A bulletproof way to acquire more customers: ‘Brute Force Marketing’ ⚡
How to ace cold messages by *forcing* a demo
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Hey friends! I’m writing these words from the beautiful lake of Khao Sok (Thailand), where we are staying in a floating bungalow.
Now let’s dive right into today’s new marketing idea 👇
My #1 acquisition advice for early-stage startups is always the same:
Use your own product on behalf of potential customers → gift them the results (as if they were already using your product).
I call it 🕵️♂️ Brute-Force Marketing 🕵️♂️ and it requires a lot of manual, non-scalable work… But it’s a bullet-proof way to boost your acquisition rates. 💯
And it’s much easier than you might think.
🧪 My ‘Brute-Force Marketing’ Playbook:
Find 8-10 ideal customers on LinkedIn. Who are you dying to work with?
Use your product to create something valuable for them. This could be a report, video, or anything that your product can ‘create’ to solve their specific problem. For example, if your product is a podcast editing SaaS, then edit an episode for them (based on their own materials that you find online). If your product requires some data/integrations to work — use your best guess.
Send them the surprise! Reach out via email or LinkedIn DM and gift them the results you achieved for them. No sales pitches, just a gift.
No response? No worries: Publicly share the gift (e.g., as a LinkedIn post), praising their work and explaining how you ‘helped’ them with your product. It subtly shows your expertise and product value. And by tagging them, they might notice you.
🔥 It actually works!
1 - Christina Cacioppo, one of the co-founders of Vanta, heard that the Segment team was struggling with SOC-2 compliance. She proactively sent the team a spreadsheet outlining steps to take to ensure compliance, for free.
2 - My friend Tomer Dean did ‘Brute-Force Marketing’ with his startup Lychee — a SaaS for automatically turning podcast episodes into YouTube Shorts clips. He simply created clips with his app and sent them to podcast hosts. It generated some sweet results, as we can learn from his LinkedIn post about it.
And just like the playbook, if the potential customer doesn’t answer — we can make our efforts public. Here is a viral post from Nico Ferreyra, the CEO of Default.com, showcasing the value of his platform to Deel:
🧠 Why does this work?
🦄 Unique & Specific: Everyone is sending generic cold messages. But you will show personalized value.
⛳️ Real Results: People resonate better with tangible outcomes than vague promises.
👷 The Famous ‘Labor Illusion’: When your ideal customers see the effort invested, they perceive your company & product as more valuable.
Let’s end with a quote I love:
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
(- Steve Jobs)
I’ll hang out in the comments section if you have any questions.
See you next week ✌️
Tom
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I've been doing something similar inconsistently (that's the truth).
What I do is make a video evaluating what they are doing, what they shouldn't be doing, what they are failing to do, and what they should be doing, changing, or improving.
Normally, I catch their attention, but so far, I haven't closed a sale with this method.
Maybe there isn't enough value in what I do.
Good advice which brings me to a question- I do complimentary engagement audits on LinkedIn as a lead jn to work with me. Usually, a client opts in to have this audit done. Would you suggest that I go ahead and do some for my IC?