Field Guides / Marketing

Content or outreach: where to spend your marketing time

Many of the owners I coach over-engineer their content and under-execute their outreach: hours on the bio and the posting plan, minutes on contacting people who could hire them. If you spent more hours on content this week than the number of people you contacted, outreach is your problem. Pick one channel, run a seven-day outreach test, and judge it on the conversations it starts.

Why do video business owners spend hours on content and minutes on outreach?

Video business owners spend hours on content because polishing a profile feels productive and safe, while contacting someone who could hire you feels exposing. The safe work is easier to start, so it gets the hours.

I see it across the owners I coach. One spent hours on an Instagram bio. Another went back and forth on a LinkedIn page strategy. A third kept debating between LinkedIn connection approaches instead of trying one. The coaching was the same every time: pick one, execute, adjust from the data.

The polishing looks like work, which is why the cost is easy to miss. The coaching put it plainly: the seven followers lost mean nothing, and the diagnostic follow-up email matters.

There's a second reason content wins the week. Most people reach out to a prospect once, a few follow up, and most give up and go looking for something new. One message with no reply feels like evidence that outreach doesn't work, and the owner goes back to the bio.

How do you tell whether content or outreach is your actual problem?

You tell by putting two numbers side by side: the hours you spent on content this week, and the number of people who could hire you that you contacted. If the hours are bigger, outreach is the problem. The five questions below sharpen the answer.

How to run a seven-day outreach test: the method, step by step

A seven-day outreach test is one channel, worked every day for a week, logged, then reviewed. It's adapted from the seven-day test I run in workshops, where the week mixed a posting plan with connecting and then we looked at the results. This version is outreach only, and it keeps two lines from the workshop slide: what gets measured gets managed, and do it five times a day.

1. Write your message in one line. Use the equation: We help [niche] to [get result] by [offer]. If you can't say it clearly, your target market will be confused and your marketing won't work. In the workshop deck this line went into the connection message. In this version it stays with you as the line you check every message against, and the message itself leads with their situation.
2. Build a short list. Answer four questions about the people you want to work with: who are they, where are they, what is their pain, and what is driving their decision. Prospects don't change the status quo because of their job title. They move when their current situation is putting them at risk, and a decision maker won't do anything that puts their own job at risk. Look for the people whose situation is already making the case, and list enough names for five contacts a day.
3. Pick one channel, where those people already are. LinkedIn or email, whichever your list actually uses. On LinkedIn, reach comes from commenting thoughtfully in the right rooms, where your kind of client is already talking, rather than from sending more connection requests. Check the host's audience is your client before you comment.
4. Book the time seven days ahead. Put one block in the diary for each of the seven days before you start. Done looks like seven blocks in the calendar before day one.
5. Make five contacts a day. Five is the number for this test, taken from the workshop's five a day. A contact is a thoughtful comment in a room where your client talks (including on a post by someone on your list), or a short personal message with one question in it. Give first.
6. Log every contact. Name, date, what you sent, whether they replied, and the next step. The workshop's four steps were connect, content, nurture, track, and this is the track.
7. Review on day eight. The next section shows how to read what you've got.

How do you read the result of a seven-day test?

Read a seven-day test on one number: conversations started with people who could hire you. Followers, likes and views are vanity numbers. Seven days tells you whether you did the work and whether your message starts conversations.

A widely used sales rule of thumb, one I've used in workshops, explains why the week can't tell you much more. For every 100 people you make contact with, about 60 aren't interested, 30 are interested but not right now, 7 are open to buying and 3 are ready to buy now. It describes readiness to buy, not how many people will reply.

Three readings I'd suggest for day eight:

• You didn't make the 35 contacts. The channel hasn't been tested yet. Run the same seven days again before changing anything.
• You made the contacts and almost nobody replied. Try changing the message or the list before the channel. Go back to steps one and two.
• You got replies. Keep the channel. Have the conversations, put everyone who said "not right now" on a follow-up list with a date, and run another seven days.

A worked example: one week of the test in round numbers

Here's the rule of thumb applied to one week of the test, in round numbers. It shows how readiness to buy might spread across the people you contacted. It uses no member's figures and doesn't predict replies.

Five contacts a day for seven days is 35 people.

On those round numbers, three or four of the 35 are anywhere near buying this week, and about ten may be ready later. That's why seven days rarely settles whether a channel produces clients.

The mistakes that undo it

The seven-day test fails in three predictable ways.

• Switching channels on a feeling. Decide the test length before you start and let it finish, even if the first three days are quiet. The coaching on paid ads was the same: they need to run longer before you kill them.
• Skipping the log. Without names, dates and replies written down, the day-eight review is a guess about how the week felt.
• Pitching in the first message. The workshop deck put a case study in the first message after connecting. I'd hold it back now: the first message asks one question about their situation, and the case study and the call come once they've replied.

The rule of thumb for content and outreach

Contact people before you polish anything: one channel, five contacts a day, logged, and reviewed every seven days.

The benchmark is 35 logged contacts a week, with everyone who said "not right now" on a follow-up list with a date.

Hold yourself accountable

Which of these have you taken on or put in place recently?

• You know how many hours you spent on content last week and how many people you contacted.
• You've sent the follow-up you'd been putting off.
• You've run one channel for seven days at five contacts a day and logged every one.
• You've reviewed the week on conversations started and decided: keep the channel, change the message, or change the list.

Your one move this week

What's the one thing you can commit to implementing this week? If you're not sure, start here.

Answer the five self-check questions in writing. Then write your one-line message and a list of ten people you'd like to work with, and send the first message to one of them today.

One thing executed every week creates 50 strategic moves a year.

Related tools and guides. How to write a follow-up email that gets a reply, How to qualify a video lead before you pitch, How to get more from referrals and networking, Feast or famine: why your video business swings, The marketing asset you already have and keep ignoring.