Q&A: How to Run a Podcast PR Tour
04/06/22 • 77 min
In this special Q&A episode, Jeremiah is joined by Lemonpie CEO and Founder, Erik Jacobson, and our Head of Talent Relations, Josh Crist, to talk about what it takes to run a podcast PR tour.
This is a must-listen if you’re considering a tour for your brand but aren’t sure where to start. Erik and Josh walk you through the ins and outs of identifying shows to pitch, strategies for landing interviews, the value of podcast guesting, and how to measure the success of it all.
Guests-at-a-Glance
Names: Erik Jacobson and Josh Crist
What they do: Erik is the CEO and founder of Lemonpie and Josh is the Head of Talent Relations at Lemonpie
Connect with them: Erik’s LinkedIn | Erik’s Twitter | Josh’s LinkedIn
Key Takeaways
Podcast tours are like the digital version of a book tour but for your brand.
Podcast tours, like book tours, are a way for you to build awareness for your brand and for you (or your employees) as a thought leader in your industry. It’s the proactive strategy of finding podcasts that your ideal customers or ideal team members listen to and getting interviewed on as many of them as possible over a short period of time.
Being a guest on a podcast helps position you as the expert in your space.
The more your name appears across podcasts in your industry, the more dominant the perception of you and your brand becomes. You don’t have to be a market leader to reap the benefits of a podcast tour. Instead, your goal should be to give the best, most transparent interview those shows have ever had in order to build trust with the audience and be seen as an expert in your space.
Leads from podcast tours come from the aggregation of multiple interviews.
Rather than micro analyzing the number of leads you get from one specific interview, you should take a more holistic approach. Look at the aggregation of leads coming from all the interviews on your tour. It’s about setting the sail in the right direction versus narrowing your focus on each individual opportunity.
Repurpose episode content from your guesting opportunities.
Many guests miss the chance to repurpose content from their interviews to share across their own organic channels. Rather than waiting for the host/show to send you assets, you can actually record videos of yourself for every single interview you give or even write blog posts out of the topics you cover. This will give you the ability to distribute your own repurposed content even if the host/show doesn’t provide you with marketing content to work with.
Go into your podcast tour with clear and realistic goals so you don’t quit too early.
What are you asking of this channel in relation to the goal you hope it achieves? If you’re looking for podcast PR tours to drive leads in the first 30 days, there’s likely a mismatch between what this channel can do for you and what your goals are. Measuring podcast tour results is not the same as measuring paid acquisition channels. You need to be willing to stick with it long enough to see the outsized returns it can drive, even with the limitations of podcast tour analytics.
Podcast tours are great for companies that believe in raising the profiles of the executives on their teams.
If you believe that people want to buy from people, then this is the right strategy for you. You need to go into this channel with the philosophical mindset that brand building comes from raising the profiles of the executives on your team.
The compounding results of a podcast tour come in months 6 through 12+.
This isn’t something you see results from within the first 3 months of your tour. Yes, you will see and be able to generate activity, but there’s oftentimes a lag from when the podcaster agrees to interview you to when the episode goes live. So you need to go into the first 3 months knowing it’s a ramp-up period where you build up a snowball effect with compounding results in months 6 through 12+.
The key to being a successful podcast guest is having domain expertise and sharing it in a vulnerable way.
A podcast interview isn’t a 30-minute pitch or webinar of your product. Instead, it’s a time for you to share the expertise you’ve learned from being in the same position the listeners are in. What sort of experience do you bring to the table that only you could have from having lived the same experiences of the listeners you’re speaking to?
It’s more important to look at...
In this special Q&A episode, Jeremiah is joined by Lemonpie CEO and Founder, Erik Jacobson, and our Head of Talent Relations, Josh Crist, to talk about what it takes to run a podcast PR tour.
This is a must-listen if you’re considering a tour for your brand but aren’t sure where to start. Erik and Josh walk you through the ins and outs of identifying shows to pitch, strategies for landing interviews, the value of podcast guesting, and how to measure the success of it all.
Guests-at-a-Glance
Names: Erik Jacobson and Josh Crist
What they do: Erik is the CEO and founder of Lemonpie and Josh is the Head of Talent Relations at Lemonpie
Connect with them: Erik’s LinkedIn | Erik’s Twitter | Josh’s LinkedIn
Key Takeaways
Podcast tours are like the digital version of a book tour but for your brand.
Podcast tours, like book tours, are a way for you to build awareness for your brand and for you (or your employees) as a thought leader in your industry. It’s the proactive strategy of finding podcasts that your ideal customers or ideal team members listen to and getting interviewed on as many of them as possible over a short period of time.
Being a guest on a podcast helps position you as the expert in your space.
The more your name appears across podcasts in your industry, the more dominant the perception of you and your brand becomes. You don’t have to be a market leader to reap the benefits of a podcast tour. Instead, your goal should be to give the best, most transparent interview those shows have ever had in order to build trust with the audience and be seen as an expert in your space.
Leads from podcast tours come from the aggregation of multiple interviews.
Rather than micro analyzing the number of leads you get from one specific interview, you should take a more holistic approach. Look at the aggregation of leads coming from all the interviews on your tour. It’s about setting the sail in the right direction versus narrowing your focus on each individual opportunity.
Repurpose episode content from your guesting opportunities.
Many guests miss the chance to repurpose content from their interviews to share across their own organic channels. Rather than waiting for the host/show to send you assets, you can actually record videos of yourself for every single interview you give or even write blog posts out of the topics you cover. This will give you the ability to distribute your own repurposed content even if the host/show doesn’t provide you with marketing content to work with.
Go into your podcast tour with clear and realistic goals so you don’t quit too early.
What are you asking of this channel in relation to the goal you hope it achieves? If you’re looking for podcast PR tours to drive leads in the first 30 days, there’s likely a mismatch between what this channel can do for you and what your goals are. Measuring podcast tour results is not the same as measuring paid acquisition channels. You need to be willing to stick with it long enough to see the outsized returns it can drive, even with the limitations of podcast tour analytics.
Podcast tours are great for companies that believe in raising the profiles of the executives on their teams.
If you believe that people want to buy from people, then this is the right strategy for you. You need to go into this channel with the philosophical mindset that brand building comes from raising the profiles of the executives on your team.
The compounding results of a podcast tour come in months 6 through 12+.
This isn’t something you see results from within the first 3 months of your tour. Yes, you will see and be able to generate activity, but there’s oftentimes a lag from when the podcaster agrees to interview you to when the episode goes live. So you need to go into the first 3 months knowing it’s a ramp-up period where you build up a snowball effect with compounding results in months 6 through 12+.
The key to being a successful podcast guest is having domain expertise and sharing it in a vulnerable way.
A podcast interview isn’t a 30-minute pitch or webinar of your product. Instead, it’s a time for you to share the expertise you’ve learned from being in the same position the listeners are in. What sort of experience do you bring to the table that only you could have from having lived the same experiences of the listeners you’re speaking to?
It’s more important to look at...
Previous Episode
InVision: Establishing a Loyal Audience w/ Eli Woolery
In this episode, Jeremiah sits down with Eli Woolery, Senior Director for Design Education at InVision, to chat about the impeccable execution of their content platform and podcast, Design Better.
Design Better is an entire brand within InVision that produces books, industry reports, a podcast, a newsletter, blogs, and so much more. It’s entirely focused on delivering high-quality education and value to its audience.
Tune in to learn why they built Design Better as a complementary brand to InVision, how their focus has changed over the years, how they execute their 6-season podcast, and why they believe in investing in podcasting for the long haul.
Guest-at-a-Glance
Name: Eli Woolery
What he does: Senior Director of Design Education at InVision and Lecturer in Product Design at Stanford
Connect with Eli: LinkedIn | Twitter
Key Takeaways
Create content that is useful to people without expecting anything in return.
The entire philosophy behind InVision’s Design Better brand is creative generosity. They produce content that’s useful for people purely with the intention of helping them become better at what they do versus promoting their own product. When you lead with value, you have a better chance of building a loyal community around your brand.
Growing a podcast takes time, no matter who you are or what brand you represent.
Even though InVision started with a base email list of millions of subscribers, it still took them a couple of years to really build up the Design Better podcast. It’s important to set the right expectations from the start that these things take time. You won’t see an immediate ROI, so your leadership team needs to have the confidence and patience to let the podcast run its course.
If you, as a host, are bored of your content, your audience likely is too.
How do you know when it’s time to switch up or expand your podcast? Eli says when you, as a host, are bored and no longer curious to learn, that’s when you need to move beyond the topics you normally cover. Because if you’re bored, your audience likely feels the same if they’ve been following you for a while.
Your podcast content should continuously align with the overall direction of your product.
Whether you’re working on a podcast, blog, newsletter, video series, or a combination of all channels, your content should always align with the direction your product is taking. If your product is now serving a purpose for a broader audience, your content needs to reflect that broadening as well. Design Better, for example, shifted its focus from primarily design-heavy content to more broad collaboration to reflect the change in InVision’s target ICP.
Themed seasons help create guardrails around who you want to bring on as guests.
Each of the 6 seasons of Design Better has a unique theme, and the purpose of those themes is to help anchor the content and guest roster. However, they make sure the theme is flexible enough to where it doesn’t restrict them when they want to bring someone really interesting on the show who might not fit the exact criteria.
Podcasts are a great top-of-funnel strategy to build brand awareness.
With podcast metrics being hard to track, InVision focuses its podcasting efforts purely on brand building and brand awareness. To them, success comes in the form of audience growth season by season, which means more people are exposed to the InVision brand and hopefully stick with them throughout the customer journey. They also repurpose podcast content on their blog where they can better track click-throughs on their CTAs.
The quality of your podcast reflects the quality of your brand.
If you’re asking people to listen to you for 45 minutes, it’s in your best interest to provide them with good quality audio. By simply switching from Zoom to Riverside or Zencastr, you can 10x your audience’s listening experience. Remember that your podcast is a direct reflection of your brand. The higher quality you provide, the more your audience will trust your expertise.
Podcasts are a great alternative to traditional media channels.
Podcasting allows your audience to connect with you on a deeper, more personal level for longer periods of time than any other traditional media channel allows for. You’re better able to have discussions and go deeper on topics, which means there...
Next Episode
Databox: Using a Repeatable Podcast Format w/ John Bonini
Today’s guest is John Bonini, Director for Marketing at Databox, a cool SaaS platform that lets you build reporting dashboards and track performance from every tool you use.
In this episode, you’ll hear why podcasting was one of the first channels John chose to invest in after seeing massive success with SEO. He also explains how their podcast, Metrics & Chill, plays into the rest of their content strategy, along with how he thinks about growth, and a ton more.
Guest-at-a-Glance
- Name: John Bonini
- What he does: Director of Marketing at Databox, host of Metrics & Chill, and creator of Some Good Content
- Connect with him: LinkedIn | Twitter
Key Takeaways
Podcasts are a great way to stand out from the competition.
Databox was quick to convert to podcasting once they realized none of their competitors were in that space. It was a great way to stand out, talk directly to their ideal customers, showcase their brand’s personality, and help break them into the industry.
Podcasts with a repeatable format are easier for smaller teams to manage.
John decided to use a repeatable format, or what he likes to call “The Tonight Show Approach”, with the Databox podcast in order to make it easier for their small team to manage. With quicker episodes and a consistent set of questions, their podcast content can easily be transposed into different content formats, like blog posts or newsletters.
If your content strategy is focused on SEO, don’t overlap that approach with your podcast.
Use the two content channels differently. Many companies treat podcasting as another way to drive more traffic or leads, but if you already have a written content strategy in place that performs well at the top of the funnel, then your podcast should be more of a brand play. Use it as a way to showcase the views of your company and leaders to cement your positioning in the minds of the listeners.
A repeatable podcast format helps listeners know what to expect from each episode.
Rather than freewheeling an interview, you could take a repeatable approach and ask the same 10 questions to each guest. After 25 episodes, you’ll be left with a lot of qualitative data around those questions that you could then use to create reports, blog posts, or videos.
A strong podcast host knows how to get the human side out of a conversation.
Avoid asking yes or no questions. Instead, focus on pulling out stories from your guests. Lead with things like, “Tell me about...” or “Tell me a time when...” or “How did you feel when...”. This helps guests open up about their feelings and experiences rather than respond with short, surface-level answers. If you can get the human side out of a conversation, that’s where the magic happens.
Don’t start a podcast because everyone else is doing it.
You have to have a desire to start your own branded show. Don’t feel pressured by what the rest of the market is doing. It’s important to ask yourself, “Should you do it? Do you want to do it? And do you have the staff to execute a full show?”
Podcasting is a good way for legacy companies to stay in the conversation.
If you’re running a legacy company, you might wonder if you should even bother podcasting at all? John thinks it’s a great way for staying top of mind. Particularly, for consumers who are trying to decide between you and your top competitors. If you’re one of 5 big players in your industry and all 4 of your competitors are podcasting, they’ll be more relevant in conversations than you.
If you like this episode you’ll love
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