Why guest on podcasts?

Let’s say you’re presented with an opportunity: you get to give a presentation to 100 business owners in your target market.

You’re going to take part in a one-on-one discussion with a moderator — an expert and authority in your target market — and have the opportunity to discuss your expertise and industry background, how your products or services can help your target market, and the expensive problems you specialize in solving.

All-in-all, it’ll take an hour. The moderator has done interviews like this interview dozens (or hundreds) of times.

You’d probably jump at the opportunity, right? After all, it looks like an excellent opportunity for your business!

  • Target Market — You get to reach your exact target market with your message. You know that the audience will be the exact business owners you want to connect with.
  • Influencer Status — This isn’t just anyone interviewing you. The person interviewing you is someone that your target market looks up to and respects. And by being interviewed by them, you receive some of their influence and status.
  • Calls to Action — During the presentation, you’ll be able to tell the listeners about how you can help them, the expensive problems you can help them solve, and how they can get in touch with you to learn more.

Not everyone in the audience is going to be an ideal buyer (or ‘best buyer’) for you and your business, but out of the audience, a percentage of them will be.

Would you take this opportunity? I would.

Now, let’s take a step back and look at this idea again. What we’re describing are the benefits that you experience when you appear on a podcast that reaches your target market:

  • Target Market — You’re able to speak directly to a group of people in your target market.
  • Expensive Problem — You’re able to educate the listeners about your knowledge of the expensive problems that they may be facing in their business.
  • Authority — When you appear on a podcast as a guest, you’re building a platform that showcases your authority and expertise. If you’re interviewed 5, 10, or 20 times on a topic, prospects or members of your audience can say ‘Woah! This person understands their area of expertise really well!’
  • Star Power — When you’re interviewed on a podcast, you inherit some of the ‘star power’ that the host has built up with their audience. If a host has produced 20, 50, or 100+ episodes of a podcast, the listeners of that podcast have grown to trust the host’s recommendations and endorsements. When you appear as a guest, you receive an implicit (or explicit) endorsement from that host1.
  • Calls to Action — You can end your interview with an explicit call to action on how to get in touch with you, work with you, or get more information.
  • Warm Leads — Anyone who acts on your call to action is a warm lead for your business: they already know who you are, they understand your authority and expertise about their industry and the expensive problems they’re experiencing, and you’ve inherited a degree of star power from the host. Anyone who takes action is, automatically, a warm lead for your business.

When you appear as a guest on a podcast, you get all of those benefits.

One additional benefit that I always like to call out is the perception of authority that you generate as you continue to be interviewed on podcasts.

If we look at an industry, we might say “Huh, the authorities in this industry are frequently interviewed about relevant industry topics!”

Does it stand that if you frequently appear on relevant podcasts for your industry and talk about relevant topics that you become perceived as an expert?

I’d argue that, yes, you will become perceived as an expert. You cultivate a status of authority.

In this way, someone who is new to an industry can slowly level up and build their authority. While, when you’re getting started, you may be undifferentiated from other consultants, but as you appear on podcasts in your industry that reach your target market, you’re able to accomplish multiple things:

  • You’re building a platform for your authority and expertise
  • You’re creating a public body of work that demonstrates your knowledge
  • People can come across this public work at any time, providing you with an evergreen source of leads or prospects for your business
  • And, most importantly, every time you appear on a podcast, you’re speaking directly to a segment of your target market, making them aware of your services, and presenting them with an opportunity to learn more about you and potentially work with you

Those are the benefits of podcast guesting.

By working in public — by appearing on podcasts and sharing your knowledge and expertise — you build up a body of work and a status and reputation as an authority or expert.

Getting started with Podcast Guesting often feels like the hardest part.

If you’ve never appeared on a podcast before (or if you’re new in a new industry), how are you supposed to build a relationship with a podcast host? What are you supposed to talk about?

At the core, it comes down to:

  • Understanding the questions that people in your industry are asking (these are potential topics for your podcast appearances)
  • Identifying podcasts that reach your target market
  • Making yourself available to the podcast hosts as someone they can have on as a guest

When you start to market yourself in this way, you start to build your authority.

Think about the difference between two consultants or product creators. One has been interviewed twenty times about their area of expertise or problems they can solve. The other hasn’t. To a potential client, the perception is that the person who has been interviewed multiple times is an expert and authority.

This is what my colleague Josh Doody had to say about his experience with proactive Podcast Outreach to reach his target market:

After listening to Kai talk about the principles of Podcast Outreach on a podcast, I realized “This isn’t hard. I’m an expert. I need to just start reaching out to podcasts and trying to book appearances.” I had no idea how easy it would be! Since starting, I’ve booked appearances as a guest expert on 10+ podcasts that reach my target market.

I identified 25+ podcasts that I reached out to. So far I’ve booked 10+ placements as a guest on podcasts ranging from small to big, and all of them are targeted to my audience.

And after appearing on these 10+ podcasts, Josh is further positioned as an authority. He’s not just the author of Fearless Salary Negotiation, he’s a published author who is interviewed for his thoughts on career development and negotiation.

As new members of his audience show up, he’s able to present a — true! — image of being an authority and an expert in his industry. And even if new audience members don’t take the time to listen to ever podcast episode he’s appeared on, the mere fact that he’s appeared on a number of podcasts to talk about his area of expertise carries over to a broader perception of expertise within his industry.

Those are the benefits that guesting on podcasts brings to your business:

  • A perception of authority within your target market or target industry
  • A continual source of warm leads for your business (people who already know who you are, how you can help them, and what they should do next to begin a relationship with you)

And who wouldn’t want those benefits for their business?

  1. Ever wonder why you see blocks with the logos of media outlets that someone has been interviewed in? Because those logos carry a degree of ‘star power’ in them. By demonstrating that you’re associated with those media outlets, you demonstrate authority and inherit some of the star power of those media outlets. ↩︎