I have a client and friend who owns a company he built from the ground up and now makes $40 million per year. He’s a very good marketer. In fact, the sales and marketing teams at this company are massive — they alone account for 70 of his employees!
The Wisdom of ‘Old-School’ Marketing
I remember a conversation I had with this marketing legend a while back. I asked him about what he was working on concerning lead generation and conversion. So, he explained how he was focusing more on “old-school” marketing tactics with a few “new-school” tricks.
Those old-school marketing tactics my client uses for his massive B2B business include direct mail (which we help him with), phone prospecting, phone sales, shock and awe packages, and text opt-ins. He also has various campaigns: retargeting, long-term online and offline nurturing, re-engagement, and reactivation.
Through testing, this company has found it more difficult to get leads and sales with a manual sales process like direct mail and phone prospecting. However, the lead quality and, ultimately, the quality of the customer is much higher with this manual method of marketing. (This is measured by the package they purchase and their customer lifetime value.)
Follow Your Own Instincts
For most of my adult life, I’ve been the person who goes the opposite direction of everyone else. Being an entrepreneur is not the path most people choose. Having a kid at 16 isn’t normal. Neither is raising that kid as a single father, surely a decision most 16-year-old boys don’t make. In 2011, I started a print newsletter company when others were starting SEO firms, website development companies, and digital marketing agencies.
Being a contrarian is a core part of being an entrepreneur, but I’ve noticed something else.
Once we get into the entrepreneur club, many of us face a few setbacks or failures. All of a sudden, we want to conform to what everyone else is doing. We want to find the shiny object that promises us riches but rarely ever delivers.
With that in mind, I want to leave you with two thoughts to ponder.
- Success Does Not Come With Shiny Objects Or The Next Internet Hack. Business is won by being really good at the boring stuff and grinding it out. These overnight successes you read about are, at best, a lucky break. But, more often than not, they are total b.s. Someone has likely messed with the numbers to make their businesses seem more successful than they really are.
- Chasing The Easy Path Is Not A Path To Riches. My client and friend (who, by the way, is in his 30s and not out of touch with technology) knows that quality typically trumps quantity. That “old-school” marketing he uses is part of the quality. He also knows that a complex business is nearly impossible for a competitor to rip off. This gives him a huge virtual moat around his business. Don’t be scared of complexity and old-school marketing. It is a huge asset and is nearly impossible to steal once you have a system and process that works.
I’ll leave you with this final question: Are you going to follow the herd (possibly to the slaughter), or are you going to be an entrepreneur contrarian? Are you going to carve your own path to success and riches, regardless of what is “cool” right now?
