What I learned from my last outbound campaign (spoiler..it didn't work)

Our company is in a pretty competitive SaaS sector. We do quite well with inbound and in particular for people looking for a cost-effective alternative to the incumbent in our space. We wrote a good blog post that drove a lot of relevant traffic as it ranked well.

We thought we could maybe be proactive and target existing companies using our competitor's software with a value proposition of helping them save a significant amount by switching to us.

We managed to use a combination of LinkedIn and email to send super personalized outreach (a personalized video for each prospect.)

Open rates were great and response rates were high but a friendly 'no thanks' in most cases.

The audience was right, the personalized approach seemed to work but the value prop was wrong. In hindsight, it was way off.

The learning was that price and cost are only really factors at two moments during the life of owning a product.

1. When you are about to buy it.
2. When someone tries to raise it.

The latter is how we are really attracting people inbound. That's a really hard moment to target with outbound.

Outbound should really always focus on a value proposition or differentiator that isn't pricing. It should really be about something significant you can do that your competitor can't and really clearer articulate the value of that. Approaching it that way should usually help you charge more than your competitor.