Audience-First
18 months ago, this idea seemed pretty bizarre to me:
You can just… build an audience of prospective buyers and become visible to them. And (hopefully) memorable to them. And (hopefully) remembered and reached out to when they need the service you sell. Without special charisma and just a bit of skill and money, you can do this.
These days, this idea seems like a solid lead generation option to me. Not bizarre at all.
Here’s how I implement it for clients:
1: Make sure my client has clear positioning that can be expressed in a memorable way (ex: React development for scale-ups, B2B Ecommerce marketing)
2: Build an audience of 10,000 buyers and recommenders
3: Create and email a topical weekly newsletter to the audience segment I can discover email addresses for (typically 3k to 5k). My client is the sponsor of the newsletter, and their content is often part but not all of the newsletter. The leading-indicator stats for this approach are very good: https://opportunitylabs.io/nlsstats
4: 5k to 6k of the audience will match into a LinkedIn ads audience and can be shown ads to reinforce my client’s brand and positioning
5: 30% of the 7 to 5k no-email contacts will accept a no-pitch LinkedIn connection request from a relevant vendor that doesn’t look desperate to sell them something
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Some percentage of them will respond positively to an (automated) polite+personal invitation to subscribe to the weekly newsletter
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Some other percentage of them won’t subscribe, but will see my client’s content in their LinkedIn feed (which can be re-purposed newsletter content)
The goal of this approach is to position my client as a salient, memorable source of educational value to a relevant audience of prospects and buyers without the cost of ghost-written thought leadership or the potential brand damage of irrelevant straight-to-the-sale cold email.
More good stuff:
