Question about generating leads when I dont know precisely the target audience and their preferences

[chris0320]

I am a manager at a company of about 20 people and the company recently defined a department and offered me money and to manage it if I can sell at least a few of our new product in the next few months and start up the department - They are planning on starting it themselves in about Q2 next year if no one else wants or does it. The software / service is subscription based and users can create content with it which they can sell. Knowing the details, it seems like a good opportunity for me and our clients as well.

We didnt sell similar products before and dont know the exact target audience and their preferences (just have a general idea - 3D artists: freelancers or small businesses) so my issues is how to start generating leads. I worked in sales but there we only did cold calling from a list we got. Here I was thinking cold email and cold call but the emails/numbers are rarely accessible and paying for an email list or service might not be an option for now. I was also thinking about connecting with people on Linkedin and cold messaging them or finding them / their website by name and emailing them.

Do you have any experience on generating leads when working with freelancer and small businesses in cases described above? What are some best practices and options on lead generation?

Thank you!

 

[AllUpHere]

What's your budget?

 

[Paul Carmen]

You've unknowingly answered your question in the question itself!

The only way you can really do this with any level of accuracy is to do proper research up front and then come up with a plan that targets, measures and tests the processes properly.

If you don't do this research, it ends up being at best a scattergun approach, where you may luck into something working, or more likely you waste a load of money and decide it doesn't work, without ever knowing why.

To even vaguely answer your question we'd need to know more about the product and its USP, or if you haven't got one you need to work out what problem it addresses and why its better than the competition. That along with the customer/market research determines whether your audience is on LinkedIn, Google search, or via some other email/call based outreach programme, or something different entirely if it's really for freelancers; e.g. people per hour.

All the data is out there, you can find B2B contact detail easily with some research, if that's the route to market. You can carry out detailed research on customer/keyword data if its Google or LinkedIn.

 

[chris0320]

@AllUpHere Currently there is no budget. For example if I find that email or any cold approach works well and I need a lot more emails/numbers we'd pay for a service but I dont think the company would pay upfront for a service that is not working in small scale or not proven that it works.

We are not really making money on the software since a lot more money goes into the development and first we need to figure out exactly who to sell to, how, and what features they might need that we are missing, preferably from someone who paid and uses the software

As i was writing this I better understood what you wrote about @Paul Carmen.

So first instead of focusing on lead generation I would do market research and figure out precisely (or at least more accurately) our target customers and best ways to reach out to them then scale up that approach - Did I understand you correctly?

Although as market research I would probably do the "scattergun approach" and pay attention who is interested (this will probably be a trial and error method) and also try figuring out who would benefit the most from our product (better understanding what our potential clients do and where can we help the most) - but please let me know if you think there is a better way to do this with limited time and money (the company would pay if they see that something works and I'm doing this beside my regular management job).

Thank you!

 

[AstEver]

first we need to figure out exactly who to sell to, how, and what features they might need that we are missing

I dont think the company would pay upfront for a service that is not working in small scale or not proven that it works.

Two reasons why you need to conduct a market research and develop a marketing plan, which means the company needs to pay for it (either by using money or resources).
Also, you probably do not want to waste eight months of your and the company's time to end up with poor results or with a wasted opportunity (which, by the way, may put you in a difficult position within the company).

If a business enters or introduces a product/service to a market, it costs and the business takes risk.

 

[Clinton]

I was also thinking about connecting with people on Linkedin and cold messaging them ...

Cold message me on LinkedIn and I'd not only block your ass, I'd report you to LinkedIn. Others would, too. Collect a few of those and you lose your LinkedIn account.

Business owners / decision makers are busy people. The more that desperate sales junkies call / email / message them, cold, the more time they're wasting. If 99% aren't interested in what you're selling you're effectively taking the stand that it's fine to waste the time of this 99% in order to reach your 1%.

Cold calling / emailing is a selfish approach. I blacklist any firm that cold calls me and I do not do business with them purely on the grounds that they're selfish assh*les. I recommend other business owners similarly blacklist cold callers / emailers.

Do find a better way!

 

[Paul Carmen]

Although as market research I would probably do the "scattergun approach" and pay attention who is interested (this will probably be a trial and error method) and also try figuring out who would benefit the most from our product (better understanding what our potential clients do and where can we help the most) - but please let me know if you think there is a better way to do this with limited time and money (the company would pay if they see that something works and I'm doing this beside my regular management job).

There is, do what I suggested, anything else is will be a much bigger waste of your limited time and money. The only way to carry out marketing is to do and get enough data to make meaningful decisions.

The way to do the research is to look at the spec and features of your product to work out what problem it solves. Then you know who would benefit and who to pitch it to, you can then work out where these people are and what your marketing message to them is.

If you don't know how to do any of this research you need to either learn it, or get someone who can do it. Otherwise you'll waste much more money and time with the "scattergun approach", which is highly likely to end in failure.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Without blatantly spamming, in a couple of lines, explain what this new product does?

 

[Kevin Joseph]

I'm sure you must have heard of this advice before but you should definitely give the various digital marketing channels a go.

There are two aspects to this depending on the nature of your product

Firstly, let's say the product you're selling requires a substantial amount of education that needs to be shared with the customer, in that case doing a mass campaign on Facebook behind your target audience would work just fine.

If, however, let's say you're selling something that the market is well aware of, then doing highly relevant Google ads for your target audience would do wonders.