175 | You can drive business growth by being a guest on podcasts, but only if you follow a clear strategy and some tactics that shared in this episode

Being a guest on podcasts is becoming more and more popular. Multiple CEOs and business leaders are on a constant tour as podcast guests.

There are many benefits to being a guest on podcasts:
1. Reach new audiences - by leveraging the following the host already created you can reach a well-targeted audience
2. Become an authority in your industry
3. Evangelize a unique POV
4. Provide your target audience with a new lense to view the world
5. Personalize the business - people want to do business with people not businesses

All of this sounds great and is achievable by being a guest on podcasts (and even more by having your own show (connect with me on LinkedIn and ask me how if you are curious).
But it only works if you have a clear strategy, and it can happen much faster and more effectively if you use specific proven tactics.

In this episode, we cover both the strategy and the tactics that can help you and your business make the most by being a guest on podcasts. The episode is based on a consulting session I recently gave a colleague
 

Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏

Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis, your host. And recently I had a conversation with a colleague of mine. He's a CEO of a nationwide successful company, and he's thinking about starting a podcast tour and being a guest on different podcasts. And I had a one-on-one session with him, helping him with strategy and tips on how to make the most out of it. And I thought of sharing it with all of you. Being a guest on podcast is an amazing way to connect with your audience, build trust, grow authority, and drive more business in a very non-salesy way. So I highly recommend that. So in this episode, I'm going review everything that I've reviewed with him that you can use in order to grow your business. Being a guest on podcasts.

Isar Meitis: 1:41

Hello, and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis, your host, and thank you so much for listening to the show today. In today's episode, we are going to talk about being a guest on podcasts. Yes, this has become a big deal. More and more CEOs and business leaders identify the benefits of being guest on different podcasts, and many of them go on a tour either on their own or through an agency that helps them get booked on podcasts. The problem is a lot of them do not have the proper strategy behind this, so they're missing on a lot of the benefits. So before we dive in on how to do this right, how to be a great on podcasts in a way that's not only educational and providing value to the audience, but also can support the business you're trying to promote. Let's talk a little bit about the benefits. The benefits of being a guest on podcast are multiple. First of all, you have the opportunity to grow an audience by leveraging other people's audiences. So if you're a guest on a podcast that caters to the right audience, you now have their ears, and by the way, for a much longer period of time than the average, which is the second benefit. A lot of the content that we're putting out there today Is built around short snippets that are built for social media, which means you're gonna get somebody's attention if you're lucky for a couple of minutes. On average, probably 30 seconds. And if you're not great, maybe not at all. But if you're going onto somebody's podcast, and people are used to listening for that podcast regularly for 30 to 45 minutes. You can talk to those people again, your direct relevant audience for 30 to 45 minutes, sometimes an hour. So it's a huge benefit from both getting to that audience as well as the span of attention you're gonna get from that audience. And it enables you to become an authority in your field, develop and hone in on your unique point of view so you can share it and attract people. to Your business. So these are some of the direct benefits. Some of the indirect benefits. One is creating content. You can use the content that's created by the podcast for content for your business, and we'll talk a lot more about that at the end of this episode. So don't leave before that because that's one of huge benefits that you're gonna get if you know how to do this right. The other side benefit of this is that you're gonna get known for the thing you want to get known for, and you're gonna get invited to speak on other stages and events, which will allow you to network and become even more known in your industry for the things you're trying to be known for. So, huge benefits, both direct and indirect. but as I said, if you do this without a clear strategy and while missing some of the tactics, You are not going to enjoy all the benefits of going through this process and investing the time and the money you're gonna invest in doing this. So let's begin. How do you maximize your appearance on different podcasts? First of all, you gotta start with strategy. And that is defining the goal. What is it that you're trying to do? What are you trying to achieve by being on podcast? Is it just word of mouth? Is it getting leads? Is it getting exposure in areas you don't have right now? What is the goal? Once you define that goal, you can better define the audience that is the right audience for that goal, and also define goals that will show you that you're actually tracking in the direction of that goal. So let's start with the first one, the audience. If you are trying to get leads, then your audience has to be people that are potential clients of yours. If you're trying to make a big splash in your industry and get known for partnerships, then the audience needs to be people from your industry. And so on and so forth. So once we find the goal, define the target audience. Once you know the target audience, there's two things you need to do. Number one is think of what is the value, the unique value that you can provide to that audience, whether directly related or not related at all to the product of service that you're selling, but how can you provide value to them right now in a unique way that they cannot find just by going to Google or ChatGPT or any other source of information that they have, because this is the way you're gonna capture and keep their attention and drive them to grow an affinity to you and the brand that you're presenting. So what's gonna bring unique value to them, to the specific audience right now? What kind of burning questions they have that are relevant because of the economy, because of what's going on in your industry, et cetera. That's on the audience side of it. On the flip side of it, you gotta do some research on which podcasts cater to that audience. That is the ultimate audience for you to promote your goal. This has to do with the very first step of the strategy of going on podcast. The second thing is, what are you going to talk about? You have to have one thing for sure, and potentially two. The one thing you gotta have is a unique and clear point of view that you're excited to talk about, and that can provide value to your audience. That point of view, preferably is unique and different than what everybody else in your industry is talking about. And this could be a. Better presentation of a problem, a new problem that people are not paying attention to. A new way to solve an existing problem that everybody knows of, et cetera, et cetera. But it has to be unique and different and representing the thing that your company does well. The other thing that is not a must, but is definitely very helpful is to have a villain. If you can define what's the wrong way of doing something or what's the bad outcome that you're gonna get by doing the things you're doing today, you can better help people understand why they should work with you, why your solution is different, and why they should consider doing something else than what they're doing anyway. If you go back to category design, the book play bigger, they call it damn the demand. If you can take a group of people that already, have a need and their need is now connected to a specific demand, to a specific servicer product, and let them understand that the problem is real, but there's a different solution. And the solution they're seeking right now is not the optimal solution. They are very likely to come and work with you because they're already new. They have the problem, now they're seeing a better solution. And you can attract people that way. So find. Your point of view that is unique and preferably find a villain or damn the demand on how other people are doing what is it that you wanna offer to do? You do not want to talk about your product or service though. You want to talk about benefits in doing things in a new way, looking through a new lens that you're providing to the audience. Now that you know all of that, that will allow you to better hone in on the right shows you wanna be a guest on. So it's not just the audience, it's also the topics that this audience is seeking that is relevant to the things that you're going to talk about, which will give you an even shorter list of shows, which is awesome because then you can focus on the place where your time is gonna provide the most amount of value. Now the question is how many times you want to talk about the same stuff you're going from show to show to show? Do you wanna be a one show pony? And the answer is one show pony, maybe not three show pony, absolutely. So find the two or three really big things in which you have a very clear point of view that you're passionate about. In where your company provides a unique value that other companies do not, and talk about this again and again, and again and again and again. Don't worry about this. First of all, you're talking to different audiences in different podcasts, but the other thing is the fact there's gonna be a different host every time, and sometimes if it's a live show, different audience asking questions. Your story is gonna get contextualized in different ways, which will attract different audiences. Sometimes the question are gonna be coming from a female, sometime a male, sometime a C E O, sometime a practitioner of the thing you're talking about. So while you are gonna evangelize the same point of view and the same villain, you're gonna contextualize it to the specific questions, to the specific use case of that specific host or audience, which will allow more people to connect with the things that you're saying. Another thing that you gotta ask yourself is do you want some kind of a business call to action or any other call to action when you are a guest of the show? And I'll explain what that can be. A lot of people tend to think that has to be a salesy kind of move and it. Absolutely doesn't it actually better if it's not? Meaning don't save people to, here's a way to book time with my salespeople, or here's a way for you to buy my product. That's not what you're trying to do. But the trick is, how do you combine the value that you're providing on the podcast to additional relevant value that you can provide to people on your website through a conversation on a strategy call, et cetera. So if you build your talk correctly and you mention. A checklist that you have a process, that you're using a book that is worth reading, and then you send people to a specific landing page or a way to book time to continue the education that you have provided. This doesn't feel salesy. It feels like a way to get more value in the same topic, to go deeper on specific things, and in many cases, to be very practical and tactical. So again, if you're talking about here's a process to do this thing, and if you want, there's a checklist. Go to the website, you can get it. Here's a link to the website. Now you're providing people more value without being salesy and while being very relevant to the things you were talking about on the show. To be a little more tactical on where you wanna send people from that show. If you wanna build a landing page, my suggestion is use your company's URL forward slash the name of the particular show. That landing page can be the same exact landing page, or if you have three topics, three different landing pages that are replicated again and again and again with a different URL every time. So people who listen to the show will find it easy to remember. And within the url, all you have to change is, it was great being a guest on show X. I really enjoyed my conversation with host y. Here's some things that I mentioned. Here's the stuff that you can get. Here's links to other things or ways that my company can provide value on those topics. Either download the checklist, connect with a salesperson, learn more on topic X, follow us on YouTube, et cetera, et cetera. Whatever links you wanna put on that page that people will go to. For the one thing you mentioned on the show, that ties back to the thing you were talking about during the show. Another great call to action at the end of a show is for people to connect with you on the social media you're most active on. Give them your handle or your name if it's LinkedIn and say, I would love to connect with you. I love answering question. Just send me a direct message and so on. that's another way to continue the conversation. Or if you wanna start the conversation with an audience beyond them listening to you on a podcast. That's one way, by the way, for you to start tracking that the podcast is actually doing something. So if you remember in the beginning I mentioned that one of the things you have to do is to define a goal and to find ways to track that you're actually moving towards that goal. The first results you're gonna see are not tied directly to business KPIs. It may happen, but usually it takes a while. But what you're gonna see is signs that you're doing the right thing. One of those signs is people going through your landing pages and engaging with them. If you have a gated content that they have to put in an email to download, which some people like some people don't. I personally don't, but it doesn't mean it's wrong. You can still do that. Then you can even capture their email addresses so you see signs that people are interested in the thing you're talking about and in the value that you're providing. Another thing is you can start talking about it on social media again. Find a platform you connect with at your audience roams at, and use that platform to produce content. And remember, it has nothing to do with where you feel comfortable. It just has to do with where your audience is. So if you're catering to a younger audience, even if you are older and TikTok still looks to you like a place where people do weird dances, it's not. It's an awesome social network which has a huge following with a younger audience and now with a slightly older audience as well. So maybe you wanna produce TikTok content that is an outcome of the thing you were talking about in the podcast. And what you're gonna see is if you're creating the right content around the topics you were talking about in the podcast and sending people to listen to the specific podcast you are on, you'll be able to see if people are connecting with the message that you're delivering. Are they're engaging with your content? Are they writing comments? Are they sharing it? Are they liking it? If you see those, that means you're talking about the right topics. And to the right audience. Otherwise, you would see crickets. If you see or hear crickets, then it's time to either hone in more specifically on the right audience or change the topics that you're talking about. A few more ways to track the results of being a guest on a podcast. If you're selling something, if you're into e-commerce or even SaaS, you can give on the show promo codes to try your product or your service. So if you give a unique promo code, again, use something that is correlated to the name of the podcast you're a guest on, then you'll be able to track when people come from that particular podcast, and you will know that when you were a guest on that particular show with that particular audience, you had five people go to your website and sign up for the thing using the promo code or 20 people, 200 people, doesn't matter. But you have another benchmark for you to test. Another way to do this, especially in bigger products that people don't, don't just go and buy is on the intake form, whether it's for a consultation or for talking to a salesperson, et cetera, whatever the case may be in that form where people connect with your company at a field, an open text field that says, how did you hear about us? And make it a mandatory field so people have to fill it up. By the way, that's a good way to learn where people are hearing about you, regardless of whether you're being on podcasts or not. what you'll see if you do that is some people will say, I heard you on this, and that podcast, which again, will give you the warm and fuzzy that this thing is actually leading to business, even if you cannot directly correlate specific transaction to a specific podcast appearance, Now you've found your point of view. You know what you're gonna talk about. You practice it internally and on some smaller shows, which by the way is another great idea. Don't go to the bigger fish in the beginning. Go to the smaller fish. Develop your language. Develop your style. Get better at delivering your message. See bigger results now go to the bigger podcast. Don't burn those when you're still not ready for that. But now you've done that. You've been on the show. The owner of the podcast is gonna release that podcast. Sometime in the future, the average is probably four to six weeks, but in some cases you see two to three months. In some cases you'll see two weeks, but the average is probably a month to two months. When from the moment of the recording that the podcast is gonna be released too many CEOs or people or guests on podcasts, that's where it ends. They maybe would, once the podcast goes out, we'd share it on social media. Say, Hey, I've been a guest on this, and that show. Here's the link. Go check it out. That's not bad, but it's not great. You can do a lot more with that. Most podcast hosts, me included, record video and audio. And most podcast hosts will give you access to the source material if you ask for it and you promise to share it and give credit to them and send people to the podcast because then the podcaster, the host, gets free publicity so you can ask for the raw source material. Once you have the raw material, you can repurpose that content. So take the recording, which would be on whatever third party platform there is, whether it's Zencaster, zoom, stream- yard, whatever platform it's been recorded on. You can have the video recording of you and the host, and you can. Repurpose that content, meaning cut it and edit it in different ways. That would be then applicable for YouTube or for stories on TikTok or for Square on LinkedIn. Or for your website, et cetera, et cetera. So you can reuse that one hour that you've invested in being a guest on a show to multiple marketing channels that your marketing team can do in-house, or you can find an agency that repurpose content. I provide those services, but there's a lot of other people who do that. So you can go to them and then from that one hour that you invested, you can have multiple pieces of content optimized to specific channels so you can. A) be in a lot more places and generate a huge amount of content from that one hour you invested. And B, you do a great service to the podcaster because now he gets links back to his podcast for multiple channels. And if people want to hear the full episode, they will go and download the podcast, which means the podcaster will benefit from it as well, which means more podcasters will want to have you as a guest and this way you'll be able to grow your audience even faster. So let's do a quick summary of everything we talked about. First and foremost, define a goal. What do you want to achieve by being a guest on podcasts? Then define because of that goal. Who's the right audience? What is the right point of view that will be unique and will attract them? Which shows you need to be a guest on that have that audience and that will resonate with the point of view and the villain that you're going to present. And once you have been on these shows, decide if you want to have some kind of a call to action. If you do build the right landing page or the right thing on LinkedIn or whichever social media you want that people can go to and have the right content as a follow up to the things you were talking about on those podcasts. And after the show goes live, ask for the source material and repurpose it to put it in multiple different places. If it's something that you're considering or if it's something you're already doing and you wanna know more, I would gladly connect with you on LinkedIn and give you some additional free tips. My name is Isar Meitis, I S A R M E I T I S. I'm the only one with that name on LinkedIn, which is absolutely awesome. and I love talking to people and helping them in anything that has to do with business, but specifically for today with stuff that has to do with growing an audience and growing a business, leveraging podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you found this valuable, and until next time, have an amazing week.