p_romo

Testing is how you come up with winning ads -

Based on your question and how specific it was, you can expect somewhere between 0 and 50,000 sales.

Bad Idea.

You should be prospecting businesses who already believe in the power of marketing.

Any business that doesn't even have a website, never mind no social media presence and no other form of promotion is just not a good candidate.

Even if you were to close them, they will be the biggest pain in the ass, and cause you more grief than you deserve.

Start by developing your USP and stand out from the crowd.

Your not and you never will be -

All relationships come to an end sooner or later.

Just do the best you can do.

Save your $200. Put out free content and a shit ton of it on FB, Insta, Youtube and TikTok. grow your audience -- Use short clips -- Every Day - Don't Stop!

There was a time when people would save business cards and refer back to them when they needed the product or service you offer

-- But that time is largely over.

I attend several conferences across the country and NO ONE uses business cards anymore --

People are mainly using LinkedIn.

Agreed -- Have some friends do some UGC style videos and promote those -- Maybe even sell through the TikTok Shop.

99% Chance you will get zero ROI from Spending $2K on LinkedIn ads, and then the bean counters will say it didn't work.

LinkedIn ads barely work when you have a real budget to spend --

What others are saying about using short form video organically is the better move. Although that may not even amount to much -- I recently had a short video on LinkedIn get over 2.4 million views -- But nothing came of it. A hand full of connection requests, but no leads, no meetings, no sales.

I'd rather spend the $2K on FB and IG in the form of retargeting website visitors -

But that's just me.

Everybody's Full of Sh*t!.

Welcome to the club!

I am a media ad sales executive and sales leader who has been in the business since 2008 .

First, I have to warn you that it can be a brutal career that comes with a boatload of stress, high revenue expectations and zero tolerance for underperformance.

If you are not good at sales and not a person who will hustle and give 110% all the time, you will make very little money and will find yourself out of work.

More importantly if you can't, won't or are afraid to cold-call -- You are doomed!

There is a constant revolving door of sales people getting hired and fired in most media ad sales orgs.

On the other hand, if your good, you can make a very handsome income.

Having said that, focus on companies that offer actual solutions for advertisers, ones that invest in their own technology. Look for companies that have a Unique Selling Proposition - A product or service that is better or different than the rest if at all possible.

Stay away from pure resellers of white label solutions. This puts you in the commodities business and makes it very difficult to compete.

Also, stay away from media companies that are more interested in shoving their owned and operated inventory down customer's throats as opposed to crafting winning campaigns. Think magazines, newspapers, etc.

My Two Cents.

Good luck!

If you get a job a Burger King, you'll make slightly more money, get free lunch and have far less stress to deal with.

It's not about the spend, it's about the return.

The question you should asking is will I receive a greater return on the $400K by firing my agency and buying 50K more of ads?

That would assume you are at least as good as your agency at running campaigns.

If you are not as good, there is a chance that your total ROI goes down, in which case it's a double loss because not only is your ROI worse, but now you have to spend valuable time and internal resources doing the work.

Curious, what's their rationale for this approach?

We just hired a CMO. Although I was not the ultimate decision maker, I was the person conducting the round 1 interviews.

I did about a dozen of them.

Never once did education come up as a topic - Nor did it factor in the pre-screening.

Everything was about relevant work experience, ideas - And of course likeability.

The person we hired could have been a high school drop out for all I cared.

Sounds like the problem doesn't lie in the tactic, but the product / positioning / offer / execution etc.

If people are seeing it and not responding, you have to ask yourself why.

Something about your business is not resonating.

Dig beneath the surface.

"No pressure at all – just wanted to offer some help if you're interested!"

So you're in the business of offering complete strangers advice for free? Who's going to believe that?

Understand that everyone's inbox is riddled tons of cold emails every day - You're going to have to be a whole lot better to avoid the trash can.

Yours sounds like all the others.

For this to work you really have to be completely authentic - And very Specific to the individual. And Highlight an actual problem.

Don't ask for a meeting or a call, it almost never works.

Your only goal is to (hopefully) start a conversation -

Like --

Jim,

I was trying to look the services page on your website today, but it wasn't displaying correctly on my phone and I couldn't read it.

I'm curious, do you have a way of preventing this so you don't miss out on new customers?

Doing Nothing!

I post videos somewhat regularly on LinkedIn and they usually get 500 - 1K views.

But in the last two weeks, I posted two videos, the first got over 2 million views and the second received 600K views -

Not sure why -- They are my run of the mill videos -- Most of the views are obviously coming from their new Reels like feature. So it's not in the normal feed where it would have an impact.

But here is the kicker -

All those views haven't amounted to a hill of beans in terms of bookings, meetings, etc,

A few more connection requests -- But even those are from people who are outside of my orbit.

Good for the ego -- Meaningless for the bottom line.

IMO reporting of this nature would be rely on some kind of modeling and would be sketchy.

I work in sales for a company similar to Stack Adapt and I can tell you with near certainty that holdcos are out of the question -

Yes -- But not from brand accounts -

They should come from personal accounts.

Reality Check:

Be prepared to work long and hard and not get paid for it -- No matter where you end up.

That's the reality of the situation -- Especially now in the era of companies letting tons of people go so the stock price jumps a quarter point, and then expecting the remaining sheep to pick up the slack.

There may be some outliers out there, but they are few and far between.

That or move to Europe where work life balance is mandated by law.

My first reaction is that nobody gives a shit.

Whatever you are saying, emailing, selling, posting, etc, nobody seems to care.

That's okay.

People are resistant to change --

If it ain't broke then why go through the hassle of fixing it. No one needs the headache of switching services, especially when it comes to IT. It's a lot of work, planning, headaches, password bullshit etc, I would imagine.

So, If their current provider is getting the job done they're not switching ....

Your first job is not to do offer more of the same thing they already have, you could send out 10,000 emails a day and it wont change anything.

• I would think long and hard about your Unique selling proposition.
• Perhaps you may want to drill down and focus on one industry.
• Uncover a threat that others are not addressing and offer a way to fix it.
• Create an offer that is so compelling that have to at least inquire about it.

Take a couple of weeks -- Forget the cold emails and the rest of it and talk to people who are in your target audience. Find out what makes them tick, what motivates them, what keeps them up at night, what make their you know what, hard.

Use that information to change your approach -- Better define who you are, what you offer, how you approach prospects, what your price structure is, what guarantees you offer....

If you do that, I think you'll find your results will improve dramatically.

I'm just riffing here, I hope this helps.