“Growth Hacking Business” I know what you are saying to yourself: “Always more! “. Even if indeed this may seem a bit grandiloquent, it is nonetheless true that growth hacking has several specialties . In this article we will see how this technique and especially the tools can facilitate and optimize the daily life of business developers.
Salespeople play a key role in businesses. Today, salespeople have not only endorsed a new more striking Job Title “Business Developers” but they have also trained to optimize their actions using digital tools . I present to you five to use without moderation! The majority of these tools are free or freemium.
Scraping tools:
Snov.io, find and contact your future customers
The main function of the Snov.io tool was to find the composition of a professional email address. Once on your prospect’s site, all you have to do is use hunter.io to find out the type of email address (for example {first}.{last}@). Then a little tour on LinkedIn to find out who the person contacted in the target company and voila. You get a qualified professional email address.
Going to a site and then clicking on the extension can be quite time-consuming, especially if you have several hundred target companies. This is why Snov.io has developed a function to integrate a whole CSV list of company URLs. In 1 click you have everything you need!
Webscraper, export and exploit all web data
The Webscraper extension allows you to suck up information present on internet pages (directories/exhibitors in exhibitions etc). Convenient especially when paired with other tools like snov.io…
Its use is not simple but remains within everyone’s reach. Once the extension is installed, go to the page you want to scrap, right click and then “inspect”. Then, you will have to create a Sitemap where you will tell it what you want to take as information thanks to “Selectors”. Do not hesitate to watch this tutorial .
The most important in Webscrapper is that you will spend more time for the first page but once it is scraped you can duplicate the sitemap by adding URLs to it.
The secret to all scrapping is target URL analysis . For example, many directories have urls in this form: https//xxxx/nom-de-l-entreprise. So scrape all the company names on the first page of the directory and with the “concatenation” function in an excel or google sheet you will be able to reconstruct the target URLs.
The best way to learn is to test, so comment on the results you get from scrapping this directory .
Goal: 100 companies with name / phone number and link to their website.
Captain Data, automated scraping
Captain Data is what we might call a Phantom Buster-style script bank. You can select a special Linkedin script to scrape first / last name and company name for particular job titles. With this easily constituted database, you can obtain their professional email address using another tool: Dropcontact. In just a few clicks, you will obtain databases of qualified and up-to-date prospects at a lower cost .
For example, I went to look for Deliveroo employees in London (no particular job title) for a client here is what I got:
Phantombuster, generate leads from scraping
A powerful tool when it comes to lead generation is PhantomBuster . Indeed, thanks to it, you will be able to export / scrape a lot of valuable data to use to find new potential customers.
PhantomBuster supports you in 3 different phases:
- Scraping a list of leads
- Enrichment of the list with the scraping of email addresses and other data
- Automation of sending a campaign (different channels available)
What is interesting with the PhantomBuster platform is that it allows you to exploit the potential of social networks for your lead generation and in particular LinkedIn . If you are acquiring leads for B2B sales, there is a good chance that LinkedIn is a relevant platform for you. PhantomBuster gives you everything you need to scrape profiles, search results, company profiles, account activity, etc. Everything you need to generate quality leads!
As we said, PhantomBuster is not limited to LinkedIn, you will be able to extract data from other sites: Instagram, Twitter, Google, Quora, Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, GitHub, Slack, email, et even more.
Prospecting tools
Derrick, the extension to build these databases in Google Sheet!
Derrick is a google sheet extension allowing you to create a list of qualified prospects in a few clicks.
With it, you can:
- Find any person/company’s LinkedIn and email from their name
- Enrich your search results LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- Enrich the data of your companies and/or leads and find more than 15 information about them
- Update your CRM with up-to-date data from your prospects/companies.
The strength of this tool lies in its ease of use (and it’s free)! No need to have technical skills, only the mastery of Google Sheet and Linkedin Sales Navigator is important!
YAMM, the free emailing tool
Even free emailing software (like alternatives to Mailchimp) are extremely numerous on the internet and most only work on gmail. YAMM is the most effective free email tool, it’s an add-on to google sheet. This allows you to send 50 emails per day for free in an automated way. These emails are customizable thanks to merge tags and are tracked to follow the opening rate, the bounce rate etc.
Merge tags vary depending on the type of mail merge software you are going to use. They are also called personalization fields, substitution strings or personalization tags. For Yamm, merge tags are identified by < >. These tags allow you to insert data from your mailing list (in this case a google sheet). The “< >” are associated with the title of your columns.
You will write a draft with the < > where you want to personalize the email with, for example, first name, last name, company name, location or others. The more complete your database, the more efficient automation with personalization will be .
For more advanced tools in emailing do not hesitate to comment or contact me directly. The sequencing of emailing makes it possible to create commercial scenarios and in particular to automate reminders .
Meet Alfred, LinkedIn message automation
For connoisseurs it is the new Meet Leonard which has been banned by Linkedin. Meet Alfred allows you to sequencing messages on Linkedin by inviting and contacting qualified prospects. You have to see Linkedin as a huge database with your prospects neatly arranged in boxes, thanks to the filters you can pick the number and the prospects that are interesting for your business.
Then you can set up multiple automation campaigns with stages. For example :
- Visit profile
- 2 days later: Log in with a note
- 1 day after your prospect is accepted: First reminder
- 1 day later: Visit profile
- Etc
Sendinblue, the webmarketing and emailing platform to take advantage of your contacts
To use all the data you have collected previously, a tool like Sendinblue is perfect. We saw everything that Yamm could offer, especially in terms of emailing. With Sendinblue, you’ll have access to all of this, and more.
First of all, regarding emailing, you are entitled to 300 emails sent per day completely free of charge (with an unlimited number of contacts) ! Of course, this does not allow you to take advantage of the most advanced features such as dedicated IP or advanced statistical reports, but it is already sufficient. You will even have access to automation with this free version, within the limit of 2000 contacts, this already leaves you a good margin of maneuver.
The automation features offered by Sendinblue will allow you to create scenarios from your website or otherwise, whether basic or complex. You will be able to use A/B testing, manage entry and exit conditions in scenarios and of course include variables in your emails.
And, Sendinblue is not limited to emailing and marketing automation. Indeed, you can take advantage of their CRM, to do lead scoring and list all your customer contacts, send marketing SMS to your leads, create forms, Landing Pages or even Facebook Ads campaigns.
In other words, Sendinblue gives you all the keys to efficiently exploit your data, convert your leads and develop your business in an ambitious way.
Special mention for one of the most beautiful tools:
LinkedIn, the ultimate B2B prospecting tool
Having a good LinkedIn profile in tune with your prospects can be more effective than hours spent on the phone. In this sense, LinkedIn becomes an essential link in Inbound Marketing.
Inbound marketing is a subject that all business developers must work on. He cannot duplicate himself and yet his workload can very quickly become unmanageable. The goal of Inbound Marketing is the opposite of traditional prospecting. Instead of going after the customer, this strategy allows you to attract customers to your business. Not by aggressive advertising but by creating content, good self-marketing and a response to the problem of your prospects.
To do this, a good Linkedin profile is essential. In a future article I will detail the tools, tips and advice to effectively develop your profile so that it becomes a prospect magnet!
