What are your thoughts on starting with LinkedIn ads for a B2B agency?
That assumption isn't a good qualifier for smart; smart means having a low cost per acquisition relative to gross revenue. I don't personally use LinkedIn ads. The simplest way to start is outbound outreach, such as cold email or Upwork applications, and if you use LinkedIn, just DM people directly rather than building a full inbound ad funnel with landing pages and static assets.
You know, there are still website designers making $20‑40K a month solo. My friend Cody at his creative agency routinely sells $100K+ websites. There are many opportunities; you just need to be the right person. The value of a website is less about the platform and more about the relationship and business value you provide. Think of how a better website can increase a large company's revenue by even 1%—that translates to billions. So the brand is important at that level.
Regarding targeting info product creators, schools, and coaches: they’re B2B service clients who look at their checkbook daily and want to make money, so a simple offer like “I’ll make you more money and here's how” works. There’s a big growth opportunity. To get started, define those three niches, feed them into a cold‑outreach tool like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, compile a list, and start talking. You could reach out to 20 today and have 20 conversations by the end of the day with info product creators, schools, and coaches.
I'm not a big inbound LinkedIn expert, but from what I've seen, lead magnet-based posts generate large top-of-funnel interest and positive responses. You can then DM everyone to start private conversations. The value is taking conversations off public and making them private. If you don't have 50k followers, the calculus differs when starting vs growing. When starting, the top approach is reply‑guy‑ing your way up—engaging on others' posts to piggyback on their growth. Once you have a few thousand followers and something valuable, try lead‑magnet posts. Also, add non‑AI elements like photos of yourself doing odd things to inject personality and flavor, because soon AI will be able to generate indistinguishable talking‑head videos; being real will help you stand out.
With no money, you double‑down on time. Scrape LinkedIn or Upwork profiles for first names and contact details, then manually reach out with a concise pitch that showcases your AI skill and offers a quick solution. Aim for 10‑minute outreach slots; in 48 hours (assuming you sleep 16 hours) you have 32 slots, which translates to about 192 potential prospects. Even a single positive response can land a $5k‑$10k client. If LinkedIn isn’t an option, be relentless on any platform—spend every waking second on outreach. These prospects are pre‑qualified because they’ve already expressed a willingness to pay for a problem solved. You can also farm social media for signals of need and contact those users directly.
zero budgetcold outreach48 hoursclient acquisition
It's a great question; many in Maker School ask about cold emailing med spas, which is odd because you'd be emailing soccer moms. I focus on B2B because businesses put personal info on platforms like LinkedIn, making scraping easy—LinkedIn forces work experience and company URLs, letting you scrape URLs and emails (e.g., Nick@leftclick.ai). B2C data is harder to get and lower‑ticket, so I avoid B2C. For B2C outreach you need ads (PPC, Facebook, Google) to attract interest, then capture leads. My experience with B2C is either running PPC for them or helping them run PPC, then building systems to capitalize (speed‑delete systems). Alternatively, reframe the B2C as B2B: position the med spa to offer corporate discounts to businesses, then target those businesses via LinkedIn scraping. For example, search LinkedIn for med spas, get the business URL, extract an email like Ryan@viomedspa.com, and pitch a corporate package discount instead of direct consumer sales. This turns a B2C problem into a B2B one, enabling scraping. Solving B2C client acquisition is non‑trivial.