How Do You Reach Customers Without Cold Calling?
There are so many different ways to reach customers that you don’t have to cold call. Yes, there are the obvious ones like advertising on Google, Facebook or even here on Quora.
Here are some non-obvious marketing channels I’ve seen work to gain traction:
A. Meetups.
Someone I knew grew his business to over $1M/year by speaking at meet ups. He provided value to the group, explained what his company did, and some of the people at the meet up became clients.
B. Crunchbase.
This is a really clever strategy that I’ve seen a couple variations of. Let’s say you’re customer base is startups that just raised around $5M.
Enter in what you’re looking for in Crunchbase, and you’ve got your initial list of customers identified including the executive you need to contact.
C. Interview executives for a book.
This is a really cool idea that I just heard this week. Write a business book and ask CEOs for their thoughts on your subject.
The person who did this interviewed sixty CEOs. Eleven of the CEOs have already become customers.
D. Brokers.
Another CEO I know is on his way to building his business to over $40M/Year using brokers to grow his revenue. The brokers have access to the customers he wants, so he found a way to incentivize the brokers to make the connection between his company and his potential customers.
You can get more ideas by reading Gabriel Weinberg’s great book, Traction. Traction outlines 19 different marketing channels you can use. More importantly, traction gives you a systematic methodology you can follow while identifying these marketing channels.
That being said, what’s wrong with cold-calling?
Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with cold-calling. I’ve done cold-calling, and I’ve done cold-emailing.
Both strategies work.
There’s nothing embarrassing about cold-calling someone. I know it’s tough, but cold-calling does work.
You have, as you can see, many options if you don’t want to cold-call.
For more, read: Can You Get Investors To Respond To Cold Emails?