growth @ Selzy // paid social @ FirstPour

I’ve been in digital marketing since 2017, and I kept seeing the same pattern: fuzzy results and no clear ROI.

I always wanted one thing — direct, measurable impact.

In 2022, I moved to a new country, started freelancing, and then built Dedicado Agency. Survival was simple: make marketing work.

I went all-in on B2B, tested multiple channels, and found outbound to be the most effective. For the first time, I saw Sales truly respect Marketing — we generated enough qualified leads to sign 3 new clients within a couple of months.

Since then, I’ve replicated the same playbook for multiple clients and for my own agency. It wasn’t easy: long days, heavy tooling investment, documenting processes from scratch, and building a team — with more than one moment of considering a return to full-time employment.

But it paid off.

Today, I know which projects can win with outbound — and which can’t. And I’ve gone beyond outbound to build full GTM systems (outbound + paid ads + organic content) that don’t just generate leads, but also build trust and awareness within a clearly defined audience — and turn that into demand.

If you’re building B2B and want a repeatable way to generate demand and pipeline, feel free to connect or DM.

Evgeny Kotelevskiy

After 4 years of working 100% remotely, I realised one simple thing:


This is the ideal work format for me.

Why ideal:

↳ You can focus 100% on work, eliminating water cooler small talks, coffee runs, and the like.

↳ The number of useless meetings decreases significantly.

↳ You choose where to work; in my case, the bike replaced the subway, and instead of the soulless skyscrapers of an office center, I started working in a cozy coworking space with a garden where roses bloom year-round 🌹.

↳ Conveniences like dress codes are a thing of the past - I never understood the relevance of clothing to professionalism.

I see two main advantages of remote work:

↳ Development of independence: there's no Maria or Peter sitting near you to give you hints or do something instead of you; you have to figure it out yourself.

↳ Considering all the above, your professional growth happens much faster.

What are your thoughts on the 100% remote format?

#remoteworker #remoteworklife #remotework

I created Dedicado Agency in 2024. The goal behind it was simple: prove to myself that I can make marketing work and make it clearly measurable.

Why this idea?

Before that, I’d seen so many teams (including myself) doing so many things that didn’t produce results:

- Generating reports for the sake of reports, full of BS
- Infinitely forwarding emails back and forth to approve one simple thing that could’ve been approved in 2 minutes
- Burning budgets on channels that didn’t generate any profit and inventing metrics to "prove" they actually bring results

The more I run my agency, the more I understand this story is less and less about money for me, and more about finding the connection between business results and marketing activities. And for that, I can tolerate a lot:

- Spending more and more money on tools, even if projects can go unprofitable
- Working with "hard clients" who aren’t very friendly, if I see they have product-market fit
- Focusing 100% on my work and on nothing else

That’s why the agency is called Dedicado [Dedicated].

Go all the way to the end.

I’d like to say this is a joke, but there’s zero irony here. I’m pretty damn serious.

🤑 How much does DIY outreach cost?

Last week I did a quick exercise to understand how much money you need for lead gen tools to launch properly on your own — and I was kinda shocked 🤪.

Let’s use our starter plan at Dedicado Agency as a benchmark.

2,000 contacts: 5,000 emails + 1,000 LinkedIn connections for $1,990/month

Let’s go:

↳ Lemlist (2 seats) — $198 (LinkedIn + email sender)
↳ Apollo — $100 (contact source)
↳ LinkedIn Sales Navigator — $120 (LinkedIn contact source)
↳ OpenAI API — $50 (to plug AI into spreadsheets, etc.)
↳ Apollo scrapers — $30 (so you don’t hit limits)
↳ MillionVerifier — $30 (email verification)
↳ Catch-All Verifier — $20 (to double-check emails after MillionVerifier)
↳ GetProspect — $50 (Sales Navigator scraper + email finder)
↳ Make.com — $19 (automations)
↳ Domains (10) — $130 (one-time payment)
↳ Google Workspace via Zapmail (12) — $70
↳ Apify — $100 (scrapers)

Then you choose:

🔴 Budget option:
GPT for Sheets — $30 (data work)
Perplexity Pro for 3 accounts — $20 (website research)

🟡 Optimal option:
Clay Explorer — $349 (data work)

🟢 Recommended add-on:
+ MasterInbox — $299 (reply management)

What you get in the end to launch your campaign:

🔴 Budget option:
$967 [$817/mo + $150 once a year]

🟡 Optimal option:
$1,317 [$1,167/mo + $150 once a year]

🟢 Optimal option with the recommended add-on (MasterInbox):
$1,616 [$1,466/mo + $150 once a year]

Writing this not only for you, but also for myself — to understand where the money is actually going. 😂

Outbound should work like this:

- A steady flow of interested leads
- Converting into meetings
- Meetings turning into sales

Yes, there can be nuances:

- The % of interested people can vary a lot
- You may need 2-3 follow-ups before someone agrees to a call
- The deal cycle can stretch out, and it’s not guaranteed a deal happens within a month

But the main thing is this:

!! Understanding that people are replying and that there’s interest. !!

If you have replies and you have interest, you can:

- Scale volumes multiple times
- Fine-tune your offer to make it more attractive
- Add extra channels (LinkedIn, WhatsApp, etc.)

But if you don’t have that, you need to think about 3 key things:

- Who you’re pitching
- What you’re pitching
- Do they actually need it

Because if at scale (1,000+ contacts) you’re not getting replies, most likely you’re not hitting the right audience with the thing they actually want.

Because if you are hitting it, people will forgive you for:

- Not-perfect deliverability
- AI-generated profile pics
- Domains that lead nowhere
- Your non-native or ChatGPT-ish English

All of that matters and affects conversion rate. But it’s not the core thing.

The core thing is understanding what your audience needs and communicating value that can actually satisfy that need.

That’s it!

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