Challenges
The clients of Unifocus are mostly the restaurant and hotel ranges in the USA, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. The company's primary target was to drive new business clients to their pipeline and up-sale to the existing ones. Having a full-scale marketing department, the company uses content to reach the target audience, and their sales team regularly prospects for new clients. But they wouldn’t involve Belkins team if there weren’t any pitfalls.
- SDR crisis. Unifocus aimed at attracting skillful SDRs to their team. Yet, the tight labor market cannot provide B2B companies like Unifocus with enough SDRs/BDRs. The company’s recruiter admitted that hiring a person for this role was extremely difficult. It was one of the most challenging issues they’ve ever faced.
- Long sales cycle. Sometimes, closing a deal with a client takes 6-8 months. So, the marketing efforts should pay off fast and drive incremental revenue. Unifocus needed a solution that brings more appointments and doesn’t decrease their ROI.
- Limited resources. The company was eager to start the outreach and test this channel. However, they required more resources.
Our strategy was to go after the accounts from the hospitality industry, mainly in the US, and then expand our reach into restaurants and, finally, to other continents. Here are essential insights into our lead research and outreach process.
Figuring out ICP
Sometimes, it was challenging to find the right companies that fit an ICP when we dealt with other clients. In the case of Unifocus, we had a pretty understandable product with a well-defined target audience. We targeted the chains of restaurants and hotels with more than 20 locations. It was the client's requirement, and, simply having this tip, we’ve completed the lists of prospects from the USA and Asia-Pacific with almost 5.5K contacts.
But, some adjustments were needed, leading us to the next point.
Making clarifications on contact lists
During our cooperation, we had to collate the received list of prospects with the names in the client’s CRM. We did this to ensure we do not hit any other existing opportunities in their pipeline.
Launching email campaigns & flavor the templates
Basically, we had to reach two very similar yet specific types of prospects: hotels and restaurants. We started from the USA market and designed effective templates for lead generation. We worked on separate Unifocus UVPs:
- For hotels: we emphasized the client’s current partners like Hilton, White Lodging, and Loews. It’s impossible to trash a letter from someone who deals with these giants, don't you agree?
- For restaurants: our messages hit one of the most critical issues in the hospitality industry — how to improve the value proposition to workers and avoid turnover. We mentioned more flexible scheduling, cashless tipping, and same-day pay, which are possible with the labor-management platform.
The satisfying reply rates let us know we hit the bull's eye. We didn’t make sufficient template changes until we reached out to the APAC prospects.
Initially, we offered recipients only workforce management software in our emails. But later, we sent brochures about extra services like housekeeping management for some recipients among the hotel representatives who replied and paid more specific interest.
