How A Podcast Guest Funnel Can Double Your Success By Attracting Both Guests And Clients

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works.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 brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host Tracy Hazard and today we've got quite an episode for you and it's quite a subject. I think it'll be of interest to a lot of people and that's how a guest funnel can double your success by attracting both guests and clients. And I'm going to admit right off the bat and let our listeners know, I am really going to be the sidekick on this one because you don't.

Do guest episodes very often.

Not as often as I used to. I mean it used to be all we did on one of our shows at one point, but I do a lot more shows that are topic based and not interview based with the current shows that I'm a part of. So whereas you, Tracy, interviews are everything you do on the binge factor and this really everything that we are going to share with our listeners today really comes from your experience, your knowledge and things that you've dialed in over. I don't even want to think about how many guest interviews you've done. Right?

Yeah, I think that I calculated it pretty recently. It's over 3,000 interviews across all the podcasts and all the articles that I've written. So it's a lot of interviews, but not all of them are what we call a guest funnel. That's a very specific model. And so Tom and I start a brand new podcast every single year so that we can test out a model of podcasting or how hard it is to start a podcast in this particular year. So a couple of years ago, within feed your brand here, keep that in mind. We already had feed your brand. That was the one we started in the prior year. And I made a subset of our podcast guest interviews and I set it up to follow this guest funnel format. It's not the first time I had explored it. I've certainly helped other clients do it. But the idea is, is that you are interviewing your ideal client. That way you can have a follow up conversation with them and potentially a sales call. And it's really meant for, I would say, High end products, services, coaching, things that involve a lot of connection in order to sell it. So it used to work really great for many, many podcasts. They were set up that way. And then it got to be a. I'm going to call it a roast exaggeration of what a guest funnel should look like. It's kind of like the nasty programmatic funnel is like, okay, let me see how many I can interview and squeeze into seven minutes so that I can have as many in the top of my funnel as possible. And that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about relationship building so that you can have a follow up sales conversation with your ideal client. That's what a really good podcast guest funnel looks like.

And some of the podcasters we work with, that is their entire purpose of their podcast. How many people listen to the show is really secondary. Right, right.

And keep in mind that it doesn't mean you're not serving your audience. It doesn't mean you're not serving your guests and providing them value. In fact, you need to have that structured in there. It just means that its ideal outcome is not necessarily a listener base. It's certainly not going to be advertisers. And it is just this model of I expect to either build a great relationship with my guest so that they become a referral partner or so that they become a client. So it's one of the two models that you might want to take. But it starts with understanding that that's what you're building. Your guesting strategy is truly a funnel. It's a very niche, narrow funnel and it's really specifically built to show off the relationships you can build and what you do best in the process, but showing it off in a way that is service based.

Well, that sounds great, Tracy. So how many points do you have to share with us in this guest funnel process?

Well, it's fairly easy. Look, there's a whole set of programmatic things. You need to be very organized with your system. Just like any funnel, you need to make sure you've got all your emails in order and you've got everything in order. So you want to think about all the different pieces and parts and make sure that you're extremely organized with your system. Because if you're doing this in an ad hoc way, it's going to come across badly to the potential guests, seem like you're not organized, seem like you're not professional. And that's not a good thing. And secondly, it's not going to be Targeted enough so you won't actually get a good return on investment from it. So you won't actually hit your target often if you do it in this sort of mixed bag way of pulling it together. That doesn't mean you can't start that way and refine as you go. But there are five basic parts that I use in my funnel. The first is making sure that I absolutely know my profile. It must be extremely targeted, very niche, very narrow. Tom and I have set as a preference and that's what it sounds like when we do it, but it's actually really dialed in. So we say you don't qualify for the binge factor if you haven't podcast 25 episodes or more, you don't do a weekly show. So it can't be seasonal, it can't be all of that. It must be longer than 30 minutes and you must be in that business to business model or business to consumer model. We don't really want to do interview a bunch of entertainment shows. Now one thing we don't say out there because it sounds insulting, but we won't take Spotify sponsored shows, we won't take wondry shows, but they don't really fit the model anyway, so they're unlikely to request to be interviewed. Now if someone comes through and it sounds interesting, I'll still interview them anyway. But most often what we set there just screens them out instantly because they're usually seasonal. So I've set that target really tightly. And Tom, doesn't that sound a little bit like our ideal client?

It does. How about that?

How about that?

Know your target. That's the big message for number one here is know your target. Right? And I'm actually surprised. I thought the criteria was more like 50 episodes. I didn't know you'd reduced it to 25.

Typically people won't apply when they're 25, but I do set that as like the minimum because I didn't want to have it be so overreaching that if, look, if somebody's really working hard on their show, working to get publicity and they find the binge factors website page where you can become a guest, apply to be a guest. I didn't want them to feel like it was so out of their reach. Now a lot of times it won't work. And I have a form that they have to fill out. And that's number two is really have a screening form, have something that is going through an application form, a screening form, something for people who are random. Have a booking calendar for someone you reach out to. So it's stage one, application form. Stage two, you approve them and they're the right fit and you send them to the booking calendar. So that's kind of a streamlined thing. So when they come through that form and they're only 25 episodes in, if there's a way we can support them and help them, I might send them to have an appraisal with you first before I allow them on the show. So it's just another stage of being able to bring some of the people through who might be a right fit, but it might also be a little too early for them yet. And we can then say, hey, thank you for touching base. You're not quite a right fit yet. Maybe you'd like to have an appraisal of your show. And when you've improved these things, then I'd love to have you back later. And that way we're still serving them, giving them something of value.

That makes sense. All right, I like it.

Now, the screening form, the application form, this is the thing. It cannot be a long form. Like, I am not going to say this enough. If you created this form that where it's extremely obvious that all you're doing is vetting them for your sales process, or you use the same form that you use for sales process, then you are failing in your ability to attract the right people. Because when you have this extremely long form, you're really busy. Clients who are willing to pay for coaching, who are willing to pay for those things, do not have time to fill out your long form. And if your form's not about your show and it's really only about sales stuff, like, what's your average income per year? Like, you're asking them stuff like that, then you're being very obvious to them that you only intend to sell them something and not serve them. And I would be shocked if you get the right people through that funnel. It doesn't happen often, so keep it short, keep it to the point. I've already set my criteria for what I'm looking for. So in it, I ask them your total number of episodes, just so that they have to type it in and confirm it. I asked them, where's your show? Do you have a website for your show that I didn't tell them I wanted at the beginning, but I want to see that now. It's not a screener to say, if you don't have a website, you're not going to be allowed to be on my show. But it does help me understand how Sophisticated and far along in the process. Are they what's missing? And it gives me one more place where I can go and check them out and make sure they're really, truly a right fit for our services for my show and make sure that they can do both. So I do ask them a couple of questions that are not a part of my criteria at the beginning, but it's very simple. I think there's seven things total, including their name and their email and their phone number. So there are four basic questions in there. That's it. And then they hit submit. It goes into my team. My team will do a quick screen through, and they'll usually give me a recommendation back. We should invite this person. Absolutely. Then they just do it. If they think we should invite them. If it's on the fence, they'll send it back to me and say, hey, should we send it to Tom for an appraisal of their show?

Or.

Or do you want to invite them on anyway? And we'll make that decision. So I only make the decision on the people in the bubble, on the edge of the bubble. That's it. So I don't have to do that much work.

That's really what a screening form is for. Right? I mean, that's the whole point. You're trying to make sure you're not spending your precious time on something that isn't really a good fit.

That's right. Now, if they're already a client or if a client refers someone to be on my show, they're automatically in. They just go straight to the guest booking form. We don't go through the screening form. It's just for cold outreach that that's there. So if I reach out to someone, if I send out an email offering it, or if I reach out to them in LinkedIn and offering it, we send them to the application because we do need to confirm and make sure.

So, Tracy, I'm realizing we need to do another episode upcoming, and I know some of our staff are listening to this, and so they need to make a note. And just for all of you to have something to look forward to, we need to do an episode where we go over the worst podcast guest pitches, because you get them, like, every week. And there are some epically bad ones.

Oh, my gosh, they're terrible. Right? So, yes, we don't do it that way, really. It's a much easier offer. And yes, we are maybe making them apply only if it's cold, but if it's a real. I'm reaching out to someone I know they want to be on the show. I, I'm never going to bother with that. I'm going to straight invite them to the guestbook form where they can go right to the calendar and get that. So those are my first two. We have a profile of who we're targeting, then we are screening them because it's a lot of cold outreach, right? So we want to screen them, make sure that it's right for them, and then we get in our podcast call. And my thing about it is, is those that do a pre screening call make a huge mistake. Again, if you do a proper job on your screening form, you do not need a pre screen call. But I have been on a lot of pre screen calls where all they try to do is sell you in that they have no intention of having you on the show. So now whenever someone tells me they have a pre screening call as a part of their process, I don't go on their show.

That's a waste of your time. You're not interested.

It's a waste of my time. So if you want really good CEOs of companies to come on your show, do not do pre screening calls. Use only the form because some assistant will fill that out or it'll go through the process and you'll just confirm everything and you're going to immediately invite them on and it'll get scheduled. So don't use a pre screening call. It's a waste of your time and theirs. And if you think that that's the only goal of your show, you haven't done my number three, which is serve them first. Because when you serve them first, the law of reciprocity kicks in and they will agree to the appraisal call, the sales call, whatever you have as a follow up. They're more likely to agree to it because you served them first.

Yeah, I find that a lot. I find it very surprising how many people that I will do a podcast power appraisal with, and this is for existing shows, not for people starting a new one, but when I get into showing them three to five key points about their podcast that they really didn't realize was holding them back or keeping them from being found or things like this, they're very shocked that I'm willing to just provide them that value and tell them sort of for free. But it's exactly what you said. You serve them first, you share your knowledge, you provide them value. They're interested to know whatever else you have to say or offer. It's just natural, right?

So two things happen. When I get on a phone call and I'm about to do an interview with someone, I spend five to ten minutes at the beginning chatting about their business, chatting about what I can't say, see and hear in their show because I need to understand a little bit more. I said, I think I'm hearing that this is your growth area, this is the outcome you look for on your podcast. This is its purpose. Am I correct? What would you like me to highlight? And I'm just having a discussion about them in their show. At the beginning of that, you're doing a lot more listening and pulling out of them what they want. And so then I have my interview. At the end of my interview, I, I say, wow, that was really great. We had a great time. I really enjoyed it when you said this. But, you know, you told me at the beginning that this is the outcome you're looking for. And I think there might be a couple of things, technical things in your show that are not helping you achieve that goal, that are holding you back. Would you be interested in having a follow up conversation with my partner about that? 99% of the time they say yes. Very few of them will say no. Right. Because they were like, you've intrigued me. You didn't tell me what it was. Right.

Really? This is the beginning of. It's our funnel, right. Is getting people from guests to have a conversation about being customers. Right.

But I only offer that if I think they're going to be receptive to it. If they're not going to be receptive to it, maybe they have a really big ego. Maybe there's something in there that is getting in the way of them being accepting that offer. And that's, like I said, probably 1%. Because that's just not who gets through my funnel to that point. If they weren't continually growing their show and wanting more input and seem like the kind of person who's already coachable. Right. That's who I look for when I'm trying to look for someone to be an ideal guest. And we built a rapport over the call. So what happens is the fourth thing on my list, which is before you sell them, you serve some more. So in the 99% that go over to Tom to have an appraisal, he serves them first before he ever sells them anything, before he ever has a single conversation. And usually they ask for the sales conversation in that call. Right, Tom? That's exactly how it happens.

They do. And that's intentional too. It's well so how do we work with you? That sort of naturally comes out.

That's what comes from it. Right. But for the 1% who I don't think are going to accept that appraisal or be receptive to it for some reason, my serving them more is by showing them what we do best. We send them follow up emails, we send them great graphics, we do all the things that we do for our own clients, we do for our own show. We do that complete professionalism all the way, throughout the way. And what usually happens with those 1% is on the outside. What will happen is they'll come back to me and they'll say, wow, I loved what you created here. How do I do this? And I'd say, would you like to have a call with my team and learn some more? We do this for our clients. You don't have to learn how to do it. And they will always say yes. Then at that point, if they've reached back out to me and asked me how we did this or why we did this or what this is for this, they will have a follow up call with the team at that point and they'll already be sold. They'll already be ready to move to the platform because they want that thing, they saw something they wanted.

That little point there. I just want to put a little emphasis on Tracy, because everything you're talking about throughout this whole process, all five of these things are leading to that, that whole process, the rapport you're building, the value you're providing, how you're serving them throughout, makes the sales conversation almost like, okay, how do we do it? How do we get started? And it's not a, do I trust you? Should I buy? You've already convinced them. Right?

And so then the last thing is, if they haven't come through the process at this point and they haven't offered to go to the appraisal or been interested in that, or gone to have a call with Tom already, then the last thing that I do at some point is serve them some more. I send them a great guest, I give them an episode or something that I think they might be of value. One of my masterclasses, I invite them in to take one of our courses or programs, including ones that are really expensive, but I invite them privately into those things. So I do give them something on the other side that's of tremendous value to them, something that I know that they need. It's very highly tailored. That's why it's not systematic. It's not. It doesn't go out in a generic email funnel and gives them that. But it is something very specific that I think will provide them great value and that invites them to become a part of my community. Now, I also invite them into these coaching calls. I invite them into other things that we do that's going out in the general follow up emails, but it's very generic like join our community, listen to our live streams. We have 101 tips over here. Go get that. Here's our masterclasses. Like I might give them very generically in any of the follow up emails that happen, but I'm not expecting that person to do that. I still want to do one more follow up with them because I'm building a relationship over time and I want to provide them something special that I believe that they're going to benefit if they utilize. And if they utilize that, whatever that might be. This video I sent them about how to do something special, if they utilize it, I know they will see success. And when they achieve that small step of success, they got a little boost in listeners from doing it. They will come back and become clients. And if for some reason they can't, because maybe they're stuck in a network or doing something, they refer someone who can become a client. And that's what we've done, is built a referral base at the same time that we built a client base.

Sounds like pretty good funnel to me.

I used to give a lecture on this, Tom, remember? And I called it the prospect pipeline because that's what I really want it to look like. I don't want it to be a funnel because a funnel like it ends up in your drink, in your pot. It ends up done right, like at the sale. That's not how it works. I want a pipeline that has constant flow. And so that's actually how I look at this. But funnels, the common terminology.

I hear you on that, Tracy. And this is additional free tip for all you podcast listeners out there having a title that is going to get attention, be engaging and be more clickable. Which one would be more in clickable? Talking about a podcast prospect pipeline. Although the alliteration is good, I think what's going to get people's attention more is a podcast funnel, because funnel is. So it's maybe a little cliche, but it is a buzzword in the small business and entrepreneurial community. Everybody knows what a funnel is. Everybody might say, what's a podcast? Prospect pipeline.

So when you have a captive audience at an event, so you're live at an event. And that's the title of your topic and your speech that you're going to give. That works. And that's what I've done before. It works, it packs the room because they do want to hear this new thing, this thing they haven't heard before. And so that works there, but it doesn't work in a self directed way. I'm searching on Google. I'm looking for how to create a podcast funnel that's not going to come through unless you're titling this episode the way that we did. Right. So that's also another reason why we do what we're doing. So the last key that I want to say, it's not one of my five steps, but your show name and your cover art may be the number one thing that prevents you from creating a good guest funnel. And I say this because I just gave a big speech to a community about how you decide whether or not a show is worth guesting on. And I did give them some tips on how to recognize if a show isn't for you. And the number one reason a show isn't for you is if it's all about me, the host. So if it's the Tracy show and it's got my picture all over it, you should not bother to guest on my show. You shouldn't, because it's really not about me at the end of the day. And it's really all about me at the end of the day and not about you, my guest. And that's a problem. Unless you really want associations.

If that's someone you really want to make sure that you can have a graphic from that interview with your face side by side with theirs, because that association is going to give you some value. Right?

Right. But that is a different model. You had to have worked really hard on your brand, on your image. And so, like, if I'm going to be on the Oprah Show, I totally want to do that. Right. Because she earned the right to be that powerhouse. And I would like association with that. That's great. But if you're just the Tracy show, like, who cares? What's in it for them? Your guest? So it will prevent you from getting the kind of guests that you're looking for, especially if you've got a guest funnel. So you want a really flattering name. So who doesn't want to be on the binge factor? Because that says that my show, my hosting style, has a binge factor. And that's a cool thing. We have another show, Masters and Clarity. Who doesn't want to be a master of clarity like that Sounds amazing, right? That shows a perfect name to invite really powerful guests on and turn it into a guest funnel at the end of the day. So thinking about the name of your show matters. If you're going to do a guest funnel, you can't just turn a me show into that.

Now Tracy, you mentioned to me after this event that you spoke at and at the time we're recording this, it was really only about a week ago when you did this. So it's fresh in our minds. I remember you told me most of the people were very receptive to what you had to say, but there was one person that wasn't and was kind of debating you as a polite way to put it, about having it be their face on the COVID at all about them. Can you share a little bit about that? I know it's not what you intended, but it's a good story maybe to wrap up this episode.

Yeah. So he was pushing back on me about branding himself in association with all of these other people. And I said that's just a different strategy. Right. And that's your strategy, but the guest strategy. And I was giving a speech about guesting and finding the right shows to guest on that guest. Until you've done all that work and built yourself up so that your brand is of significant value. So for me to want to be associated with. You're not going to attract the guests. You want to help build your show enough. It's self defeating in the early days and so it keeps your show small.

So if people are thinking about really the right types of shows, they want to be a guest on doing that, putting up that appearance that the show is all about you. The host might make a lot of people say nah. Next let me move on and look at these other ones that are clearly I can tell are more what I'm looking for, a better fit or whatever. It's not necessarily all about the host.

So Tom, just to wrap this up, what would you estimate the close rate? I'm going to say that I send you people from the binge factor and you keep in mind we do this as an exercise to show how it works. So we don't really do this as like a serious lead generator strategy. It just would be too. I'd be spending all my time interviewing people. It would take too much effort for me.

Yeah, I would say it's not our primary lead generator, but we do get customers from your guests on the benchfactor for sure.

I think we're probably heading close to because of our utilization of Pod Match as the front part of our funnel for finding people. And so I actually really rarely use the screening form. I usually just straight invite them through that model. So it cuts the excess out.

Well, when you've researched and found people and you do that about once a week, look at potential matches, right?

I do it about once a week. Exactly. But because of that, I think we're probably getting close to 60% who become clients.

I was going to say at least 50% for sure. Because I mean, you're talking about four people you are publishing interviews with a month, Right. Isn't that your pace in general?

I usually interview about six and so somewhere around there six and publish four.

Publish four. That's what I thought. There's definitely on average two people, two new customers a month that come from that.

Yes, usually two new customers and a referral like that's why I'm thinking it's a little bit more.

It's hard to sort of put a number on that. But you're right. I mean, it's shocking to me. I mean, referrals is our number one lead generator. People that know us, people that are working with us, and even people that used to work with us, that don't work with us anymore, still refer people to us. That usually happens when someone's just decided they've got a big enough internal team, they've gone to school on us and learned how to do it and they're just going to do it internally. And if you want to do that, by all means. But they don't want to do it for other people. So they still refer other people to us. Right. So it happens all the time. That always amazes me. It's like you're not even a customer and you're sending people to it. It's actually just happened. You sent us somebody yesterday that I just met with actually this morning when we're recording this that is likely to become a customer by the end of the day. We'll have to stay tuned and let you know next episode if that happened.

But it does work like that. And what it does is I would say you have less phone calls with them too because the relationship's already been built. So I would say you have like one or two. You don't have three or four.

Oh, often it's one meeting and they will close either that day or some follow up emails and then they close. Rarely do I actually have to have a second meeting or call with people that you're right.

This is another thing that I want you to think about. So not only have you created a rapport building process, but you've created touch points that decrease the sales process. Right? Decrease the amount of sales calls that you need to have and that has a value to your organization as well. So I highly recommend the podcast guest funnel strategy as one of a great things to be able to do. And now maybe you don't want to do it for every single episode. That's okay. Plan one a month, try it out, see what's working for you, and layer in return on investment value from your show.

Sounds great, Tracy. Okay. Hey, I just want to remind all our listeners so you're getting this a few weeks after we've put this out live on social media and as a part of our weekly client only coaching call. But now we're actually going to have a Q and A that is private only for our customers and we're not live streaming that. So if you would like to be a part of that, just need to be a podcast customer in some way. Whether that's simply for hosting your podcast or something more for production, there is more to the conversation that's going to happen here for those that are customers. But for the rest of you, thank you so much for listening. Hope you got some great value out of this episode. I'm actually be shocked if you didn't as long as you have guests and have any kind of a way that you're wanting to turn those guests into customers. But we'll be back with another great episode next time on feed.

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