Hey folks, I need to get my shit together and build a real outreach list for warm outbound. By that I mean, people I know/have spoken to/have interacted with on LinkedIn/have met with.

I think my data sources for this are:
- Google Takeout calendar exports for 'who I've met with'
- LinkedIn data exports for who I'm connected to and have DM'd or engaged with
- my existing CRM, Hubspot Free plan

Some enrichment will be needed, since those data sets will have to be mashed together in a way that yields contact data I can act on.

The target person I'm looking for here are heads of marketing and the owners of marketing agencies that do social media for their clients, so I'll need some sort of 'business model analyzer', even a rough one, that tells me if either a contact's business offers social media services to their clients, or if the person fits a marketing leadership role at their company.

Questions:

1. I'm on Hubspot Free; are there clear and pressing reasons to not keep this as the main data warehouse?
2. What would you use to enrich? I've used Apollo in the past, and I find Clay expensive and confusing, and I have a QuickEnrich account with a ton of credit on it
3. How, mechanically, do you suggest combining and combing through these data sets? Claude Cowork? Something else?

The end goal is to be able to set up 20-50 meetings from contacting 80-150 people that I have some sort of connection to (fortunately since these are relatively warm relationships, or at least 'not cold', I expect a relatively high response rate; the issue is moreso sorting through my tens of thousands of connections, contacts, and other data sitting in a variety of spreadsheets or in a LinkedIn data dump that I'm awaiting).

Particularly looking forward to hearing from GTM/RevOps people. Oh and for context, the product in this case is a social media management/scheduling tool, with an average subscription fee of ~$30-70/mo on the low end, ~$100-300/mo for small and growing agencies, and $500+/mo for larger agencies (or corporates with many different internal brands/divisions).

Thanks for any help y'all can offer!

P.S. Please no ChatGPT responses, pitch-and-ghost tool mentions, etc... much appreciated.

Just read a few posts from people who said they are early in their marketing careers, have watched all of the "how I scaled my business to $1B ARR" videos, have been scrolling social media influencer content about marketing for months, and yet are finding that the job of digital marketing is, frankly, pretty freaking hard.

The trouble with learning from the fountain of "crack knowledge", aka of well-edited Youtube videos and TikToks etc, is that there's very little correlation with how entertaining a video is, and whether the advice in it is true, or whether it will be effective if you apply it.

A Few Examples of Bad Marketing Advice

Here's an example: we've all heard the advice, "don't talk about features, talk about benefits". But this is complete dreck when you have a revenue goal, and worse, can lead you to write some pretty awful-sounding copy. No, seriously, I want you to talk about features *more*! Telling people 'the benefits' aka "this will improve your life/health/revenue/portfolio by 84%" is generally going to arouse so much skepticism, it's not even worth saying, unless it's coupled with a How You Will Help Them Do That.

Another example: the marketing/sales advice of "ask them what it's costing them to not buy from you" (I find this often in B2C/consumer sales but it sneaks into lower-end B2B as well.) Yet again: while this might have worked in days past, smart consumers can smell this stuff a mile away. This leading question reeks of desperation. It's bad advice.

Marketing Is Actually Pretty Dang Simple

If I were to boil this down:

Strip away ALL of what you've been told about how to tactically manipulate people's psychology into buying your stuff. Marketing works best when you dumb down the "thinking you have to 'do marketing' part of it".

All marketing (and sales) is, is the process of helping people (who are a good fit to buy your stuff) solve their problems.

Loading up on tactics, tricks, methodologies, and Youtube videos about how so-and-so did that or thinks you should do it, can really cloud you from understanding the core of it, which is really very simple.

Once you yourself can apply this very simple, core, practical view of marketing to your own company, it'll sink in.

Once it has truly sunk in and been part of your psyche, that your job is just to help people make better decisions and solve problems (in a way that involves your product), you'll be able to expand on that understanding, layer on your own point of view, incorporate interesting tactics you've learned, and all of that will stuff click better.

tldr

Too many marketers are just 'twenty tactics in a trench coat' with no substance or fundamental understanding of the job they're supposed to be doing.

Don't fall into that trap and you'll do great 😄