Launching your new business comes with a universal problem that all beginners face: how do you get customers? When your time, budget, and energy are running low, you need a surefire way to get customers.
We’ll narrow it down for you with the three main ones: cold outreach, content marketing, and paid ads. They’re the most commonly used customer acquisition methods brands use today. Yes, each one delivers results, but they work in different ways, especially when you’re just starting out. And when you’re running on a minimal budget, you can’t afford to spread yourself thin.
When it’s down to cold outreach vs content vs ads, choosing the wrong channel can cause burnout, wasted money, or slow down momentum. Our guide discusses the potential of all three methods for early-stage marketing: long before you implement scaling, optimization, or complex funnels.
What Is Cold Outreach, and How Does It Work at the Beginning?
In cold outreach, you proactively contact people who have never interacted with your business. When you start your business, cold outreach is a manual, targeted, and focused process, not automated.
Compared to content or ads, cold outreach doesn’t need an existing audience, paid visibility, or an algorithm. Instead, you identify a specific group of potential customers and reach out with a clear, relevant message.
Typical Cold Outreach Methods
Your new business can rely on these cold outreach methods:
- In cold emailing, you send personalized emails to potential customers.
- In Direct Messages, you reach out to prospects via platforms like LinkedIn, X, or Instagram.
- With Cold Calls, you call prospects directly, especially in service-based businesses.
- With platform-based outreach, you message users via forums, professional communities, and marketplaces.
Early on, you need to emphasize quality over quantity, so you benefit from smaller lists and personalized messages instead of mass outreach.
How Cold Outreach Works For Early-Stage Customer Acquisition
Cold outreach is effective for beginners because it gives you direct access to possible buyers without taking much time to set up. You get benefits like:
- A faster feedback loop, so you learn quickly whether the offer resonates with prospects.
- No need for an upfront audience, like incoming traffic on the site, followers, or subscribers.
- More control over who you choose to contact and what you say to them.
- Potential to build revenue by having conversations and closing clients early.
And if you’re a solopreneur testing a new offer or service, cold outreach acts as a marketing channel and validation tool to see how your offer performs.
Challenges You’ll Face as a Beginner
Despite its benefits, beginners can dismiss cold outreach because of a few pitfalls:
- Getting a low response rate when sending generic messages
- Not being able to identify the right audience
- Being confused between helpful outreach and spam
A lot of beginners also fear being rejected, but did you know that the average rate of success for cold outreach, like calling, is only 2 percent? So, for the 100 calls you make, only two will get a sale. That means 98 rejections. You can’t expect 100 percent of your outreach efforts to stick, so having realistic expectations is the best place to start.
Another common mistake that beginners make is focusing on numbers instead of relevance. Sending a flood of poorly targeted messages can only frustrate potential leads and give you minimal results.
How Long Does Cold Outreach Take?
The trade-off with cold outreach is that it takes more time than content creation and paid ads, but you need fewer technical skills. Initially, expect to wait a few days to a few weeks before getting the first response. You’ll have to invest 30 to 90 minutes every day for researching prospects, messaging them, and following up.
You won’t need complex tech skills, so if you’re willing to be consistent and thoughtful, cold outreach is an accessible startup marketing tactic.
What Is Content Marketing for Beginners?
In content marketing, you attract potential customers by making and sharing helpful information instead of pitching a product or service. As a beginner, you can start by publishing content to answer common questions, explain problems, or share industry insights.
Where cold outreach involves initiating direct conversations, content marketing requires you to earn people’s attention over time.
How Should Beginners Do Content Marketing?
Creating content is a simple and low-volume startup marketing tactic with different formats. The most common is to write blog posts that answer questions, with short videos like reels or TikToks gaining more traction.
Then, you have social media posts, where sharing threads or carousels consistently can bring in viewers and possible sales. Lastly, you can send email newsletters to a small list of people who subscribe through your website. These can feature industry updates, guidance on how to use your offer, or just helpful information to keep them engaged.
If you end up choosing content creation as your primary customer acquisition method, remember that you don’t need to publish everywhere. Choosing one platform and a subsequent content format is enough to see whether it relates to your audience.
How Content Marketing Builds Organic Reach and Trust
A major strength of content marketing is how it builds your brand’s credibility before asking a customer to buy your offer. As you share more helpful content, it positions your business as a reliable source of information while proving that you’re an expert. Content also allows people to discover your brand organically as they look up related keywords on search engines and social media feeds.
Good content isn’t just a one-and-done deal, either. It has a compounding effect, so it continues to bring traffic in over time. And compared to paid ads, content creation strategies carry less financial risk, requiring more time than money.
We’ve seen that this early-stage marketing strategy works best for consultants and creatives. It gives their potential customers a look into their brand’s philosophy and approach before making a purchasing decision.
The Limitations of Content Marketing Early On
Yes, content marketing gives you long-term benefits, but you need to be patient. At the start, you can expect limitations like:
- Waiting weeks or months to see traction on your content
- No guaranteed visibility because search engines take time to show content
- Publishing content on a consistent schedule, since you’ll only see results by posting regularly
- Slower feedback, which can make it harder to validate offers quickly
Because of these limitations, beginners should avoid choosing content marketing if they need quick leads and cash flow.
Easy Types of Content For Beginner Business Owners
Not all content types need the same level of effort, so some are easier to create than others. If you’re just starting out, you can test:
- One-minute videos that explore popular ideas or trends
- Blog posts answering common questions that your audience members have
- Social media posts based on industry insights or personal experiences
- Longer instructional videos related to your offer or service
These content formats are common because they don’t need advanced tools, require minimal production, and let you focus on clarity rather than performance metrics.
What Are Paid Ads and How Do They Perform When Starting?
Using paid ads is the fastest new business lead generation strategy out of the three. You simply pay platforms like Facebook and Google to show a specific audience your product or offer. Because they promise speed, paid ads are the go-to customer acquisition method for beginners.
The most common platforms to start include Google Search Ads and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) Ads. Google Search Ads work by showing your business to people who are actively seeking a solution. Social media ads on Facebook and Instagram appear on users’ feeds, Stories, or Reels based on their interests and behavior.
Just like cold outreach, you’re not targeting everyone with paid ads. Platforms let you target users according to their location, search intent, interests, or past interactions. If you have a clearly defined audience, using these filters can save a lot of time.
Benefits of Paid Ads For New Business Lead Generation
The biggest advantage of using paid ads is their speed. While content marketing takes weeks or several months to surface in front of your audience, paid ads work immediately. They’re great for:
- Seeing the demand for a new offer that you’re launching
- Driving traffic to your business’s landing page or lead form in a few days
- Getting early feedback on your business’s messaging and positioning
You can also control different aspects of your paid ad campaign by setting budgets, pausing them, and adjusting targets based on performance.
Challenges of Paid Ads For Beginner Businesses
Though paid ads are fast, they’re also super fragile for beginner business owners, so you risk facing certain challenges:
- Without experience and technical skills, you end up spending money without getting results, affecting your overall budget. This quickly gets expensive, considering the average Cost per Click for Google Ads was $4.66 in 2024.
- To use platforms like Google Search Ads and Facebook Ads, you need to understand targeting, bidding, and analytics, making it a steep learning curve.
- If you don’t have a clear message or offer, paid ads make things worse by showing the same message to thousands of people.
Early on, ads don’t develop trust on their own, so you need to pair them with a strong landing page and a compelling value proposition.
Paid Ads Approaches and Expectations for Beginners with Small Budgets
As a beginner business owner, you shouldn’t rely on a paid ads campaign to be your full growth strategy. A more realistic approach is to test one platform at a time, running ads with a small daily budget, and seeing how the campaign performs. Most importantly, you should drive traffic to a single offer, like signing up for a newsletter or consultation.
Don’t expect paid ads to give you sales right away. They’re better for seeing if people click and engage with your ads, learning which messages resonate with the audience, and identifying whether your offer has a demand among the audience.
Some solopreneurs and side hustlers use AI-assisted platforms to simplify setting up paid ads by automating ad creation or connecting them directly to landing pages. Platforms like nas.io make it less complex to test ads, but only work if you’ve clarified your offer and audience.
Comparing Effectiveness: Cold Outreach vs Content vs Ads for New Businesses
Cold outreach vs content vs paid ads: all of them work, but they need different levels of time, money, and skill.
Cold Outreach | Content Marketing | Paid Ads | |
Time it takes to see results | Fast (days to weeks) | Slow (weeks to months) | Fast (days) |
Upfront cost | Very low | Low | Medium to high |
Skills required | Communication & research | Writing, teaching, consistency | Targeting, creatives, analytics |
Effort needed | High manual effort | High time investment | High learning curve |
Scalability | Limited early on | Grows over time | Increases with your budget |
Trust building | Medium (1:1) | High (long-term) | Low initially |
Risk level | Low financial risk | Low financial risk | Higher financial risk |
Works best for | First clients, validation | Long-term visibility and authority | Testing your offer and driving traffic to the landing page |
When These Early Stage Marketing Strategies Work Best
For a beginner business owner, each method shines in different situations, especially at the beginning.
Cold Outreach
This can be a direct path to first conversations with your potential customers, and is a good fit if you:
- Offer services like coaching or consulting
- Know who your ideal customer is
- Are comfortable with personalized, targeted communication
- Want immediate feedback on your messaging and not just passive visibility
Since it’s manual, cold outreach isn’t easy to scale, but if you want to validate your offer, it gives clear signals for demand.
Content Marketing
Solopreneurs and side hustlers playing the long game use this method a lot, and you can try it if:
- You have a knack for explaining ideas or solutions
- Your audience searches for information before buying
- You want to build trust with potential customers first
- You can stick to a content schedule
Yes, it takes more time to give results, but the effects compound. So, if you write one good article or make a cool video, it can attract leads for months once it gains traction.
Paid Ads
When you want immediate leads and you have a clear message and offer, paid ads can work. Choose them if you:
- Have defined your audience and offer carefully
- Want to test ad messaging quickly
- Have a small budget to experiment with ad campaigns
- Want to drive traffic to a focused landing page
Pouring money into paid ads won’t fix your unclear brand messaging. Initially, it’s best to use them as a controlled test and not a complete growth strategy.
Should You Combine Customer Acquisition Methods Early On?
A simple combination can include using cold outreach to get early feedback, creating content to answer common questions your audience has, and running small ad tests on a single offer.
However, trying all three at once without clarity won’t give you better results. New business lead generation in the early stage rewards focus rather than coverage. Don’t try mastering every channel at first; just choose one primary tactic and go from there.
How to Choose the Right Approach for Your Situation
What you choose depends on your offer, audience, resources, and current goals. Here’s a quick guide:
- Assess Your Offer: Ask yourself if you’re providing a custom solution or a standardized product, and whether customers need to build trust before making a purchase.
- Consider Audience’s Preferences: Look at how your audience behaves online. Do they respond to direct communication, or do they actively seek answers? Are they engaging with other ads in your niche?
- Evaluate Your Budget and Timeline: Choose cold outreach or content if you have more time than money, and paid ads if you have more money and less time.
- Consider Quick Wins vs Long-Term Branding: Cold outreach and ads can give faster conversions, speedy feedback, and early validation, while content builds long-term trust and compounding results.
- Think About Your Current Goal: If you want your first customers, choose cold outreach, but if you want to build trust, publish content regularly. And if you want to validate your offer or learn what resonates, you can run small ad tests and try outreach.
The best strategy for you is one that takes you closer to real data, feedback, and conversations. After making the first move, adding more channels becomes easier.
Using AI and Automation Tools to Support Early Marketing Efforts
No matter what customer acquisition method you choose, it’ll be made up of several little tasks. But writing messages, posting content, tracking and following up with leads, and sending responses can take a lot of time, which would otherwise go towards building your offer.
AI and automation can support your strategy, not replace it. Initially, leave repetitive tasks to the AI tools, so you have free time for higher-value work, like talking to customers. A few ideas for initial uses include:
- Drafting outreach messages
- Organizing your leads
- Scheduling and posting content
- Managing simple ad campaigns
AI-powered platforms like nas.io can help you automate outreach sequences or manage lead lists after you’ve narrowed down the target audience. And if you have limited technical skills, it can help you manage leads and package offers without learning to code.
Clarity First, AI Tools Second
Adding AI-powered tools to your early-stage workflow only works if you’ve made key decisions. Before using automation, you should know who you’re trying to reach, the problem you’re solving, and the channel you’re prioritizing.
Build Your Business Smarter With AI
Cold outreach, content, and paid ads are all viable customer acquisition options for beginner business owners, but they work differently. Outreach gives you faster conversations, content builds the audience’s trust in your brand, and ads bring speed.
The best approach is to avoid multitasking early on and choose an approach that fits your offer, budget, and skills before testing it out. Early stage marketing is about learning and creating momentum, so start small, see what works, and go from there. After getting feedback and refining your offer, you can move to deeper strategies and scale your existing approach.
FAQs
Are cold outreach, content marketing, and paid ads doable strategies for beginners?
Yes, but they work differently and at different speeds. Cold outreach doesn’t need any complex skills and is direct, but takes the most time. Content marketing builds trust over time, but also takes longer to show results. Paid ads work faster, but only if you clearly define your offer.
How long will it take for me to see results from each method?
Paid ads can show results in a few days, while cold outreach takes a few weeks. Content marketing takes months before bringing consistent leads.
Are paid ads too expensive if I’m a beginner business owner?
It’s expensive if you start without a clear plan, so set a small test budget to see how your ads perform. Make sure you’ve validated your offer before investing heavily in paid ads.
What mistake should I avoid with early marketing?
Multitasking with all three methods. Start with one channel and commit to it for a set period before scaling and expanding your strategy.
What tools can make early marketing easier?
AI-powered tools like nas.io can help with early outreach, lead capture, and setup without needing technical skills.
