Can You Really Convert Podcast Fans Into Active Subscribers?

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed. You'd been. I'm Tom hazardlonk, my co host, Tracy, and we have a great topic for you today. We're gonna talk about how you can really convert podcast fans into active subscribers. And really, it's more than just active subscribers. I mean, it's about converting listeners in some way, shape or form to being more than just subscribers who you don't know about. Right, Tracy? Because you don't know who your subscribers are who are subscribed through Apple or Spotify or whatever app they listen to.

Yeah, so I'm going to be on Alicia Galati's podcast, Listeners to Leads tomorrow. I'm going to be recording that with her. And that's this ID here. We're not talking active. Subscribers are leads. Right? They're leads that you're going to do something with. And so many of you want your podcast to lead generate for you. I hear that again and again and again. But here's the reality of it. Most of you don't know what to do with it. You don't know how to do it. You don't know how you're going to get them from the podcast to your list. That in and of itself is the first part that I want to tackle right now, Tom, because I think that's the biggest problem, that they have no concept that I'm going to start a podcast and it's just going to have these subscribers and their my community. But unless they're actually on your list, unless you can reach out to them outside of Apple, outside of Spotify, outside of any of the other listening apps, then they're not really your leads. They don't belong to you. They may be consuming your content, but they really don't belong to you. The only thing you could do is podcast to them.

That's the tough thing, I think, for most podcasters to really wrap their heads around.

New podcasters.

Yeah, new podcasters, is that. What do you mean? They're not my listeners. They're listening to me. Well, that's true. They're listening to you. You've put your content out there in the whole ecosystem, in all those apps. That's true. They can listen to you, but they're not yours in terms of a user.

You don't have their email address. You don't know anything about them. You don't know their gender. If you want to know that, you don't know that. You maybe know where in the world they might be, sort of. But you really don't have a lot of information on them. And that is because you haven't gotten them off the podcast and somewhere else. So what happens if you take them off the podcast? And I get this all the time, it's like, oh, well, I invite them to my Instagram. I invite them to my TikTok. They're still not yours. The only way that they become yours is when they come to your website and they enter your list.

Let's talk about that for just a moment, Tracy, because this is, I think, something that isn't necessarily understood by all podcasters is that, hey, no, I send them to my Facebook page or I send them to my Instagram. Well, that's great. You have just done a huge favor to Instagram when you do that. You've increased activity on their platform. You've sent people from the listening app over to that social platform. That's great. Now they're going to connect with you there, maybe communicate with you there. That's good. That's helpful. That's better than just having them be passively listening to your content in a listening app. But wouldn't it be better if they went over to your website, to your domain, in a place where they might trade their name and email for something of value from you? I mean, that's the next level.

More connection to you, more content. There's always something more you can provide for them. And we're going to talk about that in a minute because obviously, that's a third major component here. But the idea is that subscribers are a lot more passive. Podcast subscribers are more passive than any other form of media. Right? I subscribe to you and I forget that I'm subscribed to you. It just pushes to my phone and then I go, yeah, maybe I'll listen today. Right? That's how it works in a subscriber base. I was like, oh, that topic caught my eye. I'm definitely gonna listen today. Or, I absolutely love your show and I'm not gonna miss it. I'm gonna listen to every episode, and when I see it pop up on my phone, I'm there, I'm listening. I'M checking it out. That's maybe a little bit more of what we would call a binge listener, an active subscriber. Right. But they're still not taking any actions. And getting them off of the listening app is extremely difficult. Podcast listeners listen for a reason. They're researching, they're consuming content, they're doing it for their own purposes and their own reason. And they love it because it's not pushing in their face. Right. They're choosing to get it pushed to them, if it's pushed at all. That's a big difference in mindset. So that means that they're highly likely to not be the best community members in Instagram, or that they don't like that consumption of media. They don't like having things forced to them. And remember, when you get over to Instagram, you get over to TikTok, you get over to any of these other places, that platform controls the algorithm of who sees what. Unless I actively pick in Facebook to have every notification you make sent to me, it won't happen. I get maybe 10 to 13%. So again, you've put yourself in a place at which you can't get their attention. It's harder. So the only place you're in control of that is your own website, your own list. So that's where we want to drive them. So, Tom, what are some ways that you've heard about from some of our clients you've done. We've done different ways. But what are some ways that we drive them off the podcast and into our website? I mean, we used to talk about this for wtff, our very first podcast that Tom and I ever did. We used to do short videos that would be like time lapse videos of things, 3D printing. And we would say, you can only get that by going to our website. We didn't send them to YouTube, we didn't send them to Instagram, we didn't send them anywhere else. We sent them to our website to see how this thing that they've been hearing about looks printing. Wouldn't you go check it out?

So you're right, Tracy. Providing more, not the same thing, but added value. There's more to the story, there's something behind the scenes. There is a resource that is relevant to what was talked about in the episode. You need to provide more information, something additional of value for them. What's in it for them to leave that listening app and go to your website. So that's one level. Now, what you were talking about, Tracy, is just to see something Consume some other piece of content that is not in the listening app that they can't consume there. And that's wonderful. There's more to the story there, but that's not going to get them to identify themselves as to who they are. Right. So certainly I would do that. I would have more content, more to the story, more for them to experience more value in the website, usually in a blog post for that episode. But you need to create a way, something of value that they can get from your website that isn't just go and look at it. Something they need to download maybe, but.

It'S an okay path for you to send them to your website to look at something that's cool, that's different, and have that be in the sidebar. This irresistible offer, as our good friend Dustin Matthew calls it, an irresistible offer made to them in the sidebar. A pop up that happens on. I'm not fan of the pop up that happens the first moment you come into a website, but I have seen some that time when you're sitting there for a couple of minutes, then pops up. That's always good because then they've consumed something, they've seen something of interest and they go, maybe I will subscribe or maybe I will get that download of a file or something really interesting or ebook, whatever that might be. Popping it up a little bit later can be useful, but I like to get them because I'm not a big fan of saying join my list. Right. And like being really obvious about that. That's what all you're doing. That sounds greedy and is just not in keeping with the spirit of my podcast to begin with, which is in service and so sending them to get something more, as Tom put it, getting more something that's not available on the listening app, that's valuable, but I do want to deliver that to them and then serve up the opportunity for even more if they actually belong to the community.

Right. I agree with you, Tracy. Offering people to join your list without providing what is in it for them just to join the list. What is this list going to do? You're going to just try to sell me stuff or are you ever going to email me anything? And some people do newsletters and if you do a really good one and people know it or get used to it, then that could be a value. But joining a list for the sake of joining a list, that's not how I would do it. I would say here is this thing of value I want to provide you. I'll use an example in a Moment of what we do on our website, because it's a good example, although it's not something everybody could do. But let's say you have a checklist, okay? A checklist for something. Maybe it's a podcast recording checklist. If you're for podcasters or if you're a tax accountant, it's a prep for tax season checklist. Or who knows what it could be, right? Many different things. It could be just a downloadable PDF, but in order for them to get it, they have to enter in their name and their email and opt into your list. Now, there is a good reason why they might be willing to do it. Not only to get that thing of value, but hey, if you want to be notified when there's an update to that thing of value, you want to stay subscribed, you got to have a good reason why.

So that's where I see this go wrong. So this is the second piece that I want to talk about with what it is. So we want to drive them from the podcast to our site because that's where we're going to be able to have their attention only be on us and not the puppies and cute kid pictures that are on Instagram, right? We want them only there because then we're concentrated and we know they have interest or they wouldn't have come through. So there's something of interest to them. So we want to keep them there. That's important. But we also need to give them something, an irresistible offer, something of value. But here's where it typically goes wrong. Most people do not have their email system and their funnel set up with anything of value or even systematized. In other words, like they can't even figure out what they're gonna do with anything. They have an email capture form, but then they never even get the emails off of it into a list somewhere. It's like sitting there weirdly in their website under the forms section, right? I've seen it so often that they don't even know they have 50 people subscribed. And so they're not doing anything with it. So not knowing what that is ahead of time. I am a fan of not asking. Don't ask them to come and join your list. Don't make a pop up, don't do those things unless you're ready to actually do something with it. Because it becomes so outdated so fast. Email addresses and the whole way that that works, it becomes really outdated quickly if you're not taking advantage of it in the moment. So be prepared, have your system in place, have your irresistible offer in place, figure out what that is. But here's where I see it also go wrong. So I did this recently. I went through. Because I wanted to compare another podcaster's template to mine. I already have one. I wanted to see if mine was better. Maybe mine was outdated. So I was doing a little research.

Template for what, Tracy?

I'm not going to share that right now.

All right.

But template for something that you might use as a podcaster. And I wanted to make sure I had the most updated one. So I went to their website because I remembered from hearing them on their podcast say that they had this download and sure enough, there's a nice little landing page with it, like details about what's in it. And it sounded pretty cool. And I clicked it and I put my email address in and I got the form, the PDF, got it delivered in my email, downloaded it off the site because you could do that as well. Got it read. It wasn't great, but it worked. I mean, I think mine was better, but it was at least what I needed it to do. But here's the thing. I immediately unsubscribed. And I didn't just do that because I was done with my research. I did it because he didn't give me any compelling additional offer. I didn't know what else I was going to get staying on his list. He didn't tell me anything but that one thing, that value, what else I could expect from him.

So there was some uncertainty as to why I should stay on his list.

So I immediately unsubscribed just because I don't need any more email. Like, that's just crazy, right? Who wants to make themselves have more email, right? So I did it immediately. And that is a miss in and of itself. Not knowing where you're going and not give them a fear of missing out on what could be in the next email and the next email and the next email. We also don't always do that so well on our podcast. We don't get them to be excited about what they could be missing by not checking out our website, what they could be missing by not tuning into the next episode. Right. Leading them through that process and understanding what that looks like. Even if you don't have it all figured out, but you're sort of stacking it on and at least figured out maybe a couple of emails in the future, that's really critically important to make sure that you create something sticky that they cannot feel right about. Unsubscribing from. Right. They're afraid to unsubscribe from it.

I could imagine. I'm thinking of a couple of podcasters just because they've been some people I've interacted with recently that have podcasts in the mortgage space. They're speaking to other mortgage lenders or loan officers and things like that. And one of them has this weekly mortgage update. I can imagine the promise of, hey, what's the latest news info? Key things you need to know as a mortgage professional, that may be a good reason why you might subscribe and stay subscribed to a weekly mortgage update. Because you're in the business and you can't afford not to know.

Right? And even if you think you have the latest information, you don't want to miss out on what your competitors know. And that's the thing. So we used to have something in the contract furniture industry. Remember we used to get a weekly fax on Mondays.

Oh my gosh, Monday morning quarterback. I remember the facts.

The Monday morning quarterback. Yeah, it was mm, qb.

MM qb, right.

And the Monday morning quarterback. And it would get faxed to everyone who was in the contract furniture industry.

And it was crazy. I don't know how they sent those group faxes, but it literally was sent out to thousands of people in the industry. Right.

I mean, I think it was bigger than that because it went to many, many every fax machine within a company like it would go to. So when I worked for Herman Miller, every machine would spit that out on Monday morning mornings at 8am and everyone would like run over to the copy machine and start reading it. Right? Because you didn't want to know what was going on in the industry. You didn't want to miss that out. And that's not a place like that kind of news. And timely information is not really great on a podcast because it's not a bingeable thing, right? It's a one and done. If I miss it on Monday, it's outdated by the time I get to it on Friday, so I'm not going to bother to listen. But a great way for you to use your newsletter, a great way for you to use a flash update or do something like that, where you're sending them a quiz email with these things that they might want to know and deep dive into. That's really critically important for you to think this through, into how you're going to make what you provide so valuable, so irresistible. So that they will hit subscribe, they will give you their email address and then stay Subscribed. Because if they don't stay subscribed, what's the point?

Well, even if they unsubscribe now, in the context, Tracy, of business related podcasts, where you are prospecting, right, you're mining listeners for prospects, getting their email address once, even if they unsubscribe from the list, I mean, if I had a sales offer, I could still send an individual email to them. I've got their email in my CRM, right?

By law you can't because they hit unsubscribe. Now, an individual to an individual, you can do that? Yeah, you can send an email out, but theoretically you're supposed to purge their email from your system. I mean, that's the way the GDPR law is. So you should be taking that out of your system altogether and not sending any kind of solicitation email. So that's actually not the case. And most people do violate that because you're getting around it by not sending a mass mailing a sequence or marketing email. You're doing a one on one, which is technically allowed, but they did ask to not be emailed by you and you've chosen to violate that. So how receptive to your email are they really going to be? And that's a question, right?

Yeah, that's going to be different in every situation.

Right. So getting them on your list and keeping them on your list are not the same thing either. So we really just talked about this. I want to recap really quick. It's like getting them from your podcast to your site. Critical number one thing you need to do, providing them something so irresistible that they want to hit subscribe and join your list is number two. Right. And we got to figure out what that is. And then number three, making sure you have a system for keeping them on that list, keeping them engaged, keeping them there, and a system of where you're actually going to use them. You're actually going to use that list and do something with it that's going to be valuable for you and your business. So those are the three major components that we were really talking about. That's the way you really convert podcast fans into active subscribers who then become real legitimate leads for your business and for everything that you might want to do in your community. That's really important. But the other thing is I do want you to think carefully about listeners and the listener personality. I touched on it briefly. Listeners are not as likely as others to be excited by downloading a PDF by reading a long sales form page. They're not Readers. So when you see those like super long sales pages with the PDF at the bottom, they're not those people, that's just not their media type.

Like those direct response marketing emails type thing too, right?

Yeah, the really long emails, the really long sales pages, it's just this is not their personality. So be making sure that you are aligning what you're providing in a format that is appealing to your podcast listeners. You should know what's working. I mean, assuming you're not just brand new and you'd only got like one episode or three episodes in, but as you go forward, you should start to see what's resonating with them. Are the shorter episodes resonating or the longer one? Take those things and start to understand the personality of your listener. Because not everything is going to work. Here's the one thing. Tom and I know this show, our client base, they're action takers. They do not want to watch a long webinar, they don't want to read a lengthy sales, they don't want a seven step process. They want one and done right. And we gear everything we do to make sure to deliver that. Even when we send them an email sequence, we still make sure to deliver that. The second thing that we do is we overserve. We make sure that we're giving them so much for free before they have to subscribe, before they have to do something where they have to give us their trust. Because we're going to say we're going to trust you, we're going to trust you first. And we know that you're going to achieve results. And when you achieve results, then you're going to want to be a part of our community. That's what we do is we just say that's how we're going to put it out there. That's how we chose to show up. Because we understand our listeners better, we understand our clients better, we understand that's what they require. Because there's a lot of skepticism, there's a lot of distrust, because there's a lot of abuse that goes on in the direct response marketing industry into that in general in the media. Right. So we decided to do it in the opposite way. Be thinking carefully about your listeners when you do this. Because this doesn't follow the same formula that email marketers go out there and say, because your people that you're getting there, you're getting them off of the podcast. They're not necessarily email people. And so you want to make sure you're matching that up.

I Think it's a good suggestion, Tracy. Email is, I guess, only one method. A lot of people are doing text or doing other means of communication. I think it's a good idea to provide different options, meet people where they want to be connected with. Right. How they want to be connected with. Well, today's topic is about really how to get them converted over to the website. There's sort of a sister topic to this eventually, about all different types of methods you can use, what, what the payoff is, what value to provide the listener that will get them to trade that name and email.

Right.

And join the list. There's just dozens of different things you can do.

That's really hard for us to cover here. No, I know cover here in a topic because it's so specific to your industry, to your listener base. But here's where you test it. Right? Here's a great way to test it. That's the fantastic thing about the podcast is one week I test for them to take this action and next week I test a different one. You and I found out that those time lapse videos were like, hugely attractive. Everybody wanted to see them. And not just that, they'd see them and they'd share them on social media. So they were really a great circulation for getting more listeners to our podcast. And we didn't have to do anything but make sure that that was there in the website and make sure that that was there in the blog post for them. We didn't have to work that hard at it to make it sticky. That's kind of an awesome find for us. It just worked. We tried a bunch of things and that's what worked. So keep experimenting. That's the great part about it. You can change it up and try to do something different in the next episode. See what happens. And when you hit on something that works, double down. Try it again, because if it doesn't work consistently, it's not really a solution.

Sounds good, Tracy. All right, well, let's leave it there. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll be back next time with another great episode. Until then, this has been Tom and Tracy on Feed.

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