Read time: 3 min, 44 secs

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

In Feb 2021, I wrote my first post online.

Two things shocked me:
1) How long it took to get the first few customers.
2) How overwhelmed with customers I was once it worked.

If you’re antsy like I am… you don’t want to wait.

So if you’ve tried marketing online, but you’re frustrated customers aren’t coming fast enough… this issue is for you.

We’ll talk about:
How long it really takes to get customers online (hint: it’s faster & slower than you think)

And how to design your marketing to speed up the process

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

I quit my job to help business owners

November 2021, I quit.

I advised 30+ Fortune 500 executives to grow their business. But the small business owners I coached on the side didn’t have access to basic growth frameworks.

It didn’t seem fair.

So I left consulting on a mission to even the playing field for business owners.

I had 9 months of savings to to make this work.

So I had to figure out fast how I was going to share these growth frameworks with business owners (or head back to big corporate defeated).

But there was one big problem:
How was I going to find these business owners to help?

So I posted my first Tweet.

Then… I sat back to imagine all the people about to reach out to me for help.

And?

Nothing.

You know how many followers I had after writing every day for two weeks?

7

But today… I have 85,000 followers. 14,000 people read my emails.

And 4 - 6 business owners a week who reach out for marketing advice.

I never imagined these lessons would create so much excitement.

But I also never imagined it would take so long.

Getting your first customers online takes longer than you expect. But, once you crack it, the explosion is faster than you imagine.

Every channel has different benefits and timelines.

So we’ll look at each channel through two lenses:
1) How fast before you get customers?
2) How many customers do you get?

Some channels are faster, but don’t have the big compounding snowball effect. Others are slow to start, but get you massive results over time.

Learn from my mistakes.

You’ll need to combine fast AND snowball channels to get both. 👇

🧔🏻‍♂️ Quick side note:
I was overwhelmed when I first felt digital marketing working.

It’s a nice problem to have, but I didn’t set up my business the right way to take all the demand.

Vote at the end if you want the story and I’ll write an issue on what I wish I knew.

How long will it take to see customers online?

Rough rule of thumb:
The longer it takes to build, the more powerful it is when it works.

Every channel is different, so here’s a few example timeframes:
• Cold outreach: 1 - 2 weeks
• Warm outreach: 2 - 3 months
• Google ads: 2 - 3 months
• LinkedIn: 6 - 9 months
• SEO: 6 - 9 months

Think about how long your runway is. When do you need to see results?

Can you afford to wait for the snowball and get overwhelmed with customers in 6 months? Or do you need customers today?

Usually the answer is a blend of both.

In the next section we’ll design how you blend both “the snowball” channels and the “quick-hit” channels.

Here’s how you blend channels so you build towards that snowball result, but still get your quick results today:

How do you get fast results AND the snowball effect?

Which channel you start with depends on the size of your business.

When I first started… it was only me. And I had no revenue.

So I had to master one channel on my own (Twitter).

It takes a lot of learning to get good enough to see the compounding.

If you’re strapped for cash, do it yourself. Focus just on one channel and get good at that channel.

Do you have funds to access experts (~$2k / month)?

Then I’d start the quick-hit channel on your own. Then hand it to an agency to take over and quickly get you to master it.

Once that’s working, add on a channel that takes longer to build, but gets you the snowball effect (socials or SEO).

Quick tip for working with agencies:
Make sure you ask them to show you how they’re doing it.

You’ll want to learn their tricks to build it into your own systems so that as you scale you can decide to bring it in-house.

Now, anyone can start an agency so most aren’t good. So make sure you get connected by referral.

Side note: It took me 3 months to find a Google ads agency I trust. I’ll share the story in this next section:

I’m on a mission to share good resources (so I found you a Google Ads agency I trust)

I build marketing systems for my CMO clients.

So if you’re an avid reader of Outlier Growth, you’ll know I spent the last 3 months looking for agencies I trust to plug in with my clients.

I felt like every agency I talked to was just trying to sell me something. They felt more passionate about making money than marketing.

So I didn’t trust them.

Then I came across this Google Ads agency that wasn’t trying to sell me. They seemed like internet marketing nerds who just love the craft.

And it shows. They’ve managed $82M in ad spend.

So I pulled them into one of my clients and I had a great experience.

I’m excited to share them with you. If you’re looking for someone to run your Google Ads for you, check out QuickerLeads.

Tell Sam you came from me and you’ll get a free landing page feedback session to make sure people actually buy when they get to your site.

Click to get a free landing page review.

If you found this helpful, please forward this email to 1 friend or colleague. They'll appreciate you and you'll help grow the community.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian

P.S. A good Google ads agency took me forever to find. So I’ll share them again in case you missed it.

My goal is to find you amazing agencies for every channel (Facebook ads, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram etc).

But the bar is high. It’ll take a while to weed through all of them.

If you’re looking for one for a specific channel, reply to this email so I can prioritize the hunt for you.

Cheers!

🙋 Vote: Next Week’s Topic

Choose the topic that 13,753 readers receive next week (vote below):