Initiating a Proprietary Outreach Campaign – Looking for Insights

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April 25, 2025

by an member from New York University in 美国纽约

We’re kicking off a proprietary outreach campaign and would love to hear from others who’ve gone through this. Our plan is to start with direct mailers, followed by targeted emails and phone calls. What strategies or messaging have worked well for you? Any lessons learned or approaches that didn’t yield results? Appreciate any insights or examples—thanks in advance!
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Reply by a searcher
from IESE Business School in Brescia BS, Italia
I would recommend to start with increasing the awareness about your SF within your community/region/nation. For example I reached out to a local journalist to get interviewed and, after the article appeared in the newspaper, some entrepreneurs reached out to me. In addition I'm having a video interview next month to further increase my (local) media recognition. Good luck!
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Reply by a searcher
from Auckland University of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand
As a disclaimer I haven't done this yet but haven't seen anyone else mention this strategy which I believe will be far more effective at generating leads than cold emailing. The biggest problem for early-stage search funds is no one knows you exist and you have no social proof. One idea to solve this would be approaching legacy media, especially business related newspapers or radio talk shows and discussing some relevant human interest story i.e. succession crisis, great wealth transfer, silver tsunami etc and who you are and how you are helping solve it. In the interview drop some contact method i.e. a landing page for inbound leads. This solves the 2 issues from earlier. Now you have the legacy media putting you in front of thousands of people (awareness) and your appearance on their newspaper, journal, website etc gives you credibility (social proof). Legacy media tends to have an older audience already and business related newspapers and websites are especially more likely to be read by an aging business owner looking to retire. This will generate warm leads that approach you which is a better power dynamic than cold emailing people who may view you as a salesperson pestering them with unsolicited emails. To clarify, I believe the best outreach strategy is likely a mix of these but I would encourage you to consider how you can get your face out to as many people as possible. Podcasts, talk shows, radio shows, newspapers. Then get interns to sift through what comes in for the gems.
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