A good—no, great—way to get leads

Welcome to Issue 13 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about a good brand move that helped grow a small business. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.)

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Hello Reader,

What if I told you that guesting on podcasts is (hands down) one of the easiest ways to grow your small business?

What if I told you that everybody—including you, including me—is sleeping on this marketing strategy?

It’s time to wake up, friends.

Let’s start by reviewing the basics: When you break it down, marketing only has three pillars. You have owned, earned, and paid.

Owned is all the stuff you create. It’s your website, email, and social channels. It’s your blog, white papers (are these still a thing?), and podcasts. It’s your stuff.

Paid is anything you pay for—ads, influencer campaigns, sponsorship. It’s advertising.

Earned is what it sounds like—press mentions, features, speaking opportunities. This is publicity.

And publicity, in my experience, is usually the last thing on the list for most small businesses. (If not overlooked entirely.)

I get it. Earned media is not as seemingly easy to control as owned or paid. Also, there’s no guarantee that it’ll yield results, and it can be pretty hard to track.

But publicity in the form of podcasts is a whole different ball game.

Not only are there over 1 million podcasts to choose from—many of them full of your ideal audience—speaking on one is a direct way to get in front of people who might eventually buy from you.

But you don’t have to take it from me—take it from Christina, the feature of this week’s issue.

Christina built her first business (which led to her starting her current business) around publicity she earned from getting on other people’s podcasts.

As a former newspaper journalist, I’m well aware of the power of publicity to grow small businesses. But until I talked to Christina, I wasn’t convinced that podcasts are the earned media channel we should all be focused on.

Now I am. And after reading this, I think you will be too.

A Good Story

Christina grew up convinced that she wanted a career in journalism. She was passionate about writing and romanticized what that job and lifestyle would look like.

But a stint as the editor of her college newspaper swiftly squashed that dream.

Long hours, constant deadlines, and high standards revealed that journalism is not, in fact, the sexiest job in the world. (I can attest to that.)

Her mom suggested she’d be much better at public relations, anyway. And moms are usually right.

So, she moved back home and got her first job out of school in the PR department for a large comics publisher. She worked in-house and at various agencies over the following decade, focusing mostly on tourism PR.

Then, like so many others, she had her first kid and realized she no longer wanted to work the grueling hours of a senior account executive. She took off to freelance and (as so often also happens) decided to start her own online course.

Pretty convinced this was her ticket to make a million dollars, Christina took a course on how to build and launch an online course. (So meta.)

While she followed the playbook step-by-step, nothing in her course about selling online courses said anything about getting publicity. As a person with an extensive background in building audiences and getting sales through publicity, this perplexed her.

Still, she did as she was told and followed the step-by-step instructions, which included creating Facebook ads to drive people to live webinars to drive sales. When all was ready, she launched her course teaching tourism destinations how to get publicity in traditional media.

Then…crickets. She sold two courses during her launch and cursed herself for spending so much on that course about selling courses.

At that point, she decided to take a step back, listen to her intuition, and do the thing she knew how to do best—pitch it.

A Good Approach

Christina began reaching out to podcast hosts with audiences full of her ideal customers (destinations, at the time) to talk about her experience and share valuable PR tips. She’d plug her course during each show.

Within a couple of months, sales of her course started skyrocketing.

Christina said the shift was “night and day” in her business, with a 10x jump in sales. Not only was her course flying off the shelf, but she was also getting booked on other shows and pitched speaking opportunities, which further contributed to helping her build her credibility and reputation.

All was going well until the pandemic hit. For obvious reasons, Covid had a huge impact on the tourism industry and the publicists supporting it. (Clearly, Christina should’ve niched down to focus on the Mexican Caribbean like the subject of my previous newsletter, but I digress.)

Christina, who loved helping small business owners, decided to pivot and get real meta herself.

Instead of teaching about tourism, she realized she could teach the thing that transformed her own business—how to get booked on podcasts.

But several of her students didn’t want to learn how to do it—they just wanted her to do the work for them. Christina saw a new avenue for her online venture.

With that, Publicity by Christina was born. A niche agency focused solely on getting entrepreneurs and business owners booked on podcasts.

Christina’s agency now has three other part-time publicists and brings in multiple six figures annually. Beyond showing up on other people’s podcasts, Christina has a newsletter and uses Instagram as her primary marketing channel to land new clients.

Her team works with 8 to 10 clients at a time, and has a guarantee of getting each one booked on at least 24 podcasts full of the client’s ideal audiences.

This, by the way, is pretty unheard of in any PR agency, where guarantees are few and far between.

But Christina believes this guarantee is the biggest reason clients keep choosing her agency. (This makes me wonder about how guarantees are a great marketing hook in any business…something to think about.)

And she’s able to give this guarantee because—unlike TV or radio or newspapers—there are over 1 million podcasts in the universe to choose from. (Apparently, according to USA Today, more people listen to podcasts than have a Netflix account.)

Beyond helping Christina land clients, this guarantee sends a clear message: Guesting on podcasts is doable for all of us.

A Good Lesson

Christina admits that she hunkered down so much in her niche as a podcast pitch broker that she missed several opportunities to expand her business.

People would pitch her on collaborations and she'd say, “Nope, I only do this one thing.”

While that served her initially to build her reputation and focus her messaging and offer, Christina recognizes she could’ve been broadening her business sooner.

It wasn’t until this year that she finally decided to let go of her tightly-held identity and partnered up with another agency that does public speaking research.

Public speaking is something her podcasting clients are naturally interested in, so instead of adding on the full service herself, she collaborates with another agency that specializes in the research portion and takes a cut.

The lesson here is that once you’ve mastered your market, think about what else your clients need (or often ask for) and ways you can offer those things without doing the work yourself.

Ask yourself: Who can I partner with to provide those pass-on services?

This is a way to be more helpful and make more money without completely abandoning your niche.

A Good Takeaway

If you’re anything like me, you’re relying pretty heavily on referrals to bring in new leads.

Or, you’re busting your butt being a slave to social media and competing with thousands of other people or businesses who do what you do.

But what if you could have a low-lift way to—quite literally—speak directly to your ideal customer? That is the specific power of publicity through podcasts.

With a well-placed podcast, you are in your ideal customer’s ears, where they’re listening to every word you say.

Not only that, you're building relationships with hosts, who could be potential customers or referral sources. And once aired, you get unique SEO from the show release, as well as new content to use throughout your other marketing channels.

There are so many wins here.

I don't know about you, but I’m sold. And it’s something that I’m already weaving into my marketing strategy over the next quarter.

If you’re also interested in getting more leads this way, here are crucial steps Christina says you need to take:

1. First, get crystal clear on your message or set of messages: What’s the one thing you can be an expert on? What intellectual property do you own? What can you say—from your own experience—that no one else can? What are the key takeaways for the audience? Get super specific.
2. Next, figure out who exactly you want to get in front of: The only question you should be answering here is who’s going to buy from you? If they’re not primed to buy from you, why are you doing this? For instance: Peers are an easy “yes,” but is their audience your ideal buyer? (Usually, the answer is no, according to Christina. But if you're just trying to build your credibility, then go for it!)
3. Third, do your research and keep pitching: Don’t “spray and pray,” as Christina puts it. For every show you plan to pitch, make sure you listen to it first and craft a custom pitch. Then, set a calendar reminder to follow up. Keep pitching.
4. Last, have a clear funnel to take people through: If you get booked on a show and someone in that audience wants more from you, do you have a clear offer to sell them on? Don’t sleep on this.

The most important thing to remember about publicity is that it’s a shared value exchange—I’m giving you information and you’re giving me access to your audience.

As someone who was formerly getting pitched, I can tell you that specificity about the value you’ll bring to my audience is so important when trying to land a spot.

Why you? Why now? Why this topic? These are all important questions you need to answer for your host.

As for finding shows, Christina recommends reaching out to your current audience and asking what shows they listen to as a starting point.

Another way is to identify a public persona (maybe a competitor) who shares your ideal audience. Pop their name into the search bar of your preferred podcasting platform and see what shows they’ve been on. Pitch those with a different angle or topic.

Keep in mind: As long as you know something about something, this option is available to you.

You don’t have to have a huge social following or a TED talk to get booked on a podcast. You just need to know your stuff and have a decent website that makes you look legit.

I’ve been asked to be on a few podcasts since openly sharing my story and business-building journey on LinkedIn. But I realize that the shows I’ve been on are full of peers—not necessarily the people who want to hire me.

It’s time for me (and maybe you?) to set aside the time to research and pitch.

It’s one of those “simple—not easy” things to do. But isn’t that most of our marketing efforts?

A final note: If publicity is something you really want, but don’t want to put in the effort to do yourself, you can always hire someone like Christina to do it for you.

And I'm here if you need help with your story and messaging :)

A Few Good Resources

1. If you want the next steps for podcast pitching, Christina has a quiz for you. She also has a private podcast that goes deeper into how to choose shows and pitch effectively.
2. If you’re interested in starting your own podcast, Sarah Noel Block is hosting a masterclass you can tune into.​
3. For my content marketing peeps: This is the last day to talk about your feelings about the state of content marketing.
4. A personal pitch: I’m thinking about working with individuals who want help figuring out what personal stories you should tell on social to build an engaged following. Reply directly to this email if you’re interested in exploring this option!

Hope you have a good one,
Renee