Imagine that you've just landed your dream PR client. They want to up their media exposure, and it's your job to suggest a new strategy—what a coup if you could hand over thousands of potential leads! Podcasts are potentially a great channel to explore.
Podcast listener growth is steady, with more than 68 million Americans now listening weekly and many more worldwide. That's a vast audience for marketers and PR professionals to tap into for their clients.
There are all kinds of benefits when the person behind the brand features on podcasts that their audience listens to and shares valuable insights with them. You can check out why podcasts are one of the best new PR strategies here, but in a nutshell, podcast interviews:
- Increase brand awareness
- Demonstrate your authority
- Allow you to invite listeners to take action like visit your website or join your mailing list
- Create social sharing opportunities
- Get backlinks to your company website through the podcast show notes
- Expand your personal network
6 reasons for savvy PRs to use podcast guest appearances
- Many business owners and entrepreneurs regularly listen to podcasts. If your client runs a B2B company, their customers will likely have at least one business, marketing or niche podcast host in their ears each week.
- A key feature of podcasting is the strong connection formed between the host and their audience. Listeners feel they know the host and trust their recommendations. That trust extends to podcast guests. So giving an engaging, value-packed interview is gold for PR.
- Podcast interviews present the guest as authorities in their field of expertise. Telling the story behind the brand or how they overcame struggles puts a human perspective on the brand. So, when you land your client a guest interview on a podcast in the right niche, their stories draw in listeners in your target demographic.
- When you feature on podcasts, you have an opportunity to provide immense value to the audience. When guests generously share wisdom and concrete tips, they can generate a warm, positive impression that continues into the customer's subsequent encounter with the brand.
- You can easily reach your target niche or demographic through the podcasts they listen to. Instead of spending thousands on a television ad campaign or social media outreach, your client can speak directly to their customers through a medium that they enjoy and deliberately spend time with on a weekly or even daily basis.
- Podcast episodes generate opportunities to gain more organic traffic, social media comments and backlinks to your business website.
How to start your podcast outreach strategy
Invest in creating relationships with podcasters, be consistent, genuine, generous responsive, give value,
1. Get clear on your goals and niche
Describe the product or service that you're promoting - what outcome do you want to achieve?
Are you marketing a new or existing product or an upcoming book launch? Is your client campaigning or raising awareness for a cause? Perhaps they're even in line for a prestigious award.
At the same time, zero in on a narrow niche rather than trying to spread yourself over a whole category.
Throughout this article, we'll use gardening as an example to show how podcast outreach works for your business.
Gardening is a broad category with many sub-niches. Pot plants, vegetables, organic, homesteaders, cut flowers, ornamental or fruit trees all fall under the general term "gardening," but the gardeners have utterly different pain points and interests.
2. Understand your ideal customers
Once you're clear on the niche, you can look deeper into the customers your client serves. After all, marketing success often hinges on knowing your customers and their needs as much as possible.
Reach out to people in your industry and discover their needs. What are their biggest problems?
Do take note of the language they use when they're talking about their pain points, and feed that back to your client. People gravitate towards experts who can describe problems and solutions using terms that resonate with them. So, when you're doing a podcast guest interview or discussing an ad campaign, you can talk in ways that create approval and empathy.
A great way to know that you're reaching those ideal customers is when you hear feedback like "you took the words right out of my mouth" and "it feels personal, as if you're talking directly to me."
3. Identify your areas of expertise
How do you show that you know the solution to these problems and pain points?
This is where you get clear on the value you provide and how your brand story communicates value and solutions. When you find podcasts in your target niche, you need to know which of your tales will create the best engagement.
Stories should illustrate:
- How you overcame relevant problems
- The solutions you created
- Your backstory and how it links to your brand
- How your solution and product or service could help the podcast listeners
- The incredible value you provide
- That you understand the worries and frustrations in this niche
- Your credentials and why you're an expert in this topic
4. Promote your client where their ideal customers congregate
Now that you're clear on product goals, niche and your ideal customer avatar, it's time to go where they like to gather online. Newsletter emails, helpful tweets on Twitter and "how to" videos can only go so far.
Research by podcast industry experts like Edison Infinite Dial, Nielson and large platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify all confirm that podcasts are an ideal medium to promote connection with a brand.
Research podcasts using Rephonic to get featured
Once you're clear on the niche and stories you want to promote, it's time to research specific podcasts. Rephonic's search tool makes it easy to identify individual podcasts you could reach out to.
Filter your search to find many possibilities
Use the topic and categories filters to find a variety of podcasts where the audiences intersect with your product or company.
Let's take our gardening example and narrow it down to one specific field - organic gardening. Your client has published a book that helps new gardeners create healthy vegetable and flower beds using organic methods and wants to get the word out to as many enthusiasts as possible.
So, use Rephonic to find those intersecting podcast audiences.
Going deeper into our search reveals different segments and podcast listeners who could be interested in reading the book.
Filter the search by category. Your client's research may resonate with podcasters in the health and fitness, alternative health or nutrition categories.
Think of other categories too. Books, food, education, kids and family, self-improvement are all possibilities where your client could get featured on podcasts where the audience would welcome the account of their organic journey and the solutions they've discovered along the way.
Rephonic lets you go as wide and deep as you like. What about organic gardening on a budget? Does our client have stories that would add value to finance podcasts?
Use the data to decide the best podcasts to contact
When you click onto an individual podcast in Rephonic, you'll find plenty of data to help you decide whether you and the podcast could be a good match. You'll see podcast stats on audience size, episode numbers, social engagement and more.
It's always best to listen to a few episodes before you start your podcast outreach. Clicking on the Episodes button takes you straight to the latest episodes so you can check the podcast's structure and vibe. Do you like the host's interview style? Can you fit into it? And, do you have an angle that can add value to this show?
Make a list of possible podcasts
Rephonic's handy Lists function lets you save all the podcast possibilities in one spot. Create one extensive podcast media list or make separate ones for each category.
If needed, you can share this list with your team, add notes, and even export it as a spreadsheet.
And once you've named a list, you can add podcasts to it from any part of the search.
Start your podcast outreach
Now that you have a list, it's time to start reaching out to the many possible shows that might be interested in having your client as a podcast guest.
Get the right contact info
You'll find each podcast's social media and email contacts on its Rephonic page. When you click the duplicate symbol beside the email, it copies the address straight to your computer's clipboard.
If Rephonic's automatic search engine hasn't found a suitable email address, you can use our Concierge service instead. Our team of researchers will get right onto the job and get back to you with answers as soon as we can.
Draft the perfect pitch
Each podcast is different, and hosts can spot a generic or template email from a mile away. Although most podcasts welcome guest pitches, they'll send your email straight into the trash if it seems off the cuff or irrelevant for their needs.
With that in mind, here are some tips for drafting winning outreach emails.
- Base your pitch on the target audience and the topic of the podcast.
- Create a Subject line/header that explains your email's purpose in 10 words or less
- Briefly explain how you will add value to the podcast in your interview
- Let them know how your product or service benefits their audience
- Give a selection of the topics you cover and if possible word the titles in a similar style to the podcast's previous episodes
- Show that you'll be easy to work with
- Make it easy for them to contact you
- Close with a friendly expectation that you'll hear from them soon.
Track your podcast outreach
Of course, you'll need to keep track of all the podcasts you're pitching on behalf of your company. That means keeping a record of the podcast's name, email address, your pitch, their response, dates etc.
We make outreach tracking effortless. Simply export your list as an Excel sheet, then customize the columns as required.
Level up your podcast outreach with Rephonic
Podcasts are a cost-effective way to reach a broad audience of people who are likely to be interested in your brand and product or service. Podcast devotees love to learn and are likely to follow up with you, especially if they hear you on more than one podcast.
That's why you need to schedule several guest interviews for your client on a range of podcasts related to their niche.
Rephonic was built with all this in mind. We make it easy for you to:
- Sort and filter over 2 million podcasts
- Create networking and interview opportunities
- Research podcasts
- Listen to episodes
- Make lists
- Find contacts
Looking for a superior tool to find and pitch podcasts?
When you're searching for podcasts as a potential guest, Rephonic is a terrific way to locate perfect-fit shows in any topic or niche, then quickly find the best email address to contact them with.
Get started with a free trial.
Photos by Campaign Creators and NeONBRAND on Unsplash.
