Do you want to grow your podcast?
Good.
Are you an influencer in your niche? Are you just starting to build your audience?
If you answer yes to either of these or if you fall in the middle somewhere, it doesn’t matter, the approach to landing your ideal guests and leveraging their audience is the same.
Growing a podcast can be challenging but by using OPP we can fast-track the success and ensure it’s a win-win for you and your guests.
How does it work?
The goal of using OPP is to leverage their audience. Simple as that.
To make this a success you need to do 5 simple steps
- Make a list of your ideal guests and group them into 3 phases – short term, mid term, and long term targets. We will go into this in detail below.
- Reach out in a way that makes your guests excited to be on your show, even if you are just launching.
- Make it stupidly simple to schedule an interview with you.
- Ask them to share a freebie with your audience
- Record a top-notch episode that positions your guests as an authority,
- Provide great assets that your guests will want to share with their audience.
Step 1: Grouping Your Ideal Guest Outreach Into 3 Phases
Use this spreadsheet template to help you organize your podcast leads.
Short term: Reaching your direct connections with influence. These are the people that will open your message or email because they know you personally in some capacity.
Midterm: Getting referrals from people in your network. The people that won’t make a good fit for your podcast but might know someone that would. This could also be referrals from your short term guests.
As you know, people with big networks or lots of followers usually know others that have the same.
Long-term: Developing your Dream 100 list and getting them on your podcast one by one as you increase your circle of influence. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of the Dream 100, then listen to this podcast episode.
Now, for each of these phases, let’s dive into the exacts around:
- Who are the people in these phases
- What is the best way to reach out to them
- When you should connect with them
- How can you make it an irresistible offer
The details of each phase to help you group them:
Short term
Who are the people in this phase?
- These are your closest contacts. You probably have these people in your phone contacts and can text them when you want. If you were thinking about them as leads, these would be hot leads. You could close them on being a podcast guest quickly.
- These people should have some influence in their niche.
- They should be aligned with the niche of your podcast.
Mid term
Who are the people in this phase?
- These are people with authority in your niche – it doesn’t have to be someone with 100k followers.
- These are people you either are connected with but don’t have a relationship with, or you are not connected with them but are aware of their authority in the niche.l
- They should be aligned with the niche of your podcast.
Long term
Who are the people in this phase?
- These are people with high authority in your niche – it doesn’t have to be someone with 100k followers.
- These are people you either are connected with but don’t have a relationship with, or you are not connected with them but are aware of their authority in the niche.
- They should be aligned with the niche of your podcast.
- Depending on how “big” they are will determine the strategy for you to get in front of this person.
Step 2: Outreach Strategy By Group
Now that you have them grouped, you will need to plan an outreach strategy.
Just like the names of the groups state, you will approach them in stages – going after the quick wins (short term) first.
Short term
When should you reach out to them?
You should start this at least a month before you plan to launch your podcast.
What is the best way to reach out to them?
You will want to reach out to them in the most intimate way possible.
In order of most effective this would be:
- a phone call
- text message to their phone
- a voice message on FB Messenger
- text message on FB Messenger
- email with video message embedded using Loom
How can you make it an irresistible offer?
- Since they are your close contacts this should be an easy “sell”.
- Be authentic and let them know you are growing your podcast with listeners who are in their ideal audience.
Mid term
When should you reach out to them?
You should start this at least a month before you plan to launch your podcast.
What is the best way to reach out to them?
You will find the best way to reach them is through an existing relationship.
Ask someone in your close network to introduce you to the person. This is by far the most effective way.
If you can’t get an introduction then
- a voice message on FB Messenger
- email with video message embedded using Loom (you’ll also be notified when/if they watch it)
How can you make it an irresistible offer?
- Spend some time telling them how your listeners are aligned with their ideal audience.
- As always, be authentic and let them know you are growing an engaged podcast audience.
- Don’t mention how many downloads you are currently getting unless it is over 10,000 per month or they ask.
Long-term
Reaching out to your long-term targets is more comprehensive so this will be broken down into a few steps.
Stage 1 – The Insider
You want to find 4-5 people that are very close to your Target Connection; we call them The Insiders.
When should you reach out to them?
- This is a long-term play and you shouldn’t even be reaching out to the Target Connection.
- In the beginning, you should be connecting with their “Insiders”.
- The “Insider” is someone who is a “right-hand man/woman” to your Target Connection. They either work in their business, are collaborators, or a close friend that is often around.
- You’ll want to reach out to them when you find the right opportunity. This is strategic not a “spray and pray” approach.
What is the best way to reach out to them?
- Find the Insiders close to your target connection and start providing them with massive value – authentically.
- Are they active on Facebook? Comment on everything they post. You can notifications on everything they post by going to their Facebook profile then clicking the Friends button. You’ll get a drop down – click “Get Notifications”. This is how they can passively “get to know you”.
- Do you have expertise that may benefit them? Offer to help them with a problem, for free, no strings attached. And over-deliver.
- Gift them something on their Amazon Wishlist – here is a link to search. Depending on how “big” your target connection is, you may want to gift their insiders first to cultivate that relationship first.
- If you can’t find their Wishlist then you can consume their content to try and pick up on things they may be interested in. For example, I was at a mastermind recently and the host mentioned he friended one of the speakers originally by finding out from interviews that Chipper Jones was his favorite baseball player – he then went online and bought a signed baseball and shipped it to him. Yes, you can find someone’s address if you really want to.
- Go to events and conferences that they will be at.
- Do not “stalk” them at the conference – this will backfire quickly if you do.
- Go one level down and find people that are close to your Insider and do the same things to them.
How can you make it an irresistible offer?
- It can take quite some time to develop the relationship with the Insider to the point that you can pitch them your podcast. Remember, this all depends on how “big” they are. For some people, you could pitch them after only a few interactions or with an introduction from someone else, as explained in the previous section.
- Spend some time telling them how your listeners are aligned with their ideal audience.
- As always, be authentic and let them know you are growing an engaged podcast audience.
- Don’t mention how many downloads you are currently getting unless it is over 10,000 per month or they ask.
The goal here is to stay in front of these “Insiders” and make sure they know who you are and what you do.
Stage 2 – The Target Connection
What you want to happen here is for your relationships with the Insiders to get you in front of this person or for them to bring you up to the Target Connection.
When should you reach out to them?
You won’t be in control of the “when”. You’ll need to sit back and wait for the right time once you have nurtured the relationships of the Insiders and built enough trust.
What is the best way to reach out to them?
There are three approaches here:
- You will ask for an introduction from the Insider to the Target Connection. You need to Insider to pre-frame you well – this is crucial – so consider giving the Insider a few pointers.
- You can wait for the Insiders to bring you up to the Target Connection as an authority on ‘X’ topic.
- You can approach them directly referencing a few of the Insiders. (Ask the Insiders if this is a good approach)
How can you make it an irresistible offer?
-
- Make it 100% about them – don’t even allude to how it will help grow your audience.
- Like with the other’s, describe your listener audience and how it’s their ideal audience.
Step 3: Leveraging Their Audience
Getting connected with these people is only the first part. Now comes the part where we actually try to leverage THEIR audience. You will inherently get some boost to your podcast just from people seeing the Target Connection’s name in the episode title or from organic search but that’s not why we are doing this. We want THEM to share and spread the word about your podcast and here is how to do it…
Make it a good experience
The quickest way that you can ensure they will not share your podcast episode is by making it a bad experience for them. This is why I do not recommend coming out with a top name person in your first 5-10 episodes. It takes some time to get into the groove with interviewing people.
- You should have listened to other content from this person to get some idea of the topics you want to be sure to cover.
- Before you start, you want to make sure you ask them if they have any specific topics they’d like to cover. They could have something about to come out that they want to promote such as a book, course, or event. I usually do this during the scheduling process. You can see exactly how we do this in the 7-Figure Downloads course.
- Create a fun environment for the guest – open the conversation with brief small talk but keep it < 3 minutes – unless they keep it going.
- During the interview, don’t ask them “left field” questions that will catch them off guard and put them in a non-authoritative position. You are trying to frame them as an expert and authority so, keep the questions in their core competency.
Create share-worthy content
The goal is to get them to share it with their audience so you need to create share-worthy assets.
- Make sure you have professionally edited audio
- This means you want professional looking graphics that fit the various social media platforms. Mainly, standard FB/IG and Stories. You may also want to create a YouTube thumbnail.
- You’ll also want to create an audiogram that contains a snippet from a highlight of the episode.
- If you are recording video, you can also make a short video clip as well. Try to keep it under 30 seconds.
- If you just want to record and not do all the creation, then check out our services here.
Make it super easy for them to share
It’s likely that they don’t share their own social content besides Facebook & Instagram Stories so you will need to get the details of who shares their content before exiting the interview because that is who you will email.
- Send a thank you email the day before that the episode goes live.
- Make sure it contains these main parts:
- Genuine thanks that address them by name (duh) and let them know it will be live tomorrow (or whenever)
- Actually ASK them to share it.
- Attachment of the various social media graphics you created
- iFrame code of the media player in the email body so they can add it to their site (more plays from traffic to their site)
- Ask for a review on iTunes (see below)
Ask for a review
Not only will getting a review from this high authority connection help just because it’s another review, but it will really help as a social proof asset. You’ll want to screenshot the review and save it in your social proof folder. Here is how you can increase your chances of getting a review…
- Give them crystal clear instructions for how this is done in iTunes.
- Here is a guide.
If you follow this approach, you will certainly be able to grow your podcast subscribers and downloads quickly.
Keep in mind that this isn’t a quick process, even for the short term guests and you will need to start this well in advance of your launch.
