How do you write an email to get on a podcast?

Guesting on podcasts is like presenting a room full of your dream buyers.

But how do you get on a podcast? What are you supposed to say? How do you write an email that:

  • Cuts through the noise?
  • Builds a relationship with the host?
  • and makes you the obvious choice to come on their podcast as a guest?

In a nutshell, you, dear reader, want to pitch the podcast host on why you will be valuable to have on their podcast.

There are three primary elements that you need to consider when writing your pitch email:

  1. Demonstrating your value to their audience (why should they have you on?)
  2. Showing that you’ve done your research (why are you emailing? are you relevant to their audience?)
  3. Making it an ‘automatic yes’ to have you on the show (give a clear call to action, so it’s an ‘automatic yes’ to have you on)

Demonstrate Your Value

First off, you want to show your value to their audience.

This is a bit different than you might expect. You don’t want to demonstrate your value to the host. You want to frame your experience and your value in terms of how you will help their audience learn something new.

Why would a host care about your pitch? Because you’re telling a story that will be attractive to the host’s audience. To do that, you want to pick topics that align with the podcast and audience that you’re pitching.

If your business is focused on helping consultants raise their rates, you won’t get much benefit out of appearing on a podcast dedicated and talking about work/life balance as a salaried employee. You want to make sure there’s alignment between

  • The audience you’re speaking to
  • The topics you’re talking about
  • Your personal area of expertise

This way, you’re presenting your value to a relevant audience who has the exact expensive problems that you’re great at solving.

To do that, you need to do three things:

Define Your Unique Story

First, you want to identify your unique story. Why are you interesting to the audience you’re pitching? What do you have to teach them? How can you help them improve their business?

When you define your unique story, you want to identify

  • The problem that your clients are experiencing or are at risk of experiencing (“The ‘Why'”)
  • The solution that solves the problem for your clients (“The ‘How'”)
  • Your product that provides the solution for your clients (“The ‘What'”)

(You can download a short worksheet on identifying your business’s unique story here: Your Unique Story)

When you define the unique story that you want to tell, you’re able to pitch based on your value to their audience — instead of just pitching on your background or your business.

Follow The ‘Impactful Story Framework’

You want to pick stories that would be impactful or relevant to the audience you’re pitching.

Here’s the framework for that: you want to have 3-5 topics that you can draw from when you’re pitching, based on your area of expertise, the expensive problems you’re great at solving, and common questions that you’re great at answering.

The first place to look for these topics? Content you’ve already created:

  1. You can use Buzzsumo to look at the articles on your site and see the most shared articles. These are topics that are popular, impactful for your audience, and proven.
  2. You can use Google Analytics to look at your most viewed pages. These are topics that are getting the most traffic overall on your site and, similarly, are proven topics that you have the credibility to talk about on their show.
  3. You can look at your business and area of expertise and identify a topic that you’re great at explaining.
  4. You can identify a particular expensive problem that you’re great at solving for your clients or customers and that you can teach other people how to solve.
  5. You can look at your industry overall and identify a controversial, against the grain opinion that you hold.

From these sources, you want to identify 3-5 pitches, with at least one in each of the following categories:

  1. A Controversial Opinion that you have about your industry. This should be something that goes against the grain for your industry.
  2. A Solution to a Common Problem in your market. This should address a common problem that your dream buyers in your market have and walk them through how to solve it.
  3. A Overview of your Area of Expertise. This should walk the listener through what exactly it is your do: the problem you solve, the audience you work with, your solution, what makes your solution unique, and your methodology.

Pick topics that align with the audience you’re pitching to

Then, as you pitch, you draw on these pitches, choosing the ones that make the most sense for the audience you’re pitching.

Show You’ve Done Your Research

When you’re emailing the podcast, you want to do a minimum amount of research. That means you’ve identified:

  • The podcast’s name
  • The host/contact person’s name
  • The name and topic of a recent episode of the podcast (ideally, an episode relevant to what you’re pitching)

That’s the minimum you need to research and identify about the podcast. The more research you do and the more custom you make your message, the more you can tune your pitch to be relevant to the podcast and their audience.

Make It An ‘Automatic Yes’

You want to present such a compelling pitch that they immediately want to have you on their show as a guest.

There are a few best practices you want to follow:

  • Write a short email. Ideally, 200 – 400 words.
  • You want to demonstrate how you can contribute value to the show. By including reference to how you can help teach their audience something new and specific topic pitches for their show, you show how their audience will benefit from hearing you speak.
  • When you pitch, you want to offer the podcast host a ‘choice of yeses’. By presenting the person you’re pitching with multiple topics to choose from, you’re offering them a choice of yeses. Instead of a yes/no decision to “Do I want to have this person on my show?”, the host is now presented with the choice of how they want to work with you.
  • You want to include a clear call to action. Avoid weak calls to action like ‘Let me know if you’re interested.’ Focus on strong calls to action that ‘assume the yes’ and give a clear next step for the recipient to take. A great example of this would be the call to action “As a next step, just reply and let me know which topic your audience would be most interested in hearing. After that, we can work out the scheduling details.”
  • And, most importantly, you want to follow-up persistently and politely until you get a ‘no’. If someone doesn’t respond to your first email, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t interested. It only means they didn’t have time to respond. You want to develop a habit of consistently following up, every week until you get a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.

Podcast Outreach Email Template

This template is what I use for all of my podcast outreach and all of my podcast outreach on behalf of my clients.

Heya Name,

Are you currently looking for guests for {Podcast Name}? {Recent Episode} where you talked about {topic} was great and inspired me to write in.

I help teach {target market} how to solve {expensive problem}. Would your audience be interested in learning about {area of expertise} or any of the following topics?

• Topic #1 — Short description of the topic and the outcome for the audience
• Topic #2 — Short description of the topic and the outcome for the audience
• Topic #3 — Short description of the topic and the outcome for the audience

Would one of these be a good fit for your audience? Just hit reply and let me know which topic you’d like to talk about. After that, we can work out scheduling details.

Additionally, I’d love to learn more about how you like your guests to prepare for an interview. If you have any onboarding documents you’d like me to read ahead of the interview, please send them over!

Thanks so much,

Kai

With this template, you’re:

  • Connecting with the podcast creator
  • Highlighting your familiarity with their show
  • Demonstrating how you can offer value to their audience
  • Offering them a ‘choice of yeses’ regarding topics
  • Presenting them with a strong call to action to follow

Here’s what my friend Mojca Mars had to say about this template based on her experience pitching podcasts as a business owner:

I wasn’t sure what steps to take to get on a podcast. When Kai suggested using his Podcast Outreach Template, I thought ‘it has to be harder than that!’ but after I sent my first email I was booked to record on a large podcast with over 100 episodes (and counting!) with amazing guests that reached an audience of my dream buyers. Now I’m starting a serious outreach campaign to land more interviews on popular podcasts”

Mojca Mars, independent advertising consultant

It’s a great template that you can take, use, and adapt when you start your podcast outreach.


I’m thinking about podcast outreach lately because I’m rereading my book Podcast Outreach, a quick, specific guide on how to get on podcasts as a guest expert as I prepare for my next podcast tour.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to pitch podcasts — as a newbie or an expert with an established audience — I recommend that you order a copy today!

By the way, if you’re looking for information on how to start a podcast, then you should check out this guide from my friend Justin Jackson at Transistor: https://transistor.fm/how-to-start-a-podcast/