How to sell marketing services when everyone is skeptical
Prospects are constantly bombarded with spammy marketing offers from people who take their money and run without delivering results, which makes them immediately distrust anyone offering lead generation. This heavy skepticism stops them from trusting new agencies or even considering equity-for-services proposals, as they assume it is another dud deal.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Offering performance-based guarantees like pay-per-lead or no payment if targets aren't met
- 2Offering introductory freebies like the first few customers free
- 3Hiring a general manager on payroll
- 4Paying a monthly fee to a local marketing company or service
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Honestly, I tried this but with Chinese restaurants. It's a no. Nobody will just give up equity without cash.”source ↗
“Why would I give up equity, literally tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, years of hard work to someone to make some posts on social media?”source ↗
“And I actually do struggle. Because an offer to run someones marketing and do lead gen for them, they are getting blasted with those offers”source ↗
“And I totally understand where the skepticism comes from because there are tons of people doing dud jobs for 1-2 months, generate leads that go nowhere, run away with 3k and repeat the entire process.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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