Bootstrappers: How To Get Customers Efficiently With Podcast Tours – Kai Davis – MicroConf 2016

0:00[Music] [Music] [Applause] hey folks so happy to be here today and like Rob mentioned I'm talking to you about podcast tours and there's a bunch of scripts some notes some different documents I'm gonna be sharing in the talk I just want to let you know you could download all of it at the end of the talk I'll have the slides of a URL for you nothing you need to worry about there take some notes but you don't need to take all of them so when it comes to podcast tours there's three things we want to think about at a high level the first thing is with a podcast tour we want to

0:41understand who our best buyers are if we're going out to talk to people we want to understand well who exactly are we trying to talk to second we want to think about the increase of podcast listeners of the last few years and what this means in terms of marketing strategy what this means in terms of building and developing our audience and third we want to think a little bit about the power of influence or recommendations what does that mean for our business what does it mean when an influencer talks about our product our service our company and endorses it for us so jumping into it well first let's

1:13ask a question what exactly is a best buyer it's a phrase that we might hear in marketing copy or in different sources but I think Jay Abraham defines it best in the strategy of preeminence he called he says this best buyers are buyers who buy more more often and at a higher price and it makes sense we want to focus on these people because well they're the best buyers they're the people who will buy what we have to sell at a higher price check homes and ultimate sales machine also says there are fewer best buyers than there are all buyers and that means it's even cheaper

1:45to focus on them and then on all buyers when we put these two concepts together we get a nifty little Charlie maybe keynote that looks like this we could see if we think about it for whatever our market is whatever target audience we're trying to reach we have the set of all buyers we will have a smaller set of best buyers and if we're able to optimize to reach just those best buyers just our exact target market it's going to make our marketing that much easier so switching topics for a second let's talk about the growth of podcasting and what that means there's a wonderful study that journalism org did a few

2:17years ago where they said the percentage of Americans who have listened to a podcast in the past month has almost doubled since from 9% to 17% and this is from there a fact sheet from 2015 and I found this really interesting podcasting is something that people are actively engaging and people are actively listening to but it hasn't reached full market saturation yet so we're it's a means for us to easily reach an audience of our best buyers but it's not at something that's completely dominated it's not like Google AdWords where we're competing against hundreds of other people it's an easier medium for us to engage with third there's this concept

2:51of influencer endorsement and well let's take a second to talk about what exactly that means Technorati media published a digital influencer report a few years ago where they said with regard to overall sources for information on the internet blogs and influencers ranked among the top 5 most trustworthy sources what this really means is when it comes time for us to make a purchasing decision we're going to talk to friends we're going to talk to family we're gonna search around online but we're also going to look to the podcasts we listen to the blogs that we read these influencers who are sharing information if somebody gets up on stage and says

3:26hey here's a great resource it's gonna help you you know automate your Twitter or a use buffer for this we're gonna say wow I trust this person I believe in what they're saying I'm great I'll go ahead and use it there's also a wonderful quote from a book pitch anything by Oren cloth where he says the first impression we make on another person is based on that person's calculation of our social value again influencer recommendation if somebody's an influencer if somebody has built up an audience if somebody isn't an authority when they say hey you should go check out this thing we're more likely to go check out this thing so

3:59when we put all these concepts together and start thinking about podcasts we come up with what Oren Klaff calls star power star power is the authority you've built up as a podcast host if you host a podcast if you've built up an audience it means well that audience trusts you when you say hey you should go check out that thing that audience is more likely to go check out that thing but this isn't a talk about starting a podcast this is a talk about podcast tours and guesting on podcasts what's wonderful about star power is it's transferable when you appear as a guest on a podcast

4:31you inherit some of that star power from the host just like I thought I'm up on stage here talking to you in the hallway you might not know me from Adam but because I'm placed in this position in front of you you're like oh Kai's saying something interesting I'm going to take notes maybe this will be relevant for my business the exact same concept applies we think about podcasting when you appear as a podcast guest you inherit some of that star power so I think about it this way when it comes to podcasting the guest is actually the star of the show so when we put it all together we could see three

5:02key concepts if we focus on an audience of best buyers it'll be easier for us to sell our products when we look at the growth of podcasts we could see that it's rapidly increasing it's nowhere near market saturation and it's an easy way for us to reach an audience of people we want to reach our target market our best buyers third the star power we inherit we accept from the host when we appear as a guest allows us to make an endorsement or a recommendation for a product which is easier for somebody to act on it's not saying hey you should go check out that thing it's

5:32saying well hey this person who runs this podcast has invited me on I'm recommending the service I'm recommending this solution and that star power well that moves you forward so when we put this all together we come up with the concept of podcast tours and what I love about podcast tours is they let you reach existing audiences if you start your own podcasts you need to build your own audience up from scratch but if you go on a podcast or if you identify ten podcasts and appear as a guest you're able to leverage those audiences you don't have to build those audiences up yourself similarly podcasts

6:05let you make direct personal contact with the people you're trying to reach and this is really really impactful chat homes from ultimate sales machine says the most impactful marketing you could do is direct personal contact with the buyer and with podcasting it feels like a one-to-one relationship with the people listening to the podcast you're in their ears for 30 45 or 60 minutes you're talking essentially directly to them for the duration of that podcast third the most powerful thing about podcast tours is it lets you build your audience I had a conversation with my colleague Ryan Wagner a couple weeks ago and he said this wonderful quote and I

6:40asked him for permission to print it and he said this is the subscribers he gets from podcast casting are by far the most engaged subscribers he has 90 percent open rates 70 percent click-through rate these are astounding statistics my list is pretty good and I get maybe a 60 percent open rate I would kill for a 90 percent open rate so when we think about podcast tours there's two main concepts we want to keep in mind first we want to identify podcasts our target market listens to if we're trying to reach waste management companies well we'll want to go in podcasts that reach waste management companies second

7:14we want to pitch topics that our audience cares about we want to teach them something new so when it comes to identifying podcasts how exactly can we do it there's a few different ways I want to walk through for you today the first is you could search in iTunes and if you used iTunes you know it's kind of pretty crappy but iTunes happens to have a really nifty web view for all their podcasts and you could dive as deep as saying show me all the popular management and marketing podcasts that are out there I want to learn more about those and you could get to direct list

7:42of every single popular podcast the second great place to look marketplaces and directories there's a wonderful site that I love cast doc market it's actually a marketplace for advertisers to connect with podcast hosts and you know do the advertising and a podcast host song and dance but it's an amazing tool for you to go on there and search and say I want to find a list of all marketing podcasts or I want to find a list of all marketing podcasts that accept guests with a quick little search you could find exactly that and build up a list of podcasts to reach out to third I recommend stalking

8:16your colleagues if there's somebody in your network that you know reaches the same audience as you follow them around online and see what podcasts they appear on so my colleague and my colleague is in the audience Kurt Elster he reaches an audience of Shopify customers and he's an e-commerce consultant and I wanted to see well if I do a quick little Google search can I find podcasts that he's appeared on and this is in the download you'll have at the end of the talk no need to copy it down but when I ran this quick little Google search of the top 10 results 7 of them unique

8:48podcasts that Kurt had appeared on so if I'm trying to reach an audience of e-commerce consultants I'm able to plug curtain and see Wow here are seven podcasts that he's been on here are 7 podcasts that accept guests here are 7 podcasts that I could appear on so if we can if we extend this out say well that Kurt is just one example if we could find five ten or 20 colleagues or competitors in the industry and use the same tactic suddenly we're able to build a list of exactly the people we want to reach podcasts that we've pre validated we know that they accept guests we know

9:20that they reach our target market they're exactly the podcasts we want to appear on but once we've built that list there's a question of pitching the podcasts what exactly are we supposed to say what topics are we supposed to pitch how do we make it interesting or relevant for the person we're speaking to what I recommend is pitching three types of topics when they're trying to get on the podcast you either want to teach their audience something new you want to teach them how to solve a small problem or you want to share an unconventional opinion or something new and in terms of a script if there's one

9:50that I absolutely love using and want to share with you and I basically break it down like this hey name I'm a big fan of podcast Nate and I loved your recent episode where you talked about topic I want to teach your audience about this type of outcome I'd love to help your audience learn any of the following topics topic one and I describe the topic topic to topic three does any one of these sound like one your audience would be interested in learning more about if so just hit reply and let me know and we'll move forward from there I love this podcast outreach email because

10:20it takes the hard work off of the podcast host instead of emailing them and saying hey I'd love to be on your podcast and it stops there you do the hard work for them you say hey I'm qualified I know what I talked about what I could talk about I know what I could teach your audience and I'd love to teach your audience one of these three topics which will help improve their lives will this be helpful for you just hit reply send me back a one-word email that says yes send me back one number say topic number one sounds great and it makes it so much easier for the podcast

10:50host to respond and engage with you so another colleague of mine is in the audience Erik Davis and it a wonderful quote for me he started doing this outreach process a few weeks ago and he said he's pitched seven sites and had a 100% response rate with a 57 percent placement rate and on top of that he's now reaching an or he's now being paid to reach four large sites that reach his dream buyers so this outreach process is a really effective way to identify your target market pitch them and then get placements be it a placement on a podcast or a policeman for a guest article it really breaks

11:25down to understanding your target market understanding what you could teach them and then initiating that conversation reaching out saying hey this is what I could teach you with this be valuable to your audience if so just let me know I'm actually written a book about this entire process it's hard for me to cram a thirty thousand word book into a 12-minute talk so these are just the top of the line high-level points that I wanted to share with you but since you're a micro comp attendee there's a 50% discount on the entire book the complete package twelve expert interviews 25 plus email templates and I've also put the slides and scripts and

11:59bonuses up for you to download all available at podcast outreach com [Applause] you