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In this episode of the Confessions Of A B2B Marketer, Tom & Sam discuss how podcasts can be used as a B2B growth tool... and how you can tart and grow one that will have a real impact on top-line revenue.
🎧 Have a listen to Tom & Sam as they discuss their experiences & give you incredibly valuable tips, tools, and insights that you can utilize, to skyrocket your own sales & biz! - In this episode we cover:
👉 The 3 things marketers do wrong when starting a podcast – and how to make sure to avoid them!
👉 The key steps to creating a revenue-generating podcast
👉 How to measure a podcast and get a 10x ROI from your show
👉 The secret sauce to flawless podcast promotion to increase listenership
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If you were to get like one to 200 probably new followers in a 48 hour period just after you launch your show, you would most probably get into the top 10 in the UK or in the US in the marketing category. But the beauty is we then use that as social proof as we're going out.
Tom, welcome to the show Square. How you doing? I'm very good. Thank you, Sam. How. Not too bad my friend. Not too bad for a Friday afternoon. Gearing up for the weekend and looking forward to what's hopefully gonna be a interesting podcast. We're gonna be talking all about how our audience can start their own podcast.
That's actually gonna make them real money, real revenue, real cash in the bank. So, um, first and foremost, Tom, I thought podcast was like a really flooded market these days. Isn't it really hard to drive, to drive revenue? Yeah, you're totally right. I think to understand the, the flooded market question I find quite interesting because I, Yeah, I would totally agree.
More people are starting podcasts, but the market, if that's actually not the metric, if the combination of two metrics, which is how many podcasts there are and how many people that are listening. And so for, for it to be flooded, that ratio of number of podcasts, the number of listeners has to change. And I'm not sure if it is because yes, more people are starting podcast sports and more people are listening to podcasts.
And so I would maybe disagree with the premise of the question, but we can still talk about how even if the market was flooded and you're not gonna get that many listeners for your show, you can still make money from it. So we can dig into that, which may be what we're, what we're gonna be talking about.
Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to get actionable and so you can help everyone kind of position their podcast. Like you say, it's not necessary to worry about those metrics, but to worry about how it's actually gonna be a useful resource and get them revenue. So are we saying that podcasts are still worth doing today?
I think if I was a head of marketing at a b Tob company and we didn't have. Podcast, I would start one, but it wouldn't be for the reason that most of the audience, or you might be thinking now, Sam. Okay. The reason, the number one reason for me as the marketer, for me, the head of marketer, head of marketing.
Would be to actually learn about these people that we're trying to sell to. Now, this actually happened in 2019. I was head of marketing at a B2B SaaS company and I joined, and you know when you, Well, marketers may, when you join, you have to understand who the customer personas are and then like. Create your strategy of how you're gonna sell to these people.
I saw this new type of person I thought we should sell to. We sold sales software and this person was sales operations. I was like, these are the perfect buyers. Um, but they wasn't really focused for the company, and so no one really knew about 'em apart from this one sales guy called Henry. So me and Henry were like, Why don't we start a podcast focused on sales operations?
Because if I, I was just reaching out to these people trying to get 'em on a call with me so I could learn about. Obviously they ignored me, but when we said, Hey, would you like to come on Sales Ops Demystified, which was the name of the show, and suddenly we had customers coming into our office to get interviewed.
This is before Covid. Um, and I then went on to host 150 episodes of this podcast. Right. And so my like sales of knowledge, I, I've never done the role, but I think it's like, Significant and I feel like now I could sell to a sales op person much more effectively. So I think that's like the hidden benefit of a podcast that can make it profitable.
Got it. So you went from like almost a new in the area to being an industry expert just by running podcast. Yeah, and like industry expert. But then like the other benefit, and we can talk about this as well, if I became like famous in the sales op world, I'd go to like sales events in London and then there'll either be someone I'd interviewed or someone in sales ops who like listen to the show.
So that has like power when people know you and you don't know them, you have this kind of status over them, which makes it easier to sell. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's interesting. I mean, let's, let's jump into it. Let's talk about some of the key, key benefits, some of the key reasons, and you've split a few there of why it is, cuz I'm sure when, and I've talked to a lot of kind of marketers, business owners, you name it.
Giving them recommendations of starting a podcast, but a lot, I think a lot of common issues I hear, and you can raise them as well, Tom is, is gonna take a lot of time, it's gonna take a lot of resources, um, it's gonna take a lot of energy and these kind of things, but perhaps we should address those with what the pluses are and then maybe we can talk about kind of how you, how you, how you go about it in a smart way.
Yeah. So I, I like to break down the ROI from a podcast, from the guest side and the listener. And so we focus, Well, most people think they're gonna start a podcast. They're gonna be Joe Rogan in like three months because they're projecting they're gonna get the ROI from the massive audience base. They're gonna build on the listen side.
Even if their show is just about even like a tiny part of sales operation, it's not even that niche, right? And that's just unrealistic. But what actually happens, and what happened in the sales ops example is in the short term, we're actually more. More likely to derive an ROI from their guest side. So I'll jump back into the SalesLoft story.
So we'd done about 10 interviews, like things were going quite well, very like low, low level production, but I was learning about our guest persona and then they were sharing on LinkedIn. So we were getting a little bit of social engagement. We also put every, this is good for you guys. We also put every episode on our blog, so we're getting a little bit of inbound seo.
Yep. And. Something magical happened and the VP of sales Ops, I can't say the name of the company, but it's a BT sales company everyone knows, came on the show, did a great interview, and then randomly got chatting with the CEO of that company, My employer after that, and then four months later, bought all of their sales team, 180 few sales people, our sales software, and so that gave like a nine to 10 x ROI on all the time and money we spent on the podcast.
So then obviously the business was like very happy with the show and they were like, double down, make more frequent. And so now that wasn't the initial intention. But what happens when you are like actually learning about people? That could be a buyers building those relationships, The good things will happen in the future, whether that's through partnerships or through customers, right?
And so you can't pitch your guests, but you can build relationships with people. If they need your thing in the future, they may come to you or if they would be a good partner, they could be. And so that's in the short term okay. Is where we look to the roi. And this is so important because you're not gonna get the ROI from the listener side unless you are consistent for like six to 12 months.
Mm. So this why it's so important to look for the roi, because you get the cfo, he, he's never gonna cut the podcast budget if you have like two people in the sales pipeline from it in the first three months or. . Gotcha, gotcha. And I think I made a similar mistake as well when I started this podcast is PR purely because I didn't have the expertise or the knowledge that I thought, yeah, listeners are the way to go.
I need to maximize listeners, promote the heck outta the show in any, any means possible. Whether that's email, social media, paid ads, getting guests to promote it, when in fact, like you say, Tom, it's actually pretty difficult from my experience anyway, to build up that listenership fast. Um, so what you're saying there is an interesting approach.
So are you recommending people that are new to podcast folks on what you've just described there? So actually interview their ideal fit clients, learn about those as the starting. So easy to learn and then also to build relationships. And if you're happy just running the show for those two benefits, amazing.
Mm-hmm. , then the listener stuff can come a bit later. And at the same time, you're creating a load of content that you can use for your other purposes. So that is what I recommend. I would actually say that. A podcast is not a good way of building an audience. It's an incredible way of building a relationship with an existing audience.
So if you're looking to get like more brand awareness or attention fast, then I'd probably look at other strategies like maybe like potentially even just an email newsletter. Um, and then like LinkedIn organic posting, that combination would probably work best. And then after six months, when you've got like three K people on the email list, when you've got up to like five, 10 K followers on LinkedIn, you'd want your podcast then, um, you're actually gonna, like, you should be able to spike up into the top of Apple in marketing , for example.
Um, rather than starting the podcast. Gotcha. Gotcha. So before we get into some actionables of some of the kind of core things people need to think about when they're setting up a show for their brand, for their business, what are some of the biggest mistakes? We've talked about a couple, but what are some of the massive do not dos before you get stuck in and start building one.
Yeah. Three. The first one is going to. So the, the best example of this is like the email marketing software company. They're starting a podcast and they have three options. Option one is to be to start a podcast about marketing. Option two is to start podcast about email marketing, and option three is to start a podcast about open rates here.
I would always recommend, depending on the budget, if we were talking to MailChimp, then maybe we would go for option one, Option two if is any company with like less than 50 employees and less. A hundred grand for the podcast for the year. I would say we'd start the email open rate podcast because in three to six months, in theory, we are gonna be the number one email open rate podcast.
It's gonna be so much easier to grow in the early stages if you're more specific. And then once you, you've reached that the heights of the Email Marking Marketing podcast, then you can set yourselves on like email marketing and then ultimately marketing. So it's getting the niche right at the start.
Okay, that's so important. Number two is, as we've already covered, is not being strategic about guests in the early days, right? As we've said before, ROI in the short term is gonna come from guests, whether it's partnerships or customers. And then number three is simply not being consistent. and if you're number one and two right, it's likely that you will stay consistent because you'll see the listeners grow cuz you are, you are like perfectly niche.
It's gonna be easy to find listeners. So that keeps you motivated. And then if you're strategic about guests, if you have people, partners, or customers in the sales pipeline because you build relationships with them or even like, Someone that came on the get, you built a great relationship with them on, with them, and they referred someone to you, right?
So it doesn't even have to be the person that came on, but you're networking, right? You're adding value to people in your industry. Um, but if that happens in the first six months and you have one or two people come into the process, again, you're not stopping and you'll be consistent. So three is almost a result, one or two.
Gotcha. What is, in your opinion, what's like a, is there a perfect amount of show episodes that you should put out, ie. X per month, X per week, the maximum. I wish you can maintain quality. So just by going to the gym you, you're gonna get stronger or faster by doing it more consistently. Sure. But only if those sessions are good.
So if you are unable to maintain the right quality at weekly, then we'd, we would recommend biweekly. And same for biweekly versus monthly. Yep. Got it. So making sure it's actually decent stuff that you're putting out rather than trying to rush out as many as you possibly can. Let's say, um, a few, few of our listeners, a few of our watchers are, are thinking, This sounds okay so far, Tom, how do I, how do I put this into place?
You've told us what we shouldn't do. How can we, are there some kind of first steps before we start lining up? Our own niche before we thinking about that, our own, um, industry niche around our sector, around what we're actually selling before we start signing up guests. What are some of the first considerations before you jump in and, and invite people on?
Yeah, so niche is the number one thing to consider. Once you've done that, I think guests would be second. So understanding who's gonna be a first guest, typically when you don't have a show live, it's gonna be the. Of all time to book guests. So typically I would aim to bring on people that you know already, and if you've been in your, in your industry for a while, I'm sure that'll be very obvious.
Um, also if you wanna bring on bigger people, I would typically wait until you've launched and like leverage your connections first for the launch. So once you have positioning grid, once you have guests, there's a little like small things you need to do. Like, what's the name of the show? What, what's the visual design of the podcast?
Thumbnail? What's the intro, what's the outro script? What's the structure of these? And then the technology. So what software are you gonna use to book in the guest? What software are you gonna use to host the show? Um, where are you gonna write your show notes, et cetera. So they all like small things. If you Google like how start a podcast, there's a lot of blog posts telling you how to do that.
But I think like the absolutely crucial thing is, is positioning and then your first guess, and then all the other stuff. Like, I think people try to make it seem like it's complex, but really a p's just an RSS feed with audio files instead of, uh, written. Just so it like, just like a blog is. Right. So yeah, I feel, I think it's quite simple to launch, but getting the positioning right and then getting the guess right, um, is probably the most important.
Two things. When you say positioning, tell us more about what that means exactly. Yeah, so it's like the email open podcast versus the email marketing podcast. What can is, is your show. Yeah. Um, fitting into, um, Yeah. And so yeah, getting that right is super. . Got it, got it. Okay. So focus on, focus on that niche, Focus on that category, focus on that positioning.
Start with interviewing people that you already know. So it's an easy ask. How do you build up to, once you've perhaps got a few guests, then I guess if you're going niche and if you're thinking of this show as the go-to for something very specific, so like you were saying their email open rates to start with.
Once you've in invited perhaps a few clients or close contacts, how do you ramp it up so then you can into, let's say, target ideal clients, people that you eventually maybe want to do building, uh, business with and relation build relationships with? Yeah. The launch of the show is like the big opportunity to get that social proof.
The way we're gonna get, like perfect guess whether they're famous or whether they're ideal customers or ideal partners, is because you have social proof around the show. Now, if somebody's reaching out, asking you to be on a podcast, there's probably a couple of things you're looking at. You wanna know who else has been on the show and you wanna see.
You wanna try and estimate how popular the show is? Yep. So what we're gonna do a launch. If we're just gonna maximize all the effort we have in getting as many new followers and downloads in Apple Podcasts specifically as possible, right? So we're gonna choose the category. We're gonna choose the category.
So Apple category, that not actually the ideal with our email marketing open rate podcast. We would have to be in the marketing category, which is in business in Apple. There's nothing more niche than that. But if you were to get like one to 200, probably. New followers in a 48 hour period, just after you launch your show, you would most probably get into the top 10 in the UK or in the US in the marketing category.
Okay. And so one thing, the top 10 obviously that brings more down is cause we sat there, people doing discovery will come to our show, which is great. But the, the beauty is we then use that as social proof as we're going out. So ideally, some of our early contacts are like big names as. Let's, let's say we get one, the bigger LinkedIn influencer that talks about open rates on our show, because we've liked a few of his posts.
He likes us. He comes on, he's like, yelled it. But there's three other big players that would also be ideal customers, right? So you launch, you release the episode with Jason, He's the big name. We get number seven in the US in marketing and Apple podcasts. We then script our outreach messages to these guys being like, Hey, we have the second most downloaded to email marketing open rate podcast.
Jason has been on and currently we're in the top 10 in marketing podcasts in the us. Do you have a spare? 45 minutes. And so, By month. By month three, we've had the three biggest names in email marketing open rates. Two out of the three have shared it for us. One out of three wrote a blog post on their blog about our podcast.
Well, we actually wrote it, but they posted it for us. And so we're linking back to Art, which show from that. Yeah. And we're like, Well, on the way to being the most downloaded email marketing podcast the world has ever seen. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So it's leveraging the initial hit of traffic to the show, getting it up in the charts and Apple podcasts, and then using that as social proof along with the guests that you've had on your outreach to then get those I clients on board.
Yeah, I was listening to a podcast recently called Acquired and that what they do is they basically study tech companies and AC acquisitions and they're like business nerds and they're trying to analyze how companies do well. And something they've been saying recently is that strength Built on strength.
And so all these big companies, they basically did something where I want, and they just leverage that for the next thing, then leverage that for the next thing. So that's exactly how you wanna view this process. We wanna do one thing well, which is we got Jason on the show to do the launch. We get the number seven in marketing, we, we leverage that to get the next two big, big name guests in email marketing open rates, and then we just leverage that to become the number one most downloaded email marketing podcast.
So it, it really is that like going step by step and then leveraging the result or the social proof from the previous step in order to get to the next one. Got it. So Tom, what are some of the best ways to actually market podcast in your opinion? Let's go back to the story. So we've, we now released our episodes with the two, with the two people that are the big names.
We have Jason's episode as well, but there's one other email marketing open right podcast, which we know has got like three times as many downloads per month of us. So the question is how do we get to number one, right? I like most podcast promotions strategies. You can Google like how to promote a podcast and you'll find them more of like, get the video snippets, post the video snippets.
Make sure you're tagged correctly in Apple Podcasts. And so I don't think we need to go through that, but I think, so instead, we're gonna go through three things that I don't really talk about much cause these are like the secret source, but I'm gonna share them here. The first one is, I think the biggest opportunity for attention in general in the B2B world right now is, is LinkedIn organic posting.
And so what we say, what we, what I would recommend for the host of this show is, And the new thing the Influence Profiles can do on LinkedIn is put the I fee you have, Sam is put the URL to something just below your description on your profile. So putting the podcast there with a bit of social proof. So we're saying number one.
Number two, most downloaded email marketing Open rates podcast. It's probably a bit long for the text added, but you get my point. Okay. And then we're gonna be writing probably one, well as many as we can to maintain quality. Posts that are just focused on email marketing open rates. They don't have any links that can't have images or videos embedded, but no links in the post or even there's no cts just to add value on LinkedIn.
And we're just doing that without even really talking about the podcast. And then that's just gonna, we'll get more engagement on this post, we'll get more profile views and that'll drive traffic back to our show. So that's the first thing that we're gonna do. Um, a little bit complex. So you obviously have to have like controversial or interesting opinions about the, the market, but we're, we're an expert in this field, so it's fine.
So that's the first. The second one we're gonna do is, I dunno if you remember, but like five to seven years ago, you could pay an Instagram influencer of like $50 to get them to post your econ product for like to their a hundred thousand followers. Cause they didn't know their value. Right? Right. This is happening right now being the world of podcasting.
So, Okay. If you were to Google Best email marketing podcast, there'll be like 30 within the top four pages on Google. There'll be like maybe 30, maybe a bit less than that. Blog posts, a blogger's just trying to pick up like this, this traffic for their blog. Um, and they don't know how valuable that is for us as podcasters.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna build the list, extract the list of 20 blog posts that, that are getting some traffic for that, and then we're gonna do deals to get our show included. So those deals could include maybe getting that blogger onto our share as a guest. It could include doing a link exchange between their blog and our blog.
It could exchange us just paying. And so if we do this and we get seven out of the top 20, including us, Yeah. Then about ideally more than that, then we're just be capturing that inbound traffic over time. Nice. And what, what you'll find is that you're gonna get that for very cheap for now. I mean, in a year, maybe not, but so that's not, that's interesting.
Okay. It's a good one, right? Um, yeah. I've not heard that one before. So we do this Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. This is like, because this is. This is not the stuff you're gonna get in the blog post. Number three, and we already kind of mentioned it already, is obviously guest sharing is like a big, a big thing now for the question is, Any like podcast there, I was gonna tell you that the question is how do you maximize the amount times to guest shares and also maximize the number of places in which they share.
And so what we're gonna do when one of these email marketing open rate experts is booking into our Canada link for the show, we put a question there saying, if we were to write up an incredibly insightful, uh, blog post summary of the episode with standalone blog post that talks about what you said in the episode, would you be happy to post it on your blog?
Yes or no? We'll find, there may be 60, 70% of the people will say, and so as well as creating the content we do from the episode, we're also gonna create this five day hundred word blog post that like really captures the effort, the episode, but often makes the guest look. We then we then send that to the guest.
The guest posts that on their blog. We get the back link cause we can, we're gonna link back to the show. We're probably also gonna link back to our domain. So we're gonna get the back link. And I know you like that Sam cause you're in the SEO game. Love the SEO tips. Yeah. . And then what also happens is typically when a company puts a new blog post live it get like put into their social posting schedule, right?
Maybe even automatically. So that almost guarantee for share. And also we'll get the share from their business that you might not get, because ideally they, they're gonna share personally anyway. So those are the three that are like on top of the standard podcast premise stuff that you reading. Any blog, blog posts like that working?
I think the hottest premise strategy is working right now. Nice. So, uh, let me, let me say something Tom. I like, I like those tips. I mean, especially like the second one is that's a bit more. In terms of actually looking, doing that Google search on the top X podcast, top category, name podcast, and then approaching those people that have written those blogs and trying to get your show on there.
Um, like I said, that's a nice way to capture that traffic for people that are actively searching for podcasts in your, your market. So I like that. Um, you did something a bit unusual when you reached out to us to come this show, cuz we get a ton of guest requests since the show's grown, as I'm sure you do and many other shows do.
And most of Mike nor is they're. Thousand words send me to sleep. Um, whereas you actually did something a bit different. You, I think you said at the end of your request it was quite short and snappy, but you said we'd spend like 50 or a hundred dollars actively promoting the show, which I think is the first guest that's ever done that.
And I was like, well, That's good cuz most of the time I have to nag guests to actually help promote the show, whereas you are, you are actively saying we'll help you promote it. So that, that in itself after checking out your LinkedIn, I thought, Yeah, let's get him on. Um, we haven't done a podcast specialized show in a while, so let's talk a bit about that, Tom.
Are there any ways using paid rather than organic that you've seen shows get some good growth through? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Being a guest on other shows in your niche and then at the end of the, the podcast saying, Yeah, I also have a podcast is a, is a solid way to promote your own show in its own right. Um, I guess that is also a paid strategy if you offer the paid spend as you go on other people's show, if you're right.
Um, but yeah, for paid now we flew from two catchy if they paid social and then paid on other podcasts. I don't really have much expertise of buying ads on other podcasts yet. Maybe we'll have them more in the future. Um, Sure. But in terms of paid, Paid social. I'll just go through a couple of strategies now.
The first one, and this applies to any platform in which you can target just IOF users. What you can do, and this is just for the cta, we'll talk about targeting and creative later, but you can create a deep link into Apple Podcasts. And so if you're targeting any iOS users, then only iOS people are gonna be able to click this.
So it. and what happens when people will click this link is it will, whether in desktop or mobile, Open Apple podcasts, and then it will pop up a little subscribe button and it's just a one click subscribe. And so that if you're running any paid on a platform in which you can target just iOS, I always recommend that because you get the subscription, they now call it Follow On Apple podcast before anything else.
Oh, nice. So it literally opens it and they, they have to click the subscribe button. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so that's like a little, a little hack. Now let's talk about creatives and strategies. The most effective paid podcast spend I've ever seen is actually really simple. It was just if one of our clients where they do it, they do this in house, so I can't claim, I can't pay credit for it.
um, is. All they've done. Well, actually it almost goes back to the podcast rashy part. Their show isn't really b2b. It, they basically each episode target for health condition and so diabetes for example. And so then they can, they can use quite, they have quite good paid targeting because Facebook and Instagram by the way, um, for those, because they just target the people in the right drug fee in the right age with, or that have an interest of that.
So quite if, almost a bit of a gift. But all they do is that they'll have the doctor's, the guest, and they'll have just a quote image, um, with the doctor's face, doctor's name and an in threatening quote from the episode. And then it's literally just follow us on Apple podcasts. Um, but the quote is obviously relevant to them and their, um, condition and the youth, a lingo we just spoke about.
Got it. They're running like pretty. Spin on that and it is absolutely crushing, um, just like a super target. So that's one super focused, um, image with the caption and then that links through to the to the show. Yeah, exactly. So that's, I think they'd be lucky cause they very easy tag thing for that. Yeah.
One we did recently, a different one we did recently is actually in the crypto space. We have a show and. Some of the guests are like the founders of relatively like well known projects. And so for every episode anyway, we're pulling out the best clips for organic posting. So what we'll do, we'll post, let's say five to 10 organic clips over the space of two weeks after the after goes live.
We pick the one to three, they get the most engagement organically, and then we take them and then this is actually on Twitter cuz that's the place for crypto. Um, is we'll run that Twitter ad to. People who are, cuz we can't actually run it to people's followers, but we can run it to people that are like, Either connected to or like interested in, or no, sorry.
Similar to the followers of the people of that person and that project. So if it's the founder of let's say, ar they, which is the crypto project, we'll run the ad to people that are similar to the followers of ar they, and also similar to the followers of that guest, right? If we could run it to the followers of those, it would be ideal, but we can't, so don't let you do that anymore.
Um, and so it's just putting again, like an interesting, controversial insight, four piece of content in front of them, and then having a clear CTA to go and subscribe. Have you done much in the way of LinkedIn ads? I see some B2B tech companies are doing quite a bit on repurposing podcasts, putting out kind of video snippets and then getting that in front of their icp, their I client profile through LinkedIn ads.
Have you done much of that or is that Yeah, I haven't really done that, but I know that Chris Walker refine labs technique there is big, a very poor. Similar to that, the Twitter technique we just shared. They pull, Yeah, Yeah. A she load or maybe counselor, um, of really snippet videos, find ones that they're best performing and then just run those to like the top a hundred thousand accounts.
Um, yeah. So yeah, I think that would work. Especially, he's a really good talker, so. Very helps. Yeah, helps, helps. You've got something good to say as always. With met with many podcasts, which, which I occasionally do now. That's great. Um, we had a question come in, we don't often quick take questions, but we had a question in, as we're streaming LinkedIn live.
Um, someone was asking how you can actually measure the podcast, how you can measure audience info, ie. How many listeners you're getting, the demographic. Those kind of things. Any recommended tools for that, Tom? Yeah, there's probably three metrics I would recommend tracking, so I'll go through them and the tools you use first.
If we, if ultimately the goal here on the listen side is to add value to as many people, that could be buyers as possible. The best metric to see this is a consumption metric, which really is downloads. And when we see downloads, we mean streams, Play listens like and downloads like from all directories.
So your podcast host will like. Collate all the information from all this platform, from even to YouTube. And then you'll just have that, the download number in your podcast face. So we, we track that obviously, and we like to see that go up 10% every month that, that, that's healthy. Um, we see that's without pace spend, it could be a bit faster with Pace Bend.
So that's the number one metric, like how much. Like how many people and how many, uh, and how much, how many episodes of our show are they consuming downloads? Second is followers. We only track this over for the three largest directories, Apple, Spotify, and Google. Your podcast surf won't bring that in, so you have to go and have your like access the listing of your show on those places, and then just track followers again, wanna see that going up about 5% a month without any pain spend.
So we just add those numbers up and track that. The third is, And Apple is the only platform that gives you, this is episode consumption. So they say during a time period what the average amount of each episode has that's been listened to. And so what we do each month is we take the, we add up all of those and then take the average.
So we have the average amount of all episodes that have been listened to in that month. And what we want to see then is that just slowly increasing over time is we are making the episodes slightly better. Like, like slightly better hosting, slightly better guests, um, slightly better. And so if we see that going up over time, then probably the download of Follower metrics will come as more people are retaining and more people are listening to more of Thes.
So those are the three that we recommend. Got it. And is there a tool that you should use? I know you said, um, for followers you need to go into the individual platform like Apple and Spotify for things like checking your downloads, consumption. Is that something you can do in your general podcast uploader or is there specific tools and software that.
Tryout. Yeah. So any podcast host software will show you downloads, so, um, and there's a lot of them out there. Cool. Cool. Right. We've, we've covered a lot. A lot of this has been around kind of promoting the show, getting the audience there. We talked quite a lot at the start about getting ideal clients onto the show for go Going niche into the category that you are really honed in on, and then perhaps expand.
From there and building relationships with those guests. But what are the best ways to make sure that these relationships are actually turning into profitable revenue for our business? Yeah, the, the, It could be interesting here, right? Because the more you like try to control that, almost the least effective you're gonna be.
We've been experimenting with different ways to like try to make that happen over the years, and we've kind of come to the conclusion that we kind of just. Just make sure the guests have the best possible experience and then maybe at some point in the future when, like a week or month after, if there's like a relevant reason to reach out about some problem that you can solve for them, then you can do that.
That's absolutely fine. It could be you, someone from your sales team, but we just wanna make sure that the gift leaves the whole experience. Just being like those guys are profess. Interesting and competence because then if we somehow are able to understand how we can help 'em solve a problem and we reach out, then they're more likely to say yes, but at the same time, they're gonna be more likely to recommend us to their friends.
Or when the company ultimately needs that problem solved, they might come to us. Yeah. Um, so if not like pitching too hard, it's more just focusing on ensuring they have an amazing. Got it. Got it. And that makes sense, right? So I, I can say firsthand, we've had guests on this show where we've perhaps had a chat before, we've had a chat after, we then connect on LinkedIn, or we were connected on LinkedIn anyway.
And then they might see kind of the posts that I put out. And then a little while later, let's say a few months down the line, they might reach out and say, Hey Sam, We're actually looking at getting our website done or we're looking at having some seo, and I'm sure you've had many of the same experiences, Tom, with yourself and clients, is that once you make that first connection, and as long as you kind of make the effort to be, do a really good podcast, make it insightful, ask them kind of great questions, have some back and forth, kind of give them that good experience after, like we said about sharing the episode and making it easy for them to promote and you promoting them.
Quite a lot that comes, comes back, which I get is kind of what you, you're trying to. Yeah, I mean, If we take it back a little bit, if you try to sound like how you form bond, how people form bonds together, like the strongest bonds form through the most like rollercoaster ish of emotions. So if you think about your, your best friends, like it's probably people that you maybe have known for a number of years.
You went like traveling together or you got married to et cetera, and you've been through these like up and downs. And so if you think about what you do when you run through the process of interviewing someone on a podcast, is there are these like. Like emotional journeys, like first of excitement when they book in, they're like really excited.
They maybe half an hour before they're like a little bit nervous and they come on, they're a little bit nervous, but then they start having fun and then at the end they're really happy. And then you tell 'em how amazing they are and they're like super happy. And so this is how you form the bonds is by going through this like up, up and down I find anyway.
And so yeah, all you're really doing when you're running the show with your form bonds with people that could be biased and. If you, if you don't Right, those bonds could turn into cash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Build, build those bonds, build those premium bonds. Um, so should, should, anyone that's starting a podcast that actually specifically wants to do it for their business to, to drive revenue long term.
Um, I guess I've got two parts of this question as it formulates in my mind. Um, one is typically how long does it see, Does it long, does it take, in your experience, Tom, from show start to actually, I guess there's, it's gonna be hard to answer, but to actually getting a, your first client from your experience on the basis that you're following this structure and you're inviting I clients to the show.
And then secondly, should you focus your show, Should the main metric of your show be focusing on booking? People that you wanna build a relationship with over everything else. I think in the short term, you just wanna track how many people have come on the show. That could be potential customers or partners, what percentage of guests could be they bring on.
Um, and depending on how, how, like, how much you need that short term roi, then that would be close to a hundred. In terms of time, Let's just say you're running a six month, You run a show for six months. It's a biweekly show, so you have 12 guests, say 80% of them could be customers or partners that leave you with 10 people that you've shown an amazing experience with, you've formed a bond with.
From those 10, assuming you have a product that actually solved a problem that they have, yeah. Then I would ideally want to see like you move into a partnership or sales conversation with one of them. That's probably like a reasonable thing to expect. I would. Over what space or time was that? It's a six month period for a biweekly show, so I think I've got the master around.
Got it. So six months, two. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. And then were you saying some of those prospects you might have had on the show, if you think that there is a good fit, you might reach out to them like a few months after the show and just say, Look, we discuss this. I think your, your company could perhaps benefit.
Is it worth the conversation? That kind of thing. Yeah. Nice. All right. I think the only other thing I wanted to, to ask Tom, I think the only thing we haven't covered on podcast is just a quick one on sponsorships. What are your thoughts? Because I know a lot of someone actually put in the, um, the question section.
What should be the process in, in getting a sponsorship with a show? Is that something you should even consider when you're doing what we've discussed or should that be a later thought? I think it is valuable because you can then take those funds and reinvest back into production or into promotion. Um, I typically, they recommend like going out to find sponsorship.
It's just like another thing to do if you get someone inbound and you can impose 'em on a deal that's like exclusive and quite. Um, then I would recommend that. But in the, like in the days, I'd rather focus for time instead of writing a sales process. Yes. Share, I'd really focus for time on making the podcast better and making sure you're getting the guess right.
Yeah. But if someone comes inbound and they, you have like $200 a month and offering you a thousand dollars a month, or you can close 'em on a thousand dollar a month cause it's gonna be exclusive, you're gonna tag them in all the LinkedIn posts, et cetera. Um, then I pro then I do take that I recommend taking.
And I've also done that on my show with a company called hrs. We'll talk about my show in a minute. Um, but could just for that reason, like if they, they pay like $400 a month, we, I don't have that many downloads and I just take that money and I spend it on ads for the show. Nice. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. All makes sense.
Thanks very much for coming on the show. Tom really enjoyed chatting all things podcasts and how to drive revenue with your show, so please do tell us more about how everyone listening, tuning in can learn more about your company and the best way to connect with you and get in touch. Yeah, sure. Folks, search time out on LinkedIn and you can, I mean, if you have any questions about podcasting, then please ask them.
Um, fame ISO is, we run podcasts for B2B companies, so that's been good to find that. And then of course, I would be in remiss if I didn't say this confessions of a B2B market, my podcast, where I just have conversations about this kind of stuff with, with other people. Nice one man. And with that, Tom, thanks once again for coming on, sir.
Thank you for having me, Sam. Cheers man.