When it comes to marketing products and services to small and mid-sized businesses, there is a common belief that an inbound strategy is far more likely to succeed than an outbound strategy. Unsolicited communications often irritate overworked business owners, goes the reasoning – but if they visit my website, then they’re already interested in my offering and are far more likely to become a customer.
There’s no question that a solid inbound marketing strategy is important. And yet, if a potential customer is on your website, do you know for sure if they’re ready to buy? If they’re not, do you know when they will be? And if they are ready to buy, who’s to say they haven’t already been to your competitors’ websites? At that late point in the buying journey, a savvy business owner is likely already shopping around.
Instead of just sitting back and waiting for potential customers to come to you, wouldn’t it be better to also:
- Reach out to potential customers at the very moment they need your offering?
- Save potential customers the headache of trying to solve their own problems later on?
- Position yourself as a trusted partner who will proactively address your customers’ needs?
Of course it would.
That’s why highly targeted, timing-dependent outbound marketing is critical to building customer loyalty and increasing share in the SMB market.
1. Find businesses that align with your ICP
You probably already have an ideal customer profile (ICP). You have a good idea of what market segments to target, what economic factors to consider, and any other attributes that would make your offering a good fit. You know that targeting ICPs will result in higher conversion rates and greater lifetime value.
When it comes to finding SMBs that align with your ICP, though, things get tricky. SMBs are less likely to keep their websites updated, and their data is scattered across multiple platforms and sources, which makes it difficult to paint a full picture of the business.
Not only that, but one of the most important attributes of an ICP – being at the business phase when your offering is particularly relevant – often gets overlooked because it’s too hard to quantify.
So, the first thing you need to do to build your outbound marketing strategy is to figure out how to identify businesses that meet all elements of your ICP.
2. Focus on sales triggers and indicative events
It’s true that unsolicited communications may irritate business owners -if that communication isn’t relevant to them. But if you’re reaching out to suggest something that is important for them to act upon at that very moment, you’re not irritating at all. In fact, most SMBs will welcome a genuine offer of assistance that acknowledges their current context, and you’ll score credibility points at the same time.
If timing is everything, though, how do you identify that perfect moment? How can you know when your offering is particularly relevant to an SMB?
You base your outbound marketing strategy around dynamic data that includes sales triggers and events as part of your ICP targeting. By using continuous intelligence to monitor real-time events and changes to potential customers that align with your ICP, you can reach out exactly when they need you – well before the competition even becomes aware of a need.
3. Go with quality over quantity
SMB providers often struggle with high volumes of low-quality data. If you have ever used bulk prospecting lists for the SMB market, you may have noticed:
- Big data is typically categorized based on the vendor’s tagging system, regardless of its direct relevance to your industry and your needs.
- SMBs change quickly and their growth cycles are nowhere near as stable as their enterprise counterparts.
Consequently, when you buy these large, unfiltered, and often outdated data sets from B2B providers, it can result in valuable time and money wasted. Instead of relying on bulky, static data sets, a good outbound marketing strategy focuses on using dynamic data and continuous intelligence to create highly targeted, timing-dependent campaigns that optimize sales efforts.
How Tarci can help
The Tarci continuous intelligence engine provides dynamic SMB data to financial providers and insurance companies. Our data experts work with marketing, sales, and customer success teams alike to identify industry-specific tags and sales triggers for their ICPs, and establish the results they need for highly effective outreach campaigns.
How do we get the data?
Tarci processes terabytes of SMB raw data collected from diverse sources on a weekly basis, then combines it to create one unified view of a business with industry-specific tags. Our continuous intelligence engine then scans it to uncover event- or change-based triggers. These sales triggers are time-sensitive, actionable insights that indicate an opportunity or need for your offering.
When tags and triggers are used in combination, the resulting dynamic data is a sales and marketing team’s dream – especially when it comes to the enormity of the SMB market.
Make timing your secret advantage
To learn more about how you can increase your SMB revenue by focusing on the right opportunities at the right time, drop us a line. One of our data experts will be happy to connect!
