1.
EARLY-STAGE
CUSTOMER
ACQUISITION

2.
Find this and all other amazing EIA slide decks over at:
https://www.slideshare.net/InnovationAcademy/presentations

3.
“You’ve got a world-class
product. Now you just need to tell
people. Find yourself the cheap
keywords, and start bidding.”

4.
“Trust me. You can dance.”

5.
“Trust me. You can dance.”

6.
It’s hard to know what search
terms to bid on and what adverts
to run when you don’t really know
(1) what you’ve built, (2) who is
buying it, (3) why they’re buying
it or (4) what language they use
to describe it.

7.
Marketing at a startup starts from the
inside out. As you build your product,
you start talking about it to as many
potential customers as possible. Only
when you know what you’ve built and
have a deep understanding of who
buys it, why they buy it and how they
talk about it does it make sense to
structurally start pushing marketing.

8.
STARTUP MARKETING 101
Get as many potential
users as possible to learn
and talk about your startup

9.
DES TRAYNOR, CO-FOUNDER INTERCOM
The most important tasks for any early stage startup
are to write code and talk to users. About 50% of my
time was spent communicating with potential users,
whether that was asking them to try Intercom over
email, meeting them at conferences, write blog posts,
responding to users in blog comments or talking to
them on Hacker News.
Livechat software, founded in 2011, valued today at ± 1.85bn

10.
Does that mean you have to start writing
blog posts the moment you leave this hall?

11.
No.
You can’t reach users in ways they’re not reachable.
As much as you can’t phone people who don’t have a phone,
you can ‘content market’ to people who don’t read.
(Or at least don’t read the stuff you’d write about.)

12.
01
Start by understanding the behaviors and
mindset of the people you’re trying to reach.
02
Choose a particular marketing tactic based on
those exhibited behaviors.

13.
• If you’re selling a cool new piece of technology to
developers, like Twilio, community-focused activities such
as meetups are going to work better than paid ads.
• If you’re selling clinic management software to dentists,
then speaking at/sponsoring a dentistry conference will
probably outperform social media.
• If you’re selling dating apps to millennials, then clever PR
or on-campus, offline campaigns will likely beat event
sponsorship.
• If you’re building an iPhone game for teenagers, Snapchat
Ads are more likely to work than opinionated articles on
the educational duties of the gaming industry.

14.
How to think about acquisition
1. Nail your messaging
2. Understand your customer
3. Ideate on ways to reach your customer
4. Score and rank each idea
5. Test your best ideas

15.
1. Nail your messaging
Clearly define how your product makes
the lives of your target customers
better than it is right now. If you have
multiple target audiences, do this for
each one.
Value proposition generation framework (slides 8-15)

16.
1. Nail your messaging
Example
Our AI-powered shovel helps onion farmers dig
holes faster, so they can plant more and sell more
with less back pain than traditional shovels.
What is the product?
An artificially intelligent shovel.
Who is the customer?
Onion farmers.
What value is generated for them?
Time saved through faster planting.
How is it better than the old way?
Less back pain than traditional shovels.

17.
2. Understand your customer
The better you’re able to grasp the
mindset and behavior of your target
customers, the better you’ll be at
reaching them with the right message, in
the right place, at the right time.

18.
2. Understand your customer
The more specific you are about your customer,
the easier it is to understand how to reach them
and what message should be used to do so.
For our our AI Shovel, for example, onion farmers are
a smaller audience with different behaviors than do-
it-yourself homeowners. That means their needs and
habits are more specific, which in turn makes it
easier to understand them.

19.
2. Understand your customer
• How do your target customers buy products like yours today?
• Where do your customers hang out online?
• What kind of content do your customers seek and consume?
• Which apps do your customers use?
• What questions are my customers asking?
• Where do your target customers connect with people like them?
• Where do your target customers get their information personally?
• Where do your target customers get their information professionally?
• Who do your target customers look up to?
• Who do your target customers trust?

20.
3. Ideate on ways to reach your customer
Dream up all the ways you could reach your
audience and write each idea on a giant list. Don’t
worry about thinking big and crazy at this point.

21.
3. Ideate on ways to reach your customer
• Buy sponsor slots on the annual OnionCon conference.
• Get a speaker slot on the annual OnionCon conference.
• Get an interview on the OnionPod podcast.
• Start a YouTube channel for onion farmers.
• Facebook advertising based on interest in onions and shovels.
• Google Ads targeteted to keywords like ‘shovel’ and ‘onion farming’.
• Content creation on onion farming & shoveling.
• Sending sample shovels to all the speakers at OnionCon.
• Referral program to incentivize word-of-mouth among onion farmers.
• Make distribution deal with retailers where onion farmers shop for gear.

22.
3. Ideate on ways to reach your customer
More resources for ideating on acquisition tactics
• 19 traction channels
• Bullseye brainstorming exercise for the 19 traction channels
• Cheap traction tests you can run to validate channels

23.
4. Score and rank each idea
CAN IT SCALE?
SCALABILITY
EASE & COST
AVAILABILITY
PRODUCT/CHANNEL FIT
RELEVANCE
GUT FEELING
BLINK
1-5 1-5 1-5 1-5

24.
4. Score and rank each idea
SCALABILITYAVAILABILITYRELEVANCEBLINK
What do you think
about the idea before
you even realize you’re
thinking?
Based on Malcolm
Gladwell’s stellar book.
Don’t try to sell hearing
aids on Snapchat. Or
find B2B customers on
Pinterest.
How easy is it to set up?
How long will it take?
How much will it cost?
YouTube videos may
work very well, but are
expensive to make.
How easy is this channel
to scale up?
Answering Quora
questions may be
effective, but you have to
write them one by one.

25.
4. Score and rank each idea
AVAILABILITYRELEVANCEBLINK
What do you think
about the idea before
you even realize you’re
thinking?
Based on Malcolm
Gladwell’s stellar book.
Don’t try to sell hearing
aids on Snapchat. Or
find B2B customers on
Pinterest.
How easy is it to set up?
How long will it take?
How much will it cost?
YouTube videos may
work very well, but are
expensive to make.
SCALABILITY
Don’t worry about
scalability at this point.
It’s more important that
you get a sense of your
customer’s behaviour
and validate your
messaging.

26.
4. Score and rank each idea
CAN IT SCALE?
SCALABILITY
EASE & COST
AVAILABILITY
PRODUCT/CHANNEL FIT
RELEVANCE
GUT FEELING
BLINK
1-5 1-5 1-5 1-5
= BRAS Score
X X

27.
5. Test your best ideas
Take your best 2-4 ideas and start executing.
Adopt an experimental mindset while doing so.
If something works, put more of your chips on it.
At all times, aim to understand why ideas (don’t) work.
Then use those insights to generate new, better ideas.

28.
Let’s map the landscape
Zero-budget user acquisition tactics with fast feedback loops

29.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING?
Quora
Quora means to give the world the best possible answer to
any question humans could possibly have.
Users can ask questions, write answers and upvote/
downvote answers. Answers with the most upvotes (and
least downvotes) end up on top.
People from your target audience have likely posted
questions you can answer. You just have to show up and
gently point them to the solution: your product.

30.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING?
Quora — What you can get out of it
Highly-qualified traffic
Because of the 1-1 relationship between what
the user is looking for and your value, on-site
conversion for Quora traffic is typically higher
than for many other channels (10% -15%).
Thought leadership
As you help out your target audience in what
they care about by answering questions
relevant to them, you’ll become an influential
voice and they’ll start valuing your opinions.

31.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING?
Quora — Researching questions
• Study what people are asking and what language they use to do so.
• Study the most upvoted answers for relevant questions and try to understand
why they seem to resonate most.
• Study the numbers of followers, answers and views of questions to get a sense
of their market relevance.
• Questions with significant traction also hold more potential for you to acquire
users by writing good answers to it.
• Don’t be discouraged by low metrics for questions. Your target audience may
just not be the type to be on Quora or voice the questions they have
altogether. Metrics say something, but don’t tell the whole story.

32.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING?
Quora — Researching questions
If you mean to target users from non-
English speaking countries, check out
Quora in other languages.

33.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING?
High-value questions typically have more followers than answers. The
higher this ratio, the better. This means a lot of people are interested
while not a lot of people have provided answers.
Quora — What makes a question worth answering?

34.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING?
1. Use the search module — Quora has a search functionality that lets you find
questions, answers, topics, users and spaces from search keywords.
2. Related questions — On every question page, Quora will show related questions
on the right-hand side of the page.
3. Topics & influencers — Quora also organises similar questions around topics. For
each topic, you can identify influential writers by checking out Most Viewed
Writers. These influencers will most probably also have answered other relevant
questions.
4. Use Quora Ads Targeting — Within Quora Ads Targeting, you can view the
average weekly views for every question. Creating an Ads account is free and you
don’t have to run actual ads to get these insights.
Quora — Finding questions to answer

35.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING?
Don’t be spammy and mindlessly pitch. Instead, focus on providing real help.
From the start, align your answer to the question and gradually build a convincing
narrative towards your value proposition.
Then try giving them a good reason to check it out (call-to-action).
To ensure relevance, combine the best ideas from already present answers and bring
them together in your own way.
Be mindful of who you’re writing to and make the value obvious and relevant.
It’s not that different from building great landing pages (;
Quora — How to write good answers

36.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING?
Quora — How to write good answers

37.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING?
• Ask team mates to upvote your answers.
• And downvote the other answers on the same question.
• Pro level: create a group chat with all teams that are active on
Quora so you can support each other.
• Quora may penalize upvotes - and downvotes for coming from the
same IP address (since we’re all on the same network here). Try to
up - downvote from your mobile phone instead.
• Pro level: use a VPN to change your IP + location (Hola VPN is a
free browser extension)
• I recommend to use one account per team to write answers from.
Quora — How to get your answers to the top
Facebook Group to get upvotes

38.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS SEARCHING FOR?
Keyword search volume gives a sense of market relevance
Keyword volume
How many people are searching this term
within a specific geographical region.
Keyword difficulty
How hard is it to rank highly for a keyword. Put
differently: how much competition there is.

39.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS SEARCHING FOR?
Free keyword research tools — Keyword Sh!tter
Generates keyword suggestions from a
source keyword.
Warning: it generates a lot.
https://keywordshitter.com

40.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS SEARCHING FOR?
Free keyword research tools — Keywords Everywhere
Shows keyword search
volume, competition and
related keywords.
Comes as a browser
extension for Google
Chrome & Mozilla Firefox.
https://keywordseverywhere.com/

41.
WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS SEARCHING FOR?
Free keyword research tools — Answer The Public
Maps what questions people are asking
about your niche.
https://answerthepublic.com

42.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Product Hunt
Product Hunt is Product Geek Heaven.
It’s where early adopters come together to connect
over their passion for new products and technologies.
Match made in heaven for EIA projects.

43.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Product Hunt — The Basics
The Daily Hunt
Every day again, new products for users to check out.
Products compete to be on top by the end of the day.
Upvotes
You rise in the ranking by getting upvotes from
community members. But that’s not the only thing that
counts (there’s a secret algorithm).
Hunters & Makers
Only community members with Hunter permissions
can post new products. Members that created the
product are called Makers.

44.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Product Hunt — What you’ll get out of it
You’ll get on the radar of early adopters
These are the type of people who’ll try your
product when it’s still a baby. They’re okay with it
still having growing pains.
You’ll get invaluable product feedback
While the traction is awesome, early stage this is
still mostly about getting as many people as
possible to talk about your product.
You’ll get traffic and signups
People come flocking to your landing page to
check out your product and get early access.

45.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Product Hunt — How to launch
Since only Hunters can post products, you’ll first need to get ahold of one.
This may take a couple of hours or even days, so start early.
Talk to me as I may be able to help you with this.
(WhatsApp +32478638070)
Since you can’t really give users access to the product just yet, position your
submission and landing page as a Pre-launch with a call-to-action along the lines
of Request early access, Notify me or Join the waiting list.
You can put as much effort in a Product Hunt launch as you like. You can prepare it
meticulously and aim for the top spot or you can just have it posted with some
minimal prep and see what happens.

46.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Product Hunt — How to launch
I wrote one of the most used guides to launch on Product Hunt
following a launch I did with a startup.
The Ultimate Playbook to blowing your Product Hunt Launch out of the water
If you want an additional perspective, I also recommend this resource:
10 Steps to Launching a #1 Product on Product Hunt

47.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Product Hunt — How to launch
In case multiple teams would want to go for this, you
can leverage the power of EIA in a similar way as
previously recommend for Quora upvotes.
Create an upvote group chat to coordinate.

48.
WHO DO YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS TRUST?
92% of consumers trust recommendations
from friends and family over advertising

49.
WHO DO YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS TRUST?
Leverage the networks of early enthusiasts by
incentivizing them to share with their friends and family
Rhyme your marketing campaign with a waiting list system that
lets leads move up the leaderboard by sharing your campaign
with their friends and family.

50.
WHO DO YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS TRUST?
Referral Programs — The Startup Prelaunch

51.
WHO DO YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS TRUST?
Referral Programs — The Startup Prelaunch

52.
WHO DO YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS TRUST?
Referral Programs — The Startup Prelaunch

53.
WHO DO YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS TRUST?
Referral Programs — The Startup Prelaunch
You can implement this quickly and without
coding with Viral Loops.
Register for a free 14-day trial at https://
viral-loops.com and get started with the
Startup Prelaunch template.
If you need help, talk to the guys from Viral Loops via the
livechat on their site. Tell them you’re running an EIA
project and that I referred you (I gave them a heads up).

54.
WHO DO YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS TRUST?
Referral Programs — Other formats
Other relevant Viral Loop formats to run for
making the most out of a launch would mostly be:
• Milestone referral
• Leaderboard giveaway
However, for these (and others), the format kind
of demands you to have rewards to give users that
share most. While for the Startup Prelaunch it’s
fine if you just promise them early product access.

55.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Facebook Groups
This is about aligning your story to the audience you’re targeting it too.
That becomes easier as an audience is more homogeneous (i.e. the people that make up
the audience increasingly similar to one another)
This is what makes Facebook Groups so powerful.
You can group a bunch of people that correspond to your ideal customer, that share that
one pivotal interest. Then you connect with them, learn from them, and market to them.
Except it won’t feel like marketing. It will feel like you’re helping them.
And that’s about the best marketing can get.

56.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Facebook Groups
Facebook Group for writers created by an entrepreneur who’s
looking to create software to help writers write better, faster.

57.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Facebook Groups — Join existing groups
Resist the temptation of blatantly posting your landing page asking for signups. There’s few things
people hate more than spam. Instead, try to start a conversation. Create the narrative of you trying to
solve a specific problem for them and wanting to work with them to get it done. Ask specific
questions, create polls, link a survey (see previous slide). Or come up with a compelling offer. As long
as you can make people feel it’s in their best interest and they’re not being sold to.

58.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Facebook Groups — Create your own
Can’t find relevant Facebook Groups?
Great.
Now you can create your own, recruit your target audience,
claim the topic and determine the narrative.
This can be extremely powerful. But takes careful recruiting, lots
of content creation and community building. And thus time.

59.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Reddit — Where viral stories are born
Reddit is the world’s 17th website for traffic (5th in the US).
Because users are anonymous, you should probably not consider this a
sustainable customer acquisition channel.
Because of its huge user base, high levels of engagement and wide
variety of subreddits however — it’s also a great place to create buzz
and momentum around your startup.
Reddit is where stories go viral before they reach social media and
mainstream media. But it’s usually hit or miss.

60.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Reddit — What you need to know first
Reddit likes laws and law enforcement.
There’s lots of posting rules you’ll need to comply with, often specific ones per
subreddit.
Moderators are ruthless and will take every opportunity to take your post down.
For every subreddit you try to post in, read the rules, study the posts that stay up
and get traction, plus make sure you post with a high-karma account.

61.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Reddit — What you need to know first
Reddit doesn’t like outsiders.
As a Reddit user you can accumulate karma through the amount of upvotes and
comments your posts get. A user’s karma indicates the seniority of a Reddit user and
determines how severely moderators judge their actions.
In short: don’t create a new Reddit account and immediately post a story about yourself.
Instead, accumulate karma first in easy subreddits or get your hands on an account that
already has a good amount of karma (let me know if you want to use my account).

62.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Reddit — Maximizing your chances of big time buzz
To go viral on Reddit, content needs tell a story that makes an audiences feel something.
This can be happiness, motivation, inspiration, sadness etc. in a way that makes them want to share it with
other people.
Rather than the startup itself, focus on the story, even if that story doesn’t directly involve your product.
To get people to read the story in the first place, you’ll need to write a hook (subject) that stands out in the
list of posts in the subreddit.
Think of the type of headlines that you would click. At the same time, avoid clickbait where the story doesn’t
deliver on the promise of the hook. Users will feel cheated and vote your post down.
Mind that it doesn’t need to have a text post: images and (especially) videos can work too, if done well.

63.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Reddit — Example
I once (unintentionally) made a startup from Rwanda that makes shoes out of tyres and banana leaves go
viral on Reddit. It was afterwards posted to BBC World and other sites.
I think it’s a good example of how to approach writing the subject line for a post you mean to get traction.
+ Another great example.
How to get your startup on the front page of Reddit
Reddit hates blatant marketing: here’s how you can still get thousands of visitors
List of subreddits

64.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Reddit — The quick win
In the specific subreddit for startups they actually want you to spam your startup. Look at that.
In my experience, this is unlikely to get you significant traction. But it takes about 2 minutes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/

65.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Betalist — A hybrid of Product Hunt and r/startups
https://betalist.com

66.
WHERE DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?
Betalist — A hybrid of Product Hunt and r/startups
Betalist also wants you to spam your startup.
To help enthusiasts discover new startups and provide startups with early user feedback.
Similar to r/startups, this is a quick win that is unlikely to get you real traction.
But why not? You never know.

67.
WHAT CONTENT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS SEEK AND CONSUME?
Instagram acquisition on autopilot
You can reach target audiences on Instagram via other other accounts that post content
related/similar to your value proposition.
For example, if want to reach people that love bread — target the users that follow and engage
with accounts about wine, cheese, gastronomy etc.
You can then automate your IG account to engage with those users
This will make your account pop up in users’ notifications. And, if they are triggered by your
profile picture + name, they’ll click through to land on your profile page.
Then it’s up to you to convert them with relevant content an appealing CTA.

68.
WHAT CONTENT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS SEEK AND CONSUME?
1. Identify accounts your target audience follows and engages with.
2. Make sure to have a nicely filled feed with relevant, quality content. For
inspiration on what to post, study target accounts, identify the posts with the
most likes/comments and have that inspire the content you create + post. Or
steal it. Up to you.
3. Automate engagement like following, liking and commenting to get on the
radar of your target audience.
4. Include a convincing offer / call-to-action on your account page so you can
send users that land on your profile page to your landing page.
That’s the nutshell version. Here’s the long, step-by-step version.
(You don’t need to use the specific tools mentioned in the guide.
There’s plenty alternatives available with free trials and similar features — just Google, or ask me).
Instagram acquisition on autopilot

69.
WHAT CONTENT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS SEEK AND CONSUME?
Make friends with your customers’ favourite creators
“This video was made possible by Brilliant. Learn everything you want, including how I make videos
like these. The first 200 to sign up via the link in the description will get 20% of a yearly plan.”

70.
WHAT CONTENT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS SEEK AND CONSUME?
Make friends with your customers’ favourite creators
1. Figure out which YouTube videos your customers watches,
which podcasts they listen to, what blogs they read.
2. Build a relationship with the creator and provide a special
deal for their audience.
3. Creators with a big audience will ask for a fee, but smaller
ones may be happy to try out your product and be able to
give their audience something special.
4. A variation of this would be to ship products to relevant
creators and ask them to review it.

71.
WHAT CONTENT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS SEEK AND CONSUME?
Make friends with your customers’ favourite creators
You can also turn this around by creating content (blog, video)
around influencers/creators relevant to your audience.
For example, I and 21 others was sent 4 questions about
LinkedIn marketing — super quick to fill out.
The content creator then aggregated all of the answers into
one giant blog post that got lots of traction.

72.
WHAT CONTENT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS SEEK AND CONSUME?
Make friends with your customers’ favourite creators
• For the influencers it’s a quick and easy. Minimum effort for significant exposure.
• Getting such a request makes the influencer feel important, especially if the
content project also includes other influencers.
• All of those influencers will be happy to share the content piece with their
respective audiences once it’s ready.
• For the content creator, this is a quick and effective way of creating highly relevant
content while gaining exposure with multiple relevant target audiences at once.
Why this works

73.
DES TRAYNOR, CO-FOUNDER INTERCOM
“In the early days, I used to literally email people and ask
them to use Intercom. If you look at the first 200 emails I
sent from my Intercom email, almost all of them were along
the lines of, “Would you like to try Intercom?” For a customer
we really wanted, I’d mock up a screenshot showing how
we’d nail a reasonable use case for their product. That
helped people understand both what we could do for them
and what it would look like in their product.”
Livechat software, founded in 2011, valued today at ± 1.85bn
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
Use email and direct messages
to start conversations and build relations

74.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales
Can you get your ideal customer to talk to you?
The more your B2B company targets enterprises, the more sales
will be your largest acquisition channel.
If your potential audience is fewer than, say, 5,000 businesses, it’ll
be tough to get traditional channels to work for you.

75.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales
Can you get your ideal customer to talk to you?
User acquisition strategy at this point becomes about setting up
processes to your potential customers interested in talking to you — be
it in-person, over the phone or via email and similar (direct messages).

76.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Lead generation
• Content marketing (SEO) — Potential customers find you because
they land on a relevant piece of content via Google, learn about your
value proposition and express interest by indicating they’d like to
learn more (demo). Your sales people now start the sales process.
• Advertising — B2B customers can be targeted just as well with ads
as B2C, however targeting possibilities are a lot less. LinkedIn is
about the only channel with serious targeting possibilities. The idea
is the same as with content marketing: people from your target
audience land on your site and agree to be contacted.

77.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Lead generation
• Events — Events like conferences and trade shows are like online
communities: a big gathering of your target audience you can start
talking to, if only you know how to get ahold of them and tell a story
that resonates.
• Cold outreach — This is where you identify targets you want to sell
to beforehand, and then reach out to them pitching your value
proposition, trying to get them to agree on a sales call or product
demo.

78.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Lead generation
For the investor pitch next week, it would be great if you can get a
couple of your target B2B customers on a sales call to learn more
about their specific needs and get them to say they’re interested in
your value proposition as soon as you launch in on the market. This
shows validation.
Because content marketing takes too much time to work for next week,
let’s look at how you can get this done with outreach.

79.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Finding prospects
1. Your already existing network — Comb through your address book, Facebook friends, LinkedIn
connections and everything else that resembles a list of people. Anyone in there worth talking to or who
might be able to get you an intro somewhere? The fastest way is probably to just make a post on
Facebook/LinkedIn or send an email to your address book so you don’t have to ask people one by one.
2. Warm intros — Ask your mentors, coworkers, friends, and family for intros to anyone who may be in the
market for your product.
3. Conferences — A big gathering of your target customers you get to talk to in-person, which will always
be more effective than any type of medium you have to use to do so.
4. The internet — Your target customer is somewhere among the 4 billion on the internet. We’ll cover how
to quickly find them in a way that you can reach out to them in later slides.

80.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Finding prospects
1. Your already existing network — Comb through your address book and social connections. Anyone in
there worth talking to or who might be able to get you an intro somewhere? Make a post on Facebook/
LinkedIn or send an email to your address book so you don’t have to ask people one by one.
2. Warm intros — Ask your mentors, coworkers, friends, and family for intros to anyone who may be in the
market for your product.
3. Conferences — A big gathering of your target customers you get to talk to in-person, which will always
be more effective than any type of medium you have to use to do so. Try to get your hands on the guest
list beforehand to determine whether the event is worthwhile. This also allows you to reach out to
people you want to meet beforehand. You can even reach out to them without going to the event
4. The internet — Your target customer is somewhere among the 4 billion on the internet. We’ll cover how
to quickly find them in a way that you can reach out to them in later slides.

81.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — What to write in emails or DMs
Know who you’re talking to
Always align your pitch and tone to the specific persona you’re
reaching out to. If you’re an online design testing platform, don’t pitch a
designer the same value proposition as you’d pitch a marketer.

82.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — What to write in emails or DMs
Be contextual, give them a reason to care
You’ll have to convince leads you’re worth spending time on in just
about the first 1-2 lines of your messages. If you can’t trigger them right
then and there, they’ll most probably ignore you. They’ll be busy and
have loads of other people trying to get their attention. Why should
they give you theirs?

83.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — What to write in emails or DMs
Be contextual, give them a reason to care
• Remind them where you know each other from (event, school, LinkedIn, intro)
• Describe a relevant bad situation and show or offer help
• Invite them as early users - make them feel ‘special’
• Invite them to an exclusive event you’re organising (or as speaker)
• Invite them an online community like a Facebook Group

84.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — What to write in emails or DMs
The hook: Give them a reason to care, set the tone, be contextual.
• Remind them where you know each other from (event, school, LinkedIn, intro)
• Describe a relevant bad situation and show or offer help
• Invite them as early users - make them feel ‘special’
• Invite them to an exclusive event you’re organising (or as speaker)
• Invite them an online community like a Facebook Group
Cold Email Playbook by Mailshake

85.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — What to write in emails or DMs
Make your pitch (2-4 lines)
• After the intro, get to the point. What do you have to offer and why should they care?
• Think back to the idea of header + subhead on your landing page.
• Your users hate video ads. We can solve it, without losing you money.
• Keep it short and simple. You want prospects to read your message before they even
realize they’re reading it. This is impossible with big, chunky paragraphs of text.
• If you feel you can’t make the pitch in such few words, attach a 3-4 slide deck. That
way you leave it up to the prospect to decide whether they need more or not.
Cold Email Playbook by Mailshake

86.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — What to write in emails or DMs
Make it easy for them to take action
• End your message by asking a specific, easy-to-answer question or propose an
action that is easy to take.
• For example, don’t ask whether they’d be interested in hopping on a call next week.
This means they’ll have to go check their calendar, find a good time, propose that
time to you etc.
• Instead, propose a specific day+time right then and there.
• Even better: provide a calendar booking link so the prospect can pick a time that
works for them in two clicks.
Cold Email Playbook by Mailshake

87.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — What to write in emails or DMs
Make it easy for them to take action
• End your message by asking a specific, easy-to-answer question or propose an
action that is easy to take.
• For example, don’t ask whether they’d be interested in hopping on a call next week.
This means they’ll have to go check their calendar, find a good time, propose that
time to you etc.
• Instead, propose a specific day+time right then and there.
• Even better: provide a calendar booking link so the prospect can pick a time that
works for them in two clicks.
Cold Email Playbook by Mailshake

88.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — What to write in emails or DMs
Mixmax
Calendly

89.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Outreach example

90.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Outreach example
Cold Email Playbook by Mailshake

91.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Outreach template
Hi {{prospect firstname}},
I noticed you guys at {{prospect company}} help brands to generate qualified leads by building tools their
audience can use for free. It’s a great new space, but I know it’s hard for agencies to scale their offering
because development takes up a lot of time.
Because these apps tend to have the same building blocks, we’ve built {{your startup name}} software
that gives you those building blocks so you can develop and deliver much faster. Agencies like {{similar
company to prospect company}} tried our first version and were impressed.
Here’s what their {{decision-maker}} said: {{testimonial}}. I’m confident {{prospect company}} would have
similar results.
Do you have time next week for a chat? You can book a slot with me here.
{{your firstname}} ,
Co-Founder {{your startup name}} {{landing page URL}}

92.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Outreach template
Hi {{prospect firstname}},
I noticed you guys at {{prospect company}} help brands to generate qualified leads by building tools their
audience can use for free. It’s a great new space, but I know it’s hard for agencies to scale their offering
because development takes up a lot of time.
Because these apps tend to have the same building blocks, we’ve built {{your startup name}} software
that gives you those building blocks so you can develop and deliver much faster. Agencies like {{similar
company to prospect company}} tried our first version and were impressed.
Here’s what their {{decision-maker}} said: {{testimonial}}. I’m confident {{prospect company}} would have
similar results.
Do you have time next week for a chat? You can book a slot with me here.
{{your firstname}} ,
Co-Founder {{your startup name}} {{landing page URL}}

93.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Outreach subject line
No matter how great your email, it won’t get read if you don’t manage to make
its subject line stand out in the prospect’s packed inbox.
Remember you’re a stranger whose name they’ve never seen before.
Aim to entice, create intrigue, spark curiosity. Try triggering a question in their
heads so they’ll need to open the email to answer that question.
At the same time, avoid looking spammy.
For inspiration, check out the resource below.
The 87 Best Email Subject Lines by Sumo

94.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Follow-up
After sending your first message, have two follow-ups scheduled.
Data proves your chances of success improve if you follow up at least two
times.
You don’t want to be a pest, but the bottom line is persistence wins. And the
marginal cost of each email you send is low.

95.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Follow-up
But you need to do it right.
Few will respond to your first email. Each follow-up is an opportunity to build
credibility to finally get to a "Fine, I'll respond.”
So don’t waste follow-ups on a limp “bumping this” or “checking in." That’s a
useless nudge. And therefore annoying.
Instead, follow-ups should build atop your original message. For example,
provide video demos visualizing what you originally pitched. Meanwhile,
remember the objective: relate about their world.

96.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Metrics
To get to the best possible copy of email and, even more importantly, subject line, it
make sense to track a couple of basic metrics of emails you’re sending out.
• open rate — emails sent / emails opened
• response rate — replies / emails opened
• clickthrough rate — links clicked / emails opened
You can use a tool like Streak to do this. (free to use)

97.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Metrics
To get to the best possible copy of email and, even more importantly, subject line, it
make sense to track a couple of basic metrics of emails you’re sending out.
• open rate — emails sent / emails opened
• response rate — replies / emails opened
• clickthrough rate — links clicked / emails opened
You can use a tool like Streak to do this. (free to use)

98.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Finding email addresses
You can find just about anyone’s professional email from:
• First name
• Last name
• Company domain
Just use one of these these tools (all have a free option for you to use):

99.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Finding prospects on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the world’s biggest B2B database.
You can find prospects by:
• Industry
• Job role
• Geographical location
• Company size
• Specific companies
• Groups around specific topics
• … and more

100.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Finding prospects on LinkedIn
Next, you can get in touch in the following ways.
1. Connection request with personal message — Be relevant. Don’t pitch your product right
away. Aim to start a conversation instead. Intro messages are limited to 300 characters so
you’ll have no choice but to keep it short and sweet.
2. Find email addresses from first and last name — Plug their names and company domains in
an email finder and reach out to them via a cold email.

101.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Finding prospects on the internet at large
Phantombuster is an automation service that can extract (contact) data from
various platforms and sites based on criteria you define. Free to use for 14 days.

102.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Finding prospects on the internet at large
Phantombuster is an automation service that can extract (contact) data from
various platforms and sites based on criteria you define. Free to use for 14 days.

103.
BE A HUMAN BEING AND TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
B2B Sales — Phantombuster: where are your customers?

104.
Or just do what your competitors are doing

105.
WHAT ARE SUCCESSFUL COMPETITORS DOING?
Similarweb
Similarweb is a free-to-use Chrome extension that reveals
marketing analytics for websites you’re visiting.

106.
WHAT ARE SUCCESSFUL COMPETITORS DOING?
Similarweb

107.
WHAT ARE SUCCESSFUL COMPETITORS DOING?
Similarweb
Awkward…

108.
WHAT ARE SUCCESSFUL COMPETITORS DOING?
Similarweb
Here’s what a referral traffic profile looks like if you have one