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How we generate $25K ACV leads with LinkedIn outbound.
Episode 3327th March 2023 • B2B SaaS Podcast • Upendra Varma
00:00:00 00:12:51

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Santi Magazu, CEO of OrbitalAds talks about how they got their first 12 customers (with a ticket size of around $25K ) by reaching out to targeted leads on LinkedIn. We also talk about their SDR outreach process, conversion funnel & how he intends to grow the company going forward.

  • How OrbitalAds helps companies (primarily agencies) optimise their paid search campaigns
  • How they got their first 10 customers in just 12 months
  • How LinkedIn outreach & email outreach on targeted niches is responsible for most of the new growth
  • How they are investing in inbound channels like webinars etc.
  • Team, external funding & future vision

Transcripts

Upendra Varma:

So out of the 12 customers that you've sort of got, uh, sort

Upendra Varma:

of, uh, managed to close so far, like where, where, which one was the, was

Upendra Varma:

the most responsible channel for you?

Santi Magazu:

The most responsible channel so far, uh, has been, I'm

Santi Magazu:

thinking, I'm thinking because it changed over time, but, uh, so far

Santi Magazu:

has been link in probably Link in

Upendra Varma:

link.

Upendra Varma:

How, how many customers did you sort of get from LinkedIn as such?

Santi Magazu:

I think we, we got over 50%

Upendra Varma:

for liquid.

Upendra Varma:

Hello everyone.

Upendra Varma:

Welcome to the Previ SA podcast.

Upendra Varma:

Today we have Santi Mugga with us San uh, Santi here runs a

Upendra Varma:

company called Orbital Ads.

Upendra Varma:

Hey Santi, welcome to the show.

Santi Magazu:

Thank you much for, uh,

Upendra Varma:

having me.

Upendra Varma:

Alright, Sandy, let's get started and let's try to understand what your

Upendra Varma:

product does and why, uh, customers pay

Santi Magazu:

you money.

Santi Magazu:

It's very simple.

Santi Magazu:

We help, uh, manage, uh, uh, pay search campaigns in Google Ads.

Santi Magazu:

So basically, if you use Google Ads to get leads, to get awareness, We have a

Santi Magazu:

very simple way, it's a SaaS service.

Santi Magazu:

So we connect to your Google Ads account and you basically define the rules.

Santi Magazu:

So let's say, let's say that you want to optimize your CCP C or have

Santi Magazu:

a target cost per lead or a CPA, or return on advertising spend.

Santi Magazu:

So you define the rule A.

Santi Magazu:

We automatically connect to your Google accounts and we process all the

Santi Magazu:

data from your Google search report.

Santi Magazu:

We can also import data from third party.

Santi Magazu:

Samera Citrix, um, or uh, similar web for keyword research and we are automatically.

Santi Magazu:

Identify keywords you need to add your to your account or you need to ize or

Santi Magazu:

you need to move from another to another.

Santi Magazu:

We use a natural language processing to do that, and what we do is

Santi Magazu:

basically we improve performance by about 15 to up to 20%.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

Of your campaigns, eh, end.

Santi Magazu:

Top of that.

Santi Magazu:

We save time to the tip because you don't need to do this

Santi Magazu:

manually or do scripts to do.

Upendra Varma:

So I wanna understand who your customers are and who you're trying

Upendra Varma:

to sell this particular product to.

Upendra Varma:

So can you, uh, so how many paying customers do you have

Upendra Varma:

on your platform as of today?

Upendra Varma:

We have

Santi Magazu:

10 right now.

Upendra Varma:

10.

Upendra Varma:

And who are these customers?

Upendra Varma:

What exactly do

Santi Magazu:

they do there?

Santi Magazu:

There are three types of customers.

Santi Magazu:

There are.

Santi Magazu:

Advertising agencies, which run campaigns for their clients.

Santi Magazu:

So very large, uh, clients, uh, utility telcos, insurance, you name that.

Santi Magazu:

That's the first time is, is advertising agencies.

Santi Magazu:

They do this because they can deliver better service and

Santi Magazu:

they save time the second time.

Santi Magazu:

Are companies who manage advertising campaigns internally.

Santi Magazu:

So they have an internal team doing this.

Santi Magazu:

So they're looking for tools for the same reasons.

Santi Magazu:

And third is a new segment we identify are what we call lead generation agencies.

Santi Magazu:

So these are people who generate leads and that they sell the qualified lead to

Santi Magazu:

utilities, insurances, telco, et cetera.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

And approximately how much revenue were you doing across all of these

Santi Magazu:

customers last.

Santi Magazu:

The, the average ticket is in the range of, uh, 15 to 2000, uh, dollars per month.

Santi Magazu:

Sorry, 1500 to $2,000 per month.

Santi Magazu:

That's, that's

Upendra Varma:

the average, correct.

Upendra Varma:

$25,000 annual contract value.

Upendra Varma:

Something on, on that.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

And that's the range.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

And when did you get the first customer

Santi Magazu:

on your platform?

Santi Magazu:

We got the first SaaS customer in, uh, October, 2020.

Santi Magazu:

So exactly two years ago.

Santi Magazu:

That was the first one.

Santi Magazu:

But to be frank, the product was sort of, Mvp, minimum viable product is

Santi Magazu:

not the full product we have now.

Santi Magazu:

So we spent the first 12 months basically adjusting the product through

Santi Magazu:

the needs, and we really started selling, uh, beginning of this year.

Santi Magazu:

Beginning of this year, this is when we really started selling.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

So it's, it's been approximately a year or so, right?

Upendra Varma:

Something like that.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Santi Magazu:

It's been about one year to find you the draw that we've been

Santi Magazu:

in business for, for about 12 maps.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So since you got your Tenal customers, right.

Upendra Varma:

So I, I'm assuming you know everything about this customer.

Upendra Varma:

So talk to me about the process.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

Where did they find you?

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

How did that type of funnel look like for you?

Upendra Varma:

Were you running Google ads on your platform itself, or

Upendra Varma:

how did it work out for you

Santi Magazu:

so far?

Santi Magazu:

So we don't use Google ads a lot to, to be frank, because

Santi Magazu:

we go to a very niche segment.

Santi Magazu:

This has have to be people who manage complex campaigns.

Santi Magazu:

Cause if you have simple campaigns, you do need, uh, so, uh, which have a

Santi Magazu:

significant investment in Google ads.

Santi Magazu:

So they spend a lot.

Santi Magazu:

and they have complex mix.

Santi Magazu:

For instance, people who, uh, do campaigns in different languages because

Santi Magazu:

our platform is language agnostic, so you can run campaigns in, in different

Santi Magazu:

languages, even not speaking the language.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

, which is cool.

Santi Magazu:

Uh, so it's a very difficult to, uh, to do a Google Ads

Santi Magazu:

campaigns and target these people.

Santi Magazu:

Yes.

Santi Magazu:

Uh, so we use more Lincoln.

Santi Magazu:

, you can do very specific audiences, and we do a lot of, uh, outbound,

Santi Magazu:

uh, sales, uh, SDR reach.

Santi Magazu:

So we really target people and we drive to them.

Santi Magazu:

We call them every focus.

Santi Magazu:

We have a very niche audience.

Santi Magazu:

So, so

Upendra Varma:

just, just help me quantify this, right?

Upendra Varma:

So when you say outbound, why are your SDRs, what channel are you

Upendra Varma:

primarily using and what is that particular niche that you're target?

Santi Magazu:

So, uh, let me give you some numbers around this.

Santi Magazu:

So we target ca clients in Europe, uh, north and South America,

Santi Magazu:

and India for some reasons.

Santi Magazu:

India is, is a very good market for this.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

, as you may know.

Santi Magazu:

So we, uh, reckon to have about 12,000 customers.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

, target customers.

Santi Magazu:

There are 12,000 companies right now who can buy our service.

Santi Magazu:

So we can go very, very.

Santi Magazu:

Micro segmenting.

Santi Magazu:

So we look, uh, advertising agency India and there are not more than I no

Santi Magazu:

1,500, which are really interesting.

Santi Magazu:

So we go very precise on that.

Santi Magazu:

On big A advertisers us there are maybe 500.

Upendra Varma:

So how does the process look like once you

Upendra Varma:

figure out this particular niche?

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

So are you doing outgoing emails or it, or is it outgoing calling

Upendra Varma:

or some some magical strategy

Santi Magazu:

that Yeah, we do a mix of that.

Santi Magazu:

So first we tend to do, um, Emails first.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

, and depending on reaction, if they opened email, then we call.

Santi Magazu:

So it's a mix of, uh, outbound emails and calling mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

. And we are, yeah, we are just starting to do a bit of inbound,

Santi Magazu:

doing webinars, doing uh, specific content and how people reach out to us.

Santi Magazu:

We had the webinar yesterday for this first time.

Santi Magazu:

For same manager in the US we got 50 people, over 50 people joined

Santi Magazu:

the webinar, which for us, our small company was, was a big success.

Santi Magazu:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

So, so I want you to sort of quantify this in terms

Upendra Varma:

of, you know, top of an elite generation perspective, right?

Upendra Varma:

So you, you mentioned you use LinkedIn as well as outbound using page channels.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

So out of the 12 customers that you've sort of got, uh, sort of, uh,

Upendra Varma:

managed to close so far, like where, where, which one was the, was the

Upendra Varma:

most responsible channel for you?

Santi Magazu:

The most responsible channel so far, uh, has been, I'm

Santi Magazu:

thinking, I'm thinking because it changed over time, but, uh, so far

Santi Magazu:

has been link in probably Link in

Upendra Varma:

link.

Upendra Varma:

How, how many customers did you sort of get from LinkedIn as such?

Santi Magazu:

I think we, we got over 50%

Upendra Varma:

for liquid.

Upendra Varma:

3%.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

And, and what's the strategy here?

Upendra Varma:

Like were you trying to build a brand, brand using your personal account or

Upendra Varma:

LinkedIn or was there something else that you were trying to do there?

Santi Magazu:

Summertime, we use personal content.

Santi Magazu:

I'm the c e o that is the founder is is not in the sector.

Santi Magazu:

So we use a really, our network, although we use, um, a database.

Santi Magazu:

So we t database, then we go very, we use some, uh, automation tools.

Santi Magazu:

We, we use a capital automation tools for linking for that.

Santi Magazu:

Uh, that's the, the main thing.

Santi Magazu:

Essentially,

Upendra Varma:

essentially it's like a cold outreach on LinkedIn

Upendra Varma:

that you're doing, right?

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

So how does, yeah, so just help me complete the story here, right?

Upendra Varma:

How does the conversion look like?

Upendra Varma:

So how, how much converge acceptance rate do we get and how many of them do

Upendra Varma:

actually end up expressing interest using

Santi Magazu:

this channel?

Santi Magazu:

I would say that it is about 10%, no, except maybe the range of 20%

Santi Magazu:

sentence, uh, getting to have a, a significant, a relevant conversation.

Santi Magazu:

Maybe out of hundred, maybe I would say four more in the regional.

Santi Magazu:

Four or five.

Santi Magazu:

Sure.

Santi Magazu:

In one that, that's,

Upendra Varma:

that's the range.

Upendra Varma:

And it, and it's just going from your LinkedIn account.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

Nothing else.

Santi Magazu:

Well, this is one thing we do.

Santi Magazu:

The LinkedIn tends to be the, the founder of myself, uh, and we tend to go to the

Santi Magazu:

c e o to the vice, you know, to the CMO and to the C levels of the companies.

Santi Magazu:

Yes.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So since you're closing deals in the range of, you know, 2025 k a on a

Upendra Varma:

regular basis, I'm assuming that you'll need to do a lot more than just, you

Upendra Varma:

know, Showing them your potential customer, your, your product, right?

Upendra Varma:

You've got to somehow convert that.

Upendra Varma:

Talk about the conversion funnel, right?

Upendra Varma:

So once you sort of, somehow, so

Santi Magazu:

the, yeah, so the typical, I, I'll give you the typical thing.

Santi Magazu:

So the typical thing is you have a first conversation, which is about

Santi Magazu:

really understanding the pain points.

Santi Magazu:

That's, that's a goal to understand what the pain point and if they

Santi Magazu:

manage campaign campaigns internally or if there is an agency which you

Santi Magazu:

need to involve in the process.

Santi Magazu:

That's first thing.

Santi Magazu:

. So the second thing, normally they come with their specific, uh, pain points and

Santi Magazu:

say, okay, you told me about this, but my specific problem is the cost per lead.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

. And what we do is a demo on that specific issue.

Santi Magazu:

So I bring in someone from our client success team, which is

Santi Magazu:

a bit of a same specialist, and they do a monographic on that.

Santi Magazu:

If there is an interest and they start saying, Hey, what's the price of this?

Santi Magazu:

Then we say, look, let's do this.

Santi Magazu:

Let's do a free.

Santi Magazu:

let you, you use this for 30 days, obviously, if they qualify and at the

Santi Magazu:

end of the 30 days, you know, we'll, we, we, we will, you, you can become,

Santi Magazu:

and we are having a, a conversion rate.

Santi Magazu:

I did this yesterday, so I can tell you it's about 16% from con initial

Santi Magazu:

convers session to try and buy mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

And then, uh, the compression from, uh, tri by to paying customer.

Santi Magazu:

Is between 60 and 70%.

Santi Magazu:

I mean, good months is about 70% bad months 55.

Santi Magazu:

So between 55 and 70% stay with us.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

, which is not bad.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So, so talk about the future, right?

Upendra Varma:

How are you gonna scale up from let's two 50 K to something

Upendra Varma:

like two 3 million, right?

Upendra Varma:

What's the strategy going forward here?

Santi Magazu:

So there is a product strategy, which is launching a new

Santi Magazu:

product for small media businesses.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

small media accounts, which instead of being the range of.

Santi Magazu:

1500 to $2,000 is going to be in the range of 50 to $500 per month.

Santi Magazu:

That's a range.

Santi Magazu:

That would be a simplified user interface is not only that you manage

Santi Magazu:

less smaller campaigns, it's also that.

Santi Magazu:

It's a simplified, less features, which is even better for some of these users.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

. So the first, uh, big thing is to go to a mid-market, which we don't serve today.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

. We have the product in beta where Connect, I hope, die by the end of the year.

Santi Magazu:

This should be live.

Santi Magazu:

. Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

, that's a big thing.

Santi Magazu:

And then the next thing is to expand to, uh, Amazon advertising

Santi Magazu:

and big manage of advertising.

Santi Magazu:

So having under Network works and, uh, we're in the ra in

Santi Magazu:

the, we are raising money now.

Santi Magazu:

We we're going to do a new round of founding towards Q2 next year,

Santi Magazu:

the second, uh, quarter next year.

Santi Magazu:

And at that point we, I think we'll invest heavily in the marketing,

Santi Magazu:

online marketing to get inbound, uh, traffic, which we don't get.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

Alright, so let's, let's conclude this, right?

Upendra Varma:

So, so talk to me about the team that you have as of today.

Santi Magazu:

So we have, we are, uh, 18 people.

Santi Magazu:

Uh, half of this are developers and products, so half the

Santi Magazu:

companies, developers a product.

Santi Magazu:

Then we have, uh, uh, of the other eight.

Santi Magazu:

Half is, uh, is selling.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

, uh, including myself and the founder.

Santi Magazu:

We, we spend a lot of time with clients and half is, uh, client success.

Santi Magazu:

So it's helping customers onboard and configure staff.

Santi Magazu:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

And did you raise any external funding so far to

Santi Magazu:

build the company?

Santi Magazu:

Yes.

Santi Magazu:

We raised, uh, since 2020, which was us, we raised, uh, 3 million euros so far.

Santi Magazu:

Mm-hmm.

Santi Magazu:

. Upendra Varma: Alright.

Santi Magazu:

Thanks.

Santi Magazu:

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Santi Magazu:

Hope you much greater heights.

Santi Magazu:

Thank you.

Santi Magazu:

It was a pleasure.

Santi Magazu:

And thank you very much for reaching out to us.

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