Video Prospecting: A Step-by-Step Playbook for Warm Leads

Video prospecting means recording a short, personal video for one specific prospect and sending it with your outreach message. It works best when you save it for people who already know your name, keep the video near one minute, and fill it with useful fixes the prospect can act on even if they never hire you.

That is the method Andy Milligan, founder of MMG Design and the Columbus Marketing Organization, runs in his own business, which builds websites and SEO for healthcare brands. This playbook breaks his process into steps you can repeat this week, with the scripts, the follow-up rules, and the mistakes he has already made so you do not have to. If you are still lining up your first conversations, start with his guide on how to get your first client and come back here once you have a short list of warm contacts.

Who this video prospecting playbook is for

This playbook is for freelance marketers, solo consultants, and small agency owners who sell services that a prospect can judge by looking at something: a website, a funnel, an ad account, a content calendar. If you can point at a screen and show what you would change, video prospecting gives you a way to prove your expertise before anyone books a call.

It is not a volume play. Andy is direct about that. "You want to reserve video DMs, people that are further down the sales funnel, because these are a time-intensive process," he says in the video. Cold email and cold outreach handle volume. Video handles the conversations that are already warm.

The outcome

Done well, each video does three jobs at once. Andy describes the stack plainly: a warm referral or existing connection, expertise shown on camera, and a small amount of free work. In his words, layering those together creates "a very high likelihood of a conversion."

Even when the prospect does not buy, the video builds goodwill. Andy expects the reaction to be some version of, "Hey, wow, that was really nice of them to record that video." That reaction is what keeps you top of mind when a budget finally opens up.

Prerequisites

Before you record anything, have these in place:

• A short list of warm contacts. People you are connected with on LinkedIn, have talked with before, or were introduced to. Andy's list for one session was 12 companies, which became 11 after he spotted a duplicate.
• One named person per company. Each target needs a real point of contact, not a generic inbox.
• A screen recorder that shares a link and shows views. Andy records on Tella and turns on its notifications so he knows exactly when a video is watched.
• A CRM or simple tracker. Andy runs his pipeline in Folk. A spreadsheet works if it has a stage column and a follow-up date.
• One clear offer. In Andy's examples, the offer is simple: fix the most urgent issues on the prospect's website.

Step 1: Pick prospects who already know your name

Time: about 30 minutes for a list of 10 to 12 (estimate).

Start with relationships, not lists. Andy pulls people he has been connected with on LinkedIn for a while, because that tells him they are in the middle or bottom of the sales funnel and that a video pitch "is more welcome." His strongest example came from a warm referral: a colleague introduced him by email to a healthcare organization that was juggling multiple vendors.

In a separate session, he noticed a pattern in his own data. The first person to respond to a video email was someone he was already chatting with on LinkedIn. His takeaway was to make an active LinkedIn conversation the trigger that moves a contact into video outreach. If you need to build that first layer of relationships, his approach to LinkedIn outreach covers it.

Pitfall: sending videos to strangers. A video takes far more time to make than an email, and without an existing connection it arrives without the context that makes it welcome.

Step 2: Find the right person and confirm they still work there

Time: 3 to 5 minutes per company (estimate).

Your contact has to be a decision maker or someone who sits right next to one. Andy's rule is that the person "can directly pass along the information" in the video to a trusted colleague, or makes the decision directly.

In a separate session, Andy shows how he narrows a company's LinkedIn page to decision makers, then looks for titles like director of marketing or executive director, ideally with a mutual connection. He also checks that the person is still there. More than once on camera he found that the person listed on the company page had already moved on, so he picked a different contact.

To find a work email, he looks up the company's email pattern with a domain-search tool, then verifies the address before sending. One contact's address only verified once he added a maiden name that appeared on her LinkedIn profile. His CRM's built-in enrichment, he says, "gets the email right almost every single time," but he still checks.

Pitfall: recording a great video for someone who left the company three months ago. Confirm first, record second.

Step 3: Audit what you will show

Time: 5 minutes per prospect (estimate).

Open the prospect's website and pick two to four fixes. They should be urgent, specific, and small enough that the prospect could fix them without you. In Andy's videos, the recurring items are:

• Mobile responsiveness. He tells prospects that about 65 to 70% of his clients' traffic is on mobile, so a site that cuts off on a phone is losing people.
• The main call to action. He recommends moving the primary button, such as "Donate" or "Make a payment," to the top right of the navigation, where his clients' heat maps show more clicks.
• A descriptive H1. He suggests replacing vague headlines with one that names the company's services, which he tells prospects makes search engines and AI tools more likely to surface the site.
• Page titles and meta descriptions. Small edits that help the site get found.
• Keyword stuffing. He flags it as risky. Google's own spam policies define keyword stuffing as "filling a web page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings."

Keep the list short. The point is to show judgment, not to deliver a full audit for free.

Pitfall: finding 15 problems and mentioning all of them. A long list feels like criticism. Two or three fixes feel like help.

Step 4: Record the video

Time: about one minute of video, plus a few minutes of setup (video length from Andy; setup is an estimate).

"I try and keep these around a minute, not much longer," Andy says. His videos follow the same structure every time:

1. Personal opener. Use their name and the connection: who introduced you, or that you just connected on LinkedIn. Andy often adds a local tie, such as both being based in Columbus.
2. The purpose, said plainly. He tells the prospect the video is not a sales pitch and that his goal is to give them useful fixes they can forward to their developer or web person.
3. Two to four fixes on screen. Scroll and point. Be specific about what you see and why it matters.
4. A low-friction close. He ends with a version of this line: "feel free to just respond with a thumbs up and I'm happy to go on and fix these." Then he thanks them either way.

Show your face. Andy's stated reason for recording at all was to put himself on camera, so the prospect meets a person instead of reading another pitch.

Pitfall: re-recording until it is perfect. Andy's best take in one session came on the first try. Get the reps in and move on.

Step 5: Write the email around the video

Time: 5 minutes per prospect (estimate).

The email does the work of getting the video opened. In a separate session, Andy shares the copy that earned a reply. The subject line was "Connecting from LinkedIn." The opening referenced their LinkedIn conversation and said he wanted to reach out personally. Then came a line that sets expectations and a little humor: "I'm attaching a quick personal vid so you can tell I'm not some weirdo."

He also learned to say outright that the email is not a sales pitch and that he simply wants to share value. That framing, he says, "goes over really well."

Pitfall: promising big outcomes in the email. Keep the promise small and specific: a couple of fixes worth a look.

Step 6: Track views and follow up the right way

Time: 15 to 20 minutes a day (estimate).

With view notifications on, you know who watched. In a separate session, Andy's video list showed several watches and one reply that turned into an offer to meet for coffee. His lesson from the data: "If they respond, they will respond right away."

So the follow-up targets people who viewed but did not reply. Andy uses an AI assistant connected to his CRM and Gmail to draft contextual follow-ups that account for how many times he has already followed up. For local contacts, he often skips the sales angle entirely and invites them to an in-person marketing leaders meetup instead. As he put it about one contact: "If she's not a fit for client base, she could be a fit for the community." For more on timing and tone, see his process for how to follow up with leads.

Pitfall: treating "not the right person" as a no. When one prospect replied that they did not have the final say on the website, Andy read it as a sign he had reached the right person for later, the one who will think of him first when a website task comes up.

Step 7: Log every send and review the numbers

Time: 10 minutes at the end of each session (estimate).

Record each video in your tracker with the date sent, whether it was viewed, and the next step. Andy keeps a running playlist of outreach videos. In one session he added three new videos to reach 27 and set a target of 50 before his next mastermind group meeting, which gives him a number to be accountable to.

Review what converted and change one thing at a time: the subject line, the opener, the length, the type of fix you show. Andy treats every session as data collection. "This is all data collection," he says. "I wouldn't have known to do that if I hadn't been doing these reps."

Video prospecting mistakes to avoid

• Using video for cold volume. It is slow by design. Save it for warm and referred contacts.
• Skipping the contact check. People change jobs. Confirm before you record.
• Turning the video into a pitch deck. Lead with fixes, close with a thumbs-up offer.
• Running long. Aim for about a minute.
• Following up with the same ask. Change the angle: a new tip, an event invite, an introduction.
• Forgetting deliverability. Andy notes it is worth checking email deliverability with a free online tool so your best messages land in the inbox.

Why this works now

Buyers are tired of generic outreach. In a June 2025 Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers, 73% said they actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. A video that shows a specific prospect's own website is about as relevant as outreach gets.

Video is also where attention is going on LinkedIn. LinkedIn reported in May 2025 that video viewing on the platform is up 36% year over year. LinkedIn is a natural second channel for these videos too. Andy has experimented with sending video DMs over LinkedIn and sees it as a follow-up route after email.

Your video prospecting checklist

Copy this into your tracker and run it for each prospect:

1. Prospect is a warm contact, referral, or active LinkedIn conversation.
2. Named decision maker, or someone next to one, confirmed still at the company.
3. Work email found and verified.
4. Two to four specific, urgent fixes chosen.
5. Video recorded, about one minute, face on camera.
6. Opener uses their name and your connection.
7. Video says plainly that it is not a sales pitch.
8. Close offers a low-friction next step, such as a thumbs-up reply.
9. Email subject and first line reference your connection.
10. View notification on; follow-up date set in your CRM.
11. Viewed but no reply after a few days: follow up with a new angle or an event invite.
12. Log the result and change one variable next session.

A simple video script template

Use this as a starting point and make it your own:

Opener: "Hi [name], great to be connected. [Mutual contact] introduced us / we just connected on LinkedIn, and I wanted to put a face to the name."

Purpose: "This isn't a sales pitch. I looked at your website and wanted to share two or three things your team could fix on its own."

Fixes: "First, [specific issue and why it matters]. Second, [issue]. Third, [issue]."

Close: "Feel free to forward this to whoever manages the site. If you'd like help, just reply with a thumbs up. Either way, glad to be connected."

Where the Columbus community fits

Video prospecting works best when you already know people, and in Columbus that is easier than it sounds. Andy's warmest video came from a colleague's introduction, and his best follow-ups for local prospects are invitations to meet other marketers in person. Columbus Marketing Organization is a peer community for marketers, freelancers, and service providers in Columbus, Ohio, founded by Andy Milligan. Members share leads, introductions, and job opportunities, including the weekly Columbus Marketing Jobs newsletter.

If you want more warm contacts to send videos to, start by meeting people at a Columbus marketing event. For the daily habit that keeps your list full, see his playbook on how to generate leads in an hour a day, and for live examples of tweaking scripts, watch him refine his video outreach.

Start your first round of video prospecting

Video prospecting rewards preparation, not polish. Pick 10 warm contacts, confirm the right person, record about a minute of useful fixes, and follow up when they watch. Then review what worked and run it again. If you want peers to trade scripts and results with, join the Columbus Marketing Organization community on Skool.