One of the biggest outbound mistakes:
always targeting the CEO.
"I was offering a vitamin to someone who was in deep pain about something else."
- Ran outbound for an SEO agency
- Targeted CEOs initially
- Low engagement
- Unexpected replies came from Business Developers
- Those replies generated referrals
- Data suggested the real buyer was BD / growth roles
- Pivoted targeting
- Campaign performance improved
- Client paused campaign to hire a new SDR
My first case study from 3 years ago: an SEO agency.
1. Started targeting FinTech companies through email and LinkedIn — the usual C-level decision-makers: founders, owners, CEOs. Used Apollo, Clay, and Linked Helper, tracked KPIs and replies in CSVs. Most bookings came after showing my client's case studies to prospects.
2. After a couple of months, they said they needed a higher ROI to keep going. It made sense. I couldn't let go of my first client like that, so I said what every lead-gen agency should say at this point: pay me only for meetings booked.
3. After a couple of hundred replies, I noticed something. Business Developers were much more open and gave more positive replies than CEOs. We weren't targeting BDs specifically — but every lead filter on every platform has a minimum 10% error rate, letting other job titles slip in. That error rate turned out to be useful: it provided an extra testing layer.
This made me realize: CEOs aren't thinking that much about SEO. They aren't even thinking about client acquisition that much. I was offering a vitamin to someone who was in deep pain about something else.
Solution: talk to the person who can use your offer as medicine, not a vitamin. We switched the target.
I looked at:
- Company characteristics of the Business Developers with positive replies
- The function and level of the people who had been referred to me
- The copy that got the best results
I launched a new campaign and took everything to another level. They had to ask me to put the campaign on hold — they needed to hire a new SDR to take all the meetings. We've done many campaigns since then. The game has changed a lot, but the biggest success is that we still have a great relationship today.
- You don't always have to target the highest decision-makers for the best results.
- Data will transition into conclusions — you need to be patient and consistent.
- Strategy gets built once a month and tested through execution — not re-brainstormed every week.
- If you're confident in your ability to deliver, don't charge more than an initial setup fee for the testing period. Take the testing period seriously — the more prior data we have, the shorter it has to be.