What is the best way to recruit mid to small size businesses to a B2B SaaS beta considering outreach is costly (time & money)?

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Working on behalf of a client on a product for businesses regarding foreign currency exchange & invoice integration. Product still in infancy, need beta users to validate MVP. Thoughts welcome on how to do this more effectively.

B2B Marketing

B2B

Karen McFarlane answered

I don't have a great answer if you have a limited budget and time, but I would focus on

1) Building a social media strategy with an incentive plan attached to spark engagement.

2) Create a "hit list" of companies that fit the profile and ask them to participate. Not sure how many companies you'd need for the beta but this select list could have special privileges and guarantees such as free or reduced cost when it launches.

3) Check out launchrock.com. For $5 per month you can build a acquisition website and get free promotion to their audience which I think is 200K+ people. Not sure the demo of those people though.

4) Rent a list of contacts in your target market, perhaps through a trade publication that caters to your audience, and send an email (or series of emails) asking for their participation and telling them why they should participate and what they will get for it.

Alex Glenn answered

Great question!

Here are 3 Free Tools Every B2B Marketer Can Use To Scale Their LinkedIn Efforts:

I’ve been marketing in LinkedIn for years now. Tools and tactics come on go, but I have been using a few strategies with the tools below to develop more/better connections in certain verticals. I do not have an affiliate relationship with any of the products in this tutorial. I just use them myself, and believe they are the most valuable for my needs. Since tools seem to break every time LinkedIn deploys an update, try these out ASAP and let me know how they worked for you in the comments below.

I'd recommend these extensions to:

Recruiters and hiring team's who need to continually recruit and fill a backlog of available candidates.
Anyone involved in B2B sales and/or marketing.
Here they are:

LinkedHub Chrome Extension - This amazing tool is relatively new, but it does two incredible things; (1) auto-drip sequences to new connections that exist in a people search criteria of your choice, and (2) auto-populate your HubSpot CRM with connections from search if you need:

Linked Helper Chrome Extension - If you haven't used this yet, you're about to have something extremely powerful in your browser. LH has a number of features, but in this tutorial, I'll highlight these: (1) Collect profiles from search for auto-visiting, and (2) connect to all second contacts from search.

*Note, LinkedIn Helper offers much more than Dux Soup. However, you would need Dux-Soup | Home to do things like visit all the members profiles in a certain LI group.

*You may want to run this overnight - to do that, install Keep Open extension so you can keep your screen on and the tool running as long as you need.

Find That Lead - I've used a half a dozen scraping tools. With recent changes, and at the time I'm writing this, FTL is what's working best for email capture/store from company sites and LinkedIn pages. What's great about FTL is that it also has a Google Sheet add-on so you can create a sheet with columns for first name, last name, email, and company URL filled in, then let FTL run through the company URL column to find and add emails for that domain. It makes scraping fast/simple.

Agile CRM - This is my personal favorite CRM for SMB use. For a negligible expense (or free if you're under 5000 contacts), you can use Agile to run triggered drip sequences, track contacts as they browse your site, send desktop notifications, SMS messages or emails to contacts who meet certain criteria... and track your sales leads through their pipeline dashboard. It has features and benefits not even HubSpot has. I can't say enough about this tool.

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These are the tools and how they work together, for a look at the actual strategy I used, click here.

Let's get your extensions installed and setup a new campaign:

STEP 1 – Setup accounts with each of these three tools:

Each of these services has a free version. And this tutorial outlines that version for you. However, depending on how much you use LinkedIn for prospecting now, and your account level, you may be forced to upgrade to LinkedIn premium to fully-utilize this process.

Linked Helper:

Find That Lead:

LinkedHub:

AgileCRM:

Step 2 - Install the chrome extensions for your new tools.

If you do not use Chrome, you will need to install Chrome first. When you have Chrome opened, click on these three links: FTL, LinkedHub, Linked Helper.

STEP 3 - Run search > connect > endorse contacts for that term on LinkedHelper.

Before you start messaging, you will want these contacts to have seen your face before. Because campaigns in the LinkedHub tool will go back and message current contacts fitting that description as soon as you launch it, I recommend reminding these people who you are by triggering non-intrusive - "____ viewed your profile" as well as "So and So endorsed you for ____ skill" notifications from LinkedIn to the same audience you're about to message. This will increase the response rates from your messaging campaigns when those go out.

** 9/15/2017 ADDENDUM - Linked Helper just released a new feature allowing users to upload entire .csv's of Linkedin profiles they want to use the tool on (auto-visit, invite to connect, endorse...). This allows us all to scrape lists of profiles before deploying the tool as opposed to simply running the tool on an entire job title or brand search (not as targeted). Here is more info on steps to get that process done. And if you need a list of your target clients/users/candidates scraped and verified, contact me today. I have a special gift for you :)

STEP 4 - Setup your first messaging sequence.

Open your LinkedHub extension as well as your LinkedIn account >> click on "My Network". You will only be able to run one sequence at a time, so plan your first in correlation with the audience you are in need of reaching/connecting with right now. This can be specific job titles, skills, or even an exact keyword in their profile like "seeking opportunities". You will want to correlate this search with the search you will deploy Linked Helper on in your next step, so determine what audience you want to get a message in front of now.

Choose your first target audience - Search for the keyword or title of the profiles you are interested in messaging. If you are a recruiter, you can try searching profiles with the keyword "seeking opportunities". If it's a profession, choose the dropdown option for "people with this skill".
2. Add URL's to LinkedHub - Copy the URL of the search page, and paste it into the LinkedIn Search URL's box in your LinkedHub dashboard:

*Note - although you can stack multiple URLs in any campaign, I don't recommend doing this.

3. Create your first message and set it to zero days so it goes out immediately after they accept your connection. You do not want to:

4. Create one more message for one day later. In this message you will put your link or request. Definitely use the {firstname} and {company1} tags to personalize this message.

*Note: It will send messages to anyone you are already connected to who fall under the search you are using, so make sure that's ok with you before you start. If everything looks good, start that puppy up.

STEP 7 - Start auto-collecting, adding and endorsing.

If you installed the extension Linked Helper, you should see the widget in the bottom right of your screen while in any Log In or Sign Up window. If so, paste the same link you are using for the LinkedHub campaign into your browser, hit enter and then go to "1st Tab:" of your Linked Helper widget and turn on:

"Collect second contacts for inviting"
"Invite collected 2nd contacts"
In "2nd Tab:", you will want these tasks on:

"Profiles Auto-Visiting"
"Collect profiles from search for extraction"
"Extract collected profiles"
Let that run for a few hours in an open window.

*Tip: In between your messages (later that day or the next), bring that search up once more, go to the "3rd Tab:" and turn on "Endorse Contacts." This will just provide your new connections with a notification with your face on it - simple reminder who you are.

STEP 8 - [If you are also planning to use email] Export and load those lists into into Find That Lead to start scraping for emails.

So what do we now know? We know these people have seen your invite, responded or not, have received one or two messages as well as at least one notification from LinkedIn about your interaction with their profile. Maybe they have responded, maybe not. But, if you are using this strategy to sell something very specific, you may want to continue this into email.

You will notice we have been compiling a .csv list of the data of these profiles you are now connected to in Linked Helper. This export will provide you with your connection and email addresses for those you are connected to. Export it, and use your Find That Lead account to start

Now, load those to FTL.

Your next step will be adding these to your CRM and then uploading them as retargeting lists to your Adwords, Adroll, LinkedIn, Facebook... or other platform you use for retargeting ads.

If you are extremely confident these contacts will want what you are offering, or if you have a special offer for LinkedIn connections only, and you want to assume they are too busy to read LI messages, cold email these connections at your own risk.

STEP 9 - Setup AgileCRM, load your email contacts, and start a drip sequence.

This is more of an involved process you will have and need their on-boarding team for. But, AgileCRM is by far the easiest robust marketing automation platform I have ever used. And I do not get an affiliate fee for mentioning them. They built something truly fantastic for SMBs to use for marketing and sales processes. So, here are the items to check off before launching your email agenda with Agile:

Make sure to add their pixel to your site. If you have Wordpress, search and install their plugin. This will allow you to track in real time those contacts interaction with your site.
Allow for desktop notifications from Agile. This will allow you to receive notifications when someone is browsing your site.
Install their chrome extension. As you collect connections in LinkedIn, you can automatically import them from LI to Agile.
Create and swap out forms on your site for Agile's custom embeddable forms.This will put contacts right into Agile from your sites contact page or newsletter or lead capture... And, you can tag them as they come in with a relevant tag like "Web Lead" so you can setup automated sequences to go to leads based on tags (LinkedIn prospective customers will get a different sequence than prospects coming from the site, for example).
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For a more specific tutorial on using some of these tools for LinkedIn prospecting, check out this article.

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Hope you enjoyed this!

Alex

Alex Walker answered

Are you still looking for ways to hire? If so, make sure you have a strong recruitment strategy on Indeed. Let me know if you'd like any suggestions on how you can optimize your account.

Joy Broto Nath answered

The best way to recruit mid to small size businesses to a B2B SaaS beta are as follows:
1. Utilize referrals.
Referrals are a good way to screen potential candidates before even interviewing them. “The absolute best recruiting would be to ask for referrals from your network,” said Jonaed Iqbal, founder and CEO of NoDegree. “Referrals are the No.” While you should not give referrals preferential treatment, being recommended by someone already on staff or in your network is an added benefit for that applicant. One way to solicit referrals from current employees is to implement a referral bonus program. If you are a small business struggling to find candidates for jobs, look to referrals for help. Referrals can make the hiring process significantly smoother, and they should be an integral aspect of your recruitment strategy plan.
2. Post on niche job sites.
“Niche job boards offer an optimal medium for small businesses to connect with ideal candidates for three reasons,” said Lee McMillan, founder and CEO of PeakSeason. “First, these candidates have demonstrated an embedded interest in the niche by visiting the niche job board in the first place. Second, niche job boards generally allow employers to customize and highlight their strengths better, since they were developed to target a specific sector or job type. Third, niche job boards generally have fewer listings and fewer mega-sized employers. “There are hundreds of niche job boards online and finding the right one for your small business depends largely on your industry and your recruiting strategy. Additional research can help you find online niche job boards that work best for your business. Other ways to narrow down the talent pool include posting job openings in a local newspaper or on the local newspaper's website. While the newspaper industry is far from flourishing, local papers may still reach thousands of people in your area. The online content from local newspapers also attracts thousands of readers who may seek out the paper's job board to look for openings in the area. Attracting local talent through a local news source may be easier than using a global platform like LinkedIn. Using a niche job site does not mean you have to abandon traditional measures, though. There is nothing wrong with posting an opening in a local newspaper and LinkedIn, for example. In addition to niche job sites, using social media can attract applicants, especially if you have a loyal following. Niche job sites can help attract applicants, but do not forget to post openings on your own site and to share those openings on social media regularly.
3. Hire on a trial basis.
Businesses struggling to find the right candidates should consider hiring on a freelance or trial basis. For example, you can hire a candidate to work on a couple of projects with your team to get a better sense of their talent and skills. This route requires proper business etiquette and clear rules and boundaries. If you ask someone to perform a minor project that takes one to two hours solely as a test of their abilities and you won't use that work for your business's gain, it's OK not to provide payment. Much like job referrals, hiring on a trial basis is a way to feel confident that the person you are hiring is a good fit for your business. Hiring on a trial basis is also a way for employees to see if they enjoy working for your company. The trial period acts almost like an onboarding process, as the candidate learns the basics of the company's workflow during the projects.
4. Write better job descriptions.
While writing better job descriptions isn't necessarily a recruitment strategy, it's a quick way to improve your recruiting success. Hiring elite candidates means you need to attract elite candidates. The best job descriptions are specific and clear. Try to keep your job description succinct so applicants feel comfortable reading through the entire description. It can be beneficial to ask your team to help write the job description, so it is as accurate as possible. Place an emphasis on writing reasonable job descriptions. Some companies ask for significantly too much or too little in their job descriptions. A company looking for an entry-level employee may ask for three to five years of experience in a role, which likely is not a reasonable request given the volume of recent college graduates applying for entry-level jobs. Avoid being overly excited in your job description. It is fine to be excited about the role and to showcase your fun company culture but using phrases like “ROCKSTAR salesman!” or being overly aggressive in your use of capitalization and exclamation points can turn off qualified candidates. Keep your job descriptions professional.
5. Offer relevant perks.
Being flexible with schedules and offering remote work appeals to today's workforce. Toptal, a company that helps connect freelancers with businesses, is completely remote. The company believes offering remote work gives it greater access to talented workers across the globe. He did caution that remote work is not for everyone, and businesses need to find employees who will remain engaged and productive when working remotely. Not all businesses can offer remote work, but it is one perk that is worth considering if you are struggling to attract top talent to your small business.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath