If you are a small company, brace up; I am going to save you a lot of time via this post. I have tried over 2 dozen marketing & sales tactics in out company in the last 9 months. During this time we have doubled our revenue (35k to 79k MRR), and this is what has worked and what hasn’t. What didn’t work first - 1. 150+ webinars with an average attendance of 60 in each - Barely $10,000 closed from it. They are too top of the funnel and lots of non-serious buyers. 2. Podcasts - Nothing; growing an audience requires too much time. Some 5 podcasts and nothing. 3. Google and FB Ads - We have burnt over $25,000 with a handful of clients closed. The cost of acquiring leads in our space is very expensive. 4. Partner promotions - Offering joint promotions with partners, done 15 so far, minimal outcome. 5. Company’s Social Handles - We are super active on LinkedIn and Facebook but barely any leads from there. I can only recollect 2 people ever buying our product and discovering us through FB or LinkedIn page. Maybe it creates social proofing when our prospects are looking up, which helps push sales. 6. Reviews on G2/Capterra - Results in nothing, you can have as many as you like. It's a vanity metric. What has worked - 1. Email Cold Outreach - People are dead wrong if they tell you cold emails don’t work. We continue to close thousands of dollars of business for both us and our clients just using cold emailing. All you need is the proper targeting and a good email copy. Most people cannot crack this, & hence you see more whiners on the internet. 2. Cold Calling warm leads - We always call people multiple times and leave a voicemail, who have shown higher engagement on our offering or clients. If not this, we would be booking 1/3rd lesser demos. 3. Linkedin Cold Outreach - higher reply rates than emails but off late Linkedin has been restricting automation. Evergreen for manual outreach. 4. SEO - took 3 months to figure out but brings in more than 200 qualified appointments today. It's a long-term investment. We started getting results from 3rd month. 5. Value addition posts on Linkedin, Slack and relevant FB groups - Anytime I make value addition posts, people see me and our company as an authority and start conversations with me. There is a higher level of trust there. 6. FB prospecting - In the last 4 months, we have booked more than 900 appointments on FB. We would send friend requests to people, have conversations around their problems and then invite them to demo. Though a lot of no-shows and junk demos as you never know what is the size of business you are dealing with. 7. FB Community - We have an active community of entrepreneurs. Some 900, and we continue to add more relevant people there. They look at our posts, see a lot of value and book demos from there, especially when they see others talking good about us. 8. Relationships - We get a lot of referrals from our relationship with customers. Easy close there. A lot has been also possible because of my partner Spencer Farber, who has over 20 years of Sales ex in scaling companies and, unlike all the Internet gurus, quietly goes on about doing his business. No fluff and lots of action. As a startup or a small company, your manpower is limited, and you can only do few things. What is leading to your growth?

How much money have you spent the past year to achieve this?

@Harsh Gupta this is a great post. I have a small start-up agency and I'm seeing the same thing. I've closed a $25k/yr client with cold email so far and 2 clients from Linkedin. The other 5 came from referral and just posting my offer in Slack groups that allow that. How do you handle the FB outreach? That is something I haven't tried yet. Do you use a team or just do it yourself?

@James Davis maybe spent like around 60-80k

very good content, thanks @Harsh Gupta

Great post thanks @Harsh Gupta Which tool do you use for email and engagement tracking?

i use our own tool, cliently.com

Cold email marketing is still on top of the charts with far less investment than SEO/FB google ads etc. I've been helping my clients reach out to their most targeted prospects using cold emails and they are in turn paying me ~15k/month to build email/contact lists for them.