Five Underused Marketing Tactics That Cut Through the Noise to Reach Your Leads

The bad news:

Online as well as IRL, your business leads are dealing with more tasks and distractions than ever. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, it’s tougher than ever to get your offer in front of an ideal prospect; to get them to make time for a Zoom meeting to learn more and give you an opportunity to close a sale (particularly if you’re B2B); and to create an environment where your lead can make an informed, confident decision that you are the right solution for them.

But here’s the good news:

When it comes to lead outreach, there will always be tactics that few, if any, of your competitors use. These include tactics that have largely gone into the marketing graveyard because they’re so old school, as well as emerging tactics that scrappy companies and agencies alike use to stand out amidst the increasing volume of business and life.

Here are five infrequently used marketing tactics to perk up your leads’ eyes and ears:

1. A form letter with a handwritten envelope (or automated equivalent for the envelope). While many businesses immediately throw out postcards and brochures, they pay much more attention to #10 envelopes since these contain invoices, statements, and direct business contact-to-business contact communications. A personalized offer in black ink on premium paper stock, maybe with a business card included, is a classy and inexpensive way to reach out to your ideal role in a way that they will very likely see with their own eyes. (Consider this versus a cold email, which could end up in a Junk folder, where your lead may never see it.) As for the envelope, if you or someone on your team can write well and fast with a pen, actual handwritten address lines really sell this approach. However, automated pen-like writing has come a long way in the last two decades, and you can use this, too, to save money.

2. A voice memo LinkedIn direct message (DM). Text-format LinkedIn DMs are so commonplace that a voice memo DM really stands out. I got my first voice memo DM from someone I DM’d because I liked their LinkedIn post close to two years ago. At that time, I thought that this was the future of DMs — that within a year, I’d see 60% of more of my DMs from people I don’t know being voice memos as their first method of contact. But no — I still get almost no voice memo DMs, either from new contacts pitching me or from people to whom I’m connected. The blue audio block with a white “play” button is so enticing that your lead has to click it, even if they only listen to your message once. You can also experiment with sending a second voice memo DM if your lead doesn’t respond to the first one, and/or following up with a phone call referencing your DM. I would personally stop with a third attempt — you don’t want to go crazy, like many amateur sellers do with cold drip email campaigns.

3. A phone call. Admittedly, there’s some generation-based finesse involved here — for example, many Gen Zers and younger leads view phone calls as an affront, as they hardly ever use their mobile phone’s call function. However, as Gen Y and older contacts are (currently) generally the decision makers in organizations, if you can catch them at their desk — and, obviously, if your pitch is hyper relevant to a current pain point they’re dealing with — a good old phone call can still seal the deal or get your lead closer to making a purchase decision. Just don’t take this tack with your phone leads, as it rarely works with you retaining a sterling reputation.

4. Live virtual education events. Identifying businesses whose audience you want to reach — who either match your ideal client/customer profile (ICP) or who can refer you to your ICP leads — and working with a contact or team to set up a live event where attendees will leave with actionable tips is a great way to quickly get to the heart of what you do and how it helps your audience. And since most businesses who champion these events record them, you get additional value (beyond attendee contact info for follow-ups) in the form of a YouTube recording and/or event page on your partner business’ website that link to your site. If you have stage fright, I recommend that you co-host these types of events to start with and then, when you feel comfortable, try hosting solo events — where you have 100% control over a pre-event lead funnel and communications, event content, and post-event lead follow-up.

5. Sharing a topic-specific website link at a virtual networking event. In my Virtual Networking 2 Leads System video course, I share a Google sheet template to track event performance for number of ICP leads each one delivers for your business. As you attend more events, you’ll identify those that have both a high number of attendees and a chat session that’s active beyond people sharing their contact info. If you find an event with this magical combo — and if you hear people talking about something that you’ve published relevant, helpful tips on in the past, such as a blog post — then if you share your link in the chat while people are still talking about your topic, there’s a good chance that some attendees will click your link during the event to read later. Others will download the chat session during the event, and later you’ll get some website visits from people who visit your link to learn more. The key here is acting in real time and making sure that the link you share is both relevant to the event discussion and doesn’t immediately jump to an offer.

If you feel you’re at a limit with the sales messages you use — and the selling power you have — with marketing channels like SEO, email, social media, or paid ads, give one or more of the above tactics a try and see how they perform against what you’re already using for engagement and sales conversions.

More leads matching your ICP for tactic #3, phone calls

I’ve started helping my Web Conversion Tracking marketing agency clients when it comes to sourcing more ICP-matched B2B leads for their cold phone call campaigns (even more proof that phone calls still have a place in marketing strategies). If you need more B2B phone leads to keep your sales pipeline strong, check out my done-for-you B2B leads service.