Traditional marketing spreads budget thinly across many low-conviction prospects. A "tollbooth" approach identifies high-demand prospects with near certainty. This conviction allows you to consolidate your budget and spend dramatically more per person on a high-impact action, transforming your CAC economics.

Use Facebook or LinkedIn ads to target decision-makers in a specific city and industry, inviting them to an exclusive, curated dinner. This "high school party" concept positions you as a thought leader and gives you a captive audience for a low all-in cost, generating high-quality leads.

Lemlist outsourced the technical execution of paid ads (bidding, platform specifics) to a freelancer. This de-risked hiring for a new channel and allowed the in-house team to focus on high-impact work like positioning, messaging, and linking campaigns to major GTM moments.

Lemlist used paid ads to enter the German market and quickly learned their standard messaging failed due to cultural differences around cold emailing. This allowed them to pivot their positioning, proving ads are a powerful tool for fast market validation and de-risking expansion.

Palta's playbook challenges the 'organic-first' mentality. They start with paid user acquisition, scaling spend to $3-5K daily on one channel. This forces an early, clear understanding of true unit economics and validates the business case before investing in slower organic strategies.

To find clients with a budget for lead generation, look for companies already running ads on platforms like Google and Facebook. Their existing ad spend is a clear signal that they value customer acquisition and are willing to invest in services that promise a positive return.

When ad performance breaks at scale, the problem isn't your bidding strategy; it's that you've saturated the 3% of the market ready to buy now. To grow, you must target the other 97% with broader, less direct hooks and lead magnets that educate them first.

Lemlist multiplies the impact of influencer marketing by connecting it to other channels. Successful organic posts are sponsored as 'thought leadership ads' for wider reach. Their sales team also conducts outbound outreach to people who comment on these posts, leveraging social proof for high reply rates.

When ad spend can't increase without performance dropping, the issue isn't your bidding strategy. It's that your direct offers have exhausted the small pool of problem/solution-aware customers. Scaling requires broader hooks and funnels to engage the much larger, less-aware audience.