outreach.

However, “good” is not good enough, especially in a highly competitive market and a generally weaker market environment. Therefore, new approaches were necessary.

Although Google Ads served as a reliable source for inbound leads for years, it was still cost-intensive, and the cost per lead was correspondingly high.

Regarding search engine optimization, we reached a certain ceiling where most of our keywords were in the top 5 or top 3 (and still are), and the growth of organic traffic slowed down.

As for cold outreach, whether on LinkedIn or via phone, the target audience and its relevance play a crucial role. Cold audiences performed significantly worse in 2023 than before.

Our software, LeadRebel, has reliably generated dozens of leads for us every month over the years. However, if traffic doesn’t continue to grow, the number of identifications cannot increase.

As a result, we were not satisfied with the growth of our leads. As other metrics depend on how many leads we bring into our pipeline, this has affected other metrics, especially the number of completed subscriptions, the cost per lead and acquisition, etc.

Then there’s a looming specter in our industry called Churn. If all other metrics stagnate, even the smallest negative change in churn has unpleasant effects on revenue growth. This is why our revenue stagnated at the end of 2022 and in the first half of 2023.

Therefore, we had to rethink our approach and restructure our lead generation.

The magic of the right target audience

In the past, everything seemed simpler in sales. Cold outreach and email marketing worked better, mainly because decision-makers weren’t bombarded from all sides. There was no flood of 50 inquiries on LinkedIn every day, no dozens of emails with the same subject and offers. Even in cold outreach, people didn’t tend to take a dismissive attitude from the start.

Nowadays, someone targeting a cold audience has a significantly harder time than before. Our initial attempts to fill our pipeline via email marketing, LinkedIn sales, and calls were almost futile. But then, we learned how to identify the right target audience—people actively seeking a product like ours right now.

The path to significantly more leads. Step 1: Finding a suitable target audience

A widespread sales wisdom often quoted – also by me – says: In any market and at any given time, only about three out of 100 randomly surveyed individuals or companies are actively looking for a specific product or solution. Another 10% might consider making a purchase in the near future. The rest is not relevant to your offer, for the time being.

The crucial question you should ask yourself is: How do you identify these three to ten percent of companies currently actively seeking your solution? It can be challenging to answer this question from one industry to another.

It took us a while to find the right answer, although it was obvious. During a call with a customer, I heard a statement familiar from previous conversations: “After signing up with LeadRebel, I was immediately contacted by your competitors.” For a long time, we ignored this statement, thinking “it’s just how it is, but we’re still better.” However, at some point, we had enough and decided to do the same as our competitors. With a slight difference: Our advertising budgets and consequently the number of our registered users were significantly lower than those of our significant competitors. Therefore, our competitors could poach far fewer customers from us than we could from them.

Hence, we set up an automated process that retrieves data from our customers’ trackers. This way, we built an extremely relevant target audience: companies actively seeking software like LeadRebel. Often, these companies are still in the testing phase and haven’t made a purchasing decision yet.

Step 2: Cost-effective mass outreach

Now, we come to a step that is common in our industry (SaaS) but not so widely used in many other areas – email marketing.

The advantages of email marketing are evident:

• There are many high-quality and cost-effective software solutions on the market.
• These tools are easy to use and allow the management and optimization of campaigns.
• It offers the opportunity to reach many companies without much effort.

Of course, there are disadvantages as well:

• Legal uncertainties.
• Technical peculiarities and requirements.
• The required expertise to set up campaigns correctly and optimally.

After a short optimization phase, we fine-tuned our campaigns to be extremely effective. The open rates were high, the response rates solid, and the conversion rates outstanding. These superlatives are not misplaced here. Even industry experts were surprised by our results.

However, the success was not in using particularly novel texts or subject lines. The real difference lay in the target audience – it’s genuinely highly relevant.

Step 3: Picking up the phone

Some time ago, a recipient responded to our email with the words: “From one salesperson to another: Pick up the phone to talk to potential customers. Generic email templates are a waste of energy.”

Little did he know that the telephone had been glowing from thousands of calls. Executing email marketing campaigns is something anyone can do, but making calls is a different story. It’s time-consuming, costly, and requires personnel. But as they say in Bavaria: “Wea ko, dea ko” (He who can, can). And we can. In fact, our sales team starts making calls early in the morning towards Australia and Asia and only stops late at night after reaching contacts in California. As an intermediary step between emails and calls, we use LinkedIn. This way, we can warm up leads a bit and refer to our LinkedIn connection during calls.

This multi-channel approach has maximum impact. An email might get lost, a LinkedIn request might go unnoticed, and an unexpected call is more likely to be declined. But by using multiple channels, the chance of reaching the decision-maker increases.

And the results didn’t take long to show

Right at the start of the new campaign, we recorded a record number of sign-ups in the first month. The number of leads increased month after month, and almost every month, we achieved better results than in the previous month (this trend has slightly slowed down towards the end of the year). Additionally, key metrics skyrocketed: the number of leads and monthly revenue growth. At the same time, the cost per lead and per customer acquisition decreased significantly. Here are some numbers:

• The number of leads increased by 234%.
• The number of subscriptions grew by 185%.
• The cost per lead decreased by 72%, and the cost per customer by 65%.

Such changes don’t simply mean optimizing business processes. Instead, they represent radical changes that significantly shape and elevate the company’s development to the next level.

What does this mean for you?

If you’re considering how to increase your number of leads in the coming year, just follow this pattern:

1. Find a suitable target audience.
2. Implement a multi-channel outbound strategy.

It sounds simple and is relatively easy if you understand your own market well. Because that’s the core – the rest is hard work.

However, if you’re still facing difficulties, we have good news for you: LeadRebel has launched a B2B lead generation service! We support clients like you from various industries in acquiring more customers. Exactly following the mentioned pattern: Identify the target audience -> Reach out to the target audience.

Feel free to contact us at: info@leadrebel.io.

The post How We Increased Our Leads by 234% in 2023 appeared first on Leadrebel Blog.

Usually, entrepreneurial growth is regarded as “slow but steady.” We do not fully agree with this statement. After all, a good kick-start never hurt anyone. Which leads us straight to B2B growth hacking. B2B growth Hacking strategy is about helping your business grow through imaginative, unusual, or bold marketing strategies.

See how it works from the following companies. In this article, you will get an overview of growth hacking for B2B companies and learn about: 

• proven growth hacks 
• exclusive inspiration and how these ideas can be implemented today
• case studies and take-aways: Slack
• two examples of growth hacking for B2B start-ups
• summary 

B2B Growth Hacking: what has proved itself worthwhile

Globally, three companies have shaped the term growth hacking substantially: Dropbox, Hotmail, and Airbnb. Thanks to the hacks used, all three companies have massively expanded their follower base within a very short time.

1. Dropbox
2. Hotmail
3. Airbnb
4. Pipetop
5. Slack

Dropbox: The recommendation hack

Growth Hacking Cornerstone – Number 1: Dropbox’s double-edged recommendation scheme

1. Users who recommend Dropbox to a friend will receive free additional storage space. 
2.  The person who registers via a link also receives a promotional gift.

This win-win opportunity paved the way for the company’s rapid growth, which today has 500 million customers.

Source: Google. Referrals by Dropbox. Perfectly SEO-optimized, of course. 

“How-to: How’s it going today? Payoneer is currently applying the same strategy and is likewise growing successfully with it.

Hotmail: Backlinks

Growth Hacking Cornerstone – Number 2: Building on proven concepts

Well, Hotmail’s big days are over, actually. But: The company had managed to register 6 million usersin just six months.

This worked because the company used its original 20,000 subscribers as “carrier pigeons.” Every email sent contained an automatic message linking back to Hotmail. And it reads: PS: I Love you.Get your free Hotmail email address.

PS: “I love you” worked so well because it was cordial and sympathetic. The concept was new, and people liked it. So, the results didn’t take long to show and almost everyone who clicked turned into a Hotmail user. 

“How-to”: How’s it going today? Add “Powered By” or trust badges to the footer of your websites and in your email signature. 

The integration of “Powered by” or trust badges into the signature or footer is easy to implement and produces excellent results. The principle behind it relies on references: If you use brand widgets of a reputable brand or if people see your product on other websites, this can lead to a growth boost.

Example of a “Powered by” integration. Source Screenshot: Optinmonster

The world-famous Hotmail signature. Source Screenshot: Optinmonster

Airbnb: Backlinks

Growth Hacking Cornerstone – Number 3: From zero to millions

Airbnb is famous for effortlessly finding affordable, stylish and exclusive accommodation – wherever you go. 

It wasn’t always like that. Airbnb also had to build up its customer base in laborious detail work. In the early stage, its founders discovered that Americans who did not want to stay in expensive hotels searched Craigslist for alternative accommodations. Without further ado, they had the opportunity to have their listings copied there. 

The idea is brilliant. And theresult? Immediate access to a potentially huge market.

Source Screenshot: Airbnb Facebook Account. Without Craigslist no overnight stay in the “Wienermobile.”

Before we reveal to you how this can be done today, please reflect on the most important growth hacking rule: pirate metrics. 

If you simply want to remember the basics of growth hacking, just remember “AARRR!“

Acquisition -How do your customers find you? 

Activation – How enjoyable is the initial point of contact for the customer/visitor?

Retention – How many of your customers do you retain or lose?

Referral – How can you transform your customers into ambassadors? 

Revenue – How can you increase revenue?

Preliminary conclusion: before you growth-hack, you need to know your customers inside outand know where they are. 

“How-to: How can the Airbnb strategy be implemented today? Use advertising portals, contact exchanges, and LinkedIn marketing. 

LinkedIn probably is the most important social network for B2B companies.

In addition to the common content sharing features, LinkedIn offers a handy tool: you can see the users who have viewed your profile. Yup! Thanks to this hack, you can find out which LinkedIn users have been visiting your site.

You must have a Premium LinkedIn account and insert the following HTML code on your website:

<img src = ”https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?authToken=XXauthType=name&id=XX” />

Here, XX stands for your LinkedIn ID page.

Pipetop: The pufferfish among the growth hackers

Growth Hacking Cornerstone – Number 4: Fake it until you make it 

The pufferfish uses a visually awe-inspiring adaptation technique when it is in danger.

The fish sucks in water or air and suddenly becomes three times as big as usual. This warning prevents other sea animals from messing with the prickly fellow. 

Pipetop, a Danish company, followed a similar approach in its sales strategy. The start-up wanted to give the impression that it operates in several countries, although it had only one office in Denmark.

Instead of opening different offices, they bought several Skype numbers in different countries. Although the company is no longer on the market today, this hack created the necessary confidence for sales, especially in the highly competitive B2B sales market.  

“How-to: How’s it going today? Here the motto is: “steal” the strategy. Buy (Skype) numbers and place them on the website. This gives the impression that your company is bigger than it seems.  

“If many others find something good, it will also work for me” – that is the concept of social proof. A lot depends on this today – who wants to use a service that nobody else is interested in? 

That’s what Uber’s rival “Lyft” also figured out. The company solved its problem (too little demand, too few operators) by paying taxi drivers to pretend being booked and waiting for passengers. This mass of suppliers ensured that potential passengers were convinced of the service quality even before their journey.

Case Study – Slack: Growth the easy way

Growth Hacking cornerstone – number 5: Convince with simplicity and a great product

Founded in 2013 by Stewart Butterfield, Slack is a cloud-based hub where multiple companies can collaborate in real-time.

Here are some company facts: 

• 1.25 million paying users
• 4 million active users per day
• The fastest-growing SaaS company of all time
• Turnover from 0 to 4 billion USD in only 4 years
• 77% of Fortune 100 companies use this software

The Slack growth hacking strategy in detail 

Slack did not use cold calling, lead generation, or support campaigns for its growth hacking strategy.

It is worth mentioning here that the founding team – besides Butterfield – was made up of Eric Costello, Cal Henderson, and Serguei Mourachov. They all were involved in building the photo-sharing site Flickr.

By the way: Slack is worth more than 100 times as much as Flickr today. 

The most crucial growth strategy at Slack:

• Optimization for PQLs (product-qualified leads) instead of 
• optimization for MQLs (marketing-qualified leads) 
• or SQLs (sales-qualified leads).

This means that Slack focused on generating active logins rather than building a massive database of inactive users.

This was achieved with a free product version.

Charges only apply once the user wants to unlock additional functions such as memory or app integrations. This is a tactic used by many SaaS companies.

Slack is different, though, because they are always focused on one goal: They want to make the day for your users as easy as possible by doing the organizational work for them. 

Instead of pushing people to try out the demo version by using intrusive sales techniques, Slack relied on paid advertising (retargeting) and the following concept: simplicity. 

• Instead of technical jargon, the user sees simple slogans, ads, and landing pages.
• The company uses easy-to-use registration forms, friendly ads, and uniform branding.

“How-to: How’s it going today? 

The Slack Growth Hacking Take-Aways for B2B lead generation agencies. 

Word of mouth: Improve your product continuously and simplify people’s work. Make it easy for people to share your innovation with colleagues and friends.

Use paid advertising: Do not rely on scattering losses, but on paid advertising. This is particularly recommended as part of social media marketing. 

Give a lot but make yourself well paid for giving “more.” 
This can be done through extensions. It’s quite logical, actually: Thanks to the integration of a multitude of apps and functions, not only Slack is continuously growing, becoming more powerful and indispensable, but your company, too.

Growth Hacking for B2B Start-ups: Feel free to think out-of-the-box 

There are a host of unorthodox ways you can use to accelerate entrepreneurial growth. Even on a shoe-string budget, start-ups can implement their ideas. The only prerequisite is to be innovative.

Especially extensions, as mentioned above, holds particular potential for companies in the growth phase. 

Base CRM: Use Chrome Extension

Convert your product or service so that a user can use it as a Chrome extension. Whenever users open Chrome, they can automatically access your product. 

Google Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers. Over 60 % of Internet users use it as their standard browser.

Build into Chrome is the Chrome Web Store, the app marketplace where you can publish apps and extensions (so-called Chrome extensions). When a user adds your web application to Chrome, a link to your service is continuously displayed in the browser’s bookmarks bar, increasing the likelihood of a return visit.

Example: Base CRM. The Chrome extension of Base CRM has almost 30,000 users.

When Base CRM (a widely used and popular CRM solution) introduced its Chrome extension, the company immediately recorded nearly 30,000 downloads.

For a few hours of development time and just $5 investment for the Chrome installation, they got a world-class growth hack for B2B companies. 

Growth hacking for start-ups & founders: Udemy & Co.

Source Screenshot: Udemy website. One-time course generation, lifelong customer acquisition 

Create an online course and establish yourself as an expert in your field. 

Course platforms like Udemy create an additional source of revenue, increase your credibility, and generate leads.

That is for life, with a one-time investment. 

With these tools, you can easily create courses:

• Camtasia (screenshot)
• Audacity (audio recording)
• Teachable.com (Create and manage courses)

As a teacher and expert, you are automatically perceived as a professional and authority. They take you and your opinion seriously. This can have an incredible effect on your brand, your person, and your company.

You think it’s too complicated? If you’ve already created and regularly shared content in the form of blogs, e-books, presentations, videos, and interviews, you have more than enough material to create a course.

Re-use the entire content of a topic, create courses, and then refer to your new offering in your normal online activities.

Growth hacking for B2B companies & start-ups: Conclusion and outlook

Growth hacking is about using resources that are already available to you. A good growth hacking strategy not only has the goal to expand the company but also to focus on customer benefits.

This shows the first category of growth hacks. The second category (which is also suitable for start-ups) shows you that it can be worth going new ways and trying things that are not mainstream. 

Growth hacking for B2B companies, therefore, focuses on two aspects:

• Creativity and the desire to continually improve one’s own product and to expand the application possibilities.

Of course, you can’t copy any of the strategies and expect miracles. But you can better understand the dynamics and psychology behind the examples and take advantage of the critical points. The listed examples show that you can achieve good growth success even with the smallest budget or even real-time commitment.

More interesting articles:

If you’ve wondered how much a lead costs on average in your industry, read the article about the value of acquiring new customers.

Privacy is paramount when it comes to email marketing. Read this article about GDPR and its impact on marketing and sales.

If you want to learn how to generate more leads, read this article about 13 ways to generate leads.

How to increase your Website Traffic

Picture source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/arrows-growth-hacking-profit-1574173/

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