176 | 3 Effortless Hacks to Drive Sales & Podcast Growth

There are three secret hacks that business owners with podcasts can use to get more podcast downloads and more sales in one fell swoop. And today I'm going to share with you what those three hacks are. This is Grow the Show, where we help business owners get cheaper leads, easier sales, and establish branch dominance through podcasting. I'm Kevin Schmidland, I used to be a full-time, six-figure content creator, and since 2020, I've held to more than 400 business owners, get millions of downloads and add thousands of new sales to their business by improving, growing, and monetizing their podcasts. Today I'm going to share with you three effortless hacks that will help you drive more downloads to your podcast without anything new to your marketing and sales processes. They are the ultimate low-hanging fruit that's going to grow your audience and, yes, bring you more lay-up sales. So last week, I was speaking with a client of mine in the Grow the Show accelerator who just did a big product launch. For a couple of weeks, she showed up a ton on social media, she used the Whisper T's shout framework to get tons and tons of attention to her product right when she opened her cart, and she noticed that during the launch of this product, her podcast downloads tripled, without changing anything about her podcast download growth strategy, and then after the launch was over, downloads went back down. So she came to me and she said, what is this? What gets? And it turns out there's three things that she was doing during her product launch that served to triple her podcast downloads, where if she just kept doing those things on a regular basis, her podcast would continue to grow. So what were those three things? Well, number one, she was showing up on social media every single day, especially on stories for Instagram. Now, this doesn't mean that she was making really, really complicated or heavily edited or expensive videos or anything like that. She was just showing up on stories, sharing her life. There were a couple CTAs here and there to talk about her product launch, but she was just literally showing up on social media. And because of this, a lot of people were reminded of her. And so that's the first thing, is the more you show up on social media, it's counterintuitive, but the more people are gonna download your podcast. And that's because it's not necessarily new listeners who are gonna discover your show and start to tune in, but it's gonna be all those people who are already in your audience, who see you showing up on your stories, and they go, oh yeah, and they remember that you exist, and then they go back and they start listening to your podcast. They're like, oh yeah, I forgot about this. Let me go see if they have any podcast episodes. That actually happens. However, if you never show up on social media, if you never post anything, you're not on your stories, people just forget about you. It's that plain and simple. So, strategy number one is not about getting more listeners per se, it's about getting the people who are already in your audience, to just remember that you're there and go and listen to your podcast, the next time they are listening to podcasts. Now, the second thing that this client of mine noticed was that when she interacted with all of the clients who bought this product that she just launched, virtually all of them said that they had listened to her podcast before they bought the thing. She said, huh, that's interesting. So, what was happening there? Well, what happens when someone sees you online and they're considering buying your course or your consulting or your coaching program or whatever it is that you sell, they do a little stalking, right? They check you out before they give you money, they wanna understand whether you're the real deal. So, what do they do? They start consuming your content and in many cases, that means they start listening to your podcast episodes. Think of that as the dating phase, right? Before they buy your thing and get married, so to speak, by giving you money, they wanna see if they know what you're talking about. So, they tune into your show. Because of that, your podcast basically serves as a free trial of your coaching and your services. If people who are considering buying your stuff know that your podcast exists, they're gonna tune in to see if you really know what you're talking about and see if they learn anything. And if they do, they're gonna be like, ah, yes, this is good, I need more of this, I want more of this and they will buy your products and services. So, again, this is a little counterintuitive when thinking about how do I grow my podcast. But the truth is, if you get more people to consider your products and services, more people will start listening to your podcast because they wanna see what you're about. So, what is your action item there? What can you actually do with this second hack? Well, consider sending podcast episodes to people who are considering your products and services. So, if you know that certain people on your email list are clicking on your sales page or are thinking about buying your stuff, send them episodes of your podcast that are really good, that are really informative and that show that you know what you're talking about. Likewise, if you have a sales team or you take sales calls yourself, make that a part of the sales process where before you get on the sales call with somebody, you send them specific episodes of your podcast for them to listen to. And the way you frame that is just, hey, just wanna make sure that you get an idea of how I go about things and what I teach. So, you know, before we meet on Thursday, give these two podcast episodes a listen and we'll be able to get a head start on the conversation. People love that, they're really, really appreciative of it. And in the end, what happens is they come to that sales call having already spent time listening to your voice, learning from you, being indoctrinated into the things that you're talking about, they have been super, super well nurtured before the sales call. So, again, not only have you gotten more podcast downloads by getting these people to tune in, but you're nurturing your leads better so that when they join your sales call, it's gonna be way easier to convert them to happy clients and customers. And so, the third hack that grew her podcast downloads is kind of similar, but not exactly the same. I asked this client if she was sending out her podcast episode to anybody while she was promoting her new launch and what she shared was that she had added links to specific episodes of her podcast in the email sequence that she was sending to her list before the launch. Now, this particular client was spending a bunch of money on ads leading up to the launch and all of those ads brought in new leads. And so, here's what she did. She kind of did this unknowingly, but after we had this conversation, she's gonna be doing this on a regular basis. She added podcast episode links into every single email in her email drip that she sent out pre-launch. So, every day, she was emailing her list, getting them pumped, handling objections, you know, all the different things that you do before a big launch, and with every email, she linked a specific episode that was related to that email. So, what happened? Not everybody, but several of those leads who were getting those emails started clicking on her podcast, started listening in, started being nurtured, became amazing clients, but yes, brought her more podcast downloads. So, what can you do with that information? Well, whether or not you're spending money on ads, hopefully you have a process for getting new leads to your business. And most of the time, that process involves getting them to opt into your email list. So, every single time somebody joins your email list or opts into a lead magnet, what you wanna do is make it so that you're opt in drip, aka the emails that you send to them every day or whatever your cadence is after they sign up for your email list, usually a five to 10 day sequence, make sure that that sequence is sending people to listen to your podcast on Apple and Spotify at the very least. And if you're on YouTube, add the YouTube link as well. Now, you're not gonna make those emails about the podcast episode itself, you link at the bottom to your podcast as an additional resource in addition to that email. So, for example, I have a free email course, it's called the 12 Days of Podcast Growth. And that email course walks you through my framework for how to make, grow and monetize amazing podcasts that ultimately get you cheaper leads and ease your sales for your business. In every email of that sequence at the bottom, it says, hey, you just learned this strategy or this tactic or this thing that you need to know. If you wanna hear the audio version of this lesson to really let the lesson sink in, listen to this specific episode of Grow the Show and it links to this specific episode. I know for a fact that, because I can see that those episodes of my podcasts are regularly the ones that get the most downloads because people are getting my email course, people are reading the emails in the email course. And they're like, oh yeah, I definitely wanna learn more about this. They're clicking on the episode, they're listening to it and guess what? They're subscribing and they're sticking around and they're becoming podcast listeners. Now, you probably noticed that these strategies are not really, really groundbreaking, but most entrepreneurs I found working with 400 plus entrepreneurs over the past four years aren't doing this. They're not showing up on social media regularly. Again, it doesn't have to be complicated, but the clients that I have worked with who have had the most explosive podcast growth simply do. They show up every day. They post something every day. They participate on social media every day. Now, at the end of this discussion, what my client said was that she's probably not going to continue to have the same amount of intensity with her marketing efforts as she did with her launch, right? She's not gonna email her list every single day. She might not post five to eight times on her stories every single day, but what she has learned and has seen is that the more you show up on social media, the more your audience will show up for you, the more they will remember that you exist and tune into your podcast. She's going to intentionally send podcast episodes to prospective clients so that her sales will be easier. And yes, so that she'll get more downloads. And number three, for every single entry point of her email list, she's going to make sure that in the opt-in drip, she's linking specific episodes of her podcast. And that's what I would recommend that you do as well. No matter what you talk about in your opt-in emails, link to your podcast. Add it as an additional resource. And be sure to choose specific podcast episodes that are related to the topic of the email. That's how you'll get the most amount of people to actually tune in, download your show, your downloads, go up and you get more listeners. So if you are an online business owner who currently has a marketing funnel and your podcast is not plugged into that marketing funnel, I highly recommend that you do that now. You're going to see your downloads go up and guess what, your sales are going to be easier because the people who are considering buying your products and services are going to be way more nurtured and they're already going to know, like, and trust you. So that's going to do it today for Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schildland. I'm your podcast growth coach. I'll see you in the next one. That is going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. Now I have a quick favorite to ask you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five-star rating and if you're feeling generous, a review in the app that you're using to hear my voice right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable growth and monetization tactics here on the show because it helps us land bigger guests and it helps show the world that what we're doing here is actually valuable. So once again, if you've ever gotten any value from the show and you haven't already, please just take a moment, leave us a five-star rating, maybe a brief review on what type of value you've gotten and I will be eternally grateful. This episode was produced by me with post-production by podcast boutique and if you want your show to be post-produced with quality really freaking fast and if you want to save yourself and your team tons of time working on your podcast, you should chat with podcast boutique. Just head to podcastboutique.com or click the link in the show notes and set up time with them because I spent no time editing this episode and neither should you. All right, that's going to do it for Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schvittlin. I'll see you next time.