Podcasting in Professional Services, with John Tyreman π
Every week, you'll get three things: 1) Perspective from successful business podcasters, 2) Research about podcasting, 3) New ideas to help grow your show.
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π₯ Podcaster Hell π₯ Where no host ever wants to be...
Published 22 days agoΒ β’Β 3 min read
Hi, Reader.
A podcast that features guest interviews can be a major marketing asset. Until your guest pipeline dries up.
At that point, you start getting desperate, loosening your qualification criteria and considering fringe guests that don't quite align with your target audience.
And with a weekly or even twice-monthly cadence, it can be hard to get off this hamster wheel and build out your episode buffer.
I call this 'podcaster hell'
How to get out of Podcaster Hell:
Getting out of podcaster hell takes creativity and a little bit of gumption. You will need to balance production with additional effort in outreach and analytics. Here are
1. Be flexible with release dates
First, it's important to remember that it's OK to miss a publication date. In business podcasting, it's better to be consistently relevant than having a consistent publishing cadence.
I'm not saying you should go months between episodes, but if it means pushing out a week or two for a more relevant interview, it's worth it. You are in control.
2. Consider alternative episode types
Another lever you have to build out your episode buffer is to explore different kinds of episodes:
Monologues: Just a host and a mic (and some good visual overlays for YouTube). These episodes give your audience a chance to hear directly from you instead of your guests.
Compilations: Recycle the best moments from past episodes through the lens of a common theme. For example, if you ask a similar question to all your guests, compile clips of those answers and stitch them together with a monologue.
Internal guests: Instead of relying on external guests, you could feature a subject-matter expert from within your own business.
3. Measure outbound conversion rates
Next, you need to understand the lead time and conversion rates for outbound outreach to target guests. If it takes 10 outreach targets to net one new guest, now you know how many you need to reach out to each month. Here are some baseline conversion rates to monitor:
Connection rate (responses / total sent): How many responses did you get to your initial message?
Schedule rate (recordings / total sent): How many recordings happened as a result of outreach efforts?
Average time in pipeline: How long does it take from initial outreach to recording session?
These are key metrics to understand how many prospects you need to reach out to each week/month in order to yield enough buffer in your production queue.
4. Nurture prospective guests
When running outbound campaigns, your messaging and cadence are important. Sometimes, a little reminder or nudge is all you need to spark a response.
It's critical to stay organized and manage outreach in your CRM or at the very least a spreadsheet. I've had plenty of successful outbound campaigns managed in Google Sheets.
Examples of shows that have escaped 'Podcaster Hell'
Here are a few recent episodes from the Red Cedar Marketing portfolio of shows with healthy episode queues:
The Three-Part Framework for Building Next Year's Sales Plan (Breaking BizDev)
As fourth-quarter planning season approaches, many professional services firms fall into the trap of setting arbitrary top-down financial targets or simply crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. To build a predictable, growing firm, doer-sellers need a realistic bottom-up sales plan that grounds abstract growth strategy in real dollars and cents.
In this episode of Breaking BizDev, Mark and I introduce a Three-Part Frameworkβa visual, structured approach that connects day-to-day revenue execution with long-term sales strategy. Watch now.β
β
The Godfather of Fractional: Referrals Are A Science, Not Art (Scalbility Code)
In this episode, Matt Haney sits down with Kirk Coburn, the pioneer who coined the fractional executive model and founded Chief Outsiders. Kirk shares how solopreneurs can build a referral engine, avoid the trap of culture debt, and make tough operational calls when facing burnout. Watch now.β
Podcasting in Professional Services, with John Tyreman π
A newsletter designed to help business podcasters grow their show.
Every week, you'll get three things: 1) Perspective from successful business podcasters, 2) Research about podcasting, 3) New ideas to help grow your show.
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