As business owners with a podcast, one of our main goals is to get our listeners that are prefect fits, to raise their hands and say – “Hey, I want to work with you. I think you can help me”. This episode is all about that. How do you create something of value and transformation that gets your ideal client to raise their hands.
In this episode of Should I Start A Podcast you will:
- Learn what strategies business owners use with their lead magnets
- Understand how to avoid some of the basic lead magnet mistakes podcasters make
- Learn to look at your lead magnet with fresh eyes & why it is really important you do that
- Take a deeper look at podcasting and being a digital media influencer.
- We answer a question about why the basic requirements of a business is an email list.
- Rethink your lead magnet by getting inspired by a bbq restaurant example.
- Understand your message and improve your website for your target audience.
- Hear us talk about the online assets you need to have when you have a podcast.
- Learn how you could use a quiz as a lead magnet to your podcast listeners.
- Think differently about getting your ideal prospect’s contact information.
- We talk in-depth about how to get listeners of your podcast to take action and download your lead magnet.
All this and more, on this week’s episode of Should I Start A Podcast.
Psst … make sure you listen to the end … I’ll break down this episode to give you 3 small steps you can execute right now to help you take this listening experience into execution experience. Enjoy the show.
After you listen to this episode I would love you to do 3 small steps that will help you sort out the lead magnet for your podcast:
- What are the Top 10 mistakes your audience is making. Lead magnet, consumable. What is yours?
- Think about what kind of content you could deliver your email subscribers that is unique and wantable. Make a list. 20 minutes.
- Create image templates for your top 10 ideas.
What you pick as your strategies to grow will depend on where you are at in your business. Pick the strategy that is right for where you are at and not for where you want to be.
These are 3 small steps that if you execute, irrespective of where you are at in your business and podcasting journey will make a huge impact on your making your podcast more profitable & more impactful.
If this is the first episode you’ve listened to all the way to the end or if you are a regular, thank you … I love that you are here. Check out our back catalogue on ShouldIStartAPodcast.com, subscribe to the show and give me a review and rating, it really helps us get found more.
If you are a business owner podcaster and want to join others just like you in a group where we share tactics & ideas on what’s working (or not) for us when it comes to using our podcast in the best possible way. For more on that go to wearepodcast.com/group … it is free.
We Are Podcast 2022 – It is happening this year. For the latest announcements on Australia’s first podcasting conference for business owners, join the free group wearepodcast.com/group
Stay tuned next week when we going to cover what are the requirements to call yourself a “Professional Podcaster”. This includes how you present yourself, conduct your interview and talk about your business. So, don’t forget to subscribe to the show to get that episode as soon it gets released. Until then, much love.
If you’ve never heard of our work before, there are 3 things that I think you would benefit from right now…
1. Listen to this playlist of How to Podcast for Business.
2. Get the the Recurring Results Roadmap (if you haven’t already).
3. Check out this video about a business builder who is closing high-ticket clients with his podcast.
Having worked with thousands of business owners to create a podcast for their business, I’ve created The Recurring Results Roadmap for Podcasters™.
It’s a step-by-step guide to growing your business to 7+ figures using your podcast.
Importantly, it removes the guesswork so you know exactly what to focus on at all times to generate that recurring revenue.
The best part? It’s personalised, free and it lets you get started straight away.
Download The Recurring Results Roadmap for Podcasters™ here.
If this is your first time here, this is Should I Start A Podcast. I’m Ronsley Vaz. Each week you’ll hear me, and a star-studded guest lineup, dig deep into the podcasting process. We’ll bring you tactics, tips and tricks to use in your own podcasting journey. We’ll teach you how to build an audience. And we’ll show you how to keep them coming back, show after show.
So if you want to start a podcast, or expand your current audience, this is the show for you.
Here is the transcript of the entire episode for those who like to read …
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
lead magnet, podcast, people, emails, mailchimp, pinterest, business, mailing list, lead, barbecue, website, biggest, engage, email list, person, recipes, question, add, anna, james
SPEAKERS
James Whittaker, Ronsley Vaz, Shawn Walchef, Anna Vocino, Catharina Joubert
Ronsley Vaz 01:03
We’re gonna talk about accounting for business, but specifically, we’re gonna talk about lead magnets for podcasters. So join here in the campfire, let’s talk about lead magnets for podcasters. I feel we’re all here in a business capacity, we all want to create a show probably that actually enhances our business. I know a lot of people create podcasts and say, Hey, I just doing it for the networking, all sorts of different sort of reasons. But giving your listeners the logical next step, or giving your listeners something that they can potentially consume in a way that delivers some sort of transformation. We’ll talk about strategies first, and then maybe some mistakes and stuff award we’ve all been through. And I’m sure James has a whole bunch of different examples of bad lead magnets. I know for a fact he does. So we’ll get into that. But let’s start off with how can we strategize on next lead magnet? And can we keep that in line with our podcast from So say, for all of us here as podcasters? You know, we all have our own podcast, consider with thinking off strategizing on Nick’s lead magnet for those that podcasts. If we will put in the hot seat, I suppose. Like, how would you start strategizing that? And how would you keep that in line with your podcast promise for the audience that you have?
Anna Vocino 02:05
I’ll start. First of all, if you already have a lead magnet, I encourage everybody to go and look at their lead magnet today with fresh eyes and see if it’s the best it can possibly be. Because sometimes you might look at it and go ooh, and if you’re going home, for whatever reason, if you’re wincing, it means it’s probably time to freshen it up, do a complete overhaul think of a new one. But if you don’t have a lead magnet yet, your podcast is probably the best way of driving traffic to your email list. And better so than somebody just stumbling upon your website. Obviously, people are going there intentionally. So have something good and meaty and updated and fresh. And if you feel like it needs to be redone, just go ahead and start the process of redoing it because it takes a little bit of time to get all the graphic design and things done nicely. I know we’ve all been to websites to where you hear somebody interviewed on a podcast, right? Oh, that sounds cool. Like I want to go sign up for their thing. We’ve all done that. And you go sign up and there’s no such thing that’s like literally like the flimsiest like no information. I just feel like that’s not acceptable anymore. You can’t have something flimsy with Bs that’s like common knowledge, you really need to get something that shows your personality, as well as giving a lot of information. We are in the economy now where you have to give out information, at least some good chunky what you don’t have to necessarily give them all the how, but tell them who you are and give them some information. So that’s where I would launch off from
Ronsley Vaz 03:25
anyone else jumping. Well, I
Shawn Walchef 03:26
can share just a quick story about our local news appearance today. We were invited for the second time this weekend to a local news channel in San Diego to do a barbecue cooking segment. And we’ve been very fortunate that our barbecue restaurants gotten featured on all the different local news channels. But back to the podcasting questions. We’ve been podcasting, like I said since 2017, and I had one of the news anchors come up to me on Saturday and asked me specifically about podcasting that, oh, that you’re early into the game, obviously not as early as Anna but yes, in 2017, we were podcasting for our business, we made it our Northstar content. And because of that podcasting, we’ve gotten a lot of legacy media personalities. So people in radio, people in magazines, people in newspapers, people on local news, national news, reach out to us about digital media. So for us, it’s much bigger than barbecue. You know, we always said that we’re selling stories. We’re in the storytelling business, not the barbecue business. And for us, that’s given us so much more than we could have ever gotten by generating a PDF basically on how to do a barbecue recipe.
Ronsley Vaz 04:27
Yeah, so let’s follow up on that question. Because you’re getting so much media attention, you ultimately want them to come to your business in some form, right? What are you seeing on the shows that’s driving traffic to your business? Or are you doing any of that stuff?
Shawn Walchef 04:39
Free food, we only sell one dessert at a restaurant that’s our wicked peach cobbler and the lead generator that we have on our website is just sign up for our newsletter and you get a free peach cobbler we have no problem providing color to the entire world if that means that they get to try our cobbler and then get into our barbecue funnel.
Ronsley Vaz 04:56
Oh my god that is gold. I wonder what the restaurants have been doing it longer obviously. So how do you integrate that all into the podcast? And do you like, is there a way that you say that on the podcast, hey, if you’re listening, and you’re around in the area, and you get free food,
Shawn Walchef 05:08
so much more of what we do is branding. So we think of it less from a digital marketing standpoint. And more I mean, my media mentors, David Meltzer. And obviously, I learned from Gary Vaynerchuk. And so much of what we do is less for the transaction and more for the overall representation of who we are as a brand. By being a barbecue media company. We’ve gotten so many different opportunities. I can’t tell you how many people tell me they listen to the podcast, but they don’t listen to the podcast, they follow our content on Instagram stories about our podcast, or they see some repurpose content on tick tock, where they see us tweeting about our podcasts, but they’re not actual subscribers of our podcast yet, when they think about podcasting, no matter what context it is for business, I’m the one that they’re contacting me, and which is great for us because it helps us with our coaching and consulting business.
Ronsley Vaz 05:51
Because that’s bullet, let’s just stay on this this lead magnet business because we get all this different exposure right to different sort of media and a podcast is obviously a media form. But ultimately, if you’re podcasting for business, we want to drive that traffic somehow to the business. And that’s the idea of the lead magnet. Yeah, Shawn, that’s a really good ecosystem. James,
James Whittaker 06:08
there’s something that Anna mentioned before that I think is really, really interesting that I hear people very, very rarely mentioned. And it was having the awareness to be able to go back to your own website to find out she was talking about a lead magnet specifically, which I think is very powerful. But by being able to get about three or four people and say to them, what specifically is wrong with my website, or what two or three things can I do to improve the website, or in addition to that, and getting people in your target market, like your ideal clients to be able to give you some constructive feedback or value on something else that you can add? People don’t do that, in my experience, when it comes to your own website and your own lead magnet, ignorance is bliss. And it’s very, very bad for business growth. It’s having that awareness on a regular basis to be able to look at your website and your lead magnet and getting other people to do it. Not through a lens of oh, this is good, isn’t it, but being able to say to them, empower them to say, what can I do to make this better, or what two or three things do I really need to work on or is out of date or anything like that. And if you do that with people who you really trust, as well as your ideal clients, and then focus on what you can do through the lead magnet as a way of providing a mini transformation, for people who are that ideal client, it means that when you’re going out there into the world, whether it’s being a guest on a podcast, or some type of other media work, if you have got some type of lead magnet that can genuinely add a lot of value to not just the host, but their community and their audience, they really want like a resource of some type, rather than just being something about you getting email lists, and you’ve taken the time to build that foundation that I just mentioned, at the start of that it’s just such a great way of being able to supercharge the growth of your business, in my experience,
Ronsley Vaz 07:42
yeah, 100% of the thing about a lead magnet and in saying the word lead magnet, as well as there’s a feeling of emptiness around it, there’s a feeling of transaction around it, as opposed to like, transformation. There’s an element that Shawn touched on as well, which is the idea of branding and the idea of providing transformation. So when you think about Shawn’s example is, well, his business is a restaurant, and someone signs up for free food. And that’s the perfect way I suppose to get someone into your business because they sample what you do straight away, they have to come in right to get the free food. That’s the same for any business that is around. And maybe there are some examples on that. Maybe we can think about it differently. I don’t know if someone someone has anything to say to that
James Whittaker 08:23
runs, I can give you one example of a guy I just had on the show who was the founder and CEO of trifecta, which is the biggest organic meal delivery service in the United States. And his team had reached out to me and said, Here it is 40% off your first order. And free delivery. If anyone who listens to my podcast, the promo code is when the day which is obviously name of the show, the promo code is already set up ready to go. I don’t want some of affiliate fee like I feel much more, it just feels more wholesome. Being able to say to the audience like this is a really cool product, if you want to try it. Here’s a 40% off and free shipping, it’s a really easy way for you to do that. If this guy goes on a whole bunch of different shows his name is Greg Connolly, then it’s a huge way of being able to get some very authentic exposure for his business doing something like that. So yeah, I just wanted to share that as an example. That’s a
Shawn Walchef 09:05
great example. And that’s definitely something that we’re looking at doing not just for people coming into our restaurant, but also shipping since we are getting into the E commerce site. So that Thank you, James.
James Whittaker 09:14
And another great example I can share is a guy Dr. Michael Bruce’s sleep doctor when he comes on. And he mentioned something called the power of when sleep quiz to find out when is the best time for you to go to bed and wake up and do all of these different activities that is enormous ly valuable for me as the host. It’s enormous ly valuable to my community. And all that is has been able to build I think 1.3 million people on his mailing list through using that one simple lead magnet yet so many people are out there trying to do like 10 or 20 Different lead magnets yet this one thing that is enormous ly valuable. It’s a fun quiz. And the way that it’s set up is not even. It’s not even that good like you go and look at the website the power of when quiz.com I think it is like it doesn’t look flashy or anything like that. It has the credibility stacks and important things like that as far as being able to include the value as far as your percent couldn’t go through. But the power of one sleep quiz is just something so simple that he is used with every avenue he’s been on. And whether it’s TV, or it’s podcasting, or it’s radio, or simply as a lead magnet on his website, he has used it to devastating effect to be able to build up an enormous mailing list,
Ronsley Vaz 10:14
which probably shouldn’t be the title of the room is like how to get people on your mailing list as a podcast. So rather than saying lead magnet, which I apologize for maybe now, in hindsight, that sounds way better. Because this is the crux of it, right? There are times in our careers, where we get a lot of attention. And when that happens, we’d hope that that attention converts into some sort of engagement, which hopefully it’s through an email list and, and that way, because you know who the person is, and you can be very specific about helping that person, no, please,
Anna Vocino 10:43
I’m just gonna say to the overarching message of a lead magnet, the thing that you’re yes, you’re trying to obtain their contact information, but you want to have your language communicate that that you want to say, Hey, listen, I have a lot of information and value to offer you Yes, of course, you’re gonna send some marketing emails, like if you’re interested. But again, we’re all in this to help and serve people. So if you can frame it all is in helping and serving Yes, in exchange for you giving me your contact information, I’m going to give you this kick ass lead magnet that actually has some cool shit in it. And I will continue to offer you through my email list information that’s really valuable and chunky, and meaty. And every now and then, of course, I’ll say, Hey, watch me on this thing, or listen to this interview, or please buy my books. But for the most part, if you’re using your lead magnet is something that you’re excited to share with your audience, whether you’re using it as going on other people’s shows, or you’re using it and you’re giving a call to action on your own show, if you’re really excited to share this content with people. And it’s just like a glimpse of all the content that you have to share with them, then it’s going to be a lot easier to get people on board as opposed to like I mentioned before, the janky flimsy lead magnet, just wanted to chime in there.
Catharina Joubert 11:49
So I’ve just been listening to the conversation with like a lot of interest, because I’ve only recently created mine. And especially like the ideas that Sean’s share just because I’m partly in the restaurant industry as well. So that was really interesting. But in terms of someone who’s perhaps not used it for that long, the difference it makes to actually have one is huge. Because the problem for many podcasters and especially if you also going on other podcasts is having listeners take action. And the usual ways or the ways we hear quite often on the bigger shows like The we’ve spoken about this as well, like leave a review or rating or please subscribe, those things have really become like almost empty, asks, in a way. And that’s why the lead magnet is so crucial, because there is something and this is what Anna pointed out. If it’s something you’re really passionate about you believe that that lead magnet or whatever the resource is actually going to help your listeners. And you can communicate that that’s so much more powerful than just having this thing that you repeat every time. Like Subscribe, and while there is something in it for them, but it’s just something you ask. It’s not something you offer, really. So I’ve discovered, especially when you go as a guest on other podcasts, also then not just saying okay, well my website is such and such, or my instagram handle is this, but actually offering this resource and the most important thing is just an Anna mentioned this, and James mentioned this, checking your lead magnet, whatever it might be, and making sure that it actually off delivers results for somebody looking at it.
13:22
Hey, this is Elizabeth McIntyre. I’m the CEO of thinkbook, Australia, host of our podcast and leader of amazing humans. I want the inside of we our podcast members, or as we like to call it the way Emily, if you are thinking about growing that business using your podcast and your online presence. Come join us on the inside. I would love to meet you, James and RONZI coaches to get those recurring results in our business. If you want that roadmap, which we all follow to get those recurring results you can download [email protected] are podcast.com. Now back to the show.
Ronsley Vaz 14:01
I feel like making a consumable and transformational is obviously the key to it. All right. I wonder whether anyone’s experienced bad lead my own mistakes. James, I wonder what you think about mistakes people make when they have this lead magnets that they put up? Can
James Whittaker 14:17
I mention something there? Like I think having any lead magnet is probably better than having absolutely no lead magnet runs. And I have both. We were both featured on a whole bunch of different things without really anything good to be able to capture that and provide more valuable info to that audience and bring those people into our community. So he and I back in the day, both individually missed a lot of chances to be able to do that. I think on your website, if your biggest way of adding more value to people is to get them to subscribe to your mailing list. Or worse if you say subscribe to my daily mailing list, like who the hell wants to do that? Like I don’t even want to read my own emails that I have already. I certainly don’t want to voluntarily go and subscribe to more and more emails especially knowing what you might do with them as well. So I think when it comes to those bad lead magnets, you got to think about it it for me, or is it for the other person. Now if it’s for the other person, I think you’re off to a very, very, very good start. If it’s something that you’ve just done for yourself, where the sole focus of that is to build your mailing list, as opposed to providing some type of transformation, even if it’s a small one, and focusing on long term trust and long term value to that person, there’s a very, very, very big difference. And that’s a difference between transaction which is like getting someone’s email address. And that’s it, versus transformation where you’re able to provide value to them over time. And when they’re ready, you are front of mind with the products and services that you have, because you’ve been able to build up trust, and that person is now ready to buy from you when they may not have been ready the entire way. So you don’t want to burn your bridges on that too early. So I really think when it comes to lead magnets, it’s such a simple focus, what can you do to be a value to the other person rather than yourself that one of Dr. Michael Bruce, the sleep doctor, immediately you got an email and breaking it down out of the water for Crono types. It says here is the time you should go to bed here is the time you should exercise here is the time you should wake up all of those different things, it was so valuable. And of course, as Anna said, you know, you’re going to get more emails from that person, which you can easily unsubscribe to that he has already provided an enormous amount of value. So it means it’s a much better retention rate than someone who has a lead magnet that is is only for them.
Shawn Walchef 16:17
That was incredible. James, I have a question actually, for the stage. Is there a podcast that you listen to that you actually really enjoy getting the emails because I’m like you, James, I get enough emails, but there are a few emails that I actually look forward to receiving. And one of them was from Ryan Holiday from the daily stoic, I get the daily stoic emails, but they’re in one of the daily stoic emails was a lead for the daily dad. And as somebody that’s a new dad with a four year old, and a two year old, that put me into their funnel, and then now I’m a subscriber to the podcast, I follow them on Instagram. And I’m actually very excited every time I get one of those emails. So for me, I’m trying to reverse engineer that for our show. And our next show is how do I give something of value, like you said, a transformative experience where people are very excited to see what we’re putting out,
Catharina Joubert 17:02
I was just quickly gonna jump in to say like mailing lists, they’re so tricky, because if you get too many, and they’re not quite in the right voice tone, they’re not the right length, they just don’t flow with you, you’re going to unsubscribe. So getting that right, as Sean pointed out, is so difficult. So strangely enough, I somehow got into a mailing list of someone called Alex Pinkett San Filipino. I didn’t even listen to his podcast, but his emails are so to the point and good that it’s now gotten me interested to listen to his podcast. So I just thought I’d share the power of a really good and timely
James Whittaker 17:38
well said, in my experience, the bigger they get, the more they’ve reached a point where they increase the frequency, and they increase the focus on sales. And that just seems so icky to me. So I don’t want to be on any of those lists, or surely mentioned someone earlier, David Meltzer, who runs and I know very well, Dave has come and spoken at our events before, he’s a truly great guy, he is so focused on what he can do to be of service to others. He’s never said no to me for anything. And I’ve asked him for some pretty significant things, you can just see through the Facebook ads that he runs, he’s testing out a lot, a lot of different lead magnets. But even as he’s doing that, because he’s got a big enough audience, like he’s got a podcast called The playbook that he does in conjunction with Entrepreneur Magazine. And he’s got a massive business, he’s at a point where he can be testing and should be testing a lot of those different things. Every one of his lead magnets is still massively focused on what he can do to be of service to other people. And that’s things like literal word documents, I can you can click on it here is like a legal agreement that you can use, you download it as a Word doc or as a PDF, you just add in your own information, have it and if you want to go and join a facebook group that I run, you can click here like it’s so focused on on adding the value. So here’s an example of someone who is so focused on what he can do to be of service you I just I can’t imagine changing like so many others, if not all of the others, in my experience, who just focus so much on the increasing the frequency of the emails that go out and increasing the selling portion of those emails. Yes,
Anna Vocino 18:58
I couldn’t agree more I like like the people. I like the people who offer us all good service, good information, like I’m much more apt to spend money with them. And I have no problem giving them all my dollars. Like no problem with that. We work so hard for every follower and every sign up and every person. And we really do like we’re here listening to this, we can see we can get something get an edge and I recently had 35,000 people on my mailing list. And that’s all a result of lead magnets, updating lead magnets offering recipes refining it, and it is a really great lead magnet. Absolutely. At least in MailChimp, which I’ve now switched to drip, which would that could be a whole other conversation. But I noticed that my open rates were getting more and more horrible. And so I just basically cut the cord and it was hard because I got it from 35,000 people to 12,000 people. That’s a lot. I can’t even do that math because somebody threw them out. Like 20,000 People I got rid of 22,000 Something like that. And if you had told me that even a year ago, I would have shut a brick because I would have been like no I fought for those four because you never know what if somebody is going to engage, you know, I went through the proper channels of sending an email saying, hey, and I send three emails saying, hey, notice you have an engaged in 90 days, if you don’t want to be involved, no problem, you or if you still do click here, and I went through and did all that stuff, but I was just like, You know what I’m tired of, first of all, the amount of money I’m spending at MailChimp was equivalent to leasing a Honda Civic, I
20:21
want to hear the difference between MailChimp and drip and or even if it’s an elevator pitch, just something
Anna Vocino 20:25
Well, we had to go through for basically because I’m, I’m not just keeping in touch with people as me as Anna Chino, who’s the writer of recipes, and the one who’s helping guide people through their weight loss journeys and all that stuff. But also as eat Happy Kitchen, which is I’m selling sauce, I’m about to launch spices. So I have a product ecommerce business. So we I had to find some that work Atkins campaign was just too much. And drip was just I love drip, drip, but it took a while of going through them. And by the way, getting the hard sell and getting called from every single company and all that stuff. Because, again, you’re paying the equivalent of a car note when you’re paying for these email companies. So they want your business. And I understand that. And so just long story short of like, you get this lead magnet, you’ve been working so hard to build all your people. And it felt really crazy to do that. But he’s like, You know what, I just want to interact with the people who want to be interacted with. And we all know that email, we all are just pelted with emails, so I get that. But it’s still, for me the best way for me to get the message out. And so what I do on my podcast is I reinforced that, and I say, Hey, I’m launching pumpkin marinara, and I’m gonna start pre selling that in two weeks, I will announce it on the podcast. But I will say it’s only going to pre sell to people who are on my email list. So make sure you sign up. And I honor that. And I don’t freak out and let myself Oh god, I better put it now on Instagram and Facebook and edited it up. But I will say hey, before leading up to that, hey, make sure you’re on my mailing list, because those are the only people who are going to be able to preorder the pumpkin marinara. And once we get to a certain amount we’re done, we’re not making that much more. So I’m trying to be more strategic with it. But of course, my open rates have now gone through the roof because that’s the 12,000 people who really want to interact with my content, and not the people who signed up on giveaways and who wish don’t get me wrong, I’m gonna still do more giveaways. I’m still looking for people, I’m still gonna do that I’m still gonna do my Pinterest thing. I’m still doing it. But for me, it felt like it felt like trimming the fat, literally.
James Whittaker 22:13
And it’s cheaper to actually because I charged by the user data on the mailing list. So it’s much better to clean up those inactive people. It’s cheaper. Oh, yes.
Anna Vocino 22:20
And now I could not go get a car with that money. Now I’m paying drip something like 110 whereas I was paying MailChimp like 280 It was bananas. Again, it’s a lease. I’m not buying the car. But still, I could go lease a Honda Civic tomorrow with the money I was paying to MailChimp. And for some reason that just didn’t sit
Shawn Walchef 22:38
right with me. Yeah. Do you mind if I asked what you’re doing on Pinterest?
Anna Vocino 22:41
Yes. I don’t mean to derail the conversation wrong. But because we could do a whole thing on podcasting for Pinterest. In fact, Rosie, you should put that on your list. But because I write recipes and food is a great place for Pinterest. But yes, I found just from looking at my double down on Pinterest because looking at my metrics about half the people who find me not through the podcasting ecosphere, but just randomly on socials, find me through Pinterest searches. So that’s why I went I’ve gone full force on Pinterest. Now I do get a lot of the good. The great thing about podcasting is that I’m introducing them to sng no sugars, no grains, which is what Vinnie started, and I’m introducing them to the idea of cutting out sugars and grains and doing like a real food keto program, right. So when you’re doing real food, keto, but most of the world knows keto like using artificial sweeteners, and just eating bacon and drinking butter all the time, and I’m not really doing I’m doing a different version of it. So I will say through Pinterest, I get a lot of questions that are like, Hey, why don’t you do it this way? Why don’t you? So I do I understand that I’m going to spend more time answering questions, but I love it because that means they cared enough to write me. And then I want to write them back. And they’re always shocked because I write everybody back.
Shawn Walchef 23:44
I’m always fascinated of which platforms are tracking the best, especially for different categories. Barbecue podcasting. I know Sam, the cooking guy is a good friend of mine, he has 3 million YouTube subscribers and he crushes it on Pinterest, and I’m always talking to his team about what they’re doing. So thank you for for that. That was awesome.
Ronsley Vaz 24:00
I love Sam, the cooking guy, I watch this channel all the time. Not all the time. But I watched the show. It’s cool. He’s funny, too, I was just gonna bring the conversation to the point where people obviously giving advice to others about the frequency of the emails, they should send people once they’re on the email list. And we should give some part of the conversation sometimes with a conversation about how to deliver that promise in the sense that we’re talking about tools, obviously, but before they were talking about David Melson and delivering on a promise, because when you think about getting someone from an audience listener to an email subscriber usually or maybe it’s just me, usually we’re thinking about that person, just about the lead magnet, but the conversation about how to keep that lead, engage with that person engaged with your content is probably more of a conversation because in Anna’s case, 22,000 people over time. That’s a lot of like people that probably subscribe for no reason. Do people subscribe just for the sake of getting the lead magnet as well. And is that something that we should take into consideration or is that something that we just leave on the table?
Anna Vocino 24:59
Yeah, I would love to To address this, because, yes, sometimes people do subscribe just to have a lead magnet. And that’s just fine. And I’ve been told by my business partners to stop saying that my marinara recipe is live for free on my website. But I still say it. But I’m like, my marinara recipe list for free on my website. And then people write me and like, where is it, you don’t make it easy to find. And I’m like, Alright, settle down. There always gonna be people who just want the lead magnet, but I feel like, for the most part, if people are interested in a subject, but then they go away, they weren’t meant to engage with you, and they were never gonna drop any money anyway. So that’s where I came to with the letting go of 22,000 23,000 people, which again, seems nuts, it seems nuts. But now my emails are going out to more people, the people and by the way, I revamped my lead magnet recently as well. So I was able to re email my entire list and have more another touch point with them, like, Hey, you guys are getting this first. And again, like whatever excuse I can do to honor my list of people who have stuck with me for a long time, I want to be able to do that. But I agree, there’s always gonna be people who are like, Hey, you said this thing on the podcast, and where’s that thing, I want it for free. And you know what I write them, I say, here’s the link, enjoy, please sign up for and I always say, please sign up for my thing. Or please leave a review for the book or whatever. But I will always make an ask when I’m doing a favor for somebody else to like that. I’ll make an ask. But you just gotta let them do that. Because sometimes it’s just not a match, they might look at your shit and be like, I don’t like this at all by and that’s fine.
Ronsley Vaz 26:21
Yeah, that’s totally cool. And I think what you’re saying is more about how do you get random listeners to become more engaged, and you know them better than you know them differently is and the traditional online ways to do it by emails. And also there are people that say, Hey, when you get a lead, you gotta like, make sure that you continuously send them emails, otherwise, they will not see your stuff. So there’s also that kind of advice going out there. I wonder what you’re doing for engagement? Because you mentioned your open rates have gone up? What are you doing for engagement? And what are you sending this email list?
Anna Vocino 26:52
Oh, wow, what I had read from the powers that be meaning I Googled, why is my engagement down. And from what I understand is that if your list is too bloated, and people are not engaging, MailChimp seems to sense that and you wind up getting an ISPs wind up sending more things to spam, and your engagement just deadens over time, like drops off over time. So first of all, I hated MailChimp with like, the heat of 1000 suns. So I hated the interface. I hated using it. So I was already ready to make a change. So I was like, Screw it, let’s get rid of the folks who don’t want to be engaged and send them off with a loving kiss goodbye, and move over to drip with the active people. So I am always posting new recipes. So now that’s number one. Number two, whenever I do an interview somewhere, I’ll put that in there. Number three, if we have a sale on sauce, or we’re launching a new sauce, I’ll put that in there. And I will never email unless I have something to offer people. Like I’m not going to just email for like, hey, what do you guys think? keto, am I right? Like, I’m not going to just send like some random email. That doesn’t mean anything. I am also not the type to just send something like here are my musings, I was just thinking about keto or whatever, I will put my musings into like a medium article and do that instead. And also cross posts on my blog. But then what I’ll email is, here’s the link to that, in case you’re interested in reading this content. I don’t send long emails, because also I can’t read long emails, I can’t read an email this longer than like four sentences, my head will explode
Ronsley Vaz 28:16
was so insightful, that’s pretty interesting. I mean, they’ve got so much like stuff going on, I wonder what they can bring the conversation back to those tools. Because we were mentioning, you mentioned MailChimp a couple of times, and we moved to drip we are in the Active Campaign barrel that we’re looking to move as well. And something similar, my feel is going to happen. But anyone has thoughts on tools that they use experience with tools that you’ve used cat, Shawn James,
Catharina Joubert 28:38
I’m just laughing because I use MailChimp. And I don’t particularly like them. So I will check out drew, I just actually want to quickly share one piece of advice. And then other people can show about the tools and so on. And it’s just in terms of like what Anna shared about like her emails and engagement. And I think the biggest question for anyone who’s thinking about this is to ask yourself, what emails do you read? And which ones engage you? What will you actually open read and engage with that will give you the answer more or less to what you need to create. So that’s just a couple of thoughts, I wanted to share.
James Whittaker 29:09
Just something I wanted to add in there as well about MailChimp was talking before about the integrity of the person who is trying to capture these email addresses. Obviously, you’re providing value in exchange for that. But when you look at these companies like MailChimp, or Active Campaign, whatever it might be, the ones that I naturally gravitate more towards are the ones that don’t have some stupid pricing thing where it’s like, yeah, it’s a monthly subscription, then you’ve got to buy these credits for this feature. And they do that because it’s impossible to benchmark between that and different services, which is very, very frustrating. So I think integrity and your business model comes across if there’s something that’s super simple. An example of that is YouTube TV versus something like direct TV. I don’t know if YouTube TV exists in Australia, but it’s so easy. It’s so simple and transparent with what they do. And it’s it’s very much a changing of the guard to what those old companies used to used to do. So I think anyone who has their own business and you’re running it that way, it’s important that it’s easy for customers to do business with you and don’t try to pull the wool over their eyes. At any point of doing this if you promise them some type of result or transformation through your lead magnet, make sure you deliver on that.
Anna Vocino 30:06
I think what MailChimp has done is and by the way is there’s not like the shit on MailChimp our Clubhouse I just want to say, the reason why it feels so clunky to use is like a Ford Edsel was invented, right? And then you know how like, every year or every so often car manufacturers will just scrap the entire design and like start fresh. MailChimp invented the Ford Edsel, because they were one of the first ones around, it was great. And then they would just add on like, this is a new carburetor, we’re taping on to the thing. And now we’re going to add SMS and glue that on, and then we’re going to add on this feature, and that instead of just completely scrapping the whole thing, and starting over, and I think that’s where other companies have been a little more ahead. So it’s fine. And most of those companies are fine. I just want to throw that out there. And James, I agree with what you said,
Ronsley Vaz 30:51
I just want to wind this conversation on making your lead magnet, how do you take them from there to the next step? What is the next step from an email thing? Like I know, James mentioned, a quiz that you have, once you have a quiz and you have all this data, what can we do to take that lead and make them more of a prospect for our businesses the question, but anyone had thoughts on how to take people from just a name and email to the next step? And what is that next
James Whittaker 31:18
step? Yeah, I like it when people feel the community because you get a little bit of social proof with that, too. So if you take people where you can give them some type of transformation, and then move them to something like a Facebook group, and then during that, you might say, look, I’ve got a podcast coming up, where I’m interviewing this person, what questions would you like me to ask him that way that people in that engaged group can then be part of you’re really participating in your podcast through submitting a question that can be asked beforehand. And then you can reach out to that person to say, look, just wanted to let you know, this episodes live? And then you could ask them a question like, obviously, you want to make it specifically related to your niche. But you could ask them something like, what biggest goal that you have for the next 12 months, or what’s the most urgent problem you face in your business right now. And then you’ve initiated great dialogue, you’ve shown that you’re really taking them seriously, you brought them into their community, and you’ve made them a part of your life, but more importantly, you’re a big part of their life. And if there’s an opportunity for them to continue that journey with you, where you can provide them greater transformation, and a more focused one on one attention or a small group environment that I think they’re gonna be much more receptive to that than just a random who downloaded something off your website.
Catharina Joubert 32:18
Yeah, I think it’s definitely very important to have a eco system in place before you start promoting your lead magnet. Because this is a mistake I’ve made. It’s just kind of, okay, I’ve got a lead magnet being super excited about it, but I’m having absolutely no idea how I was going to follow up with the leads, and then they fade away and forget. So that’s really important, just having like the type of strategy, but also the ecosystem, communities, whatever you prefer, because there are so many different ways you can do this, having those in place so that when you get those leads, you can just pull them in, gently. And yes, hopefully, it’ll stick around.
Anna Vocino 32:49
And I was gonna say to the ecosystem of having like, they sign up for the lead magnet, a lead magnet itself should hopefully give them a ton of information, but also lead them wanting some more. And this takes time as well, at least it took time. For me I didn’t generate an auto responder chain with the lead magnet that I thought was very successful until the past couple of years. And some of that went side by side with the more content that I created, whether it be a recipe or a podcast episode or a frequently asked question or medium article, the more content I created, the more I was able to give resources in an auto responder workflow to go out to people after they’ve signed up because at least with cutting out carbs, and I’m doing a lead magnet that has four free days of recipes, but a 31 day meal plan based on the book and then there’s different meals that are also recipes that are also free throughout that thing, but all is driving to either buy the books themselves or get the books on a PDF at my site. It’s not a hard, huge sell. It’s 899 a PDF. It’s not like I’m rolling in it guys, but it’s still enough to like get them captive but also giving them enough help and support over a period of time. So the autoresponder thing has been a big thing but it took a while for me to refine it, refine the language, see what works, look at the heat map, see what they’re clicking on. See what’s interesting to them. After years of doing this, putting together all the questions that you get asked that your own frequently asked questions that you can address into either your lead magnet or your autoresponder
Shawn Walchef 34:09
workflow. One of the successful things that we did, we’ve been putting on an amateur BBQ contest in front of our restaurant for the last 10 years a charity contest and a professional contest up at the Del Mar thoroughbred club for the last four years. And for the last four years since we’ve been doing the podcast we actually started incorporating a lot of the signup material, the volunteer material the sponsor material throughout the podcast and those call to actions actually helped us develop an in real life community so all the people that were competing in the event all the people that were sponsoring the event they were all using the podcast as their media source for what was going on pre event during the event as well as after the
Ronsley Vaz 34:48
disappoint them Catherine brought up and then Anna and Shawn you touched on is the ecosystem is gold because what tends to happen as well as podcast is someone told us Hey, start your podcast and then Have a lead magnet, don’t forget to have a lead magnet, I made the mistake of not having a lead magnet missed out on all these leads. And the advice that podcasters get when you’re a new podcaster. There’s so many spinning plates, there’s so many moving parts, there’s so many things to do so many things to get done. And once you get those things done, you got to do them again the next week. So you need to keep doing them and they never stopped. So there’s lots of spinning plates. So when someone’s gives us that kind of advice, and with so much uncertainty, we go and take it and without the ecosystem and without knowing where you’re going to take them ultimately, or how you’re going to like just get the email address and do what and how you’re going to communicate with them. And do you take them to a community? Do you take them? I don’t know somewhere else? How does that all work? I think that was some bullet points. Anyway, let’s wind this and land this plane. I’m going to say that this was a really cool conversation from a variety of different angles, especially for me, because it gives me a different perspective on how to address our business and how to put that in perspective for our business. And rather than just having email address, which is quite useless. As Anna pointed out 20,000 emails and names just got chucked away. What are we going to do with that, and that perspective is gold. So if you’ve been here for a while and found this useful, send the speakers some love. Otherwise, we’ll see you next week. Thank you, team. This has been awesome. All right. So you still till the end, you found this useful, and you have a business. And, Paul, you have a podcast and a business. And you kind of want to make it work for you and grow your business using this podcast. Well, you know what, that’s something that I have helped 1000s of people do and 1000s of businesses do in different forms, through an agency in a one on one fashion through a conference in a group and obviously courses and stuff. So please, I want to be able to give you something that you can use to get recurring results in your business using a podcast. We call it the recurring results roadmap. It is years of putting this in practice. It is the blueprint to get results and recurring results using our podcast if you’d like that, send me a message [email protected] I want to hear from you. I want to hear your voice or I want to hear from you. So if you’ve listened to this and you want that roadmap, please send me an email [email protected] I want to hear from you. Much love. I’ll see you in the next episode.
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