CIENCE vs Martal Group: Which Lead Gen Company is the Best for You?

Both the Martal Group and CIENCE are great lead generation companies, that’s well-established. Making an informed decision about which of the two is right for your business can feel overwhelming. 

In this blog post, we will provide an in-depth comparison between these two leading players in the B2B lead generation field. However, before we start, we want to establish that comparing lead generation companies isn’t just about examining the range of services or their team size. 

While these aspects can have their importance, they should not be the deciding factors. It is the more nuanced components of the company’s approach to lead generation that are critical in determining its effectiveness and suitability for your business. 

Let’s discuss these components. 

1. An outbound approach: The agency should actively reach out to potential leads rather than waiting for them to come to you with inbound strategies. That’s because you don’t have months to wait or millions to invest in inbound strategies. You want an approach that’s time-bound and can provide predictable results. 
2. Clear and focused service offering: You don’t want a company that offers 100 services you don’t understand. And by “focused” we mean that they don’t offer a thousand lead generation services. Instead, they’re super focused on a single lead generation service (i.e., LinkedIn lead generation), master it very well, and achieve results with excellence. 
3. Fast results: Hiring a lead generation agency implies a desire for accelerated growth and quickly filling your sales pipeline. Due to this, you need an agency that delivers quality leads quickly. Waiting months is not an option, and you cannot afford it.
4. Reliable and accepted outreach channels: Depending on your business type and product, appropriate outreach channels should be clearly identifiable. However, these should be channels that your clients are comfortable with, professional channels that don’t jeopardize engagement or piss off the prospects. 
5. Consistent lead attraction and generation strategy: The main reason you’re seeking an agency is to fill the knowledge and talent gaps in attracting and securing leads — and systemizing the whole thing. Consequently, the agency must exhibit a tested, systematic approach to generating leads that will consistently work for your business.
6. Insightful understanding of your ICP: The agency should have a profound understanding of your target market and their unique challenges — or demonstrate a clear process to achieve this. They should be adept at crafting outreach messages or cold emails that address your ICP’s needs, producing content that persuades and entices them to buy. 
7. Meaningful, personalized, and effective outreach: The agency’s outreach should be customized to each prospective lead for optimal results. You don’t want an agency that sends generic emails to random lists acquired from databases like ZoomInfo. It’s imperative that the agency’s work earns respect, even from non-buyers, to maintain your reputation and brand image. 
8. Comprehensive, completely done-for-you service: Ideally, you want an agency that handles all lead generation and outreach tasks, allowing you to concentrate on other business areas, such as personal meetings with leads and closing deals.
9. Excellent service over technology: Lead generation tools are great for outreach campaigns, but companies make you pay for their service with tools included in the package. You want a company that focuses more on getting their hands dirty to do the heavy lifting and get the creative done rather than a company that basically relies on AI and other tools for almost all the work. 
10. Cost-effective and scalable solutions: Lastly, the agency’s services should be affordable and capable of expanding with your business. They should provide clear pricing models, detailing what you will get from their service and ensure transparency about the number of leads you can expect before you engage their service.

For us, these are determining elements you need to concentrate on. Spoiler alert, when you consider these elements, very few (if not none) of all the SO GREAT lead generation companies make the cut. And CIENCE and the Martal Group are not different. 

So, we will dig into the specifics of CIENCE and Martal Group, uncovering their methodologies, strategies, services, and how they incorporate these vital elements into their operations. 

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Martal Group vs. CIENCE: which company should you hire for lead generation and appointment setting needs?

Let’s start with an overview of each company’s scope of services. 

Service range: Comparing their different services and what it means for your business’ lead gen needs

Martal Group’s range of services

The Martal Group serves its clients by generating sales-ready leads, setting up appointments, and driving conversions. They focus on serving companies that offer tech, software, and innovative products or services. Here is a breakdown of their main services.

1. Sales development: Martal Group provides sales development services that focus on bringing more sales opportunities to your business. Their team of experts can manage the entire sales development cycle, from identifying potential customers to qualifying leads and setting appointments.
2. Outbound lead generation: The company uses various strategies and proprietary tools to generate high-quality leads for their clients. This includes targeted cold email outreach campaigns, LinkedIn outreach, cold calls, and more. Interestingly, they offer three tiers for the outbound lead generation.
3. Outbound lead generation
4. Outbound lead generation + sales and customer onboarding
5. Outbound lead generation + customer onboarding + account management
6. Inbound lead generation: This involves attracting potential customers (leads) to your business through content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), branding, and other strategies designed to draw customers in, rather than marketers having to go out to get prospects’ attention.
7. Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Martal Group also offers ABM services, which involve a focused approach to B2B marketing. They identify high-value accounts and develop personalized marketing strategies to convert these accounts into customers.
8. Outsourced sales team (People-as-a-Service): Martal Group provides a fully managed, outsourced sales team for businesses that may not have the resources or expertise to build and manage their own sales team. This service allows businesses to focus on their core competencies while Martal Group handles their sales operations.
9. Consulting services: The company offers consulting services to improve the effectiveness of a business’s sales and marketing efforts. This could involve optimizing sales processes, improving lead conversion rates, or enhancing the overall marketing strategy.

That’s about it for their services. Martal Group prides itself on having an experienced team of sales professionals, industry specialists, and account managers who understand the complexities of the B2B tech market. 

They also own three B2B databases that they leverage together with their expertise to help their clients find the best potential customers, build strong relationships, and close deals. It’s basically a top-notch, comprehensive lead generation service. 

CIENCE’s range of services

CIENCE is also a reputable B2B sales outsourcing and lead generation outsourcing firm. They’ve been in operation since 2015 and rely on a combination of managed services and software to offer a holistic approach to lead generation. 

Here’s a brief overview of their key services:

1. Lead research: CIENCE assists in comprehending your ICP to produce high-quality leads that are ready for sales. Their services include demographic research, industry trend analysis, and identifying customer pain points via their proprietary platform CIENCE GO.
2. Sales engagement: CIENCE provides services such as the creation of customized email sequences, cold calls, social media engagement, and targeted follow-ups via their tool. They interact with potential leads, nurture and establish relationships, and ultimately help in turning these leads into customers for your business.
3. Data enrichment: CIENCE offers to improve your existing client data by adding more valuable information. This could involve updating incomplete fields, verifying the accuracy of data, or incorporating new data that could help your sales team close deals more quickly — it’s also done via their proprietary platform CIENCE GO.
4. People-as-a-Service (Outbound and Inbound SDRs): If required, CIENCE can supply highly skilled sales reps who can blend seamlessly into your current sales team. These professionals undertake tasks such as lead generation, ABM marketing, setting appointments, and initial qualifications, allowing your sales team to concentrate on closing deals.

That sums up the services provided by CIENCE. While they offer a range of sales enablement tools to aid in your lead generation process (which we will discuss later), our focus here is on the lead generation expertise they bring to the table.

As outlined on their website, these services are segmented to cater to businesses that may already have internal teams and require only certain services. However, when you engage them for lead generation, all of these services are included in the package they provide.

Remember, services such as LinkedIn marketing, appointment setting, and email marketing represent different lead generation service models. The choice of service model should be guided by your product, its target audience, and other relevant factors. 

Also, understand that when compared, CIENCE is more of a technology company than it is a lead generation service company. The Martal Group registers more as a lead generation company because their business model focuses more on the service than the tools. 

Furthermore, both companies offer a lot of services, way too many. They don’t have a single expertise of focus. That implies chunks of teams and self-acclaimed expert individuals who do different work under the same umbrella — the company name. 

While this might appear unimportant, it could indicate a lack of clear focus on the lead generation service you care about the most. As the saying goes, a master of everything is a master of none.

Lead generation strategies: Comparing strategies for finding your ICP, building lists, reaching out to prospects, etc. 

Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter. Here, you’ll discover how these companies go about the real business of lead generation and how their techniques and strategies impact the results you get. 

Also, you need to understand their different lead generation workflows and frameworks to ensure the way they do things aligns with your standards and how you want your brand to be perceived by your target audience. 

That cleared; we’ve found there are three (03) things you should care about. These are:

• The service’s process for finding your ICP, 
• how they build lists and where they find the people they reach out to, and 
• how they reach out to them.

Now let’s look at how each of the companies approaches lead generation. 

ICP identification and lead research

When you have to choose between two lead generation companies, the one that has the best approach or system to nailing your ideal customer profile is the one that can bring you the best results, aka real leads who are ready to buy. 

Therefore, the effectiveness of this process directly reflects the quality of leads you receive. Essentially, securing high-quality leads requires a lead generation company with an accurate and comprehensive mechanism to understand your ideal customer profile. 

So, how does CIENCE do it?

According to CIENCE’s website, their approach to finding your ICP combines human insight with machine learning and AI to facilitate sales lead research. We read on their website that they provide custom sales research that enables businesses to accurately target their best audiences.

Admittedly, the scant details they provide about their process for identifying your ICP leave much to interpretation, making it difficult to comprehend their targeting strategy. However, it’s evident that they lean heavily on AI- and ML-powered tools, alongside their trained curators, as their primary resources.

The problem here is that it’s essentially a speculative process for a lead generation company to identify the right targets without in-depth discussions about your ICP with you or your sales team. The thing is that even the preliminary data or filters fed into their tools must be in sync with your ICP, which they can’t merely guess.

Relying on AI and ML for lead research loses its significance if there isn’t an accurate portrayal of your ideal customer profile to begin with. I mean, without this critical information, how can one even assess the validity or lack thereof of the results produced by these tools?

Furthermore, without casting doubt on CIENCE’s AI and ML tools, most AI and ML tools only provide surface-level data, such as technographic, firmographic, and demographic information. This data reveals little about customers’ needs and the challenges they are facing, or how your product could potentially address these issues. Let’s take a look at the Martal Group.

Just like CIENCE, the Martal Group also relies on databases and tools to find your ICP. 

We believe that’s the main reason most companies’ lead generation processes are broken. No ICP can even be found on a database or devised by a tool. 

It’s like both companies are skipping the most important step in lead generation, which is discussing the ICP, asking questions to your sales team, and running A/B tests to gain direct insight into psychographic data pertaining to your ICP. 

If they can’t discuss and nail your ICP, your product can’t make sense to them (not to the fullest, at least), they cannot relate to its unique use cases or the problems it solves, and subsequently, they cannot sell your product better than a company that has a solid process for the ICP. 

Lead research and list building

The subsequent step following the identification of your ICP involves researching potential customers who fit that profile and compiling a list for outreach campaigns. Therefore, this section will focus on that particular process. Let’s start with the Martal Group.

The Martal Group is particularly proficient at generating target prospect lists for their campaigns. As stated on their website, they develop a weekly curated list of pre-qualified prospects for use in their campaigns from their proprietary B2B contact information databases or from other vendors.

Additionally, the website indicates that they compile a list of approximately 3000 – 5000 prospects each month. Given that they construct these lists and target prospects on a weekly basis, this equates to creating a list of around 750 – 1250 prospects per week.

We believe it’s reasonable to infer that manually constructing outreach lists of this size would be impractical. Hence, they likely use a data intelligence tool (FYI, they own three in-house databases for B2B contact information) to rapidly build prospect lists and then curate them.

With such databases, they can rapidly compile extensive lists of businesses by simply applying specific filters. Interestingly, building lists this way can effectively expedite the list-building process, thereby enabling the targeting of thousands of prospects fast. 

We take issues with that.

First issue, while convenient, data intelligence tools produce generic information you can easily anticipate. Even when they apply specific filters to narrow down the lists and focus on particular audiences, the resulting data remains generic.

In most cases, you’ll see data in the range of:

• IPO companies
• Companies that have 500-1000 employees
• Companies that use Salesforce
• Companies that are in the UK
• Companies that are Serie A funded
• Etc. 

Second issue, the data doesn’t provide specific insights about your ICP, their challenges, or any unique aspects about them. While it might form a solid base for sending cold emails, it fails to illuminate the specific needs of a company and the reasons for targeting them.

That means you can’t confidently determine if a company you see on these platforms experiences the problems your product or service resolves. Consequently, it turns into a speculative endeavor where you send cold emails to a random audience and wait to see who responds. NOT GOOD.

Moreover, when you do manage to pique someone’s interest, leads generated this way are the hardest to convert. When they hand them off to you, you’ll still need significant informational content and time to educate and prepare them for a sales pitch.

This is bad for your business, particularly when you’re investing in lead generation services to rapidly grow your sales pipeline with qualified leads and increase revenue fast. (You’ll discover how we at Nerdy Joe do it better later on.)

Similar to the Martal Group, CIENCE utilizes its proprietary Go Platform to facilitate its lead research and list-building operations. Their approach closely mirrors that of the Martal Group, meaning the same potential issues related to accuracy and efficacy persist, with all the not-so-great implications for your business.

Plus, in terms of coverage, CIENCE appears to reach a smaller audience compared to the Martal Group because they only use their platform and don’t rely on any third-party data intelligence vendors.

Lead targeting and outreach approach

We’ll divide this section into two parts: campaign-level and copy-level approaches. This distinction will aid in understanding how these organizations conduct their outreach campaigns, create the content or copy sent to prospects, and how these elements influence the results you receive.

Campaign-level 

Let’s start with the Martal Group. Understand that we are only focusing on the 1st tier of the service, outbound lead generation, as it aligns with your current needs the most.

As part of their outbound lead generation campaign efforts, The Martal Group targets between 3000 – 5000 potential leads and sends out a range of 9000 – 12000 emails PER MONTH.

Within the same timeframe, they also connect with prospects on LinkedIn, sending between 600 – 700 LinkedIn messages.

The package also includes call follow-ups with prospects. Ultimately, you can anticipate 20 – 30 qualified leads from the campaign. They guarantee that you can convert between 5 to 15 of these leads into customers. 

The combination of these three platforms or outreach channels can be effective in hitting up prospects across channels and ensuring that you actually touch the prospects and get a response. But people are known to be typically averse to cold calls.

Even with that aside, the real issue is that The Martal Group reaches out to WAY TOO MANY PROSPECTS and SENDS FAR TOO MANY EMAILS. We get that the emails can be sequences. We also get that they’ll create new sending domains, new mailboxes, warm-up domains, and design go-to-market approaches, etc., before completely unfolding the campaign, but still.

Doing so raises the question of whether this approach ensures a high quality of meetings or a good conversion rate of leads. Here is why targeting a huge list and sending too many emails isn’t great for you. 

From our experience, here is what it could mean if you are targeting huge lists: 

• Mass outreach: If you send emails to this many people, you are not taking the time to properly research your prospects and tailor your email to each individual. You’re blasting people with generic cold emails and pushing for action. They might say you’re selfish and lazy. 
• Substandard lead quality: Since there is no super personalization, the quality of the leads you get will be subpar, and you can’t convert, at least not easily or in a short timeframe. 
• Pissed prospects: Some prospects can be mean to you, saying things like “Remove me from your list”, “Don’t ever email me again”, or worse, “Your cold email sucks”. 
• Bad rap on socials: Targeting people with generic emails can negatively impact your company’s reputation. This can be particularly damaging if you are in a competitive industry or rely heavily on word-of-mouth referrals. Also, we are sure that’s not how you want your business to be represented.

We are not saying that this is indicative of the Martal Group’s work, but do you get the idea? We only mean to say that quality outreach requires substantial effort and time, and targeting enormous lists is not the best way to go about it.

CIENCE does not provide explicit details about how they conduct their outreach campaigns. They mention some features but don’t elaborate on the scale of their campaigns or their particular methods.

However, by examining the campaign results they promise, it’s clear that their operations are quite similar to those of the Martal Group — executing large-scale campaigns that reach thousands of people — and therefore, the same concerns about lead quality and conversion rates are relevant.

Copy-level

Both the Martal Group and CIENCE showcase a strong dedication to comprehensive customer research before initiating a campaign. They use the insights obtained from this research to inform their actions and produce personalized content. 

However, we hold some concerns about their understanding of personalization. Let’s explore CIENCE first.

CIENCE employs AI to produce personalized content. They use AI and Machine Learning (ML) tools for data collection and enrichment, integrating personalization into their emails, LinkedIn InMails, or web content before delivering them to their clients’ potential customers.

We acknowledge that AI and ML can enhance data collection and analysis, scrutinizing prospects’ social media (such as LinkedIn) posts, customer support interactions, etc. As a result, AI can learn which content resonates with the audience.

We also acknowledge that AI-driven personalization can indeed be effective. However, here’s why we believe that human research and manual content creation yield better results.

• Human connection

One of the primary reasons we advocate for human-conducted research and personalization lies in the human element. 

A proficient researcher or salesperson can empathize with a potential client, comprehend their needs and motivations, relate to them and deliver a personalized experience that AI simply can’t replicate. 

Moreover, this human connection we are talking about is more than simply understanding your target audience and gathering data to tailor personalized messages. 

It’s about telling stories that elicit emotions, content that inspires actions, and more. AI tools can mimic it, but they can’t do it the way humans do. 

• Creativity

Another significant reason we resist the notion of AI-driven personalization is the repetitiveness inherent in AI tools. For instance, once they discover a successful framework for personalizing messages, you’ll likely notice the same framework across all their generated emails. 

Meanwhile, innovative thinking is essential in prospect research and personalization. Uncovering unique and personalized solutions for each client makes a substantial difference, and it’s something AI is limited in due to its training data and its incapacity to generate truly innovative solutions — a feat humans take for granted.

• Contextual understanding and adaptability

We have the ability to adapt to market shifts or specific changes in your situation more effortlessly than AI. In essence, skilled researchers can adjust their tactics or strategy based on new information or feedback, a capability AI might struggle with.

Moreover, AI and ML tools and their many software platforms provide the data, and that’s cool. But when it becomes a campaign of scale —as we see CIENCE do— the information and their output become generic for lack of specificity or individualism. 

The Martal Group doesn’t rely on AI or other tools to create emails or outreach messages. Still, their method of personalizing messages and emails isn’t top-notch. Like we said before, mass outreach sucks away the time and brain power you should normally invest into crafting compelling copies. Here is what the Martal Group does.

While creating templates might seem efficient at first glance, it essentially means that they’re basing all their content on one successful example and applying it across the entire campaign.

Given the large number of prospects they target, they can’t craft personalized emails for each individual. This results in broad, generic personalization, which, when you really consider it, isn’t truly personalization.

Essentially, this means they’ll create a single email template, sent to the vast list of prospects they’ve compiled, with only some generic variables (like company name, job title, first name, etc.) altered within the email.

This kind of superficial personalization is far from optimal. Even if they do manage to generate leads with these tactics, you’ll likely encounter difficulties when trying to convert them.

Lead outreach channels included

Yes, both CIENCE and the Martal Group utilize multi-channel outreach strategies in their approach to lead generation.

CIENCE describes its approach as “AI-enabled research, multi-channel outreach, and our proprietary software platform to start sales conversations with your next, best customers.” 

They employ a variety of channels (Email, Phone, Social Media, Web) for outbound sales, combining human intelligence and AI to fuel their operations. 

Similarly, the Martal Group also employs a multi-channel outreach strategy, encompassing email, LinkedIn, phone, and more. They leverage data intelligence tools, proprietary outreach tools, and their expertise to drive their operations.

However, at Nerdy Joe, we take a different stance. We believe reaching out to prospects on so many channels can be overwhelming and, sometimes, counterproductive. We’ll explain more about our unique approach later.

Lead generation and sales enablement tech stack included

We believe this is one of the unique reasons you can consider working with CIENCE and its unfair advantage over most lead generation companies. 

CIENCE provides a comprehensive suite of tools for all aspects of lead generation. This includes platforms for lead research, data mining and analysis, CRM, email automation, reporting and analytics, and more. This means that clients of CIENCE don’t need to invest in third-party tools for lead generation, which could potentially lead to cost savings.

The Martal Group, on the other hand, also provides several tools for lead generation, including databases for B2B contact information and dashboards for outreach analytics and reporting. However, unlike CIENCE, the Martal Group relies on several third-party tools to deliver its services.

This could mean that clients of the Martal Group might need to invest in additional tools to achieve their lead generation goals. This is something to remember when comparing these two companies’ services.

Pricing and deal specs: Pricing model, refund policy, average deal size, minimum commitment period, and contracts. 

None of the two companies leaves a clear pricing detail on its website. In most cases, you’ll have to reach out to them to get custom pricing. That said, we’ve looked on Clutch to see the average deal size of the two companies. 

Pricing/average deal size

Both CIENCE and the Martal Group have a typical deal size ranging between $10,000 to $50,000, according to Clutch. 

That’s quite an investment, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. Given the volume of prospects they target, the scale of their campaigns, and their many tools, this pricing might make sense. 

However, considering the potential lead quality and conversion challenges discussed earlier, this might not provide your business with the best return on investment.

Minimum commitment period and contracts

When working with the Martal Group, the typical subscription period is 3 months. You have to commit to working with them for 3 months.

CIENCE also has something similar for their managed outbound lead generation service. Except their minimum commitment period is 6 months.

That means that you will have to PAY or AGREE to pay them for months before you can start working together. This might not be ideal for you, especially if you are a small business or a startup, and here is why.

This system obliges you to pay them for months while they simply try stuff, and you MIGHT not have any results to show for your investments. 

Think about it, that’s $60,000 minimum for CIENCE and $30,000 for the Martal Group. You’ll have a hard time explaining that. 

Even more importantly, committing to a long-term contract or subscription can limit your flexibility to adjust your lead generation strategy or switch to a different provider. 

It can be problematic if your business needs change or you are unsatisfied with the results. 

Whether or not you’re satisfied with the service, you’ll still have to pay them and honor the contract. 

Refund policy

The Martal Group doesn’t mention any refund policy anywhere on their website. 

CIENCE’s terms of service do not provide any provision for refunds. 

This means if their services do not meet your expectations or desired results, there is no mechanism in place for you to recover your investment. You would need to accept this outcome and proceed accordingly.

Nerdy Joe vs. Martal Group and CIENCE: Why we are a better option for lead generation than the Martal Group and CIENCE

At Nerdy Joe, we specialize in B2B lead generation, focusing specifically on email marketing and outbound lead generation methods, such as cold emailing and LinkedIn outreach.

Our service ensures a continuous stream of leads for your business, freeing you from the stress of lead generation. This lets your sales team concentrate on their core competencies — meeting potential customers and making successful sales.

We provide a potentially superior option to CIENCE and the Martal Group, as we feel that these companies overlook some fundamental aspects of lead generation, aspects we prioritize.

To provide some clarity, let’s look at the key elements of lead generation where CIENCE and the Martal Group seem to fall short. It’s worth considering these points before deciding on their services, as they might not be as beneficial as you initially think.

Here we go:

• Martal Group’s approach to personalizing outreach messages leaves much to be desired. They rely heavily on generic templates, personalizing only at an industry level, resulting in one-size-fits-all messages. The level of personalization is lacking, making their communications far from unique.
• CIENCE’s ICP identification process is vague and leaves too many unanswered questions. Similarly, Martal Group’s ICP identification process isn’t robust either, as they depend more on tools than manual labor, leading to a lack of guaranteed sales-ready leads.
• Both companies tend to source their leads from sales and data intelligence tools, which leads to a lack of precision in targeting. Their outreach efforts essentially become a game of chance and volume, sending emails to random individuals and waiting to see who responds. This is a result of their approach, which isn’t centered on addressing individual needs and pain points.
• While CIENCE’s AI-powered personalization may seem appealing, it raises concerns about accuracy, quality, and overall effectiveness. Relying on human-researched lead data and personally curated content may serve you better.
• Another drawback of these companies is their ‘jack-of-all-trades’ nature. They offer a plethora of services across numerous channels, which can dilute their expertise. Collaborating with a team specializing in one or two channels and excelling in them is more beneficial.
• The outreach campaigns of both companies are not well-structured to attract the best leads. This is largely because their strategy focuses on mass-targeting, leading to poor campaign performance and a prolonged lead conversion process.
• Neither company offers refunds; more strikingly, they don’t guarantee results. This uncertainty is coupled with three to six months commitment periods, requiring you to allocate budgets for these periods without any assurance of outcomes.
• Lastly, their pricing is quite expensive and seems to be predicated on the tools they use (as in the case of CIENCE) and the work they undertake rather than the results they deliver, which is less than ideal.

Both CIENCE and the Martal Group fall short in several critical areas for lead generation companies. They fail to align with the key elements we initially discussed, which you would ideally want from a service that will fuel your business growth. 

Both companies show significant limitations in delivering an optimal lead generation service from personalization to targeting, campaign strategy, and pricing structure.

Now here is why you really should work with us at Nerdy Joe. 

Outreach services: CIENCE and Martal Group are jacks of all trades; we are deeply focused on cold email outreach and LinkedIn outreach.

One problem with CIENCE and Martal is their propensity to spread themselves too thin. They promise a full spectrum of services, from LinkedIn marketing, sales enablement, inbound marketing, and even technology as a service.

They present themselves as one-stop shops in the lead generation field, which can make them less top-notch than you’d want them to be because one cannot excel at everything. 

Rather than posing as a one-size-fits-all solution, we take pride in specializing in two key areas — cold email and LinkedIn outreach. Our strategy revolves around honing these two channels to provide unmatched results.

This targeted approach we take delivers significant benefits to our clients. We keep it straightforward yet potent: focusing on crafting compelling cold email and LinkedIn outreach strategies that draw in and engage potential leads.

To us, lead generation is just a piece of a larger puzzle. The real measure of success? Turning leads into long-term customers. Thus, our aim isn’t merely to generate leads but to generate high-quality ones with a high potential for conversion.

Service value: The Martal Group and CIENCE charge you for the work they do and their vast (not-so-useful) tech stack; We charge only for the results we bring you.

We believe that if you hire a company to generate leads, the only important outcome is the number of sales leads generated by the end of the month. That should be their sole commitment and the only performance you get billed for.

Both CIENCE and the Martal Group charge hefty fees for their services, with costs tied to the outreach volume, the tally of contacts they add to your list, and their fancy tech tools. This pricing model has an obvious downside, as it doesn’t consider or guarantee the number of leads they will deliver.

At Nerdy Joe, we clarify from the get-go that clients need not fret about the list of prospects we construct or the email volume we send — don’t worry, we don’t do mass outreach.

This is because we understand the core struggle for companies seeking lead generation help revolves around their need for LEADS. It’s that simple.

So, our lead generation specialists concentrate only on metrics that truly reflect your outreach performance and ROI. We focus on metrics like:

• Volume of positive responses
• Number of meetings scheduled
• Count of new sign-ups
• Number of demo requests
• Lead to close rate

Our reports are customized to align with your company’s product or service and your broader objectives. This enables us to discern the results that hold the most importance for you, and those become our primary targets for achievement.

For instance, if you task us with getting more guest posting opportunities for you, we’ll report on the following:

• The count of positive replies from editors
• The volume of affirmative responses we receive from webmasters

Outreach methodology: CIENCE and the Martal Group approach lead generation as a number game; We at Nerdy Joe adopt a careful and systematic approach to lead generation. We manually build our lists and prioritize strategic targeting.

Most companies in the lead generation approach it as a number game, and CIENCE and the Martal Group are no different. In fact, that approach is industry-standard. 

They amass extensive lists using data intelligence tools like Apollo.io and ZoomInfo, then dispatch cold emails hoping to close a portion of that audience. And we do acknowledge this method might yield some leads.

The problem is that it doesn’t allow for the quality work that makes lead generation the most successful. There are a lot of issues that stem from targeting huge lead lists:

• Poor research and mediocre lead data enrichment
• No room or time for personalizations
• Poor, generic emails or messages
• Subpar lead quality, no conversion to show for your investment
• Company reputation at stake
• Deliverability and spam issues 

We’re not claiming that the service quality of CIENCE and the Martal Group is not excellent. Rather, we’re emphasizing the immense effort and time it takes to construct effective outreach campaigns. Simply mass-emailing individuals discovered on ZoomInfo doesn’t contribute to this objective.

Even more importantly, as dedicated marketers, we find it unimpressive to reach out to 5000 individuals only to engage 50 leads who may not even convert. That’s why we at Nerdy Joe prioritize individualized messages based on exhaustive research and analysis.

Our typical scenario is to build a short list of 20 prospects, research them thoroughly, and craft cold emails or LinkedIn messages, which can yield 15 responses, 10 of them positive, and eventually result in 6 sales-qualified leads or meetings for our clients.

Let’s be clear about our definition of personalization. It’s about making each email genuinely relevant, timely, and uniquely aligned for every recipient. It’s more than just inserting [[First name]] or similar variables into the subject line and calling it a day.

We seek to make each recipient feel understood and to spark their curiosity. We aspire to create emails that engender a sense of personal connection, encouraging them to take your proposition seriously, regardless of whether or not they decide to sign up.

We achieve this by investing considerable time in understanding and researching your ideal customer profile (ICP) before any email campaign launch. Targeting huge lists does not position you for this. 

We collaborate closely with you to craft the ICP, scrutinize each prospect on an individual basis, and gather data points to create impactful cold emails. Unlike CIENCE, we don’t rely on any tool to formulate your ICP or conduct research.

As soon as we onboard a new client, our initial step is to inquire about their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) through a set of probing questions.

We might ask:

• Who are your highest-value clients? 
• Which client category is the easiest to convert? 
• Which type of clients shows the fastest turnover? 
• What are the main objections that come up during sales calls? 
• What was your motivation for starting the company? 
• What issues were you aiming to address? 
• And so forth.

Your responses to these inquiries equip us with precise target demographics and their associated reasons. This granularity of information helps distinguish between:

“We’re reaching out to series A tech companies OR companies that use ClickUp”

And

“Our ICP is a VP of Sales at a B2B software company, catering to HR professionals, who is struggling with organization, time management, and team collaboration. They frequently resort to XYZ podcasts for insights on efficient team management.”

After gaining a clear comprehension of the ICP, we move forward to manually compile our list, which becomes the foundation for our lead generation campaigns.

Research and copywriting: CIENCE and the Martal Group provide basic, generically personalized emails; we research each prospect individually and create truly personalized cold emails and LinkedIn messages.

• We don’t rely on AI or ML tools as CIENCE does. Given that AI technology is still in its early stages, the content it generates often tends to be repetitive and lacks human warmth. We’re confident that our handcrafted emails and messages stand out for their authenticity and impact. We’re not in a rush as we don’t aim for a mass-scale campaign.
• Unlike the Martal Group, we don’t depend on templates for crafting emails. We maintain that a template-based approach tends to strip away the unique personal touch that can connect with each recipient’s distinctive characteristics. The result is impersonal and often ineffective mass customization.

So, what do we do?

Our process begins with an individualized examination of each prospect to gather useful information. This is the method through which we enrich our data.

We don’t rely on software to just feed us with basic information like job titles, geographical location, the technology they use, or the size of their company.

Instead, we seek psychographic data — insights into their personalities, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. We deploy all our resources to acquire this data as it makes a remarkable difference. To give you an idea, here are some things we do:

• We listen to podcasts featuring your potential customers. 
• We read their blog posts. 
• We examine their posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon. 
• We analyze discussions in forums they participate in. 
• Etc.

Leveraging this compiled data, we identify unique angles that enable us to formulate personalized introductions or icebreakers.

Here’s what it looks like in real life. We pitched CoSchedule’s Head of Content, Ben Sailer, and asked him if we could write for them.

Here’s what he replied 1 hour later.

Here is another successful example from a similar strategy.

As you can see from both screenshots, the cold emails sent to the prospects were so compelling that they couldn’t help but acknowledge it before offering to hire us.

Contracts and signup implications: CIENCE and the Martal Group both require you to sign longer-term contracts; We don’t — you’re free to renew or stop your subscription based on satisfaction.

In contrast to CIENCE and Martal, which mandate long-term commitments of 3 to 6 months that could lead to considerable outlay without guaranteed results, we at Nerdy Joe champion a more flexible, subscription-based model.

This model ensures our collaboration brings you measurable outcomes from the very first month. The decision to continue subscribing is solely based on your contentment with our services and your budget considerations.

Our pricing structure is clear and upfront, possibly making us one of the leading agencies in lead generation. You select a plan tailored to your budget and needs and know exactly what you will get at the end of the month.

You won’t get ambiguous statements such as 

• “The results depend on various factors.” 
• “Your account manager was unable to work because he accidentally swallowed the office key.”

As long as your product fits the market well and resolves a widespread issue, that’s practically all we require to generate results for you. But, if you’re still in the process of identifying the perfect audience for your solution, we might not be able to provide efficient assistance. 

Nerdy Joe Pricing: The Martal Group and CIENCE are downright expensive; With us, you get the best bang for your buck and the option to scale without burning a hole in your bank account. 

• CIENCE and the Martal Group are expensive, way too much, to be fair. 
• They do not provide any refund.
• They have unclear pricing models and charge for things you don’t need.

We believe that pricing is way too expensive and not sustainable for the average business on a budget. 

So unlike the Martal Group and CIENCE, we offer a flat fee for a specific number of leads or appointments booked for you and keep it all transparent on our site. 

• DeLorean: It costs $1799/month and gives you 10 leads or meetings with high-quality leads.
• Batmobile: This is the plan we recommend, as it gives you the biggest bang for your buck. It costs $2199/month and gives you 15 hot and sales-qualified appointments or LEADS.
• Millennium Falcon: It costs $3099. This plan is good for mid-level to enterprise companies willing to fuel their sales team with up to 25 sales-ready leads on a monthly basis.
• Starship Enterprise: This is the enterprise-level plan, and it comes at $5099. We added it for large organizations and enterprise-level businesses willing to fuel their sales team with a huge flow (50+) of meetings with sales-ready leads on a monthly basis.

What’s interesting with us is that you know what you’re getting upfront and know exactly how much you’ll have to pay for it. We don’t play hide and seek or get you on long sales calls to discuss pricing with you. 

Collaborate with Nerdy Joe and start generating sales-ready leads today

The Martal Group and CIENCE are both highly respected in the field of lead generation, backed by robust portfolios and a strong industry presence. This post could potentially guide you to the lead generation company that best fits your business needs.

While the Martal Group is well-known for its proficiency and work in lead generation, CIENCE is primarily recognized for its array of lead generation tools. 

However, if you’re in search of a superior lead generation partner, we encourage you to engage with us. We are an agency that prides itself on delivering high-quality service.

As an agency, we:

• Execute tailored and effective outreach campaigns rather than mass-blasting lists.
• Undertake meticulous research to ensure efficiency.
• Charge for results, not individual tasks.
• Don’t burden you with unnecessary tools or costs.
• Don’t compel you to sign a binding contract.
• Value your time, delivering our services affordably and efficiently.
• Care deeply about the reputation of your company and the relationships with your prospects.

Nerdy Joe is the lead generation agency you need. We conduct market research, identify leads, manage these leads, and deliver you qualified prospects. Consider us an extension of your team.