How to Create Targeted Lead Lists

Over the past 9 years, I’ve acquired 1,000+ clients for my agencies. If I were starting over today, here’s exactly how I’d land my first 10 clients: Step 1: Start with the right data The biggest challenge when starting out? Finding highly targeted prospects who are ready to buy. Here’s how I’d solve that: Google Maps. Yes, I said Google Maps. Why? Because it’s an untapped goldmine for qualified leads. With over 4,000 B2B categories, it’s packed with local businesses and SMBs often overlooked - or missing - from LinkedIn. These are hidden gems waiting to be discovered. Scrap (https://scrap.io/s/9MYK) transforms this goldmine into actionable leads by extracting from Google Maps listings: - Emails, phone numbers, & websites - Social media profiles - Website technologies - Even Google Maps ratings & reviews Filter and focus on your ideal targets in just 2 clicks. For example: - Restaurants with 4+ ratings but no Instagram. - Local businesses with websites but no ad pixels. - SMBs in specific niches or locations. Scrap’s real-time data extraction ensures you always have the most accurate info - and it’s available as a Chrome Extension for instant insights. Step 2: Personalize your outreach Generic outreach doesn’t work - relevance is everything. Try this playbook: - Subject Line: Use something attention-grabbing like “Quick question about [business name]” or “Idea for [service].” - Personalize: Reference their Google Maps reviews, website, or niche. For example: “Congrats on your 4.9-star rating - I can see why people love your café.” - Partner Up: “I help cafes like yours boost foot traffic through email marketing. I noticed a few opportunities I’d love to share.” - CTA: End with a low-pressure ask: “Does this sound worth exploring?” Pro Tip: Pair the emails from Scrap (https://scrap.io/s/9MYK) with LinkedIn outreach - connect or engage with their posts to build trust. Step 3: Stay consistent and scale your efforts Build momentum through persistence: - Follow Up: Most responses come after the 2nd or 3rd touch. Example sequence: Email → LinkedIn connect → Follow-up email → Call. - Track Metrics: Monitor open rates, replies, and booked calls. Aim for a 20%+ email response rate and 10%+ meetings booked. - Leverage Referrals: Once you’ve landed a few clients, ask, “Know anyone else who might benefit?” and share testimonials like, “We helped a local coffee shop grow foot traffic by 20% in 30 days.” - Automate: Use Scrap for fast lead gen and a CRM to manage outreach. Recap: - Use Scrap (https://scrap.io/s/9MYK) to turn Google Maps into a lead-gen machine for local businesses, SMBs, and niche prospects. - Personalize your emails with insights and a clear CTA. - Stay consistent by following up, tracking results, and leveraging referrals. - And remember: Your first 10 clients lay the foundation for scaling. #ScrapPartner

We ran a micro email campaign last week to just 400 leads—and booked 3 enterprise-level meetings. Here’s exactly how we did it, step by step ⬇️ We’ve been experimenting with micro campaigns—highly targeted, small-scale outbound campaigns—and the results have been 🔥. For this campaign, we specifically targeted followers of a competitor's LinkedIn page. Here’s the exact process we used: Step 1: Build the list We used a tool (still in beta—DM me if you want details 👀) to scrape the followers of our competitor’s LinkedIn page. The tool provided us with an 8,000-contact CSV file. Step 2: Filter the list Imported the list into Clay to filter down to contacts who fit our ICP (in this case, sales leaders), got us to 440 highly relevant prospects. Step 3: Enrich the data Used Clay email waterfall for enrichment. My go-to tool for emails is Findymail (seriously incredible—post coming soon on why I love it, but by FAR the best accuracy in terms of email addresses) Step 4: Craft the outreach Uploaded the refined list into Smartlead for sequencing. Wrote highly specific, competitor-relevant copy, because we knew they were already familiar with our competitor. Here’s the structure we used: Plain text message 1: "Saw you follow [competitor]—curious if you’ve tried video prospecting. Mind if I send you a 30-second video showing how we’re different?" Plain text message 2: Called out the competitor directly: “We differ from [competitor] in [specific way] and have helped companies like [ABC Corp] drive [X results].” Video outreach: Created a personalized video to show how we differ from the competitor using Sendspark. Step 5: Results 3 enterprise meetings booked from just 400 leads. Step 3 was the MVP (s/o Sendspark dynamic videos 🙌 ) Definitely looking at scaling these campaigns out even more over the coming weeks! Who else is running a micro campaign like this? #saas #outbound #sales

At UserGems 💎, our go-to-market motion has been account-based (ABM/ABX) since almost day one. Its efficiency makes sense for us. Four years later, it's still 20%+ of our pipeline. Some of the learnings we've had along the way: Account Selection 🚫 Just... don't: Target any possible company that you come across -- legacy list uploads in your CRM, sexy logos seen on news headlines and billboards, etc. 🥈 Good: Build a list of companies that match your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) criteria, e.g. industry, employee size, geography, technography, revenue, etc. 🥇 Better: Incorporate signals that indicate the company is "in-market", e.g. funding, hiring trends, intent data, etc. 💎 Best: Incorporate signals to prioritize accounts that are easier for your Sales/SDR team to break into, e.g. your previous customers are there, new key exec hires/ promotions, referral connections, etc. 💡 Pro tip: review your ICP criteria with sales, marketing, AND customer success leaders to optimize for the highest win rate AND lower churn risks. Prospect Selection: 🚫 Just... don't: tell reps "We usually sell to [DEPARTMENT]; go find those leaders". The ability to find and prioritize right decision makers, influencers, etc. varies from rep to rep based on their experience & skills. Wrong prospects = No deal. (Plus, the operational inefficiency of this laissez faire approach gives me anxiety 😬) 🥈 Good: Have a list of target persona's titles (or a boolean string) that is shared with the team. Reps then build a lead list in SalesNav, ZoomInfo, etc., then research each prospect for outreach. 🥇 Better: Have a list (and, train the team) on common signals to prioritize warmer prospects -- so they don't end up grabbing the first 5 Director of [X] alphabetically. Signals like: existing & previous relationships with your company (if any), recently hired and promoted (indicator of having budget), have mutual connections with your execs & investors, etc. If you already leverage these signals to select accounts (ie. the Best option above), it would make the prospect selection easier for the reps. #alignment 💎 Best: Prospects are identified and prioritized based on signals that you care about & past deals, then surfaced where reps do their prospecting (e.g. CRM, sales engagement tool, etc.). No need to jump around between tools. 💡 Pro tip: Run an analysis of your target personas 6-12 months -- who involved when. You might be surprised how many teams within the same company disagree who their target personas are. After that is where the fun & high-value parts come in, e.g. creative marketing ideas, personalized & relevant sales outreach. We're still experimenting but it's clear that if we can automate the account & prospect selection process at scale for the team, they'll have more time for the high-value tasks, enjoy their jobs more & make more $$$. And companies will need less headcount. Yay, #efficiency 🙂 #pipelineanxiety #revenue #sales #marketing