“Hustle”, they say.  “Grind”, they say.  You have a software product or a service, and you want to grow it.  So you sit at your desk, wondering where to begin.

Adwords? LinkedIn? Hire a PR firm? Commission-only salespeople? Suddenly, the word “telemarketing” pops into your head, and frustration takes over.

The universe of lead gen (demand generation, sales development, awareness, marketing, and about a hundred other terms for roughly the same universe of thing) is WAY too big to digest all at once.  Even the most experienced sales and marketing leaders — in fact, I’d say ESPECIALLY the most experienced sales and marketing leaders — aren’t experts in every method.

You have to pick exactly what works well for your company.  Fortunately, there are a few easy ways to do this.

And, before we continue: “Growth Hacking” is just a fancy rockstar/ninja type word for someone who is pretty good at dabbling in everything.  I say this as someone whose title used to be “Director of Growth” at a 200+ person VC-backed company!

Strategies by Sales Price

IS YOUR AVERAGE ANNUAL REVENUE PER CUSTOMER GREATER OR LESS THAN $8,000

If your Avg Sale Price is GREATER than $8,000 and you have a budget of between $3,000 – $30,000 per month to spend on marketing, consider the following techniques, ROUGHLY in order of effectiveness:

  • Outbound Sales Development (cold emailing/calling/social)
  • Content Marketing (SEO), Social Media, plus Live Chat
  • Referrals & networking — this one is actually low budget
  • PR & Earned Media Outreach
  • Partnerships
  • Paid ads

IF AVG SALE PRICE IS LESS THAN $8,000, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING TECHNIQUES:

  • Content Marketing (SEO) & Social Media, plus Live Chat
  • PR & Earned Media Outreach
  • Automated cold email

Strategy Breakdown & FAQ

WHY IS OUTBOUND SALES DEVELOPMENT NOT A GOOD IDEA IF YOU HAVE A <$8K AVERAGE PRICE?

Because it’s expensive.  Similar to how asking current customers for referrals and networking to find new clients requires a lot of high-value humans to be spending intensive amounts of time to show results, it’s usually not worth doing if you won’t make more than several thousand per year from a client.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH PAID ADS?

Nothing, in general!  But it’s devilishly tricky to get right, and it’s extremely saturated.  If you know PRECISELY what you’re doing, or have hired a person/firm who does, then by all means go for it!  But it’s one of the most tempting, yet hardest things to do right unless you’re familiar with marketing already.

WHAT DO PEOPLE USUALLY MEAN WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT “PR”?

Most people who aren’t in PR or marketing think of PR, and imagine getting mentioned in big publications, links in big news stories leading readers back to their website, or entire stories written about them.  In other words, what’s called “Earned Media”.

For example, if Forbes decided to write the dramatic, compelling, and heartfelt story of how your company’s product was the definitive choice for homemade, gluten-free, DIY, vegan juice-making (with its own built-in Chia Seed terrarium), you’d probably get a lot of sales from people checking out your company (JuiceMaster.io).

PR can refer to a lot of other things, too.  Relating with the public can range from maintaining a company’s forum, handling press inquiries reactively, chasing down journalists, creating an online industry publication that is indirectly related to your product; that kind of thing.

SO LET’S SAY I WANT TO DO OUTBOUND SALES DEVELOPMENT OR CONTENT MARKETING, WHERE DO I START?

Talk to a professional.  Even if it’s scary to think about investing into a marketing technique that you aren’t familiar with, someone who’s done it a million times before, and created millions in revenue as a result, can walk you through what it looks like, requires, and – yes – even what it feels like to run a particular type of marketing.

RevenueZen itself only specializes in two types of lead generation – content marketing and outbound sales development – but we know folks that do everything.

Get in touch with us if you want to chat through the revenue goals you’re hoping to accomplish!