High-Converting Podcast Outros: How to Drive Listener Action, Simplify CTAs, and Boost Retention

This is Feed Your Brand with hosts Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard.

Welcome back to Feed Your Brand. I'm Tom Hazzard, along with my co-host Tracy Hazzard, who's feeling better this week, finally, from her little illness, if you remember from last episode. In any case, today we're going to talk about the secret to high conversion podcast outros, which is about activating your podcast audience and skyrocketing engagement. And this is a good topic to discuss, Tracy. We've talked about podcast outros before, way back a couple of years ago in Feed Your Brand, but there's more to discuss and new things to consider with it, especially because we've seen listening trends that actually ads that are put in the latter part of your episode in what we would call post-roll ads, not necessarily have to be the last thing you hear. But in the latter part of your episode actually convert better than ones that are right up front. And I know it's counterintuitive, but it also really points to how your show outro— while I agree regular binge listeners have heard it if it's the same every time and are going to skip it, it's also an opportunity. And those people that do listen are going to pay attention. They've already listened through to your whole episode. So anyway, this is a great topic that we're gonna dive in today.

Yeah, here's the thing. Outros are traditionally like sales messages. Like, that's just the way most podcasters and most podcast coaches look at it. And there's no question in my mind, Tom, that we've earned the right to have some kind of sales message if you've gotten all the way through my episodes and I've given you value, then you, I deserve to have an ask, right? That there's no question about that being valuable and my turn, right? But that doesn't mean that your audience is ready for it. And that's what we really have to keep in mind. Our outro is for someone who's ready to take action. Its purpose is a reminder of how to get in touch with you and like where to find you, and you wanna reinforce those things. In an auditory way, right? Like, so I wanna say my website again. I wanna say my name again. I wanna say those things because the repetition is really good for someone who's binge listening or someone who is there for the first time to know what they just listened to, right? So there's important parts of that repetition that's really important, but the real point of it is being there for someone who's ready to take action. And keeping that in mind makes us focus Our outro on those action takers.

I think it's really important. People that have listened through to the end, they like what you have to say. They're engaged, they're sold on you, or they wouldn't have listened through that far. So this is an opportunity, right?

Yeah. But even if they don't do it the first time, like if you're not, I mean, it just, the sales model of podcasting is so wrong because it's just like, I have to give you a sales message right at the front. I have to give you one at the end. I have to constantly drill into you this sales message, but they're not necessarily ready yet. That's part of why they're listening to your show. You're warming them up. You're getting them to know, like, and trust you. You're giving them information to make them feel comfortable with the fact that you are their answer. You are their coach. You are their course. You are their leader. They're the thought leader. You're the person they want to follow. You're the person they want to do this. So there's too much salesiness to a lot of outros that just is never going to work. It's one thing if you're going to make your outro different every single time, then you're losing that repetition model I talked about. So then I guess you could have a custom sales message for every single one, but that's an ad. That's not an outro. An outro really needs to be this comfortable end so that I know the show is completely over. And this repetition of who put this on and where can I find you? And just some basic details, website, maybe your favorite social media. I don't even mention it. I mean, everybody knows how to find you unless you have some weird handle, which you shouldn't have today. You should keep your handle simple. And if you personally have like different handles all over the place or different spellings all over the place, get a forwarding URL. And tell 'em to go to the website and find your social handles. Like, it's just not difficult. Keep them doing one major thing. Send 'em to your website. That's what Tom and I preach all the time. Keeping it simple there, giving them one location that they can remember that you repeat again and again and again that sends 'em to someplace to follow up. That's the most important thing because if somebody, they say, if somebody is out there and they wanna recommend your show, they're gonna say, here's the show.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, and if you really want something right away, go to their website and here's what it is. You could say it off the top of your head. That's so easy, right? That's what we want. That's our ideal outro is we created this repetition where they know how to tell people how to find you.

So Tracy, what do you think about, I think creating a unique one every episode is not very practical and a lot of people are not gonna do that, but the shows that have done that. Often gets your attention because it is unique every time and it can be very amusing. What do you think about the people that do that?

Look, I think all the power to you. Like, we used to have Therapy Bites, Dr. Heath. I was on his show. He has a funny, funny outro that he used to do. He stopped his show, right? Because it's so much production work and it's at the end. So it's kind of like you put in funny out— They're more for you and your cast than it is for the people. Some raving fans will sit in the audience and watch it, right? But it's the raving fans who would already rave about you anyway.

But it can be entertaining, I think. To me, there's a potential entertainment value. And I'll tell you, of all the podcasters we produce, nobody does this, really. I've only heard this on other shows occasionally. It's kind of like— I'm going to date myself here, but if you watch the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, And there he is at the end of the movie after the credits are rolling and he's coming outta the shower with a towel on his head. He is like, you're still here? Like talking to the audience. What are you still doing here?

Right?

Are you still here?

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And so it's a lot of work and if you're going to put that much production value in it, all the power to you, but you gotta put a lot of effort into it and it's not really worth it for something that people are passively listening to. And so instead, I think there are 3 things that you wanna accomplish with your outro. One is that repetition value, which is why it needs to be the same thing every time, because you've got this brand repetition. And that brand repetition should be the most important, useful thing to find the most about you because you don't know why they're about to seek you out. Maybe they wanna buy your book, maybe they wanna buy your course, maybe they just wanna follow you on social. Why are they reaching out might be tons of different reasons. And because you don't know that, send them to the one place you can count on where they can find everything they need. Your website. Make it easy to find. And if you don't have a good URL, then get another one. Get one just for the podcast. It's not that hard.

Yeah, just forward it, right?

Yeah.

But I agree. That's what I always tell customers is there, to the extent that you can, Limit this, and it's your show. You're in control of it. You're either editing the audio yourself or you're in control of what you're saying. Certainly, you should be able to control this. I always tell customers: Make sure you burn your website URL in the brain of your listeners, of your viewers, and ideally, that's the only website they ever hear the URL spoken of in the website. Like we always say, podcastersunited.org. In our later episodes, if you go back years ago, we were on a different web URL, but today our episodes are podcastersunited.org and that we reinforce that every episode. And the outro should do that too, so that you're right, Tracy, it's intuitive. It's like, oh, Feed Your Brand. Yeah. Oh, and they have a website, podcastersunited.org. And that's what the listeners remember because that's what we say all the time.

Right. And The other part of it that I wanna say is that that is the one anchor piece, right? This is just how do I find you? Right? And that you earn the right to, to give them that. You wanna reiterate your name at that point or your website name or whatever that is because you want them to hear that again. Because while they were listening, there was a guest in there, there was a top, it might, they might've got distracted and forgot and you don't want them to even have to look down because hearing it is very powerful. So we wanna make sure we're repeating those things, but that takes all of 5 seconds. This should not be 10 seconds of your outro should be covering like where to find you. The next piece of it though has to be something that's absolutely most useful and easiest for the listener to do. So what do they need most from you?

Right?

And if you are, let's say you're a podcast on sober living.

Okay.

Okay. Your podcast on sober living, something like that. And you can— an invitation to using that link, that URL that you just gave them, that way to find you might be the way to do the ask rather than, here's how to find me. You say, if you or someone you love is struggling to maintain a sober lifestyle, go to... I'm here for you.

That's entirely different than you can find me at this web URL, right?

Like and follow me. That's self-serving. If we flip it around and we make it something that they want to do when the right time to do it is, or the right frame of mind or the right need, keeping that aligned with what you want from a good follower or a good client. Keeping those things in mind, when we align our outro to match that, it becomes an invitation. The other thing is that I'm not a fan of, Tom, in outros, rate, review, subscribe. They're already on the app. If they wanted to do it, they'd do it already, or they'd go and do it if they loved it. They know how to do that already. This is the worst place to ask for that. Ask for it on social.

I agree. It's very cliché and it used to happen all the time. You know, remember to like, follow, and rate and review, whatever, uh, you know, Here, there, and everywhere. And while certainly your episodes are listened to on track players, on websites, and in places where no one has— they're not in an app where they can follow you or subscribe— the reality is people these days know. I mean, you really— they know if they want to keep listening, they're gonna subscribe either on YouTube or Apple or wherever it is. Everybody has a favorite app they use, or one that's just built into their phone that's the easiest for them to use. You don't have to tell them, go listen to me on Apple. Now, I do think there are ways, not in the outro of your show, in other contexts, whether it's on social media or in an email campaign, or it could be an ask verbally early on in your show if you want to, but something unique to the episode.

A YouTube Short you do separately.

Where you are running a specific campaign because you're trying to get over that threshold of 1,000 subscribers on YouTube, or you're trying— you're a relatively new show and you want to get some ratings on Apple because you don't have any right now, ratings and reviews. It's perfectly okay to ask for those in certain ways, but don't— please, please don't just Put it in your intro or outro. And so people have to hear it every time. It really becomes annoying, I think, for your regular listeners.

Well, it's like you're asking me for something again, and it's actually not the most valuable thing to you in the long run, because I can tell you right now, having high ratings is not going to do much for your show in the long run. Getting more clients would be very useful to many of you.

Reaching more people one way or another. Don't get us wrong here, listeners. I mean, having Some ratings and reviews on Apple and anywhere else, other apps that do that, is useful, but it's really just more like a box to check off. Yeah, I've got some. It doesn't matter how many you have. They don't need to be growing month over month. It's really a little bit of initial credibility piece. And for those people that really seek out reviews and they want to know, what do other people think of the show? Am I going to waste my time by subscribing or not?

Then.

There's that information for those people, but it's really, I think, the minority of listeners that are gonna be trying your show out.

And it's a waste to put that in the outro.

Agreed.

This is what we're trying to, you know, we've been encouraging you to make your intro shorter, your outros more impactful is, I guess, the word that we're gonna use here. It doesn't necessarily have to be shorter. Shorter's better, especially if somebody's binge listening and then they're gonna listen to the outro bundled up against An intro, right?

So like the intro again. Yeah.

So now you've got like 45 seconds going on. So like, you know, you think about it from that perspective, from a listener experience. So we don't wanna make it too long, but there's a place for doing this brand awareness of where to find me and in an invitation to do that. And then something that might be a little bit more salesy, but it's not really sales. It's saying like, If you found this episode useful, if you're at this stage, know that there's more. I have more for you on the website. I have books, I have courses, I have things that are available to you. If you are serious about podcasting, we have more to give you over here at our website, right? So not only can it be an invitation, but it can also be, uh, giving a little peek into what it really takes, what more looks like. That's an opportunity without making it too salesy. Like, don't forget to order my book. Like, you know, why? You're not tying it to what you did in the episode. And if you're not going to do that, then that outro becomes just more you're asking of them.

And something that maybe things that need more context or would be better with more context really shouldn't go there. It really, that's something you should Mention somewhere else, maybe within an episode more organically. Oh, that reminds me, you know what? I have a chapter in my book about that. And you know, any of you that haven't gotten it yet, you might wanna go check it out type of thing, right?

That's gonna do way better than just mentioning your book at the end. It just is. And when they get to your website and they know you have a book and they're a reader, they're gonna go, they're gonna navigate right there. So, you know, have your book pop up, like, you know, you do the things that you're supposed to do on your website to make sure that you're capturing the traffic and letting them know what you have.

100%. Actually, there's a couple of shows recently where we've been supporting customers to have their book information available on the podcast page of their website. And actually the other way around too, to have the podcast information, a player of episodes right there on a book page, because it's more common when people publish a book, they've got a whole website about the book. Well, now the podcast on there to provide more value that people finding the book will find the show. There's definitely ways to have some combined efforts here to make sure that everyone that you reach is aware of everything you have to offer, but in a, I guess, a more authentic, organic, and a way that's just gonna be received better.

Absolutely. So look, I'm a big fan of the outro being— I can say we change the outro way less than we change our intro. And over the years, and that is because outro stays very informational and invitational. And so it, because it's so open, it doesn't really need to change unless we're changing the website. The only time we've ever changed the URL for was when we changed the URL for Feed Your Brand because we moved the whole show to Podcasters United. So we changed the outro to mention why Podcasters United is important, why it's a nonprofit. How it serves podcasters, and we added a little twist to it. So our outro's a little longer than it used to be because we added that mention in there because it was a shift for our audience and we wanted them to hear that. And we now had to create this repetition of the new location. Now, for those of you who've listened to the last couple of episodes that we did about intros over the last month or so, we have a system, our company Poditize, where we just automatically update the outros. That's one of the things that I love about what we built, Tom, because when you can update that outro and now my new website is all over and I don't have to re-edit my episodes, that's a fantastic benefit for me. And so that I think has made the update when the decision to donate our show to Podcasters United was an easy one when we knew we could make that change and make it effective.

Yeah, it really makes all the difference in the world. It makes it an easy decision to replace all the outros because remember, you have a good show, you're a couple hundred episodes in and you change something like that. People are going to find your show now and go back and listen to the first episodes, the earliest ones. They always do. I know for new podcasters, they don't realize that's going to happen. Happens all the time. And if they go back to those early episodes and they hear your outro, go to this website, and that website doesn't exist anymore, that's— you're going to need to re-edit that episode and do it the hard way. But when you're on Poditize, it really is just pushing a couple of buttons and it'll put the new outro on all the old episodes, remove the old ones and put the new ones on. That makes it a really easy decision to go forward and make that change.

Yeah. And the, so the last kind of part I wanna mention to people is like, those of you who are sitting back going like, Tracy, I can't, I have to mention my book. My book promoter's gonna be pissed at me if I don't put my book mention in my outro and I don't change it and I don't do all of this. And my answer to you is, that is short-term thinking. And that short-term thinking is going to hurt you long-term. In terms of getting constant sales on your book. So what we want to do is when we have a book we're launching, a course we're launching, some program we're doing that is some webinar, whatever it is, use ad systems for that. Use advertisements to put them in, and you could put them in right before the outro. That's totally okay. But put them in there and remember that there's longevity, that this is for the long-term listener The one who just met you, the ones who are going to come back again and again and warm themselves up to doing business with you. This is not a transactional space. This is a service space. An outro is a service space. Still, like the rest of our podcast is, the advertisements are promotional spaces. Keep the stuff that are promotional into the right space. Keep the stuff that is service-related invitational and open, flexible, because you all know, like, I can't even tell you, Tom, our head of our customer success team and I were just reviewing a bunch of shows that basically abandoned their shows. And so we were going through a handful of 'em and their websites are all gone. So here they are, they still have a podcast out there. But there's no website on the other side of that.

And their podcast episodes, I'm sure, have links to the website in them, right?

They have links to things. So they haven't taken the time to like think about the longevity of whatever you're gonna do. This is what happens to a lot of the authors. They create these landing pages and book sites, and then they're onto the next book. What's gonna happen when you're ready for your next book? Are you still gonna be using your podcast for that? If you are, If this podcast itself isn't transactional, if you're serious about your podcast and serious about it being a lead generation machine for you long-term, then listen to what we're saying here and keep things very directional to the one place you know you're gonna keep around. Might be your own personal website, might be just a forwarding URL that you keep up and you forward to the next space, the next book site. Wherever you're going to do it, make it simple. Make it something maintainable. Make it easy for you and the listener.

Fantastic advice, Tracy. I mean, outros are not that complicated, and I think the, the last thing we should share is, if it isn't already clear, don't overcomplicate it.

It, the secret to high conversion is making it one thing, right? Making it simple.

And we often see them be overcomplicated over the years. They were a lot more, a lot longer, a lot more involved in the past. Even some of our own work, they've all gotten shorter. They've gotten more to the point. And Tracy's advice here is very sound. There's a few things it should do. Don't try to make it do more than it should. And then yeah, update it when needed. And hopefully it's not that hard for you to do.

All right.

Well, we'll be back next week with more episodes. We have been planning our content. I'm super excited cuz we're starting to plan our content for the year with our partners. So don't forget, we've got YouTube partners, author partners. We've got all kinds of partners who are gonna come in and provide additional information and sort of customize it in case your podcast is for promoting your book or it, your videocast comes first. We wanna make sure we're serving you. So we've got a lot planned for the year and we're super excited for that. To keep bringing that out for you. If you don't know what's coming up next, then either you're not paying attention to the podcast feed or you're not receiving our newsletter. Podcasters United has a fabulous newsletter. And so my invitation to you is to go register for it. There's no sales stuff in it. It's just a service newsletter. But the one thing that it's gonna tell you is what next week's topic is.

All right. So go sign up for that. Find out next week's topic and how you can join us live. Remember, if you're hearing this in a podcast episode, you missed the live, but that's, that's great because it comes out 2 weeks later, but you want to find the live, go to podcastersgena.org, sign up for that newsletter, and you have the opportunity to join us live. So we hope to see you there.

Thanks everyone for listening. I'm Tracy Hazzard along with my co-host Tom Hassard, and we'll be back next week with another episode. All right.

Thank you. We'll see you next week.

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