Growing an Audience and Monetizing a Podcast with Chris Liddle

You're listening to the PT Proffit podcast, episode 203. I am your guest solo host, Chris Little, and today I will be talking to you about growing an audience and monetizing a podcast. Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

Hey, everybody. So, as mentioned in the introduction, my name is Chris and I help Beverly with the podcast. So today's episode is going to be for anyone who has thought about starting a podcast or currently has a podcast. We're going to kind of go over the basics. We're going to go over a little things about how to monetize, how to structure your show, how to grow your show, how to sustain your show, and little tips and tricks along the way. Of course, if there was ever any details that you wanted us to go over in a future episode, maybe be sure to tag Simpson Fitness in social media and just let her know that you want to hear another episode. You can also reach out to me at Christian Little. Without further ado, let's dive into this. So one of the things that I like to start off with is really understanding what the mission statement of somebody's podcast is. I want to understand why you set out to start a podcast, what your values are like, what matters to you, perhaps what your goal of the podcast is or the overarching vision. So it can be fun to have a podcast that's like anything goes, talk about anything and everything, but it's very hard to build an audience with that. And so it's important to sort of have some kind of a theme and some kind of a direction that will help you decide what kind of conversations you're going to have and what kind of guests that you might have on the show. And it doesn't mean that you can't have an extremely diverse first guest list. It just means that when you are framing your questions, they're going to be on certain topics that sort of align with the audience that you're building. Because if the topics get to be a little bit too randomized, it's going to be a lot harder for a person to invest in the show. A simple example could be as if you were a TV show and one week you were the Bachelor and then the next week you were South Park. It would be really hard to build an audience doing that. And so by creating sort of this mission statement, we have something to base the foundation off of and to help us decide how we are going to structure things moving forward. So the next thing, and this is key, I'm going to tell you why. Because one of the biggest things that sets growing podcast apart from a struggling podcast is, is consistency, or lack thereof. So if you have a podcast and you're able to consistently put out episodes for years, you're very likely going to grow. Your audience is going to become the kind of thing that people expect to have an episode to listen to and they start to anticipate and they start to block out time. Maybe it's on Thursdays in the morning as they're driving to work, they're listening to your show, so they get familiar with it. So you want to have an idea from the get go how frequently you're going to be publishing episodes. So some people it might be once a week, some people it might be twice a week. You're going to want to as often as possible kind of structure set days. You can get away with kind of staggering the days, but just having one episode per week. But what I would say is, if possible, just pick specific days of the week that you're going to publish your show. I haven't found that there's too much difference where like time of day that you publish, but you should kind of stick to either a.m. or p.m. if possible. Another thing to consider, if you are a very busy business owner, I would recommend batch recording when possible. So perhaps have a couple guests recorded so that there's one just always ready to go and one is going to be published right away. That way, if somebody has to delay with you or maybe you have an illness, then you always kind of have backup. And it just simply is an efficient use of your time when you're able to sort of structure your time in which you focus on certain tasks for a few hours and then switch gears and go back to building your business. So another thing that I wanted to cover here in this episode. What are two ways you're willing to repurpose your content? The reason that I bring this up is because it's my belief that if you're going to be dedicating this time to your show, you might as well leverage that time as much as you can. So if you're going to record a podcast, are you recording the video as well? I think that you should, because that allows you to take clips and turn them into reels or short form video YouTube shorts. It gives you an opportunity to have sort of a library of content that can be purposed for so many other things beyond the podcast. And if you choose, you can publish full episode or clips of the episode to YouTube. And if you're able to grow an audience on YouTube, there's monetization opportunities there as well. It also is going to make it a lot easier for you to promote the show if you are making a point to repurpose the raw footage of the show. So if you are making a point to create some clips for social media and then you're able to direct them to the published episode, that's going to make it a lot easier to promote. If you make it so that it's a shareable phrase or shareable sound bite that's going to entice people to maybe share it with their friends. If it's a quote that really just resonates with somebody or just something that somebody said that was really profound and somebody thinks to themselves, wow, I can really relate to that. It's a similar concept to those Twitter screenshots that we've seen on Instagram over the last couple years. You want to do something that's going to kind of land with the broadest number of people in your audience. Not necessarily something that was powerful for you, but, but more so something that's powerful with the people that you work with or the people that you're trying to build community around. So making sure that you're repurposing your content and whenever possible set it to publish, batch, produce, do things that kind of save your time down the road so that you're not having to do a whole bunch of tedious things hopping around from platform to platform. So an example is for my podcast, I host a podcast called the Lifestyle Chase and I've taken clips from episodes from 2021 and taken little 30 to 45 to 60 second clips from that and published them to trickle out on YouTube shorts every day of the week until I think I've got it scheduled until December and then I'll just publish a few more clips and I have a folder and. And I just basically drag everything that's published into the published folder and then I can go into that published folder and I can do the exact same thing on TikTok and I can do the same thing on Facebook shorts within my podcast Facebook group. So there's a lot of opportunity to almost automate these things and organize these things. So it almost seems fresh to someone who isn't like 100% invested in your show. And, and to be honest, it's rare that we'll find anybody that's really invested that much in our show that they're going to know if the episode was in 2021 or 2022. Aside from if they were actually part of the episode, then they would have a clearer idea. But generally speaking, a lot of the content is evergreen. As long as it's like topics that are still pertinent, like getting over obstacles or doing something within your business or facing adversity, things like that. That stuff reoccurs year over year. And so you're building a library of very powerful content that's going to be valuable for years to come. The next piece that I wanted to talk about is are you maxing out the SEO potential? So when I say that. So SEO, your search engine optimization. First and foremost, when you're publishing your podcast, you're probably going with a podcast publishing host. So whether that be something like Anchor or substack or podbean or Subsprout, there's endless different platforms that you could be using. And a lot of them will have like a, a list of different podcast platforms that they automatically feed it out to. Some of them don't at all. Most of them will put it out to Apple podcasts automatically. Sometimes you have to submit it to Spotify podcast manually. Kind of depends on platform that you use. But then there's a lot of like lesser known podcast platforms. And if you go and you manually submit them, then your podcast and the episode description and the art and the audio, it'll all kind of show up in a web search as long as it's part of their library too. So it's very worthwhile to do that because let's say if your Instagram handle is in the episode description of every single episode that you've ever published and they Google your name, your name is probably going to go up higher on the search ranking because your name is on so many different sort of episode descriptions throughout the Internet. And if you have websites, website links, links to your business website, then your business website is going to go higher up in the charts for Google because there are going to be so many links that go to your website that almost brings up the credibility of the site, brings up the visibility, and just helps you in the end. And these are little things that some people pay to increase. And you can simply do it by ensuring that when you publish an episode of your podcast that the RSS feed, which is basically kind of like the link that traces back to where your podcast is host, that RSS feed channels out to all the different platforms, all the different listening sources, and you get to make the most of the work that you're doing. So it can be great for marketing and promotion and great for reach. And so with that being said, is more than worthwhile to spend a little bit of time on your podcast description. So the episode description or show notes, you don't need to make it super, super lengthy and in depth. But I do think it's wise to include links or Instagram handles to yourself and your guests because of that search engine optimization opportunity. Because sometimes people are searching for a different person with your name and you're going to get exposure because of that. The other thing is sometimes there's topics crossover. So a person could be looking for fitness, but they might be looking for a different business and they'll find you. Maybe they're looking for physical therapy, they're looking for a different business and they'll find you because you will have such better search engine optimization in comparison, potentially. The next thing that I want to talk about is why are you choosing the guests that you choose? And the cool thing is I recently saw a post by James Wedmore, who is one of Beverly's mentors, and he actually made a point that I really, really agreed with. So when you're sourcing out your podcast guests, it can be good to get very well known guests. And the reason being is that their speaking skills are going to be much more polished and you're going to have a lot less editing to do and they're going to be a lot more confident and people are going to recognize their name when they see them as a guest on your show. However, a lot of very widely sought after podcast guests are on so many different shows that their responses and the conversation starts to become a little bit robotic. And so people don't feel as engaged in the conversation. It's no longer feeling like they're there. It's almost like they're on the outside of the conversation. The other thing is that they're not necessarily going to have the bandwidth to share your podcast with as much enthusiasm as someone who might not have been as on as many episodes. And it's just kind of one of those things that if you don't have a really strong personal connection with them, how deep can you really get in a conversation over the course of 40 to 60 minutes? And so what I would say is make sure that you have some kind of an inclination, that the person that you are looking to interview kind of has some parallels with the mission statement of your show. And then if ever, try to find someone that's already kind of like in your inner circle of trust. So people that you've worked with in the past, people that you've spoken with in the past, people that you've known for many years or One thing that I do as a podcast producer is I spend an endless amount of time vetting guests. So I'll listen to their other podcast appearances, I'll follow their social media, I'll google them as if I was going to hire them. I will look at their credibility, their credentials. I do want to make sure that they're not selling snake oil. And so it's just little things that you want to be mindful of, because as soon as you have this person on your show in some way, shape or form, you're attaching them to your brand and you're attaching them to a legacy of your podcast. And that can go really, really well, or that can be something that you learn from. And so that is a very important thing to consider. So when you are choosing the guests that you choose, try to pick out people that you either maybe they're in a role that would really speak to one of your clients, maybe they are having had life experiences that would be really helpful for your audience, or perhaps they just have like this personality and you just want to talk to them really bad. But try not to base your guest selection wholly off of their, like Instagram following or social media following or their popularity, because quite often the popularity of the guest does not convert to episode listens or views. So, looking back at metrics of the PT profit podcast, quite often some of the most widely known guests aren't necessarily the ones with the most listens. So keep that in mind as you're choosing your guests. The next piece here is what ways do you promote the podcast, aside from publishing? So earlier on we kind of talked about the importance of connecting that RSS feed to as many different podcast platforms as possible. I'll shout out another one. Amazon can actually be a place where your podcast can be found, but you need to submit the RSS feed to that in order for it to be visible. And so when you're doing that, it's usually you just take you copy the RSS link and paste it into their space where they'll take podcast submissions, and then it'll usually take a few days to be approved. But then if somebody goes on Amazon and searches your name and your name is attached to your podcast, just like they could search for a Swiffer Wet Jet, they can also search for your name and find it. Despite the fact that you don't have inventory on Amazon, you now have your podcast on Amazon. And just imagine the possibility is there, there might be some opportunities where a person might find your show by accident, a happy accident. The other thing here is we talked about repurposing content, so are you consistently making posts on your social media and making it clear what that post is with regards to? Are you putting in the caption that this is a clip from the latest episode, or are you making it easy for people to go to the episode? Are you linking the episode in your stories? Are you adding it to your link in bio? Are you putting like maybe a title on your media? What are you doing to promote the show? In some cases, it's just word of mouth. Do you tell people that you have a podcast? Do you recommend a certain episode that might resonate with them? Because of blank. It's really moving when you're able to actually, like, pick out a past episode and kind of speak to something that that person is dealing with and tell them why they might actually enjoy it and then send them the link. Because if you are actually right, about can be a game changer. If you have someone who's like a new mom and you interviewed someone who shared their experience about motherhood, it can make a big difference for them if they understand that you really understand what they're going through and you want to help them with a conversation that you had with somebody that has already been through what they're going through. So little things like that go a long way. So my next piece here that I wanted to talk about is, do your guests truly have a reason to promote your show? Now, this one's tough because you kind of have to put your ego aside. So the next piece here is, if they do not have a reason to promote your show, how can you change that? So I'm going to give you an example. You can interview somebody for 60 minutes and learn about their story, but there's a chance that there's something that they want to promote or there's a chance that there is something that would make them feel amazing about having been on your show. Some questions that you can ask a person as you're preparing for the episode are, is there anything that really lights you up that you wanted to talk about on this episode? You can do that before you hit record. Because if they're talking about something that's really like, it just resonates with them, that they're really passionate about, then they're probably going to want to have their people hear it because it probably took a lot of energy out of them and they're probably really proud of it and they're going to want to share that. Other instances are if somebody is trying to promote their book and you did a really good job of highlighting and showcasing the book with them and. And it was just a great experience. Well, they do want to sell that book and so they're more likely to help you promote the show. So little things like that that you can pay attention to. We do have to remember that it's a two way street. And so despite the fact that people are getting to be on our podcast, unless we offer value to them and unless we give them something to really take pride in, they don't necessarily owe us anything when we're done hitting record. Yes, it would be nice if every single person that went on our podcast promoted it. But we do have to present a good side of the deal on our end. We have to make it hard to deny the promotion. We have to make it exciting to be on the show. We have to be super receptive to feedback. Perhaps there was something that we really wanted, they really wanted to talk about, maybe we didn't talk about it. Little things like that add up and make a big difference. So the next question here is, do you want to grow your audience or monetize first? And to be totally honest, there is no right answer to this. This is just kind of something that's going to sort of shift your priorities, maybe put different items on your to do list, and I'm going to give a case for either way. So if your business is just strong and you just want a platform where you can have conversations and you want to grow your brand recognition and you want to practice your speaking skills and you don't really mind investing into the show, and you're not really looking for any kind of additional income stream, then I would say just focus on growing the audience. There's no harm in that. There's no harm in pouring money into the podcast. And with that said, podcasts don't have to cost that much. You can find a free podcast host. You can oftentimes use onboard mics on like a Mac computer, or you can get some good PC computers that have good onboard mics, or get like a $150mic from Amazon or your local store, whatever works for you. But it doesn't have to be this massive investment. When I talk about investing into a podcast, I'm talking about when people want to get lighting, when they want to update their camera, when they want to get a little bit better microphone setup, or maybe they want to have like a special studio to have in person interviews. The sky is truly the limit with that. You can spend upwards of $20,000 if you truly want to, or you can spend like $200 if you want to. With your recording platform, you can spend money on that. Right now, I'm recording on Riverside. That's the platform that I personally use. And the reason I do that is it just makes my post production just a little bit easier for me and I have a budget that I can use towards that. And having my time back is valuable to me. I would say right now with my podcast, my focus is on growing the audience, growing my brand, and just simply having a platform, platform to have powerful conversations with people I might not be able to otherwise. So I'll give you an example. There's a lot of people in the industry that I get to talk to because I have a well known podcast and that's valuable to me. So when my career gets a bit busier, the episode frequencies slow down. But because I've established the podcast over many years, then I can kind of afford to do that. And I still have an audience that comes back to listen to the episodes during the times that I publish. And in the past I have also monetized my podcast. So during the first year or two, I actually had a local magazine that agreed to sponsor the publishing and hosting costs of the podcast. So basically I would finish up a year, I would have given them 15 to 22nd AD read. That was just part of my intro for every episode of that year. And then when the bill came up, they just reimbursed me for that. So it was a very, very low barrier to entry kind of podcast sponsorship. It wasn't anything lucrative. It just basically recouped the cost of the podcast for me while building a grassroots partnership in the local fitness community and kind of getting me a bit of brand recognition for being aligned with the local fitness magazine. So it was kind of more of a strategic sponsorship than a like profitable partnership. But it has definitely paid off in my career long term. From that point on, I've had some episode specific partnerships where I would partner with like a local realtor who had fitness passion and he actually sponsored me an updated microphone. And I've partnered with different brands where I got free food comped to me, whether it be like a meat delivery company or a meal delivery company. I also had laundry detergent comped to me. So there's a lot of opportunities to get creative with it. And you can have it structured or you can have it fairly casual. During the course of my podcast, I've had it fairly casual with the exception of the first sponsorship of the whole show. Having completed that first year or two with the magazine sponsoring, I actually followed up with them and let them know that I was going to be increasing the rate for advertising and they didn't want to continue with it. But then having closed that chapter, it opened up the show that I could actually pitch to other advertisers and give them a pre roll spot for advertising. So pre roll is like the period of time at the start of the show where you can do an ad read. Mid roll is somewhere in the middle of the show, usually the halfway point, but you can kind of put it anywhere in the middle, wherever you deem appropriate. And then post roll is after the end of the show, right when you're finishing it up, or right after you are just about to say goodbye and to your audience, then you can do another pitch for an ad there. So when you are selling advertising, when you aren't using the publisher to do it. So let's say if you used anchor, you could get ads turned on via Spotify and then that would be a, that wouldn't be a baked in ad, that would be them putting in dynamic ads into your show and, and then reimbursing you usually by every thousandth listen. So that would mean that your episodes would have to have several thousand listens per episode. Now that takes a long time to get to. So if you want to try more of the grassroots monetization style, the thing that you will need is a media kit. Now with a media kit, not everybody knows what that is right off the cuff. So what it is is it's basically a document that outlines the mission statement of your podcast. The reach, the exposure, the people, who your audience is, where your audience lives, what your audience does. You can find that information through your podcast host or by sending out surveys to your verified audience. You can go through the analytics and stuff of chartable. You can see when you've charted, you can do all kinds of things to build out your media kit. You can also take some of the career capital from your own training or business career and be able to build that into. So if you have certain Certifications, or if you're aligned with certain businesses, or if you're an ambassador of anything. Things like that can build the credibility of somebody partnering with you from a advertising standpoint. Because just like sponsored athletes have to be on their best behavior to have partnerships with brands like Nike and stuff, you as a professional kind of need to be on some sort of behavior in order to align with certain brands that are careful about where they spend their money and where they place their brand. So your media kit is going to represent that. So generally speaking, you're going to want to be able to represent the amount of listens per episode that you get. Maybe rough estimate. But try to keep it as honest as you can because there are ways that people can kind of double check these things. And you're going to want to kind of give them a picture of where your audience is, who they are, just so that they can see if the demographic lines up and to get an idea of like what those people are going to be looking for. So the mission statement is going to tell a lot for them, but fill in the gaps wherever you can make it appealing. Look at the visuals of it. Is this a nice looking media kit or does this look like a six year old made it? Little things like that matter. And then when you're reaching out to a potential brand, that's going to be something that you're going to attach. That oftentimes is what's going to get your foot in the door. Because a lot of times people won't necessarily think about having a media kit when they're first just starting out a podcast. Now the backstory of this is I used to actually sell advertising for, for a fitness magazine. This is the same fitness magazine that I partnered with for my podcast. And so I would sell full page, half page ads in a print magazine and I would sell posts for social media. So we'd have a certain set rate for a post on Instagram, for a post on Twitter, for a post on LinkedIn. And we would have to show them the media kit, the magazine's reach, the social reach, what the magazine was about, who our target audience was, the things that we spoke about, past issues, different things like that the length of time the magazine has been around, all the things like that make a big difference. So you just transpose that to a podcast and apply the same concepts. So when you have gathered all this info for your media kit, then you also want to be gathering contact info for your potential ad partners. You want to verify with yourself that these people actually are aligned with the podcast and not just with something that you felt would be cool. So if you're all fitness, you don't necessarily want to target alcohol. Maybe you do, but I'm just saying you might kind of set yourself back if you are truly on this wellness pursuit to. But each person is going to have their own style, so somebody listening could probably totally pull it off. I'm just saying that you want to do some kind of an assessment as to essentially, is this ad partner the hill that I want to die on? Like, is this something that I would completely endorse myself without being paid? Because if it's not, and then you put your name to it and then you talk about it on your show, people aren't going to ever believe you again if it's not something that you genuinely promote and genuinely stand by. So you want to make sure that the brands that you work with are brands that you absolutely rave about, that you love, that you've used, that it's easy for you to talk about them because more often than not, when you're doing your ad reads, you're probably going to do a live ad read. You're going to basically set a timer for 30 seconds and you're going to genuinely talk about the product with your audience. You're going to talk about the time that it saved your butt when you got like these perfectly awesome lifting shoes. Are you going to talk about how the laundry detergent is the best laundry detergent you've ever smelled and you're going to give them that first hand experience because you know what that will do. They'll increase the odds that you have conversion on that ad read. And if you don't have conversion on that ad read, then there's a pretty good chance that either you're not going to be able to renew the deal or you're not going to get any kind of recoupment from doing that ad read. So the other thing is you're going to have a few different options. You can either charge them a set rate per episode and then maybe not make a commission off the sales, or, or you can do sort of a hybrid set rate per episode and a commission for sales. Or most people are going to initially say, hey, we'll give you a promo code, you can promote it however you want. And then you'd kind of have to make a decision as to whether you want to promote the code on your social media, on your podcast, both, one or the other. It kind of depends on your vision. For myself, I like to pitch for a set rate for the podcast. Because once you put that in your podcast, it's essentially baked in, which means that it's published as part of the episode. And so three years could pass and maybe you didn't make anything from it, but they're still on your episode and they're literally living in your podcast rent free. And people could be talking or hearing about their product and you never got incentivized for it. So if you're able to do a set rate, let's say like $50 per episode for a 30 second ad read and you're able to pitch that, that is certainly very valuable because they are getting in the ear holes of however many people listen to your show, whereas they don't have that kind of direct access through billboards, stuff like that. They are getting one of the most genuine connections because you have dedicated listeners and they are getting to be borrow the trust that you've built with your audience by being part of your dialogue, by being part of your episode. So despite the fact that they might not acknowledge how valuable that is, know for yourself it's an extremely valuable ad possibility. So just know your worth when you're looking at doing this stuff. If ever possible, get a promo code. But, but my hope would be that if you're arranging this, that you are both getting a set amount per episode when you're doing the ad read and the promo code, so that maybe you'd get commission per sale of the item. And that's just like an added bonus. The other thing is if you get this promo code, then you might get some positive reinforcement that if you actually were to convert a bunch of sales, that would be something that would allow you to renew with that client. What I would suggest to do is pitch them to work with you for four episodes or three episodes, something like a bulk set of episodes, just to give you a little bit of a buffer that if the episode that you first did with them wasn't a home run, perhaps you could redeem yourself by the third episode and really show them the value that you bring as an ad partner. The other thing is that perhaps by having this code, you could stand to make a little bit extra money, whether it be like a three dollar per skew or whatever it is. So keep in mind the opportunities that you have to kind of like capitalize on the different income streams. In a lot of cases, the bigger brands will have a pretty extensive marketing budget and so you're not going to make them bankrupt with a $400 investment by partnering with Your show. Now with that said, there are going to be some brands that barely have any kind of a marketing budget and they might be local to you, they might be a small mom and pop business. And with that you really want to work on building the connection over trying to negotiate different deals. So with them it would be more. So maybe you could get comped some product. So then instead of cash it would be product. And I think that's a great arrangement for an up and coming business that could maybe stand to benefit from being promoted ahead of a certain event or maybe promoted to a certain audience. Perhaps it's a local meal kit delivery company and nobody knows about them, but they've got an industrial kitchen and you tell your audience about it and your audience is all fitness clients and they're all looking for a meal kit company that's a huge opportunity. And if they maybe comp juice some meals, then I would say that's a pretty fair trade off. So basically pay attention to the little details and be sure to not burn a bridge with potential ad partners by making sure to add value, create value, offer value and be conscious of the state of their budget. To know to not ask for too much if they truly are just like bare bones, just trying to pay the bills, just trying to keep the lights on, just trying to grow their business. So when you're gathering contact info, you can grab that from their social media, you can grab that from their LinkedIn, you can grab that from their website. And from that point you want to have a way to track your leads, the temperature of the pitch and when and how you reach out. The reason that you do that is because if you just reach out to a company on Instagram and then like a week passes and you don't hear from them, you might forget about them or you might forget how you reached out, you might forget where you reached out, you might forget when you reached out. So there are different sales tracker softwares and apps that you can use. I think Pipeline is one of them. But you can also just use like sheets, Google sheets, Microsoft Excel have different columns. So what you want to do is if possible, track the style of interaction you had. Was it email, was it live message, was it social media, was a phone? And then do little notes as to how the interaction went. So when I talk about temperature of the pitch, if they just ghosted you then just call that cold. If they responded to you and said maybe check back next season. So like different companies have a different season as to when they're like planning their budget and so sometimes you miss it by a month. And then they let you know that you're gonna have to check in with them like eight months later, then make a note of that in one of the columns. And then in doing that, you can also kind of set yourself reminders perhaps in your Google calendar just to organize you. And you kind of set up a system so that you are doing this constructively and not just haphazardly. So by organizing all of that stuff, you're going to increase the likelihood that you're able to actually land an ad partner for the podcast, if that's something that you want to do. When we talk about providing value to the brands that you pitch to, always make sure that you're kind of seeing the whole scenario from the their perspective. Like, is your audience actually their consumer or do you think they're. That your audience is their consumer? So sometimes we'll be talking to like a general population audience and then we'll want to partner with a very specialized, advanced level product and we have to sit back and realize, okay, like, most of the people that listen to the show aren't actually interested in this thing that's at that high level because they are just coming from the ground up. They're just getting into this thing that we talk about on our show. And in other cases, it might just be like a product that's completely out of reach for your audience. Maybe they're just starting to get their footing with whatever goals that they have. Maybe they listen to podcasts because they have a limited budget and you chose something that costs like $1,000 a month. It can be great to partner with something that. But if your audience just isn't receptive to it, it can be a little bit counterproductive. So you can look at stuff like that too and just know your audience really well. Do things like surveys with your audience, do Google form, ask for feedback when you're talking to people on your social media and really get a handle for who they are, what they like, what they care about. And try to reach out with ad partners in line with that because it increases the likelihood that A, the ad would be successful and that B, you're going to be walking into the pitch with a lot more confidence because you know exactly who you represent, who listens to you and what their interests are. And if you do not provide value to the brands that you pitch to, always ask yourself why and what can you change? And the best ways to make meaningful, positive change in your podcast is to ask for feedback. So something that I've done for many, many episodes is at the end of the recording when the episode itself is done while the guest is still on, I'll ask for feedback. And it, it can be very tricky to ask for feedback from somebody who just finished recording with you because they might not quite be in a place where they want to give you honest feedback. So the other option is you can set up an email that is put all the emails in BCC in the send column just so that it's anonymous and then send an anonymous form that doesn't identify them when they respond. And just be willing to put your ego aside and really hear what they have to say about their experience on the show. Things that could be improved, things that might entice them to promote, and then maybe a call to action that you are working on growing your show and if they could review your show, that that would be very helpful. And that's going to bring us to a bonus segment. So actually, during the month of November 2022, Beverly is looking to help the PT Profit podcast grow. And she is so dedicated to that mission that she's actually going to be donating money to charity for every review on Apple Podcasts. So I'm going to dig into that a little bit more. When you're reviewing a podcast, there's a lot of different places that you can review. But for most of the charts that people will look at for rankings of a podcast, most of those are in connection to Apple Podcasts, formerly known as itunes. So if you go onto Apple Podcasts and you go to the show, you will actually see like the five star ratings, you'll see all the reviews. So in order to add one onto that, you have to access it via Apple Podcast Podcast on an Apple device or via Apple Podcast Apps on whichever platform that you use. So if I go on to a Mac, I'm going to open up the Apple Podcast application and I go to PT Profit Podcast and then I go down, I set it at five stars, obviously, and then I write in a genuine review of my positive experiences from listening to the show, from guesting on the show, and I press enter. So if I were to do that, having pressed enter and having submitted it, then I would want to screenshot it and send that to chrisimpsonfitness.com and in doing that, that just ensures that we see it. Because when you post a review onto Apple Podcasts, oftentimes it takes about five days to process and so you won't actually see it on the platform for a few more days. So if you want to remember to alert us of that, then that'll help us to be able to track it and then dedicate that donation accordingly. With that said, as you being someone who is growing their podcast, you're going to want to do the same for your show. So whether it be a call to action for the people who have been on your show, asking them to review the show, or maybe some reminders to your audience on social media, maybe some calls to action within the episode, make it genuine, make it fresh. Explain like your mission for the show that you want to help more people, explain that reviews actually help with reach. So if you go up on the charts and somebody goes into Apple Podcasts just in the Explore page, it increases the likelihood that you will show up up there. Fun story. A few years ago I actually ended up on the Explore page of the fitness part and one of my training clients who had never listened to my show found me on the Explore page of Apple Podcasts. So I'm just saying it's possible that you can get additional exposure and it can be pretty cool what can happen there. It doesn't take too too much to chart Sometimes. Sometimes just someone dedicatedly listening to your show in a region that you've never been listened to before will cause your show to chart. It's a very mysterious thing, but it's also very powerful thing for growing your podcast. With that said, that will basically summarize everything that we're going to talk about on this episode. Thank you for listening. If you have any questions, you can reach out to Beverly or myself. You, you can reach out through Beverly's social media at B. Simpson Fitness. And if it's any questions that relate to me, you can either connect with me directly at Christian Little or connect with us through Bimson Fitness. Com.

Before you go, please help us help more people. In Honor of our 200th episode that was published in November of 2022, we are currently for the month of November for every review that has been submitted for the podcast in November, we are donating $20 to one of my favorite charities that their mission is near and dear to my heart. Children of the Night, While I personally have not been affected by human trafficking, it is a cause that is very near and dear to my heart. And so in this giving season we are sending a donations for every review for the podcast to this charity for the month of November. If this show has helped you in any way, if this episode has helped you in any way, please leave us a review screenshot it and email the screenshot to Chris C H R I s@bsimpson fitness.com thank you so much. I'll catch you on the next show. Thank you for listening to the PT Proffit podcast. If you like this episode, chances are your friends will too. So it would be a huge service to us if you would please leave us a review and share with your friends on your social media channels. When you leave us a review, be sure to take a screenshot of it and email that screenshot to my team atinfo simpson fitness.com and we'll send you a very special Instagram podcast that will show you how to create compelling content so that your ideal clients come to you and you go from wanting clients to a wait list of clients ready for your services. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.