Como participar de podcasts e ser um ótimo convidado

Como entramos em mais de 200 podcasts relevantes em um ano

If you’re looking for how to get yourself invited as a guest on podcasts (and nail your guest appearance), you’ve come to the right place.

After spending 1 year of outreach getting our CEO, Jeroen, on over 200 podcasts, I’ve compiled a list of the best tips & tricks. 👇

We’ll cover:

Why it’s valuable to get on podcasts

I’ll start off by prefacing that the benefits of getting featured on podcasts are long term rather than short term. If you’re going into podcasting expecting to quickly boost your sales, think again. Most people that have tried this have been disappointed.

Getting yourself on many podcasts and getting your brand mentioned where your audience is listening helps build brand recognition. This is a way to grow your own audience and expand your reach, which you can expect to lead to increased sales down the road. 📈

You can reach a similarly sized audience as you would at a conference talk with a much smaller time investment. Going to a conference costs time and money – traveling to the conference, spending day(s) at the conference, buying conference tickets, booking hotels, etc. Meanwhile, being featured as a guest on a podcast can be done right from your living room or office.

On top of that, podcasts give you a much bigger opportunity to talk about what your business does and why. It’s something you’ll often get asked, right off the bat most of the time.

Podcasts also tend to be a more personal chat and are therefore better at building more personal relationships with your audience at scale. 😍

Por fim, ser convidado em podcasts faz com que você seja considerado um especialista no setor. Isso aumenta a credibilidade de sua marca.

Como abordar os podcasts

While some podcasts may have forms directly on their site, we’ve found that emailing them directly works better. It puts you in contact with a real person you can engage with more than a form and, in most cases, sort of pre-approves you before filling out the form. ✅

Convenientemente, todo podcast tem um feed RSS com um endereço de e-mail vinculado a ele.

More about how to find that email address at scale in “How to build a podcast list” below!

This is usually the right email address to reach out to for podcast requests, so it’s an efficient and effective way of getting in touch.

When emailing, we’ll ask them whether we should go through a form instead in case they do prefer this method of vetting. If they do, they’ll ask some qualifying questions before sending us to the form if they have one. And in those cases, we’ve mostly likely already been accepted. They’ll just ask us to fill out the form to put us through their proper booking flow.

Como criar uma lista de podcasts

Now, the next question is: how can you identify who to approach? How can you find podcasts that are a good fit for you as a guest? 🤔

The first step is to understand how a good fit may look between you and the podcast. Think about which audience you want to reach, what topics they are interested in, and where you can add some valuable insights or stories. In short, figure out who you can inspire and how. And make sure that it’s somehow related to your business, so you can see long-term business results from getting in front of that audience.

There’s generally three aspects you can filter podcasts on:

  1. O tópico do podcast
  2. O idioma do podcast
  3. O foco geográfico do podcast

Juntos, eles definirão seu público-alvo e a variedade de assuntos sobre os quais você pode falar.

The best place I know of to search for relevant podcasts is Listennotes. It’s a free podcast search engine that offers some paid upgrades.

Here’s how a search for marketing podcasts looks on Listennotes.

If you’ve defined multiple topics you want to search podcasts for, it’s best to search for them one by one on Listennotes (if relevant, combined with a filter for the right subset of languages and geographies).

I also recommend filtering out podcasts that haven’t had any recent episodes with the filter “Pub date of latest episode”. We typically only contact podcasts with episodes in the past month, because otherwise you might get in touch with a lot of inactive/dead podcasts, which doesn’t help you much.

At the time of writing this more advanced filtering comes on the premium “Super Search” plan, which is priced at $4/day and is billed only for the amount of days you have it enabled. The real kicker about this plan however is that you get access to the email address linked to the RSS feed of the podcast, which is essential when you’re reaching out. (Trust me, you need it! And I don’t get affiliate commissions on this whatsoever. 😃)

Depois de iniciar uma busca por podcasts relevantes no Listennotes, você tem algumas opções:

  • Você pode navegar por ela, selecionar os que se encaixam e copiá-los em uma lista para que possa começar a entrar em contato
  • Você pode obter automaticamente a lista completa das páginas de resultados de pesquisa em uma planilha (também conhecida como scraping)
  • You can click “Export results to CSV” to have Listennotes do the work for you – mind you, it is quite expensive

If you go for one of the two last options where you get the whole list first, then we highly recommend you to do an extra curation step before starting your outreach. It’s really essential to first manually curate the list to make sure you only reach to podcasts that are a good fit. We do this by working through it in a Google Sheet manually first.

The podcast name and description mostly tells you enough to decide whether it’s a good fit… or not.

Se você se sentir um pouco preguiçoso e achar que faz sentido pular essa etapa de curadoria, saiba disso:

  • Some podcast hosts will immediately notice that you haven’t done your research properly and get angry or even mark your emails as spam. We have a podcast ourselves called “Founder Coffee – Intimate SaaS chats” on which we interview founders of SaaS companies (preferably established SaaS for SMBs). There’s nothing more frustrating than getting daily emails promoting the CEOs of companies who sell consumer products, coaching, … well, not SaaS.
  • Some other podcast hosts may not notice immediately that you’re not a fit and may start aligning on potential topics. After a lengthy and often frustrating discussion, you’ll probably then come to that conclusion anyway and end the discussion in an awkward way.
  • A third possible case is that you end up getting on the podcast anyway, but you don’t really know the audience nor what value you can bring them. You may end up making a fool of yourself and your brand. This is a complete loss of time and clearly the opposite result of the one you were hoping for.

In short, not doing the manual work wastes everyone’s time, builds bad karma, and may hurt your brand. ⚠️

That’s why I personally spend a good amount of time going through the list to make sure I only contact podcasts that touch the right audience (the one we want to reach with Salesflare) and where our CEO, Jeroen, can add significant value.

Como escrever a melhor sequência de divulgação de podcast

When writing any cold email sequence, it’s important to write your emails with the mindset that you’re sending it to one person at a time. This helps make your email sound natural, as if you really did just send it to them, not to an automated list of many people.

With podcasts, think about your email from the host’s shoes. They may get several emails a day with people pitching themselves to be a guest. How can you stand out? 🤔

We send a personalized sequence of emails at scale using Salesflare’s built-in email workflows feature. Our podcast sequence is our best performing email sequence, with a 48% reply rate. ✨

That means 48% of podcast hosts replied to us! 🤯

I’ll break down how to approach each email step.

E-mail 1

Make your email short & to the point. Let them know you’ve taken a look and it seems to be the right fit, let them quickly know who you are and establish credibility. For example, “we’re the #1 CRM on Product Hunt”. (We could also say Salesflare is top rated on G2.com, but this maybe sounds a little more enticing.)

It’s important to be concise here. Sending a wall of text about what you and your company do will overwhelm them.

End the email with a simple call to action: we ask here if they’re the right person to talk to. This makes it easy for them to quickly forward the email to who takes care of booking guests in case they’re not the right one.

E-mail 2

If they haven’t replied to your first email, think about how you can approach them in a different way. For example, ask them again if they mind connecting you to the right person or if there is a form to fill out instead.

Isso dá ao apresentador do podcast uma opção simples: ele pode encaminhar seu e-mail ou enviar um link rápido para o formulário.

E-mail 3

O terceiro e-mail é onde você pode enviar um pouco mais sobre si mesmo para estabelecer ainda mais sua credibilidade. Por exemplo, envie a eles um link para seu podcast pessoal ou perfil do LinkedIn.

Podcasters trust fellow podcasters a little more 👀

That way they can do a bit more research on their own if they choose to, but again aren’t bombarded with a wall of text in their inbox.

E-mail 4

Email 4 is the breakup email. Let them know it seems they’re too busy or uninterested and you won’t reach out to them anymore.

Embora pareça simples, esse e-mail realmente funciona! Normalmente, temos uma taxa de resposta de 5% em nosso e-mail de rompimento de pessoas que estavam muito ocupadas para se aprofundar, mas que querem nos informar que estão interessadas e nos pedem para fazer um acompanhamento em um período de x semanas ou meses.

Do make sure to send these outreach emails with a tool that sends emails automatically from your inbox, like the email workflows feature in Salesflare. Don’t send it out for instance with an email newsletter tool like Mailchimp. People will get the email in their Promotions or Other tab and clearly see that it’s not a personal email.

Se você quiser se aprofundar no assunto, em dois artigos relacionados, exploramos com mais detalhes como enviar e-mails pessoais em escala e como escrever e-mails frios que obtêm respostas.

Como se preparar para quando eles começarem a responder

Once responses start coming in, you’ll notice a lot of the same information is being asked. It’s good to have the following info on hand:

Biografia do podcast

Keep it short & to the point. For example, our CEO, Jeroen’s podcast bio looks like this:

Jeroen é cofundador e CEO da Salesflare, um CRM inteligente criado para PMEs que vendem B2B, popular principalmente entre agências e startups de rápido crescimento.

Salesflare itself was founded when Jeroen and his co-founder Lieven wanted to manage the leads for their software company in an easier way. They didn’t like to keep track of them manually and built Salesflare, which pulls customer data together automatically.

It’s now the most popular CRM on Product Hunt and top rated on review platforms like G2 for its ease of use and automation features.

Sometimes podcasts do ask for a longer bio (not very often). If that’s the case, you can elaborate a bit more on your past experience that brought you to where you are today.

LinkedIn e links sociais

I normally send out the links to our website and Jeroen’s LinkedIn profile. If you have more, send them over too!

Foto de rosto

I find it’s handiest to keep your headshot in a shareable Google Drive link. That saves you time uploading headshots in different places. Sometimes forms even ask for a headshot but don’t have an upload button. That’s when a Google Drive / Dropbox / … link is most practical.

Informações básicas sobre o convidado

Sometimes podcast hosts want a bit of background on the guest before jumping right into bio and socials. It’s good to have a little blurb that details what you’ve done in the past and establish a bit of extra credibility. It’s good to include extra information here that they wouldn’t exactly find in your podcast bio.

Por exemplo, algo como:

With a 7-person company, Jeroen and the team have built a CRM company that competes with the giants, the likes of Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive. It’s the #1 CRM on Product Hunt and has more than 2000 companies actively using the software with NPS scores of 50 and more, all supported by a team that is hundreds to thousands times smaller than the teams of competing companies.

Lista de tópicos gerais sobre os quais o convidado pode falar

Alguns anfitriões perguntam, em geral, sobre o que o convidado pode falar. Aqui, apresento uma pequena lista de áreas gerais de especialização sobre as quais Jeroen pode falar.

Jeroen pode falar sobre uma variedade de tópicos, desde automação de vendas e vendas remotas (em tempos de COVID-19 e além), passando por estratégia de crescimento e marketing, até gerenciamento de produtos.

Lista de ideias de tópicos que eles podem escolher

Other hosts ask directly what topic ideas we have. In that case, it’s best to list more specific topics. Such as:

Here’s a few possibilities of topics Jeroen can speak on:
– How to grow a software business to over 2000 active users/companies
– How to automate the part of sales that makes you a robot and become more human
– How to sell remotely in times of COVID-19… and beyond
– Why people don’t use CRMs and how to fix that
– How to use a CRM to make more sales
– Why you should organize your team around habits, not goals
– How to do content marketing that doesn’t suck and generates leads
– How to simplify and game-ify your product’s onboarding
– How to compete with giants as a small business
– How to create personal connections at scale using data & technology

Kit de mídia / página única

Às vezes, os anfitriões simplesmente pedem um kit de mídia ou one-pager. Nesses casos, eu envio a eles um link do Google Doc que inclui todas as informações acima em um único lugar.

Ter esses materiais em mãos facilitará o acompanhamento. Você sempre pode ajustar um pouco as respostas para adequá-las ainda mais ao podcast. Por exemplo, mantemos uma lista diferente de tópicos à mão com base no fato de o podcast ser sobre vendas, marca, atendimento ao cliente, SaaS, marketing etc.

Como ser um ótimo convidado

Once you’ve finally gotten yourself on as a guest, it’s important to make sure you’re a great one.

Don’t try plugging your company too much. Mentioning your company will inevitably happen and that’s enough. Adding value to the audience is more important than using it as a commercial opportunity.

Remember: it’s about building long term brand recognition and an audience relationship, not about short-term sales. Very few people buy your product or service immediately after they’ve heard you talk on a podcast. It’s more important to expand your audience and identify as an industry expert than to get quick sales from being featured as a guest.

From our experience, once you’ve gone on a few podcasts you’ll notice there are two questions that recur in most podcasts:

No início:

Por que você fundou a [nome da empresa]?

No final:

Se as pessoas quiserem saber mais sobre você ou sobre a [nome da empresa], onde elas devem ir?

It’s best to prepare the answers to these questions thoroughly.

Next to that, it’s good to have an outline for each of the topic ideas you’re presenting to podcast hosts. You don’t have to have that in written format, but it’s a good idea if you’re a fan of prepping well. 🤓

Como gerenciar o acompanhamento

Now that you know how to start getting in touch with podcasts, the question is: how will you organize yourself for closing these podcast opportunities too? 🤔

When reaching some scale, following up podcasts in Excel or from memory just doesn’t cut it anymore. Opportunities start falling through the cracks and a lot of time is spent manually following up. You need a system. ⚙️

What we did is create a ‘Visibility partnerships’ pipeline with custom stages to match our podcast flow. We have stages for when we’re in contact, for when an intro call has been booked, for when a date has been scheduled, and for when the podcast is done/live or rejected.

Isso nos ajuda a manter o controle das coisas e é especialmente útil para Jeroen e eu que trabalhamos juntos. Podemos acompanhar facilmente o estágio em que cada podcast se encontra, quem está em contato com quem e quais ações ainda precisam ser tomadas.

Um RCM automatizado, como o Salesflare, ajuda você a manter essa visão geral sem o trabalho extra.

We keep an overview in our podcast pipeline in Salesflare 👆

Salesflare automatically keeps track of every email, meeting and call. It lets you know when your podcast leads are opening your emails or visiting your website. And it tells you when podcast hosts have gone inactive and it’s time to follow up.

Isso também facilita muito a colaboração entre mim e Jeroen.

To collaborate efficiently, we message each other and share all our emails through Salesflare 👀

To approach podcasts professionally, follow up timely and work together around them, give Salesflare a try. It’s set up in a matter of minutes.

We know that the internet is full of fantastic claims, so… for proof that this process for getting on podcasts works, check out our up-to-date overview of all the live podcast episodes Jeroen was on. It may not show 200+ podcasts at the moment you check it, as a big part of the recorded episodes still need to go live. 😃

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Keri Byrne
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