Episode #117 Speak directly to ideal prospects with targeted Podcast Interview Marketing with Tom Schwab

Transcript

– Hello, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to another awesome episode of Explode Your Expert Biz Show. Today I’m here with the one and only Tom Schwab. How are you doing, Tom?

– Simone, I am thrilled to be here. Thank you.

– Fantastic. Now, for those of you that don’t know Tom, he runs a business called Interview Valet, and he helps small business owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs to get featured on leading podcasts, so that the podcasts that their prospects are already listening to, and then he shows them how to turn their listeners into customers. Which is awesome, and I’m running a podcast myself, so I’m eager to learn here. I’m eager to get into the trenches and learn from Tom. But before we start, Tom, can you share for the next few minutes, what got you, about yourself, and why did you start this business?

– Yeah, I guess it starts with my first job out of college. I ran nuclear power plants in the Navy. And one of the things that I saw there was that anything can be systematised. And when people say, “Well, you don’t understand “my business, it’s too complicated.” It’s like no, if they can teach 20 year old high school students how to run a nuclear reactor safely, you can systematise your business, right? I think too many people focus on art and magic, right? So when I looked at sales and marketing, and started my own companies, one of the things I looked at is like, let’s figure out a system here. A reproducible system in order to attract, engage, and delight customers. And about eight years ago, started with inbound marketing. There’s a company called HubSpot, we were one of their early e-commerce companies. And at that time, content meant blogs. And over the years, blogs have gotten less efficient, they never were super effective, and then about four years ago, we started to say could you use podcast interviews in order, almost like guest blogs used to be, as an expert to go out there and get in front of your ideal audience, to get them to know, like, and trust you. And somehow we were just amazed by the results we got with it, and had a lot of clients say, “Hey, could you do this for me?” And I always say the best copy comes from clients. I had a client that said, “I want to be the guest, “you take care of the rest.” You know, Sinatra only sang, that’s what I want to do, I want to be the performer. So that’s what we do, we help authors, speakers, coaches, brands get out there and get in front of their ideal clients. Because I believe that almost every business out there, their biggest problem is obscurity, right? They’ve got something that could help, they could help people if those people just knew about them.

– Absolutely. And, I mean, if I think about my journey in podcasting, in the podcasting world, it’s been exactly for the same reason. I was looking at there must be a better or smarter way to create content. And I found myself listening to a lot of podcasts during my commute, every morning, I was listening and binge listening to some podcasts. And I was like, “Why am I not starting a podcast myself?” And I remember, that changed it, that was a game changer. But then I started thinking, “Why am I not “going on other people’s podcasts?” Which, to promote my podcast and my brand and what I do. And that was mind-blowing. So, what made you decide podcasts instead of blogs? Or other, you know, you can do guest lives on Facebook Live, you can do guest blogging, and you know, I got some good results with guest blogging, as well. But why guest podcasting should be the one instead of the others?

– Right, and I think the first thing you have to look at is yourself, right? How do you produce content the easiest? So for me, I can write a blog, but it feels like a homework assignment, right? But talking, being interviewed, to me that’s easy, that’s fun. Then I can reproduce that into other content. So for me, personally, I look at it and say, this is the medium where I communicate best. And I think a lot of times with experts, you know, the speakers, the coaches, people need to hear your voice, need to understand who you are. Because they’re not so much buying a product or a service, they’re buying a relationship with that person. That, hey, I understand you, Simone, and you know, you can help me, you’ve helped other people. So really, you’re trying to build that relationship. And so I look at that and say, from that standpoint, that interviews are more powerful than, say, just a blog. Then the flip side, too, is like, why would you do interviews on other people’s podcasts, as opposed to starting your own? And I don’t think it’s an either or, but Simone, I’ve been on over 1,000 podcast interviews, and when people ask me, “Why haven’t you started “your own podcast yet?” I’m like, “I’ve been talking about it for years.” But honestly, anybody that tells you doing a podcast is easy has either never done it or never done it well. Simone, the work that you put into this, I appreciate, and I always look at that as like return on investment. I think I can get more return on investment of being the guest and being on other people’s platforms, as opposed to then me starting my own platform.

– Yep, I completely agree with you. It’s about the long-term results, versus short-term gain. You get a person to believe that when you are a guest, we’re talking about public speaking, right, as well. When you are speaking on someone else’s stage, they do the hard work for you. Which is running the event, the logistic, promoting the event, getting people in the room, creating everything. You walk up, and you are the star of the show, you sell your product, and you go home. That’s all you do. The same thing, you deliver your interview, you don’t have to think about setting up the podcast, the branding, the marketing, the repurposing, taking piece of content here to in there, getting the assistant to message again the guest, reminding blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you have, it’s leveraging your time much better. And I agree with you about that.

– Very much, and I love that idea of podcasts being a digital stage. You are so right that that digital stage, if you can let somebody else build a stage for you, it’s so much easier to get your expertise out there.

– Absolutely, I agree with you 100%. I think that it’s, uh, they both work really well. I’m also a big advocate on having your own podcast, because that’s where people are gonna follow you, and that’s where people then they will have, but it requires a lot of work, it requires a team to run it. It’s a project, it’s a full-time project in your business, and then some people decides. So I think what I love about this interview is that I’m interviewing a lot of people that already have podcasts, while you are saying no you don’t need one. And I think, and I’m hearing some of our listeners saying, “Oh, thanks God.” Right? Because they say, okay, everybody’s telling me to run my own podcast, but I can actually make it without doing it, which I love.

– It could be either or. I think you can work your strengths, whatever your passion is behind. But to me, there’s a bigger commitment being a podcast host, you know? You show up regularly, and if you took the summer off, people would notice. If a guest takes the summer off, nobody’s gonna notice.

– I agree with you, completely agree with you, 100%. And it goes back to what kind of lifestyle do you want to live? What kind of lifestyle, and what kind of business do you want to have? And there is not one way that fits every business. You know what’s important for you, you know your strengths, you know the way you want to run your business, you have the freedom to run it in the way you want. You want to have a podcast, have a podcast. You don’t want to have a podcast, just having guest interviews? Just have guest interviews. So, now let’s explore the getting into the right podcasts. Because I know, as a podcaster myself, and I’m average interviewed on about 100 podcasts a year. That’s my target of external interviews. Not all podcasts are created equal. Right? There is podcasts and podcasts. So, how can someone find the right podcast?

– You’re right, and sometimes people ask me, “Well, how do you get on a podcast?” I’m like, “Well, there’s 400,000 podcasts out there.” Getting on one is not the problem. Getting on the right one, that’s the question you need to be asking. If you want better answers, ask better questions. So really, we look at it, our algorithm looks at four things. So the first one is the podcast itself. So, look at the popularity and who it’s talking to. You know, it could be a big podcast focused on cat juggling, or knitting. As a coach or an expert, that’s not gonna help you. That’s not your audience there. So when we go through, and looking at that, we always say, okay, what’s the popularity in iTunes? What’s the typical listener of that? We also look and say how long has this podcast been around? You know, the ugly reality is that most podcasts that die, die within the first ten episodes. So you really don’t want to be guest number seven when they stop paying the Libsyn bill on number eight, and it’s completely lost. So that’s the first thing, and I think lots of people look at that, but there’s other things you can look at, too. And one of them is the website, because the back links from a podcast are so powerful. We’ve got some clients that do podcast guesting just as an SEO strategy.

– Yeah.

– So you can look at the podcast and say, do they have, what’s their popularity? Like an Alexa ranking, what’s their authority, like a Moz ranking. And that can be very powerful. The third thing is social media. Are they promoting it? How many people are actually gonna see this? And then we always look at what have our experience been with previous clients. You know, there’s some big podcasts that are so generic that they never seem to convert real well, because they’re talking to everybody. Whereas if you can find something, a podcast that has your ideal listeners in it, man, you’ll get the best conversions from that. It’s almost like if you’re a speaker, do you want to speak in front of 100,000 random people for five minutes? No, because you’ll tick them off, right? Or would you rather speak to a conference room of 100 or 1,000 ideal customers? Well the smart experts know that they want to be in front of their ideal customers, so.

– Sign me up.

– Sometimes we have to remind people that there’s more fish in the ocean, but if you can find a barrel of fish, go there every time.

– Absolutely, absolutely. I agree with you, completely agree with you 100%. Remember, I got a lot of clients going through external podcast interviews, and these podcasts weren’t even huge. They weren’t huge podcasts, they weren’t big names, but I know that my exact avatar was there. So, of course size matters. They say size doesn’t matter, but hey, size matters. And if you’re around, if you’re being interviewed in a podcast which has three listeners, and the three listeners are the mom, the dad, and the sister, and the goldfish of the host, then you might not get results from there. But then as you said, it’s to look at for how long has your podcast been around? And this is for example as well, I’m seeing this as a point of view as a podcast host. When I’m looking for my guests, I had recently Jairek Robbins, which is the son of Tony Robbins as a guest. We’re going to release the episode soon. Now, I didn’t approach him up until I had 100 episodes. Because I remember, actually I approached him once, and it was, I think, about the 20 episode mark. And your team turned me down. They said no, your podcast is too fresh. So then I waited up until the 100th episode, and then it was easy, straight-in, yes, you’re coming in. So I think that, as well, that longevity is crucial, from a guest point of view, because it says I, your host, actually can get me some results.

– Mm-hmm. It’s gotta work for both people, so from that standpoint, that was a big point for you to be at your 100th episode, and for him to come on after that point sorta takes you to the next level. So yeah, looking all of those things will make the difference between just getting on a podcast, and getting business results from a podcast interview.

– Absolutely. So now, if I want to, let’s say, how do I find the right podcast then? So if I’m going, you know, sometimes when I want to be a guest on a show, I’m going on my iTunes, and I’m checking, I’m flicking on the trending podcasts that there are, and I see if that’s relevant. But what other ways can be to find the right show?

– Yeah, one of the best ones is to ask your current clients if they listen to podcasts, right? Ask them, “Hey, do you listen to podcasts? “What ones are your favourite ones?” Because one of the things that we have found is that it’s not always going on the same style of podcasts, but getting in front of your ideal listeners. So, let me give you an example here, Simone. We had a client early on. Great business coach, but when he went on podcasts that were for business coaches, he sounded like every other business coach, right? Everyone was basically the same.

– Yep.

– But, when he got on a podcast that focused on men’s health, you know, middle-aged men, he made a comment that said, you know, he works with his clients on work-life balance. He said it does you no good if you make your first million by the age of 30, if you make your first widow by the age of 40. That resonated so well with that audience. It was like the first time a business coach, a life coach, had been in front of that audience. They were open to seeing that. Now, I always use the example, it’s almost like, you know, walking into a bar. If you’re the only woman that walks into that bar, you’re gonna get noticed. And it was the same thing. He walked into a place where he was different, he was fresh, had fresh ideas, so a lot of times people just start to say well, I’m selling coaching, or I’m a speaker, so I need to get on speaker’s podcasts. No, get on the podcast that your ideal listeners are already listening to, and get in front of them there.

– I think that’s very powerful, and it remarks the fact that your customers have all the answers. Your customers have all the answers all the bloody time.

– But with that, too, also, I love that line. I’ve always said that your customer is the only expert. You know, I’ve got an opinion on my business, and you’ve got an opinion on it, but it’s an opinion. The customer’s the one that’s voting, and voting with their dollars. So do more of what they love, and do less of what they loathe. So like, when you’re on a podcast interview, we worked with a client, and he is an accountant. And he does a lot of virtual CFO work. Well, he was getting on different podcasts, we were looking at the data, and after about four months, pointed out, “Hey, did you notice that you do “really well on e-commerce podcasts, and dentist podcasts?” And he’s like, “You know, a lot of my clients “have been in that area there.” So from that standpoint, it’s like, for the next five months all we focused on was e-commerce podcasts and dentist podcasts. It was like, once we figured out what that barrel of fish was, we just kept going and trying to find different ones there. So I think it’s important as you go on podcasts, to have some kind of mechanism in order to understand where your traffic’s coming from. Because, you know, if some podcasts are giving you base hits, well, maybe don’t go to that type anymore. If some of them are giving you home runs, well, go back to that podcast and find other podcasts just like that.

– Absolutely. Great, great, great. Now, I want to then go to the step further. So now we discussed about one of the ways to find guest podcasts, so now you know how to find them, you have an idea on how to find them. But then you are on the show, now you are at a time when you are on the show. And it’s important, as you mentioned before, Tom, that you don’t sound like everyone else. Somehow you gotta stand out, somehow you gotta get this listener to say, “Oh my God, this is “the person for me. “I want to start interaction, I want to engage “with the person, and ultimately maybe buy for this person.” How do you stand out as a guest?

– Well, I love this, and I love how you describe it on your website. You should trademark that line. How not to be a douche bag on a stage. Because that is so true. Because a podcast interview is a great place to build credibility, to build that know, like, and trust. It’s an awful place for an infomercial. And so we do a lot of testing. And digital marketers will always tell you one call to action, right? Just give one call to action. Our testing has consistently shown to give three calls to action off of a podcast interview. And I’ll pull behind the curtain here and show ya how I use it and you’ll be like, “Oh, okay, now I get it.” So the three calls to action are a small yes, a medium yes, and a heck yes. So for me, a lot of times, a small yes will be, hey, there’s nine secrets to getting on your first podcast. And there’s an infographic for that, and I’m not going to go through and list all nine of them, but I’ll tell people, hey, there’s this free infographic, and you can go back and get that. And we always make a dedicated welcome page to send traffic back to. And that way we can measure which ones are a base hit, which ones are a home run. So, total transparency here, if you go to interviewvalet.com/explode, you will see what a welcome page looks like. And I’ll tell you right now, you have no idea what I look like, you have no idea what my website looks like, but you know Simone, and you know his podcast. So the first thing you’re gonna see on there is gonna be his picture, right? That’s that fantastic trust seal, and it cuts down on the bounce rates. And then there’ll be some words, and then there’ll be the small yes, the medium yes, and the heck yes. So the small yes is just that little infographic. The medium yes is typically I wrote a book called Podcast Guest Profits. You can buy it on Amazon, but I give away more than I sell. So that’s always the medium yes. If you want a copy of the book, just go there and you can get a free download of it. And then the big yes, especially for coaches and experts, if somebody hears you, and they’re like, “Simone gets me. “He can help me, he’s the one.” Well, don’t slow them down in a sales funnel, right? One of our clients, Bill Troy, wrote a book called Clicksand, How Digital Marketing Is Killing Your Business. And one of the points he makes there is big fish don’t go through funnels, and whales don’t click. So if somebody hears you for 30 or 45 minutes, and they want to work with you, don’t slow them down. Let them talk with the wizard. So the big yes for us is hey, you know, if podcast interview marketing sounds like something you would like to learn more about to leverage, let’s jump on a 15 minute discovery call, and see how you might use it. So once again, how do you sell from a podcast without being a douche bag? Well, give them ways to help them. So the small yes, you know, here’s a checklist. That medium yes, hey, here’s a free book. The big yes, where they come ready to engage, well, let’s talk. And do that all through a dedicated welcome page.

– This is mind-blowing, I have to say. Hat off, and actually, and I love doing this show because I get to learn always something new. So you just changed my guest podcast strategy right now. Tomorrow, actually tonight, I’m gonna create that page for my next interviews. Like, literally, straight away. This is such a great thing, in particular because what I loved about, it’s true, the majority of the clients that will pay you the biggest amount of money, they are not going through the funnels. Funnels are for the masses. Straight conversations wanted is for the few. And if you get the few through a long funnel, first of all, they ain’t got the time to go through it, they ain’t got the passion to go through it, they just want the results, because their pain is big, they’re pain or their desire is strong enough to get them to say, “I know this is important for me. “I love this, let’s move forward.” And that’s the same thing, for example, that happens, so my specialty is selling from the stage through seminars. In particular, a small event where we get 15 people in the room, and we can make up to $100,000 with 15 people in the room. And when we funnel people through that seminar to get there, we have a first call to action during a presentation, which is to download something. So they might send a text, or they might put their name down to get something to download during that presentation. And then there’s going to be a stronger call to action towards the end with all the product to buy or the conversation, or booking a consultation for having a proper conversation. So that’s the same psychology around it. So, which makes sense. Absolutely.

– That’s a great analogy, or, because I’ve had this argument back and forth with people. And it’s like an interview or speaking from a stage, that’s not cold traffic, that’s not the same thing as traffic off a Facebook ad or traffic off a blog. They’ve already heard your heart for 30 minutes, so they know more about you than you know about them at that time, so, like you said, have the conversation with them.

– Exactly, exactly. And also, on top of that, there is the endorsement, and the transference of authority from the guest, from the host of the podcast, which is someone that they already have a relationship with, to you. So now you are already immediately not completely liked and trusted, but half-liked, and half-trusted. So it’s much easier, right? So they’re like, “Okay, let me check you out. “But let them know that just because you are here, “I half-like you, and I half-trust you. “Then let me see if I fully like you and fully trust you “by the end of this interview.” I absolutely love that. So, okay so now you are there on the podcast, you want to blow the audience away, so you want to have this system in place to capture the audience and to monetize them. What else can I do as a guest to, again, stand out from the crowd while I’m doing that interview?

– Sure, one of the things that I’ve always believed is content is king, but context is god, with a small g, right? So make sure you’re talking straight to the audience. So if you listen to what I’m talking here, a lot of times I’ll talk about experts, coaches, speakers, trying to make it very focused in there. And with that, you want to know your audience, who you’re talking to. So be prepared for the stage you’re going onto. You wouldn’t walk onto a stage in front of 1,000 people, 5,000 people, without knowing who they are, right? Nothing will ruin your credibility more than stepping on a stage, and I gotta change the names here. If I step on a stage in London, and say, “Hello, Dublin.” I tell you what, that crowd is gonna stop listening to me. Because I’ve disrespected them, I don’t know who they are. Or if I don’t give examples then on a podcast that fit to that audience, it’s like, the person doesn’t even know me. So spend some time listening to the podcast, listening to what the audience talks about, listening even to the inside jokes. You know, some podcasts are very academic, and you don’t want to come in there being funny on an academic podcast. And the same way, you don’t want to come into the flip side of that. So it’s almost like respecting the rules of the house. You know, if they take their shoes off, you take your shoes off. So do that. The other thing is that most, or a lot people will listen to podcasts sped up. Right? A lot of times, so, listening to you now is weird to me, because when I listen to your podcast, I listen to it at 1.5x. So I always say, I run at 1.5x while I listen to podcasts.

– And I speak fast. And I speak pretty fast.

– You do, but with that, you need to make sure that when you’re a guest, talk the same rate as the host. Because if you talk faster or slower, it’s gonna be hard for people. Especially if they speed it up. So once again, it’s like if you were talking from any stage, make it specific to that audience. Just don’t come out and give your generic elevator pitch, because it won’t relate to them, and I think in some ways, on podcast interviews people say, well, since I didn’t have to fly there to do it, since I didn’t have to get dressed up to do it, they disregard that digital stage.

– While, at the same time, I consider it as a speaking engagement. I got to show up with my A game. Because I’m in front of an audience. That’s a speaking gig for me. And it is an audience that deserves my respect, deserves my preparation, and deserves me showing up in my best, even though they cannot see me. Or, in some podcasts where people do video, then also make sure that you are presentable for video. Because that’s also the other part of it. A lot of podcasters, they will record a video, like we do, and put them on YouTube, or put them on Facebook. So that’s important, by the fact that you want to be prepared for having a camera, and being shown up on camera, and as well, like you’re doing, having a good quality audio with no other noise in the background. These are all small things that make a huge difference from someone keep listening to you or keep, in this case, watching you if they see you, or click next. Because it’s incredibly easy to click that next button, incredibly easy. So it’s about keeping them engaged all the time, so I absolutely love that. Last question, last question before we wrap up, Tom. Which is about monetization. You already shared, actually I have two questions, actually, before we go into monetization, I have something quirky. I would love to ask you, what was the weirdest thing that happened to you while you were a guest in a podcast? What was the weirdest thing that happened to you?

– The weirdest thing had to be the weirdest question, and the hardest question I had ever been asked on a podcast. And there were two podcast hosts that had a fascination about, is it Renée Zellweger, the actress? And they asked all their guests, like in the middle of the interview, what’s your favourite Renée Zellweger movie? And, I’m 52 years old, I don’t know all the actresses there. So I’m getting ready for the podcast, the podcast interview, and I’m going through the brief sheet that my team had made me, and I’m like, I think I’ve heard of that. So I was able to Google that really quick. Now, if I wouldn’t have known that and been prepared for that, listened to the podcast interviews, they would’ve gotten to that part of the show, and I would’ve been like, “Uh, who?” And the entire audience would’ve known, oh, this person has never listened to this podcast. He never knows who these people are. So from that standpoint, that was the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me on a podcast, and the hardest question I’ve ever been asked.

-Which gives, again, is about doing your homework. It’s about doing your homework and making sure that you are prepared for different questions, so now let’s check about monetization. Let’s discuss the last part about monetization. You already shared something which is definitely going to change my business, so thank you very much. I owe you one, Tom. I’m going definitely to create the page with the three different asks. What else can we do as a guest to monetize our appearances better?

– I think the biggest thing, Simone, is being clear who you are. A lot of people try to be very generic, and try to appeal to everyone. The worst business advice I ever got in my entire life came from my grandfather, and it was the only wrong thing that old Irishman ever told me. He said, “Choose carefully who you drink with, “because you can’t choose who you work with.” Now for him, that was true. I mean, he was a mechanic in a small town. If you came to him with a car, you were his customer. But for us today, we’ve got access to so many ideal customers. So with that, you don’t need to convert half of the people on a podcast. For most experts, you just need to convert those ideal people. And if you’re honest with who you are, those people will find you out, they’ll connect with you. And those people, other people that listen to you and say, well, that was interesting. You know, Tom was interesting. But I’m onto the next podcast. That’s fine. But the ones that are the speakers, the authors, the coaches that say, “Wow, that was amazing. I could see how “Interview Valet could help us.” Those are the one you want to deal with. So I would say, you know, be yourself. Be true to who you are. Don’t be insulting to other people, but don’t try to be all things to all people.

– Fantastic. Thank you, Tom. And again, this is a brilliant example on even if you’re running a speech in a live event, that’s the same thing. You want to be yourself, you want to be the speaker that stands out on the stage. You want to be the speaker that people remember. That’s, for example, I have my didgeridoos, I play a didgeridoo, and I play basketball as well, and so a professional basketball player and I do beatboxing with the didgeridoo. So these are two quirky things about me that people remember me for. And when I run my presentation, there’s always a basketball ball on the stage, and a didgeridoo. And again, this is about being yourself in a way that stands out, and also being clear about the people that you are talking to, so then they will resonate, they will see themselves in you, and they will say, “Yes, I want your support. “I want to work with you.” So, Tom, it’s been a brilliant interview. I have to say, you absolutely over-delivered. You absolutely over-delivered. I can say you’re definitely more than walking your talk with what you teach and the support that you give. So now, if someone wants to get in touch with you, where they can find you?

– All right, so learn from this, too. When somebody’s listening to a podcast interview, they’ve got a lot of things going down. So they can’t write everything down. Don’t give out your email address, don’t give out your social media. Just go back to what you talked about before. So if this resonated with you at all, just go over to interviewvalet.com/explode. So you’ll see what a welcome page looks like, there’ll be those three offers that we talked about. You know, the infographic on how to get on your first podcast, the free copy of the book, and a chance to talk where we can just find out how podcast interview marketing could work for you. I’ll put all my social media on there, my email address, all the rest of that. But just go to interviewvalet.com/explode, and you’ll find everything there.

– Fantastic. So interviewvalet.com/explode. And then you can interact and engage with Tom. Download the book, download and check the infographic, and also if you’re saying that how Tom and his team at Interview Valet can help you, then absolutely get a chat. Because I have to say, from my experience, I experienced how was the booking process with Tom. And it was perfect. From under every single aspect. From the way the team handled me, the way the reminders would send, and everything else. So I can see from a host, from the host point of view, what the work and the structures and the systems that Interview Valet has put into place for this talk, for the interview that we had today with Tom. So definitely another plus on the service that I can really vouch for, and that I can really recommend. So Tom, thank you very much. Thank you for being on our show.

– Thank you, Simone.

– It’s been an absolute pleasure, guys. If you haven’t subscribed to this show yet. If you haven’t subscribed, what the heck are you waiting for? Click that juicy subscribe button. I know it’s calling you right now. And also, give us a review. Let us know what did you love the most about this interview, so then we can have other great guests like we had Tom today for you, every week, where we release on Tuesday, our single, our guest episode, and on Friday, our solo episode. So subscribe, stay tuned, and I’m looking forward seeing you next episode. And always remember that together, we grow exponentially. See you next time, bye.