Running Outbound at a PLG Company

How to run outbound at a product-led growth company?

If you are a product-led growth company, chances are good that outbound marketing isn't your top priority. Why spend money acquiring customers when your product is so good that it sells itself?

‍While it's true that a high-quality product is the best sales tool, there are still plenty of reasons to invest in outbound marketing.

- For one thing, it's a great way to reach new markets and expand your customer base.
- Additionally, creative and well done outbound sales can help build brand awareness and create buzz around your product.

So, if you're looking to take your product-led growth company to the next level, outbound sales. may just be the boost you need.

Getting Started with your PLG outbound motion

To run effective outbound campaigns, you need to know the profile of your users. Are they champions, decision-makers, coaches, or budget holders? A person using your freemium model is not always the budget holder and will be more likely to convert if you multi-thread with critical stakeholders from the company the user belongs to.

Calculate ROI before sending your outreach

The best thing about the PLG model is that you can focus on ROI calculation. The account users should already be on the platform, so you know what they are trying to achieve and what ROI they could get by expanding their usage. When reaching out to the parties you think might be involved in the purchasing process that are not using the platform, you will be in a great position to send a message that gets a response as it will likely be tailored towards their current goal.

Tailoring your PLG outbound

One way to tailor your outbound approach is to look at the product-usage data of one or multiple users from the same company and look on linkedIn for the stakeholder who’s most likely to kickstart the buying process decision**.**Then, you can message these stakeholders with a very tailored approach, sharing how their team members use the tool and why they should start paying for it or expanding their usage.

Two examples of PLG outbound messaging

Message A

Hey James,Your team is using userled.io. I would love to jump on a call sometime this week. I can take you through how we can help you automate your inbound approach and free your sales reps’ time so they can focus on big bets.Are you free sometime this week?
Best,
Yann

Message B

Hi James,Nice to meet you. I am contacting you as I have seen strong activity from your team at PipePiper, currently trialling userled.io.Also, I have just been assessing PipePiper ROI data, and it looks like you managed to book 35 calls last week from your website using our journey builder - this is 55% more effective for you than companies of the same size using our product, so big kudos to your team!It'd be great to jump on a call whenever you have time and discuss what might be blocking you from moving forward with the pro version.
Speak soon,
Yann

Why you should use message B

By sharing stats on product usage and focusing on ROI, message B is much more likely to resonate with the budget holder. However, remember that you might be wrong regarding who the right person to contact is, so make sure that at the end of your outreach message, you ask for a referral to the right person.

Now, I know this is hard and time-consuming to research usage data, make ROI calculation, and write tailored messaging. That's why you use userled, so that we can do it for you 😊.

How to automate this outbound methodology?

If you're like me, you are always looking for ways to automate tedious tasks. And what could be more tedious than manual outbound sales?The good news is that there are several ways to automate this process, from using an automation campaign management connected to usage data to setting up automated email drip campaigns. Here are a few tips to get you started:

• First, if you still haven’t adopted a CRM and enrichment tool, now is the time to start. A CRM will help you keep track of your user's details, and an enrichment tools such as Clearbit  will automate some of the work needed to retrieve the contact information that isn't provided at the signup stage, helping you tailor your approach.
• Second, connect your CDP to your CRM to gather usage data and monitor the performance of each account - you can use any reverse ETL (Airbyte, Census…) to do it at scale or do more manual sync at first if your prefer.
• You can then use an email marketing platform such as customer.io to segment your audience based on company size, job title, industry, and product usage data. This will make your outreach much more powerful and personalized.Now, the tricky bit is that you know of a few users' email addresses but not the broader company audience. customer.io is suitable for the folks that sign up and give their emails, but what about the others? Who are the key stakeholders that you have yet to learn about?
• To solve this problem, I connect Outreach or SalesLoft to my CRM and schedule campaigns triggered based on the account usage, the plan they are on, and the company profile data... By doing so, you can create PLG outbound campaigns that will get sent to the person with the relevant job title on LinkedIn. You could also create a zap (zapier) between hunter.io and your sales outreach automation platform to automate the sending of emails to stakeholders you didn't have the email address of in the first place.

By following these tips, you'll be well on your way to automating your outbound sales process and freeing up your time for more important things.

I am not saying it is easy to set up, nor that it won’t take time, but the result will be worth it.

Why PLG companies shouldn’t wait to start their inbound motion

PLG companies are often in a difficult spot if their inbound demand suddenly diminishes. Fortunately, the two-pronged approach to generating constant growth - having an outbound pipeline as well as leveraging customer inbound requests - seems to be the most promising route companies can take. Instead of waiting for success to drop from the sky (which isn't a reliable strategy), taking initiative and building a proactive outbound strategy is a surefire way for PLG companies to stay productive and profitable.

Outbound helps you build a sustainable sales engine

Outbound is critical if you are looking to ARR spent per account at a PLG company, and having a great product should never be enough. In the following article, I will discuss how to automate your inbound motion.

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