As a long-time podcast producer, strategist and guest, there is one thing, that everybody agrees with.
Following up with people is a really important part of podcasting.
It’s also the part that’s the easiest to shift to the backburner.
It’s understandable. In fact, I’ll cop to falling down on the follow-up from time to time myself. Things get busy, teams need help, clients have emergencies and when did it become tax season again!? Rigorously following up with your guests or hosts you’ve connected with just doesn’t seem as urgent as anything else.
But if you started a podcast to help you grow your business, you need it to be driving outcomes and increasing your profitability – otherwise it’s just talk. Talk that you are paying to have produced.
And for shows designed to facilitate sales in different ways like connecting with potential clients, building relationships with referral partners, encouraging listeners to take action or creating the content that nurtures leads throughout your sales funnels, following up with people is the difference between a profitable business asset and a bunch of talk. (Talk you are paying to have produced!). This is as true when you’re the guest as when you’re the host – you’re not off the hook just because it’s someone else’s show!
So today we’re going to look at some of the follow-up strategies and tactics that will help you get more sales.
Nurturing Guests Towards Business Opportunities (Nicely!)
Using your podcast as a selling tool has been growing in popularity of the last few years, and on the surface, it looks pretty fool proof. You start a podcast where you can talk to your ideal customers and a certain percentage of them will become your clients, or refer business your way.
Then you actually start one and you start to see that after the call… nothing happens. It’s not a fun feeling. You put in a ton of work finding the guest, preparing the interview, being a gracious host giving your guest the chance to really share their expertise, investing in post production and maybe you even created a beautiful set of assets for your guest to share! But when you ask for a referral, or propose a working engagement you get a polite decline if you’re lucky or a vague “sure, I’ll see what I can do…”
Again and again.
The unfortunate truth is that, most of the time, all of that work is not enough to build the kind of relationship that leads to sales. It takes more.
For someone to feel confident working with you or sending business your way, they need a few things: to believe you understand the problem they or their connections have, that you have the ability to solve it, that you’ll be good to work with, and that you’re available to do it when they’re ready to get started.
Part of this has to do with the content of the episode itself. Rather than making the whole call an interview where you are asking questions, make sure you’re having a conversation where you can demonstrate your own expertise as well. You can do this by having a ‘fix-it’ element to your conversation where you help a guest with an issue, any kind of live coaching or workshopping in your area of expertise. If you’re doing this, your single next follow-up step should be sending them a list of points you covered and an offer to explore them more deeply. This can be followed up in a few weeks to see how it’s going!
A Fix it show can be challenging to get people to agree too it involves your guest being willing to be very vulnerable, and many don’t want to be in that position publically. As an alternative, if you are speaking with business owners who have complimentary audiences you can describe a scenario that you and your guest can both weigh in on from your own areas of expertise.
For example, if you’re a speaking and presenting expert talking to a graphic designer, you might describe a small business owner trying to get more leads from their speaking engagements. You could talk about how the speak on the stage, and your guest could talk about how to improve the visual elements of the presentation.
That’s going to help you out with the understanding the problem element and the ability to solve it elements.
It’s also important to be clear that you’re looking for work and connections without being too pushy about it. This is generally going to happen in the pre-or post show chatter. You can schedule a little more time than you need for the recording so you have a few minutes to chat afterwards, or you could request a second call specifically to talk about mutual referrals. It’s nice to open this conversation up with: “Can you tell me a little more about who you work with? I’d like to be able to refer you”. Most people will reciprocate, and if they don’t directly, it’s not rude to give similar information.
Whether it’s at the time of recording, or at a second call, follow this up with documentation like a price sheet, ideal customer profile, copy they can use for introductions, and signs and signals someone would be a good fit. Ask for theirs too.
Now, what about being good to work with and being available when needed? That comes down to your professionalism, the quality of episode and asset you’re delivering and being top of mind long term.
Being Good to Work With:
- Make sure your scheduling, intake and prep are seamless. If it’s confusing or inconvenient to book with you, your guests will assume that is how your whole business operates.
- Send a thank you note after the call. Most people don’t.
- Make sure the episode looks and sounds good. Invest in quality production. The product you create here is reflective of the other work you do.
- I can’t believe I have to write this, but I really, really do: Tell them when the episode is live. If you didn’t ask for a second call immediately after the recording, this is a good time to ask for one.
- Send lovely assets. Swipe copy, reels, graphics. This is a chance for you to demonstrate your attention to detail and your investment in making your guest look good. It doesn’t matter if they use them, it matters that you send them.
- Share those assets widely, and tag your guest when you do. Don’t just promote it once, re-share old episodes at least 2 or 3 times a year. This is always a good reason to reach out to the guest again to keep the relationship fresh.
Being Available When Needed:
Many people might not need what you do right now. But chances are they will in the future – or run into someone who does. When that happens you want to make sure your name is top of mind.
- Follow them on social media, and engage with their content, not just the posts about your episode.
- Repost their content with your commentary.
- Subscribe to their email list and respond when you have something to contribute, or to compliment something.
- Send the odd email (every couple of months) with something they might find helpful – either a resource or article they might find valuable, or when you have something new to share. Keep it mostly not-your-stuff.
- Refer business or make introductions when possible.
Essentially, you’re going to systematically treat your guests the way you wish other podcast hosts treated you.
Encouraging Listeners to Take Action
The other category of people you’re probably hoping become your customers are your listeners. In fact, the listener-to-client pipeline is what most people are hoping to develop when they start their show.
The follow up for this type of sale is different than with your guests, because for the most part, you don’t get to know who listens to what episode when. There isn’t a hack or strategy to completely solve this problem, just refinements you can make to your episode content, structure and the infrastructure surrounding it to improve your results over time.
Let’s start with your content. You can engineer it to create more engagement, and address specific issues you know specific listeners are facing.
Create episodes for specific segments of your audience, or types of clients you work with. Keep these handy to share directly with leads as part of your sales and discovery process and on social media. (For example, if you have a web design business focused on coaches, you might have an episode where you talk about the three things that tank conversions on group-coaching sales pages. You can send this episode to any coach you come across who mentions group-coaching.) When you have a library of episodes dealing with specific issues for specific people, then you have a pile of very valuable sales resources. These are resurces you can send to people who email you, who you connect with on social media, or anywhere else. Once you’ve made that personal connection, you can follow-up as normal.
Next, the structure of your episodes. When I talk about structure, I mean the different parts of your episode where you are directly asking for your listeners to do things: your Calls to Action or CTAs. No one wants to sound salesy on their podcast, but often hosts swing way too far in the other direction and never ask for anything beyond a rating or a review… which doesn’t help you much.
People are listening to your podcast on purpose – they chose to click play. You can and should give them the information they need to engage with you in other ways. When you introduce yourself and your show, be specific about your expertise and the problems you solve. When you talk about your work mention how people can get in touch. When you have resources and solutions, share them! You’re not helping anyone by making it harder for people to figure out how to work with you.
Now, on to more specific places to insert CTAs. Different things work best in different spots.
Welcome:
You don’t want to delay too much before getting into the meat of an episode, but if you have something big and exciting happening, there’s no reason not to mention it early on.
Right after the opening music when you’re welcoming your audience and guest to the show is a good time to mention any major launches or events you have coming up. If you’ve got a new product or service offering, a book or course launch, or a big event – that qualifies as news that can get a brief mention at the top of the show.
No more than 20 seconds!
Body:
In the body of your episode, you’ll want to work things in a little more conversationally, and create a bit of a curiosity gap. The listener should think: “oh – well that sounds useful, I should get in on that…”
If you have a membership or community, talk about it! Mention that a specific question came from this group, or that
If you have a quiz or assessment you have people take, mention it and the results and how helpful it is regularly. If appropriate, you can even have guests take the assessment as part of your intake process so you can discuss the results.
If you ever have the chance to share a client success story in the body of your podcast, do so! You can also mention the specific service or offer they had engaged you for so people know what to look for if they are in a similar spot.
End of Show:
After the guest has said their final goodbyes and given their own links, but before the closing music and credits is a good time to mention ways for people to subscribe, like your email list or to a group on Facebook or WhatsApp. You’ve just given them lots of great stuff, so tell them how to get more!
This is also the best time to ask for specific engagement like sending in questions, connecting on social media or applying to be a guest.
If you have a resource related to the episode, or other episodes on the same topic that can work here, too.
You can also make a direct offer to listeners to get in touch or book a call here. “If you want your systems to be more organized so you can spend less time on admin, go to SIMPLE URL”
Post-Show/Produced Outro:
If you have a produced outro where you say the same thing over music every episode (live or pre-recorded) you can include lighter engagement asks like sharing the episode, and asking for ratings and reviews (If this is an important part of your strategy, do it earlier, however, like in your post-intro welcome. It’s not important for most strategies)
It’s also a good idea to include the basic logistics of how to get in touch if you didn’t do it anywhere else. Include your website, and a direct explanation of how to get in touch for support.
If you don’t have multiple things to ask for in each episode, you can make the same call to action twice in episodes under 30 minutes, and three times in episodes 30 minutes or longer without sounding like a broken record.
All right, let’s move on to how you follow-up as a guest!
Follow-Up as a Guest
A common complaint about podcast guesting is that it’s really hard to measure it’s impact – and it is! You don’t have any input into how the host is going to promote your episode – you don’t know how many people will hear it, when they’ll promote it or how.
And some of that is just the way things are – but there are things that you can control… and you’re going to see that this list is pretty similar to how you follow up as a host. Follow-up is follow-up, what can I say?
You can:
- Ask for another call at the end of your recording to get to know each other and share more about your businesses. You can say something like: “This was great, but I’d love to learn a little more about you and your work – could we put a chat on the books for in the next week or two?” Most people will be pretty amenable to this, but read the room. On that second call is when you can both share a little bit more
- Send a thank you note after the recording or after the episode releases. Both would probably be overkill, so I like to see a thank you note right after the call, then some public promotion once it’s live.
- Post on social media about the interview before it releases. This is an early ‘give’ to the host and indicates to them you’re excited and eager to talk and promote.
- Subscribe to their email list, and respond to messages when you have something to add. This keeps your top of mind, and most people who send newsletters don’t get nearly as many responses to them as they’d like. You’ll be noticed.
- Follow them on social media and re-post their stuff, with commentary when you have it.
- Promote the episode when it’s released. Create your own post as well as sharing theirs. (Every host wants this. Few ever get it!)
- Send referrals, resources and introductions when you can. This is probably the single best thing you can do to increase your own rate of getting referrals back.
A lot of people look at podcast guesting as a numbers game. Appear on enough podcasts and your business will grow. And it’s true that podcast episodes can send traffic and leads your way years after they’ve released. But the quality of relationships you build along the way is important too, and it’s worth investing your time and energy in.
And if you want long-term visibility on how well that episode performed for you?
Here’s a trick. Most hosts are going to give you the opportunity to offer something to their audience like an opt-in or freebie, and you can see exactly how many people take you up on that over by create a unique landing page just for them that has the offer, any other resources you’d like to share and information they might find useful. Make sure it has a unique URL and, if possible, a contact form or calendar you can track submissions on so that you know exactly how many people have joined your community or reached out based on your interview. This takes a little extra work, but it provides unmatched clarity, and it makes you look well prepared and well-resourced, which doesn’t hurt.
Ultimately, podcasts are tools designed to connect you with people so that those people take actions that helps your business. And whether you’re the host or the guest, you can optimize your show and the systems that support it to include the kind of follow-up that, over time, leads to the sales you need to grow.
Megan Dougherty is the co-founder of One Stone Creative author of Podcasting for Business: How to Create a Show That Makes a Bottom-Line Difference for Your Company, and creator of the State of Business Podcasting Report. As a digital marketing strategist with a background in online business development, she has had the opportunity over the years to work with hundreds of business owners in a huge variety of industries. One Stone Creative specializes in functional podcasts that achieve specific business outcomes like strategic networking, sales enablement and host authority and visibility