Podcasting is, without a doubt, one of the popular forms of content creation in today’s world. There are series covering a wide range of topics, industries, and niches, connecting speakers to their interested audiences. According to Podcast Index, there are more than 4.4 million podcasts in the index, at the time of publishing.
For businesses looking to build real connections with their target audience — connections that will lead to sales — podcasting is a priceless resource. Here, we’ll delve into how to generate leads from a podcast.
Why Podcasts Can (and Should) Be Used for Lead Generation
With such a massive range of podcasts available, why should you add to it? The simple answer is, of course, lead generation. Getting your brand voice heard by your main audience is just one powerful way of developing your brand authority, and can strengthen how your audience perceives you. After all, that is what your brand is.
It’s no longer enough to simply have a great product — you need to have that real connection with your audiences. More than ever, consumers crave relatability and authenticity, and the best, most successful brands are ones that can offer this. A recent study by the influencer marketing group, Social Soup, found that 52% of consumers are mostly impacted by informative content when it comes to making purchases. This was closely followed by relatable content (40%), authentic (35%), creative (35%), and friendly content (32%).
By publishing a podcast, you’re able to hit all of these requirements. Here, we’ll go through how.
How to Generate Leads With Podcasts
When it comes to generating leads, having the right content is key. As previously mentioned, podcasts are an easy way to do this, as it allows you to directly speak to your audience, and connect with them.
Understand your audience
You won’t be able to connect with your audience if you don’t know who they are or what problems they’re facing. Knowing who your audience is, what their problems are, and how you can help them is the most valuable preparation you can do before starting your podcast. By truly understanding what your potential customers are experiencing allows you to speak directly to them — rather than delivering the same, tired sales pitch and hoping they bite.
Instead, take the time to understand your audience so you can speak directly to them. As mentioned above, consumers respond well to relatable and authentic content. If you understand them, you’ll be able to speak effectively to them.
Publish valuable content
We already know that there are millions of podcasts available for listeners, making it even more important for yours to be different in order to stand out from the crowd. Give your listeners something valuable to take from listening to your podcast. Maybe it’s a piece of advice, an expert opinion, or a deep look into data and insights specific to your industry. Speak directly to your ideal customer profiles (ICP) in order to build a meaningful connection and a sense of community.
The key to publishing truly valuable content is consistency. Publishing regular episodes that delve into the deeper facets of your industry allows you to build a sense of credibility. And, if you’re able to, invite experts, authoritative figures, and industry experts to your show to hear their thoughts and opinions. This can help to boost your credibility even further and gain an audience that truly cares about and trusts your insights.
At EM360Tech, we work with industry analysts who offer their unique insights and thought leadership on our podcast episodes. Leading the conversation with our guests, these analysts are experts within their field with a deep understanding of customer problems — and the solutions that are needed. With any guest appearing on one of our podcasts, we take the time to learn about their niche, matching them with an analyst that best fits the needs of the episode. This allows us to facilitate a conversation that our listeners are genuinely interested in hearing.
We know our listenership is built up of IT and business professionals who are keen to stay on top of industry trends, which is why we carefully select an industry analyst to chat to each podcast guest.
Collaborate with ‘influencers’ and experts
Influencer marketing is worth billions, and for good reason. Any consumer wants to be assured that what they’re purchasing — or considering purchasing — is approved by people they trust and admire. While B2B industries may not have influencers in the traditional sense, working with renowned figures within your specific industry can help add a level of credibility and gravitas to your podcast and brand.
As previously mentioned, inviting industry analysts and thought leaders to speak on your podcast is an easy way to start ‘influencer’ marketing. Reach out to subject matter experts to speak on your podcast, and gather insights, quotes, and opinions that are totally unique to that episode. As well as gathering unique — and, therefore, valuable content — you’ll also benefit from your guest’s network, who are likely to be interested in what they have to say and will tune in to listen to the episode. This creates a wider listenership for your podcast, giving you more people to convert into buyers of your product.
This is something we do well at EM360Tech. We have a network of analysts who are on hand to appear on specific podcast episodes, sharing their unique takes on industry news and solutions to customer pain points, as well as their predictions on future trends.
Create an optimised landing page
So, you’ve now got valuable content with unique angles and fresh opinions from experts — how do you now generate leads? First, you need to invite your listeners to consent to giving you their data. Create a landing page for each episode that’s well-optimised — so users can search for your insights and find your episode.
Provide extra value to these pages, to encourage listeners to click through to calls to action (CTAs), such as by offering up show notes, additional and exclusive content, or downloadable guides.
Creating a dedicated landing page to your podcast also provides an opportunity to gate the content — allowing you to gather data from listeners to convert into leads. This involves having visitors provide their email address and name in order to gain access to the podcast episode, which you can then use to follow up with marketing material in order to convert listeners to buyers.
Lead listeners to your podcast
Getting an audience to listen to your podcast is crucial — if they don’t listen, why would they subscribe and convert to buyers? The best way to do this is to focus on content quality, offering something valuable to your listeners to keep them engaged. It’s also worth having the right moderator or guest on your podcast. As previously mentioned, we work closely with industry analysts to moderate our podcasts, giving us access to their audience as well as providing a level of quality that may not be possible with just one speaker.
However, you can’t simply rely on the audience of your guest. You need to do your own promotion. Publishing each episode on social media by sharing image stills, or short-form content through episode snippets. Ensure that you’re always sharing links to the full podcast so audiences are encouraged to click through and make the conversion.
If you create a podcast of high enough quality, you’ll be able to repurpose one episode in multiple different ways. Whether this is a blog post that delves deeper into a specific quote, a 30-second snippet of a video to share on TikTok or Instagram Reels, or a quote posted to LinkedIn that invites other experts to comment, you should be creating as much content as you can from each episode.
A targeted email campaign can also notify your existing subscribers to listen to the podcast — especially if it’s relevant to their interests.
Email potential leads to convert
Once you’ve gathered a list of potential leads from your podcast, it’s time to start nurturing them. You want to start moving them through the funnel and encourage them to convert into a buyer, rather than a listener.
Carefully plan an email strategy, with personalised messaging and follow-ups, in order to create a meaningful connection with each prospect. Use the data you’ve gathered from the lead magnet activity to create and deliver content that’s relevant to your audience’s needs.
Our team works closely with each client to help them nurture their leads, providing a comprehensive guide to nurturing and converting leads.
Things to Remember
By following the guidelines highlighted in this blog, you’ll be able to generate qualified leads from a podcast series. However, there are a few aspects that you should keep in mind when producing a podcast.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is your audio and visual quality. Podcasts are first and foremost audio-based content. This means that you need to ensure both you and your guest are using a quality microphone that clearly picks up what is being said.
If you’re also publishing a video of your podcast — whether it’s the entire episode on YouTube or snippets created for social media — you’ll also need to consider the quality of your camera. If the camera being used isn’t a high resolution (such as using a laptop’s built-in camera) or if the lighting isn’t right, you run the risk of producing low-quality content. This can turn your audience away from the get-go, before they’ve even had a chance to hear your message.
You should also remember to include clear CTAs within all your content. This means speaking to your audience and reminding them to subscribe, encouraging sign-ups on the landing page, or asking social media audiences to click the link in the bio to be taken to the latest episode. By skipping out on CTAs, you’re skipping out on gathering valuable leads.
And finally, you should always be focused on producing valuable content within each podcast episode. This means you should avoid overloading your content with a sales pitch. All listeners want value above all else, which means insightful and educational content is key. If you prioritise valuable content, the leads will naturally follow.
Get Started with a Podcast Episode Today
Podcasts are a key way of generating leads, while also creating a sense of community amongst your audience. If you’re interested in starting a podcast series — but don’t have the time or resources to do it yourself — we can help.
Our team at EM360Tech are experts in lead generation with podcasts. We have established three distinct podcast series that you can guest appear on, depending on your niche. Join our cybersecurity-focused series, The Security Strategist, to explore emerging trends. If data management and control is more your industry, we welcome you to join our analysts on Don’t Panic! It’s Just Data. Or, if you’d rather talk about the future of tech and AI, our Tech Transformed series is a perfect match.
Get in touch with our team of experts, and let us do the rest. We’ll find the podcast series that’s best suited for you and match you with one of our industry analysts. Then, we’ll manage the leads that come in, passing them to your team and helping you nurture them.