How To Craft Compelling Calls-to-Action For Your Podcast

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works.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're going to talk about how to craft compelling calls to action in your podcasts. And I have to tell you folks, hang on. This is going to be a wild ride. We've got a lot of things to say about this, a lot of tips and examples, and this is going to be fun. I geek out on this topic. I really enjoy it and I think I want to start open up this episode just with one good example of what not to do. A good example of a lousy call to action that is very cliche in podcasts.

I also do want to start with excuse my voice, everyone. It's a little rough today, but hopefully Tom will be able to carry the conversation here. But the timing of these things matter as well. And a lot of these things that are like the ones that you're going to demo here, people put them right at the beginning.

Right at the beginning. I agree. Timing where when in your episode you have a call to action is critical and you're right, everybody often does it.

Up front because this one you're going to do is worse when it's at the beginning.

And it's all too often at the beginning. I hear this all the time. And believe me, guys, I meet with six to eight existing podcasters just about every day and I'm evaluating their podcast, giving them what I call a podcast power appraisal and letting them know where their opportunities lie, what they're doing well, what the gaps are so they can get more value out of their podcast. And I hear this all the time. People say, hey, thanks for joining me on the show today. Remember, if you like the show, please go subscribe and review. And that's the most common thing. It's the most common, cliche, boring call to action. It happens up front where they're first of all, asking people who are already listening to your podcast to subscribe is kind of a throwaway ask because they're already listening to a podcast most of the time on a podcast listening app. If they like it. They're going to subscribe anyway. It's easy for them to do right there. Asking them for that without some compelling good reason why or reward for doing it, it's really not going to help you. You're making yourself seem desperate right up front in the beginning of the episode. And one big message I want to send everybody is don't be desperate. You've got a show, you've got a compelling message. You are an expert in your field or you wouldn't be doing it. Don't make this plea. Don't make it sound like, Would you please subscribe to my podcast? Because I'd really like you too. I mean, oh my gosh, I just, I can't stand to hear that.

Yeah, especially in the beginning. It really is the wrong time for you. You haven't delivered anything yet.

Provide value first. The subscriptions and the reviews are going to come. If people like your show, they're going to go and do it now. I'm not saying you can never make an ask or have a call to action for people to give you a rating or a review. There are ways to do that. Especially if you really need some and you have a brand new show, there are ways to do it. There are just better and more creative ways to do it and more effective. That's more important ways to do it. So anyway, that's just a little example of a all too often used and a poor call to action. But Tracy's right. Timing is critical and one of our biggest tips is choose the timing carefully. I'll give you sort of an example.

This is no different than us mentioning this for advertisements. So we did a whole episode on this recently where we were talking about the post. We call it the post roll position of advertising in the last third of your show is what we're saying here. But it's even better if you finish the major content and you're just about to do like your closing thoughts or whatever. That's the perfect time to do a call to action.

I agree it's somewhere in the latter third of the episode. Certainly the latter half provide value first. And I don't understand what it is about podcasters. And some of it, I'm sure, is a lack of awareness. Honestly, my kids are notorious for choosing the worst timing in the world to ask them or their father for something that they really want because it's important to them. They want to ask you about it right now, even if it's just the absolute worst time of day. And I'm going to say to no to whatever you ask me right now because I'm not receptive to anything new. It's kind of like bugs that can't stay away from the light. They're drawn to the light. My kids are always doing that with asking. And I think that podcast rookie podcasters especially think, well, this is really important. I want to get more subscribers. I got to ask about it right in the beginning.

There's like a term out here that people have been using called an askhole. And that's what happens when you ask too soon, when you're always asking. Your listeners are not there for you to do that to. Your listeners are there so that they can build some trust with you. And that's not a way to build trust. And they're not receptive until they've received some information. They've decided if you're worthy of them to subscribing and coming back for more. Also, your first episode is not a place to ask. Keep that in mind. It's not only the timing within the episode, but which episode you're asking in. Your first episode is not a place to ask.

What I also want to make sure all of you hear me saying right now is that we're not saying don't have calls to action right now. We're being kind of negative. We're saying we're giving examples of what not to do. We're going to get to what to do. That's very effective. And the biggest one of those is, hey, you're a podcaster. You have a podcast, you have a platform 100%. You should be making a request, having a call to action for something in your episodes. Yes, I agree with Tracy. Not in the first episode, maybe not in the first three, but pretty quickly, you absolutely should have a call to action. Even if you don't have anything major that you need right now. There is an aspect of having calls to action to engage with your audience, to communicate with them, to get them to reach out and communicate with you. Even if you're not selling anything necessarily. Maybe you don't have a specific ask, just create one that is meaningful to get that listener off of that listening app and to communicate with you. Maybe just to trade their name, phone number and email for something free of value you're going to give them. Because guess what? We don't know who our listeners are when they're staying in that listening app.

Right? We want to get them to take an action. That's the whole point of a call to action is to take an action. Because we want to test out the activity level, the action taking level of our audience. We want to see how much action we've earned. We want to do this throughout our show, throughout the many, many episodes we do. We want to have test different types of calls to action. In the beginning you're not going to get much. You're going to get a little bit of like, I'd love some feedback, maybe a rate and review. Maybe there's a follow me on Instagram, follow me like my channel on YouTube. I'm trying to grow my channel. Could you help me out? Some of those things are okay, ass, but they're forcing an action and that's important. And they're forcing a connection between you and that listener because if they follow you on Instagram, you now know who they are. So it is helping you in terms of making those connections. But we want to keep it simple. We want to keep it action oriented and simple. But as we grow, we see more and more action. Tom and I, our podcast in 3D printing had a hundred thousand listeners a month. Here's the key. We could get them to do what we asked them to do. We found out through testing Calls to action that 37% of our audience would go download something. They would give us an email, an address, even a phone number. Like they would go deep in. That's really high. When you have an action oriented audience who's really listening and ready to do what you're telling them to do, that's awesome value. Now you're really an influencer now. You're not just passively giving them your content.

Absolutely. That was so on point, Tracy. And we're getting to the point where we're now getting into some specific tips for calls to action. Okay. And first of all, any of you can do this, whether it's episode 4, 5, 6 or episode 356. Okay? You all can do this and all should be and start to condition that audience. What I want to say about calls to action is you should make a single call to action at one time. Ask for one thing, not two or three things. Or asking people to do this or that, it's just going to confuse them and message sent will not be message received. A single call to action that is either a request or an offer for something. It could even be you asking a question. And for me, when you do this, you want to know what's the specific action you're asking them to take. If you're going to ask them a question, how are they going to Answer you. Where are you telling them to go? And answer. Okay. And it could be on a social media page. They could be shouting out to you on, like Tracy said, Instagram or LinkedIn, or connecting with you on LinkedIn is one thing. Or sending you a message through there. But I'm always a bigger fan of all roads leading back to your podcast website. Now, there are exceptions and reasons why you might send someone somewhere else. Okay. But you want to give them a specific place to go and make it easy for them to do it. So I want you to think a little bit about how you might do that and we'll make a few suggestions.

Yes, I want to clarify what Tom's saying here is that the. Where you communicate with them, where they can get more information, where that is happening. The where is really important. Make it one place. If you're going to say DM me on social, direct message me on social, that's okay. Because then they can pick their social. They're going to hear that and they're going to go, I'm on Twitter, so I'm doing it on Twitter. Or I'm on Instagram, so I'm doing it on Instagram. That's an okay thing to say, is to DM me. But you're getting them to take the action by doing a direct message. That's the actual where. Doesn't have to be the social platform. But if you want to test and use your CTAs, your calls to action as research. Where's my audience? One episode, ask them to message you on Instagram or comment on Instagram. The next one, try Facebook, try LinkedIn. Do it different in each one and start to see where your audience responds to it. You might find out you have tons of LinkedIn listeners who are happy to message you there. And because you invited them there, they heard us. Very specific where, call to action that matched them. That's why we want to test out some of the where's as you're doing this.

I agree with that, Tracy. We do want to test them out. And I'm going to do one right now. That's an example. Now, this is a. We're recording this live and those people that are out watching on LinkedIn or where are we, Facebook and YouTube, at least I believe are going to hear this. First, the podcasters, those of you listening to this as a podcast, it's a couple weeks later. And I'm going to use this to illustrate a very important point for calls to action. Okay? Because this is going to be in the Live forever. Because it's live and I'm not going to edit this CTA out of that recording that's going to live on, let's just say LinkedIn. But right now I'm going to say, hey, those of you that are existing podcasters out there listening to us especially or watching us live on social media, I conduct a webinar tomorrow at 1:00pm Eastern that is about the three podcast promotion tactics that are going to get you more listeners now and continue to get you more listeners on a regular basis. And you can go to Podties co register to sign up for that webinar. Okay, so that's one kind of call to action. Now, it's kind of complex because I read you a web URL and that's like, you gotta remember that you gotta write it down. Are you gonna spell it right? Might not have the best chance of success.

And that one was harder because it doesn't match where the podcast is located. It's not a match to it. It was poditized cat instead of potato.com.

Or Podcasters United is really where we are.

Right.org right podcasters united.org it's not a match necessarily. And so when that happens, you really have to reiterate.

You do.

You're going to have to repeat that multiple times to make it sink into someone's head. You may have to mention again at the end, oh, don't forget, I mentioned my Q and A session tomorrow. You're not going to want to miss it at Potatoes Co register, do it again. Because it's complex and this is going to happen, especially if you're making affiliate calls to action and things like that. But the issue is, is if it's not relevant, it's not going to work for you. This is relevant to our audience of all podcast people out there, people who are looking to get on podcasts, I mean, who are looking to promote their podcasts, are the right audience for us. The listeners are a match to that call to action. You're more likely to get a response to that if it was something totally unrelated. It's going to be a fraction of your audience and you're going to have made your entire audience listen to it. The relevance factor matters.

The interesting part about that call to action is that the reason that I felt I needed to recite the web URL is for those people that are watching it live. Because those of you listening to this as a podcast on your favorite listening app, all you have to do is go into the description of this episode and that link is right there. You can just click it and go register.

And it's better if you have a landing page or you have something that you're going to send people to. So when we're thinking about the instructions of what we're going to have them do is like, look, if you want to book a call with Tom, go to the website potatoes.com and there's an inquire button right up at the top, or book a call button right up at the top. Super easy for someone to just find that. All they have to do is know the website. Because it's your normal website that you use with your podcast if it's not your normal website. Like, if you're doing something in an affiliate, you want to send them to the website and make a very clear section for it. So if it's like, it's the website slash affiliates, go to the affiliates button, go to the affiliates tab, the menu item. Like, make it very clear that they can find it there as well if they can't remember what you said.

I also want to point out that I'm a huge fan of putting the link in the description of the episode, because that's going to be there whenever anybody listens. If this were a podcast recording only and I wasn't going live, I wouldn't even bothered with Potatoes Co register. I just would have said, hey, go to the link as you're listening to this episode right there, or even if you're watching it on YouTube after the fact, that link will be in the description of the YouTube video. It's going to be in the description of the podcast. It's super easy. And whenever anybody is listening to you and they scroll down in their app and they look at that description, they see that link. Click here to register for that live session or whatever it may say. They can click it and it'll open up a browser window. And guess what? They're still listening to your podcast. It didn't take them away from it. That's really important to understand. People can take action while they're listening, right?

And I want to be really clear here. What we're saying is that it also needs to match your language. So when Tom says that this is Potatoes Co register, the URL that you use should match that. Now it's going to forward that forwards to some complex zoom registration link. If you have some complexity that it's forwarding to and you don't want to have that forwarding happen, which you should, because you should be tracking it. So you should Be knowing that it's hitting there. That means it came from my call to action on my podcast episode. Like you should make it so that it matches so you can track it as it's happening. But when you do that, you want it to match everywhere or they'll think they're clicking the wrong thing or that you're spamming them or that's a risky link to to click. You want to either hide it so that it's matching to the language. Three podcast promotion tactics that work Q and A session and then it's a hidden link that's you just click the text and it goes out to it. If you can do that, you want to do it on the podcast description, the YouTube description and in your blog post for it. We like to put the calls to action way down at the bottom on bullet points. So while it's in in the language of when we said it within the podcast, it's also down at the bottom in a quick and easy links to find and you can do it that way. But everything should match in the way that it looks to the way that you said it that they are clear that was what they were looking for.

And there's a reason why. Obviously zoom registration links are these incredibly long complex links. But that's not really the reason why I create a forwarding URL of potatoes co register and I even have some variations on that because I will run multiple webinars at different times and have different email campaigns for them or social media campaigns on LinkedIn for people to sign up to these things. But I just told you I'm running a session tomorrow and it's true, I am from when I'm recording this live. So the podcast people are going to hear this a couple weeks later like well, damn it, I'm out of luck. Well, guess what, you're not. Because I run these things pretty regularly every week to new groups of people and I always update that forwarding URL that forward slash register to the next one. As soon as I finish it, it's going to the next one. So that when anybody clicks it, whether it's from hearing this podcast or looking at the description or they got an email. Because I also do email outreach about this stuff and put it on LinkedIn and LinkedIn messenger. Whenever anybody gets to it and clicks it, they're not going to get to a dead webinar link, they are getting to the next one. That's going to happen. That is super critical and also just.

If you are not going to run it again and again and again, like Tom does, you can run to a recording of it that's also something as you can forward to a final seller. Sorry, you missed it. Here's the recording, though. We don't happen to record those webinars, and so it doesn't have that model. We just don't do it that way. But he does have a closing what you missed page that he could send people to. So there's always something that you can be forwarding them to. And this is where I think a lot of podcasters make huge mistakes, Tom, because 60% of your listens may come from your back catalog, meaning, well after you aired that episode. So it's time. Relevance is outdated. This is how we invented pas de ties. Like, I mean, we didn't want calls to action. We didn't want advertisements. We didn't want messages that were out of date and unable to be accessed by someone who listens to the podcast a year later. Because when somebody finds her show, we want them to be able to make sure that they can access the tools, access this, be really clear, use those forwarding URLs, do that really regularly. And if you feel like, well, I may not do this again, then make it a call to action that tells them to go to the blog post where you can update it regularly. You can send them someplace new. If they don't find it there, it's so easy for them to, like, contact you and message you and say, hey, where's this thing you referred to? It's going to be easier for them to access it that way. So be thinking about this being relevant far into the future.

Awesome. Yes, very important. And we're going to come back to another application of that in podcasting in a minute. But I want to run down a lot of potential CTAs, because I'm sure there are some podcasters out there thinking, I don't know what I have. I don't have anything that I want to share with them. I don't have anything that I feel like I need to ask them. I'm telling you, you do, and you want to figure it out. Just believe it. Start believing it. Because if you don't believe it, it's not going to come across cross when you make the ask or you deliver it. Okay, there's always a reason. Maybe you want to find out how many of my listeners out there are men versus women. I really don't know. And I'm curious to know, would you be willing to go to this page and just reach out to me. And again, this could be a DMing you on a social platform if you want, or you can have a little page on your website where they can submit a contact form or something just to say hey, if you're willing. I'm just curious how many men are how many are men and how many are women. And I'll give you an example. I did this recently and I do this in my live webinars, but I also do it sometimes in email in advance, just trying to get people to respond. I haven't even told them there's a live session coming up, they're going to be in. It's like, I'm just curious with all of us podcasters out there, how many of you are also recording and publishing your full length episodes as video? And I asked that question. I'll do it in a live webinar and just get people to comment and everybody comments. You ask them a question, they're a part of it, they're feeling a part of it and are contributing. You can make it a formal poll or you can just ask a simple question and get them to answer it in the chat or respond to an email or to DM you on social. Those are a couple of simple things.

Some of the social media platforms allow you to pin a poll, so you can also do that there so it's pinned to your profile. So if they're going to find you and then you pin a pulse like those are things that you can take advantage of and test out. Now I do say this, but it may not be available to everyone if you don't have like creator mode turned on or something like that. So it may not be available to every Instagrammer or every LinkedIn profile, but so some of those tools aren't there, but take advantage of them if they are, use them and mention them. Those are great ways to get feedback coming through. And it doesn't feel, as I'm going to say, as salesy or funnelly, like is that a word? It doesn't feel as much like I'm going to end up in a funnel. If I go to LinkedIn to do something, it feels like something that feels much more normal, much more connective, engagement, invitation oriented. The other feels like you're taking my information. That's really. We also want to make things that are light and easy for them to take action on and doesn't feel like a heavy lift yet, especially to somebody who's new to you, your favorite audience members, like the people who come back for more. They're going to reach out to you anyway. They're going to do what you say. It's going to happen. We're not going to worry about those. We're worried about the new people, the people who are new to you to take action to let us get to know them better.

Other examples, CTAs. I see people doing this all the time on social, not so much in podcasts. I think it actually would be better in podcasts. But some people, they're going to create something new in their business and they're trying to name it and they'll kind of crowdsource naming it. Hey, guys, I've got these three names. Which one do you think? Now, I'm not a fan of doing that personally, because I have all these people. I give three different answers. I'm going to get pretty much so many different answers as to which one is the best. It's not really going to inform me of which one I should choose. I believe that. But if you have something you want to pull your audience or crowdsource them, ask them, hey, I'm considering one of these three names for something. I'm curious what you all think as the listeners of the show. And again, you're going to need to have a place to send them where they're going to answer, but solicit that answer. I know.

So that one's not my favorite, Tom. Because it's like rooted in time that it's going to get outdated fast.

Let's talk about that.

Timeless opportunities are better option. More evergreen kind of calls to action are better, but also ones with a sense of urgency.

I like that too, Tom.

You created a sense of urgency when you were telling them to register because it's tomorrow. It's going to occur tomorrow. That is useful as well. So if I can get them to take urgent action, that's good. And then if they take the action late and they missed it, I've sent them somewhere to tell them what they do now that they missed it. Now, I've created something that is timeless and urgent at the same time.

But I said that for a reason, Tracy. It is grounded in time. And that's true. It would age out of relevance. If somebody listens to this podcast six months from now, that may not be relevant anymore. Well, when you're recording something live like we are. Yeah, I'm stuck. I just did that. That's true. But in a podcast, when we have a really important call to action that is gonna be grounded at a time. Hey, Tracy, you're gonna be Giving a virtual keynote at this virtual event. Or maybe you're gonna be speaking in an in person live event and you want to let people know, hey, there's a call to action. You all can get a discounted ticket for this event if you go to this landing page and sign up and use this code. Those are great calls to action. You can take advantage of the differences. We don't want to have those permanently in our episodes forever. We record those as a separate little recording. That is a promotion. Think of it as an ad, okay? A call to action. That is a mini little MP3 file that's 30 seconds long that does not have to be edited into your episode permanently. That can go into your episodes. Certainly when you're hosted on Poditize, we have a system that does just that. They can put it in for a period of time and take it out when it's over. And then anybody listening to that episode in the future won't hear it. Or better yet, they hear the next current, most important relevant call to action. That has not happened yet.

This is how Tom and I invented the ad mixing system on our platform. Because in our 3D print podcast we were offering a mentorship contest and it was going to be a month long contest. People had to send us information. They had to apply like it was a big deal we had.

And boy, that was great. CTA to get people to reach out to you and provide their info too. Even the application of that. Right.

And we had 20 episodes we did in a month. We had lots of calls to action that were happening there and we were doing it throughout that month. Well, when I went back to our editor, our audio editor at the time. Cause there was no video back in those days when we first did that podcast, who's now our son in law. But I asked him if he would edit out those. Because once I realized the contest was over and we made the announcement about it, I was like, gosh, they're in everything and I don't know that I want to keep them in these episodes. He said, it's going to cost you just as much to edit them out as to put them in in the first place. And I went, there's no way. I'm too cheap for that. And so I said, tom, let's figure out a way to do this. And then Tom and another partner we had at the time came up with this great method for ad mixing. That's what we still use today, that concept. Because it was an irrelevant call to action that was set in time that is no longer relevant to the audience and the listener base. And we didn't want to have Christmas ads in July when we're not running a Christmas sale. That's one of the reasons we did this. It works really well to do that. And I'm a fan of doing this. And even if it's not something anchored in time, but if it's something associated with an affiliation or a partner, a joint venture, I'm going to encourage you to use an ad mixing system like ours to do that. Because too often we have seen affiliate partners that you no longer want to be associated with because they do something that they shouldn't have done, get themselves.

In some hot water or just go out of business. It could be right.

And now you don't want that association in your podcast anymore. And your only other choice is to delete your episode, have it manually edited and replaced. And most often when you do that, you break all your statistics. I apologize. We have a way to do that that doesn't. But other companies, when you upload a brand new audio file, you completely break and lose all your statistics. It'll be the same case if you load up a YouTube video and now edited it out. That old YouTube video, all its statistics, everything that went with it is gone. Putting these ads in a separated spot is our solution to this. To make sure that that doesn't happen. It's critically important for you to do this with affiliations, timely or time sensitive advertisements, promotions, calls to action. Hey Tom, we need to start wrapping this up because we've gone along on our calls to action. And I just have a couple of things I want to make people aware of and thinking about. Because I write a lot of copy, I write a lot of calls to action, write a lot of scripts here. One thing that you want to remember is what it looks like in writing isn't what it sounds like when you speak it. If you're doing a call to action, test it out by speaking it, record it, maybe listen back to it and go, oh yeah, that's not a good idea. Like, do not just read it without listening to it. Okay, that's my first important point.

Definitely listen to yourself, hear it, the way you deliver it, the level of energy. Is it gonna. Does it sound compelling or does it sound like you were giving a little book report in elementary school and it.

But is it concise and clear too? Like it's going to come across? Did it sound right? Is what we really need to do. So we want to close our eyes, listen to it and Go. Oh, yeah, that sounded totally confusing. Be clear about that. We want to use strong action verbs then to take action. So we need to use strong action verbs. Download, Join, share, claim, Support. I love claim, by the way, because that's a really timely thing. It's like it's going to run out of them. Right. Claim your spot. It's going to be gone. Support, Connect, Follow, Access, Subscribe. Yeah, okay. Rate, review. Like those are things. They're typical terms. Only use it when you're talking about that because it gets confusing to podcast listeners if you're using subscribe to something else. Attend, upgrade, snag, seize, act now. Those are some action words you can really, really use. And then don't forget about the most important thing about a call to action, which is what's in it for me, the audience member. Right. Is there a benefit?

What's in it for them? Thank you. Yes.

If the benefit is, I get your email address, that's your benefit, not theirs.

Right. What's the reward? This comes in. What is the reward for. For the person for taking action. And it doesn't have to be something that costs you any money. It can be something that you do once and gets delivered to everybody who takes that action. There are different levels of rewards, but what's the reward? Okay. And that will motivate people to go trade their name, phone number and email to get that reward. And sometimes it can be just as simple. In the beginning, in the early days, solicit a response from your audience, engage them, make them feel like they're a part of your community, they're a part of the show because you're speaking to them. Speak to them. But yeah, eventually you want to think about the rewards, especially the ones that are more complex. Calls to action. We're asking of them.

Yeah, always be thinking the word relevant. Is this the relevant time for this? Is this relevant to my audience? Is this relevant to the content that I already provide here? Because you're not going to get a good response rate if it's not in line with the content that you're already giving them or the type of show you have. Is it the relevant time? Is it the right time to be giving this call to action? Always be thinking about that. It's going to really be the term that you want to use that is going to help you decide whether or not this is right for you. Is it a right fit? Is it relevant? I don't know if we can go on much more on this time, so let's stop right here and wrap this up.

All right. Well, hey, thanks for listening everyone. Remember, we're going to have the links to everything we talked about today on the blog post of this episode@podcasters united.org now that is a new URL. We have moved the podcast from where it always used to be to podcasters united.org and again, we've been doing this live. If you're out there live, you're seeing it on LinkedIn or somewhere. Hey, there is more information for you on podcastreasonited.org so check that out.

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