Episode 408: The Numbers Game of 100 Touches

The Number Nobody Tells You About Voiceover Marketing

I need to have a real conversation with you. Not a comfortable one. Not a motivational poster kind of conversation.

A lot of you are working really hard and wondering why it is not translating into bookings. You are auditioning, posting, emailing, doing the things, and it feels like nothing is moving. And instead of looking at the actual math and data of this business, you are starting to wonder if maybe you are just not good enough.

You are good enough. That is not the problem. The problem is the number.

Here Is the Number

Industry veterans who have been in this business for decades are now saying that the old standard of 20 marketing touches a day is dead. That number used to be considered ambitious. A serious effort. The bar is now 100.

100 touches a day between auditions and direct marketing outreach if you want to compete at a serious level in today's market.

I know how that sounds. But I would rather you hear it from me now than spend another year wondering why 20 is not cutting it.

What a Touch Actually Is

A touch is not a finished, polished, custom audition every single time. A touch is any meaningful point of contact within the industry. An audition submitted, a LinkedIn connection request sent, a follow-up email, a comment on a piece of content, a pitch email, a check-in with a producer you worked with six months ago. All of it counts.

The Three Reasons Most Voice Actors Never Get Close to 100

The first is perfection paralysis. You spend so much time crafting the perfect audition, agonizing over every take, re-recording 17 times, and then you submit three auditions instead of 10 because you spent 30 minutes on each one. A solid, confident, well-directed audition submitted today beats a perfect audition submitted next week every single time. Done is better than perfect in a volume business. Full stop.

The second is confusing being busy with doing the work. Being in voiceover Facebook groups is not a touch. Watching tutorials is not a touch. Reorganizing your recording space is not a touch. All of those things have value but none of them move the needle the way actual outreach does. You can feel very busy and be making very little contact with the people who actually hire you.

The third is not tracking anything. If you are not writing down what you sent, who you sent it to, when you sent it, what subject lines you used, whether they responded, you have no idea what is working. Tracking is not optional. It is the infrastructure of the business.

What a 100 Touch Day Actually Looks Like

I am a big fan of time blocking. Here is one version of what this could look like.

Morning block: 90 minutes on auditions. If you are working on a casting platform and you are focused and not overthinking, you can realistically submit eight to twelve auditions in that time. That is 10 touches right there. Then 30 minutes on direct marketing. Five personalized pitch emails to potential clients. Five more touches.

Middle of the day: 20 minutes on LinkedIn. Ten connection requests to people in your target industries, five meaningful comments on posts from people you want to be on the radar of, one piece of content that demonstrates your expertise. Fifteen more touches.

Next block: follow-ups. Anyone you reached out to in the last week who has not responded gets a brief non-desperate follow-up. Ten more touches. Then check-ins with your existing network. A quick note to a producer you worked with, a congratulations to someone whose project just launched. Another 10 touches.

And then the auditions you submit through agents and other rosters throughout the day. Another 20, 30, maybe 40 depending on what is available and how efficiently you work.

None of that requires you to be superhuman. It requires you to be organized, consistent, and willing to prioritize this work.

The Thing I Want You to Sit With

Most actors approach this business like they are waiting to be discovered. Passive. If they just get good enough, if they just have the right demo, if they just book that one thing, the floodgates will open.

The alternative is you have to go get it every single day. It is relentless. It is consistent without waiting for permission.

The voiceover actors who are thriving right now are not the most talented or the most popular. They are the most persistent. The most organized. The most willing to show up and do the unsexy things.

A hundred touches a day sounds exhausting until you reframe it. What it actually means is that you are making yourself impossible to ignore. The math is on your side if you do the work. But you have to do the work.

Your Homework

Count your touches from yesterday. Actually count them. Auditions, emails, social media activity, follow-ups, all of it. Write down that number. And then be honest with yourself about the gap between that number and 100.

Not to beat yourself up. This is a clarity moment. Because most of us have a significant gap between what we are doing and what we think we are doing, and pretending it does not exist is not going to close it.

This is the long game. It is a hard game. But it is absolutely a winnable game for the people who show up every day and put the numbers on the board.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

Share this with another voice actor who needs to hear it. And reach out to Mandy at mandy@actingbusinessbootcamp.com. See you next time.