How to Let The Market Guide Your Outreach

Listen to this issue here 👇

In the last issue, I shared a way to “sprinkle yourself into your marketing” by being bold enough to say: 

Here I am! 
This is what I think. 
This is what I’ve learned. 
This is what I know.

(Have you tried it yet?)

But I also promised to contradict myself, so here goes…

While you absolutely have to boldly bring yourself into your:

• High-Quality Content
• Strategic Networking
• Targeted Outreach

(Which are, of course, the three tools of the Simplest Marketing Plan…)

You also have to listen to the market and let it guide you. It’s a balancing act, for sure!

So how do you bring yourself into your marketing while also letting the market guide you?

Let’s look at how it works with Targeted Outreach:

Start by reaching out to prospects as your (bold!) self, offering to help from a place of genuine generosity. You already know how to do that part, right?

It’s often the next step where you are likely to get stuck. What should you do next? 

That’s when you let the person you reached out to - a.k.a “the market” - determine your next step. There are usually 3 options to choose from:

1. If they engage: continue the conversation.

When they do respond, ask yourself: “How can I continue the conversation?” (BTW you can expect a response from about one in 10 people you reach out to.) 

2. If they don’t engage: add value.

Since you know that most people won’t respond to your first outreach effort, you’re not going to take it personally, right? People are busy.

Ask yourself: “How can I up the ante by adding value in an authentic way?”

3. If the timing isn’t right: stay visible.

Some will respond with, “We don’t need you right now” – which is not the same as “We will never need you.”

So of course you can stay connected via your LinkedIn posts and newsletter. But ask yourself, “How else can I stay visible to this person?”

How would you answer the above questions? Share here.

I asked these same questions in my July Office Hours for the Simplest Marketing Plan, and got some fantastic answers!

Want to see them?

Sure! I took all the answers and used AI to organize them into a PDF guide you can reference anytime you need a little help letting the market guide your outreach.

👉 Download it for free here.

So what do you think - could you be bolder in your marketing while also letting the market guide your next step? I think you could.

Try it, and tell me how it goes. Thanks for reading.

* This article was originally published here