Start with outbound
Outbound channels are channels where you proactively push your message to an audience—like paid advertising, or outbound sales. Startups should start with these channels, because they produce results instantly. They also produce immediate feedback: you will know within days whether your offer resonates or not, unlike inbound channels like content marketing or SEO, where feedback takes months, rather than days.
Tips
- Outbound channels are channels where you proactively push your message to an audience—like paid advertising, or outbound sales. Startups should start with these channels, because they produce results instantly.
- When you start doing outbound sales, do it yourself. You can’t outsource sales to partners, external parties, or sales people. Nobody will be successful in sales until you—the founder—show that it’s possible and lead by example. Founders should lead sales.
- Outbound sales is frustrating and exhausting… but that’s exactly because you’re getting extremely rapid and candid feedback. It is exactly that unambiguous and unfiltered feedback that you need to iterate and succeed.
- Not all channels will allow you to build a unicorn company, but both paid advertising and outbound sales can pull that off.
For an agency like Double, it’s not uncommon to see clients running $100k-500k/month in paid advertising spend on platforms like Google, Meta or increasingly even TikTok.Those budgets mean you’re bringing in tens of thousands of leads per month.
That’s the volume you need.
Consider outbound channels.
It’s expensive, but it’s fast.
Sometimes, that’s just what you need.
In Practice
Nathan Barry, the founder of ConvertKit historically spoke about the benefits of outbound sales: if you go out and call people, they’ll tell you whether they are interested in your offer or not.
Outbound sales allowed Nathan to scale ConvertKit — a bootstrapped SaaS company — from $1,500/month in MRR to $100,000/month MRR.
That’s the kind of immediate action you’re looking for, in the early days. It unlocks other channels that only function at scale.
Pair with
