Sardar Azimov, founder of Miami-based Skief Labs, knows that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to scaling companies. He combines the most advanced data extraction and enrichment tools with AI and sales automation to drive client growth.
Almost eight years ago, Sardar Azimov relocated from Paris to Miami. An accomplished business development professional, he set up a U.S. office for an emerging European sales acceleration company.
In Miami, the firm opted to use similar practices that had proven successful in Europe.
“In France, we relied on the outstanding performance of freshly minted college graduates,” Azimov said. “Sourcing similarly driven talent in Miami was challenging.”
Since then, out-of-the-box marketing campaigns became Azimov’s speciality. He launched his growth marketing agency, Skief Labs, to help businesses find their unique path to success.
What latest trends should companies incorporate into their marketing strategies?
Data is at the core of an efficient campaign. A few years ago, sourcing accurate contact details was challenging. Today, technology, including AI, makes things easier.
We can easily organize unstructured data gathered through website scraping, analyze social profiles, provide data segmentation, and more. The emphasis has now shifted towards pinpointing your target audience and crafting messages tailored to resonate with them.
Identifying new buying or targeting signals is crucial for optimizing outreach. By monitoring indicators such as fundraising, hiring surges, growth rates, and the presence of a specific tech stack, marketers can tailor their approaches to engage prospects more effectively, aligning marketing efforts with the precise moments when potential customers are most receptive.
What mistakes do businesses often make when reaching out to customers?
There are plenty of things that can go wrong. If your message is great but it reaches the wrong audience, then its impact diminishes. Other times, however, you have the right audience, but they don’t engage with your content because it doesn’t appeal to them.
The goal of an efficient marketing campaign is to identify the right channels, audience, and messages and then optimize everything to scale your business. We always start with assumptions and ask our clients who they think they need to target.
We begin by developing a hypothesis about the ideal customer, identifying the problems our clients solve for them, and determining how to engage with them effectively through targeted audience, messaging, and channels.
Where do you start with your clients?
This depends on their stage. For new companies, as well as clients entering new markets or launching new products, our goal is to validate the product-market fit.
When working with new companies and their products, our approach involves engaging various audience segments and evaluating those that show the most traction.
Another category consists of established SMBs and solopreneurs. They primarily rely on inbound leads and referrals to maintain a steady flow of clients. But this isn’t sufficient for their business expansion, so they tap into digital marketing. We help to identify and test new channels for their customer acquisition.
The last category are mature businesses that already know how digital marketing works, and their goal is to grow.
These companies understand what works, what doesn’t, which channels to use, and which messages to send. Our goal is to help scale their customer acquisition efforts by implementing the necessary systems and processes.
How can businesses find the leads they need? Could you give an example of an out-of-the-box campaign?
One of our clients helped small business owners in claiming the employee retention credit after the COVID-19 pandemic. So, we focused on companies that received over $100K in PPP loans, and they weren’t that easy to find.
Some were franchise owners, and their legal names were different from their business names. We had to use fuzzy matching techniques, which were used to identify similar elements in a data set, and various scraping tools. Eventually, we scaled the systems to source and engage 3,000 new prospects daily. As part of the campaign, we sent out over 10,000 emails daily, including follow-ups, resulting in a significant influx of customers for our client.
Is Outbound Marketing always aimed at sales prospecting?
No, the same principles and technology can be applied to many other areas, such as talent acquisition and partner and investor outreach.
Recently, we’ve been on the hunt for highly specialized healthcare professionals at the request of a major private equity fund. Given the aging demographics in these particular roles, we’ve had to seek out and find individuals employed by competitors.
This role is under strict regulation, with fewer than 100,000 individuals in the U.S. holding the necessary license. A number of these professionals run their own practices, while others aren’t willing to relocate to a different area. We apply the latest Sales Acceleration technology for these kinds of campaigns.
In this specific case, we used custom data extraction scripts and sources to find the right contacts. We evaluated them using criteria such as age, location, and more. Sometimes, we even calculated the commute distance between their current work address and the client’s location. Once we identified the right people, we found their contact details to ensure effective engagement.
Nowadays, businesses are diving deep into digital marketing strategies to scout for top talent, investing thousands of dollars. Engaging and securing top-tier talent has become a major priority, a crucial factor for succeeding in today’s challenging market.
Spencer Hulse is the Editorial Director at Grit Daily. He is responsible for overseeing other editors and writers, day-to-day operations, and covering breaking news.
