As a SaaS startup, you need to generate high-quality leads quickly in order for your business to grow.
If conversion rates are low, and you aren’t filling your sales pipeline as quickly as you would like, this could lead to frustration and the added stress of paying for marketing that’s taking too long.
Sound familiar?
If so, have you ever considered Linkedin outreach for b2b saas?
Many SaaS companies have a great content marketing strategy in place, but the problem with content marketing is that it can take time to generate leads.
If you need fast results, then using Linkedin to your advantage can be a game-changer, you just have to know how to use it the right way.
The saas lead generation strategy that we’re going to show you, is what we use to get 1 qualified lead per day for our saas clients.
And if you don’t have the time or a dedicated sales team, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. At Salesbread we offer data-driven list building and expertly personalized outreach messages; Because of this, we can guarantee our clients 20+ qualified leads per month.
(To understand how we differ from every other Linkedin lead generation agency out there, read this.
Why use Linkedin for outreach as a saas startup?
As mentioned earlier, you might be making use of content marketing and seo to advertise your product. Which is great. Don’t get me wrong, content marketing works, but it takes time.
For example, here at Salesbread, it has taken almost a year for our content marketing strategy to really take off. (See below)
We aren‘t saying that you shouldn’t use content marketing, because we know that it works. But the problem is that it takes some time.
If you’re using social media to create a brand presence for your Saas product, that’s also great, but once again, it can take a long time to gain brand authority.
And if you don’t have the time, or the money to waste (Let’s face it, good content marketing agencies aren’t cheap.) then, trying a more direct approach to marketing via Linkedin is a good option.
Why?
Because it will bring in leads quicker.
At Salesbread, because our target list is so refined, we actually tell our clients that they can expect qualified leads within the first 48 hours of launching the campaign.
So if you need leads as in yesterday, Linkedin is the fishing hole to try.
But besides that, have a look at some of these stats on Linkedin users:
Imagine having a pool of 822 million potential customers to reach out to?
And the best part is that Linkedin has various filters that you can use to target these users. So if you invest in Linkedin Sales Navigator, you can use these filters to target:
- Specific people at companies
- Specific locations
- Various industries
- According to job titles.
(There are some Sales Nav hacks to be aware of though, if you would like to use it correctly.)
Below are the filters that you can use to refine your prospect list in Linkedin Sales Navigator:
If you aren‘t using Linkedin to generate immediate leads, you are making a mistake. Last year alone we generated close to 5000 qualified leads for our clients using Linkedin and cold email.
So hopefully, these few sentences have convinced you that Linkedin is a great platform to try out to reach your ideal customer.
But you might be wondering, how exactly?
Here’s how:
1. Make sure you have a killer Linkedin profile first
Before you begin using Linkedin, make sure that your Linkedin profile is up to date and enticing. Remember that if you use Linkedin for outreach, your profile will be the potential customer‘s “first impression” of you, so make it good.
Have a look at SaaS guru, Dan Martells’ Linkedin profile:
When you look at Dan Martell’s profile, it screams professionalism.
Notice how his profile photo is professional and that he has made use of every feature of his profile.
His about page, isn’t a resume, but rather shares what he does, and how he can help his clients with their pain points.
He is basically using his Linkedin profile as a sales page.
Compare this to the Linkedin profile below:
Chances are, you would rather engage with a SaaS profile similar to Dan Martels that the one just above.
Watch the video below for tips on how to create the perfect Linkedin profile before you begin with your outreach campaigns:
2. consider your SaaS price points
Every SaaS company that would like to use outbound lead generation, has to consider their price points to figure out their strategy.
Why?
Because if you are selling a $9 a month product and I’m selling a $10,000 a month product, we would most likely have different strategies. Right?
Remember that you need to know what you can afford before you acquire new customers.
And once you work that out, you can then go ahead and decide on how you are going to spend that amount before you acquire these new leads.
Example:
It’s not quite like saying how much we can afford for PPC. Because when it comes to email marketing, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re going after, across the board it’s the same price.
Why?
Well, it takes the same amount of time and energy to build a list of plumbers, as it would a list of lawyers. Whereas if this was PPC, a click to get a lawyer’s attention compared to stay-at-home moms, would probably have quite different price points.
But in this article, we are rather going to talk about how much time you’re going to bake into these campaigns and where that magic balance point is.
It’s all about your sales time.
Think about how much time you or your sales team is busy with the sales process. This could be spending time on sending or replying to emails, doing demos, or doing cold calling.
The more time you spend on prospecting, the more sense it makes to have a higher price point, but what if you are selling a saas product that’s only $9 per month?
If this is the case, you have to think differently and have a different sales strategy.
What can you afford?
Depending on the cost of your company’s product price per month, you could think about having a small marketing team that handles different aspects of your campaign.
You might be able to hire 3 or 4 people. One who does SDR, another who does prospecting, and another who does closing. If you could, you might even be able to hire one person who does qualifying calls.
But this depends on the price of your Saas product. If you are selling a product in the high price bracket, then you could afford a small sales team, but if you are selling a product in the lower price field, you might not be able to do this.
Have a look at the graph below. The higher your product price, the larger the sales team; the lower your product price, the smaller the sales team.
Once you determine whether or not you can have a small sales team, you can then come up with a strategy.
It’s important to have the following part of your sales team even if it is really small:
- Someone to build a list for you of your ideal customer and runs campaigns (This might be the same person)
- Someone to do lead nurturing. This could be by follow-up calls, replying to Linkedin messages, or even booking meetings.
(A closer might not be needed if you are selling at the lower price point. You could always higher a closer later on.)
Who are you selling to?
You have 2 options.
You could either focus on the end customer, or a partnership campaign.
The End Customer
This means that you will target the decision-maker directly. So if you’re selling big-ticket items in the B2B space, it just makes more sense to go directly to the person in charge—the person who will decide whether to buy your item or not.
So create conversations and campaigns that go directly after the end customer.
Partnership Campaigns
With partnership campaigns, you will need to find people who are already connected to the end customer. Create a campaign where you can reach out to potential partners that can be a referral source for our clients.
Here’s an example:
If you’re selling a hosting service and you notice that a lot of your referrals come from fractional CTOs, then we’ll set up a referral campaign where we target fractional CTOs and get them to become a referral source.
So what does this mean for your strategy?
If you have a lower price point product, you are not going to bother contacting the CEO of a company.
Why?
The CEO might have handed over the buying power to a manager for example, who can make the call on certain financial products.
But if your price point is $10 000 a month, then contacting the CEO, or decision-maker would be a better idea. This is because a lower-level employee at a company won’t be able to make that massive buying decision for their company.
The CEO would need to make that decision for the business.
By considering this, you will know who would be a better option at reaching out to and if you can afford a small sales team or not.
3. Use data to build a list of your perfect target audience
If your saas business has been around for at least 6 months, it’s important to have a look at WHO has been purchasing your product over this period.
Why? Because this will give you an indication of who your ideal buyer persona is.
You actually need at least 6 months’ worth of data because this will help you look for patterns.
For example:
- Do all your paying customers have a certain amount of employees?
- Are they all located in a specific area?
- Are they all in a certain industry?
- Do they use a specific CRM tool?
- Have they been funded?
- Do these companies fall into a specific revenue category?
At Salesbread we actually compare buyer intent data against 34 different filters to find exact patterns. By doing this we are able to refine prospect lists until it’s perfect.
We don’t stop at basic targeting because this is just too risky. There is no point in having a list of thousands of prospects who are a bad fit; this just wastes money and time.
Below is an example of how we actually look at data and keep refining it until we see buyer patterns.
(Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/CjzxDCczaaI )
After analyzing the data, you will notice that the companies to target are those in computer software, the company sizes are between 51-200 and 201 -500 and most of these companies are funded. You will also notice that the location of these companies are in the US.
Once we have an idea of who to target, we can then start looking for these companies by using prospecting tools, such as Crunchbase, Clutch, Linkedin Sales Navigator, Apollo, and Expandi.
Below is an example of how you can use Clutch to find b2b companies to target for your SaaS business.
This is an actual Case Study of ours, for a company called LOFT.
“LOFT delivers peace of mind through post-launch maintenance and support for software applications.
This includes monitoring, patching and maintenance, backups, bug fixes, help desk support, troubleshooting, content and database updates, performance improvements, and more.”
During our marketing campaigns for LOFT, we were targeting CEOs, founders, and presidents of companies.
138 Qualified Leads within 4 months = This 1.7 qualified leads per day on average.
We needed to target decision-makers in the IT and tech space.
WHY?
Because these people are potential repeat sources because they work with our ideal client… but do not currently offer the services of LOFT.
The first thing that we always do at Salesbread is to build a list of prospects, saas customers, and even potential partners in order to get the most results for our campaigns.
We built our list using Clutch, as well as Linkedin Sales Navigator. Once we had our initial list, we then refined it even more by plugging it into our client’s second-degree network on Linkedin.
There are many many filters to use on Clutch, therefore you can get extremely granular about your targeting.
Once the list was perfect, we sent out a connection request message on Linkedin
These connection request messages contained a commonality; either we mentioned a shared connection with the prospect, or that we noticed their company on Clutch and would like to connect regarding a partnership with LOFT.
Once they connected, we then added personalization to our replies and asked for a meeting.
This resulted in a lead rate of 38%
4. Filter your list through your 2nd-degree network & recently posted.
Once your prospect list has been refined, and you have found the people that you would like to reach out to at these companies, you can then plug your list into Linkedin Sales Navigator and filter it by your second-degree network and by recently posted.
The reason for this is that if a prospect has recently posted on Linkedin, it means that they are active on the platform.
You don’t want to send your messages out to prospects who don’t use Linkedin regularly. (If they aren‘t active on Linkedin, rather send them an email.)
And why filter through your second-degree network?
Historically, if someone is in your second-degree network on Linkedin, it means that they have accepted a connection request from someone like you in the past.
The chances of them accepting your connection request will be greater than if they were in your 3rd-degree network.
5. Send out personalized connection request messages
(We recently wrote an article on how to write like a pro for Linkedin outreach, which you can read here.)
The first thing that you need to do before writing your connection request message, is research the prospects on your list.
Yes, this takes time, but there is a good reason for this.
By researching your prospects, you will be able to write personalized messages just for them.
Why is this important?
Think about it, most Linkedin users receive a couple of messages a day on Linkedin. Many of these messages are from salespeople.
If you want our b2b saas company to stand out, you have to add personalization to your messages to capture the prospect’s attention.
This will set you apart from every other saas marketing team out there.
Here is an example of a personalized connection request:
“Linda loved your piece on real estate trends in California. Would love to connect seeing that we are both in the real estate space.”
At Salesbread we use the CCQ method for writing personalized messages (The video below explains this method in detail.)
6. Follow up and ask for a meeting with a clear CTA.
Once the prospect connects with you, you will need to add more personalization to your follow-up message and ask for a meeting.
How do you do this?
Example:
“Thanks for connecting with me Linda. By the way, I see your company offers leasing services. Curious to hear about how your company manages maintenance issues between lessors and landlords? I know this is a problem for some real estate companies.
(Just for context, my company has developed a program that takes the difficulty out of xyz..)
Would love to hop on a quick call with (you at time to date) to hear your thoughts. Maybe we could be of benefit to each other.
Notice that this b2b lead generation strategy doesn’t sell in the messages. It’s best to only sell in a meeting.
We also focus on building connections, engaging with prospects, and starting conversations.
This step in the Linkedin lead gen process isn’t about selling but rather about getting your foot in the door for further discussions.
Do these lead generation tactics work?
Yes, they do. Salesbread has worked with numerous SaaS companies over the years, which you can read about here.
Last year we partnered up with 5 saas companies and managed to generate 699 qualified leads for these clients.
Need a Saas marketing plan that gets fast results?
If having more qualified leads in your sales funnel within 48 hours sounds good to you, don’t hesitate to contact Salesbread today.
