You’re going DOWN, Sophie Lizard!*
In 2014, Sophie collaborated with Gary Korisko on a post and video called “Why Freelance Blogging is NOT a Numbers Game” that contains this tidbit:
Dashing off sloppy pitches to every blog in the universe is not the most profitable use of your time.”
Since my pet saying is “Freelance writing is a numbers game,” I’m taking this very, very personally. What, Gary and Sophie, you lookin’ at me?
Wanna see me get mad? Just watch this video:
Straw Men Need Not Apply
First of all: Whoa, hold up there! Who on God’s green earth equates the term “numbers game” with “crappy pitches”?
I suppose someone might be handing out that godawful advice, judging by pitches like this one, which I received on February 3, 2017:
Guest Post Request For There Negade Writer
My name is [name withheld to protect the guilty], a passionate blogger. I am a featured contributor at Ceo World Biz, Social Work Helper and also a columnist at Modern Diplomacy. I was going through some blog posts on your website and it really got my attention, seriously!
I am also willing to share my knowledge and experience with your readers. Would you please allow me to contribute? Below is the link to my writing samples do check them out.”
(What’s the main problem with this pitch, aside from mangling the name of our business? It’s that we closed down The Renegade Writer blog in December 2016, so I doubt our blog “got her attention, seriously!”)
However, if you’re reading the right people, when you hear “Freelance writing is a numbers game,” you can rest assured they are not talking about this kind of thing.
Freelance Blogging IS a Numbers Game—and Here’s How to Play It
While it’s true you shouldn’t spam the universe with junky pitches, it’s also true that the more you do something, the better your chances are at succeeding with it. If you buy 1,000 lottery tickets, you have a better chance of winning the jackpot than someone who bought just one, right?
The problem with many writers is that they buy zero lottery tickets. They’re so stuck in perfectionism that they don’t do any marketing at all because they’re afraid of sending out imperfect pitches.
Isn’t there a happy middle ground between hurling crap against the wall to see what sticks (as in the pitch above), and striving for perfection to the point that your marketing slows to a virtual crawl?
Why yes, there is. It’s called Volume Marketing, and it lets you play the numbers game the right way.
Let’s talk about how to make Volume Marketing work for you.
Do One Thing
If you’re like most bloggers, your marketing schedule looked a lot like this today:
8 am: Reached out to a prospect via Twitter. Phew, that was scary! Took a little break to recover.
8:30 am: Sent a sales email for your professional blogging services to a prospect. Also angst-producing, which is why it took an hour.
9:30 am: Updated your LinkedIn profile to be sure your title had good blogging-related keywords.
10:30 am: Dinged a blogger you’d like to guest for on Facebook. Anxiously checked back every two minutes to see whether he responded.
11 am: Gathered up the courage to send a query to a blog (30 minutes), and finally did it (45 minutes).
12:15 pm: Spent 15 minutes psyching yourself up, then called a local business that may need your blogging services.
Wow, it’s only lunchtime and you did six things! Woot!
However…
If you chose just one form of marketing—one that you enjoy—you could be marketing much, much more. So your day would look like this:
8 am – 12:15 pm: Called 36 local businesses that may need your blogging services. The first one was cringe-inducing, but soon you were on a roll… and by the end you were a total pro! Oh yeah, and you also got six prospects asking you to send them more info.
Or this:
8 am – 12:15 pm: Sent out 20 email pitches. Again, the first one was hard, but the last one was a breeze! Not to mention you actually made a sale.
My point: If you scatter your energies among 20 different types of marketing, you’re failing at the numbers game. Each time you switch from one tactic to another, you have to get psyched up and in the zone all over again. It’s like you’re running a long-distance race and you have to pull yourself out of a tar pit every 30 minutes. What a great way to slow your progress!
With Volume Marketing, you do one thing. Then you do more of it.
Do B-Minus Work
The writer of the ghastly pitch above got one thing right—she was clearly sending out her query in mass quantities. There are no perfectionist tendencies holding her up! Sadly, though, she probably didn’t get any gigs with that quality of pitch.
Here’s where Volume Marketing veers sharply from the M.O. of sending out loads of sub-par pitches, while also rescuing you from the chokehold of perfectionism:
In Volume Marketing, you allow yourself to do B-minus work.
This is not F work. It’s above average work, but not 100% perfect.
- Yes, you want to research your target markets, but you don’t want to get stuck in research mode.
- Yes, you want your pitches/call scripts/social media reach-outs to show you understand the prospect’s needs, but you don’t want to go down a rabbit hole of research-write-edit-research-write-edit-research-write-edit.
- Yes, you want your pitch — whether delivered by email, on social media, by phone, or even in person — to be conversational and easy to understand instead of dry and stiff, but you don’t want to agonize over it.
B-minus work strikes a happy medium and releases you from the grip of fear so you can get your marketing out there in volume. Sending out 100 “good-enough” pitches will net you an infinitely greater number of gigs than the pitch you don’t send because it’s not yet perfect.
The More You Do…
…the better you’ll get at it.
That’s the beauty of Volume Marketing. You start out with a B-minus and end up with an A.
If you let yourself be happy with B-minus work, allow yourself to make mistakes, and learn from your gaffes, soon you’ll be doing B work. Then B-plus, then A-minus, then A.
While you’re doing Volume Marketing, you’re learning on the job. You’re likely to get gigs just because you’re putting out massive quantities of marketing, and the number of gigs will only go up as your work gets better and better.
Compare that approach with going for A-level work right off the bat. If you haven’t pitched much, you’re probably at B-minus level anyway—and the pressure of striving for an A will, ironically, keep you from getting the massive amounts of practice you need to finally get that A.
Don’t spam out trash, but don’t stress over crafting flawless pitches either. Do good work, and do it in volume.
Now that’s playing the numbers game, Gary and Sophie. Any questions?
* J/K. You know I love you guys.
Do you want us (Linda and Sophie) to walk you through the Volume Marketing process and support you each step of the way? Then you’ll want to check out our Volume Marketing Challenge for Freelance Writers — a 6 week online program that gets you marketing like a pro.
Sophie, thank you for inviting me to guest post for you! I’m honored to be here, and hope everyone likes the post…and I especially hope that they enjoy watching me give you and Gary a beatdown in the video. 🙂 finally, all those martial arts classes come in handy.
Linda,
The Volume Marketing approach reminds of a theory that if your strike rate is 20 rejections for one acceptance, then every rejection is one step closer to an acceptance. It is a different way to rationalize the rejections. If I was putting in an A+ effort, I could tell you whose theory it is, but, I’m in the B- mindset now, so I won’t research it any further. Good luck with the Challenge.
Exactly! Every No takes you one step closer to a Yes. And thanks! The Challenge is going SO WELL and I’m so pumped up! Tomorrow we start the first Challenge, Sales Letters, and I’m participating as well. Can’t wait to do the mail merge and put together my mailings like in the good ol’ days. 🙂
The main question, I think, is: How many contacts can you make without going into frantic-rush mode, where “making quota” is ALL that matters? The ideal number, like the ideal medium, varies per person.
Good question! I think it depends on the person, like you said. You want to make sure you’re keeping the love in the process!
This was fun to read. Great advice, Linda! I’m curious if you can answer this question… I prefer email marketing but can’t find emails sometimes. That’s when I switch to twitter or LinkedIn. If I stick with one mode, then I would have to skip some leads. What are your thoughts on that?
Pick two! 🙂 Your volume marketing plan is your own. I took my own VM Challenge last month and discovered I enjoy email and LinkedIn the most, and those got the best response. (Snail mail and phone calls, not as much.) So now when I make a connection with a prospect via email, I also reach out via LinkedIn, and vice versa. I also find LI helpful when, like you, I can’t find an email. Hope that helps!
Awesome! Thank you!
This was really helpful! I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this earlier since I work in digital marketing so I know the numbers game from my day job. Somehow for my side business of freelance writing, I feel like my pitches need to be the most tailored pitches ever to be ‘respectable’. I will definitely try to scale up my pitching a bit more going forward.
I’m glad it helped, Lizzy! I still do Volume Marketing even now, a couple years after I wrote this post. I learned from taking the class as I was teaching it that email pitches and LinkedIn are my pitching superpowers, so I focus there instead of worrying about other social platforms, cold calls, networking, etc.
(I do send a little physical mail to my leads as well, though, just to switching things up…but I always GET those leads via email and LinkedIn.)
Also, don’t worry too much about keeping up with the volume…if you do a big push at the beginning and build up a stable of clients, you can back the intensity down some just to make sure you always have enough clients, because some do drop off after time.
This was really helpful
I’m just breaking into the freelance writing game, and have been hung up on HOW to pitch. It seems so big and scary when you’ve never really done it. I love this approach! I do find that I learn much better when actually DOING something!
Sounds like we are in the same position! lol
I’ve been so guilty of buying zero lottery tickets in the past when it comes to marketing my freelance writing.
I’m excited those days are behind me, but I can completely emphasize with those early days – striving for perfection and spending my days learning and learning versus actually working/pitching!
Thanks for the awesome post, Linda!
Thanks, Lisa…I’m glad to hear you’re past those days of over-researching and over-thinking! It’s such a hard place to be in, and the kicker is that it doesn’t result in more work than just doing the best you can and putting it out there!
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Great article. I’m new to this so I am trying to learn as much as I can and my task now is working on how to create a pitch. Thank you for the valuable information.
Thank you for all the great advice! Just found your blog and read several of them.
I loved reading this post. Perfectionism is surely a killer to any kind of forward progress. Being okay with B- will striving for improvement is great advice. Any idea when the course will open again?
Hi Theresa! We don’t have any plans to re-run the Volume Marketing Challenge during the next year or two… but if you’re really eager to try the challenges, email me at [email protected] and I’ll see if I can sneak you in through the back door as a solo student. 😉
It’s great that you mention how emotionally stressful it can be to approach prospective clients when trying to get work. I think a lot of people feel like they are the only one’s who feel that way and then get down on themselves for taking a long time to get something done.
Great work!