Leads, Sales, Brand… What Is Your Podcast Actually For?

I have a question for you. This might sound like an obvious one, but why are you actually doing a podcast?

Why did you start recording? What did you hope it would do for you? What was your focus in creating this content? What was your intention? And what was your desired output from the time, effort and energy that you have to put into the creation of this thing?

Now, I’m not trying to demoralise, dissuade or disappoint anybody from making a show (I am a self-confessed podcast geek so the more shows out there the better in my opinion!) but once in a while, it is definitely worth realigning yourself with the purpose of the content you’re actually creating.

GOALS
Podcasting without an intention is like a rocking chair, it will give you something to do but it won’t actually get you anywhere.

The first question that we always ask our clients when we onboard them into our agency is “what’s the outcome for the show and what does podcast success look like for you?”.

Once we know this we can then craft the content strategy and associated marketing plan that will actually deliver the desired result.
You might think that this is overly obvious as surely everyone just wants to be the next Joe Rogan or they just want millions and millions of listeners but, from my experience of launching 150+ shows, success within podcasting looks like many different things for many different people.

BE AWARE OF YOUR NICHE
Let me explain. A client who came to us is in a super, super niche sector of the recruitment space and he has a very focused target market. Now, as a content creator, I like a niche, but this is a niche in a niche in a niche! So, when he came to us enquiring about launching the brand’s podcast — as we do with all clients — I had a frank conversation about what this podcast needed to do.

If his answer had been that he wanted to become the next Rogan talking solely about niche recruitment I would’ve had to let him down gently that that was probably not going to happen.

But what he actually told me was really interesting. He said that, due to how specific his target market is, there are only really a very, very small number of potential clients that actually fit his ideal buyer demographic. So he was looking at podcasting as a way to differentiate himself from everybody else in his marketplace who is trying to secure leads in the same way. Essentially he was going to use podcasting as a way to circumvent gatekeepers; smart!

I’m sure you have experienced this yourself, as soon as you put an advert on a job board you get nothing but uninvited outreach from recruitment agencies. Whereas this client wanted to be able to shift the power dynamic entirely and instead of his first interaction with a potential client being him going cap-in-hand asking for them to buy from him, he wanted to give value before trying to extract it from the relationship.

He was going to use a podcast to open a door, build a relationship, develop rapport and then develop that connection into revenue.

CONTENT THAT ADDS REVENUE
So, armed with this brilliant outcome for a show — and a brilliantly crafted one-pager that we designed for him about the podcast — he set about securing his ideal clients as guests for his pod, created value-adding content that shifted the power dynamic entirely with his ideal prospect.

Not only that, but the content is fast-developing brand awareness, credibility in the sector and authority in the market, so this super-niche pod is doing a lot of value-adding for this client.

As mentioned above, the end goal was to ultimately land clients off the back of creating this show (I know the idea of creating revenue from content can get lost in this content world sometimes — which is why it is good to look back on your ‘WHY’ for making it occasionally!) and that is exactly what has happened.

By having great conversations, producing great content, and intentionally creating marketing assets that make the guest look and feel like a rockstar this podcast has driven bottom-line revenue to this business.

So, going back to the original question, before you hit that record button ask yourself, ‘What does podcast success actually look like’, knowing this should always be your first step in content creation.

You can read other articles about a whole variety of other ways to build your content strategy via my Medium page or if you are really hungry to start making podcasting more impactful for your brand then let's have a chat about making your pod more powerful.