USER GUIDE

www.leadcrunch.ai

INTELLIGENT TARGETED DEMAND GENERATION

AI-POWERED. DIGITALLY ENGAGED. HUMAN VERIFIED.

How to Run a Successful

LeadCrunch[ai] B2B Campaign

Introduction 01

LeadCrunch[ai] harnesses data + [ai] to drive persona precision and

pipeline velocity. 02

How to make you successful 03

1. Smartly design your marketing campaigns 03

2. Incorporate artificial intelligence into your marketing stack. 05

3. Automate basic sales and marketing functions 05

4. After receiving leads from us, utilize best practices for follow

up

06

Specific Cadence Recommendations 07

Cadence Outreach 07

Cadence Pattern 08

Best Practices Guide

Best Practices Guide

Let’s talk about best practices in demand generation.

But first....

Let’s start with some context.

In today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape, companies can be mortally wounded by

new technology effectively deployed by a competitor. Let’s look at some examples.

[ai] will be the most important trend of our lifetime.

Are we overstating the importance of [ai]? Here’s what Microsoft’s Chief Envisioner has to

say on [ai], or “machine learning,” while MIT Technology Review’s article title says it all,

Machine Learning: The New Proving Ground for Competitive Advantage.

A tale of two companies: The internet begins to boom. A small bookseller decides to

compete with a big bookseller. The smaller company effectively harnesses the power of

the internet, the larger company does not. Today Amazon has a market cap of over $430B

while Barnes & Noble has faded into obscurity.

A tale of two other companies: The internet booms and DVDs proliferate in popularity. A

small movie rental company decides to complete with a big movie rental company. The

smaller company effectively harnesses the power of the internet and ability to easily mail

DVDs. Today Netflix has a market cap of over $68B and Blockbuster has faded into

obscurity.

A future tale of two companies: Artificial Intelligence, [ai], begins to boom and experts

say that it is the most important business trend of our lifetime. You or your competitor

effectively harnesses the [ai] to optimize persona precision and pipeline velocity. The other

company fades into obscurity. Who will it be?

[ai] will be a critical differentiator in sales and marketing.

Online thought leader magazine, CMO, is bullish on [ai] transforming sales and marketing

while Salesforce’s State of Marketing reports that high performing companies are already

10.7x more likely to be using predictive intelligence.

1

LeadCrunch[ai] harnesses data + [ai] to drive persona precision and

pipeline velocity.

Best Practices Guide

Have you ever felt like there should be better tools for deeply understanding your own best

customers? Have you ever struggled to build a look-alike audience? Have you ever

wondered if there are better ways to harness your existing data to improve marketing

performance? These are exactly the problems LeadCrunch[ai] was founded to solve.

Now, let us tell you what we do. Or, better yet, let’s have one of our clients tell you.

“LeadCrunch[ai] unifies high-quality data sources in an artificial intelligence-powered

platform that helped us discover our customers’ key attributes, or “core DNA”.

LeadCrunch[ai] mines your customers’ core DNA by looking at

factors such as offline data attributes, online website data, social

media, tech stack, job postings, government filings, and more

“Their platform then generates a look-alike audience based on these attributes and

outreaches to that audience through an ‘Intelligent Targeted B2B Campaign.’ We have now

run several of these campaigns targeting our audience and the results are far superior to

other methods we’ve used. 300% better, in fact. Not only that but they can tell me what

content the audience engages with the most and provides me engagement metrics. This

has helped me better map my buyer journey and message my audience more effectively.”

Then, based on the deals that become sales qualified leads or closed deals, the

LeadCrunch[ai] engine learns and gets smarter about my ideal targets.”

- Senior marketer at Ebsta

2

Best Practices Guide

For a deeper understanding of what LeadCrunch offers, please see our Media Sales Deck.

Also, we can’t help mentioning that we were recently recognized by Forbes as a top tool

for business in 2017. Aw, shucks.

But enough about us. Let’s talk about how to make you successful.

To modernize your sales and marketing practices, you must do these really, really, super

duper important things.

1. Smartly design your marketing campaigns

Think about the basic campaign parameters you’d like which should include length of

campaign, number of leads, industries, company size, geography, target job titles, and a

suppression file. Bear in mind that while you can give us boundaries if you like, our [ai]-

powered models will still drive a precise audience based on fit and engagement.

Choose basic campaign parameters:

Some clients tell us that they want to talk to only CEOs of very specific type of

company within a 100 mile radius. This is too narrow. Go wider than you think you

should. And then let our [ai]-powered algorithms optimize your target audience. We

can’t optimize if you put us in a teeny tiny little box.

Now go wider:

Curate a handful of your best top-of-the funnel thought leadership content pieces.

Here’s some basic pointers from Forbes on how to create thought leadership content

as well as some good examples. Inc also offers some solid pointers. We’ll syndicate

this content to the look-alike audience that we build for you. We’ll also provide a real-

time dashboard that measures engagement to tell you which piece of content

resonates the most with your audience and help you more precisely map your buyer

journey.

Assemble your best thought leadership content:

3

In case this term is new to you, it defines an ideal prospect as having the Budget,

Authority, Need, and Timing to buy your solution. More sophisticated marketers are

moving away from this framework since it is deeply flawed in today’s selling

environment. Using stated Budget is unwise this is more about someone’s current state

of mind than about their available dollars. In fact, we’ve sold lots of customers that said,

“We don’t have the budget right now.” Relying on Authority is problematic since

decisions are made by increasingly collaborative groups of people. Good salespeople

can assess a prospect’s Need and Timing better than the prospect since the

salesperson has the knowledge of benchmarked sales triggers. Also, the best

salespeople want to build a relationship before there is a stated Need and near-

term Timing. Otherwise, they risk a bidding war with inadequate time to establish

value and differentiation. The other major problem with using a BANT filter is that

our research shows it screens out many good prospects who do not fit this

increasingly arbitrary criteria. A much better framework is to use the basic filters

that have been successful for you combined with an [ai] model to dramatically

increase audience precision while syndicating your thought leadership content to

this audience. This way, you are nurturing the right audience while prioritizing

sales outreach those that are currently engaged with your content.

Optimize audience but create your own BANT:

As with the BANT framework, it’s very tempting to eliminate prospects with questions

designed to filter out undesirable prospects. However, we’ve seen clients pay us to

filter out many good prospects while driving up their CPL through unnecessary filter

questions. If you feel compelled to add custom questions, please keep these points in

mind:

■ Try to avoid committal questions, such as “Do you mind if a sales representative

calls you to follow-up on your survey participation?” We have seen that this type

of question does not resonate well with the prospect.

■ Try to avoid questions focused on a prospect’s available budget – it can often

change and is better to ask during the sales call. Also, it can be construed as too

forward and aggressive to ask this too early in the process.

Minimize or eliminate custom question filters:

Best Practices Guide

4

2. Incorporate artificial intelligence into your marketing stack.

In business in the next ten years, [ai] and the effective use of data will be the difference

maker between companies. Demand gen is the most difficult, most time consuming,

and arguably the most important part of the sales funnel. Don’t take it from us, take it

from this really smart guy. So why are [ai] and data suddenly important to demand

gen? Because there is now an abundance of available online and offline B2B data that,

if effectively leveraged, can help you dramatically improve your demand gen results.

We’ve already seen this with our clients’ increased pipeline velocity. But harnessing this

volume of data cannot be done effectively with human beings since it must be done at

machine scale.

Utilize [ai] in demand gen:

In Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin said, “Always be Closing.” Today we might

update his statement by saying: Always be nurturing, promoting, and socializing. If you

want to automate these things, there’s nothing better than a Marketing Automation

Platform. We use Hubspot since it takes our new content and emails it to our entire

funnel. It also syndicates this content across our social media accounts.

Nurture, socialize:

3. Automate basic sales and marketing functions

(Like you’ve never heard this before)

Set up a pattern of outreach to prospects with the right number of touches. Architect

this approach through cadence software like SalesLoft which will help your SDRs keep

a solid discipline. It also allows you to customize each touch so you sound like a human

being rather than a mass email blast robot, e.g. “Dear <first name>”. At the end of this

document, we’ve included an example of a proven cadence outreach pattern.

Do cadence outreach:

Leads are much more valuable and accurate than web traffic.

■ Try not to ask for too many pieces of data or for information that is too personal.

In your online form fills, offer several options instead of expecting prospects to

input free form text.

Best Practices Guide

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4. After receiving leads from us, utilize best practices for follow up.

Keep in mind that these leads will go through LeadCrunch[ai]’s rigorous quality control

process to ensure that:

▪ The details the prospect has entered are accurate

▪ We have all the fields of data that you require

▪ The prospect has answered all of your questions

▪ The prospect meets your qualifying criteria

▪ The contact information is correct

Understand that you bought quality:

Simply acknowledge this and resume asking them key questions about their business.

If you still feel they were not properly contacted, let us know and we can investigate.

According to the book, Predictable Prospecting, you should follow up with a well

designed cadence of 8-12 touches. Don’t give up on reaching these contacts -- we

have engaged with them twice. Giving up too soon is the sure-fire way to not see ROI

for a campaign. Be sure not to discard any of these valuable leads.

Finally, and most importantly, be persistent:

Overall Cadence

Recommendations:

▪ 90 day nurture period

▪ 5 Nurture touch points per month over 3 months

▪ Combination of both targeted calls and emails

▪ Fifteen total touch points

Bonus material!

Cadence recommendations and a sample outreach pattern.

“B2B buyers engage with vendors through an average of

six different channels”~McKinsey

Best Practices Guide

6

Specific Cadence Recommendations:

After receiving a lead from LeadCrunch[ai], re-engage the prospect with another high-

level content asset with short note that says, “Thank you for requesting ‘XYZ’ white

paper, we thought you might also like this eBook on ‘ABC.’ If you have any questions or

would like additional information regarding our solutions please confirm your availability

and will coordinate with a calendar invite accordingly. [Include one bullet point here on

what makes your solutions relevant to ‘XYZ’ company]”

Try this “First Email” Example:

Cadence Outreach:

Use the 90/10 Nurture

Methodology

90% thought leadership content and 10% sales

focused communications

Structure Your

Content Sequence

Thought Leadership Content (TLC) should start at a high-level with

assets such as white papers, infographics, blog posts, eGuides,

articles, and eBooks. Later, you should include more focused

content such as case studies, webcasts, comparison guides, and

special reports.

Contact Multiple

Decision Makers

Find the 5-7 stakeholders who are most likely to be involved in

the buying decision. Include them in your cadence outreach

pattern.

Drive Continuous

Improvement

Take advantage of LeadCrunch[ai]’s self-learning feedback loop

to make your outreach and content more precisely targeted.

Personalize Learn as much as you can about your prospect to customize

each email in your cadence.

Best Practices Guide

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Cadence pattern:

Month 1

Week 1: Email TLC

Week 2: Email TLC and Direct Call.

Week 3: Email Deeper Content

Week 4: Direct Call

Month 2

Week 1: Email TLC

Week 2: Email Deeper Content

Week 3: Direct Call

Week 4: Email TLC

Month 3

Week 1: Direct Call

Week 2: Email Deeper Content

Week 3: Email Deeper Content

Week 4: Email TLC

You can learn what content resonates with your prospect by accessing persona

insights from the LeadCrunch[ai] engagement platform. Then dig deeper through a

targeted phone call with your prospect where you discover their interests, challenges,

and goals. Build a relationship with the prospect. Based on their needs, send more

relevant and focused content accordingly. Ideally, your content will move the prospect

along the buyer’s journey and frame your entire product category around your points of

differentiation. By the end of the buyer’s journey, the prospect will ideally view your

solution as the gold standard and have a relationship with you. Your competition won’t

stand a chance.

Customize Content:

Best Practices Guide

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For further assistance, please contact us.

DEMAND GENERATION

sales@leadcrunch.ai or 888-708-6649

MEDIA INQUIRIES

olin@leadcrunch.ai or 888-708-6649

CASE STUDIES AND MARKETING EDUCATION VIDEOS

Read our case studies and education videos or view our

education videos on our YouTube channel

SOCIAL MEDIA

Follow us on Linkedin and Twitter

We truly appreciate your business and hope that you both enjoy

working with us and accelerate your growth using our system.

www.leadcrunch.ai