Podcasts: A Lead Generation Gem
If you own a business or work in sales, you continuously think about lead generation. New leads mean potential new sales. And with any company, sales are the lifeblood to keep the business moving forward. With the internet and social media, there are several ways to generate leads for your business. Yet many companies and salespeople are sleeping on starting a podcast for lead generation.
Podcasts? My leads are busy running their businesses, working from home, or scrolling social media! Well, let's take a look at some podcast statistics:
- There are 800,00 podcasts and climbing.
- More and more people are listening to podcasts at work.
- According to Statista, there will be 164 million listeners by 2023
- About 74% of podcast listeners want to learn.
- Podcast listeners are high earners. 45% earn more than 75k in household income.
It's highly likely that your ideal lead is somewhere in these numbers. So you're missing out on a golden opportunity to position yourself as their podcast of choice. From there, you can turn your podcast from a trickle into a heavy faucet of leads flowing to your business.
Before I get into the heavy lifting of how podcasts can be great lead generators for your business think about it this way. Today millions of people are searching for a piece of content that can give them the information they are looking for. They want relevant content that fits their needs and sometimes they don't have the time to attend a seminar, webinar, or consume an entire book. By adding podcasts to your content strategy is an easy way to convert your listeners to leads. The more content you can create the more you will be looked at as an authority figure and trusted resource.
What Is Lead Generation?
A lead is anyone who expresses an interest in your product or service. Some may directly show interest in your product by calling your company or filling out a contact form. Others may stumble across your marketing material, social media content, blogs, or website. The goal of any Entrepreneur, Marketing Department, or Sales Team is to find these leads, get their attention, and convert as many as possible.
Lead generation is not what it was in the past.
“Sales is not about selling anymore. It's about building trust and educating,” according to Entrepreneur Siva Devaki You have to find ways to build trust and confidence before the customer opens their wallet.
The most basic form of lead generation is developing a marketing or sales funnel that someone can enter after submitting their email address. This can be any type of content format from checklists to private training. All of them can be attractive to your potential customer and leveraging a podcast to get them there is a great idea.
The Content Marketing Funnel
So then why can you use a podcast for lead generation? It's one of the many ways we consume content. Some people like reading long-form blogs, others watch YouTube videos. Some spend hours scrolling through social media. But some people prefer listening to podcasts. The average American spends an hour in the car and a great way to fill that time is with a podcast. Chances are, those people cover all other social media channels as well.
Podcasts make up one of the many forms of the Content Marketing Funnel.
The Content Marketing Funnel or Inbound Marketing Funnel consists of:
- Top Of the Funnel (TOFU): For example, Blogs, Social Media, Infographics, YouTube, and Podcasts.
- Middle Of the Funnel (MOFU): For example, eBooks, downloads, case studies, discounts, and FAQs.
- Bottom Of the Funnel (BOFU): For example, Demos, testimonials, and free trials
The more top-funnel content, the more you can attract your ideal customer. While it may be challenging to do all forms of content, it assures the business that it is not leaving any leads on the table. Either way the simplest way to get them into your funnel is by offering a middle-of-the-funnel offering after submitting an email address.
Setting Up A Podcast For Lead Generation
I'll assume if you're here, you have a podcast, or you're looking to start a podcast for lead generation. If you don't have a podcast, you can start one with as little as a smartphone and a headset with a microphone. The easiest way to start is with your mobile device. Check out this blog on how to start a podcast from your iPhone. But there may be some limitations. You can create a quality podcast setup for less than $500 . Setting up the podcast is the natural part. Now it's all about crafting the right product and taking the right actions to attract the correct lead.
If you're looking to start a podcast the best thing to do is start and have a listener persona in mind. Take time to understand exactly who you want to listen to your podcast. Is it geared towards business owners, sales professionals, or B2B marketers? Think of who you want to listen to your show and make every podcast episode directed towards them.
Create A Listener Persona
Whether or not you have an existing podcast, this is a critical part of the lead generation process. It's important to know who is the ideal listener, aka customer, you're trying to attract. If your content is not catered to your ideal audience, you'll waste precious time and resources. Remember the key is to turn listeners into leads with your content.
Take the time to sit and craft out your ideal customer. Make sure to answer questions like:
- Age, Sex, and Location
- Ideal Income
- Occupation/Business Type
- Types of content consumed.
- Purchasing behavior
Now you know the target market. The podcast content will be hyper-targeted to those who will most likely buy from you. The key is to have consumable content that your ideal buyer would be interested in.
Find Out Their Pain Points & Leverage Them.
We know who they are, but what are they struggling with right now? The goal of any business is to solve a customer's problem. The bigger the problem, the more money the business can make.
As mentioned before, the best way to generate leads is to build trust and educate. So we need to teach listeners how to solve the problem they are facing in our niche. Tools like Google Trends and Answer The Public shows the type of questions posed online to solve problems in your niche. Take those questions and pass them through a Keyword Search tool like UberSuggest to find which ones rank highest. These are digital marketing tools that help you identify actional information. If that's a little too technical subscribe to the blog below as I am always covering these topics and teaching how to reach your ideal customer.
With your list in hand, now it's time to create lead-generating content.
But how?
The goal of using a podcast as a lead generation source is to develop an inbound lead generation pipeline. This is when your ideal customer comes to you willing to buy. This allows you to turn leads to revenue. The podcast is only the beginning of the sales cycle by building trust and positioning you (the host) as the expert.
Create Content To Solve These Pain Points
Document the steps to solve the problems (preferably using your techniques, product, or service). The easiest way to get people interested is to position your product as the solution to their problem. You can give them all of the "secret sauce" but more often than not they want someone to do it for them. When starting your podcast there's no right or wrong podcast length. However, you should know that many listeners tend to abandon long podcasts.
Keep the episodes short and actionable, between 15 to 35 minutes. A 30-minute podcast is enough time to effectively cover the material in-depth and give them enough to take action without walking them through step by step droning on and on.
At the same time, inject some personality and fun into the content. People like to be informed and educated, but they love to be entertained! A simple way to do this is to invite a guest speaker to the show to keep things exciting. The podcast host should know enough about the topic to have a great in-depth conversation that keeps listeners wanting more.
Make sure to publish the content on as many podcast platforms as possible. Apple podcasts are by far the most commonly used platform but with other large players in the area like Spotify, Stitcher, and more it's better to cover as many as possible.
The Power of Call to Action & Podcast Lead Magnets
After you've solved the listener's problems on your podcast, you can't leave them hanging. Listeners will leave and go to the next podcast if you don't give them the next steps.
A Call To Action is a part of any content that encourages the consumption of the material to take action.
At the middle and end of the podcast episode, place a CTA, letting the listener know where to go to download more content or get more resources. This is how listeners can get to the middle of your funnel.
This could be in the form of a lead magnet, coupon, free coaching, training, or resource. Try mixing things up by adding different funds, CTAs, and lead magnets. Keep in mind not every show should be a sale. You want to position the CTA as a value add for the people who want to take it to the next level. Think of a cherry on top of ice cream. It's not the whole desert is just a little extra treat.
Make sure to set up your resources using an email marketing platform, landing page, or squeeze page. The goal is to get their email address with one of these in exchange for your resources.
You can even put a direct call to action with a link in the episode description to buy/download the product or service.
Since you've built trust that you can solve the issue, the listener will be more willing to take the next step.
Spend Time Promoting Your Content
You've created the podcasts, implemented the Call To Actions, and got potential leads. Now it's time to scale. Promotion is an essential part of Content Marketing and lead generation. Make sure to share your podcasts on your company website, social media platform, and email list. Encourage employees to share content on their profiles. Find similar podcasts and start outreach for guest interviews or joint venture opportunities. Guest posts are another way to create valuable content on someone else's website to help drive traffic back to your show. The right mix of content creation and promotion can significantly increase your lead generation efforts.
Repurpose Your Podcast For Maximum Reach
Podcasts are the content gift that keeps on giving. There are several ways to use the same content and serve multiple audiences. For instance, Lewis Howes records videos of his podcasts interviews that he shares on YouTube. Gary Vaynerchuck does the same, but he repurposes his podcast in blog posts, Instagram clips, Tweets, and LinkedIn posts.
How can you repurpose your podcast? A good starting point is to transcribe, optimize, and publish as blog posts on your company's website, linking your podcast within the blog post. Over time, you will receive organic traffic from Google, which will turn into leads.
How To Use Your Content To Generate Leads
After your show and you being to edit there are plenty of sound bites you can use for everything from social media to email blasts. You may not realize it because you were there but your audience and the prospective audience may find it incredibly valuable. If you're doing a video podcast leveraging platforms like TikTok is another way to have content that could go viral.
When you're recording your show you're going to cover tons of different topics. Some of those are going to be valuable to your ideal buyer. Maybe it's a statement from you or a guest on how services may work. Simply cutting out that content and posting it on your website is a great way to build confidence in buyers and remove potential buyer remorse.
How Podcast Appearances Can Generate New Leads
During this whole blog, we have spoken about how podcasting can be a great lead generator if you start one. What no one is talking about is being an expert guest on other people's shows. Just as you would invite someone to be on your show it's important to be a guest on other people's shows. This allows you to reach a new audience you never thought possible and attract more listeners to your show. Try to target shows with your ideal audience and who have great audio quality. It sounds silly but audio quality is important and with poor audio, no one listens. At the end of most shows when you're a guest the host will ask you to plug where people can find you. This is a great opportunity to mention your company, social media, and maybe even a call to action.
Start Your Podcast for Lead Generation Today.
Despite its effectiveness, few businesses think about using a podcast for lead generation. According to Hubspot, 18% more marketers are looking to add podcasting to their content marketing strategy.
Outbound lead generation is still an essential, necessary part of the sales process. When combined with inbound strategies like podcasting, businesses can blow their sales goals out of the water.
If you need help with podcasting, content marketing, or other forms of lead generation, connect with me here for more content straight to your inbox.
