How to Engage Buyers & Clients at Every Stage With Your Podcast
There is a lot of attention and focus in the podcasting world on all of the “up front” steps: how to choose your title, identify your target listener, format your episodes, etc. And while all of this is important in order to launch a podcast, we often see a breakdown in resources, support and understanding of how the podcast can then engage new customers as well as existing customers.
Our goal is that every business utilizing a podcast is getting the lead generation and sales nurture benefits it can provide, while also acting as a retention and engagement tool for existing customers. Not to mention, a podcast is a fantastic way to keep inactive customers engaging with your brand until they reactivate.
If you have a podcast that is meant to support visibility, lead generation and sales in your organization, take a few minutes to audit your show against the following:
Layer 1: Engage Prospects & Nurture the Sales Process
Sharing podcast content is not just about driving new listenership. One of a podcast’s most crucial roles is to position the host as a thought leader and build trust + rapport with sales prospects, helping them to feel more comfortable and confident in their buying decision.
Tactically, this happens by:
- Encouraging sales representatives to leverage the podcast; sending episodes to prospects that help to answer their questions, make them feel supported, etc.
- Including podcast episodes in the pre-sales meeting emails/communication, as well as immediately after the sales meeting as an added resource.
- Including the podcast in things like pre-webinar emails or mentioning related episodes in your live videos on social media
- Linking to specific episodes in cold sales outreach like emails, mailers, etc.
But the most important thing to understand is why this happens. According to one of our leadership team’s favorites sales books, The Science of Selling by David Hoffeld, a potential buyer needs to be able to answer 6 questions in order to make a buying decision:
Why make a change?
Why now?
Why your solution?
Why “you” and your company?
Why your product?
Why spend the money?
Not to spoil the book, but you may notice those questions touch on a few major points: understanding and believing in the transformation possible, considering the host/CEO a thought leader with expertise who can help them, and why the investment is worthwhile to the buyer.
If you are using your podcast to drive leads and sales for your business, and you look at your last few episodes, do your episodes help support a potential buyer to answer those questions? If not, it would be worth chatting with a strategist as to how you can integrate these elements in a way that feels supportive and comfortable to the listener.
Layer 2: Retain & Continue to Engage Your Current Customers
Retaining your customers and clients obviously is a result of a great client experience, but truly creating a “client for life” mentality within your organization is a great opportunity for your podcast to shine.
Do you find yourself frequently answering similar questions or solving common problems among your client base? When the question comes up, make sure you resolve it with your client so they feel your attention and focus. And you can create a podcast episode directly from those questions and send it to your clients as an additional resource for them to reference back to.
Make sure as part of your servicing that you are referring clients back to the podcast as well, and position it as a powerful added resource for the client (or their teams, depending on what you do in your organization). While this is a simple thing to do, it is the most often thing we see that gets overlooked, and is actually a low hanging fruit for many organizations to increase downloads and for engaged listeners who are more likely to share out the episode(s) with others.
You can also feature clients on your podcast as a demonstration of something they’ve implemented and had success with, and allow them an opportunity to share more about themselves as well.
Ask your clients to submit questions for the podcast, and if their question gets chosen you can invite them on as a guest and have a full conversation for the podcast.
A great bonus to implementing a few of these strategies is that your listeners who are not your clients already will get a better look at the client experience and who you serve, as well as hear more specifics that you can help them with (because they are hearing examples of others who are just like them!)
Layer 3: Engage Your Inactive Customers Until They Reactivate
When you work with a client for any length of time, you know a few important things:
- What were they initially working on when they started working with you?
- What did they accomplish during their time with you?
- What’s next for them?
After your offboarding call and customer survey (if you do them, which we do recommend doing!), make a note as to where that customer is headed next on their journey. If those initiatives and your work are aligned, you can use them as inspiration for future podcast episodes. Once the episodes are live, you can use it as a touchpoint to reach back out to them. The episode will be supportive of their goals, and gives you a talking point to keep checking in on where they are at in that journey.
When you need content ideas, you can include your inactive clients in your outreach to gather questions. By making them still feel like they are a part of your ‘ecosystem’ and part of something as important as your podcast, you also get to “co-create” in a sense and open up further conversations with them.
You will often hear the words “podcast” and “rapport” in the same sentence, and for good reason – it is one of the most powerful tools to build up the know, like and trust factors.
The important thing to remember is that this is not limited to prospects, but to include your active and inactive clients/customers in that sentiment as well.
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!
