How Marketing Agency Founder Howard Lee Delivers to His Clients using Apollo.io

If you’re a company founder, you are in the business of people.

Building client relationships, delivering on company promises, and aiming for the highest customer retention and satisfaction is all a part of the job.

That’s why it’s so important that you invest in data and engagement tools that you can trust! For Howard Lee, owner and founder of LFDM Marketing, Apollo gives him all the functionality he needs to find, engage, and deliver to his clients.

“I never recommend a tool I don’t trust,” Howard says, “For me, Apollo, is my insurance…For my clients, [I recommend] Apollo as their primary method for generating revenue streams.”

With exclusive interview insights from Howard, we’ll cover how LFDM uses Apollo to streamline their workflow and why he and his team recommend Apollo to clients looking to boost marketing initiatives.

About LFDM Digital Marketing Advisors

LFDM is a team of marketing advisors who work with businesses looking to fill gaps in their digital marketing strategy. Starting with an initial marketing audit, they provide a “digital swiss army knife” of tools, talents, and tactics that are custom-fitted to the needs of their customers.

From SEO consulting and social media management to web design and development, LFDM is a solutions-oriented company through and through.

“Instead of selling them a generic package, I am going to audit their company and then customize that for my clients,” Howard says, “And that’s why Apollo turned out to be really crucial. Because [with it], I know exact ways ROI can be brought in, fast!”.

Over the past two years, Howard and his team have leveraged Apollo tools in some awesome ways. Let’s get into specifics…

Howard's top strategies for using Apollo

#1: Combine first-rate data with killer automation

Accurate data + intelligent automation = unlimited sales success! This is one of the many reasons LFDM loves Apollo.

“In general [data and automation] are sold as two separate services, which adds additional steps that can be a time and money suck,” Howard says, “There’s no other platform that has both the data portion and the automation portion that Apollo has.”

And, well, he certainly isn’t wrong!

According to G2, Apollo ranks higher than any other sales intelligence platform in contact, company, and industry data availability. Pair that with groundbreaking automation features like Sequences, Rules Engine, and Job Change Alerts, and you have yourself the perfect go-to-market engine.

#2: Add best-fit prospects into your campaigns in a fraction of the time

With a database of over 250M contacts and advanced filtering across 200 different attributes, it’s a breeze to find contacts for your sales funnel that perfectly align with your ideal customer profile (ICP).

“With Apollo, I don't have to hunt anymore,” Howard says, “If I wanted to do a campaign including 500 individuals, to gather that would have taken me a week, now, it takes me a minute. And on top of that, I have the convenience to be able to filter things around until I find the exact perfect list, which I couldn’t do before Apollo.”

One of these must-have, time-saving features is the Apollo Chrome Extension: the ultimate prospecting tool that allows Apollo users like Howard to find and add best-fit contacts directly into their pipeline in a fraction of the time!

When you use LinkedIn, the Apollo Chrome Extension allows you to find new prospects with verified data that includes direct mobile numbers and email addresses. You can add these contacts to lists and sequences that you've already built in Apollo with a single click. You can also stay on top of job changes with alerts and update your contacts directly.

It’s as simple as that!

#3: Create opportunities for new business ventures

The best founders always have their eyes on new business opportunities.

Howard revealed to us that he has been using Apollo for just that!

Recently, he has used Apollo to find shuttered companies in new verticals to expand out to and test their potential for restoration. He has been searching by industry within Apollo’s database to find high-potential sites that other domain brokers (who don’t use Apollo) have missed.

He describes this newest experiment as a low-risk method of acquisition.

“And that's what I like about having data from Apollo,” Howard says, “You have a low-risk resource of potential acquisition, you have a low-risk resource of outreach, and all that ROI is there for sure.”

It’s Howard’s job to set up his clients for marketing success and help them achieve a high ROI. So, naturally, he recommends that his clients get set up in Apollo.io!

Here are some of the specific reasons why Apollo is Howard’s go-to tool for servicing his clients…

Easily find your ideal buyer with advanced filtering

One of the biggest superpowers that Apollo gives to users is the ability to search across hundreds of millions of contacts using advanced filters.

“Targeting is more important than ever. [It’s] going to be super crucial moving forward and the only way to do that is you get as much precise data as you can,” Howard says.

In his experience, the keyword search, technologies used, and funding filters are some of the most valuable to his clientele. For them to be able to find and identify exactly which contacts align with their buyer personas and have the budget and the technology stack to get the most value out of their product is a game-changer.

In Apollo, you can even save and subscribe to your filtered searches and get email alerts when Apollo finds new people and/or companies that match your search criteria.

For more information about using filtering, developing personas, and Search Subscription, visit our comprehensive Knowledge Base.

Discover your most effective messaging with A/B testing

As an experienced marketing advisor, Howard is always stressing the importance of effective messaging to his clients. When it comes to engaging with potential customers, it’s important that what you say and how you say it is perfected.

“With Apollo, it’s easy to feel like you have a limitless universe [of buyers], but it is in fact finite. So you need to make sure your message gets through”, he says.

And what better way to make sure your message is resonating than with A/B testing.

In Apollo, A/B testing allows you to test multiple messages in a sequence step. Apollo sends an even traffic distribution to each message variant in the test. This can help you to determine which message engages more prospects and helps you better reach the intended audience.

Howard says that he encourages his clients to test email subject lines first and follow up by testing the body of their email. Clients can then leverage this data to improve the effectiveness of all their future outreach sequences.

Understand performance with Apollo Analytics and Reports

Howard loves the transparency that Apollo Analytics gives to his clients’ marketing initiatives.

In Analytics, you can track metrics that reveal the best outreach times, email campaign performance, sequencing performance, message effectiveness, and so much more.

“All the best practices that you read about are not always going to apply to your industry,” says Howard, “You start getting a proprietary understanding of your specific business using Apollo analytics to really figure out your market”.

And from a personalized Apollo dashboard, users can access all of this valuable data in one place!

The more you evaluate what works and what doesn’t, the more you can test and improve your Sequences to increase candidate engagement.

Parting thoughts

The team over at LFDM loves Apollo, not only for the limitless functionalities that it gives to them as a company but for the ability that it gives them to support their clients in building effective marketing initiatives that take their business to the next level!

Don’t wait to leverage all of Howard’s favorite Apollo features! Sign up for a free Apollo account today, or request a demo of Apollo to see our platform in action.