"Should I focus on building my online presence or cold outreach"

"Should I focus on building my online presence or cold outreach"

There’s a lot of debate around cold outreach vs building your online presence lately

In this post, I am going to break down what this drama is and my full perspective on the situation 

See, most of you are looking at “The De*th of Outbound” as a dig to say F*CK the outreach industry, but this is the furthest from the truth.

People seem to be letting their emotions take over something logical that is happening in the industry right before our eyes

The greatest leverage is using your AUTHORITY across ALL your outreach efforts. This includes cold emails, cold dms, paid ad funnels. 

The De*th of Outbound says the TRADITIONAL ways of outreach and acquisition are dying out, as strategies naturally do during market cycles. It’s a matter of market sophistication

Every single person who is speaking against building an authority only has the privilege to voice this opinion because they’re an authority on a specific platform. Speaking negatively about the importance of building your presence while you grew a massive chunk of your business using this presence is silly. 

Let’s go through it all together, in this post, I will be uncovering the winner of the debate of Authority Vs Outbound

TL/DR

The potency of Cold Outreach is weaker than ever

What makes a product great? It delivers on its promise. 

People have been creating products around cold outreach for the past few years. Whether it be programs, software, courses, communities, cohorts, etc. The most saturated agency niche on X right now is “lead gen agency owners” - 

This is great, it means the product owners have delivered on their promise

The downside is “saturation”. 

How does saturation affect cold outreach? Well, to understand, we have to break the core objective of cold outreach 

It is to get Qualified people to book calls with you. That’s it. 

If 1 person was sending cold messages to the single prospect, they have a better chance of getting opened, responded to, and ultimately booked a call with 

If 5 people were sending cold messages to the same person, that one prospect would naturally choose the one that STANDS OUT THE MOST

Now here’s the problem, everyone in the industry is copying the same outreach templates and recycling the same list of leads without doing anything to stand out. Without having any unfair advantage. They’re painting their crap with some lipstick and calling it a supermodel.

This leads to a very big problem 

Business owners get exhausted of the same outreach messages and they IGNORE YOU.

You have to understand that results are a commodity, anyone can deliver results. 

You also have to understand that anyone can copy templates and send them out… (The same outcome comes with content creation) 

YOU NEED to find other ways to stand out 

Does this mean outreach is dying forever?

NO. 

It just means that period of INSANE RESULTS is not as prevalent anymore 

So if you want to no longer be ignored, then you need to adapt to new ways of outreach.

Adapt or Die - Market sophistication - Cold outreach is not the end all be all

Markets sophisticate every few months or years 

What does this mean?

When your audience's knowledge improves

When more competition comes in and they innovate the old ways 

When your audience gets desensitized to the same strategy over and over 

When the expectations of your prospects change in terms of quality & results

A market gets smarter, your consumer becomes more empowered and they DEMAND BETTER STUFF

Apple just announced the iPhone 15, their old best features from 2 years ago are now the BASELINE version of this new announcement. If they decide to never innovate, their consumer will leave

To keep your consumers happy, enticed, and ready to buy, you need to adapt. 

Relying on 1 outreach strategy (cold outreach) is dangerous because STRATEGIES CHANGE with time, they reach ceilings, and it's on you to expand. If a strategy is not breathing, if it’s not innovating, then it is falling behind. 

Cold outreach is always relevant, however, relying on the old ways WILL NOT WORK FOREVER whether you choose to believe it or not

If you want your outreach efforts to prosper, you need to stand out more which we will be talking about in point 4 

Relying on one source of acquisition will be your downfall - Instead, create your own Acquisition Ecosystem 

Here’s a lesson I want to introduce 

It’s something the eCommerce world knows very well.

7 years ago, you could have one traffic source, one basic ugly store, and one simple funnel and you could succeed and scale to millions

Today if you were to follow this entire route, you’d FAIL dramatically. In 2023, you need something called a TRAFFIC AND ACQUISITION ECOSYSTEM

At scale, you need Facebook & IG ads, Google ads, Retention marketing, etc. 

To scale profitably, you need to diversify. 

Patterns tend to repeat themselves, the pattern here is people relied on 1 source of traffic - It worked so people began educating others, that one strategy was over-shared, and the POTENCY began to decrease 

Sounds familiar? 

Facebook ads NEVER DIED OUT COMPLETELY, however, the TRADITIONAL way that worked back then is no longer relevant. 

What did the E-commerce stores do? They pivoted and began expanding their ecosystem

This is what is happening to the service-based industry, 

Course creators, agency owners, freelancers, coaches, and consultants, pay attention to this pattern

Relying solely on one acquisition source is dangerous and will be your downfall.

You need to make a natural pivot. What is that pivot? Let’s look at the next point

Being a lighthouse in the Fog - Standing out from all the competition 

To pivot, I want us to move on from solely talking about cold outreach & personal branding and open the doors to a few other client acquisition methods out there

Cold emails

Cold DMs

Paid ads

Referrals

In-person events

Every single one of these sources can get great results, but your goal is to always improve the success of them all, right? After all, we are all business owners optimizing for revenue and profits. 

To improve our success, we need to stand out from every other person out there. (Aka your competition as they’re looking to take your perfect prospect from you) 

Why do we need to do this? Because if 100 people are reaching out to the same prospect, then that one prospect will choose the person with the person with the most compelling offer & pitch & experience 

What are the ways we are currently taught to stand out?

1/ Share case studies - this is exceptional, this proves you are better than 95% of people 

2/Name-dropping other people that your prospect may know too 

3/ Compelling copywriting to build curiosity 

4/ Personalization within the content 

These work, but as more competition floods in, you need STRONGER ways to stand out. Ways that act as a MOAT, something that is more difficult for others to copy

This is where becoming an AUTHORITY is important

Remember this, people will always choose to hire someone who’s an Authority vs a random person who cold outreached them. If the outreacher had his/her name out there with a presence, closing becomes 10x simpler because trust is built quicker.

Becoming that Authority is like being a lighthouse in the Fog. All your cold outreach becomes easier, all your ads become easier, and all your acquisition becomes easier. 

People TRUST you. Which is one of the biggest barriers prospects face when hiring.

Your online presence is the NUCLEUS of your acquisition ecosystem

Your online presence is the ultimate leverage. 

Every acquisition source you have will prosper greater when you have this presence 

It’s not Cold outreach vs Building an Authority 

It’s Cold outreach is better when you are an Authority.

Building your online presence needs to be done in parallel to all your other acquisition efforts so they can all feed off the name you are building. 

This is all without mentioning the powerful results you will have with the inbound aspects of your online presence which can be a post of it’s own 

The Real De*th Of Outbound 

There is no winner of the debate, instead, you have a new light that is shed on the situation.

The industry is sophisticating, and the potency of your old outreach strategies is losing their effect

Relying on outbound your entire life will be your downfall 

Relying on any ONE acquisition source your entire life is not enough 

You need to create an acquisition ecosystem. The life force of this ecosystem is your online presence 

Your online presence fuels your other acquisition efforts all while generating you more leads inbound 

The De*th of Outbound is happening