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Is your podcast guesting strategy not working?
Podcast guesting is one of the most effective strategies to generate leads and build a brand. Depending on the podcast, this strategy can help you generate short term leads and benefit from the long tail too. If you've not had a great experience so far, this episode is for you.
Generating leads as a podcast guest is not just about the quantity.
This is more a quality game. If you don't have a solid plan with your content, podcast guesting can soon turn out to be one of the most expensive strategies. What makes the same strategy go from the most effective marketing strategies to the least? What aspect of the content can make such a huge difference?
Creating actionable content is your answer.
You heard it right. It's not just the content. It's not about how big the show is. It all comes down to how well you were able to transfer listeners from listening to your email list. And that's what we focus in this episode. In this episode, you'll learn:
Show Transcript
It’s part two in this series about creating hit episodes as a podcast guest. My name is Karthik and let’s get down to business. In the last episode, we looked at why and how focusing on the rule of one, can get your guest appearances to work for your business. Today, let’s look at creating actionable content.
When it comes to actionable content, a popular advice that’s floated around (and I followed that for a long time too) is about giving specific steps that listeners can understand and implement. There’s nothing wrong with that advice. Just that it’s an incomplete advice. Let me explain why.
And to do that, I’ll take the help from Hollywood. When I was a kid, I remember going to the movie theatre to watch Hollywood movies. I remember walking out of these movies feeling like the hero. After watching Terminator 2 Judgement Day, I walked out thinking I was Arnold. I used Hasta Lavista Baby in conversations with friends. I walked out of Demolition Man thinking I was John Spartan, the role Sylvestor Stallone played. These movies made me take action.
Let’s talk about a different kind of action. Did you notice the sudden increase in tiny sunglasses after the cult classic Matrix hit the screens? Hollywood and other movies have been inspiring the world to take action. Be it a new line of products, a sudden grow in gym memberships. We’ve seen how Marvel used this after the success of Iron Man.
But what does all of this have to do with creating actionable content?
Simply put, creating actionable content is not just about the step-by-step content. There’s more. Movies like the Matrix or Terminator or Rocky did not just make us take action. They inspired us to take action.
The storytelling was based on the insight they gained from the state of the world. Be it the Vietnam war, or the rise in conversations about the future, deep philosophical beliefs that engulfed the audience. These movie makers understood their audience really well. And everything they did with these movies, was a direct reflection of that understanding.
So the point simply this - to create actionable content, you need to inspire your audience. This applies even more when you are on a podcast. Listeners don’t hear you. All they can do is hear you. Only if you deliver good content, laced with everything we’ll discuss in this episode, will they consider engaging with you more.
Let’s see what it takes to create content that inspires your audience to take action.
We’ll go through nine of them. As usual, I have all of them in the Launch Plan Workbook. The best use of your time right now is to carefully listen to what I say and what I don’t say.
And you know where to find the Launch Plan Workbook. It’s at designyourthinking.com/launch
Step 1: Align Your Topic to Your Business
The first step is align your topic to your business, the podcast, and it’s audience.
There are so many topics you could talk about as a guest on someone’s podcast. But if that topic is not aligned to anyone involved, it doesn’t make any sense. For example, I like to do pencil sketches and art in general. I’m reasonably good at it. But my business is not about art or sketching. Even if I created an actionable piece of content as a guest on an art podcast, it will not help my business. Sure, I might help their listeners and the host too. But that benefits end right there. It’s actually not good for their audience either. If they needed to learn more from me, I have nothing to offer.
Let’s say you teach pencil sketching. It will make sense if you got on a podcast about art and the audience or a subset of them wanted to learn something about pencil sketching.
So make sure your topic aligns well with your business, the podcast’s core promise, and the audience.
Step 2: Big Problem
Know what is the audience’ biggest problem.
If you don’t know the answer, as the host. Most podcast hosts can give you a precise answer to this question. And once you know the answer, fine-tune your topic to address this problem. It could be that what you are about to share on the podcast will not directly impact that biggest problem. So long as you care to explain the connection, you’re good. Listeners will appreciate that.
Step 3: Expected Result
Know what result your audience is looking for.
If your listeners are amateur runners and the biggest problem they are dealing with is frequent injuries, a result they could be looking for is to train every day for their next or first full marathon without any injuries.
If you are a nutritionist on a podcast that caters to that audience, your topic will need to help the listeners run their first full marathon without injuries. It could be that you talk about eating the right food or taking the right supplements. In the end, it needs to help the listeners run their first full marathon without injuries and finish strong.
Step 4: Give Them A Reason
Give them a reason to listen to you.
For all you know, that podcast has already had 10 other nutritionists. Why you? You need to give the listeners a reason to listen to you. Perhaps every other nutritionist guest has talked about sports nutrition in general. If so, you can talk about running-specific nutrition. You can find a unique angle to the same topic.
If the topic is about running nutrition, you could take a different angle and talk about timing and when listeners should eat their meals and take supplements. Another angle could be about the kind of supplements - plant vs animal based. You could talk about something no one is talking about. Growing your own supplements in your home garden. You could instigate thinking my talking about running barefoot. Jeff Galloway, an American Olympian runner developed his own style of running that combined a mix of running and walking. What’s your unique angle or approach to your topic?
Because if you don’t have something unique to bring to the table, listeners don’t care. They may still listen, but they won’t take action even if you gave them an action plan.
Step 5: Make A Promise
Make a promise to your listeners.
Hope makes humans do what we do. We go to restaurants with a hope of finding good food. We go shopping with a hope of finding something to buy. We listen to podcasts with a hope to listen to something interesting. And that’s what listeners do in the first few seconds of listening to a podcast. They try to find a hope to promise match. Their brains are scanning for the promise. And when it finds the promise, it tries to see if that matches with their hope.
If there’s a match, they gift you their attention. If there’s a mismatch, their brains either spend the rest of the time listening to you, still waiting to find a match. If they don’t find it after a few minutes, they move on.
Make a promise and give your listeners hope.
Step 6: Acknowledge The Villain
Call out the villain.
One of the most powerful tools people have used to start movements, get people to rally behind a cause, is by triggering the innate human need for communities and tribes. One of the most powerful ways of getting people together behind your idea, is by getting them to move away from a popular idea that’s already out there.
<Apple Think Different>
You see how Apple uses this in this advertisement. People like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and many other leaders and politicians have used this for decades and centuries. Identify the villain for your business. Is it the big pharma? The government? The greedy corporates?
Let’s now look at the next element.
Step 7: Give Them The How
People love to know how. Give it to them.
Let me know if you have ever experienced this. You are at a supermarket and someone’s giving out free samples of a new drink or snack. Research shows that 35% of customers who try a sample will buy the sampled product in the same shopping trip. And this is no different with podcasts. But there’s a problem.
Many people think “What if I gave away the secret?” What will I be able to sell? A popular advice is to give away the what and the why, and get people to pay for the how. But this doesn’t work well with podcasts. Especially when you are a guest on someone else’s show.
If it’s a magic trick, show them what happens behind the screen. If you cracked the Houdini code, share that with the audience. The simple reason is because with guest podcasting, you are trying to leverage the host’s authority. By giving away the “how”, you are also winning the listener. Not deceiving them.
Step 8: Give Them A Reason To Pay Attention
Give them a reason to pay attention to you.
People don’t want to find themselves in the wrong company. While you speak well and make valid points, how much can I trust you? We are always asking this question when someone presents us with an opportunity. It’s no different when listening to a guest on our favorite show. So it’s important you give them reasons to pay attention to you, and trust you.
You can do this simply by showing them that you and your clients have tried exactly what you are sharing with listeners. Show them what specific results you or your clients got when you tried it. And finally be candid and tell them why you are giving away the best secrets for free.
If you’ve listened to the intro episode of this podcast, you heard me do this. I told you that this podcast plays a big role in my marketing. And everything I share on this podcast is with the hope that it will help you today, and hope it will lead us to doing business at some point in the future when the conditions are right. By being transparent about why you’re giving away valuable information for free, you are removing a key obstacle in the listeners’ minds. This will inspire them to taking action.
Step 9: Offer A Meaningful Bonus
Offer meaningful bonus to the listeners.
If you’ve done everything we discussed so far, you have moved a subset of listeners to engage with you beyond the podcast. And that’s why you need a meaningful bonus. The positioning of this bonus can be in two ways:
- a logical next step for your listeners to take after listening.
- something that makes it easy to implement what you already shared on the podcast.
When you have the right bonus, you will see two things happen: 1) it helps build greater trust with listeners because they think you have all the right answers. 2) you have established yourself as an authority on the topic.
And these are the nine steps to creating actionable content. Let’s take a quick look at what we discussed so far:
- align your topic to your business, the podcast, and it’s audience
- understand audience’ biggest problem
- learn the result your audience is looking for
- Give them a reason to listen to you
- Make a promise to your listeners
- Call out the villain
- Give them the ‘How’
- Give them a reason to pay attention to you
- Offer a meaningful bonus to the listeners
When you follow these nine steps, you will have created a highly-actionable piece of content on someone’s podcast that will send a steady stream of leads to your business for eternity. And as far as creating bonuses go, it’s also important you sell the bonus to your listeners. Thinking of putting a link and expecting listeners to find it is a bad idea. As a good practice, bring it up meaningfully in the beginning of your episode, and towards the end too.
