How to generate leads with podcasts.

Okay, you should all be able to see a screen saying Podcast Guest Course Essentials. Is that what everyone can see? Okay, perfect.

Right.

So the whole idea is to prepare entrepreneurs really, and Scott, hearing you, for example, to generate business inquiries from podcast guest appearances. Most people think of a podcast as a conversation or as an entertainment or an information, but You know, I've done PR in B2B and tech using media and then the internet and TV and podcasts really are, as Christian said, they're the gift that keeps on giving because you get access to the content. You're frozen on us there for a moment. Oh, you're back, Jim. Okay, froze up for a second there. Did I freeze?

No. Okay.

That's right. Okay, so for my internet should be okay. Um, so Module 1 basically is just to tell you first about the opportunity. So you're all here because you're interested in podcasts, and I'm sure that you all listen to podcasts. A couple of key points about podcasts. One is that celebrities and big brands, you know, like Bartlett and, and The Economist, actually rub shoulders with people like you and me. If you look at the top 100 shows on your iTunes, you'll see there are shows produced by independent producers, people like me, along with some of the big brands. It's the one medium where you can rub shoulders with big brands. That means getting access to big audiences. And a key part of this being in a podcast is that As a guest, you get access to somebody else's audience. This is the key source, if you like. And what happens is that you're invited by the host who's the trusted curator, the leader of that group, like Christian is of his podcast with the Wealth Builders Community. Whoever comes onto Christian's podcast is given the credibility of Christian's relationship with that guest. So what actually happens is that when you do a podcast, you have this unique position. But also the podcasts are growing in number of listeners. So over half a billion people now are actively engaged in downloading podcasts. And it's also worldwide. My show is listened to a third in Europe, a third in Asia, and a third in America. So this is the other thing about podcasts is they're completely geography independent. Then that number's growing. But what's important as well, you see on the right-hand side, is that big brands are using podcasts to advertise. And this shows you the validity of the medium because the advertisers are moving into podcasts. And consistently so. And why do they do that? Well, a survey done a couple of years ago showed that 61% of listeners to a podcast said they would buy on the recommendation of the podcast host. If you're a guest on Christian's show, he's given you the seal of approval that he's a— that you're a trusted provider of services. Okay, so 61% of listeners said they would buy from Christian's recommendation, and 81% said they always pay attention to podcast advertisements. Unlike any other medium, with podcasts you have the voice, but also people engage and they subscribe to that podcast. So there's an intimate connection. Which leads to trust. Here are some examples of individual business owners and entrepreneurs that have generated income from being guests. I won't drag you through them all, but I've had people on my show that have ended up getting contracts from people that have listened to the show. I've had calls from people being on my show. So being on a podcast with the right frame of mind can definitely lead you to getting sales. So first of all, I want to just talk about the technical capabilities of podcasting, because one of the banes of my life being a host is that people turn up without being properly prepared from a technical perspective. Now, many people feel a little bit overwhelmed by what they might face when it comes to podcasting, but it's not, it's not necessary. It's very easy to set this up, but there are some basic things that you're gonna think about. Common problems that we face on podcasts. One is muffled sound. Now, if I move my microphone away, can, is that making much of a difference to what you can hear? You can hear the, right, you can hear, and I'm using a microphone If you use a computer microphone, you're about this far away from the microphone on your computer.

Okay?

And microphones really work best when they're very close, about 10 to 15 centimeters. People are hard to see, and they also have distractions.

Okay?

And all, all of these things actually have some scientific-based issues. So A study done by Erwin Newman in Australia, but also Norbert Schwartz in the University of Southern California, they did a survey. They did a survey where they played the same interview with scientists with the audio clear and muffled to the same audience. And what they found was when they reduced the audio quality, the scientists and the research lost credibility. Okay, so, and physiologically, when information is hard to process, it becomes less credible. It's quite interesting, that, isn't it? I've been in correspondence with, uh, Professor Schwartz in California, sent me the documents if you're interested. But so one of the problems that you have, Scott, for example, if you have bad audio and you're trying to sell yourself as an authority, is that people are struggling to hear you That becomes one of the reasons that they struggle to think that you're an authority. It makes sense when you think of it like that. But I could, I can tell you how few guests come on the show properly set up for audio. So we can have an internal microphone, it's okay, but external is better. We need to wear headphones because it stops feedback. We need to reduce external noise. We need to silence notifications on our computers, and we need to be close to the microphone. You can hear the difference if I move even just this far away to the audio. So this is the microphone I'm using. It's, it's £80, not expensive. Now, on the science of the image, people are more likely to trust someone when they can see their eyes. And it allows for the assessment of emotions and intentions. Bear in mind that 80% of body language— sorry, 80% of communication is nonverbal, right? And in fact, your hands and your shoulders, which is why we frame a shot to have more of the body. You wonder why this is important if you're doing a podcast, because you're thinking podcasts are audio. When you record, your interview with your host, you will be recording video or face-to-face. Everybody now is doing that just because Zoom and Riverside and, and Squadcast, they're all doing video because the body language helps people to have a better conversation. But also more and more of the podcasts are filmed. In fact, more because YouTube is the world's second largest search engine. Everyone is putting their podcasts onto YouTube and YouTube's now just started a podcast channel. But also, as I'll show you later on, you can reuse the interview on your social media channels, including LinkedIn with video and drive much higher engagement than audio only. And Spotify now plays podcasts in video. Okay, so it's important to look good as well as sound good. Now, common problems we face: people have got distracting lights, the face isn't well lit, and there is a bright light source behind. If I turn off my lights, can you see the difference? Even just in the daytime. Camera operations: you can use the internal camera, you can use the external camera by buying one like I'm using now, Logitech. But also, you can actually use your phone as a continuity camera. Your iPhone is actually one of the best cameras you can use because it actually keeps you in the center of the frame and blurs the background, has studio light settings. Background. There's been some studies done you might have read recently. It was actually on CNN, but done by Durham University that shows that having space behind you, you can see I have a depth of field behind me as opposed to being against a wall. For example. And what they did in this survey was they found that plants, bookshelves give a higher sense of authority than a family home setting, for example, or even a blurred setting. The worst is a blank wall behind you or a novelty setting. So how you set up and frame your shot makes an impact on, as you can see here, on the trustworthy and competence levels of the guest. Okay, so just setting this all up for you because by doing these things in advance, you will feel so confident when you're in the interview that you won't have to worry about how you look and sound. You can focus on what you're saying. So finding podcasts. I'm gonna move on to this next because I did, I did the technical first because a lot of people try and find a podcast and then rush to get the technical side sorted out. I'd rather that you get your technical kit sorted out first and then approach, because more and more podcast hosts like me want to know whether you've got equipment or not, because the good shows know that if you turn up to a show as a guest and you don't sound good and you don't look clear, you're going to impact my show. Okay, you're not going to— if you don't look good, like the old ads, if you don't look good, I don't look good. Okay. There are a couple of directories you can use where you can find not just the show itself, but the contact details of the host. If you go on to Spotify, iTunes, you'll see all the shows, but you won't see the producer details necessarily. You won't be able to find rankings and ratings. Listen Notes is amazing. It's comprehensive, it's up to date. And also, if you want to, what you can do is you can pay to download the data. Okay, so super, super, you know, so Scott, with your CRM, I, you can download all the guests, sorry, all the shows that take guests, and then you can email them using your CRM. There's a product called Respona which actually has this built in, which is amazingly powerful as well. There's also the podcast index, which is an open source directory of podcasts that you can also use. It's not as commercially functional, but you can find the data you want. There are matching sites. Here are just 4 of them, some of the bigger ones. Here you can find the podcast, but you can also list yourself as a guest. Okay. Matchmakers out of the UK, 70,000 users. Okay. Guestio, Podmatch, Podcast Guests is 47,000 subscribers. So they've all got different business models with the exception of Podmatch. They all have a freemium model, but then you are one of thousands, tens of thousands of people that are listed. Okay, you can also use a booking agency. Okay, so this is a done-for-you solution. You pay and they will organize the play. They will prepare your materials for you and they'll host your bio. A lot of them have got like modeling agencies, they host your speaker bio on their website. They'll pitch you to podcasts. They'll charge anywhere from $500 to $2,000 to pitch you to a podcast. Okay, they're great. There are some that I work with now. Every week I have people pitching to come on my show. Um, here are some based in America, a lot of them, some in Europe, some in Asia. Pikal's based out of Singapore, for example. This way you can just outsource all that work. What you, what happens with a podcast agency though is that you lose the relationship with the podcast host. And part of what you're trying to do is to see the podcast host as more than just a host, but a potential partner in new ventures, someone who can be a gateway to new activities for you. Okay, so, but booking agencies are really useful if you're running short of time. What a host wants, what I want, I want to see a one-page summary. I want to see an interesting story. I want some talking points. I want contact details and prior appearances. This is one from Podcast Bookers. So that's what they do. They prepare this for you. I've created a free download at the end which has got 2 templates for you to use from PDF. Doesn't have to be complicated, simple, but you need something to send to help you be positioned in the mind of the host that you're a little bit professional. The pitch process or the pitch itself, there's a slightly longer process, but essentially you are reaching out to someone that you found on for example, podcast directory. You're going to write them an email, and you need a good subject line with a hook, okay? As personal as you can. In media relations, we always write an individual tailored pitch. So a good subject line with a hook, which could be, you know, 8 out of 10 small business owners don't know who their customers are. I can help. My name is Scott Reynolds. I'm a CRM expert, for example, right? So you want to explain, if you can, that you've paid attention to their podcast. So Respona's got this tool where you can find shows that have had a similar guest to the work that you do. So you can find someone that you believe is in the same industry doing the same thing as you. You can find any other shows that that person has been on, and it'll say I noticed you hosted this person. I can also talk to that. This is a platform called Respona, but that's great at volume and you pay for it, but you don't need to do that. You can also just find the shows you like to listen to, listen to 1 or 2 episodes and say, hey, I like this show about this. And then you want to explain how you're going to engage the audience. I'd like to explain why Off-the-shelf promotional items are not as good as print-on-demand promotional items, for example. Okay, write concisely, 100 to 300 words. To give you an idea, I only have my own show and I'm, um, by no means a top-tier show, but I get 10 to 15 applications a week to come on, on my podcast. So you can imagine how many pitches people are getting. So 100 to 300 words. And then what I'm gonna suggest is you think about a gift that you can give the audience. And I'm gonna go on to that in the next section. This is what 9.5 out of 10 people that come to me to be on my show do not do. And this is what I want to help everyone to start to do is to offer something the host to offer to the audience because it helps the, the host feel good, but it also helps the engagement for the podcast host because they're giving their community something they couldn't get somewhere else. And this is really the gift that I want to share with you today because so many people, most people do not think of the podcast as a way to give something to the audience. They think about what they're gonna talk about, not about what they're gonna give. So I had someone the other day send me a video introduction, uh, using Loom to explain why they should be on my show. If you haven't heard back in 48 hours, you can write back. I'm checking in.

Okay.

The offer. If anyone's got any questions, you know, we can put them in the chat and Christian and I can talk to them at the end. But I want to make sure I, I, um, get through this and answer as many questions as I can the presentation. So this is the offer. What is gonna be your lead magnet? I can't stress highly enough when people come to a business-to-business podcast as opposed to a consumer where they're going to be entertained or informed. In a B2B podcast, they're all looking for an answer to a problem they're trying to solve. That's why I go to a podcast. I wanna know how to solve that problem. I'm waiting for the guest to help me with that. This is your opportunity to give for free what you normally charge for as a result of getting their email address. Okay, so think about your lead magnet. The reason the lead magnet in my presentation is in advance of the interview is because you need to set this up Before the show. I have a few people come on my show and I say, would you like to offer something? They say, oh yeah, yeah, they can come to my website and they can drop me an email. And I go, okay, there's why, right? So set up in advance. And I'm gonna share with you an example of one later. Have a landing page specifically made either for all podcasts Or for this particular podcast if you want to. So Mark Osborne came on my show a couple of weeks ago. He has a specific— he says, thanks for attending the show. And he said on my show, only 50 people can get this book. And you go to his website. I've got to tell you, I got 19 emails within, you know, basically every day for the next 21 days. I got each chapter day by day. You know, I mean, it's in it. Is it too much? You can decide, but a huge amount of value. But the point is, he's offering something that otherwise I'd have to go to Amazon to buy. So the interview, you can see only now we're getting to the interview. So many people come on the podcast with me and go, right, right, what are we gonna talk about? Yeah, you know, I love your show. No, I haven't heard of any Haven't listened to any, haven't got anything to offer. And I'm like, okay, A, I'm a bit annoyed. Sets me, it's like, well, you didn't show any respect. But B, what a waste of an opportunity. Why take an hour of your time and my time and not be prepared? You wouldn't go to a business presentation and just say, I just, I'm just here. You wouldn't do it, right? You'd be prepared. Now remember, most people have some nerves when they're going onto a podcast, but you don't have to have any nerves. You've got your camera set up, you've got your microphone set up, you've got your lighting. You don't look as though you're being held hostage because you're up against a white wall. I can tell you how many people are sitting against a white wall is amazing. You've sorted all this so you can then relax, okay? Because you've got your offer online, okay? So the host, believe me, the host is not trying to judge you nor to catch you out. They want the best for you and they want the best from you. Bear in mind that the way that Apple ranks a show and Spotify is if people stay to the end of a show, it goes higher up the charts. It's not just about likes, it's someone listening to the whole, the whole show. So on Listen Notes, you'll see they have something called listen score, and it's about how much of a show people listen to. So if a guest doesn't perform well on my show and my listeners drop off, I don't move up the rankings. So hopefully this is useful as well for you to understand the algorithms and the, the game going on in, in this publishing business. If you're on the show, you've already passed the test. Relax and be yourself. Be prepared. So on the course, I have some templates, but basically you have your story, okay? Where you're from, what obstacle you faced. Now, the key is to be able to say all this in a minute, okay? Say it in a minute. Get your objective in your mind about what you want to do. And then have one key message because people will be running, driving, in the gym, walking the dog. They need to take away one thing so they then come back to you. So have a, a pre-show routine. I have a folder and I have like 19 things I do before I go on a show. I have, I have a branded hat I wear. I have a drink, I have lights, I turn off this, I tell, I put the dog in another room, right? You have a list so that each time you're consistent with your performance. Interview pointers. This is a huge topic, but use your story to introduce yourself. Listen to the questions. Take time to think of the answer and don't interrupt the host. I'll show you in a minute why not. And have a stopwatch, like when you're speaking, because we all lose track of time. So in B2B, remember, your life story is probably not what the audience wants to hear. They want an answer to the problem. Okay, so something like, I am from A and I overcame B obstacle by doing C. I learned how to repeat C and built D to serve Kevin's story. My father passed away when I was young. I looked after my family. I want to make sure no one has the same problem. I built Wealth Builders with Christian, right? That's it. He's mastered that. So you want to avoid this. This is the editor or someone like me trying to untangle your answers. And in the course, I have 2-minute tests where you have to answer each question in 2 minutes because there is nothing worse than trying to edit people's rambling answers or where they speak over the host. Because in a conversation in a restaurant, you talk over each other. But in audio, if people are listening and there's 2 different voices, it's impossible for people to understand. That's why even on the arches, you hear they They give each other space. So I can tell you, if you make it so that it's too difficult for someone to edit, they will just leave it out because it's not their job to make you sound good. It's their job to make the show sound good. Finally, this is gonna be fun. I know I've gone through all the things, and when I do media training, there's always the anxiety at the beginning, but you practice and you get better. So you will be well prepared. And your number one priority is to offer the gift at the beginning. I'm on this show at the end, I'm going to offer this. In the middle, I'm so glad I'm here because I can offer this. And at the end, I'm going to offer this. And at the end, you can get hold of me by coming here. And this is my gift. Okay, so follow up. Thank the host for the opportunity. Ask for any introductions. offer to work together. Remember, if you've chosen the podcast correctly, appropriately, you've chosen a podcast that already has your potential customer group in it. I'm, I'm stunned by how many people say they've done 100 podcasts and you're like, but how many different communities?

Sorry.

Oh, sorry, someone Ask you a question.

Okay.

Just some background noise there. Oh, okay. So offer to work together, right? If they've got a community that you want to access, which is why you're on their show, what could you do to, to do something, a joint webinar, a joint training class, something live together? They're giving you access to their audience, and their audience are your potential customers. So why would you not follow up? And again, this is another one where if you went to a business meeting, the chance of you leaving and never saying, that's great, what should we do next? Remote, you shouldn't be there in the first place. And yet podcasts at the moment, there are so many opportunities for people to leverage. So this is the fun part now. you've been on the show. You can use AI apps to reformat the content. You can use humans as well. I've done that as well for years. You can link the content to the page with the gift on it. Okay. All of you that know about SEO will know how powerful that is. And you can post the content to your website, but it'll also be on the podcast site. So for example, I interviewed a lady called Jackie Biebenroth out of Ohio. She came on the show. This is Riverside. I'm going to show you how I did this using Claude AI in the next slide, but I download the transcript, I upload it to Claude, and then I make an article. I thought I'd just show you how I do that just in, in 2 minutes. Is that, is that okay?

Right. We can Ask it to give us a prompt. Now, this happens. I've created a prompt beforehand already in my work drive. So in my Zoho Writer, I can use the last prompt. So I set up. Okay. So now what I want to do is I want it to write me down. Okay, so here's the prompt. Take this prompt here, cut that, put that into Claude. Claude, the language I'm going to upload, text file. Which I've already taken down from the video. It's a transcript basically of the article of the interview with Jackie and I. You can see how long this isn't back and forwards. Okay, you couldn't use it as it is an article. What I'm going to do now, upload this. Claude to do us some work while we sit back and relax. So you can see how quick— this is real time, I haven't stopped it in any way. And this is now writing the article while I can kind of copy it. I find Claude one of the better writers. ChatGPT doesn't handle this length and you can't upload a text file to ChatGPT in the way that you can with Claude. And then Claude seems to be better at long-form articles. So that's why I'm using Claude today. It's a subscription of $18 a month. As you can see, if I had given this to somebody to write, it would have taken them several hours at least. You can see I've got my article, which I can then copy. I'll just show you in here. I can create a new document.

Okay, so you could see how I did that, and then I was able to use that. So this is then what happens with that article. You can see I sent that to Jackie, uh, in Ohio, and her team had a field day, right? So from 20 minutes, we've got 7 different assets. I put them on all my channels, but they put them on her LinkedIn, on her Facebook, on her Instagram. Okay, and can you see they've also put on their website with a call to action? Okay, again, it's amazing how few guests are taking the asset and leveraging it, because for SEO this is brilliant. But also what you can do then is you can send all of those to anyone that signed up for the gift. Hey, you came on, thanks for signing up. Here's a recap of the, of the interview. You can send the pieces to the show host to demonstrate you're working to promote their show, which they will appreciate, and then they'll refer you to other hosts, right? You can add the content to your website. You can add the links to your bio as well because that gives you more credibility. You can also send that to your potential customers because You, you've now got the authority of being seen on other people's podcasts, right? And so you can also start the conversation with the next potential podcast host because you can say, hey, I've been on this show, look how professional I was. Okay, so you could turn up the heat on your professional development. So I have a little bit of a quiz, but Christian, you may want to let people ask questions if they've got them. But that's 30 minutes, which is you know, my sort of mandate for today. Um, this is part of a much bigger course that I've, I've put together to really help people to generate leads from podcasts by seeing them as a business opportunity, which is really where I think podcasts are going, um, in especially in B2B. Then my free download, go to jimjames.com/podcast. Guest bio download, or you can use your phone, and if you scan that code on the left-hand side, it will take you to the page with the free download.