Whatever you sell — products, services, unicorns — there are four ways to sell it:
- Inbound/organic marketing
- Sales/cold outreach
- Paid growth/ads
- Networking
Since this is marketing, not astrophysics, there is no clear delineation between them. There’s no straightforward recipe i.e. if you sell this, use that.
There are, however, a few rules of thumb that can help you make an informed decision.
Inbound/organic marketing — ideal for long-term, evergreen products, services, and businesses
Inbound marketing is an umbrella term for a suite of tactics that attract users and clients without pushing for sales. In inbound marketing, you are creating useful content and experiences that attract users to your business.
Examples: SEO, organic social media, community building, blogging, event planning, and more
Limitations: inbound marketing takes time to work. Content takes time to rank on search engine pages, communities take time to build and grow, and so do social media audiences.
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What can you sell through inbound marketing?
Anything. Products, services, B2B, B2C, anything can be sold through organic tactics.
Inbound marketing is the bread and butter of B2B providers, though. B2C sellers can get by on “lighter” inbound and more focus on paid marketing or cold outreach — in some industries.
Is it right for you?
Yes, if you’re building a business you want to stay in for years to come. While inbound marketing takes time, it is perhaps the only one of these tactics that almost any business needs.
Even if you rely on, say, cold calling, you will still need some inbound assets to send to your prospects.
Ultimately, inbound marketing is all about building an audience on owned and rented platforms. If that audience is relevant to your goals, you can do countless soft pivots (i.e. from selling services to selling products) and your business will still thrive.
So, if you invest in a single tactic, make it this one!
Sales/cold outreach — ideal for services
Cold outreach refers to reaching out to prospects that have no connection to your business. In most cases, they don’t even know you.
This is the exact opposite of inbound marketing, where you “warm up” your prospects before pitching them your offer.
Examples: sales calls, cold emails, snail mail ads, social media DMs — you can use dozens of channels for cold outreach.
Limitations: cold outreach is time-consuming IF you do it right. You can do it at scale by buying email lists or blasting everyone who follows you on social media with the same message. However, that will get you labeled as a spammer and you are very likely to lose your social media account (in some cases) and damage your sender reputation (on email).
Another caveat here: in some countries (especially in the EU), cold outreach is highly regulated, so you could be fined.
What can you sell through cold outreach?
You can sell pretty much anything, although it’s more common to sell services.
Is it right for you?
Yes, if you have the availability to do it right and personalize your messaging.
I recommend you combine cold outreach with inbound marketing. Spend a bit of time creating a modicum of a relationship with your prospects before you send them a pitch.
Examples:
- Engage with their social media posts
- Send them a few value-packed emails before adding them to a sales sequence
- Ask them a question about what they need before you try and sell them something.
Paid growth/ads — ideal for eCommerce, B2C, and some B2B offers
Any channel you use organically (from social media to earned media) has a paid option. You can use that to accelerate your growth if you have the budget and the bandwidth for it.
I wrote about paid growth and when to consider it here.
Examples: social media ads, Google Ads, display ads, influencer/creator marketing, media buying, and so on.
Limitations: creating and running ads is a skill in its own right, especially on huge platforms like Google or Facebook. When your ads are set improperly, you can lose a lot of money very fast.
Moreover, the cost of ads tends to rise with time. So, if you’re only relying on ads, there will come a time when you will need to switch platforms because the ROI is decreasing. Also, most people who see your ad will Google you before buying, so you also need an organic presence.
What can you sell with paid ads?
Pretty much everything, although selling B2C products is the most common go-to. In B2C eCommerce, the funnel can be very short: prospect sees ad → prospect buys.
However, you can use ads as part of a more complex funnel too, in almost any vertical.
For example:
- Use paid ads to attract people to your email list and sell them something later on.
- Pay for an advertorial in a media outlet to help establish yourself as an authority in your field.
- Use paid ads to increase your social media following, then de-platform users to a channel you control or sell them something through organic social media.
The combinations are endless.
Is it right for you?
Yes, if you have the budget and the know-how to set up the campaigns. If you’ve never done it before, I highly recommend working with an ads expert, at least in the beginning.
Networking — ideal for services
“Your network is your net worth” is an adage I’m sure you’ve heard before. Like any cliche, it’s pretty much true.
Sure, you can have a lucrative business without a solid network. But it’s much easier with it.
Examples: you can build your network by going to in-person or virtual events, via social media, or via networks like Success Champion Network or Business Network International.
Limitations: networking can take a lot of your time. However, it’s something that compounds: the more peers you have access to, the more your circle of influence grows through second- and third-degree connections.
What can you sell through networking?
Once again, you can sell pretty much anything but selling services used to be the most popular approach.
In the creator economy, however, networking is more important than anywhere else because it can help you grow your audience fairly easily. Creators are redefining networking and making it relevant for any type of offer, product or service, B2B or B2C.
Your peers will recommend your social media profiles, your newsletter, and even your products to their own audiences, which gives you an incredible opportunity for growth.
Is it right for you?
Yes, whatever you sell. A strong network can help you grow your business in all of the ways mentioned above, plus a few other underrated ones:
- Your peers can recommend services and providers and sometimes even score a discount for you.
- You can learn from them.
- They can help you vet new ideas before you invest too much in building them.
- They can be your sounding board.
- Entrepreneurship can get very lonely, so even the fact that you can talk to your peers and vent/check-in on each other is a major plus.
I owe my network more than I ever imagined and I can’t believe there was a time when I was white-knuckling everything on my own!
How do I choose where to focus my efforts?
Very few businesses can survive on one of these tactics alone. In fact, most of them use a combination of all of them, in various proportions, depending on their current goals.
But you have to start somewhere, right?
Start by laying a solid foundation — always: inbound marketing and networking are your best friends in the early stages. While they may take time to compound, you will thank yourself for this foundation later on.
Next, you can add the bells and whistles, once you have a solid network and some organic reach of your own: cold outreach and paid growth are viable options to scale things faster.
As always, my number one recommendation is to use these tactics to build a relevant audience as early as possible. Without an audience, the world’s betst product is only the world’s best-kept secret. You need eyes on your offer, whatever it may be.
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That’s it from me today! See you next week in your inbox.
Here to make you think,
Adriana
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