Cleverly Vs Lead Cookie: Which LinkedIn Lead Gen Service is Best?

Cleverly and Lead Cookie are renowned agencies in the realm of LinkedIn lead generation. Each of them provides exceptional LinkedIn lead generation services with distinct methodologies. 

Cleverly combines a proprietary LinkedIn outreach tool and done-for-you lead generation services to help businesses tap into a vast network of LinkedIn offers and generate leads to grow their business. 

Lead Cookie, on the other hand, is primarily a LinkedIn lead generation agency. Their service is completely done-for-you, and they also leverage LinkedIn’s powerful networking platform to drive lead generation, increase website traffic, and increase brand awareness. 

Before discussing how each of these LinkedIn lead generation services is special, we want to clarify the lead generation elements you need to concentrate on. 

We believe these are key elements that tell you what you should look out for to know whether they can help you achieve your lead gen and growth needs. 

So, here we go.

1. A comprehensive, hands-off approach: You want to generate leads without lead generation. So, the agency should handle all aspects of lead generation and outreach for you (completely done-for-you), allowing you to focus on other areas of your business, like having one-on-one meetings with the leads and closing deals.
2. Clear and focused service offering: 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. A proven strategy for consistent lead acquisition: One of the essential reasons you’re considering an agency is because of their specialized knowledge. The agency needs to have a tried-and-tested approach to generating leads consistently for your business.
4. Quality over quantity framework: A team that understands the level of accuracy it takes to design successful lead generation campaigns. And thus, they put in the brain juice to do good work and don’t care about volume or rely on AI tools to do most of the work. Also, lead generation can sometimes be daunting but fuels growth, so even though you can’t afford to waste time on it, you don’t want to hand it off to an agency that’ll hand off most of the work to AI. 
5. Deep understanding of your ICP: They must demonstrate a clear mechanism for achieving this. The agency needs to be able fully comprehend your target audience and their unique needs. They should craft LinkedIn outreach messages that address your ICP’s pain points and create content that engages, persuades, and incites them to buy. 
6. Leads that convert: You’ll read on their website that they’ve generated trillions of leads for millions of companies. But nowhere will they tell you how many of those leads actually became clients. The most crucial factor in any lead generation service is the quality of leads generated. You want a service that generates high-quality leads that have a high likelihood of converting, not just a large number of poor-quality leads.
7. Fast results: If you are looking to hire a LinkedIn lead generation agency, it means that you are tight on funds and not growing at the rate you wish, so you want to fill your sales pipeline and grow fast. Because of that, you want an agency that can deliver quality leads promptly. You don’t have months to wait, and you can’t afford it.
8. Customized and impactful outreach: The agency needs to personalize its outreach strategies and communications for each potential lead to optimize outcomes. You want to avoid agencies that send out generic messages to a random list of leads gathered from Sales Navigator. Your brand’s reputation and image are crucial, and you require an agency that maintains high-quality work standards. 
9. Cost-effectiveness and scalability: The agency should provide budget-friendly and scalable services, aligning with your business growth. Their pricing model should be transparent, detailing exactly what you can expect from the service.
10. Well-established fundamentals: First, you want to know how much you’ll be paying and how many leads you’ll get — with exactitude. You want to make sure their ethics and marketing standards align with yours. You want to ensure they abide by data privacy laws, et cetera. 

With these elements in mind, Cleverly and Lead Cookie both barely pass the average when we compare them. Still, both companies are great at what they do and have extensive portfolios of hundreds of B2B companies to prove this. 

So, this article will explore the different services each lead generation company offers, the different strategies and methodologies, tools, and all the different features they offer their customers, and how these contribute to their client’s overall success. 

We’ll also introduce you to our own LinkedIn lead generation agency, Nerdy Joe, to discuss why we might be better suited for your current needs. 

So, let’s get started.

Lead Cookie vs. Cleverly: Which of these services is best for your LinkedIn lead generation needs?

This will be a comparative study of the two LinkedIn lead generation agencies, and our appreciation will be based on the key elements mentioned in the introduction. 

By the end of this thread, you can tell which of these two LinkedIn lead generation services is more packed to do the work you need and generate great results. 

Lead generation service range: What are the different types of lead generation services that Cleverly and Lead Cookie offer?

Let’s start with Lead Cookie. 

Lead Cookie

Lead Cookie’s website has very little to tell visitors. On one of their pages, we found that the company offers a comprehensive outbound outreach service, including LinkedIn outreach, Email marketing and outreach, and phone outreach or cold calling. 

Let’s detail each of the services.

• LinkedIn Marketing: LinkedIn outreach is only a slice of the LinkedIn services they offer their customers. Lead Cookie offers all types of marketing services related to LinkedIn profile optimization, LinkedIn content creation, and LinkedIn lead generation campaigns, which include sending personalized connection requests and follow-up messages to your target audience, thereby helping to convert them into leads. 
• Email outreach: Think of this as cold email campaigns. So, based on the ICP you agree on, Lead Cookie will research your target audience, build a list, and reach out to them via personalized cold emails. Interestingly, they don’t detail in any way whether or not they do data enrichment, lead research, etc. 
• Cold calls: Lead Cookie also includes a cold calling service in its range of offerings. This includes all the services from list building, script development, call execution, follow-ups, etc. Understand that cold calling is a traditional method, and cold calls easily set people off.  

Cleverly

Cleverly has more in its service bag than Lead Cookie. Even with their lead generation tool aside, Cleverly is more than just a lead generation company. Their services also include inbound marketing services and much more. 

Let’s detail their main services. 

• LinkedIn Marketing: Cleverly also offers a comprehensive LinkedIn marketing service with a list more extensive than Lead Cookie. On top of lead generation, LinkedIn marketing services include paid ads, LinkedIn recruiting, profile optimization, LinkedIn content creation and ghostwriting, and more. Cleverly also owns a proprietary outreach tool that they use for their service.
• Cold email lead generation: Like Lead Cookie, they also offer a done-for-you cold email service for lead generation. It’s almost the same service as what you get with Lead Cookie, except they own a proprietary tool they also use to run their campaigns.  
• Google Ads: You can also hire Cleverly for Google Ad services. They can assist your business in setting up, managing, and optimizing your Google Ads campaigns to drive traffic, increase brand visibility, and generate high-quality leads. They handle all the heavy-lifting work, ranging from keyword research, ad creation, and optimization, bid management, landing page optimization, etc. 
• SEO content and Blog writing: On top of their primary LinkedIn outreach services, they now also offer SEO content and blog writing services. They have a team of professional content writers who can produce SEO-optimized content for your website that engages your audience and improves your website’s search engine rankings. 

With all their many services and tools, Cleverly can be your one-stop shop for everything digital marketing. But we’ve found that they do not do any sales enablement. You’ll have to further nurture your leads by yourself if you want to close them. Which is not ideal (it is ironic).

Because if you are hiring a lead generation company, it means that you want leads you can close fast and increase your sales revenue. Otherwise, you might as well hire someone from Upwork to build lists and hand over the leads to your team to do the outreach.  

Bringing it back to both Lead Cookie and Cleverly, the latter clearly has the edge for the services they offer. Although this might seem like a great score on which of them is better, keep in mind that offering a lot of services typically means that you are a master of none. 

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

Here, we will discuss how each company actually does their lead generation. The idea is to shed light on their approaches and strategies based on information we read on their website. 

We also want to appreciate this so that you can understand how this affects the results you’ll get and your potential for positive ROI.

ICP identification and lead research

According to Cleverly’s guide to LinkedIn lead generation, their first step in the strategy is to use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool to build dream prospect lists. 

At first glance, that might seem like an excellent strategy. But this means compromising on quality from the get-go, which in turn will affect the quality of the leads you receive and their potential for conversion. Here is what we mean.

You can’t target people based on a couple of features from Sales Navigator. You need to understand their pain points, why they’d want your product or service, and how it can help them. 

Until you can figure this out and install a proper mechanism to achieve it for all your LinkedIn outreach campaigns, your outreach messaging will simply be generic and based on guesses from your gut. Let’s see how Lead Cookie does it. 

Interestingly, Lead Cookie’s website tells you nothing about their ICP identification process. There are only a couple of posts mentioning the importance of targeting the right people as well as targeting small segments of prospects from specific niches.

It seems interesting, but we can all agree that the very fact that they are talking about “Hand-qualifying leads” implies building a list by relying on data intelligence tools like Crunchbase, ZoomInfo, and Sales Navigator”. 

Another way of looking at this is that they don’t target people based on their customers’ ICP. Rather, they cast a wide net by targeting random people within the industry (even when they target small segments of them) and cross their fingers for results. 

Pretty much the same as Cleverly, and both results will be a subpar lead quality that you can’t convert. Based on the data at hand, our verdict is that both companies’ lead generation system does not set them up to bring you the best customers ready and eager to buy. 

A better approach here is for the lead gen teams to have a sit down with you or your sales team to discuss your ideal customer profile. Who should they target and why? They need to gain clear insights as to who they need to target and why your product makes sense for this specific audience. 

Why did you create a product or service? What pain points were you trying to solve? They need to understand the different use cases of your product and who they serve best. They need to find people with genuine issues or needs that your product can solve. 

That’s the only way they can create outreach messages that are compelling and hook the audience to read and take action. Jumping on Sales Navigator to build a list based on a couple of technographic and demographic filters tells you nothing about people’s pain points or why they should care. 

Sending them messages like that rhymes with purchasing a lead list and starting to blast them with generic messages that have very little to do with them or their needs. In the best-case scenario, the results will be leads that take months to convert (and we are being optimistic). 

Strategy for lead identification and list building

The next key elements in the lead generation operation are how the company finds the leads it targets for you and how they build the lists prior to the campaign launch. 

As stated before, Lead Cookie primarily relies on tools like LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator or data intelligence platforms such as Crunchbase, ZoomInfo, Apollo.io, and Lusha for list building.

Essentially, they leverage these tools, apply a few filters relevant to your industry or target market, and quickly compile lists comprising thousands of individuals. These lists are then refined by account managers and used for outreach campaigns.

This method could indeed be effective (as it works for them). Plus, we acknowledge that these tools can significantly reduce the time spent on list building, sparing the outreach specialists the painstaking process of manually building the lists.

The thing is that list building is the most difficult aspect of lead generation. But it’s also the most crucial for your success, and that’s why we at Nerdy Joe prefer not to rely on any tools for building our lists. Here is why. 

To begin with, using Sales Navigator comes with its own set of limitations, with data accuracy issues being a major concern for us. Let me explain further with some scenarios so you understand better. 

• A lot of LinkedIn users (the largest majority) don’t regularly update their profiles. That means outdated information regarding job roles and company associations. Sales Navigator doesn’t know that and spits out what you ask as it has it. 
• We live in a fast-paced world, especially in the tech industry, and Sales Navigator might fail to accurately distinguish between those laid off and those still employed. This can result in unreliable data for prospecting campaigns. 
• More importantly, this approach lacks a deep understanding of the prospect’s pain points and motivations, as neither Sales Navigator nor any other tool tells you. This makes it difficult to craft personalized and effective messages.

Moreover, when it comes to tools like Crunchbase or ZoomInfo, the data you obtain is typically generic technographic and demographic information about the company. 

• Tech companies
• Companies that raised series A funding
• Companies that had an IPO
• Companies that use HubSpot
• Companies with a workforce of between 50 and 500

The information they provide about each company is very basic. Also, this data can help you compile a list of 1000 companies to contact within seconds, but it provides no insight into their specific pain points, objectives, or why they might require your service. 

The truth is that you can’t possibly know whether or not a company you see on these platforms has the pain point your product or service solves, so it becomes a guessing game of sending LinkedIn outreach messages to random people and seeing who responds. That’s not good.

As we said before, leads generated like this are the hardest to convert. You’ll need a lot of time and content to educate them, which is not ideal because hiring lead gen services means you want to fill your sales pipeline with sales-qualified leads and grow fast.

Cleverly does almost the same as Lead Cookie here. They also rely on Sales Navigator and data intelligence tools to build lists of leads and reach out to them. 

The main difference we see here is that Lead Cookie, as per their website, targets small segments of individuals while Cleverly targets huge lists, which takes us to how they run their campaigns.

Campaign outreach and copywriting approach

Here, you’ll understand how each agency operates its campaigns, how they create the content or copy that’s sent to potential leads, and how these aspects influence the results you achieve.

LinkedIn outreach campaign

Cleverly targets large lists of prospects. NOT GOOD. 

Take, for instance, Cleverly’s Gold plan. Under this plan, they aim to reach out to 500 prospects, sending as many LinkedIn messages or cold emails as they can. 

This means they’ll connect with up to 500 people within the specified timeframe. That’s just an excessive number of individuals to engage with.

Based on our experience, here’s what targeting large lists might imply:

• Mass outreach with very little personalization: Reaching out to such a large volume of people suggests that you aren’t investing time to thoroughly research your prospects and personalize your emails for each individual.
  
  You’re likely to resort to broad, market-level personalizations that fail to differentiate between the unique characteristics of all the individuals on your list.
• Subpar lead quality: Due to the lack of in-depth personalization, you’ll come off as a spammy marketer. Even when you do find success, the quality of leads you’ll receive is likely below average. These leads may not easily or quickly convert.
• Disgruntled prospects: Some prospects may respond negatively, with remarks such as “Remove me from your list”, “Don’t ever email/message me again”, or even harsher, “Your connection request message sucks”. 
• Risk to your brand reputation: Sending generic emails to a wide audience can tarnish your company’s reputation. This could be particularly harmful if your industry is highly competitive or if your business heavily relies on word-of-mouth referrals. Moreover, we’re certain this isn’t how you’d want your business to be perceived.

These are only to say the very least. Also, understand that we are not claiming that this is indicative of the quality of work you get from Cleverly. We know for a fact that it takes a significant amount of work and time to create effective outreach campaigns.

There is no shortcut to it, and targeting a vast number of prospects you rapidly whipped up from a tool is not an effective approach to it. 

Lead Cookie does a better job here. Instead of creating huge lists and targeting prospects in a single batch, they build small segments of prospects based on clear niches within your target audience. 

Doing so makes their approach much more specific as to who they target. Their campaigns are much more streamlined and much more value-packed, given that their target audience is very linear, and they are much more likely to bring you better results. 

Copywriting approach

Cleverly relies on its LinkedIn outreach tool and AI for its copywriting and personalization. 

Unless you’re living under a rock, you sure know that AI tools have become increasingly popular recently, and they’ve shown capability in accomplishing impressive feats. 

Our understanding of AI-powered personalization is that Cleverly utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to gather data and analyze customer preferences, enabling the delivery of personalized emails and LinkedIn messages.

In theory, the process involves defining the target audience and establishing specific details about this audience. AI then learns which content is most effective for that audience and delivers it automatically.

Also, as campaigns progress and given that Cleverly targets large lists of up to 500 prospects, handling personalization at such a scale, especially with the massive amount of data involved, can quickly become a daunting task.

For instance, they might need to examine the prospects’ social media (LinkedIn) posts, interactions with customer support, and so on.

Here, once again, AI-powered personalization proves to be useful. It can assist in gathering, processing, and analyzing large volumes of behavioral data, generating personalized messages in real-time.

However, let us explain why we prefer to conduct our research manually and write our personalized cold emails or LinkedIn messages by hand.

• Human connection: One of the main reasons we support human-led research and personalization is the element of human touch.
  
  A skilled researcher or salesperson can empathize with potential clients, understand their needs and motivations, connect with them, and deliver a personalized experience that a non-breathing organism simply can’t replicate.
  
  Moreover, this human connection goes beyond merely understanding your target audience and gathering data to tailor personalized messages. It involves weaving stories that stir emotions, crafting content that spurs actions, and more. AI tools can try to emulate this, but they can’t quite match the human touch.
• Creativity: Another crucial reason we shy away from AI-driven personalization is the repetitiveness embedded in AI tools. For example, once they identify a successful pattern for personalizing messages, you’ll likely see the same pattern across all their generated emails.
  
  On the other hand, creative thinking is vital in prospect research and personalization. Discovering unique and personalized solutions for each client makes a significant difference – something AI is constrained by due to its training data and inability to generate truly creative solutions – quality humans possess naturally.
• Understanding and adaptability: We humans can adapt to market shifts or specific changes in our circumstances more easily than AI. In essence, experienced researchers can modify their approach or strategy based on new information or feedback, a capability that AI might find challenging.

More on the AI and ML front, the tools and their many software platforms provide the data, and that’s cool. But when it becomes a campaign of scale —as they do— the information becomes generic for lack of specificity or individualism. 

Also, here is what a customer has to say about Cleverly’s copywriting.

For us, the mere fact that Lead Cookie manually creates its LinkedIn outreach messages strongly indicates a better approach to creating messages than Cleverly. They also do an excellent job of researching their small niche prospects and creating messages that align with them on a personal level.

Outreach and sales enablement tech stack included

Lead Cookie has no proprietary lead generation tool. All they offer is the service. They rely on other third-party tools like Mailshake and Sales Navigator to research prospects and dispatch their messages. 

Cleverly, on the other hand, has a proprietary LinkedIn lead generation tool that helps them run outreach campaigns both for LinkedIn and cold email. The tool helps with anything from creating AI-driven messages to dispatching outreach campaigns. 

We believe their primary service is the lead generation tool, and you have to do most of the heavy-lifting work by yourself. That’s why they always have to specify or label their lead generation services as done for you. 

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

Pricing/average deal size

Lead Cookie’s website does not provide any information about their pricing, making it challenging for businesses to determine if their services fit their budget and requirements. 

However, according to a Lead Cookie review on Cience and the reputable client review website Clutch, the average hourly rate for their services is typically between $25 and $49. We also note from Clutch that their average project size is around $10.000. 

Cleverly offers a way less expensive, below-industry average pricing. Their most expensive LinkedIn lead generation package is $697.

You need to understand that their primary offering is their lead generation tool. Not the lead generation service — as we explained earlier. So, the pricing makes sense. What’s concerning is that none of the companies tells you what results you should expect from their service. 

How many leads will you get? N/A.

That’s the main problem. You’ll pay them without even knowing how many leads you’ll get and whether or not you can reliably turn them into paying customers. 

While we’re at it, Lead Cookie’s pricing is way too expensive. Also, the pricing model seems to prioritize the amount paid to the agency over the actual results obtained, making the service less focused on achieving results for the client.

Minimum commitment period and contracts

Cleverly typically asks its clients to stay with them for a minimum of 3 months because they believe that’s the average time period it takes to see significant results from their LinkedIn lead generation service. Keep in mind that this is optional and not compulsory. 

Lead Cookie, surprisingly, doesn’t mention this anywhere on their website. 

Refund policy

Lead Cookie has a 30-day money-back guarantee. So, if their services fail to meet your target goals, you’ll get your money back. This somehow protects you from investing without receiving any positive results. 

Cleverly doesn’t discuss a refund policy for their services.

Nerdy Joe vs. Cleverly and Lead Cookie: Why we are a better option for LinkedIn lead generation than Lead Cookie and Cleverly

We’re a B2B lead generation company that exclusively provides email marketing and outbound lead generation services (precisely, cold email and LinkedIn outreach).

Our primary goal is to help businesses build a sales pipeline that ensures a steady influx of leads. Our mission is to help businesses and sales teams consistently secure sales-ready leads without worrying about the lead-generation process. 

It frees up your sales team to concentrate on what they do best — having meetings with the leads we bring for you and selling to these leads — with little to no friction.

So, why choose Nerdy Joe?

At Nerdy Joe, we offer a superior alternative to both Cleverly and Lead Cookie. We believe this because we feel both these companies overlook critical aspects of LinkedIn lead generation — aspects that we deem fundamental.

Let’s recap the comparison and highlight the important lead generation boxes that both companies fail to tick. More importantly, let’s discuss why hiring them may not be as beneficial as you might think. Here we go:

• Cleverly’s service is not a done-for-you lead generation. It registers more as a done-with-you service — and you’ll have to do most of the heavy lifting. 
• While Cleverly doesn’t have one, Lead Cookie’s ICP identification isn’t clear and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. 
• Both companies generate leads lists by scraping data from sales and intelligence tools without referencing specific ICPs. This diminishes the precision of their targeting.
• The outreach campaigns from both companies are not designed to bring you top-tier leads. Their strategy of targeting extensive lists results in mediocre campaign performance and a drawn-out lead conversion process.
• Neither Lead Cookie nor Cleverly offer true, deep-level personalization in their outreach messages. They deliver basic, industry- or niche-specific personalizations that are largely template-driven.
• Cleverly’s AI-powered personalization raises questions about accuracy, quality, and overall effectiveness.
• Cleverly does not offer refunds, and they don’t provide any guarantees on results.
• Lead Cookie’s pricing structure is high and is primarily based on the tools they use and the work they carry out rather than the results they deliver.
• Much of the information provided by Cleverly on its website is vague and lacks essential details.
• Cleverly doesn’t deliver leads ready for conversion, pretty much like most outsourced lead generation services. They label every individual who responds as a ‘lead’ and immediately pass them on to you without any further sales enablement or qualifying steps.

In conclusion, you are seeing that these companies mostly don’t check most of the key features you want in your LinkedIn lead generation company — remember the key elements we aligned in the introduction?

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

Service value: Unlike Cleverly and Lead Cookie, who bill you based on the work they carry out and the extensive (albeit not always effective) tech stack they use, our pricing is result-oriented. 

We’re strong advocates for the idea that when you engage a lead generation company, the only result that truly counts is the number of sales leads you will receive at the month’s end. That’s the only promise they should make and the sole outcome for which you should be charged.

As you may have noticed, both Cleverly and Lead Cookie structure their pricing around factors like the number of LinkedIn messages they send, the size of the list they compile, the number of contacts they add to your list, and their tech stack.

Unfortunately, this pricing model doesn’t account for the actual results they should deliver to your sales team, which feels unfair to you. It’s basically like you’re paying them to try things with no expected results at the end. 

At Nerdy Joe, we make it clear from the start that our clients need not worry about the prospect list we construct or the number of LinkedIn connection requests we send — don’t worry; we keep it all healthy. 

This is mainly because we understand that the principal pain point for a company seeking lead generation support is their struggle to grow; they want to boost sales and get more revenue, and thus their need for SALES READY LEADS. It’s as simple as that.

Hence, our LinkedIn lead generation specialists concentrate solely on the metrics that genuinely impact your business and return on investment (ROI), not superficial metrics such as open rates or the number of LinkedIn accounts we send connection requests to. 

Instead, we report on metrics like:

• Positive responses
• Meetings booked
• Appointments set
• New sign-ups
• Demo requests
• Lead to close rate

We customized our reporting based on your company’s product or service and your broader objectives. We determine the most crucial outcomes for you, and these are the goals we strive to achieve.

For instance, if your goal in hiring us is to increase the number of guest posts your team produces each month, we’ll provide reports on the following:

• The number of affirmative responses we receive from editors
• The number of positive replies we get

LinkedIn outreach approach: Belkins and Cience approach lead generation as a number game; We take a meticulous approach to lead generation, build our lists manually, and only engage in effective targeting.

The fact that Cleverly and Lead Cookie rely on Sales Navigator to conduct their LinkedIn lead-generation campaigns is not a surprising revelation; it’s an industry norm. It’s the same approach many self-proclaimed LinkedIn lead generation experts and companies adopt.

These agencies view lead generation as a game of numbers. They build extensive lists via Sales Navigator and send out connection requests in hopes of closing a small percentage of these leads. This method could work to some extent, and they might indeed acquire some leads.

However, the real issue lies in the fact that they overlook the meticulous work that is integral to successful lead generation. There are numerous problems that arise from targeting massive lead lists built from data intelligence tools like Sales Navigator:

• Unprofessionalism and targeting people based on outdated data
• Inadequate research and mediocre lead data enrichment
• Lack of time and space for personalization
• Poor and generic outreach messages that resonate with no one
• Below average lead quality, with no tangible conversions to justify your investment
• Potential damage to your company’s reputation
• Issues related to deliverability, spam, and LinkedIn restrictions

We aren’t saying this is what you get from Cleverly or Lead Cookie. We only need you to understand that considerable work and time is necessary to research and create effective outreach campaigns — and sending outreach messages to thousands of individuals discovered via Sales Navigator does not contribute to that.

Also, as marketers who take pride in our work, we don’t consider reaching out to 500 people without a firm commitment to the number of leads we can deliver to our clients as an achievement worth boasting about. 

We prefer to send personalized messages to a curated list of prospects compiled after rigorous research and analysis. 

Our typical outreach scenario is to build a list of 20 highly-qualified prospects, send them thoughtfully composed LinkedIn messages, get in 15 replies, 10 positive responses, and ultimately, 6 sales-qualified leads or appointments for our clients.

Now, let’s clear any misunderstandings. By personalization, we mean that we craft each outreach message to be individually relevant and timely for each recipient on our list. We don’t merely insert [[First name]] or other variables into the outreach message and call it a day.

We strive to give each recipient the impression that you understand them well and their needs. We want the messages to make them feel a personal connection with you and take your offer seriously, even if they don’t eventually subscribe to your offer.

We accomplish this by investing significant time in understanding and researching your ideal customer profile (ICP) before initiating any connection request or LinkedIn message.

We collaborate closely with you to shape the ICP, study each prospect individually, and gather data points that help us create distinctive outreach messages and leave a lasting impression. And unlike Cleverly, we don’t depend on any tool to construct your ICP or research them.

The first thing we do when we onboard a new client is ask questions about their ICP. We ask questions such as:

• Why did they start their business?
• What pain points are they trying to solve?
• Which category of clients brings the most lifetime value? 
• Which client type is the easiest to convert? 
• Which type of client experiences the quickest churn rate? 
• What are the top 3 objections you encounter from prospective clients during sales discussions?
• What motivated you to establish your company? 
• What problems were you aiming to solve? 
• And so on.

The responses to these questions give us an accurate understanding of whom to target and why. It’s this kind of data that distinguishes between:

“We’re targeting Series A tech companies OR we are targeting companies that use ClickUp”

And

“Our ICP is a VP of Sales at a B2B software company catering to HR professionals, whose primary challenges are lack of organization, time management, and team collaboration. He often listens to XYZ podcasts to gain insights on efficient team management.”

Once we have a comprehensive understanding of the ICP, we proceed to construct our prospect list manually. This list forms the basis for our lead-generation campaigns.

Research and copywriting: Unlike Lead Cookie and Cleverly, who offer basic, generically personalized emails, we dedicate time to individually research each prospect and craft truly personalized LinkedIn messages.

• We choose not to use templates for crafting outreach messages. This is because we firmly believe that if a message is born out of a template, it can no longer be truly personalized to reflect the unique characteristics of each recipient. Essentially, it becomes a form of mass personalization, which is often ineffective.
• Unlike Cleverly, we also do not depend on AI tools. We are confident in our ability to craft superior emails and messages without the need for such tools. The smaller scale of our campaigns allows us the luxury of time to ensure each message is meticulously tailored and impactful.

In our approach, we place a significant emphasis on researching each of our prospects individually. This process enables us to gather essential information, leading to personalized messages that truly resonate with each recipient. We refer to this process as data enrichment.

Contrary to the common practice, we don’t simply lean on Sales Navigator for basic details like job title, location, tech stack, or company size.

We seek psychographic data, insights that reveal your potential customers’ thoughts, values, and interests. We direct our resources toward gathering this information because we believe it makes a difference. 

For a bit of context, here are some of the activities we undertake:

• Listening to podcasts that feature your potential customers.
• Reading blog posts authored by them.
• Reviewing their posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon.
• Engaging in forum discussions they participate in.
• etc.

By aggregating this collected data, we are able to identify unique angles. We use these insights to craft personalized introductions, icebreakers, offers, and unique touch points in our outreach messages, ensuring each communication feels highly tailored and relevant.

Pricing: With us, you get the best bang for your buck, you get affordability and the option to scale without burning a hole in your bank account. 

Lead Cookie is way too expensive. They have an unclear pricing model. Cleverly charges for things and confusing features you don’t need. Know what the worst part is? None of them guarantees any results for you. 

We believe that pricing is way too expensive and not sustainable for your business on a budget. If you’re paying for lead gen, it should be a flat fee for a specific number of leads or appointments booked for you. And you want a company that keeps it all transparent. 

That’s us.

• • 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. 

Work with Nerdy Joe to start generating sales-ready leads from LinkedIn today

While Cleverly and Lead Cookie have proven their effectiveness as lead generation companies, with robust portfolios and industry popularity, they might not be the perfect fit for everyone. That’s where we, Nerdy Joe, come into play.

Lead Cookie stands out for its expertise and lead generation work, while Cleverly is recognized primarily for its lead generation tool. But if you’re seeking a service that goes beyond the standard, you might want to consider partnering with us.

We are not just an agency but a partner who puts quality work at the forefront. Here’s what sets us apart:

• We are an agency dedicated to quality work. Our team does not blast out generic messages to massive lists but crafts custom, effective outreach campaigns tailored to your unique needs.
• We value the importance of deep research and spend the time needed to ensure our strategies are effective and efficient. We don’t take shortcuts – we delve deep.
• Unlike many agencies, we don’t charge you for tasks but for tangible results. Our success is tied directly to yours, creating a partnership truly invested in your growth.
• With Nerdy Joe, you don’t have to worry about paying for unnecessary tools or services. We provide exactly what you need and nothing you don’t.
• We understand the importance of flexibility, so we don’t require long-term contracts. We want to earn your business each month, not lock you into a lengthy commitment.
• We respect your time, always working efficiently to deliver results without unnecessary delays. Furthermore, we provide our expert services at an affordable rate.
• Our team genuinely cares about your company’s reputation and the relationships you build with your prospects. We are your partners, and your success is our success.

We are the lead generation agency you’re looking for. We do the market research, identify leads, do the lead research, lead management, and bring you qualified leads; we are part of your team.