Hitting your TOFU Targets During Uncertain Times

In March of this year, most marketing leaders were asked to pivot their marketing strategy overnight due to the uncertainty around the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prospective and pipeline meetings, demos, and events were suddenly cancelled or postponed, and securing initial calls was nearly impossible. 

As any marketing leader knows, a stalled top of funnel pipeline (even for a month) is worrisome -- and can have downstream effects on company revenue for years to come. 

Given our work with dozens of early stage and high-growth B2B companies, we’ve navigated many periods of uncertainty, whether due to a pandemic, economic downturn, or significant company changes. Here are some strategies we’ve learned for hitting your top of funnel targets despite unforeseen headwinds that your team may be facing:  

Get Creative: The tried-and-true tactics that worked before likely won't work anymore, so you need to try something new. For example, if you previously viewed TOFU as a numbers game (the more emails and calls your BDR team makes, the more meetings Sales will have), consider pivoting to fewer, more personalized emails that clearly articulate how your company can specifically help the organization and include key metrics that matter to the persona you are targeting. This type of email grabs a prospect's attention, shows this wasn’t a mass blast email, and clearly indicates that you did your research on the company. You might also want to consider special discount offers, campaign or prospect-specific landing pages, and direct mail campaigns.

ROI Matters: In uncertain times (especially when an economic downturn could be on the horizon), a focus on ROI always grabs a prospect's attention. If you don’t have a clear understanding of your product or service ROI, now is the time to do the analysis. Once you have that analysis, leverage it across every channel. For example, run an outbound email campaign, host an in-house webinar or roundtable for a small group of prospects, or drive ads to an ROI calculator. 

Get Focused: The worst thing you can do in uncertain times is throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks. Get focused and prioritize what will have the biggest impact -- we can’t stress this enough. Be clear about your marketing strategy for the quarter: What are the one to two big boulders that will truly move the needle, and focus on those. If you find that one isn’t working, fail fast and pivot quickly.

Remove Choice: The biggest mistake we see BDR teams make is being too casual about a time to meet in their outreach. Everyone is busy and the last thing we need is more choice, so tell your BDR team to offer a few exact times (day and time) to meet in their outreach. This works, and we’ve seen it also shorten the time from meeting booked to the first meeting date - especially important in uncertain times when prospects have a tendency to reschedule or postpone indefinitely.

Get Clear About Meeting Objectives: We’ve seen so many BDR teams write really great outbound emails, but it is unclear exactly what they want to talk to a prospect about in the first meeting. During uncertain times, a prospect doesn't have extra time and wants to know exactly what you plan to cover in a meeting. This will lead to higher meeting conversion rates. 

Speed Matters: Speed is critical to the success of any marketing organization, but the ability to move quickly and pivot quickly will be key to driving TOFU. Don’t worry about the campaign being perfect - you don't need to spend two weeks writing messaging, nor a month building the assets. During that time, your competitors just slipped past you and are getting in front of your prospects. Moving fast doesn’t mean sacrificing quality; it means moving fast towards having an impact. 

Have more questions on how to hit your TOFU targets during uncertain times? Reach out to the Noted team at info@noted-marketing.com.