The Inbound Led Outbound Strategy That Scaled ColdIQ From $2M to $6M ARR — Ivan's Complete Playbook

TL;DR

Most B2B companies hit a revenue ceiling around $2M when cold outbound stops scaling. Ivan Falco, Head of Growth at ColdIQ, broke through that ceiling and tripled revenue to $6M in 12 months using an inbound led outbound strategy that activates warm signals before they go cold.

Here's what you'll discover:

• How the inbound led outbound strategy helped ColdIQ break through the cold outbound ceiling and triple revenue in 12 months
• Why profile views, post engagement, and website visits are people raising their hands (and how to activate them with outbound sequences instead of waiting for demos)
• The tier-based account routing system that determines which warm leads get automated emails versus manual SDR follow-up
• Ivan's complete playbook for generating 4 million LinkedIn impressions per quarter with just 10 team members posting 3x per week
• How to measure ABM campaign ROI when the buyer journey is nonlinear (and the dashboard setup that tracks tier one accounts from first signal to pipeline)

This is Ivan's complete system for scaling B2B growth without living on the lifeline of cold outbound.

Why Cold Outbound Stops Working (And What to Do Instead)

Ivan joined ColdIQ when they had just built its reputation as a GTM agency specializing in outbound list building and tech infrastructure. They were good at what they did. But Ivan noticed something that would define his entire growth strategy over the next 12 months.

They had hit a ceiling.

Cold outbound was working, but only to a point. Conversion rates were predictable. A small percentage of their target audience was ready to buy at any given moment, and cold outbound caught those people. But that was the problem.

"You can't live on a lifeline where you're just trying to catch the people that are ready to buy," Ivan explained when Kinner asked about his approach. "To scale, you need to generate that demand."

This forced Ivan to confront a distinction that most B2B companies ignore until it's too late. There's a fundamental difference between capturing demand and generating demand. Capturing demand means fishing where the fish are already biting. Generating demand means making them hungry in the first place.

ColdIQ was stuck in capture mode. The ceiling isn't about effort or volume. You can send more emails, build bigger lists, or hire more SDRs using traditional sales systems that prioritize execution over tools. But if you're only catching people who are already ready to buy, you're fighting for scraps in a zero-sum game.

Ivan needed to generate demand. That meant building an inbound motion that would create awareness and intent in people who weren't ready to book a demo yet. More importantly, he needed a system to activate those warm signals before they went cold.

This is where most companies get it wrong. They build inbound. They wait for leads to come in. And they leave money on the table.

Listen to the full conversation on Edbound With Kinner on Spotify, watch on YouTube, or read the complete breakdown below.

How Inbound Led Outbound Activates Warm Signals Before They Go Cold

The breakthrough came when Ivan started building ColdIQ's inbound motions at scale. LinkedIn content became the primary engine. The team rallied around a posting cadence that would have broken most organizations: 10 people posting consistently, three times per week minimum. Founders posted daily. The result was around 4 million impressions per quarter.

But impressions alone don't move revenue. What Ivan realized next changed everything.

Source: ColdIQ

Every engagement on LinkedIn, every website visit, every profile view was a signal. These weren't passive metrics to track in a dashboard. 

These were people raising their hands. They saw a post and liked it. They clicked through to the website but didn't book a demo. They checked out a team member's profile. They were interested, but not ready. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they wanted to do more research. Maybe they just hadn't found the time to look at the calendar scheduler.

Most companies treat these signals as vanity metrics or, at best, retargeting audiences for ads. Ivan saw them as first party intent data that deserved immediate outbound activation.

"Every single engagement that you have on your LinkedIn, profile views, website visits, these are people raising their hand that they might be interested, but might not be ready to book a demo," Ivan said. "All of that are signals. How can we check the engagement, the profile views, the website visits, and any other signal that we have at our disposal to run outbound campaigns to those people so we don't have to go for just cold accounts and cold leads?"

This was the birth of the inbound led outbound strategy. Lead with inbound motions to generate demand and warm up your target market. Then use outbound to reach the people who have engaged, but haven't converted yet. You're not sending cold emails to strangers anymore. You're reaching out to people who already know who you are.

The difference is everything.

"Cold outbound converts at 1-2%. Warm outbound—where the person already engaged with your content—converts at multiples of that rate. You're not fighting for attention. You already have it."

First Party Intent Signals: The Missing Link Between Inbound Content and Outbound Conversion

Ivan's insight was simple but profound. Companies spend enormous energy building inbound engines, whether that's content, SEO, ads, or community. Then they sit back and wait for the leads to come to them. Some people will book demos. Most won't.

The ones who don't book demos aren't unqualified. They're just not ready yet, or they need a nudge. And while you're waiting for them to come back on their own, your competitors are reaching out.

First party intent signals solve this problem. These are signals that come from your own ecosystem. Someone engaged with your post. Someone visited your pricing page. Someone downloaded your lead magnet. These people are in your world. They've raised their hand in some way. And you have the data to know it happened.

Ivan's team started building systems to capture every possible first party signal. LinkedIn engagement tracked through native analytics. Website visits tracked through their CRM. Profile views, post likes, comment threads, demo requests that didn't convert, email opens that didn't lead to meetings. All of it went into a central system.

Then they built routing logic to decide what to do with each signal. Not all signals are created equal. A tier one account (their highest priority target accounts) that visits the pricing page three times in a week is not the same as a tier four account that liked one post. The former gets flagged for immediate SDR outreach. The latter gets added to a nurture sequence.

This is the orchestration layer that most companies are missing. They collect signals, but they don't have a system to route those signals to the right action. So the signals sit in a dashboard, unused. Or worse, they trigger generic automated emails that ignore the context of who the person is and why they engaged in the first place.

"Every LinkedIn engagement, every website visit, every profile view is a signal. These aren't vanity metrics. These are people raising their hands."

The Content Engine Behind ColdIQ's Inbound Led Outbound Strategy: 4M Impressions on LinkedIn

Before Ivan could activate warm signals with outbound, he needed to generate those signals in the first place. That meant building a content engine that could produce 4 million impressions per quarter on LinkedIn.

Image Source: ColdIQ LinkedIn

Most companies hear that number and assume it requires a massive content team, agencies, or some secret growth hack. The reality is simpler, but it requires commitment.

Building a Sustainable LinkedIn Content System

ColdIQ got 12 people on the team to post consistently. Three times per week was the baseline. Founders posted daily. The math works out to 35 to 40 posts per week across the team. That's it. No massive content studio. No viral hacks. Just consistent execution from people who understood their audience.

The content itself wasn't random. Ivan's team focused on teardowns, playbooks, and tactical breakdowns of GTM strategies—a LinkedIn content strategy that builds authority by demonstrating expertise rather than promoting products. They shared what was working in their client accounts. They documented their internal processes. They weren't trying to go viral. They were trying to provide value to the specific people who matched their ideal customer profile.

How Content Quality Pre-Qualifies Your Audience

This approach solves two problems at once. First, it generates the impressions and engagement that create first party intent signals. Second, it pre-qualifies the audience. People who engage with detailed GTM playbooks are more likely to be in-market for GTM services than people who engage with generic motivational content.

Consistency matters more than creativity. Most companies post sporadically. They'll do a campaign push for a few weeks, then go dark for a month. The LinkedIn algorithm punishes inconsistency, and more importantly, your audience forgets you exist. When Ivan's team posts 40 times per week, every week, they stay top of mind. When someone in their target account finally has a GTM problem that needs solving, ColdIQ is the first name they think of.

From Impressions to Activation

But content alone isn't enough. That's the trap. You generate millions of impressions, you get thousands of engagements, and then what? Most companies stop there. They celebrate the vanity metrics and wait for the leads to come in organically.

"We didn't triple revenue by sending more cold emails. We tripled revenue by making 10 people post 3x/week on LinkedIn, then activating every warm signal with outbound before competitors could."

Account Prioritization Framework: How to Route Inbound Signals to High-Converting Outbound Actions

Not all accounts are created equal. When you're generating thousands of signals per month from LinkedIn engagement and website visits, you can't treat every signal the same way. You'll overwhelm your SDRs and miss the high-intent moments that actually convert to pipeline.

Understanding the Four-Tier Account System

The solution was a tier-based routing system that categorized every account into four buckets. Tier one accounts were the highest priority: perfect ICP fit, high revenue potential, strategically important. Tier two through four ranged from strong fits to edge cases.

Every signal that came in got matched against this tier structure. When a tier one account engaged, everything changed.

"If they receive an automated outbound workflow, it doesn't work, that will be flagged to an SDR for a higher outreach type," Ivan explained. "We have this signal, they received an automated email, they haven't booked a meeting. This needs to have a cold call because it's part of our tier one accounts."

Manual vs. Automated Routing Logic

Tier one accounts got manual, personalized follow-up. SDRs enriched the company data, understood what the account was trying to solve, and shared resources tailored to their specific situation. Lower-tier accounts got automated sequences because the math didn't work otherwise.

This routing logic separates good GTM teams from great ones. It's not about doing more outreach. It's about doing the right outreach to the right accounts at the right time.

The Tech Stack That Makes It Work

Ivan's team built this using a combination of tools. Their CRM (Attio) held the tier classifications and routing logic. Clay handled enrichment workflows—the same enrichment capabilities that power high-converting cold outreach workflows. Make.com triggered automation sequences when certain conditions were met. Webhooks connected everything so signals flowed from one system to the next without manual intervention.

The result was a machine that could handle thousands of signals per week while ensuring nothing fell through the cracks. Tier one accounts always got white-glove treatment. Lower-tier accounts got nurtured until they either converted or showed stronger signals that bumped them up the priority list.

LinkedIn ABM Strategy: Using Paid Ads to Generate First-Party Intent Signals

Most companies treat LinkedIn ads as a top-of-funnel awareness play. Ivan's team used ads as a signal amplifier. They weren't trying to get clicks or form fills. They were trying to generate engagement from their tier one accounts so those accounts would enter their warm outbound sequences.

Setting Up Ads for Signal Generation

The setup was specific. They uploaded their tier one account list (around 10,000 companies) into LinkedIn's matched audiences—part of a broader signal-based GTM strategy that prioritizes intent data over cold prospecting. Then they promoted thought leadership content that was already performing well organically. Tactical playbooks, teardowns, case studies. Content that demonstrated expertise and provided real value.

When someone from a tier one account engaged with a promoted post, that signal got captured. The orchestration layer kicked in. The account got flagged in the CRM. If it was a new signal, it triggered an outbound sequence. If it was an additional signal on an account already being nurtured, it escalated to manual SDR outreach.

Why Thought Leadership Ads Outperform Lead Gen Ads

The genius of this approach is that it turns ads into an intent generation mechanism rather than a conversion mechanism. You're not trying to get people to fill out a form. You're trying to get them to engage so you can follow up naturally. A LinkedIn DM or personalized email referencing the post they engaged with feels organic. A cold call after a form fill feels like a sales ambush.

Ivan also mentioned ad drift, a problem every LinkedIn advertiser knows. You upload a list, and LinkedIn serves your ads to people outside that list. The platform's algorithm prioritizes engagement, so it looks for lookalike audiences. The result is that a meaningful percentage of your ad spend goes to people who weren't on your original list.

Measuring Ad Effectiveness with Fibler

ColdIQ used Fibbler to solve this. Fibbler pulls company engagement data from LinkedIn Campaign Manager and matches it against the tier list in their CRM. Then it sends a webhook to Clay to run a lookup workflow. The result is visibility into which accounts from the tier one list are actually seeing the ads.

This data becomes critical for measuring ROI. If 80% of your ad spend is going to your tier one accounts, and those accounts are showing up in pipeline at a higher rate, you can make the case that the ads are working. If only 30% of your spend is hitting your target list, you need to adjust.

Ivan's approach to measurement was pragmatic. Build a dashboard that tracks every tier one account from first signal to pipeline. Don't worry about attribution models. Just track: How many tier one accounts have engaged since we started running ads? How many have entered the pipeline? How many have closed?

If the numbers are moving in the right direction, the ads are working. If they're not, you adjust. This is the practical approach to ABM measurement. Focus on account-level progression rather than trying to attribute revenue to specific channels or touchpoints.

Why Thought Leadership Ads Outperform Lead Gen Ads for B2B (With Examples)

Here's where most LinkedIn ad strategies go wrong. Companies promote gated content, free trials, or demo requests. The call-to-action is transactional. The content is designed to extract information, not provide value.

The Fundamental Difference in Ad Strategy

Ivan's team did the opposite. They promoted thought leadership content with no gate, no form, no ask. Just useful content that demonstrated their expertise. Playbooks on GTM strategy. Teardowns of successful campaigns. Tactical workflows that people could implement immediately.

"We use it to just generate engagement," Ivan said. "We serve impressions to the accounts that are also the tier one accounts. Once they engage, now we can be more aggressive on the outbound."

This flips the traditional funnel on its head. Instead of trying to capture a lead with a form fill, you're trying to earn engagement with valuable content. Then you follow up with outbound once the person has self-identified as interested by engaging.

Testing and Validating Ad Content

The ads themselves were posts that were already performing well organically. If a post got strong engagement from the team's followers, it got promoted to the tier one account list. This ensured that the content had already been validated by a real audience before ad spend went behind it. There's no guessing whether the content will resonate. You already know it does.

Ivan's team tested the content by checking engagement rates. LinkedIn tells you what percentage of people who saw the ad engaged with it. If the engagement rate was high, the content was good. If it was low, they tried something else. This feedback loop kept the quality high and the ad spend efficient.

The format of these thought leadership ads varied. Some were single-image posts with a tactical insight. Others were carousels walking through a multi-step process. Some were text-only posts with a strong hook and a clear payoff. The unifying thread was that every piece of content could stand alone as valuable, even if the person never clicked through or took any action beyond reading the post.

How Engagement Signals Beat Form Fills

This is what separates thought leadership ads from lead gen ads. Lead gen ads are asking for something. Thought leadership ads are giving something. And the irony is that giving first generates more high-quality leads than asking ever could.

When someone engages with a thought leadership ad, they're telling you they care about the topic. They're not just clicking because they want a free checklist or because the headline tricked them. They're engaging because the content resonated. That signal is far more valuable than a form fill from someone who immediately unsubscribes from your nurture emails.

Results: How the Inbound Led Outbound Strategy Tripled ColdIQ's Revenue in 12 Months

Ivan joined ColdIQ at $2 million ARR. Twelve months later, they hit $6 million. That's a 3x growth rate in a single year, and it happened without burning cash on inefficient channels or hiring an army of SDRs.

The Strategy in Summary

The strategy wasn't complicated. Build an inbound motion that generates millions of impressions and thousands of engagement signals. Classify every target account into a tier so you know who matters most. Build an orchestration system that routes every signal to the right action, whether that's automated nurture or manual SDR follow-up. Use ads to amplify engagement from tier one accounts. Track everything at the account level so you can see which accounts are progressing toward the pipeline and which need more nurturing.

Why Execution Matters More Than Strategy

The hard part isn't understanding the strategy. The hard part is building the discipline to execute it consistently. Posting 40 times per week on LinkedIn requires commitment from the entire team. Building the orchestration layer requires time and technical resources. Training SDRs to treat tier one accounts differently than tier four accounts requires process documentation and ongoing coaching.

But the results speak for themselves. ColdIQ tripled revenue in 12 months. They did it by refusing to rely on the cold outbound lifeline and building a system that generates demand, captures warm signals, and activates those signals with targeted outreach.

How Buyers Actually Make Decisions

This is the inbound led outbound strategy. It works because it aligns with how people actually buy. They don't want cold emails from strangers. They want to engage with content that helps them solve their problems. And when they're ready to have a conversation, they want to talk to someone who understands where they are in their journey and can provide context-specific value.

The Path Forward for Stalled Growth

If you're stuck at the cold outbound ceiling, this is the way through. Build inbound. Capture signals. Route them intelligently. Follow up with warm outbound. Measure at the account level. Adjust based on what works.

That's how you scale B2B growth without living on a lifeline.

"Tier one accounts get manual SDR outreach. Lower-tier accounts get automated sequences. This routing logic separates good GTM teams from great ones."

Turning Strategy Into Scalable Content Distribution

This is where Edbound AI becomes essential. Offering businesses the tactics to turn podcast conversations into a distribution system that compounds requires infrastructure most teams don't have. You need transcripts, blog posts, social clips, email sequences, and internal enablement docs, all created from a single conversation. Edbound AI automates that entire workflow so you can focus on having the conversations that generate demand instead of manually repurposing content across channels.

The same orchestration principles Ivan uses to route warm signals apply to content distribution. Record the conversation. Let Edbound AI turn it into every asset you need. Publish it across channels. Track which pieces drive engagement and pipeline. Double down on what works.

About the Guest

Ivan Falco is the Head of Growth at ColdIQ, a GTM agency specializing in outbound list building, ABM campaigns, and demand generation systems. He led ColdIQ from $2M to $6M ARR in 12 months and helped multiple B2B companies scale, including Ahrefs. His expertise centers on building orchestration systems that connect inbound signals with outbound activation.