Podcast Guesting as a Marketing Strategy with Dustin Riechmann
On this week’s episode of Growing a Fruitful Brand, professional podcast guest and meaty snack guru, Dustin Riechmann shares his podcast-guest strategy with Raj and how he uses podcasting to fill his sales funnel.
You’ve probably heard us talk about filling your funnel and filling your sales pipeline but for most mission driven leaders, selling, well… it sucks! No one likes that feeling of getting greased up and slithering into someones inbox to talk about how great their product is.
If you’ve been here a while, you’ve probably also heard us talk about the power of StoryBrand.
StoryBrand isn’t just a marketing framework, it’s a way for you to use your marketing to tell your customer’s story.
What does this look like in podcasting? I’ll give you an example!
You are a dentist (you may actually be one but for the sake of this case study, everyone who is reading this is a dentist).
You specialize in pediatric dentistry and you’re looking for a new strategy to market to parents of school age children.
A local parenting group hosts a weekly podcast that focuses on fun things to do around your city with kids, local events and local deals.
You call the producer and ask if you can be a guest to talk about the staggering fact that 52% of school age children have cavities in their baby teeth because it’s difficult to establish routines with an infant.
You give your tips on what parents can do to start dental hygiene habits as early as infancy and the importance of early interventions to prevent tooth decay and save money, pain and embarrassment in the future.
✅ You identify what parents want: “Healthy dental habits”
✅ You expose the problem: “Brushing a baby’s teeth is almost impossible!”
✅ You assert your authority: “I have all the tips and tricks!”
✅ You give them a plan: “It’s as easy as 1,2,3”
✅ You paint the picture of success: “A healthy smile to carry them into adulthood”.
StoryBrand makes it look so easy 😏😎
Check out the latest episode and past episodes wherever you get your podcasts and don’t forget to share, subscribe and drop us a comment about topics you would like to see us cover!
Ep.16: Podcast Guesting as a Marketing Strategy.
Automated Transcript
Ben Lueders:
Welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, Founder and Art Director of Fruitful Design Strategy, and today my business partner Raj Lulla talks with Dustin Riechmann, a podcast guest that is an expert in podcast guesting! Like many of us, Dustin had to pivot his sales strategies during the pandemic. So, he started appearing on podcasts as a way to promote his business and unlocked a strategy that helped get his products into retail giants like Walmart.
Now, you may feel like you need to start your own podcast like we did in order to build a following, and connect with your audience. But Dustin shows how you can strategically tap into already existing audiences of other podcasts, for little to no cost to yourself! I hope you find Raj’s conversation with Dustin Reichmann helpful and eye-opening.
Raj Lulla:
Dustin, thank you for being on Growing a Fruitful Brand.
Dustin Riechmann:
It's my pleasure, Raj. I can't wait to visit with you here.
Raj Lulla:
Let's just jump right in. The first time I had ever heard of podcast guesting as a strategy to grow your sales was from you. And so that's probably unfamiliar to a lot of people in our audience as it was to me. Can you just explain what, again, podcast guesting as a way to grow your sales is?
Dustin Riechmann:
Sure. Yeah, it's a great question because a lot of people, when you hear podcasting, they automatically assume you're the producer of a podcast and you're interviewing people and that gets you exposure to the market. True. However, my approach has been a little contrarian in that I've actually chosen the podcast I want to be on because I know my target market is listening and for other reasons that we can get into today strategically. But by choosing to be on those shows, making a compelling pitch to the host to interview me and then doing appropriate follow up on the back end of that, that's how you make sales as a guest.
I love the strategy because again, it's very intentional. You can go out and publicly see the audiences you want to be in front of. Go do that, do a great job, tell great stories. It's a lot of fun. You build a lot of relationships and we'll talk about the benefits, but then that's really it. It's just going and being on other people's shows and being interviewed as a guest.
Raj Lulla:
One of my favorite things to make fun of in the world is the people who write the book about how to get rich, and the answer to that is to write a book about how to get rich. So I'm going to kind of put the question to you here. It's like, are you a famous podcaster yourself? Is that how? You're like, "Well, this works so great because I happen to get in podcasting when nobody else was doing it and it's super easy. Why can't you guys just be early adopters?" So tell us, do you have a famous podcast, or can it work without that?
Dustin Riechmann:
Yeah, I'm a huge celebrity. I'm sure everyone listening already knew me when they saw my name there. That's why they're here, they're following me, not you, Raj. No, I don't have a podcast actually at all. I got started doing this selling meat sticks and we can talk about that, but I have an eCommerce brand that I'm a partner in. And in COVID times in summer 2020, there were some abrupt changes, of course to everyone's business models, including ours.
I thought, "You know what? I'm stuck at home. I got kids running around, what can I do for my office?" And I decided I could be on a podcast. And I listened to podcasts, but I never even thought about the idea of being featured as an expert guest. And so what I did was I went and just told the FireCreek snack story and I talked about how we brought this local product online, which was very attractive at that time 'cause local businesses were struggling and trying to think about how to take advantage of Shopify and all the things that were in the news.
And so I just made a compelling case for how I could teach, and I got featured and I thought, "That was fun," and I gave a coupon code and we sold some snack sticks and I thought, "Okay, that was a neat experiment." So I did it again and again, ultimately ended up becoming a major marketing channel for that brand. And we grew to seven figures before we ever got into paid ads.
Then something kind of funny happened in that people started reaching out to me and saying, "Hey, I really enjoyed that podcast. How'd you get on there? Where'd you come up with that offer? The stories you selected, they stuck with me. That was really interesting." And I started taking on coaching clients. I'd never ... to your point the way you asked this question, my favorite thing to say is coaches who sell other people coaching on how to be coaches, but they've never actually done anything.
So I don't even like using the word coach sometimes, but I became a business coach because of all the exposure I was getting from FireCreek Snacks and just basically doing the thing in public attracted a lot of interest in how to do the thing. So that became coaching, it became groups, it became basically an accelerator that I run now, and all of that's been over the course of two and a half years. So I now teach podcast guesting, not because I even thought about it two and a half years ago, but because I started doing it to run a real business and do real marketing from it, and I've gotten pretty good at it and I show others how to do it strategically.
Raj Lulla:
Dustin, one of the things I like about your approach is that it's recent, that it's been working recently. Some of your media gurus out there, they do something that's successful for five or seven years and they either get burned out on it or it starts to kind of tank a little bit and that's the time they decide to write the how to get rich book or how to get famous book on social media or podcasting or whatever. But you're in the middle of making this work, and so I think that's great because you're actually sharing the process while it's still relevant, and I know that our listeners really appreciate that.
One question I have for you is, you do a pitch to a podcast and you get on and then do sales just magically start coming in? Is that kind of how this works? Or what else happens in your process to go from, "Okay, I got on a show," to actually having sales come in the door?
Dustin Riechmann:
So our five steps or five Ps, and I'll say them and then I'll go back to each one briefly. Step one is purpose. Step two is plan. Step three is pitch. Step four is perform, and step five is profit. Profit's the one you're getting to, but it doesn't come without the first four. So step one's really important here to answer this question, and that's purpose. We start with every entrepreneur we work with saying, "Why do you want to be on a podcast? Is it because you want to get a high ticket client? Is it because you want to sell a book? Is it because you want a relationship with the host and this is a really good way to approach them?" So there's different reasons to be on podcast, to grow your email list. Lots of good reasons. We'll come back to that in the profit step.
And then step two is plan. So the idea is, okay, I know why I want to be on a podcast and a really good way to clarify why you want to be on a podcast would be what's your call to action going to be? So once I know what I'm going to offer and what my call to action's going to be, then I can go find in my target market the right shows to approach. And that's step two, which is plan, it's the research part.
Step three is pitch. So now great, I found some perfect shows for me, how do I actually get on them? And so that's how we make a compelling case to the host and get those interviews booked. Step four is perform, so now I've got the show, they said yes, what do I do to prepare? What stories do I want to share during the show? What will be my call to action and how will I deliver that?
Step five then is profit. So to give you context, Raj, in our 90-day accelerator, one third of what we do is the first four steps. That's actually getting on the shows and doing well. Two thirds of what we do is profit. So we could have several episodes just about different ways, different strategies on how to make money from being on the podcast. But to give a quick example that should be really practical and easy for people to follow, let's say you're a Facebook ads agency and you specialize in food companies, Shopify food brands. So just to have something to point at.
What I would be advising you to do in that case is to of course find shows where Shopify food brands are listening. That's the obvious thing that we all think about. It's like, hey, if I do a good job and I tell some really cool strategy and I share a case study of how other food brands have made more money because they've worked with us, it might compel someone out there to book a free strategy session and that's a valid reason to do it. That's kind of what I call level one. It's like the obvious, true thing.
Level two might be, hey, I'm a food brand or I'm a Facebook ads agency and I want to go speak because there's peers out there. They're not necessarily my clients, but maybe there's Google ads agencies who serve the same client and we could partner up, or maybe this host knows a ton of food brands and he can introduce me. So that's like level two. It's kind of peer-to-peer relationships.
Level three, I think to get at the heart of your question, is what I call direct sales. So at level three, one strategy would be I want to get on a show and I choose a show because they've interviewed a bunch of food brands that are big on Shopify. Well now I've got a reason to be on this show that goes deeper. So now I get on there, I do what I would do anyway and serve the audience, but then on the back end of that I go through and screen those previous guests and I leverage the guest list and I say, "Hey, out of a hundred people they've interviewed 15 were food brand guys or brand owners and I can go find them, maybe LinkedIn or email and connect with them."
And I've got a really warm reason to connect with them, a compelling reason. We're both on the same show. I've got credibility. And it doesn't feel salesy at all. It's like, "Hey, you're cool, I'm cool, we're on the same show. We both know the same hosts now yeah, let's connect." And then I could do what I would normally do with sales. Maybe I review their Facebook ads in this case, make a suggestion on how they can improve it, and it comes across as a cool colleague helping me, not someone trying to sell me. So that's one very specific example, but I think for the audience that might have paint a picture of how deep this can go that's way beyond the surface level of how most people approach it.
Raj Lulla:
That's so great. I know that most of our clients, they get into business because they love doing what they do and the sales and marketing pieces of it can feel yucky even. We got some really honorable, humble people who are just getting out there doing the grind, making their business work, but they also know that they need sales. And the idea of going to a networking event and cold pitching yourself to somebody else can just feel so gross.
Your approach, it provides value to the audience and then it also gives you a natural way to talk to somebody else, "Hey, I saw that we were both on this show and wanted to connect with you because I liked your episode." You can say things that are all true and that don't have to start with, "Would you like to buy meat and cheese products?" Or whatever.
Dustin Riechmann:
And if it fits your personality, it's fun. I mean that's what, to your point, people come to me and they're experts at what they do and they say, "I'm really good at insert profession, but I'm not good at marketing." Great, I get it. And there's obviously multiple ways and multiple layers to address that.
But my whole, what I love about this approach for the types of people who have stories to tell, they're mission driven, they want to make an impact on people that they can do all that simply by sharing their story and teaching their framework or whatever makes them, lights them up naturally. So yeah, to your point, this is, it's a fun approachable way to do marketing, but it's also can be effective if you do it strategically.
Raj Lulla:
One of the reasons that Ben and I started the Growing a Fruitful Brand podcast was because we were having these conversations in the office that we felt like, "Gosh, if our clients could just hear us right now." The Facebook algorithm changes or Google changes the way they're doing analytics or iOS updates and oh my gosh, there's going to be a huge opportunity here. And we deal with it in real time, but our clients didn't get to hear that stuff. And so it's like, "Okay, should we sit down and write a newsletter every week with all these thoughts? We all have a lot to read. So maybe not. And blogs, yeah, but are blogs as effective as they were 10 years ago? I don't ..."
And so the podcast for us was just a way to invite people into conversations that we were already having. And one of the things that people say often about our shows, it just sounds like we're having a lot of fun, and they're 100% right. We would continue to do this even if no one listened. I just would need to not see the numbers because that would make me sad. But it feels a lot like making silly videos in your parents' basement when you're a kid. It's just fun to talk about things you love and to provide value to other people, especially when we know that this is advice that some people can't afford. This is an insight that people can really benefit from and grow their businesses. So exactly to your point, it's a lot of fun to do and you get to talk about things you love. You don't have to try to be internet famous and do it TikTok dance and all that stuff that can be exhausting.
Dustin Riechmann:
To build on that a little bit too, we talked about direct sales and so if you're in business, it's great. You want to do that, you want to make sales. There's a lot of other benefits though that I think are specific to podcasting. So you were talking about things like video content, blogs. All have their place, paid ads. I'm not against paid ads at all, but I think podcast guesting and hosting specifically has the direct sales aspect. It's long tail. I literally have people reaching out at least once a month that have heard me on a show that I did in 2020, because they're just now finding the show because of keywords or because they found a new show and they go back to the archives. So there's this long tail effect that unless the show dies, there's always some benefit and it's constantly being downloaded.
It's targeted, meaning I can choose which shows to be on too, so I can pick the lane I want to be in and go down that path. It's not random like SEO feels sometimes and it actually helps SEO. So you and I talked before we started recording that how great podcasting is for SEO because you get back links from what can be very powerful domains. I have a Shopify.com/FireCreekSnacks. And you're like, that's pretty powerful for an eCommerce brand. So there's lots of those kind of benefits.
If anyone's been around marketing, even if marketing's not your thing, you've probably heard of know, like and trust. It's this idea that that's the cycle someone has to go through before they're willing to purchase from you and your brand. And in traditional digital marketing, that is a long cycle. That could be 30, I don't know, the number changes all the time. I think it's like 70 touch points or something crazy that someone has to see your brand that many times before they know, like and trust you.
In a podcast, if you're doing a good job, you're relatable, you're telling true, vulnerable stories, you can build that in 30 minutes because of the unique nature of this format where it's long form, it's educational. A lot of times people are in a hypnotic state when they're listening because they're running, they're driving. It's really going straight into their brain. So I think there's a lot of things that I love about podcasting and I just kind of want to say those out loud for people that maybe ... that some of those things aren't obvious to people that aren't in marketing.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, you used the term evergreen earlier and I was going to ask you to explain it, but yeah, that idea, the long tail effects of being on podcasts just within the last probably two or three weeks, I've had two people reach out. I was on the Business Made Simple podcast this year in March I think it was, or April. And then I was on the Marketing Made Simple podcast in May I think, and I still have people reach out from those shows. It's just literally within the last two or three weeks here who who've reached out.
One of them we had a conversation, it was Christie Kern, hi Christie, and she introduced me to somebody else that I look forward to having more conversations with. And so that's amazing that I made content with Donald Miller nine months ago now and people are still listening to it, still interested in it. And for the first time, and I haven't had to stand out there waving my arms like crazy on the street for nine months. I record it one time, then moved on. And sometimes it's really fun and surprising to be like, "Oh, people are still listening that. That's great." I don't know how any of this algorithm works that they get served these episodes so much later, but it's amazing.
Dustin Riechmann:
And what you'll find too, Raj, I've been doing it for two and a half years, so I've got a longer tail out there. But I have, you're thinking of ... right now you're only aware of the people who actually reach out, which is a very small percentage of the people who have heard you. So what ends up happening, I've got more active on LinkedIn this year and someone will reach out in a direct message and they'll be like, "I knew you from somewhere. I heard you on the Bigger Pockets podcast," or, "I remember your story from the Side Hustle Show," and stuff I did a couple years ago, but it's still in there, it's still in their brain. They remembered me for the content that I shared back then, even though they weren't compelled enough to actually reach out.
So I'm very much, I come from the school of more direct response and you've heard me already talk about if I'm going to put time into a podcast guesting I want an ROI and that's what we deliver for our clients. However, in the kind of softer brand lift, brand awareness, all of that's also happening for sure. There's definitely this halo effect that even if the purpose of getting on there isn't to "grow my brand", that happens. And those types of effects like you've experienced and I've been experiencing, that is a real life example of growing a brand and having people remember you even if you don't know it at the time.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Let's talk about, do you have to have a podcast in order for this strategy to be effective?
Dustin Riechmann:
You do not need to have a podcast. And in fact, I do not have a podcast. I joke sometimes that I'm a professional podcast guest because I've taken this kind of to the nth degree as far as how much I use it, and I've grown two different businesses with it now. However, I will say it's beneficial to have a podcast, like I just mentioned. So your whole purpose of being on a show could be to grow your own show.
That's not typically my clients. Usually they have a service they offer or they have a product they want to sell, but if they also have a podcast, there's that halo effect. Just being on a show that they're likely going to say, "This is Raj, he's the host of Growing a Fruitful Brand," and maybe you're talking about website design and that's what you're selling, but there is that awareness. "Oh cool, I love Raj, that was a great episode." They're already in their podcast app of choice. It's real easy to flip over to click on the show link or to go look up your brand and they'll start following your podcast.
So if you have a podcast, I think this guesting strategy has a major added benefit, and some of these strategies that I'm talking about as a guest, you can also have as a host. You could choose people to have on your show that you want to have as clients. You could choose to have people on your show that you'd like to be on their show. And so there's this kind of mirror of some of these same strategies.
Raj Lulla:
And there's two interesting things in there. One is that the strategy absolutely works without having to have your own show, but that it is also beneficial to have a show if you can. When you were talking about SEO, let's unpack that a little bit. What's the value of having a link from Spotify or, I know you talked about Walmart as well? It's like, what's the value of having a link from those places from an SEO standpoint?
Dustin Riechmann:
One of the number one things that Google or any other search engine looks for to know how much authority or site has is back links. And a back link just means how many people are linking to your site and how powerful are those entities. So because it sees it as an endorsement of your authority. So if I'm a food brand and if I'm FireCreek Snacks, if I'm getting linked to by food expos, food magazines, big commerce stores like Shopify or Walmart.com or whatever, that sends Google a very clear message that this brand matters and the words that they use to link to them inform how Google wants to present SEO search engine results.
So I'm not an SEO expert, I know enough to be dangerous, but I know it's definitely number ... if it's not number one, it's one of the top three factors in ranking and it's really difficult to do that organically. So how do I get Shopify's attention to link to my brand outside of my normal store link in a way that's like? So and podcast guesting's a super effective way to do that.
Raj Lulla:
I mean, you could try sleeping on their lawn with a sign that says, "Please link to me," but they're probably not going to like that.
Dustin Riechmann:
I tried it. It doesn't work.
Raj Lulla:
So back links demonstrate relevance to Google searchers. Google knows that other people in the industry are recognizing you as a relevant player in that industry. But one of, again, going back to, we're beginning to offer podcast production to our clients because the benefits just compound on top of that. You have the strategies that you're talking about, this networking strategy, these halo effects of your audience.
But then we transcribe every episode, and I did a copy and paste in a Word document the other day. We say about 5,000 words per episode. And so those are all words that the Google bots are reading and they're hearing us talk about being a story brand certified agency. Now they're hearing us talk about podcast production, they're hearing us talk about sales and marketing. And so the more we talk about those things, the more Google picks up our site as trusted authority on those things.
So you begin to have just all these kind of compounding effects when you both are on other shows and you might have a show yourself. Yeah, like you said, we would highly recommend it. It's something we're doing for ourselves. We've seen our website traffic double in year over year based off of launching a podcast. That's the only major thing that I can see that that has changed.
Dustin Riechmann:
That's awesome.
Raj Lulla:
But exactly to your point of it taking stages to go from just the awareness, that know, like and trust, to actually move down those pillars into sales. That's true. Our website traffic has doubled, but our sales haven't yet, which is fine because people need time to move from awareness, to interest, to consideration, to purchase, and it takes many, many touchpoints for people to move down that funnel.
I'd love to dig in a little bit more with you on your strategy. You connect with other guests who've been on the show and you kind of build this network. You have natural ways to link out to other people, to connect to other people, but what makes a good sort of call to action when you're guesting on a podcast? I think for one, just the idea for a lot of our audience that you have to go talk.
We all live so much in our own worlds and we talk about ourselves so much that you just assume people are sick of hearing of it. So tell us about being on a show. What do you say when you're there to get people to move through that process of know, like and trust or towards consideration and purchase? You said you spend a lot of time in crafting that pitch and that offer. Tell us about that, if you would.
Dustin Riechmann:
Yeah, so it is a process with each client and it strongly correlates to step one, the first P, which is purpose. So what your call to action's going to depends entirely on why you wanted to be on the show in the first place. And a lot of people inherently want to skip that. They're just like, "Hey, can you get me on some podcasts?" I could, but why? What's the point? I don't even know which podcast to put you on until I know what your goals are for your business.
So when we work, like in our accelerator, it's a very condensed, it's a week, but we're answering questions like, what's your three year vision for your business? What are your one year goals? So that the marketing that you choose, in this case podcast guesting is in full alignment with that. We start real big picture to get all the way down into what's the call to action on the first episode that you're on.
So it's kind of a loaded question in a sense, but typically it's going to be, what's your lead magnet? So if you're selling a physical product like FireCreek Snacks for example, it may be as simple as a coupon code. It could be a special bundle, it could be a free plus shipping offer where they can get a free sample if they just pay shipping. Because it's a physical product, I'm really just trying to drive trial. I'm trying to get people to go try it.
If I am coaching, like for me a lead magnet that I'll use or a call to action on a podcast, if it's a podcast all about podcast guesting and people that are listening in and they're making it through the whole show are very interested in that. I have something called a Podcast Pitch Playbook. So it's basically how I write pitches to get 80% acceptance rates on the top shows, which is a unique skillset I have, and it's something that gets a lot of curiosity.
I actually posted about it on LinkedIn today, and by the time I hopped over here in the first hour, I had 30 people requesting this thing, and it's my free resource. But obviously if you request that you've expressed to me that you have an interest in podcast guesting as a marketing strategy. I've delivered you a quick win, you can now trust me, it's me on video and some downloadable things. So that is a good call to action because it shows intent, it gives them a quick win and it pulls them into my world and lets them raise their hand out of the ether and say, out of the 1,000 people who heard this, these five are really into what I do and they want more information. That would be an example.
I have another brand called Engaged Marriage, which is much more mass market. So our call to action if we're being interviewed about that might be, "Hey, we've got these, our five top communication tips that we've learned in working with couples over the years, go to this URL and grab that," and then they might get put in an email sequence and there we're trying to sell digital courses.
So again, it very much depends on the business, but it could be, I work with clients too that they're like, "Dude, if I had three clients a year, I'm set because they do very high ticket, high touch stuff. Well, their call to action might simply be to talk about what it would be like to do a strategy session and if that's their means of selling, it could simply be inviting people to a strategy session. So that gives you kind of some different options depending on what type of business and what type of goals you're serving. But the whole thing is about getting people to raise their hand and show intent that what you talked about is something they care about.
Raj Lulla:
I want to just pause for a quick second because you are so ... this stuff just flows out of you, and I'm sure our audience is just like, "Oh my gosh, my pencil cannot go fast enough to take notes on this." I want to go back to you posted about this resource of the 80% close rate on pitching to be on a show, and within an hour of posting that third 30 people joined your email list. They got the resource, but the purpose of that resource is for people to join your email list as interested customers. I want that to sink in for our audience for a quick second, because we've talked about it many, many times on our podcast that your email list is one of the only pieces of real estate that you actually have control over in your marketing. Because the Facebook algorithm is going to do what it wants, the Google algorithm is going to do what it wants.
And so there's only so much you can do on some of those platforms without being just at the mercy of people who want you to pay them to do business. Email is not that way. When somebody gives you their email address, they value it at least $20. I have the suspicion that if it's a business email address that they value it at least $50, maybe $100. And so it's like them handing you a $20 bill, $50 bill, $100 bill, and saying, "I value what you gave me that much."
And everybody knows it's easier to make a second sale to somebody than it is the first. And so that is them basically making that first very small purchase with you. And at that point you have the chance to convert that to your higher ticket sales of whatever your product is. So that might be a $10,000 offer, it might be a $10 offer depending on what business you're in. That's incredible. 30 leads in an hour go into your email list that you now have control of that relationship. You don't have that control on LinkedIn, right? But now you have control of that relationship.
Dustin Riechmann:
On LinkedIn, it wasn't my fault, but I had two warnings in the past week like account restriction things. Again, it was actually a glitch. It wasn't real, but it got my attention. I'm like, I've been putting some focus and growing my following on LinkedIn and it was a good reminder that they could just turn me off tomorrow. And so that was a part why I did that. I'm like, "You know what?"
I talk about podcast guesting, I don't often put a call to action in my LinkedIn profile. It's usually more to get direct messages with people to see if they're candidates for my program. But I had this great lead magnet and I simply posted about what it is and if you're interested, leave a comment. And then when they comment, I send them a message and said, "Here's where you go get it," and that's an opt-in on my website. Yeah, so far so good. So I'll be doing more of the kind of handraiser content.
So yeah, I think with the call to action off a podcast, same thing, the podcast, as long as it fits your business model and if they're following Raj's advice, it should. If you have an email list, that's that goal number one is to get them on your email list expressing interest that they want to be in your world so that then you can do what you do, as far as the sales process goes over there.
Raj Lulla:
Our friend Tyler Zach who does Gospel for Enneagram, which is, it's a book series that helps people kind of apply their faith to whatever their Enneagram number is, and you just ... kind of be healthier and more mentally kind of stable, all that. He had an experience recently that he shared publicly about how there was a hacker, and I think it was his Instagram and Facebook accounts got compromised and it took him weeks, if not longer, to get back on his platform. He's lost all of his followers and all of his access to his marketing channels for that amount of time.
And so exactly what you're talking about, you just never know. And most of the time it's mistakes. I'm in a marketing group on Facebook, and there are so many people who ask probably daily. If not daily, weekly for sure. It's like, "Facebook locked out my account because we run so many ads," and that can look like spam to Facebook, which is ironic. It's like, in what world is your best kind of customer who runs the most ads look like the worst kind of customer? And so it's like those platforms, you need to own as much of your relationship with somebody as you can. And really that comes down to email addresses and phone numbers.
Dustin Riechmann:
And Raj, if I might, as you're saying that it sparked a thought too. So something I haven't done a great job of but I'm focusing on now is, so I'm on these podcasts and now I've got all this audio content, long form content. And so if people are into social media and they do want to feed those beasts and then have people get on their email list. But what I've discovered is this idea of taking this long form, could be video or could just be audio only, and then turning it into short videos, pulling out the best golden nuggets from this conversation, quote images, all the stuff that those platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, whatever. This is a great source for that.
If you have an agency or whoever, a partner, a VA, someone who can take that, pull out the golden nuggets and repurpose those, you can grow those social media channels that have calls to action to get on your email list and use podcast guesting. Again, what I view as a very fun conversational way to generate lots of content. You use it as blog post already, but there's all these other platforms that you can repurpose it on too without having to sit there and think, "Oh man, I need a 30-second reel. What am I going to talk about?"
Well, no, just naturally talk. And then the cool stuff will come out and then people can pull that out and make little videos. And I have a mutual friend Dan who has Video Snap, and that's exactly what his tool does. So I was really excited when he released that and we've been using it.
Raj Lulla:
Yes, and that's exactly what we do. And we do it for our podcast production clients as well, because most owners or leaders of the business don't have time to spend a lot of time in marketing. That's a thing that we really love about podcasting, video podcasting in particular. On Instagram right now because they're trying to compete with the rise of TikTok, Reels, the little short videos are the things that go the farthest. It's the content that gets prioritized.
And Fruitful has had several videos from our podcast that we just chop up into small interesting bits of video and with Mike Kresnic's help. Mike, thank you for producing this show for us. Chops them up into little bits and puts them out there on social. And several of them have gotten several thousand views, and this is all just since I think September, august when we started this podcast. A huge effect on that.
So definitely not saying don't play in social, you should be there. You should have a presence on every marketing channel that you can, but you have to do it as efficiently as possible. The stuff that Dustin and I are talking about here where you have to create content that serves you over and over and over again and requires as little effort as possible from you, because you've got more important things to you. You are a busy person and you should be spending that energy with your clients, on your product and service, leading your team. And you should spend some of it on marketing, but not the majority of your time on marketing. You didn't get into what you do to be a marketer.
Dustin, if somebody is interested in upping their game and podcast guesting and using that as a way of growing their sales, let's talk about two things. First is, who is that good for? Does it kind of work for all types of businesses or is there a specific type of business that really works well for?
Dustin Riechmann:
I found applications of it for just about every type of business, but what I would say, if you're an online business that serves sort of a national or global audience, that's the best. A dentist could certainly be featured on a podcast, but unless he's selling dental consultancy, it's kind of hard to have that have a real impact because he's so geographically constrained. But you can take the exact same approach and thought and do it on the radio, do it on TV, do it at lunch and learns. This whole idea of being hosted and front of your target market and providing valuable content to get attention works pretty much universally.
Podcast specifically I would say, yeah, if you have an online business, a lot of the clients I work with are coaches, consultants, agency owners, authors, thought leaders, experts, brand owners.
So it is pretty universal. But if you can think of a call to action or if you could be coached through coming up with a call to action that would get you more money in your bank account for your business, that could be spoken, then yes, a podcast guesting strategy would work. That's really funny. I do these workshops and earlier this week I did this workshop and I live coach people and we come up with a target market for them and I go find three podcasts for them and we help write their pitch. So I had this guy, and he was kind of an old school guy and he was like a CPA and he helped people, a tax resolution attorney, and we always hear those guys on the radio.
I was like, "Well, who's your dream client?" He's like, he had a southern accent, which I won't try to replicate. He's like, "I love working with farmers. Because these guys die and then their kids are stuck with a farm and they got all these tax problems and that's my bread and butter." I'm like, "Cool, that's really, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that." So I was like, "I wonder if there's any farming podcasts." There's lots of farming podcasts. So a lot of people think, "Well, my industry doesn't have podcasts."
A lot of times you're not even thinking ... it's like he's a CPA. His mind went to, where can I go talk about taxes? And I'm like, no one wants to hear you talk about taxes. You're not going to have another CPA interview you about the work you do because then you're a competitor. We need to think upstream and downstream. What causes tax problems, the farm thing, and then what are the symptoms of that result from having tax problems? So bankruptcy.
And you think of those, like marriage, it's like, if I'm a marriage coach, I don't want to go and get interviewed by a marriage coach. I want to go get interviewed about trauma or about parenting. Adjacent things that are still relevant. Those things cause marriage problems. Or if I have marriage problems, well, what does that result in? Bad financial situations, like strained relationships with family members.
And there's podcasts about money that I can go be the expert and say, "Hey, a portion of your audience are married couples, that's who I serve. And the thing that causes those money problems are communication issues. I'd love to come talk about how they can communicate better to improve their financial life." And a financial advisor might be like, "That's awesome. That's a great content." So I kind of went down a little rabbit hole there, Raj, but the idea being it is-
Raj Lulla:
No, that's great.
Dustin Riechmann:
Pretty much universal if you get creative about who you want to speak to and where those people are listening in a way that's not competitive with the host.
Raj Lulla:
So a few things that stood out there are, if you can do your business online really in any way, and sometimes I know a lot of business consultants who kind of think of themselves as landlocked, as geographical because it's like, "Oh, I go do this thing in person, whiteboard and all that." But COVID taught us that we can do a lot of what we do online. And so that's something you could consider. You could also consider recording your workshops and creating curriculums for somebody to do sort of self-guided. And it may not be the same price point, but you're not doing it all the time either. You can let people push play, fill out the worksheets, all that kind of stuff, and get some value out of it at a lower price point. So if you can do your business online in any way, then podcast guesting could be a great strategy for you.
I would also say some of those more geographic things like the dentists, those kind of real local brick and mortar things, there's opportunity there to be on other local podcasts. There are podcasts in Omaha that are for moms and about the cool things that are going on in our city and that are great for families. That'd be a great one for a dentist to be on.
Likewise too, you could even start a podcast about your city. Just because you're a dentist doesn't mean that you don't care about anything else. If your audience is moms and dads of kids that have too much sugar and drilling holes in their teeth with it, then you could start a parenting podcast in Omaha. Or you could find ways to leverage adjacent content, just like Dustin was talking about here. So don't limit yourself to, "I can only talk about dentistry, and so there's no point in going on a podcast or having a podcast because all of our businesses is local traffic." Well, there's still a ton you can do. Again, even from an SEO perspective, all of that to draw attention to your brand with either podcast guesting or podcast hosting.
Dustin Riechmann:
For people who aren't in the podcasting world, there's a bit of a prestige and mystery around it. So if you're a local guy and gal, you just want to operate in your community, you could still go get on a handful of podcasts and then put that on your website and it's like all this credibility. "Oh man, he's a national expert and I get to work with him here in St. Louis?" There's that aspect of it.
And also there's the idea that if you want access to someone, to Raj's point, start your own podcast and go invite them. So I had a client that did this in Toronto. So he was in Toronto. He worked with pretty high-end corporate brands doing marketing, and he had been trying to get in the office of CEOs to talk to them about his marketing services. Zero luck. There's the gatekeepers, that's not happening. All he did was say ... and I don't advise this. He was recording stuff with no intention of ever actually having a podcast, but what he said, "I'm starting a podcast. I'm featuring the top CEOs in Toronto. I've heard amazing things about what the work you do in your company and in the community. Can I come interview you?"
"Yes. Come on down," 'cause it's status. So I think that, again, I would actually release the episodes, but I guess you wouldn't really have to if you said it was an interview, so.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, why wouldn't you? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we definitely recommend being honest. But also, I mean, you're creating that content, why wouldn't you put it out there for people? It shows both your expertise and the kinds of people that you can get in the room with. You're kind of shooting yourself in the foot there to not release it.
Dustin Riechmann:
I agree. I agree.
Raj Lulla:
We'd like to end every episode of a call to action. What's a step that somebody could take towards this? Because to me, you and I have actually had conversations to this effect. I'm a busy person, I'm very interested in this, but sometimes it's also hard to get traction with starting anything new, especially as a business owner. What's one thing that people could do to take a step towards considering podcast guesting as one of their sales and marketing strategies?
Dustin Riechmann:
Sure. I think one small step, I would say define step one, which is purpose. So if you're curious about this, think about it. Or if you have a business partner, have a discussion about, "Hey, I heard this really fun episode with Raj and Dustin and I think this podcast guesting thing would be great for our agency." Think about the purpose of it. What would you ultimately want your call to action to be? Realizing that what you choose at first is likely not what's going to be the truth a month or six months later.
Your call to action will likely change. You're going to get more clarity on your brand, you're going to get more clarity on the things that you say that people really resonate with and raise their hand for. But what would be your call to action would be step one.
I think if we added a second baby step, it would be thinking about who your target market is, go to a website like listennotes.com. It's free. It's like Google for podcasts, and put in your topic. Or if a show that you already listened to and it's like, "I wonder if there's more shows like this that would be opportunities for us to go be guests?" Put that show name in.
It's like, I always joke with people, they come to me and they say, "I don't know if there's any shows that would want to interview me." And I'm like, give me five minutes and you're going to be completely overwhelmed with all the shows that would like to interview you and we're going to have to work to prioritize them so you're no longer overwhelmed. That's the actual problem. There's definitely shows, even if you want to talk to farmers, there's plenty of podcasts to target.
So I think having a clear call to action, think through that, how it would serve your business goals? And then go find a couple shows to make it really tangible. Like, okay, I could be on that show. And then there's the other three Ps that you'd need to work through to actually make it work, which is what we do. But that would be where I would start with pretty much any brand.
Raj Lulla:
That's really great. I actually hadn't heard of listennotes.com, so I'm, I'm going to take that one to heart myself-
Dustin Riechmann:
It's a good one.
Raj Lulla:
And go look at that. I mean, think that that's such a great easy action step. It's kind of like, start identifying that there are these places out there that you could talk. I would also just encourage our listeners to hear the connection between what Dustin is talking about, what we've been talking about. With Story Brand, you make your customer the hero of the story. It's not about you, it's about them. And so when you're going out and providing value to people by just talking to them from your expertise, you're doing that.
That's part of the reason we wanted to have Dustin on here is because his strategy aligns so perfectly with ours that we just believe in, not to get too warm and fuzzy here, but in putting goodness out in the world, putting good things out in the world. And the whole metaphor of growing something, like fruit, is that you plant a seed and you tend to it, and then you reap a harvest that's way bigger than what went into it. The result is bigger than the sum of the parts. So Dustin, thank you so much for joining us. We're going to put the link to that PDF that he mentioned in earlier in the episode. We're going to put that in the show notes here. Dustin, where else can they find you and connect with you if they're interested?
Dustin Riechmann:
Sure. LinkedIn, I'm pretty active over there. I have a pretty unique name. So it's Dustin Riechmann, which is R-I-E-C-H-M-A-N-N. But yeah, SimpleSuccessCoaching.com is my home base. That's where you'll find the free resources we talked about if you're interested in doing this at scale. We have a 90-day accelerator program that we love to lead other entrepreneurs through this. And to Raj's point, our favorite people to work with are overwhelmed entrepreneurs who say, "I wouldn't have time for that," because what we do is actually equip them to not do almost any of the legwork. We help them scale it and outsource a lot of the stuff that they wouldn't want to do to where their role literally is showing up, doing the interviews, and then if they do sales calls on the back end, they do that part.
But everything in between runs as a system. I'm an engineer by trade, so I'm big on making things systematic. And I think that that's where you get most of the value as an entrepreneur, because if it takes too much work, you'll never actually do it. And that would be a real shame because there's so much magic here for people who do this consistently and do it well. So yeah, SimpleSuccessCoaching.com. My email is Dustin@SimpleSuccessCoaching.com, if people who are compelled and want to reach out directly.
Raj Lulla:
Awesome. Dustin, thank you so much for being on Growing a Fruitful Brand.
Dustin Riechmann:
It's been awesome. Thanks Raj.
Ben Lueders:
Thanks for joining us today on Growing a Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it. If you'd like to work with Fruitful on a branding website or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website Fruitful.design. So until next time, don't forget to grow something good.
