Two things in communications that don't work, even though everyone says they do (or don't work the way everyone imagines).

Here at zhizhital, we go to great lengths to find leads for ourselves and our clients. And there are two tools that everyone prays to, but they don't work the way everyone imagines, or don't work at all.

So, these two pillars of new hope are partner marketing for service businesses and outreach.

I know both, so I'll speak up.

🤝 Partner marketing in the service business was made fashionable by the Galera club. They said: agency owners, unite and exchange clients: if someone comes to you and you can't provide the service, don't throw it away—it'll come in handy, don't refuse, pass it on to another agency. What did this lead to? Agencies started running around like crazy, looking for someone to sell their services to their clients. For some reason, it didn't work for anyone.

🤷‍♀ Why it didn't work: no one is interested in selling your services to their clients for 10%. Because 10% is very little, and because selling something requires quite a lot of effort. Marketers traditionally have a relatively low ticket size because they work with percentages of the budget, while PR people have a high ticket size. As a result, marketers don't understand how to sell such high tickets, and PR people don't understand why they should sell such low tickets for pennies. Plus, no one wants to risk their reputation by selling leads to just anyone.

👌 How it actually works: partnerships develop over a long period of communication in industry clubs and on joint projects. This process doesn't work artificially. To build a partnership, you need to start with media presence and PR.

💌 Outreach emerged a few years ago as an alternative to spam mailings. You need to send emails ethically; it works great in the US, but we, in our bast shoes, walk past leads and don't notice that the money is lying in our inbox.

🤷‍♀ Why outreach doesn't work for everyone: because it's a tool that isn't suitable for everyone. And the other day I read a post about how a fellow countryman in the US got zero leads from this tool in the agency business. Because in a red ocean, this tool doesn't work; it only works in blue oceans. This is solely my opinion, you can argue with it, I have no research.

👌 How to make it work: based on my personal experience and from reading countless cases on this topic to the bottom of the internet—outreach works with products that have trust. So first, you do PR in the relevant industry, and then you do an outreach campaign. And then... then some serious leads appear.

Sad and not tasty, but it's a fact. Tools don't always work the same way and don't always work the way we want.