5-Minute Consultant: Fast Tips to Boost Your Customer Outreach

A founder cannot live on digital marketing alone — that was the big takeaway from an impromptu focus group of Inc. 5000 Masters, who recently compared notes on marketing innovations in a closed session. 

“Folks are so inundated with digital, it’s not what it once was,” said Beth Benike, co-founder and CEO of Busy Baby, an Oronoca, Minnesota-based company whose silicone play mat went viral following a Shark Tank appearance.

Ramesh Ramchandani, founder and CEO of Porter Ranch, California IT developer Topcone, agreed. “There’s too much noise on the internet,” he said.

Their anecdotal observations track with Hubspot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report — an annual survey of over 1,000 marketers. In this year’s report, respondents could identify no clear winner for the digital channel offering the biggest ROI in a world where people are served thousands of ads a day.

So, where are these fast-growth founders seeing traction?

Some founders are seeing results on older platforms. 

“We spent a lot of money on a new CMO and marketing agencies, and everything went downhill,” Benike said. “So I started over without anyone, took things over myself, and began marketing again on Facebook and Instagram. That’s been working.”

Flynn Zaiger, founder and CEO of New York City-based marketing agency Online Optimism, shared that Reddit has been a recent unlock for his team.

“I’m a big believer in underutilized or challenging platforms,” Zaiger said. “Reddit is notoriously hard to manage, and folks there can be disrespectful of brands. But I’d also recommend that people look into more niche subreddits, like r/b2bmarketing, or even the subreddits for certain cities where they might do a lot of business.”

Zaiger also shared a tool he’s been using to improve the speed and personalization of his company’s sales outreach: It’s called RB2B, and it identifies and connects with website visitors using LinkedIn profiles.

“Marketing on the internet rarely has a chance to be one-on-one,” Zaiger said. “With RB2B, you’re able to reach out directly to individuals looking at your website while they’re still browsing your website. It’s a no-brainer for sales teams in 2024.”

Some Inc. 5000 Masters are going offline to close with clients.

“I like sending postcards in the mail. I focus on niche groups, hit them with the email flow and postcards,” Benike told the group. “Then, I start calling. When we call after we’ve sent an email or a postcard, there’s some recognition.”

Zaiger agreed: “Right now, the most cost-effective marketing, outside-word of-mouth, is a postcard.” 

More market data supports the trend. Direct mail marketer Postcard mania reported a 12 percent increase in second quarter earnings, which it’s attributing to “more businesses choos[ing] direct mail to reach increasingly digital-exhausted consumers.”

Two of its direct mail automation products in particular, Website to Mailbox and Daily Mailer Postcards, have outpaced product growth. Both offer daily trigger-based mailings after prospective customers take specific actions online. 

Effective outreach is also about effectively digesting customer input, the group agreed–and here, technology can be helpful. 

“I use customer feedback constantly. I download comments into a spreadsheet, then ask ChatGPT to locate the most common ones,” Benike said. “Start your outreach with: ‘Are you experiencing this problem?’ Then, be direct. You’re more likely to get a response.”

Some founders are encouraging their staff to come up with new ideas.

Founder and CEO of Los Angeles PR agency Society 22, Danielle Sabrina said her team has been “crushing it with lead gen and emails.” 

Part of the success has been in allowing her team to try new things, while closing the feedback loop on their results. Sabrina knows how every campaign is doing “within two clicks.” When someone is seeing success with a certain approach, the founder creates a training module based on what they’re doing.

“Some of our publicists have been booking TV left and right, so we created a new training program and are seeing amplified placements,” she said.

To make this work, Sabrina knows she has to give her team their independence. 

“I celebrate people who try things differently. If you make a mistake because of risk taking, that’s OK,” said Sabrina, who arms her staff with tools like Strategic Coach to help them solve problems autonomously. “I like Strategic Coach, because it helps [the team] realize what’s at risk — whether there’s something actually at stake or not.”

Zaiger has a similar approach, and said one of his company’s values is to always be optimizing.

“Employees not taking risks leads to too much process stagnation,” he said, acknowledging that sometimes this can lead to missteps. But that’s just part of the process, and how a founder responds determines how innovative the team can be. 

“Mistakes happen,” Zaiger said. “You can’t have teams innovating without forgiveness, no matter what kind of mistake someone makes. It’s about starting that conversation with a deep breath, and a ‘Thank you for bringing this to me, I’m happy to solve it, we’ll work on this together.’ Otherwise folks will shut down.”

The experts in this article participated in a live discussion for the Inc. Masters cohort within the Inc. 5000 Community. The Inc. 5000 Community is available for free to all founders and CEOs of Inc. 5000 honoree companies. To participate in conversations and articles like this one, and to be included in teaching and speaking opportunities, honorees can upgrade your community experience with a premium Inc. Masters membership.