GTM & Sales/Marketing Advisor Current state:
We recently launched www.finden.me
Product is great and feedback good so far (always improving)
Started LinkedIn Ads and email outreach this week (using Apollo)
LinkedIn very expensive and conversions from Apollo not working yet
Queries:
Need guidance on what’s the best approach to get SME and enterprise users to try our service (and convert them to paid subscribers)… we are trying the above but it’s not working yet
Other than email outbound, what other strategies work?
Looking for an Advisor
Looking for a senior accomplished Sales/Marketing person to advice us and help us to get our ‘machine’ working. (Although not ideal, open to working on a commission structure and a more stable structure in the future once we have raised our funding round)
Thank you for any help
I'm not sure if you get the quality you are looking for with a commission model. If you are spending money on LinkedIn ads you must have some budget (not really a fan of LinkedIn Ads). I might be able to offer a midterm solution if you're open lmk
It’s a chicken and egg concept. Without customer case studies enterprises won’t signup. Without signups you won’t have case studies. Target going to conferences or do podcasts where you can find such target audience. B2B marketing is rough at the beginning
Generating QLs is tough but the starting point could be above
Hey Randeep W. Your current approach is a good start, but it's a spray-and-pray strategy. You're throwing money at ads and hoping something sticks. You've already identified the biggest problem: it's not working! The first step isn't to look for a new channel; it's to get ruthless clarity on your buyer. Before you spend another pound, figure out who your ideal customer actually is (if you havent already). From there, you need to build a strategy that's tailored to them. Instead of blasting out generic messages, build a proactive value proposition for them. Show them that you understand their problem better than they do by giving away a small, high-value insight. This isn't about giving away the whole "farm", it’s about providing enough value to get them to lean in and want to talk. This will change your conversion rate overnight.
Thank you Matt E. very useful feedback. We do have some personas defined and using that to target our potential customers. But, I’m assuming we’ll need to optimize this as we try the different messaging.
Currently, we’ve only tried LinkedIn Ads for a week but already feel it is not the right path just yet - better to do the email outbound more first may be with some cold calls?
The emails are having high open rates per apollo but the messaging is not good enough for users to click through - so we need to improve on this. Still also trying to figure out how personal do we need to get with these emails etc.
Persona's aren't enough Randeep.
What is the problem your solution solves? What language do people use to describe the problem? How does it manifest itself day to day? What is the financial impact of the problem? What personas are impacted by the problem? What type of businesses experience the problem? Is solving the problem a business priority or not? I would look to answer all of these (at the least) before you do anything else.
Randeep W. What does your email offer look like? Do you have a free trial? If you're messaging isn't good enough over email, then I worry about the effectiveness of your LinkedIn Ad messaging, which is way more expensive. I'd suggest scaling back the LinkedIn Ads and scaling up your efforts over email. It's much easier to test messaging and offers over email, you can pivot faster, and it should have a much lower cost per interested lead. You'd likely get more return from digital ads once your messaging has been proven and your ICP clearly defined. There are a lot of cool and clever plays with cold email that involve AI, automation, enrichment, and personalization. If you're running static, generic templates in Apollo and not seeing much success, it could be a decent time to re-evaluate this part of your GTM motion. Shoot me a DM if you're open to sharing some ideas.
Randeep W., the fastest lever isn’t a new channel it’s clarity plus sequencing. Right now, your LinkedIn ads are just a tax on unproven messaging. Here’s what I’d do in 14 days:
Interview 3 ICP buyers to lock in their language (not personas, their words).
Build a single flagship use case > convert into one ‘proof asset’ (mini case story, 1-page benchmark, or ROI calculator).
Test 3 micro-campaigns via email (25 contacts each) to validate messaging before scaling.
If you want, I can sketch what that sequence looks like against your current funnel so you can see where it leaks.
Hi Randeep W. - there’s already some great advice here in the thread on the strategic approach. However i did want to expand and give some more context on LinkedIn Ads specifically. Sure the channel is a bit more expensive than others. But what I often see is that is’s mostly because of the technical setup. Especially if you use the LinkedIn defaults (such as AI campaign creation) it means you’ll very likely overspend by 30-50%. Happy to dig a bit deeper into your specific setup if you’d like or share some best practices if that’s helpful!
Just to echo others here - personas are not enough. Do you have an actual GTM strategy? ICP & Persona Positioning & Messaging Channel and Campaign Choices Measurement & Feedback Loops Tactical execution protocols Resourcing Budget Segments, Firmographics, Psychographics, Technographics and how these solutions fit into your buyers ' day-to-day are key. Just looking at the website - It's not clear what any of that is.
