Outreach.io is one of the most well-know prospecting (or spam) software companies. Founded in 2014. In 2018, Outreach.io’s first acquisition was Sales Hacker, the world’s largest B2B Sales community and media company. Why did Outreach.io acquire Sales Hacker?
Sales Hacker runs a community, physical and virtual conferences, and meetups. They produce content like webinars, blogs, podcast, templates, and videos. Their blog is 100% community-generated by Sales and Sales Development thought leaders and influences, including prospecting gurus like John Barrows, Richard Harris, Tito Bohrt, and Trish Bertuzzi. Sales Hacker produced content types like: tips, case studies, tear downs, guides, templates, checklists, research, surveys, polls, stats, and product reviews. Most of their blogs would get circulated by over 50 partners. They built a reputation for the go-to destination for unbiased thought leadership and actionable advice from peers—not vendors. They had a strong social media presence such as on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. Their Founder and CEO, Max Altschuler, wrote a book called “Hacking Sales” and built a strong reputation on social media. They had sponsorships from companies like Intercom, HubSpot, PipeDrive, and LinkedIn. Sales Hacker, whose audience was Sales, was built by Marketing.
Gaetano DiNardi was the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker from January 2017 until the Outreach.io acquisition in September 2018. In a LinkedIn article, Gaetano outlines how a very small Marketing team, doing proper marketing, grew Sales Hacker 400% until it was acquired. While not a SaaS company, Sales Hacker is another ironic and logical example of a company that succeeds because of proper marketing—to a pro-prospecting audience.
Founder and CEO of Outreach.io, Manny Medina, said at the time, “[Our buyers] don’t know we exist as a category; they don’t know that Sales Engagement is a solution. The main limiter to growth for us is actual knowledge, understanding there is a solution out there for their pain. We need to educate the community that Sales Engagement exists”. So, to generate awareness and demand about their prospecting software to prospectors, Outreach.io needed Marketing. So they bought it, via Sales Hacker. Today, Outreach.io does significant other Marketing efforts. When you think of Outreach.io, do you think of Sam Nelson (who creates a lot of LinkedIn content and dyed his hair blue), Scott Barker (who hosts their podcast), Max Altschuler (former CEO of Sales Hacker that also authored the book on Sales Engagement), or their CEO Manny Medina (who is quite active on LinkedIn)? Or do you think of Billy the SDR doing prospecting? Which type of marketing do you think drives their profits, growth, reputation, demand, word of mouth, and community—Sales Development or Marketing? How much marketing resources do you think Outreach.io invests in Sales Development versus Marketing? Does Sales Development do more harm than good? Only Outreach.io knows.
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