I recently read that one of the greatest challenges many podcasters face is how to ensure their podcast can be discovered amongst millions of other podcasts, so they can successfully build their audience.
If this is a challenge you’re facing too with your coaching business podcast, or you’re planning to launch a podcast soon, and you want to make sure you have a robust strategy in place to ensure you’re able to build an audience of your ideal clients with your podcast – then today’s article is for you.
Before I reveal my five tips on how to build a podcast audience of your ideal clients for your coaching business podcast, there are two important things I want to share with you first. Because if these aren’t in place, you’re not going to get the best results out of each of the five tips.
Podcasting Principle – Build Reputation Equity vs Vanity Numbers:
This is one of my Podcasting Principles, which I always sharing with clients (who are aspiring Thought Leaders) looking to launch their podcasts: focus on building Reputation Equity vs Vanity Numbers.
Because, “Building a reputation as an Influential Trusted Authority – THE choice vs just A choice with your podcast is bankable. Building Vanity Numbers, is not.”
Even when it comes to my own podcasts – all three of them, I’d much rather build a smaller highly niched engaged audience of my dream customers than have an audience of thousands of people that do nothing.
And, that’s my encouragement for you, too.
Focus on building your reputation as an Influential Trusted Authority – THE choice vs just A choice for your dream client with the content you share on every episode. (It should be what you do with any and all content you create, for that matter). When you do, you’ll continue to build a quality audience of your dream clients.
Five MUSTS before you launch your Coaching Business Podcast:
Secondly, here are some MUSTs that you’ll want to be clear on before you launch your podcast. This will ensure that every episode you publish will continue to build brand awareness of you, your thought leadership and your podcast, while also continue to build an audience of your dream clients:
- You MUST know who your dream client is (otherwise how can you build an engaged audience of your dream client unless you know who he/she is, and what keeps him/her up at night because of the challenges he/she faces, and the solutions he/she is looking for)? This information is crucial and will shape your content.
- You MUST create content your dream client is searching for and interested in (otherwise how can you be sure the topics that you speak about and the insights you share is of interest and relevance)?
- You MUST be clear on the unique and uncopyable Listener Experience you create that resonates with your dream client so you can bring that to each and every show (because you can have the BEST content, but if you’re hard to listen too or the way in which you communicate and engage with your guest is distracting, you run the risk of losing your listener and opportunity to continue to build your relationship with him/her).
When you are totally clear on all of these three things, here are 5 tips on How to build a Podcast Audience of your ideal clients for your coaching business podcast.
Some of them may seem like a no-brainer – but as the saying goes, often the simplest of things can have the most powerful outcome.
Of course, you’ll ensure your podcast is available across all of the major podcast players, you’re sharing your podcast from your own website, as well as sharing micro-content from each episode across your social platforms to build your audience.
Now to the five things you may not have considered to build your audience.
1. Notify Former and/or Existing Customers
We’ve all heard business coaches confirm that it costs five times more to acquire new customers than it does upselling and/or retaining existing customers. Using that same thinking – it’s going to take longer for you to build an audience from people who don’t yet ‘know, like and trust’ you, compared to building a podcast audience from people who have already worked with you and therefore have a pre-existing relationship with you.
There are a couple of additional benefits to reaching out to existing and/or former customers, besides your pre-existing relationship, which means they are more likely going to want to listen to your podcast:
- It’s a great way to reconnect and keep in touch with former clients, who may be searching for additional support that you offer and which they may not yet be aware of. Your podcast will offer a great way to continue providing value, while also remain top-of-mind should they be looking to invest in next-level support from you.
- Existing customers will no doubt find any content you share of value – which is one of the reasons they hired you. Being able to listen to you share your expertise via a podcast, will continue to support them in enhancing their knowledge, alongside the work you’re doing with them.
And, lastly, both your former and current clients could be connected with more of your ideal clients, so asking them to share with their community will continue to add to your audience numbers. As we know, like-minded people flock together and because of your pre-existing relationship with both current and former clients, means they’ll be happy to share your podcast with their community.
2. Prospective Customers
Building your relationship with a prospective customer as they’re getting to ‘know, like and trust’ and considering working with is important. What better way for them to ‘experience’ you than by listening to a few of your podcast episodes.
- Add relevant podcast episodes with specific topics you know your prospective customer would find valuable to your automated customer relationship-building funnel.
- Published a recent episode you know is on a topic a prospective customer has shared with you was a challenge they were working on, during a strategy/discovery call with you? Send them a personalized email (or message) along with the link so they can listen to the episode.
- Are you in an online community of your ideal customers and someone has asked a question about a specific topic, which you have created a podcast episode on? Respond to the question with some key insights and provide a link so they can listen to your episode if they want further information.
Each podcast episode should be a valuable resource for prospective customers so make sure you leverage relevant episodes as part of your relationship-building strategy.
3. Your Newsletter and Email Database
Do you send a regular newsletter to your database? Not only is this a great opportunity to share an article or other tips, but also recently published podcast episodes.
I send a weekly newsletter – The Influence Bulletin to my database and one of the segments in my newsletter is my Podcast Binge Lineup.
People on my newsletter database have either requested access to it, or they have requested access to one of my opt-ins, which automatically gives them access to further tips and resources through my newsletter.
And, as they have requested access to one of my business-growth or podcasting resources, I know they’ll be interested in what my guests and I share on the podcast.
Don’t assume that everyone on your email database has discovered your podcast. Sharing recently published shows with your database through a newsletter is a great long-term nurture strategy.
4. Linkedin’s Newsletter Feature (and their extended database)
Did you know that Linkedin now has a Newsletter feature when you update your profile and turn Creator Mode ON. When you publish your newsletter, all of your 1st Connections are notified.
I’ve published my first edition – Invisible to Influential and within 4 days have 732 subscribers with this number growing steadily, daily.
I plan on publishing this every two weeks and from the first edition’s response, predict that the number of subscribers (my ideal client) will continue to grow.
Guess what one of the sections is on my newsletter? You guessed right if you said: Podcast Binge Lineup. However, I’ve embedded the player so subscribers can listen to the podcast directly from the newsletter. A great way to build exposure of my podcasts and continue to grow my podcast audience.
5. Leverage Other People’s Audiences
- Be a Podcast Guest on someone else’s podcast
- Your Guests: Industry Thought Leaders/Industry Stakeholders
Have you heard this statement: ‘the transfer of trust’ with regards to referrals, before?
The premise is that if someone (a referrer) with whom someone already has built ‘know, like and trust’ with, the existing ‘know, like and trust’ from the referrer is transferred to the recommended service provide. That’s because of the existing relationship that has been built. That’s why referrals are powerful – there is already a pre-existing level of trust which the referred business can leverage.
This premise of the ‘transfer of trust’ is relevant for podcast hosts who have built an audience of your dream clients. As a guest of their podcast, you are able to leverage the pre-existing relationship and the ‘know, like and trust’ that’s been built by the host.
In fact, some of the opportunities and clients I’m working with today have come from hearing me speak on another podcast. They heard my interview, listened to my podcast, and accessed my free opt-in, and, through the relationship I continued to build through my podcast and automated customer relationship-building funnel, I was able to nurture my new lead into a customer.
As you can see, with the right content (and strategy) not only can you increase your audience numbers for your podcast, you’ll also be able to generate interest in your services, but also customers.
Similarly with selecting the right guests – if you set this up properly and your guests are either industry experts or industry stakeholders, when they share their interview with their audience (who are also your ideal clients) this is a wonderful opportunity to get additional exposure for your podcast.
NEXT Steps:
Which tips will you be implementing if you aren’t doing these already? Have you implemented any with success? Let me know.
And, if you are in the beginning stages of launching your podcast and you want to make sure you have all of the 5 Pillars in place so you can build visibility and nurture listeners into leads, access our ‘Are You Ready To Launch Your Podcast Quiz?’ here.