Ads vs Content vs Cold Email

Which is right for you? Read to find out...

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1,084 Words | 4 Min 32 Sec Read

Silent Call

Welcome to another issue of Passionate Income.

Today we’ll be discussing the three most common ways of generating leads.

In particular, the Pros and Cons of each and which you should focus on depending on your situation. If you run a service business, this is one issue you will definitely want to pay attention to.

Let’s dive in.

This issue is sponsored by us - Passionate Income!

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Notebook work with statistics on sofa business

As someone who's been in business for years and years, I've tried every lead generation method under the sun:

  • Facebook Organic Posting

  • Facebook Groups

  • Facebook & Instagram Ads

  • Cold Email

  • Cold DMs

  • Direct Mail

  • Cold Calling

  • LinkedIn Outreach

You name it, I tried it.

And in all honesty, when I stuck with it, all of the above methods "worked."

In fact, after 13 months of failure, the first business I ever made a profit with involved generating leads via direct mail and cold call follow-up. And I'd bet money I could implement the same campaign today and still get leads.

At the same time, I've worked lead gen strategies that made me want to jump off a bridge. Especially as it relates to cold outreach on LinkedIn (which is notorious for being filled with SPAM).

Point being, while most all lead generation strategies "work" (if you put in the necessary amount of effort), some are better than others. And not just in general, but depending on your personality type.

Because of that, I wanted to dedicate today's issue to breaking down the Pros and Cons of today's top three lead generation strategies:

  1. Cold Outreach

  2. Organic Content Marketing

  3. Advertising

Below, we'll cover the time investment, likelihood of success, expenses involved, etc. so you can identify the method best suited to your personality, preferences and business situation.

#1 - Cold Outreach

Intellectually Stimulating: 1/5 Costs Involved: $ / $$ Likelihood of Success: 2/5 Targeting Ability: 5/5 Sales Difficulty: Hard

Ahhh, good old cold outreach.

From Twitter DMs to cold calling, there are both individuals and entire companies that have made an absolute killing off cold outreach.

At the same time, 99% of online business peeps would rather snort ghost pepper powder than make a cold call.

See, there's no denying cold outreach works. Especially if you have some degree of authority or status in your niche relative to your competitors.

Sadly, the process of identifying leads, customizing your outreach, and actually reaching out to people is both time-consuming and insanely tedious. To the point most people can't stick with it long-term.

Because of that, cold outreach should be looked at as a stepping stone. You can use it to get your first few clients, but if you're stuck doing it for more than 90 days, you're doing something wrong.

Instead, the easier path is to land a few clients, get them killer results, than leverage content, advertising and/or referrals from there.

#2 - Organic Content Marketing

Intellectually Stimulating: 5/5 Costs Involved: $ / $$ Likelihood of Success: 1/5 Targeting Ability: 2/5 Sales Difficulty: Easy

Ask 100 service providers who their best leads are and 99 will tell you it's the ones that come in from their audience.

In particular, the ones that have been consuming their content for weeks, months or years and finally decided to reach out about working together. Why?

Because generally speaking, by the time these people reach out, they've already decided they want to hire you. And because of that, selling to them is incredibly easy (aka Lay Down Sales).

Sadly, because content marketing is free (and works well when done right), everyone and their mom is doing it. And because of that, it can be incredibly hard to stand out on social media.

In fact, with how saturated most platforms have become - and with how much today's algorithms are geared to show high-engagement content - the overwhelming majority of "experts" marketing themselves on social media generate almost literally zero business from their profiles.

So if you want to go this route, make sure you're willing to a) show your personality (so you stand out) and b) have serious evidence showing your service works as advertising (aka Social Proof).

#3 - Advertising

Intellectually Stimulating: 3/5 Costs Involved: $$ - $$$$ Likelihood of Success: 3/5 Targeting Ability: 4/5 Sales Difficulty: Medium

Imagine being able to push a button and have leads come to you...

Yeah, that's how advertising works. And it's just as amazing as it sounds.

The downside?

First, it costs money. Especially if you're trying to advertise on LinkedIn, which has the highest quality audience but is by far the most expensive.

Second, you have to build a funnel.

Which, unless you have funnel building experience - and authority in your niche - can be both time consuming and incredibly frustrating.

Third, while the leads who come to you from ads will be warmer than the ones you generate from cold outreach, they won't be as warm as leads who've been nurtured thanks to your organic content.

Despite those negatives, however, ads are effing awesome.

Mainly because you can start for $5 per day and have people interesting in speaking to you about your service the same day.*

No pumping out content or doing low-status outreach required.

*This is not an affiliate link, but I've done this woman's program and can testify she has hundreds of students who sing praises for her $5 Per Day ad strategy.

So, if you can afford it and have some authority in your niche, ads can save you dozens of hours per month relative to cold outreach while driving leads exponentially faster than organic content.

💡 Takeaway: In business, you either pay with your time or your money. Whether we're talking about ads, content or cold outreach, each strategy has its Pros and Cons. In addition, what matters most if choosing the method you're most likely to stick with long-term.

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