The Real Reason Your Marketing Channel Isn’t Working (It’s Not Dead)

Yeah, one of the benefits to being in a, in a space or a, a particular area for a long time is you get to see these patterns and, and trends over a longer horizon. I guess it's the one benefit of getting older is you've got some experience and some wisdom. And one that I see in sales and marketing a lot is proclaiming that particular channels are dead. Cold calling is dead. It doesn't work anymore. Nobody answers their phone. Webinars don't work. Nobody's, nobody's sitting there and, and going through the, the webinar anymore. Cold email doesn't work. Apple changed their filters and, you know, spam filters and this and that, so you can't do that anymore. LinkedIn changed their algorithm. Organic content doesn't work. Canvassing doesn't work in the field. You, you know, you can't get into people's offices. And selling in DMs has been ruined because, you know, of, of automation and shit like that.

And, you know, all of these channels I have heard at one time or another have been proclaimed dead. Including sometimes by people that I actually respect, like people that I know used to work in a particular channel, did some really good work with it, but then, you know, things changed within that space, they didn't change with it, and so now their, their message out there is, "Hey, this thing doesn't work. Like this channel is dead." And I have like some unique insight into hundreds of, of businesses, specifically MSPs. And I get to see, you know, what's, you know, from a lead gen standpoint, from a conversion standpoint, like the entire revenue engine because I do a lot of coaching, a lot of speaking, a lot of masterminds, we have our own programs through MSP Sales Partners, and we do fractional management. And so probably just last year saw inside the revenue engines of about 500 MSPs.

And when we do the attribution exercises at the end of the year, we look backwards into what worked and what didn't, and we take the deals that were closed and we say, "Okay, where did they come from?" You know what? All of the channels that I mentioned are represented. Every single fucking one of them. Which means they do work. But it's less of a question of "Does it work?" and it's more of a question is "Do you know how to make it work?" And I think one of the biggest mistakes that strategists, business owners, sales leaders, marketers make is they go looking for a channel that works instead of picking a channel, committing to making making it work, and figuring it out. If I'm seeing the channels work for other companies, it means the channel can work for you if you make it work.

And you don't necessarily want to go hunting for the thing that works. Like people are looking for the easy button. They're looking for the, "Hey, can I just, can I just turn on a light switch and and make this shit work?" And it doesn't exist. Because there's a cycle to every, every channel. And that, that cycle typically is: it's very hard to figure out, there's a lot of learning, there's a, there's a learning curve associated with it, there's more variables to make it work than you thought there were, and you go through that learning process, you figure it out, you start to generate results from it, you're, you, you get the benefits of that thing for a while, and then shit changes. The market changes, the tech changes, the buying patterns change, something changes and you've got to evolve and adapt. And typically evolving and adapting your channel to something that was working is a much faster process than figuring it out in the first place, uh, because you, you now know the fundamentals and the principles that, that make it work so now you're just like usually adjusting the tactics.

But that cycle is, is very consistent across, across every channel. And the thing is like that's actually good. If there was one channel that was easy to get going and never changed, then what would happen is everyone would be doing it. And when everyone is, is doing something, it dilutes the returns and it starts to not work. Right? Like that's why these channels don't work. In fact, and it's not even just like the air-quote "older channels," like, you know, cold calling, cold email. AI has already gone through this. You know, think about the evolution of, of chatbots. And, you know, the, the sales through chatbots. Or, um, a really specific example is, you know, a year to two years ago, if you were on the early adopter side of taking, you know, fake personalization through AI and running cold email campaigns, you were probably getting decent returns 18 months ago, 24 months ago. You know, these, these emails that you get that are like, "Hey Ray, saw you went to, to SMU. I'm, you know, I'm sure the, the Mustangs there are, you know, are, are great. Uh, you know, hey would you wanna buy my stuff?" Right? And you, and they, that they have this like fake elements of, of attri-, of, of things that they found online and they put it into an email. Well, you know what? It's not working very well right now. Um, because everyone's doing it. Your inboxes are actually flooded with them. So now the people who were doing that before have had to think about, "How are we going to change this? How are we going to adjust this?" And if they don't, then it's not going to work anymore.

I say all that to say, if you're in a position where your job is to figure out the channel that you're going to go into, a couple re-frames that I would, I would really recommend is: first of all, stop looking for channels that work, right? Like, pick a channel and commit to making it work. And reframe your expectations about that when there's some resistance early on. And you want to say, "This thing doesn't work," change what you say and say, "I still don't know how to make this work." And don't allow yourself to kind of fall into this well, "It doesn't, it's, it's dead." Right? If anybody out there is doing it, it means it works. It just means you've got to figure it out and you're in the learning curve. And that's not a bad thing. Like if there was no learning curve, it's an incredibly crowded market. It means it's about to change. Remember this cycle. Like, it's about to change. If everybody's doing it, and it all looks and feels the same, promise you, the, the returns are about to, to plummet, right?

And I think of this and I, I don't look for the channel that works. I commit to one that, that, and I say I'm going to make this shit work and I'm going to stick with it. Because by the way, if I say it doesn't work and I move to the next one, the next one's going to have the same thing. Like it has the same cycle. And you're going to find yourself in this perpetual chasing new tactics approach and you're never going to get returns because you're going to always stay in the learning phase. "Hey this doesn't work, next one." "This one doesn't work, next one." "This one doesn't work, next one." "This one doesn't work, next one." And you're staying in the space that's, that's the hard part. And you're not giving yourself the, the time to actually see the results and see it through.

And I look at, at something as: the more difficult it is to figure out, the better it is for me. Because I know psychology is most other people are going to quit as they're trying to, to figure this thing out. So if it's a really difficult thing that I have figured out and that I have, I have mastered and we're seeing returns from, the longer I think the cycle is going to be for me to reap the rewards from it because nobody else is going to, is going to see that through. And the easier and the faster something is to work, the shorter that cycle is going to be and the faster I'm going to have to get to, to constant evolution and constant adaptation.

So, hard is good. Don't pick, don't look for a channel that works, pick one and make it work. And before you, you say something doesn't work, zoom out. Anyone out there making it work? Well then, it's just a, it's a reframe. "I don't know how to make it work." That's my message today. A LinkedIn message I saw someone said "Cold calling's dead." I said, "God, here we go again." So that's my drop for today. I hope it helps. Adios.