The Dark Arts of Cold Outreach for Startups

So you like being a startup. 

Part of the task as a founder is, ‘You Need Money.’ 

You want to both build and sell your product while maybe speeding things up with your experiment (all startups are an experiment) by raising some money.

Great, Me too. You get the game. We must be bold.

In this Wolfcast article, you will learn about an essential part of finding customers, investors, PR opportunities and partners - Cold Outreach.

Today: We will talk about.

1. The pitfalls of Paid Ads and PR

2. Building a Pack of Referral Partners

3. Using Cold Outreach to find Investors and Customers

4. How To Setup Your Cold Outreach Engine

5. How to maintain the reputation of your domain and company

Whether or not you raise money, you need customers. That means you must prospect, advertise, have people talking about your thing - for you to sell whatever software app or service you create.

If you are a startup founder selling to businesses (B2B) or raising money from investors, where do you start your sales or funding journey? 

The nicest way to find new customers is through referrals.

I love referrals.

They come with instant credibility.

Someone has vouched for you and has a prior relationship with a potential customer.

Said person is getting a referral for a reason- they already need to buy something you presumably sell.

Great.

The problem with referrals is they aren’t super scalable.

You can and should of course, invest time in building referral or affiliate partnerships. Sometimes you can find these partners by joining a marketplace or community.

This is why being a part of something like Y Combinator can be helpful . There is a reason why all YC startup founders talk about the value of ‘the YC community.’ Y Combinator startups sell to other YC companies and each other’s customers. It is part of the YC culture.

So what about the rest of us not in YCombinator?

This is one reason why Founders Pack exists - so you can Form Your Own Pack. Just like YC companies, build a mastermind of advisors and investors, a community of customers and partnerships that help you scale.

Yet these remain a part of your startup journey. You still need to find customers - ideally every day. You need to be proactive in reaching companies or individuals that have the potential to be customers. All of these require you to figure out cold outreach.

You also typically can and even must use Cold Outreach campaigns to find partners. Just like using Cold Outreach to find customers or investors, this requires building a cold outreach system and assets. We’ll get to this in a bit.

Paid Ads or Publicity?

I’ve met startups who go the route of spending hard-raised money on PR- publicity. Articles were written about them. $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 a month are the numbers I hear.

Holy mackerel.

Same for spending money on ads. Meta or Google Ads to drive traffic to something and hope someone opts into your expertly built SaaS or landing page.

Again, I’ve heard similar numbers - startups are spending $10-60k/month on ads.

I’ve also heard in both scenarios of founders running out of cash and not having sustained clients.

Now you CAN do your own Public Relations. PR campaigns are actually often Cold Outreach Campaigns also. You can build data on writers, bloggers, podcasters and make a case for them writing about your Startup.

Go Directly to Your ICP using Cold Outreach

So, Cold Outreach. Sure its less scary having someone referred to you (instant opportunity, instant credibility). Sure its nice if they see your amazing ad and decide you’re who can solve their problem and they’ll give you money. Sure its exciting and useful if you have a major blogger or podcaster talk to you about your thing or write a nice article.

It’s never that easy however in my experience going down this route. 

Recently we took on a client like this for the first product that has evolved out of Founders Pack: Opps.ai. 

The client was spending big money on Paid ads and PR (Public Relations) at the direction of their investor. They were not adding new customers, however. They spent and spent… until they didn’t have that much money left. Not an unusual story. So now what?

It's time to go directly to the customer.

For sure, it can be a less expensive route using Cold Outreach like email or Linkedin campagins.

Sounds simple, but it’s seriously fear and confusion at the complexity that prevents many companies from going all in on cold outreach.

Everyone wants to know, “How do you go direct while maintaining a positive reputation?”

Our goal with Opps.ai is initially to provide great data on potential customers or investors who look like your Ideal Client or Investor.

Once you have data that matches the location, industry, title, and company size of your prospects, now what?

Enter the dark arts of Cold Outreach.

There are two primary ways to use data from Opps.ai.

1. Cold Email Campaigns

2. LinkedIn Outreach

To help companies effectively build outreach systems that open doors for them and find new opportunities, I realized - there are a lot of secrets.

Secrets to getting messages from your campaigns into the mind of your ICP.

Secrets to protecting your main domain from being blacklisted on the Firewalls of the World. The reputation of your domain.

More secrets around messaging and copywriting so you make friends with people who look like your clients or investors.

Furthermore, sending any sort of volume or email or LinkedIn is tinged with the fact that you are spamming.

You’re spamming!

No, no, you are not. Cold Outreach to business email addresses is generally not Spam. If its targeted and the message is tailored to the audience you are reaching out to. Yes, to be compliant wit the “rules”. Know the rules and follow said rules. For example, they have become very clear; recently Google and Yahoo stepped up providing specific guidelines since these are two of the biggest providers of email hosting.

I get it. I feel it. I neither want to receive the spammy emails nor send them.

Once again I’ll state that cold outreach by email is not only legal, but effective. As long as you follow the rules. We’ll cover how to build compliant campaigns in an article in the coming weeks.

LinkedIn also has certain rules even though they are a little opaque. So we’ll want to also follow these guidelines. in addition to this article series on Cold Outreach for Startups, we will also cover the mechanics of creating compliant, successful campaigns in the coming weeks and on our Feb 28, 2024 Cold Outreach Masterclass.

The benefit of creating a compliant and awesome cold outreach system, as I have learned over the past two years, is that there is a logical way to scale it once it is setup. You can take an approach that costs way less per conversation or prospect with an Ideal Client or Investor than paid ads or public relations through an agency.

So where to start?

Cold Outreach starts with 

1. Data e.g. from Opps.ai on companies, investors even partners

2. Web domain and email assets different from your main domain

3. Clear messaging and copywriting that will get a response you want

4. Software to automate sending cold emails or LinkedIn campaigns.

Over the next five weeks, we will break down five steps to building effective B2B cold outreach for your company. 

During those five weeks, you’ll learn the following:

1. How to define your Ideal Client Profile

2. Find data that matches your ICP (Also your Ideal Investors or Partners) 

3. How to create messaging and use a copywriting frame to make friends and influence people within your ICP

4. How to set up the sending infrastructure for compliant cold email - domains, emails, warm-up, SaaS tools and to comply

5. How to set up LinkedIn outreach the right way with the right type of messaging and how to use LI Sales Navigator plus one of a series of SaaS apps to automate outreach 

You can also join our Feb 28 Cold Outreach Masterclass. This will be an hour-long overview of how to take action on the steps above.

You can sign up here for free on LinkedIn or Luma if you’d like to learn more in person:

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/events/settingupawesomeb2bcoldoutreach7160309758564986880/

Lu.ma:

https://lu.ma/b92s0p4u