Secrets to Landing Top Podcast Interviews & Growing Your Brand with Dana Lindahl

Andy Splichal:

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast, the show that dives deep into strategies and tactics that help e commerce businesses grow, scale and thrive in a competitive digital marketplace. I'm your host, Andy Splichal, and today we're diving deep into one of the fastest growing marketing channels for B2B businesses, podcasting. If you've ever wondered how using podcasting to grow your audience, establish authority and drive revenue, then you're in for a treat. My guest today is Dana Lindahl, founder of Legendary Podcasts, a company that helps B2B brands secure top hat podcast placements to share their expertise and to generate leads. Dana knows firsthand how powerful podcasting can be, not just as a content medium, but also as a growth engine generator. Today he's going to share some insights on Podcasting is on fire right now, how businesses can leverage it, and common mistakes that you should avoid. All right, Dana, welcome to the show.

Dana Lindahl:

Hey Andy, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Andy Splichal:

Excited to have you. Now, podcasting has just exploded in popularity for B2B marketing. Why do you think it's such a powerful tool for businesses to use today?

Dana Lindahl:

I think podcasting is powerful because it's one of the few mediums left where you really get a quite unfiltered view into somebody's thoughts and opinions. In the, you know, the social media landscape we have the very short attention spans and how people tend to consume media these days. It's all focused on kind of giving you these very quick hits and that can be edited down into something that's not quite what it was or taken out of context in a lot of cases. Whereas podcasting gives you a much easier way into the long form ways of how people think and that works very well, especially for B2B companies, for B2C companies as well, but particularly for B2B. For people who are doing their research of maybe a vendor that they want to work with, a company that they want to partner with oftentimes these sort of things when they Google that company. Some of the first results that pop up are podcast episodes. So even without needing to actually go in and listen to the entire episode, audiences are able to learn a lot more about the types of people that they're just doing research on, just from seeing them, you know, platformed on different shows and having their ideas and thoughts highlighted.

Andy Splichal:

So I'm curious, you founded Legendary Podcast. When a new client comes to you, what are, what are some of the misconceptions about podcasting that they may have?

Dana Lindahl:

So the big ones are that they should only be guesting on shows that have absolutely huge audiences. Some people come to us and they, they say that, well, I only want to go on a show if it has at least 100,000 listeners or something like that, which is actually a massive show. You know, shows that have a hundred thousand listeners generally have a line out the door of people who already want to appear on them. And a lot of people think that they need to go on shows that are directly within their area of expertise. So a good example of this would be like the owner of an SEO agency who wants to go on SEO podcast or agency focused podcast, because that's what they do. The trouble there is that generally their customers are not SEOs, other SEOs, and are not agencies. They work with manufacturing companies, they work with e commerce companies, they work with all sorts of different people. So those sorts of people would be better off guesting on, on areas around topics that are more related to their customer base rather than their exact area of expertise.

Dana Lindahl:

This also provides a more interesting episode for the audience as well, because if you're just going on shows that are all about your main area of expertise, you're kind of, you know, preaching to the choir, so to speak. And people end up, you know, enjoying the episode, but they don't often retain a lot from it because they kind of expect the content that's, that's going to come. Whereas if you're speaking to something that's, you know, a little bit adjacent to what the podcast normally talks about, then it actually causes people to pause for a second and say, wait, this is not what I was expecting from this episode. And they end up, you know, coming away having learned a lot more and retaining a lot more of what they've heard after they've listened.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, no, that, that makes a lot of sense. Now, what do you tell people where they're thinking? Should I start to guest on podcasts? Or maybe I should just create My own podcast, yeah.

Dana Lindahl:

So there's definitely pros and cons to each side of that. I would say the best answer, if you have the time and resources, is to do both. The cons with starting your own podcast are it's, you know, quite intensive. Whether it be labor intensive or, you know, cost intensive. It's, it's a lot of work to, you know, maintain everything related to publishing a podcast. It can also be difficult to keep that momentum going in the very beginning unless you have a great strategy for getting listeners right out of the gate. You know, you already have a pre established audience who's just, you know, they want you to start a podcast. If you don't have that pre established audience and you're just going to start a podcast from scratch, it can take quite a while to build up that audience that's actually listening in all the time.

Dana Lindahl:

So that's one of the downsides with starting your own podcast. Now, the, the pro of starting your own podcast is those are your listeners, they're tuning in to hear you specifically how you're going to be interviewing new people. So you own the domain a little bit more. So that's a little bit more valuable over time. But it's something that takes a long time to actually, you know, be able to reap the benefits of in most cases. Whereas guest podcasting is quite a bit faster to hit the ground running because you're guesting on other people's podcasts, their team or the host themselves is doing the production work and handling all that stuff for you. So it can be very cost effective and quick to get out there and get in front of a lot of different audiences. I would also say that if you're starting your own podcast, you need to be generally doing it on a topic that has the ability to go in several different directions with, you know, a handful of exceptions.

Dana Lindahl:

You're going to run out of things to talk about on your own podcast if it's very, very narrowly focused in terms of topic. Whereas if you're doing a guest tour, you can actually talk about the same two to four things over and over and over and over again. Because you're going to be going out to almost a completely different audience every time. There's certainly going to be some overlap in terms of listeners. But if the things that you talk about your area of expertise is not the sort of thing that could go in, you know, 50 different directions, then I think it's actually easier to do a guest tour. And most people who are a little bit nervous about Getting on the microphone, speaking about their thoughts and ideas. Those people would definitely benefit with starting off with a guest tour just because it's a little bit easier to get your podcast legs when it's not your own thing. And you can just, you know, show up and be able to speak about something that you're already an expert at anyways and not be too bogged down by the pressure of I've got to get one of these out every week or I'm going to lose my listeners and things like that.

Andy Splichal:

So somebody decides they want to do a guest tour, what are some of the tips that you would give them?

Dana Lindahl:

So I always recommend people to start off with what is the goal that they're trying to accomplish with a guest tour. So for most people, most people, especially in B2B, they want to get new customers from going another podcast. And that's a great goal. But I find that it's the worst way to approach a podcast tour because the types of people who start a podcast tour and base it around, well, how am I going to get the most customers as quick as possible usually end up doing a podcast tour that sounds like they're trying to get the most customers as quickly as possible, which ends up being a turnoff to the host. It ends up being a turnoff to the audience. So I always recommend for people to primarily be doing a tour with brand awareness as the. The first main goal. You just getting their thoughts and ideas out there in front of more people.

Dana Lindahl:

Then go out and start building a list of shows that have some sort of adjacent focus on that topic. So something where you can add something unique into the conversation. Go out and build a list of those show. There's lots of different tools out there like Refonic Listen notes, things like that that allow you to see the. The past episodes and the types of things they talked about. And some of them will even give you the email addresses of the hosts. I'm sure, you know, you and your team are getting requests from people trying to be on the podcast all the time. And it's due to platforms and pieces of software like that.

Dana Lindahl:

But it all exists for a reason. And the main thing is if you're trying to get on shows that the hosts and the production teams, the things that they care about more than anything, is not you and why you think you're going to be a great guest for the show, but how is this going to benefit their audience? Hosts and the shows are really, they exist to serve their own audience because their audience is what keeps them afloat So I always recommend for people when they're reaching out to shows to really make that clear, how their appearance on that show is actually going to be a benefit to the show and the audience. I recommend people to suggest topics for themselves, even if that's not going to be the exact topic that they're going to talk about. You know, the host will often say, well, that's interesting, but I think we would. Maybe my audience would appreciate something slightly different, a little bit better. That makes things so much easier on the host or the production team than saying, okay, well, you look interesting, but what are we going to talk about when you, when you come on the show? Just like how, you know, writing down or sitting down to write is so much easier when there's something on the page already compared to starting with a blank canvas. Don't make the host start from a blank canvas to be able to figure out whether it's a good idea.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, no, that's. That's great. And I know, I appreciate that when people come in and even, even have a list of suggested questions to kind of start with.

Dana Lindahl:

Yeah.

Andy Splichal:

Now where do you like, what about a one sheet? Do you have them put together a one sheet or suggest a one sheet for people who don't know that just, you know, the headshot and topic and questions are just write out a paragraph or how. How should somebody approach trying to get on a show?

Dana Lindahl:

So for our clients, we always do put together a one sheet. We find that some hosts look at it, some host click through to it. Other hosts just say, well, tell us a little bit more about them or tell us about, you know, what topics they like to discuss. So I think it's the sort of thing that's always great to have because it can still be summarized pretty easily if they want to digest it in that way. For us, we of course have the. The main things, you know, headshot, a short bio. We focus that bio on something that's going to appeal to the host themselves. So, you know, include whatever is part of their goal, but also is relevant to the podcasting side of things.

Dana Lindahl:

We also include previous interviews or, you know, keynotes or things like that that they might have done, which is a very important thing to include because that gives the podcast host an opportunity to hear exactly how you sound. It gives them an opportunity to understand how you present yourself, how you present your ideas. It makes them feel confident that you're not going to turn their podcast into some sort of a pitch fest and just be promoting yourself the whole way through. And that's also a place where we highlight topic ideas as well, and that's a good place to editorialize a little bit. The topic ideas that you, you want to be putting out there, they're very unlikely to actually be the title of the podcast, but making them a little bit eye catching, you know, making them a little bit interesting and something that grabs somebody's attention works very well and letting that host make an much easier decision to be able to have you on.

Andy Splichal:

Now, when I deal with E commerce, I mean, the biggest thing is return on investment and conversion rate and all that. When you're reaching out to different podcasts to get on there, what type of success rate do you have typically? I mean, where should you start to get discouraged and, and need to rethink your approach or where, you know, I mean, if you're doing it yourself, what can you expect? You know, you reach out to 10, maybe five, maybe three. What's, what's on average?

Dana Lindahl:

Do you mean in terms of how many will accept to have you on or the results of what happens after you go on?

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, no, how many will accept to have you on their podcast?

Dana Lindahl:

So it really depends, and I know that's a sort of a disappointing answer. Like anything in life, the answer can always be it depends. But it really depends on the type of topics that you're, you're looking to go and speak about. So if you're a general marketer looking to go on just kind of general marketing shows, you should be able to land appearances with, you know, maybe one out of every three shows that you look at. As long as the shows that you're reaching out to are not super large or, you know, the type of household name podcast. When I say household name, I kind of mean within the industry. You know, there's, there's shows that you and I probably both know that our, our parents don't know or our spouse maybe doesn't know or, you know, once you start getting into more niche topics, though, it can be a little bit more, more difficult, I would say, if you're not generating an appearance out of every 10 shows that you email, that's the point where you might want to take a look at what you're doing and why it might, might not be resonating with the intended audience. And that goes regardless of the industry or topics that you want to be talking about.

Dana Lindahl:

If you're not getting a positive response out of every 10, that's probably the point. And make sure to take good feedback or implement the feedback that you're Getting from the shows that are telling you why not. Sometimes shows will say, hey, sorry, not a good fit. Because some shows are receiving literally hundreds of pitches a week to be on their show. They, they don't have time to get back to every person who reaches out to them with an exact reason of why they're not a good fit. But there's other shows that will get back to you with a good reason. And some of them, they're just booked out, but some of them find that certain topics aren't a good fit. Some of them will just tell you, hey, your pitch wasn't good at all.

Dana Lindahl:

And this is not interesting to me, but if you're doing less than a 10% acceptance rate on the outreach that you're doing to shows, then I would say something is probably broken in the outreach process.

Andy Splichal:

Now, let's say you, you've done your taping, you've gotten on a few shows. What do you do with that show once you've been a guest on it?

Dana Lindahl:

So most shows will be promoting the episode, but I find it insufficient to just let the show do all the promotion work. And the, the good side of this is that just about any show that you go on is going to be more than happy for you to promote it on your end as well. So this can be either keeping in touch with the host to find out when they're going to be releasing or publishing, maybe getting the audio recording or the, the video recording from the host to be able to chop it up and make your own, you know, social media short form content to continue to promote it over time. I always do recommend tagging the show, tagging the host when you do end up promoting it, because you might be promoting it over the course of several months as you turn it into numerous different short form clips. The big thing that I really always recommend for people, and this is particularly true in the B2B space, is to have something that you can provide to the audience after the show. So most hosts will always ask a question at the end of how can people get in touch with you? And I find that most founders tend to waste this opportunity either by giving one of two answers. One is, well, go find me on LinkedIn or another social media platform, which is kind of a silly thing to say at the end of this, this whole episode, because at that point they know your name, they know your company name. All they need to do is go to LinkedIn and type it in and they can find you pretty easily.

Dana Lindahl:

The second thing is people say, well, just here's our homepage, go visit us. And most homepages are kind of a choose your own adventure. You get there and it's not really meant to direct you in any sort of specific way. So for most B2B founders, I always recommend for them to have a special sort of like, PDF, free guide, free gift, something that helps the audience expand upon what they've talked about already and to have that at a, at a custom URL so that the audience knows that this was specifically meant for them. So you can go and create a new landing page each time for each show that you go on, which is more work. Or you can have a couple different landing pages that you use for the type of topics that you normally talk about and use a redirect to redirect it, you know, based on the show's name that you're, you're currently on. And that allows you to actually, you know, see what shows are performing well for you. No matter which of the two methods you use, if you're creating a new landing page each time, Google Analytics can give you the traffic volume for that page.

Dana Lindahl:

If you're using a redirect just tracking the number of times that it's, it's redirected. I find that people in B2C, particularly E commerce companies going on podcasts are already doing a better version of this because usually they have some sort of like discount code or something like that for their customers. Like, oh well, they can get a 10% discount on their first order if they just use this coupon code. And, you know, that's easily trackable. Whereas with this, as long as you have that, you know, free gift or something, you know, behind an opt in on that landing page, you might have a Facebook retargeting pixel there that allows you to, you know, continue to market to people after the fact. That's what allows, you know, people to continue to get good marketing efforts out of their podcast appearances. I always just caution people, you know, with great power comes with great responsibility. So make sure that you're not spamming the people who have signed up to your email list and you know, the host has graciously had you in their podcast, given you the opportunity to speak.

Dana Lindahl:

And that's why they asked this question at the end because they're, they're grateful for the fact that you came on to record a great episode. They want to give you that, you know, 10 to 15 seconds to lightly promote yourself. And I find that that's the best way that people can be turning this into an ongoing marketing Effort for the people who self select as being interested in what they have to say.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, I mean, that's great advice. And I can tell you, you know, we had, we're on our 10th season now and we've had almost 300 guests and there's probably less than 12 that have done what you're saying. And that's. Yeah. So if you want to set yourself apart as a podcast guest and to get the most advice now, we talked a little bit, you had mentioned promoting it, and I mean, that's good to say promoting it, but promoting it how?

Dana Lindahl:

So I find that the best way to promote an episode is one, make sure that you're in communication with the show to find out when it's actually going to be going live so that you can do sort of a planned joint promotion of the episode. I recommend people promote it on whatever social media platform they're the most active on. I find that the best way is to create repurposed clips, whether that be chopping up the audio and turning it into, you know, just short form clips of the points that you feel like were the most important from your, your talk, as well as just keeping the volume going out there and promoting both yourself as well as the show. Because since the host has had you on, they've spent the time to, you know, talk with you, to have their team produce the entire episode and publish it and put it out there. You want to be making sure that you're, you know, also letting some traffic go back to them as well. So not just fully taking credit for the whole conversation, making sure that it's very clear and apparent throughout the promotion of it that the conversation happened on whatever podcast you were on.

Andy Splichal:

Now, why would somebody want to go do it themselves, try to set up their own podcast versus hiring a company like yours?

Dana Lindahl:

For a lot of people, it comes down to time versus cost. So the types of people who value their. Their time more than the cost of things will generally hire an agency like ours. The types of people who want to get their hands dirty and don't want to outlay the budget will generally try to go do it themselves. Other benefits would definitely have to be that companies like ours, we have a Rolodex of podcasts. We know which sort of podcasts are going to be a good fit for people and which ones aren't. We know which podcasts take guests and which ones don't ourselves. We have pretty large database of over 20,000 podcasts, which is only a drop in the bucket of all the podcasts that exist in the world out there.

Dana Lindahl:

But we, from all of our outreach in the past, from all of our discussions with people, we know which ones of these people, take guess or not, which ones of these people actually respond back to people or not, which ones of these podcasts respond back to us, but never actually accept anyone who's been, you know, pitch to them. Right. So that gives us the opportunity to know. These ones aren't a good use of time to reach out to for a variety of reasons, but these ones are good use of time. One of the things that's difficult with, with podcasting is that the reporting is quite opaque and you'll never definitively know how many listeners, how many subscribers a podcast has if you're not the owner of that podcast, if you're not on the back end production, you know, with access to the hosting, Right. But through the partnerships and things that we have with other podcasts, we do have a little bit more, you know, inside knowledge because we can ask them and that helps to just, you know, cut through all the fluff and make sure that you're not spending your time guesting on shows that are maybe just getting started out or are lying about their download numbers or things like that. Because there are a lot of new podcasts that are starting out, that are reaching out to people, and I think that's a totally great strategy. But if you're just getting started with a podcast tour, it's very hard to discern between, hey, this person reached out to me and wants me to be on their show to, oh, I've actually found a really great opportunity.

Dana Lindahl:

That's perfect. They have the right type of audience, the right target market, things like that.

Andy Splichal:

So if somebody is thinking, do I want to go on podcast or do I not, maybe I'll hire somebody. What, what would you tell them? What, is it worth it to spend your time going on podcasts?

Dana Lindahl:

I definitely think it's worth it to spend your time going on podcasts. The way I like to frame it for a lot of founders is, especially the ones who think they don't have time to be a regular guest on podcasts, is that this can actually be some of the most impactful marketing work that you can do. And a lot of founders are still very much entrenched in the marketing side of things. Whether or not they're actually the ones pressing the buttons, running the campaigns or not, something about their work requires them to be, you know, very connected to the market inside of things. So being able to go on a podcast, spend an hour Recording an episode and usually that's an hour all in between intro with the host and, you know, chatting for a little bit and getting equipment and everything dialed in and actually recording. That's an hour of you talking about something that you're already an expert at already. That doesn't take a lot of effort for a lot of people. You know, a lot of the high level marketing work that most founders are doing take a significant more amount of, of brain power and expertise, you know, out of their, their actual week.

Dana Lindahl:

So I recommend for founders to spend that time that they are, maybe not when they're super tired. You know, everyone's got like a dip in their day where they just get a little bit tired, but maybe they don't find themselves to be quite so productive. You know, for me, that's like right before lunch is, you know, I've been working all morning, I'm going to have lunch soon. I'm still full of energy, but I might not be super enthused to like jump into a new project. So that's an ideal time for me to record a podcast because that is some of the highest level marketing work that I can be doing. So I think there's very few times when a person should not want to be going on, on podcasts, particularly if they're coming to them easily or they have, you know, a good flow of, of invites for them. I think there's times where it may not make sense for people to invest greatly in the, the time or energy to procure them, but for most people, if they're able to go on them, I think it's a really good way for customers, vendors, partners, pretty much anyone to get a deeper insight into who they are and what makes them tick.

Andy Splichal:

All right, well, we talked about it earlier, but if somebody would like more information regarding you or your company, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Dana Lindahl:

Yeah, so I actually prepare a free guide for every podcast that I go on with. A lot of the tips that I've talked about today just kind of condensed into a more easily digestible version version. So if you go to legendarypodcasts.com each-click you'll be able to go and download that free guide and has a ton of tips there for getting started with your own podcast tour.

Andy Splichal:

Well, that's great. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up today, Dana?

Dana Lindahl:

No, just for anyone who's on the fence about it or anyone who thinks that they don't have what it takes to be a good podcast guest. Everyone needs to start somewhere and the best way is to just, you know, go guest on a few very small and new podcasts. The the good thing about those is that not too many people will be listening in yet anyway, so it's a great opportunity for practice. And usually after a few of them, people sort of feel more confident and are able to go after the larger shows and turn it into a real strategy.

Andy Splichal:

That's great. Well, thanks for joining us again today.

Dana Lindahl:

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Andy Splichal:

For listeners. Remember, if you like this episode, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding connecting with Dana, you will find that link with that special report in the show Notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business, check out our Podcast Resource center available at podcast.makeclickcount.com where you have compiled all of our different past guests by show topic and included each of their contact information in case you would like more information at any of the services discussed during previous episodes. Well, that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing and I'll talk to you in the next episode.