How To Run An Outreach Campaign for Small Businesses

How To Run An Outreach Campaign for Small Businesses

Have you considered running a blogger outreach campaign for link building recently?

It can seem like a daunting task, especially for a small software business. 

But, with the right process,  it’s actually not that difficult and in this article, I’m going to share some tips on how to get more replies, and as a result, backlinks.

The first step in any outreach campaign (and blogger outreach campaign for a small business is not an exception) would be, obviously, finding your outreach prospects. 

#1. Finding Prospects

There are a few ways of finding new outreach prospects and they are all pretty straightforward. Let’s start with the simplest one. 

Let’s imagine a pretty common situation: you wrote an article on your blog and linked to a few other sources.  

It would make sense to contact that resource and let them know about it. 

And since you’re mentioning them, giving credit to their work and potentially directing some extra traffic their way, they will be more receptive to hear what you have to say. 

You probably haven’t linked to 100s of people in your article, so you need to think of other ways to source prospects too.

Bloggers who have previously written posts on topics similar to yours would also be good targets. 

The point of contacting those guys would not be asking for a backlink in the first email you send them, but striking up a conversation. 

Discuss these posts, show the person that you’re interested in them and are more than just familiar with their content. 

If you’re able to present something interesting for them, such as information they could add to their post, you have a pretty good chance of getting a backlink. 

Just remember: don’t approach them with words like:

“Hey, nice article! Check mine out! It’s Better!”. 

That’s definitely not going to do you any favors. 

Last but not least on your prospecting list would be the people who have previously linked to content similar to yours or shared it on social media. 

Interest them in your own content and let them see that it’s in some way superior to the one they have linked to. 

Just don’t be pushy (which is the number one advice when it comes to the outreach). 

#2. Picking the Right Prospects

Not every one of your prospects is going to be worth investing time into. Let us explain: there are people that are very popular and tough to reach, but a backlink from them would give your site an extreme ranking boost. 

And, at the same time, there are guys that answer to every template email they receive but a link from them would bring essentially zero value. 

But there’s a golden zone in between those two types of bloggers. And THAT is your target. The middle class of the web, so to speak. 

So, once you’ve filled your “potential prospect” list, take a good look at it and sift out the people you’re never going to reach and the beginners without a real audience. 

The only prospects left should be bloggers in your niche with an audience large enough to make an impact, but small enough to reach them with just an email. 

But remember: that email should feel natural, friendly and personal. Avoid templates as much as you can, although it can become difficult if you’re reaching out to hundreds of people. 

Even, if you do use templates, just be smarter about it and use replacement tokens.

#3. Finding Contact Information

Alright, so now you’ve narrowed down your prospect list. 

What should you do next? 

Obviously, to reach out to them you’re going to need their emails. 

You could, of course, straight-up guess them but it’s not exactly a reliable tactic. Some bloggers will openly show their email address, while others might not be so straightforward. Take advantage of the various tools available on the Web that are dedicated to the sole purpose of getting emails from sites.

1. Vocus.io
2. Hunter.io
3. Toofr
4. Find That
5. Voila Norbet
6. FindThatLead
7. Webdef
8. Anymail Finder

Remember to check whether the emails you got are actual right since no tool is absolutely flawless. They won’t find ALL of your prospects’ emails, but using such tools is definitely worth it.

So, now that you’ve found all of your prospects as well as their contact information, it’s time to move on to the most important step in the whole process. 

#4. Writing Your Link Pitching Emails

You guessed it, it’s time to write the actual emails. If you have an extensive list of prospects, it might be very tempting to use the same template for all of them, but hold on a second. 

I know writing personalized emails for EVERY prospect is very tedious and time-consuming, so I’m not going to tell you to do that. 

A good strategy would be dividing your prospects into groups depending on the reason you’re contacting them. Separate the guys you’ve mentioned, the bloggers in your SaaS industry who write similar content to yours and the people who linked/shared posts like yours. 

The template that worked for outreachmama.com.

So, now you have three groups and three separate templates referring to the way you found those people. Be sure to make it clear WHY you are contacting them, WHO you are and, obviously, be friendly. Just not overly friendly, or it would be weird. Don’t try to sound super-professional, that just makes you seem less like a person and more like a brand. 

Remember that people like polite, fun individuals, so try to be that. And be sure to show interest not only in getting a backlink but in the person you’re talking to and their work.

 All in All

After all, even though running an outreach campaign sounds scary and definitely not a fun thing you want to do, it’s a rather straightforward process. The process of running a blogger outreach campaign for a small SaaS business like yours comes down to finding prospects, then picking out the ones worth your time, finding their emails and, of course, talking to them. Like you would in real life. Just don’t be pushy or stalky. 

You could, of course, just send EVERYONE the same email and look like a spambot, but you don’t want that, do you?

We hope you found this article helpful, and good luck with your outreach campaign!