How to Drive Growth With Your Podcast: Takeaways from This Week’s Client Sessions
If you’ve been following along with our content, you know our core mission: helping business owners and leaders drive visibility, leads and sales for their businesses with their podcast. As we’ve been onboarding our latest cohort into our Growth Accelerator Program (GAP), we have had the pleasure of hosting 1:1 “kickoff” sessions with our members – all focused on their unique growth strategy for (you guessed it) visibility, leads and sales. These may just apply to your show and your goals, too, so check out the most common takeaways our clients have shared with us from their recent sessions!
Client Takeaway #1: Message Congruency
One of our GAP clients is a business coach who focuses on both the strategy+tactical approach to business building in addition to the personal transformation that happens as your business grows and evolves.
When we did an initial audit of her brand and her podcast, we noticed that the content of her podcast felt a bit disconnected from the content on her website and her opt-in resources. Everything on either platform would certainly be of interest to a business owner (her target market), but there wasn’t a connective thread between the two platforms and the two angles she was taking in her content. Finally, there were a number of different opt-ins being promoted per episode, and being promoted infrequently, which was decreasing the list building opportunities from the show.
As a result, everything was just a bit unclear to the listener as to her signature methodology, how she works and why she could be their #1 best fit as a business coach.
To tackle these items in our first session together, we recommended she integrate a new intro to her show – in her past episodes, she hadn’t actually introduced herself, what she does, and the transformation she helps her clients achieve. In addition, we reworked her Call-to-Action to her free resource that she chose as her ‘signature’ opt in. We also laid out some foundations for her actual episodes to bring in both the strategy + transformation topics in a way that leads listeners directly to her opt in, and makes the actual act of subscribing a “no brainer” for the listener.
At time of this writing, we will soon begin to tweak her LinkedIn marketing strategy to convert more of her many followers on the platform to listeners of the show, and then email subscriptions and webinar attendees (and then clients!).
Client Takeaway #2: “Gold in the backyard”
You may have heard us use this phrase before… because it’s a powerful one.
Another one of our GAP clients works in the outdoor industry, and has had a powerful career – working up the ladder, making lifetime relationships with key leaders in major companies, etc.
When talking about audience building, as well as identifying potential sponsors and strategic partners, we asked a lot of questions about his current network. He lit up and said he has a vast network he could interact with for these objectives, and is now beginning to pull a list of his closest connections who he has not approached with the podcast yet: whether that be advertising and sponsorships or simply including his show in their email marketing or social media posts. These connections have “ins” to great marketing channels that the podcast can be integrated into, and the audiences they have are extremely aligned with his podcast.
We had a similar situation with a client who works in cash flow management for entrepreneurs. When discussing the visibility and audience building strategies to grow the show and increase leads, she kept mentioning opening up more time slots to be a guest on other shows.
Guesting is a wonderful strategy – but it does require additional time, outreach, and making new connections that haven’t had the time frame needed to truly build up trust and rapport.
After some additional coaching questions to figure out where her ‘gold in the backyard’ was, she realized she could quickly and easily touch base with a close colleague whose email audience is her target audience, too. And get this – that email community is 400,000 people strong.
Needless to say, that email marketing placement of her show, in front of that targeted audience, is a huge opportunity.
Client Takeaway #3: Getting Clear on Objectives
One of the most important questions for businesses using podcasts as a sales and marketing strategy: “what are our objectives? What are we measuring?”
We ask at the end of every session for the client’s biggest takeaway. And in nearly all of our sessions, we heard variations of ‘I really feel good about continually coming back to the 3 categories – visibility, leads, sales. I wasn’t sure what I was really measuring before, or why.’
Every podcaster has downloads and other data available to them in their hosting platform. And while having that data is great, it doesn’t paint a full picture as to the effectiveness of the show, how it is benefitting your bottom line as a business owner, and what the next steps need to be based on the numbers.
For most of our strategic clients, we do look at the downloads – but we ALSO need to look at things like:
- How many opt ins are we getting per week and per month from the podcast
- How many new clients are coming in from the podcast
- How many targeted audiences did we get in front of with our visibility initiatives this month? What impact did that have on the show?
Having these conversations often gives a business owner a bit of a confidence boost as well, because these are questions that are more familiar to them than trying to figure out what a download number really means for them.
Does this resonate with you?
If you are using podcasting as a tool in your business to boost your sales and marketing, and are needing a clearer strategy and objective to increase your show’s ROI, send us a message and ask about our Growth Accelerator Program (GAP). We have worked with businesses from nonprofit, to government agencies to global corporations and we would love to learn more about you and your business, as well as goals for your show.
Produce Your Podcast is a premier podcast consulting, production & marketing agency. Our team of experts provides comprehensive, full service high quality solutions for B2B and B2C clients to incorporate podcasting into their overall marketing strategy. If you’re looking for a reliable partner to help launch or grow your business branded podcast and boost your sales and marketing goals, we’re here to help.
Click here to schedule a conversation with our team today. Let’s work together to create a high quality podcast that takes your business to new heights!
