Seven Minute Marketing: How Short Podcast Episodes Can Attract Binge Listeners With Tom Poland, Host of Marketing the Invisible

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all noise with the Binge Factor.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Binge Factor. I'm Traci Hazzard and I've got another podcaster for you. I've got this one coming from around the world. We're now going international with our podcast interviews and I just love that. So I'm so excited to bring to you Marketing the Invisible, the host of Marketing the Invisible, Tom Poland. Tom is a multiple best selling author. I've got one of his books right here, Inbound Marketing Book. We'll have to talk about that on the show as well. He works with professionals and marketing with marketing services, advice software. He has clients in 27 cities and 15 time zones. I think you're just as exhausted as I am. He has personally started and sold multiple businesses including having led teams of over 100 people and revenue in excess of 20 million. He's spoken on global speaking platforms alongside Brian tracy, Marshall Goldsmith, Dr. Ivan Meisner, Michael Port and many others. And he describes himself as a voluntary, as voluntarily married and lives on the white sands of Castaways beach in Queensland, Australia. So thanks Tom for joining me. What time is it there?

You're very welcome. It's just gone 8am on Friday morning. This is why I'm into my second.

You're into your coffee. I'm post lunch here. So we're doing well. Well, you have a such an unusual formatted show that I want to do something different here. Normally we get into, you know, who you are, why you started podcasting and all of that here, but we're going to jump straight in because your format is seven questions in seven minutes and that's unusual and I wanted to highlight that. So we're going to jump into my five Things, My best ways and we're going to jump right into that and then we'll get back to talking about why you formatted your show this way. So we right here on the Binge Factor talk about the best ways, the lessons learned from podcasting on the best ways to do these five things. What is one of the what are some of the best ways you found.

To Book great guests, get referrals from other guests. That's the number one way. And I can also get referrals from other guests to other hosts. Cunning little strategies that I have is that before I let my guests go, I say, hey, you know, I'd love to do some cross referrals. You've probably been on the shows that were great, and you probably know other guests and I know other hosts. Why don't we circle back in a week or two and explore that?

I love that. So you'll follow up later, which is great because it gives you a chance to have a more lengthy conversation.

Just a couple of things there. First of all, we book the time before they leave that call. So before they hang up the zoom receiver, we book it in. So I have a URL explorejv.com and they can go there and I can do a screen share. But it's really critical to book that before they disappear because otherwise it just falls between the cracks and they're busy and we're busy, we don't do it. So it's booked. Then second reason for booking another time is that the second time you meet someone, they're suddenly a friend. There's just some powerful psychology about that, is like, hey, Tom, how you doing, man? And the first time was, hello, Tom. You know, and so by having that second meeting, by being a little bit patient, the rapport levels established at a very, very deep level, and it's so much easier just playing bang, bang, bang bang. Whereas the first time, you know, often they're just a little bit tense.

Yeah, well, and now you're relationship building, which is such a key to growth in your business. So I love that.

And that's the beautiful thing about podcasts, is your relationship building, but it's fun and it interesting. And I say to all my clients, for God's sake, you know, this is. I mean, technically, sure, there's some hurdles for you, but this is just going to be something you love to do.

I'm so glad you said that because I agree. I was like, why would you want to market all the hard way? This is so much more fun. Yeah, absolutely. Well, what are some of the best ways to increase listeners?

Well, one of the things we do is that when we book the guest, we ask them how they'll promote the show and whether it's social media, whether it's an email list. We don't say they have to do it any which way at all, but they make that commitment before when they're enthusiastic. And so when we send out the, that we send an email out to say, hey, your appearance is, you know, being released and we do social media assets and you know, all that sort of stuff. We remind them, oh, by the way, you had mentioned you're going to promote it. So we drive the traffic back to our landing page with our featured and then there's a pop up window with a free giveaway. So that's how we increase subscribers from the show. In terms of how we. What was the question?

Increase listeners?

Listeners, I have no idea. I just have. I don't know. That's a terrible answer. But I just. We get the show out there and people share it and I don't know because, I mean, we might come back to this, but the reason I started podcasts was because I learned from smart people like you that one of the big things about podcasting is the building of the relationship with the guests. Right.

So it's not the primary goal. I love that. We'll talk about that a little later then. So how do you produce it in a professional way?

I get someone like you to do it.

I mean, most people who are like me that enjoy having guests on the show and enjoying that repartee, like what we're doing right now and so on are not great. Technically, you know, the people person, I call them dogs and cats, you know, so dogs love interviewing people, they love talking, they love sharing, they get excited, enthusiastic, run around barking with the tails, wagon, cats will sit back and other detail and technical people. So I just, you know, I just say to every, every one of my clients is going to run a podcast for goodness sake. Outsource the production, outsource the distribution, outsource the social media sharing assets and find someone like Potter Size to do all that stuff for you. And I know I don't want this.

It's not, you know what, this is the thing. Like I just want everybody to realize right here, like I literally just met Tom as a client. Like I didn't know I have an.

Affiliate, I don't have an affiliate connection or anything like that. I'm not getting kickback. I'm just saying this is reality. But do what you do, do what you were born to do, which is probably interviewing people and having fun and spreading the word and leave the technical stuff to the cats. Cause dogs should not try and meow. It's.

I love that I was sort of sitting back and remembering that my daughter used to have this TV show where there was this cat, dog or dog cat. I don't know, it Was both at the same time. It was this cartoon when she was a teenager. And it's coming into my head is like. And I might be that one where I can flip back and forth and do one in each. But it's very rare and unusual and people should.

It is ra. About 1 in 50, I can tell you I've been talking about cats and dogs for decades now, and I've written about two different personality types, and in broad terms, it's very true. But about 1 in 50 are what I call a dog cat. And yeah, they make some of the best clients and they make some of the best entrepreneurs because they can see the big picture. There are people perched and they can relate to people, but they also okay with the technical side. Very rare. So if you're One of the 49 out of the other 50 like me, for goodness sake, get politicized on your side. Dictate a Latin nightmare out of your. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Well, the next one is, do you encourage engagement in your community and how do you do it?

I look absolutely totally stuck at that because it requires persistence and routine and it requires responding to people. And so, you know, I just. Well, I just don't do it. But we do get it done and people can contact us and I'll always respond to every email, but I'm just. I go and chase bigger shiny things, I suppose.

But you're encouraging the engagement back with the guests, so you're encouraging it on the relationship in the other way.

Well, we always give people a means to reach out if they want to do that. But, you know, the primary purpose of our podcast exercises to establish that relationship with the guest who's a key influencer. And secondary, we want to give good, quality content to our list, our email list, because that's really our gold mine. That's our most valuable asset at Leadsology is our email subscriber list. And thirdly, and there's probably a distant third, is how many people download the thing, how many people listen, how many people share it, and so on. So the whole engagement thing is something I would love to do, but I gotta find me a cat to do that because I just know I'll. The thing about a dog trying to meow is that even if you do it, it's not gonna sound good and you won't keep doing it because it's not your inclination. So. But creating a community around it would be stupendous.

So I suspect on my fifth thing here, it's the best way to monetize you're monetizing your show from that mining of your leads, your leads ology list as you refer to it, and your mining of your list, your mining of the relationships with the influencer. So it's what I would call alternative mon. But how is that working out for you?

Incredibly well. You know, it's a very short line in my brain between action and result. I'm not good at going around corners and being secure to. So the whole content marketing thing, I don't get it.

But you're doing it.

Well, I kind of am, I suppose. But the route is. So what we do with a guest is we run them through an algorithm before we get them onto the show. And I know this sounds a bit.

See, that sounds very cat to me.

Dog does. So I didn't build the algorithm. I hired data scientists, two data scientists. And they worked on this for like six months, so. And it's pretty cool. So we can. We can. So I have a data miner in the Philippines who I pay, you know, modest, I think, $7 an hour, plus she gets a monthly bonus of $25 for every interview that was conducted. But the interviewees have to get through the algorithm and the algorithm tells me what sort of JV partner they're likely to turn out to be. So the guests coming on the show, we already know they run webinars or they have a free giveaway that's quite valuable. We've checked the content out. We think it's pretty good quality. We've got a pretty good idea what their email sizes and how responsive it is because of our algorithm. So they come through the algorithm identified by the data miner in the Philippines. I don't do any of this. They go through the algorithm, they pass the test. I give them a green light to our data miner in the Philippines who then sends the invitations to the show. So the guests that are on the show, not all of them, because some of them are just fun to interview and they've got a great message and that's exciting for me too. But most of the guests on the show have been carefully pre selected and screened because we know they're going to make a great JV partner. Wow.

So there you go. There's that alternative monetization. See out there, listeners to the binge factor. This is what we keep talking about is there are so many different ways to look at the value in your podcast, to look at the value, how that, what that adds to your business and this is what's valuable to you. So let's talk about that, because you are an inbound marketing, you are an expert in generating leads, you're an expert in mining those leads. How did you make this decision that you were like going to start a podcast accidentally?

So what we did is we launched this massive online magazine. You know, where you get the tablet and you flick through it and the pages rustle as you go through and they curl over and there's glossy photos and there's links everywhere. And I thought this, this will be a great lead generation. And incidentally, yes, I do specialize inbound lead gen, but I have to tell you, nine out of 10 things that I've tried have failed miserably. And this is one of them. So we put a lot of money, a lot of time and I had a publisher and an editor and we got contributors, marketing contributors, who again, my thing was, let's establish a relationship with people who are key influencers. Let's get them contributing to this online magazine. Let's make it amazing. We ran this thing for six months and we had lots of downloads and we had lots of subscribers. But in terms of a direct marketing mechanism, it was absolutely failed miserably. And man, getting people to submit articles is like herding cats. Talking about cats. The deadline's coming up. We don't have your article. Yeah, I'll get it to you tomorrow, I promise. And they don't. So it was, you know, putting a magazine together. I don't know if anyone else is listening. If you, if you have done that, you know, it's, it's.

I wrote a column for four, for almost five years for Inc Magazine and yeah, and submitting six articles a month. There would be this nasty message at the end of every month to be like, you all have a deadline and you're not meeting it. Like there would be this. And then everybody would post on the last day of the month, right?

And they get the frickin magazine out and sign up a bottle of wine and go, thank God that issue is out and it all starts again.

Yeah, my big tip, my big tip out there was if you want to be featured in a magazine, go the last week of the month and give it to a writer practically pre written and you'll be covered in no time. Right.

Because the deadline's there. So what happened? I said the podcast came about by accident. So, so basically getting a whole lot of articles from a whole lot of people all around the world and put it was, it was a freaking nightmare and it wasn't producing the results. So then I thought, well, I Wonder what would happen if we had. If I started a podcast. And this is way back when podcasts had kind of almost died out. You know, we're talking maybe.

Yeah, they had that little dip there.

Yeah, yeah, they went boom and all of a sudden didn't hear anything. And people went broke or trying to make money out of podcasts. And now last few years of massive resurgence for all the right reasons. So anyhow, so way back then I thought, well, what if I actually interviewed someone? So I started a podcast and hey, you know, all the authors of these articles turned up on time. And then it evolved from there. And I figured out, well, all these people are coming on the podcast because they want to be seen, they want to be heard, they want to get the message out. They could make good JV partners. So then I started exploring that and we developed what I called the bridging question, which was we finished the interview, the same meeting, would say, hey, I wonder if you want to have a conversation about how we could grow each other's email list.

And they'd go, yeah, yeah, like that's everybody's problem.

So yes, because what good marketing does is it puts an offer in front of someone who's already looking for that offer. Right. So we just. But the problem is if you emailed them and said, hey, do you want to have a conversation about going email us? They go, tom who I didn't know you. I get spammer get away. But by getting them on the show. And then the next stage was carefully pre selecting them and then the next stage was the algorithm. So it's evolved over quite a few years and now we've got this really nice streamlined system. But where I don't initiate, and that's the other key for dogs, is don't initiate anything that requires data mining or detail or appointment setting because you should be barking, not meowing. So go to upwork.com which is the, to me best platform for finding freelancers because they have all these things called filters and you can just find the creme de la creme at the best price. Give them a look after them, give them a decent monthly bonus and you get someone to give them a checklist for who you're looking for of a guest. We have the whole algorithm thing, but you know, you don't have to start with that and get them finding the guests and get them reaching out and just do the interview and then give it to Potter ties to make money out of it.

We'll figure out the rest. So you've got like 180 episodes, something like that. There are six each.

I actually started doing this in 1995.

So you have before and then you have the current catalog.

Exactly right. This is the third iteration. In 1995, we'd hire a recording studio. You know, we'd walk past the rooms, the rock bands in it, smoking their dope and whatever they were crack or whatever they're on. And we'd, you know, go to our suit and tie and do this interview with someone, a business leader. So we started. We weren't podcasts back then. They were originally on eight tracks.

They were.

Oh, I'm ashamed to admit that almost, but. And then CDs, and then of course, podcasts came along. And one day I remember sitting there thinking, I don't think I need the studio anymore. It was like 500 bucks to hire a studio for one hour.

Yeah, you really don't, do you?

But, yeah, Marketing the Invisible is the third iteration. Before that, we had business owners marketing brief or the bomb. So we used to send out thousands of emails around every week saying, here's your bomb. Which probably, you know, was not a good look in terms of 9, 11, and so on. But before that it was called Success University. So this is the third iteration, Marketing the invisible.

Yeah. You know, and I think you see you've got a very different format. You do your. Just. So you guys all need to subscribe. This is the one thing that I keep telling you every time you're on the show, listeners out there, you need to subscribe to it, take a listen, get a sense of what's going on, because he's doing something interesting. But then you're also going to go through all his episode lists and go, I need to learn that. I need to learn that. And I can learn that in seven minutes.

Yeah.

And so that's really fantastic. So you do your intro right, with the guests there, and they kind of like, you know, give you a little bit of feedback. Did I get that right? And then you go straight into your. Into your seven questions and you tell them the time sometimes when you're on it. So you're like, you have. You have five minutes left.

That's right before every question. I give them how many minutes we got left? So, you know, question number three, four half minutes left. And then might be question number seven, last question, 30 seconds left.

And some of them kind of like go like 10 seconds. I don't know what to say in the interview.

That's part of the. Part of the gimmick, I suppose, is that Normally there's a countdown timer on the screen underneath the guest and it's counting down. So you can see, you know, the tension is building. Are they going to make it? But we cut the interview, whether they're in.

Yeah. You have a big buzzer at the end.

Yeah. And they're still talking. I go, that's it, you're over.

So. But to make it easy, because I'm at the core, I'm. Some people would describe me as lazy, but I don't think it is lazy. I just like efficiency. So we get them, we give them the questions when they book. We asked them to nominate a title and put how to in front of it. And then at the end, in just seven minutes, you know how to generate more leads through Instagram or whatever in just seven minutes. So that's always the title format. And we asked to nominate the landing page so we can drive some traffic back to the website. Because that's. That's. We want to. We want to invoke the law of psychological reciprocity, where we do something cool for them, apart from get them on a show, drive some traffic, whatever we can. I always say to them, you know, might only be a few people, might be a couple hundred, I don't know. But we'll do what we can. So that's all set up. So when they come to the interview, they know what the questions are, I know what the title is, I've got their bio, we've got the landing page. It takes like three minutes to do a sound check, confirm everything, and then the interview starts. And the interview itself, I start real fast as a 3, 2, 1. Hello, everyone. A very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing Invisible. I'm Tom Poland and my guest today is Tracy Hazard. Tracy, G'. Day. Very warm welcome. Where are you hanging out? So it's really fast and we don't fluff around with the weather or. How was that? You know, how were the Rangers on the weekend? Didn't they suck or whatever? It's just boom, straight into it. So the whole interview, including the intro, is like nine minutes. We're done. And the book for half an hour, so we've got some space left. Talk about JVs or cross marketing or whatever.

Yeah. So that's wonderful. And, you know, I think that, you know, just that in and of itself, there is a. There's repetitiveness and then there's comfort factor. Right. And you tread that fine line between it. This is your binge factor that you don't head into repetitiveness sometimes when People do the same questions week after week after week, week. Like I do my five things right, that it can become so repetitive that it becomes boring and uninteresting to the listener. But the time factor that you've created, that intensity of time, that speed round, that kind of that passion that comes across, because I'm like, I'm on the clock. I have to answer this. That's what's treaded it, to remove it away from being boring and repetitive. And that's your key. That's why it's working. Because I've seen a lot of people do the same questions again and again. But it is your intense scrutiny on that time and that pressure of the time on the guest that is your definite binge factor.

I think you're on the money, honey. I hadn't realized that. But now that you pointed out what a clever guy I am.

That's right. You know, may have. Wow, yay me. So often, the binge factor here, someone will go, yeah, I did that on purpose. Sure, yeah. You know, it's okay if it wasn't carefully constructed, but that's what comes across. And the other thing is that I think, you know, especially in marketing, I say this again and again. Marketers have the attention span of a gnat. They have. No, they cannot. They need something short. There is. There are. I. Very often I counsel clients and say, you cannot have a short format. No matter how many people tell you they want you under 10 minute videos like that won't work for your audience, but for your audience, it's perfect. And I half imagine, and you might be horrified at this, but I half imagine there's a very large portion of your audience who's also listening to it on 1 1/2 to 2 times speed.

Amazing.

You are prime for pod fasters, right?

Pod fasters. Oh, that's clever too.

Yeah. So anyway, that kind of makes sense. Yeah, it does, right?

This is like going to the doctors and seeing an X ray of your bone.

There you go.

Holy crap. That's. That's inside there. Really? You're like, you're like a radiographer.

There you go. I'm the radiographer of podcasters. There you go. I love it. Well, so you've been podcasting long enough now that some fun things, some interesting things, and maybe some not so fun things have happened to you. You have some funny, interesting stories.

One of the things about podcasting is I can do it from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world, of course. And I'm an introvert, so I Mean, I come alive for interviews and talks and things like that, but other than that, I mean, my wife's in Germany for a month right now, right? She's visiting a sick mom and so on. And I won't answer the phone in case someone calls me and says, oh, Tom, you're home alone, come over for dinner. No, I don't want to do that.

I don't want anybody to invite me.

So what I'm leading up to is that the oops moments, the retake moments, are when the courier knocks on the door with a sledgehammer in the middle of an interview.

And my dog not expecting anyone.

Yeah, my dog is taking exception to that and starts barking and runs out, knocks over the vase with the flower. So it's like gone from this really fast paced interview and with three and a half minutes and we got two and a half minutes left and all mayhem breaks loose in the middle of the interview. One of those moments I try and avoid, you know, scheduling. It's curious. And with Amazon delivering every other day, and I do all my shopping from home, all my clothes are bought online and, you know, I mean, I don't get out much.

You know, even the extroverts here, like my daughters, say this all the time. Mom, where'd you get that? Well, I'm a busy person. I bought it on Amazon, I had it delivered to us, you know, Right. What do you think? Where do you think I got it from?

Right?

So it's not an introvert thing, let.

Me tell you that, mom, it's called the Internet, right?

We use it all the time. So anyway. Well, that's good. You know, those things happen to all of us, right? It doesn't matter how seasoned we are. You can't control everything.

I mean, these sorts of things have happened so many times. And you know what technology is like, right? So in addition to the fact that I occasionally, if I schedule something for the Monday morning and I never work Sunday morning and I miss a meeting or something stupid like that, but technology sometimes goes AWOL on you and you can't get upset about it. You can't sort of be so wanting to be perfect that, you know, your world comes crashing down around you. If you let a guest down, they'll get it. I mean, any experienced guest on a podcast show understands it's not like turning up to the local cafe. You know, there's technology involved.

Yeah, everyone here knows my story, that I finally get to interview Gary Vee and I have zero recording from that. The technology failed, but it Failed so badly that Tom and I turned it into a product. So like, you know, there has to be something good out of it here. So. But those things happen to all of us. So I'm so glad you said that because, you know, even, even in a recording studio, those things happen. I've hired professionals and they have.

Yeah, that's true, that's true.

Have you had, I'm going to call it an increase in authority. So, you know, best selling author. Right, we were talking about that. Before you get bestselling author, has there been anything that sort of that authority raising thing that has come out of your podcast?

Well, that's a great question and I don't know the answer to it and I wish I could say yes, you know, I'm now, you know, a household name or something, but I don't know, you're probably better qualified to answer that because I'm the guy on the inside of my brain and I find it quite hard to look, you know, get that helicopter view.

Have you gotten maybe more speaking events and everything? You've been speaking all over the place. So has that happened?

I get the odd invitation, but most, they want me to fly for 27 hours and I go, nah, you know.

That'S a little too hard.

500 gigs and if it's, you know, if someone wants to fly me a business class and have someone meet with the airport and, you know, then I'd probably go, yes. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant because it's the right opportunity. I would say yes, but I just don't want to do this whole thing where I fly to Dallas and it's 27 hours and you get 20 minutes on stage and you pay for yourself. So if someone's going to look after me as a speaker, I'll certainly do that. I had an invitation to go and speak at the National Speakers association in the uk. So I'll probably look at that because that's a really fun crowd.

National speakers, sounds fun.

They are all. It's kind of like going to a comedy club, you know, and mixing with the guys and gals that, that are sick enough to stand behind the microphone and try and get a laugh. You know, NSA is a sort of a cross between that and a dog show. I don't know if you've listened to a dog show, but poodles are all dressed up and so it's a bit of a fashion event, but they're fun as well. So I love that, like that, that are just kind of interesting. But yeah, like I Mean, we need to have probably someone like you to actually get us do what else you could do. Yes, because, because, because, you know, it's like number three on the list of mentioned before. It's, it's the relationship, it's adding value to our subscribers. Number three is, is getting it actually listened to.

Yeah. So, you know, I want to, I want to talk a little bit about that because you're an expert in this. So you called as I was, you know, skimming your book. I didn't have enough time. I just got it this weekend, so I haven't had time to read it all the way. I do like to read Arrive on Our Doorstep, but I'm skimming some of it and taking a look at some things. And you have this sort of analysis of our audiences here and whether it's your email list or your audience in general that you have, 3% of people are Seekers. They're out there, look, they're looking for something, they're ready to jump. They take action quickly. And I agree with you. I love to have like that point and I usually put it right up at the top of the landing page. It says like, like, you know, if you just want this done for you, click here. Like, you know, like that's the secret. Give them the way out. Right. Give them the way right out. And I like to put a place in for that because they're not going to read the whole thing. Then you have Explorers and I forgot what the third one was called.

Wanderers.

Wanderers, yes. There you go. And so you have that kind of model of it. Are we seeing a shift though, in that sort of. You had 3%, 12% and then the remaining 85. So are you starting to see a shift happen? Are we getting. Because email marketing and a lot of these marketing meetings are getting so noisy. Like, are we starting to see a degration in that sort of percentage?

I'm not sure about the percentages, but what's working for one of those segments, the Seekers? And you absolutely hit the nail on the head. Way back when, I mean, 35 years ago when I did direct marketing, we would send out 10,000 letters, long form letters, like 12 pages long. Because we were sending them out to people that we did not know from Adam and we had to convince them that coming to the seminar or this workshop was a great idea, even though they were never thinking about it. They hadn't heard of us. Long form sales copy worked really well for Wanderers and it worked really well for Explorers and it didn't work also for Seekers. Because they're not going to read 23 pages. So. But a bit of work really well. And then what happened is people, people go, why have you got like, on your website, your, your, about your program, it's got like 25 pages, 25 screens. Who wants that? Well, actually, the seekers. Sorry, the explorers want it. They want to dive deep and have a read. But, but you got to cater for the, for the seekers who just want to. How the freaking heck do I buy, you know, how do I sign up, how do I join? So having that at the top of the page, like you've got it. That's for the seekers. That's for the 3%. So what the seekers will tolerate has diminished rapidly over the years. So, you know, with our JV program, if I'm going to reach out to a JV partner, they're not going to get more than like a very short benefit, rich subject line and maybe two very short sentences with an explicit call to action. So. And when we send out even our email list, you know, there's 22,000 subscribers. As time of recording this, we're going to have in the subject line there's one of three and some curly brackets. So it gets their attention inside the webinar because we're promoting someone's webinar or it's give, because we're promoting someone's landing page. And what's the other one coming? Oh, mti, the interview Podcast. Seven Minute interview. So they know immediately what format it is. Is it a giveaway, is it a webinar or is it a podcast? And then there's a benefit after that. Because when you talk about how things have changed, in the old days, curiosity used to drag people in. You'd have a, you know, does this apply to you? Question mark and you go, oh, what if it applies to me? I have a read of the email and then you end up three pages later, you figure out what it's all about. People don't do that anymore. They go, subject line, delete. Subject line, delete. Subject line, delete. They're not even reading the body of the text. We know from our open rates, they've gone from 25% down to 23%, down to 19% down to 14%. So open rates are falling. We know from webinars we used to have, well, ours is still at 41%, but because we do some tricky things. But we started at 40% attendance rates, and even live events used to be 67% attendance rates, even when people paid for only two thirds of show up webinars 40% and then 25% and then 12% and then 8%. Just horrendous.

We had one like that where I give the same talk all the time on stages and I. And usually it over runs the room. Like they'll plan on a breakout room and they'll, they'll be standing room only. So like I know that this talk converts and I know that it like gets people. And we did that, we ran a webinar and the show up rate was so dismal and I was like, what the heck happened here? Like, you know, a hundred people signed up and then, you know, practically nobody showed. Like, what's going on?

So with the trick with webinars, you've got to be explicit and take the crap that the odd person dishes out and say there will be no replay in caps, like you're shouting it. There will be no replay live only. And so by doing that and by finding it 4pm Eastern as the sweet spot. Wednesday, 4pm Eastern is the sweet spot. We get 41% attendance rate.

I love that. See, you just gave us some secrets here. Now that's the thing is on your show we don't get a lot of you because your Rapid Fire 7 question about all we get of you, is there more of you on your website?

Yeah, there's a fair bit more. Leadsology Guru is the main website. If. Yeah, I don't know what, where do you, I mean my bio is there.

But no, no, no, I just mean like look, you've got some hard, interesting data, hard won information, things that failed.

Right.

Where do you get, where do we access you for that? Do you have that?

The really best source of the skinny and all this and all the tips and how, you know, used AVs and webinars and everything else is in marketing. So people go to Amazon, go to books and search for inbound marketing. They'll find my bright, my bright yellow book. We're thinking of, yeah, doing that with a free pair of sunglasses, maybe like nuclear yellow. So that that is really is. And it's like, you know, we're going to keep it the Kindle version at like a dollar while we're doing our launch. So for the next month or so it'll be a dollar and then the paperback will go to $12 and the Kindle go to $12 because we'd rather people buy the paperback. Then it sits around, you know, on the desk and it's brought yellow.

It reminds them to read it. Yes, exactly. So I know this one jumped to the top of my pile. Not just because you just sent it to me, but because it's so bright. So there was some smart moves there as well. But see, that's great. So you do have a way for people to get, you know, to get to some of your thoughts. So, because that's what we find with podcasting is that audiences want more of you, the host, and you don't give a lot of that because you've got your really short segments. So somewhere else we want to get that.

So the other, the other place, if they want to have a conversation, 15 minutes. But you know, let's talk and see if I've got something they want. There's ineedinbound.com they can go to ineedinbound.com so we give people different resources and we can satisfy the seekers and the explorers and the wanderers. Right. So there's a couple there. There's the website, there's the book, there's the consult.

So I take it you've tried a lot of things over the years and you'd mentioned that you'd tried a bunch that failed.

Right.

And we all do on Monday nights, Juliet Clark and I, who's another podcast host, we dish about what's not working in marketing. Usually it's what's not working. And so we talk about stuff that we've tried, stuff that our clients have tried and like, and we dish about some of the stuff that you guys are doing. Like you guys are wasting your time on. Like, we just. We've got an episode coming up on Chatbots and we're watching it go horrendously bad right now. Right.

I'm sure you're all, we're all cringing on the other end. And you, and, and you have like, you have your, you know, you even mentioned it in the, in here that you've got like the two simple LinkedIn things that you could do, like the two messages. And you know, that's way simple compared to the chatbot. Like, I'm serious, that one of our clients has done like a hundred messages. Like, it's all programmed. Like, it's crazy. Um, and so like the episode's gonna be called Bots Gone Wild, because that's really what it is here. But you probably got lots of these things as well. And you know, I, you mentioned five day challenges and some of these other things. Are there other things besides the show up rate and webinars that's like not doing well right now? That's really just. You're starting to See failure happen.

Chapter two of my book and about marketing book lists 16 marketing methods you may have tried and why they haven't worked.

There you go.

Mostly they don't work because I'll tell you why 97% of marketing methods fail. My estimation, after 39 years of being a sales and marketing expert and trying lots of things that don't work, my conclusion is 97% of marketing efforts fail for one simple reason, which is people don't want to do it.

They don't want to do the hard work.

No, it's like a dog trying to meow. Well, it's not the hard work.

Oh, you're talking about the person on the other end doesn't want it.

Well, no, no, I'm talking about the marketer. So here's what happens. Typical scenario, someone goes to a one day seminar on Facebook advertising and funnels and they go, holy cow, this would be a dream. You know, I set these funnels up and I can just lie on the beach and let all the money wash over my beautiful body. What's not to love about that? It's like the holy grail of marketing is I don't do anything and I get clients coming out of it. Wow. So they come back, but they've heard about tripwires and segmentation and autoresponders and split testing and colors and titles and they wake up the next morning and they go, yeah, I should really do those funnel things. You know, I should do that. And the moment you hear yourself going, I should, you are going to fail because one of three things is going to happen. You're going to start it and stop it because you don't really want to do it and it hurts your head because you're a dog and you're not cat. If you're a cat. You should do funnels by the way. But most, by the way, most of the people teaching funnels, this applies almost universally. People are really successful at funnels that are telling you you should do funnels. They have like 12 PhDs, people locked in a room figuring all this stuff out for them every single fricking day and they're spending like 60 grand a month on us. I know because I'm in the mastermind group with some of them. So little old me sitting here on castaways beach going to do funnel side of things. So you start and you stop it or you'll start it and you do it inconsistently and only when the money runs out or you'll never start it at all are the three Scenarios that come out of I should versus I want. Now, if there's a marketing myth like podcasts, I want to do podcasts. So guess what? I do them.

That's right. You show up.

Whatever you do, regularly enough, you get pretty good at. But the starter fluid, the ignition is, I want to do this thing.

Yeah. Such wise words, Tom. I can't even tell you.

Other than that most marketing methods fail because they're too expensive, they're too complicated, or they're ineffective. And there's 16 of them in chapter two.

That's right. And so I can't wait to read it, and I will be one who reads it. So, you know, this is. You're so pointing out, though, that's exactly how I ended up in podcasting business and out of design. Out of the design business. Right? Because we. I wanted to do it. We wanted to do it. Right. And because we're detail people and because I. Because Tom balances me out. My Tom balances me out. Yeah, you've met my Tom. So he's definitely a cat.

Right?

And he's got all those things right. The systems fell into place, and all of those things happened for us. And so then other people were like, can you just do this for me? That's literally how it happened. And you know, and so. And it eclipsed our regular business to the point of like, why are we still doing this design business?

Yeah, you two make a great team because you got a dog and a cat, and that's always the best. I mean, I surround myself with cats.

And we have a. And we have a 55 cat team. Thank goodness, you know? Yeah. So thank goodness we've got a big team like that. We do. We have lots of kittens and we have our office puppy on top of it all who manages to interrupt our recordings now and again. So. But, Tom, I. Any. Any last parting words for someone who's on that fence of they want to start a podcast, but they haven't pulled the trigger yet.

Jesus. What can I say? Okay, go to upwork. First of all, do a checklist of who you're looking for in a guest. Second thing, get calendar time, tag whatever, find a booking link and set that up. Number three, go to upwork. Find a Filipino contractor to take the checklist and use the link and reach out and book some guests. Then you're committed.

Then you have to do it. You have to show up.

You have to do it. You've got guestbook and never confused as an all sale of marketing in consultancy. Never confuse, promise with delivery. So get committed. It's the same if you're going to do a webinar, build a program. I mean, the number of people that sit around on their ass, pardon me, for years going, I've got to build a program. I got to build a program. Look, sell the fricking thing and then build it, okay? I mean, if nothing else, there's no point in building it and then figuring out no one wants to buy it. So sell it, get some cash in, and then build the thing, have a start date of, say, the first of next month or whatever it is. So. So that's what I'd say is get yourself thoroughly committed, because go through the pain and the stress of whatever you have to go through mentally, the fear of failure and everything else, which we all go through, and just fricking do it. But get yourself committed, because then it will happen. When you've got guests booked in, it will happen.

I love that. Well, thank you, Tom. So glad you came on the show. So glad we got to talk about marketing the Invisible and your unusual binge factor of seven questions in seven minutes.

I appreciate the opportunity. It's been a hell of a lot of fun. Thanks for making it fun.

So I told you everyone, this was going to be an exciting episode. I mean, thinking about doing something short form, tight, intense, creating a binge factor that way, the way Tom Poland has here. That's an incredible model to follow if it's the right audience for you. And Tom clearly knows his audience, and that's what I really want to point out here. Tom Holland is an absolute expert at understanding his audience and understanding the psychological mindset behind them of what drives them to buy, to consume, to convert. Right? All of those things matter in the process, and he's got that dialed in. That's why he's an inbound marketing expert. That's why he's an expert on generating leads, and that's why he's utilized his podcast in a very, very different way to make it lead generating for him. And remember, he's not really generating those leads from listeners as much as he is from his guests. A very different model of alternative monetization, but one that is going to be so valuable to many, many of you out there, because less than 2% of podcasts make money off of their podcast itself from that sort of listener and advertising sponsorship side. So keep in mind, the 98% of you out there, Tom's found a great model that really works for him and works for his business, and he wants to do it, as he pointed out. So take a good listen to Marketing the Invisible with Tom Polin. Subscribe Listen. There's tons of episodes on there that are going to help you figure out how to market your show because there's lots of great nuggets in those seven minutes every single week. So take a listen to that one as well. And if you would like to be featured on the show, don't forget you got to reach out@thebingefactor.com and fill out our form and see if you qualify as a guest. I also am always looking for suggestions, so if you have great podcasters you listen to, suggest them up and you can email us there as well. You can find us everywhere on social media. Edyourbrand we're still @ the old at the feeder brand because we're a part of Feed your Brand. You can also find us@potatoes.com anywhere you want to search for us. You'll be able to find us, but this the blog post for this episode will be@thebingefactor.com I'll be back next week with another model for you to format as well. Take.

Care.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and video casting, success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feedback your Brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.