Comments on: The Anatomy of Poorly Targeted Outreach

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 18:15:55 +0000

I get these all the time too. Sometimes I write back with a prospecting email, offering to help with their email campaigns. No takers yet, but they represent a potential customer base…

By: Paul May

Paul May — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 14:59:45 +0000

In reply to Jason. Hey Jason. Stephen is on vacation this week, so I'll jump in for him. I agree that it doesn't help link builders, but I think it also provides an opportunity for people who are doing it right to stand out. Sounds like you're doing the hard work required to make that happen.

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 09:21:17 +0000

Some excellent points here. Always makes me cringe when I see examples like this, doesn’t help our cause as link builders. I spend a disproportionate amount of time on a prospect list as it is so important to get it right. If it is outsourced to someone that maybe does not have English as their first language then the subtlety of English can be lost and they miss the context (as we can see in the examples above).
Looking forward to your next piece Stephen!

By: Stephen Panico

Stephen Panico — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 15:51:38 +0000

In reply to Ann. Thanks Ann! That's an interesting approach. What sort of probing question would you ask? Something generally related to the topic or more closely targeted towards the pitch?

By: Ann

Ann — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 00:33:01 +0000

This is spot on! I agree that the key to conversion is in fact taking time to understand the context of the websites being reached out to. Assuming the first list of prospects is clean with at least 90% confidence in terms of relevance, it would also help to thresh out disinterested contacts by asking a 1-liner probing question first and wait for their reply before pitching anything at all. This pulls a curated list of relevant+interested contacts.

By: Stephen Panico

Stephen Panico — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 20:12:25 +0000

In reply to Sarah Fleming.

Glad you liked it! It’s understandable that you’ve been “lazy” about understanding recipients, especially when starting out. It can be intimidating when you’re looking at a large list, and the temptation to just send to everyone at once is real.

Unfortunately, it can mess up your reputation and won’t be effective. Quality outreach really does get dramatically better results.

I’d add just one thing to your point: I actually think there are lots of great tools you can use to build an outreach list. The issue isn’t using the tools, but rather relying on them 100% when you really need to build context. The ideal tool will let you get a lot of the “necessary but not sufficient” information about a site so you can quickly weed out the ones that won’t be helpful for you. That way, when you do start visiting the sites to build context, your list will be smaller and more targeted than just running a broad search and scraping everything.

By: Sarah Fleming

Sarah Fleming — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 19:55:56 +0000

Love this! I totally agree with your point on not taking enough time to understand targeted sites. It takes way more than a just a quick keyword search on a journalist or media directory, and ridding lazy outreach habits is the only way forward.

I must say that I have personally fallen victim to being lazy when getting to know every single recipient, but it’s clear that when you actually take the time, you really do see a better return for results!

Excuse the rambling haha! But I find it so ironic how list building tools actually take away the substance behind building real human connections through outreach.