PR and marketing are great, but don’t forget cold-calling

We’ve always had an aggressive strategy of going hell for leather with sales and marketing and have, over the last four years, put money into direct mail, marketing, telesales, advertising, PR, SEO… you name it, we’ve had a campaign of it.
But, the thing is, you couldn’t say it’s one single thing that has worked. There is not one aspect of that which I would confidently say to you “Do this, it will boost your sales significantly”.
What all of those have given us is small steps forward. The combined result is greater than the sum of the parts.
Getting someone to do your PR doesn’t get you off the hook for cold-calling. It’s a combined effort – one only works with the others to back it up. Sales is more effective if you’ve had the PR and marketing to build recognition in advance.
All of the above are great, as long as you can afford for them, individually, not to work.