Learn how to prospect funded Startups and grow revenue for your digital agency

If you run a digital agency and you donā€™t prospect funded Startups you need to start. Marketing budgets are the first budgets to get cut during a recession.

As a digital agency, it is in your interest to build a solid pipeline of diverse clients to boost revenue. šŸ’Ŗ

In this blog, weā€™ll go deeper into how the Startup industry works. We’ll help you position your agency so that you can attract top funded Startups in your demographic.

Don’t wait to find out your budget has been cut. If your current clients donā€™t appreciate your services, start connecting with Startups. šŸš€

The mistake digital agencies make is that they try to be everything to everyone. If you want to work with Startups, pick an industry and focus on getting a handful of funded Startups to work with.Ā Ā 

Build your reputation with accurate data from Prelo and get Startup clients knocking on your door every month.Ā 

Your digital agency can benefit from prospecting funded Startups every month to boost revenue

What is a funded Startup?

A funded Startup is a Startup that has received capital (monies) from investors in return for a percentage ownership of the company. The capital is either used to launch the Startup or used to scale the business.Ā 

The investors are either institutional investor like hedge funds, venture capitalists (VCs), private equity firms or pension funds.Ā 

The other types of investors are retail investors, like angel investors, family, friends and non-legal entities.Ā For more information on funding and funding stages check out this blog on fund raising stages

Find out if they have the budget before you prospect funded Startups

When Startups raise money, the amount they raise largely depends on how much of a budget theyā€™ll have for services such as marketing. Startup funding ranges from Pre-seed $50,000 right through to Series G funding $500M.

Here is a fundraising chart that gives you the average amount raised by each funded Startup on Prelo in August 2022.Ā Ā 

Help digital agencies prospect funded Startups with detailed funding data
Prospect funded Startups with ease. August 2022 fundraising data shows how much each Startup raised by category

Tools to help you build a sales pipeline and prospect funded Startups effectively

Before you start to prospect funded Startups, you need to build a prospects list. Below are five useful platforms and websites to help you get started.Ā Ā 

1. Dealroom

Dealroom is a trusted analytics platform for finding recently funded Startups.Ā 

It comes with details on funding, location and signals to help you determine when a funded Startup is likely to start its next fundraise.Ā 

Itā€™s ideal for large enterprises and VC firms selling big ticket products and services. Get the company details from Dealroom then head over to LinkedIn to build your prospects list.

2. TechCrunch

TechCrunch is an online news website that dedicates itself to sharing updates about the latest funded Startups.Ā Itā€™s a great place to find content and get a view on the latest up and coming StartupsĀ 

Similar to Dealroom you can build a manual list of Startups here and head over to LinkedIn to find the decision makers for each company.Ā 

Then use an email tool like milkshake to find email addresses and send outreach emails

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an amazing social networking platform for professionals, and it has a huge representation of funded Startups.

The biggest challenge with LinkedIn, is that Startup funding information isnā€™t accurate. This makes it impossible to search for sales leads by funding.

Digital agencies want a platform that will help them to identify funded Startups fast. With LinkedIn you can reach out and connect with sales leads before you send them cold emails.

Note:
LinkedIn email addresses tend to be personal email addresses, so we recommend that you do some due diligence here to make sure that you are not breaking any GDPR rules

4. Beauhurst

Beauhurst is a platform that stores funding updates about companies in the UK, they have just over 30,000 Startups in their database.

They provide signals to identify Startups based on when they were last funded. Interestingly, they also provide details of unannounced fundraising data.

Use Beauhurst to find funded Startups in the UK and leverage their data analytics to help you decide which of the Startups to engage with.

Again, you will need an email address or a LinkedIn contact to begin your outreach campaign.

5. Prelo

Prelo is for agencies, consulting teams and early-stage companies looking for funded Startups. Find out how much they raised, when they raised and what industries they operate in.

Find out their hiring trajectory and how many employees each Startup has. We donā€™t stop there, we also share the profiles, business contacts and LinkedIn profiles.Ā 

Prelo collects data from various sources and matches this information with LinkedIn to help you prospect key decision makers and decision influencers from funded Startups.Ā 

We have a library of email templates to use with our email generator and send cold emails to your saved prospects.

Optimize your conversion when you prospect funded Startups by using Prelo's email templates

Improve the success when you prospect funded Startups by using one of these 40 email templates

5 Steps to help you prospect funded Startups effectively

Prospecting funded Startups is an art and a science.Ā 

The science is in the analytical data you have at your disposal. The art is your ability to craft compelling sales outreach messages that will generate demand for your product or service.Ā 

We are going to take you through a few simple steps that will help you setup an approach to prospect funded Startups.

Step 1 – Create an ideal funded Startup profile

To create a profile for the types of Startups you want in your list is very easy. You need industry information and location data.Ā 

For example, you may wish to start with Healthcare Startups in the United States.Ā 

If youā€™ve created your sales prospects list manually then be sure to add a column for industries, but if you are using Prelo to build your prospects list we have some profile templates for you!Ā 

Prelo accelerates pipeline building with our simple pipeline builder, we store Startups from U.S. Canada, LATAM, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa

Step 2 – Find ways to engage key decision makers

There are a few steps to take before you start engaging key decision makers within your chosen Startup profile.Ā 

  • Connect with them on LinkedInĀ 
  • Like and comment on their postsĀ 
  • Endorse them for skills theyā€™ve demonstratedĀ 

Remember that prospecting is about building relationships. No one is waiting for your cold email to land in their inbox.Ā 

Step 3 – Create a bulletproof prospects list

Having a solid list of prospects is one of the full-proof ways of optimizing your conversion. So how do you start?Ā  Review the list of prospects that work for the funded Startups.Ā 

Once you’ve connected to a key decision maker on LinkedIn, the other contacts are only a 2nd degree connection away.Ā 

Start building your list of the 2nd level management staff, because these are the prospects with ā€œdecision making influenceā€.

Itā€™s simple with Prelo. The employees‘ section of each Startup is the starting point to create a prospects list.

 

Use the employees section to create a prospects list of decision makers who work for funded Startups

Step 4 – Send personalized emails to saved prospects

You have several options; you could use something like HubSpot to build out your templates or Close CRM to do exactly the same.Ā 

On Prelo we have 30+ email outreach templates and you can send outreach emails directly to your prospects while tracking it with Hubspot or Close

If you want to make sure that you donā€™t end up in your prospectā€™s spam folder, check out this article on how to warm up your email account in 5 steps.Ā Ā 

 

Step 5 – Help them by sending them useful content

How do you turn a cold intro into a warm one? Open your engagement with some useful content.

Lead by giving, what works well is a link at the bottom of your email about how your service can help your clients improve their website conversion metrics or optimize their SEO content.

 

Some Closing Statements

Prospecting funded Startups as a digital agency is not as difficult as it seems, Prelo gives you all the tools you need on one platform.Ā 

This blog is dedicated to all agency owners that want to expand their network in Startup and pitch their services to companies with the budget to pay for it.Ā 

Digital marketing is an industry where uniqueness is tough to establish, so picking a niche and building your reputation around that niche gives your agency a great start.

Personal Note: As a Startup founder, when I search for digital agencies, I look for agencies with B2B SaaS experience. If I am extra picky, I look for the agencies working in B2B SaaS Marketing.Ā 

Hope this has been a useful blog?Ā Ā 

Tired of pitching to Startups with zero budget?

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Use Prelo to prospect funded Startups and kickstart your marketing campaign

On twitter : šŸ¤ @oluadedj
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Until the next time.

Olu
Founder, Prelo
I tweet about helping founders win!