Cold Email vs Content Marketing

2 weeks ago, I sent out 500 cold emails.

Result: 10 qualified demos booked for the next week.

I was like “Why am I doing this whole content thing???”

I just sent out 500 automated emails, which took me almost no time, and here are TEN demos on my calendar with people who fit our customer profile. It takes a LOT of videos for me to generate 10 firmographically qualified demos.

But as I started having those calls, I realized: Not all demos are created equal.

Cold email = low-quality demos
Content = high-quality demos

Many of the people had no clue about what we do.

- One of them asked me if we ghostwrite Forbes articles. (no)
- Another was looking for an agency that did SEO and Facebook. (don’t do that)
- 2-3 of them had no idea what kind of budget they needed to work with us. (we’re expensive)

I’m yet to look at the data, but I think none or maybe 1-2 of these ten calls resulted in a next step.

Those demo calls were a little awkward because I had gotten used to the high-quality inbound leads that we get from our content.

Usually people who come inbound:
- have watched my videos on LinkedIn for some time
- spent some time on our website, and watched (part of) our webinar
- know that we do founder branding and videos
- have seen some of our case studies or customers on LinkedIn
- are base-line familiar with our processes: recording sessions, batching, editing, copywriting, etc.
- have a much better understanding of our pricing.
- already know me “personally” because they have watched my singing video, read about my book club, knew that I was in Croatia, etc.

After that week, I understood for the 1st time what it means to have “low-quality leads.”

I think there are ways to improve the cold email outreach to better pre-qualify prospects, explain our process more clearly, etc.

But I did learn that not all demos are created equal.