This is an excerpt of a masterclass presented by Dana Lindahl, Founder at Legendary Podcasts. Connect with Dana on LinkedIn.
Appearing on podcasts can be a great way to grow your business and boost sales. Not only do you avoid all the headaches involved with producing and distributing your own podcast, but you also get to access a completely new audience, all for around an hour of your time. We’ll be looking at all the benefits that podcasts can bring you, and how to present yourself and package your message so that you can book any podcast.
Dana gives us his top tips for podcasting and explains how to stand out from the crowd and reap the rewards from this exciting and fun medium.
The top five benefits for podcasting in the B2B space
The first thing you might want to know is why podcasting is useful for B2B. Here are some of the main reasons why everyone in the B2B space should consider appearing on podcasts:
- You can utilize other people’s audience – By appearing on someone else’s podcast, you can instantly reach people who wouldn’t ordinarily have heard of you.
- You get 30-40 minutes in your target market’s ear – This kind of focus is unheard of in the online space, where you are dealing with attention spans of seconds. Podcasts tend to have a highly engaged and sophisticated audience who are taking time out of their day to listen to content they are specifically interested in. Even blog posts only give you a few minutes of someone’s attention.
- EVERY podcast gives you a chance to promote yourself – At some point in the podcast, the host will give you the chance to promote yourself and, in some cases, may also give you an endorsement.
- Most podcasts are “evergreen” – that means your audience might find you months or even years down the line, without you having to do any extra work.
- Podcast hosts are great to network with – they have access to lots of other experts that they have worked with in the past. Even if you don’t feel like the target audience is going to be immediately beneficial, building rapport with the host could be reason enough to do a spot.
What kind of goals can you achieve with podcasting?
Podcasting is a versatile medium that can bring you closer to achieving a range of goals.
Brand awareness is the most common and most organic objective for podcasting. However, if you specifically want to win customers, you may need to focus on specific podcasts and then find a way of engaging with that audience afterwards, through a promotion or landing page, etc.
The same goes for promoting a launch, for example a book, a company, etc. Although plenty of podcasts will be happy to have you on to promote something specific, you will still have to come up with some interesting content to talk about besides that. For example, what was your journey towards this moment? The best outcome for promotions is when the host endorses your material.
The other option is getting creative and using the platform for something else. For example, one business owner was looking to find franchisees for a new venture. He decided to go for podcasts which targeted people looking to leave the rat race and go into business by themselves. He leveraged his own experience doing this and created a compelling story of how he got out of the rat race, engaging the exact audience he was looking for.
Look for opportunities that combine topic and goal as well as the general purpose of the podcast when you are getting creative.
Finding the right podcasts to appear on
When starting your podcast career, it’s important to be intentional about the podcasts you choose to appear on. Although every appearance doesn’t need to perfectly hit every one of your goals, it is useful to have a checklist for recognizing a good fit:
- Content should not exist in a vacuum – This means that the content should have appeal outside the niche you are talking about. E.g. If you're a fitness instructor, there’s no point appearing on only fitness podcasts in order to find new customers. Although that audience will be interested in the content, you are probably not going to sell to them. The podcasts you choose should be tangentially related to the subject you are talking about.
- A decent sized audience – You can start out with smaller audiences while you get comfortable but your goal should be to reach the biggest audience possible. It’s hard to actually know what kind of audience a podcast has but we use two factors as a base: it has to have been going for more than a year with at least one release every week. A podcast that has made it that far usually has a large enough audience for it to be worth your time. Other factors which are indicative of the size of the audience are the download charts position and the number of reviews.
- Audience is mostly within your target market – There’s no point speaking to a huge audience if none of them are going to be interested in what you say. Make sure at least some of the audience are part of your target.
- Publishes episodes on their site – This is an excellent bonus if the podcast you appear on has a site where they publish their episode because it is going to provide backlinks to your website. Some people actually use this as a strategy and do podcasts primarily for getting backlinks and improving their SEO.
Once you’ve found the podcasts you want to appear on, you need to reach out to the host with an offer they can’t refuse. Find out how to make yourself instantly bookable to podcast hosts and avoid the most common mistakes that business owners make when pitching their idea.
Do’s and don'ts for promoting yourself during the podcast episode
While it’s key to make sure you promote yourself during your appearance so that listeners know who you are, there are ways and means of doing so:
Do's:
- Wait for the question “How can our listeners find you?”
- Direct them to a relevant lead magnet
Don'ts:
- Promote yourself without being prompted
- Just say “Go find me on LinkedIn / our website”
Something important to remember is that people can’t click a link on a podcast so you need your url to be easily memorable and obvious to spell. If you haven’t managed to build your landing page before your appearance, remember that you can build it later (as long as it’s before the podcast goes live).
Your message will resonate if you come across as genuine and have something interesting to say. Find out Dana’s three top tips for making sure your podcast is memorable by listening to the full webinar.
Following these simple steps is going to put you ahead of the competition when pitching podcasters and will give you access to almost any podcast you want to go on.
If you want to find out more about how to build your podcast strategy, including how to create your lead magnet and graphics, you can set up a call with Dana by going to this link.