Strategy to Build Targeted Prospect List for Multichannel

Knowing your audience’s preferences, behaviors, and needs is not just beneficial but essential for the success of your business. Targeting the right audience is crucial as it directly influences conversion rates and minimizes the risk of spam complaints. 

According to HubSpot, segmented campaigns can achieve 70% higher open rates and contribute to a 30% higher sales pipeline value.

By identifying the  ideal customer profile (ICP), you can personalize messages to resonate with their target demographic, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.

Throughout this module, we’ll explore the strategies and techniques to construct a prospect list that drives conversions across multiple channels while ensuring compliance and fostering engagement.

Targeting the right audience

Reaching the right people with the right message at the right time is essential for driving engagement, conversions, and, ultimately, business growth. With it, you can create more personalized and relevant experiences that resonate with them. 

Let’s look at the key steps.

Identifying your target audience (ICP)

Ensuring the right message reaches the right people at the right time makes all the difference in terms of engagement, conversions, and overall business growth. With it, you can create more personalized and relevant experiences that resonate with them. 

Understanding your buyer’s persona

If you are making B2B sales, your ICP will most likely be businesses, but remember that you will still be selling to people who work for that business. It could be a sales leader or a CFO. 

You need to chalk out who you will be selling to, and what are their likes and dislikes. What makes them tick? Their KPIs, problems, frustrations, and other relevant characteristics to understand the audience better.

This will enable you to tailor better outreach, marketing efforts, product development, and customer service to meet your target audience’s specific needs and preferences.

 Market Segmentation

It divides a broader market into smaller, more manageable segments based on shared characteristics, preferences, or behaviors. 

These segments represent customers with similar needs, interests, or buying behaviors. 

By dividing the market into segments, you can tailor your outreach efforts and strategize better to meet each segment’s specific needs and preferences.

Understanding customer behaviors, preferences and, preferred channels

By understanding your audience’s preferences, behaviors, and demographics, to can tailor marketing strategies for maximum impact, this involves deciding their preferred mode of communication and the channels where they are most active.

This way, you can create targeted and personalized experiences that resonate with them, driving better engagement. 

Here’s how you can do it:

Market Research: Conduct thorough market research to identify your target audience’s demographics, such as age, gender, location, income level, and occupation.

Customer Surveys: Create surveys to gather insights directly from your existing customers or target audience. Ask about their preferred communication channels, frequency of usage, and content preferences.

Existing Data: Use analytics tools to track engagement metrics across your existing channels. Analyze data such as website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, and conversion rates to identify which channels your audience is most active on. Keep track of the data sources and actively monitor them.

Social Listening: Monitor social media platforms and online forums to understand what your target audience is discussing, their pain points, and their preferences. 

This can help you identify which platforms they are most active on and what type of content resonates with them.

Competitor Analysis: Analyze your competitors’ multichannel strategies to identify which channels they are using to reach similar target audiences. This can provide insights into industry trends and audience preferences.

User Behavior Analysis: Analyze user behavior on your website and other digital platforms to understand how your target audience interacts with your brand online. 

Look at factors such as time spent on each channel, click-through rates, customer touchpoints, user journey, and conversion paths.

Persona Development: Create detailed buyer personas based on the information gathered from market research, surveys, and analytics. 

These personas represent fictional characters that embody your ideal target audience and can help you tailor your multichannel strategy to meet their needs and preferences.

Designation / Decision-making power:  By understanding decision-making dynamics, you can tailor your strategies, personalize communication, and optimize sales processes to engage with key decision-makers and drive successful outcomes effectively. 

By combining these methods, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your target audience’s behavior, preferences, and preferred channels. 

Best practices to build prospects list

Some best practices, you can build a robust prospecting list that is segmented, organized within a CRM, and regularly updated with accurate and enriched data, maximizing the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts.

Utilize prospect list builders

• Utilize reputable prospect list builders such as Lusha, Apollo, and ProspectDaddy to gather accurate and up-to-date contact information for potential leads.
• These tools provide access to a vast contacts database, allowing you to search for specific criteria such as job title, industry, company size, and more to find relevant prospects.

Segment your list

• Segment your prospect list based on industry, company size, geographic location, job title, or level of seniority.
• By segmenting your list, you can tailor your messaging and outreach strategies to better resonate with each specific audience segment, increasing the effectiveness of your prospecting efforts.

Add to a CRM

• Once you have gathered prospect information, add it to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
• A CRM system allows you to organize and manage your prospecting list effectively, track interactions with leads, sync the lead database with external tools, and ensure timely follow-ups.

Enrich prospect data regularly

• Regularly enrich and update prospect data within your CRM to ensure accuracy and relevance.
• Use data enrichment tools or services to supplement your existing prospect data with additional information such as contact details, company information, social profiles, and more.
• Regular data enrichment helps you stay informed about changes in your prospects’ roles, companies, or contact information, allowing you to maintain a high-quality prospecting list.

Is your data compliant?

You should think hard about compliance with data protection regulations to ensure the privacy and security of individuals’ personal information. Laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California, are mandatory for your business to adhere to.

Different regulations apply based on your prospects’ location, leading to a maze of initialisms such as PECR, CAN-SPAM, CCPA, TCPA, and more. 

For businesses handling data to build prospecting lists, compliance isn’t just a best practice; it’s a necessity. Failure to comply could result in financial and reputational repercussions. 

Constructing a prospecting list involves identifying potential leads while ensuring every step aligns with relevant laws. Though each law has its specifics, certain best practices serve as a solid foundation.  

• Process only necessary data with legitimate interest
• Maintain a clear and understandable privacy policy
• Regularly audit systems for compliance
• Record data consent and opt-out requests
• Immediately honor opt-out requests
• Seek legal counsel when uncertain.

Things to avoid while building a prospect list?

Much of your cold outreach will depend on building a targeted prospect list. To make a proper prospect list, below are the best practices to follow:

Ensuring accurate and verified contact information is crucial for effective multi-channel engagement. Using outdated data leads to wasted effort; verify data accuracy regularly. Incorrect targeting results in low response rates; align your list with your ideal customer profile. Avoid unverified lists to prevent spam traps and protect the sender’s reputation; opt for reputable data providers.

Prioritize quality over quantity when building your contact list. Avoid large, generic lists and invest in tailored ones based on specific criteria. Stay away from buying pre-made lists lacking valuable details. Research thoroughly to personalize outreach effectively.

By avoiding these common mistakes, you can build a high-quality prospect list that sets you up for successful cold outreach campaigns, resulting in genuine connections and driving conversions.