154 | 12 Days of Podcast Growth Day #12: The Art of Irresistible CTAs

This is Grow the Show, the podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland, I am your podcast growth coach and this is lesson 12 of our 12-day audio course on how to grow and monetize your podcast. So this is it, the last of the 12 days of podcast growth. Today we are going to wrap up level 4 of the podcast success ladder which is monetization as a reminder, monetizing an audience simply boils down to getting them to buy something, either something that you make or something that a partner or sponsor makes. And so in order to get listeners to buy stuff, we must tell them what to consider buying, either our own products or services or our sponsors. And we do that by making calls to action. Now in part 11 of this audio course, we covered what to CTA and where within your episodes to put your CTAs to get the best results. And so today we are going to wrap things up by diving into the art of how to CTA. Now the top thing to remember is that a great CTA is an invitation, not a command. It is all about the listener and addressing what they want, their needs, and their desires. Now above all else, my favorite way to structure CTAs is through a classic copywriting framework called pain vision solution or PVS. By the way, there's also a version of that framework called pain agitate solution. But we're just going to talk about PVS today. That's the one that I tend to use. You can use either. And you can use this framework for pretty much anything that you CTA. You can use it for lead magnets, your products and services, your sponsors, your community, and even rating and reviewing the show. And so here is how PVS breaks down. P stands for pain. That is when you start by calling out the challenges and frustrations that your audience faces. So let's take an example today. And let's say that you offer a social media strategy program called social simplified just as an example. And let's say that you want to create a CTA that invites your listener to check out social simplified. So if you were to put together a CTA that breaks down into the pain vision solution framework, the pain part might start like this. Are you feeling overwhelmed by the endless cycle of social media updates, feeling like you're shouting into the void, and without any real engagement or impact? So that would be the pain portion of the call to action. You immediately call out a pain or a frustration that your audience feels. Next, you get to the vision point where you paint a vision of the ideal outcome, something like, well, imagine if your social media efforts could be streamlined, targeted, and effective, where each post you make resonates with your audience and builds your brand effortlessly. Right? So that is the vision. So we contrast the vision with the pain. Finally, step three, you introduce the solution, which is where the thing that you are CTAing comes in as the hero. So the solution might be introducing social simplified art comprehensive social media strategy program designed to turn your online presence into a powerful, engaging, and rewarding experience. With social simplified, you'll learn how to craft impactful content, engage with your audience authentically, and see real results in your engagement and reach. That would be the solution, right, where you're talking about what your CTAing. So that's pain vision solution. The fourth part after you introduce the solution and the final part is when you tell them the action that you want them to take. And this part is crucial. It is a call to action. And so your action must be clear, obvious, and easy for the listener to do. And this is a mistake. This is the part that I see folks miss. They talk about their program. They talk about whatever it is they sell, but they don't actually tell the listener a specific action to take. And so here's what the action might sound like. Let's say that you take discovery calls for the social simplified program. You might say something like if you'd like to find out more about whether social simplified is the right fit for your social media goals, then I invite you to use the link in the show notes to book a 30 minute strategy call. There we'll get to know your specific business and goals, and you'll leave that call with a custom recommendation from us on your social media strategy. Okay, so notice how very specific that action portion is. Extremely specific. I say use the link in the show notes to book a 30 minute strategy call. Really specific. Instead of go to our website to see what's instead of go to our website to see what might be good for you. Not specific enough. The less specific your call to action is, the less likely it is that a listener will actually take it. You got to make it so that they don't have to use their brain at all. You tell them exactly what to do. Now, let me read that whole thing back for you and demonstrate what a pain, vision, solution, action framework actually sounds like all together for this fictional program called social simplified. Ready? Here we go. Are you feeling overwhelmed by the endless cycle of social media updates and feeling like you're shouting into the void without any real engagement or impact? Well, imagine if your social media efforts could be streamlined, targeted, and effective where each post you make resonates with your audience and build your brand effortlessly. Well, that can be true. Introducing social simplified. Our comprehensive social media strategy program designed to turn your online presence into a powerful, engaging, and rewarding experience. With social simplified, you'll learn how to craft impactful content, engage with your audience authentically, and see real results in your engagement and reach. If you'd like to find out more about whether social simplified is the right fit for your social media goals, then I invite you to use the link in the show notes to book a 30-minute strategy call. There, we will get to know your specific business and goals, and you'll leave that call with a custom recommendation on your social media strategy. Right? All in one. It's about probably 30 to 60 seconds pain vision solution action. Now, before we go, I want to address a concern that many podcasters have about CTAing their own products and services, and that is being too salesy. I totally get that fear of coming across too strong and the desire not to overdo CTAing your own stuff, but what I see most often is that in an effort to not overdo things, I found that most podcasters vastly underdo it. The line that you're worried about crossing is so much farther away than you think. Nonetheless, this fear is real, so let me give you two tips to help make your product CTAs less salesy. Tip number one is in your CTA, don't ask them to buy the product that you're selling. Instead, ask them to take the next step in the buying process, aka, instead of selling your program in the CTA, sell the next step. So notice in the example CTA that I read to you, the action is not buy. The action is not join the program. The action that I'm selling is book a discovery call. And so instead of telling you how great the program is, I tell you, hey, this is what you're going to get from the discovery call. This is why the discovery call is going to be great. So sell the next step in the process, not the purchase itself. And the second tip I have for you to help make things less salesy is this on your podcast and optionally within your CTAs, but it doesn't have to be within your CTAs. Celebrate your existing current customers and clients. One of the best ways to spread the word about your stuff is to simply celebrate the stuff that your current clients and their customers are doing and celebrate whatever good has come to them since they became your customers. Sometimes that's as simple as shouting out a customer of yours who might have achieved something recently and just having a note in the show that says, by the way, everyone want to shout out so and so who joined the program and has since XYZ really, really congratulations to you. It's been awesome working with you, right? So at that point, you're just celebrating what they're doing and you can optionally throw a CTA on there that says, if you want to join so and so within our program, just click the link in the show notes and you can find out more, right? So once you get into the habit of celebrating your current customers and clients, you're going to find that it's much easier to talk about your products and services on your podcast without overdoing it. So there you have it. That wraps up the 12 days of podcast growth. So now we have established a Cat 1 premise, which makes your show clear and unique. Then we learned how to keep listeners by focusing on episode and audience retention. Then you learned how to get more listeners via social media and podcast casting. And finally, you've learned how to monetize your podcast by crafting compelling CTAs that gets your listeners to either buy your offerings or buy from your partners and sponsors. So with that, I have a CTA of my own to share with you. And that is, if you got value from this 12 day course and you want to explore working more directly with me, then I invite you to check out Grow the Show Pro. Grow the Show Pro is the annual membership that I have put together to serve podcasters like you in growing and monetizing your show. Grow the show you join a community of over 200 growing podcasters. You get access to all of the training material that I've ever put together. And you also get to join live Q&A calls with me and live master classes with both me and other podcasting experts. That's all in addition to a bunch of other goodies and tools to help making podcast growth and monetization a breeze. And so if you want to learn more about Grow the Show, what's involved and what the investment looks like, I invite you to click the link in the show notes or go to GrowTheShow.com slash pro and you'll get to learn everything about what we're offering. I would love to work with you directly. I've got some really, really cool stuff planned for the membership for 2024, including a brand new refresh of all the training materials that's heavily inspired by the 12 days of podcast growth that you just heard. And so if that sounds interesting to you, check out Grow the Show Pro. Now the link is in the show notes and I hope to see you there. So once again, that's going to do it for the 12 days of podcast growth. If you've heard all 12 days, congratulations, that's awesome. It has been a joy spending time with you and I wish you the best of luck in your podcast growth journey. All right, my name is Kevin and with that, we will get back to your regularly scheduled Grow the Show podcast with interviews and solo episodes for me and I will see you in the next one.