Is cold calling ineffective versus leveraging a social media platform like LinkedIn for getting in the door? How can an emerging business leverage Clarity or LinkedIn to find connectors willing to make introductions?
Inbound marketing is currently the greatest ROI method of generating demand for your offering. This really boils down to putting out high authority content through Search and Social channels so you can start to engage with prospects and steer them inwards to your automation system. From there lead nurturing takes over to heighten their trust and knowledge to create sales ready leads.
Cold calling is a low ROI method and really only works well with highly targeted segments from our experience. LinkedIn is good for B2B and strategic B2C. Partner Marketing can help to create ongoing lead flow of high quality if done right.
You may call me if you want specifics on your situation. More detail from you will allow for a more relevant answer.
For forming strategic partnerships, we've gotten the best results by doing favors for other companies without expectation of a return favor. Sometimes there isn't a return favor, which is fine. Other times, the favor is a catalyst for a conversation that leads to a great partnership.
This highly depends on your product or service. The cold calling approach could work if you have a clear value propositions that is easy to explain. However a cold call should be well researched. Who is the actual decision maker and is there a high likelihood that your service is of interest. Then is is pure math. In India a business analyst doing the research and making the calls cost 700 dollar per month. He is able to set up 10 meetings per month, of which 0.5 projects come out. This is for it services, but can give you an idea on the acquisition cost per project. If you are looking for partnerships such as joint ventures, distribution, affiliates, licensing I would always find a trustworthy door opener. Here also you must have a strong well researched concept ready to quickly show a true benefit for the partner. I have seen to many let's meet and see what we can do presentations. Best to provide clear numbers and Ideally a financial commitment from your side, this will move things for sure. For early growth and high strategic value, you could consider and equity stake for the partner with clear deliverables. Then you have to convince him about your growth story. In this event you might have a different person to talk to. Good luck
