How to Turn Total Strangers into Monetized Podcast Listeners

If you are an independent podcaster who is looking to grow your audience and make more money from your audience and get to know your audience better and know how to get new listeners easier and a bunch of other stuff stick with me and you're going to have much more clarity on what to do to grow and monetize your podcast. Now what I'm about to share is actually a presentation that I gave at the incredible podcasting conference pod fest just a couple of weeks ago. It was a blast. The room was completely full. It was standing room only and I was fortunate enough to spend about 45 minutes sharing this framework with podcasters hanging out with them afterwards to answer questions and get under the hood and help them solve their podcast growth and monetization problems. But there's a good chance that you weren't there and you didn't get to see this presentation. So I wanted to make this to be able to share this framework with you so that you can also get more clarity in how to know your audience, grow your audience and make more money from that audience. So if you don't know me, my name is Kevin Schmittland. I'm a seven figure podcaster. I've got more than 250 podcasters in my coaching program and more than 15,000 podcasters in my audience. And we are going to talk about what I call the listener funnel, which is how you can design the journey that a listener takes from stranger to casual fan to raving fan to fully monetized. So if that sounds like something that you want to have made easier for you, then stick around. And let's hop in. I'll give you the presentation that I gave at podfest. This episode of Grow the Show is sponsored by Riverside.fm, the leading platform to record studio quality podcasts. More than 70,000 other podcasters use Riverside, including myself, GuyRaz, GaryVee, Spotify, and even the New York Times. Riverside is not only great because it has unbelievably high recording quality regardless of your or your guests' internet quality, but it also gives you separate audio and video tracks for each person speaking. It's high tech, but easy to use. Unlike Zoom, you don't have to have anything installed on your computer and your guests don't either. Did I mention that the audio quality is way better? If you're recording your interviews remotely, get off of Zoom now and hop into Riverside for your next interview. Your listeners will thank you. Head over to Riverside.fm and use code Grow. That's GROW to get 60 free minutes of recording and 15% off a membership plan. The link is in the show notes. So the listener funnel, how to design the experience from stranger to listener to raving fan. What this presentation is going to do is it's going to make it easier for you to number one, grow your audience, get new listeners regularly and reliably. You're also going to better know your audience through what I'm about to teach you, meaning you're going to be more engaged with your podcast audience. You're going to know who these people are personally. You're going to be able to have two-way communication with them instead of just the publishing into the black box of podcasting and never knowing what they like, what they want, what they don't like. And of course, you're not only going to grow your audience and know your audience, but you're also going to be able to get the dough from your audience, aka monetize. We are all podcast capitalists here. We are not podcast hobbyists. And so this is also going to help you learn how to not only drive clients and customers to your product or service, but also land advertisers if that's how you are monetized. So how can you know, grow and get the dough? Well first, let me ask you this. Do you have any of these problems? Number one, you're not sure exactly who your listeners are. Number two, you're not sure exactly what they like or don't like about your show. Number three, you're not sure exactly how to get more listeners. Number four, you have no way to quickly get in touch with them and ask them questions and get feedback from them. Number five, you can't get the listeners that you do have to do anything. They won't follow you on Instagram. They won't go to your website. They won't buy from your sponsor. They just do nothing, right? Number six, you don't know exactly how to monetize regularly and profitably. And that's it. Right? Well, if any of those things describe you, you are not alone. There's a reason why that sounds so familiar because many, many podcasters are in the same exact place. So let's solve those problems. Shall we? I'd like to introduce to you right now the listener funnel. The listener funnel looks like this. And in just a few minutes, you're going to understand what all this means. But suffice it to say that this diagram is going to be how you design step by step the process that a stranger goes from the moment they discover you for the first time all the way down to the moment that they have already binged your show. They're a huge fan of you and what you're putting out and they are fully monetized. And so the idea behind the listener funnel is this. In order to be a thriving business, your podcast business has to be more than just a podcast. In my opinion, a thriving podcast business has the best shot at success if it has all of these things. Now it doesn't have to have them. And there are successful podcasts that don't have all of them. But in my opinion, you will have the best shot at success. And you will make the most money off of your podcast. If you have all of these things, number one, of course, a podcast. Number two, a sure fire away that you fully understand. And you can recreate for you to get new listeners to that podcast. Number three, a way for you to get in contact with those listeners at any time that you want to ask them questions, get their feedback. And yes, sell them stuff. Number four, a way for your listeners to contact and interact with not just you, but each other. So you can build a community around your show. And number five, a way for you to make money. Your podcast is not monetized unless you have a way for you to make money, right? So if you don't have all five of these things and your podcast is only a podcast, you're going to have no interaction with your listenership. Your listenership is basically just going to be a downloads number that you stare at all the time. And you're going to have no engagement with these people. You're going to be publishing completely into the void and you're going to have no idea who your listeners are, what they like, how to get more of them, or worst of all, how to monetize them. Now, most podcasters do already have a podcast and virtually nothing more. But how do you get to the point where you also have this all of these pieces, a way to get new listeners, a way to contact them, a way for them to contact and hang out with each other. And of course, a way for you to make money. The way that we do that is creating a podcast ecosystem that satisfies all five of those functions, right? So you need a podcast, yes, but you also need a way for you to get new listeners. This isn't the only way, but for beginner podcasters and pretty much every other podcaster, I recommend the way that you do that is by being active and participating on one social media platform. You can be on all of them, but you don't have to be on all of them. And a big mistake that many beginners podcasters make is that they try to be on all of them rather than focusing on truly being present on one. Number three, a way for you to contact your listeners. In my opinion, the most effective way to do this is via an email list, which again, the listener funnel is going to show you exactly how to have all these things. Number four, you need a way for your listeners to contact each other. In my opinion, the best way to do that is to have an online community, like a Facebook group or a discord or a subreddit or something like that. And then finally, yes, a way for you to make money, which is how do I monetize my podcast, a big question that you probably have. Now before we dig into each layer of the funnel that's going to satisfy all of these functions, let's first define what podcast monetization is. In my opinion, again, it's all my opinion, I'm not saying anything is right or wrong. Everything works for somebody, but in my opinion, every single podcast monetization strategy boils down to this converting listeners to customers. It can be customers of your business, clients, customers, whatever you call them, users, or customers of someone else's business, right? And so, in my opinion, monetization all boils down to converting a percentage of listeners into customers of your product or service, which could be a coaching program or consulting or software or a physical or digital product, like merchandise or templates or something like that. It can be a done for you service, like an agency, it could be a paid community, it could be a paid mastermind, any of those things. In my opinion, a podcast monthly membership, like Patreon or Supercast or Gumroad or any of those, in my opinion, also count as your product or service because you are selling something to your audience in exchange for money or by converting some of your listeners to customers of someone else's business, which can either be via affiliate marketing, where you sell a product via ads and you get a commission for every product that sells, or the one thing that everyone thinks podcast monetization is, which is flat rate and CPM sponsorships. Now everybody assumes that that is the best and the only way to monetize a podcast. It's the first thought that most beginner's podcasters have. I want to make money. I got to get sponsors. In my opinion, that's actually the hardest because it actually takes the biggest audience in order to make it really, really work in order to provide a person's full time income. You really do have to have a big audience. So if we agree that the way that you monetize a podcast audience is by converting your percentage, not all of your listeners to become a customer of something either your business or someone else's business via sponsorships, then the way that you build a podcast ecosystem is by having the podcast, being active on one social media platform, having an email list, having an online community, like a Facebook group or a discord, and having a mechanism to convert a portion of your listenership to customers of someone's product service or membership. So having something to sell where you get paid every single time you sell that thing. Each of those functions that I just went through translates to a layer in the listener funnel. So the first layer is that a listener has received micro value on social media. This layer is going to have the most amount of people in it, because this pretty much includes anybody who has ever seen a piece of content that you put out. Now real quick before we move on, I want to point out that effective podcast promotion on social media is actually not promotion. It's participation. What I mean by that is, if the content that you post on social media in order to get listeners to your podcast is new episode, link in bio, or it's just a photo of a headshot of your guest, the people who follow you on Instagram are not following you to get headshots of random people they don't know and have never met. It's not what they want in their feed. That's not going to get them to go listen to your hour long podcast episode. So I'd stop doing that right away. The way that you actually get people to subscribe to you, to start to like you, and eventually listen to your podcast is actually posting content on social media that they want to see. Posting content that is within the context of that platform and is actually valuable in and of itself. So if you're promoting on TikTok, you have to put out a TikTok video that people like and watch and laugh at or are educated by not something that says, hey, you should go listen to my podcast episode and nothing else. So that's my little rant about promoting a podcast on social media. The top layer of the funnel are going to be the people who have seen and consumed your content on social media, but have not yet subscribed to your show. From there, you'll have people who have indeed listened to an episode. Most podcasts are stop at that, right? So that's where we don't want to stop. And that's not what's going to get you a thriving podcast business. It can. There are some shows that do that. But again, like you're going up against three million other podcasters. So in my opinion, you'd be better served if you added these other features, which are number one, having an email list, number two, having an audience community, which again is not there for you to promote your podcast to them. It's there. The purpose of that place is for your listeners to interact with and make friends with each other. And finally, you have a mechanism to convert some of those people to customers of something. So if you're missing those bottom three things, you're probably not going to be able to grow and monetize your show. It's not going to be a thriving business. So how do you get listeners to do all of those things to consume content on social media and listen to your podcast and join your email list and join your community and become a customer of something? Well, that's what we're about to dive in. That requires two things. Number one, the listener in order to do all of those pieces or any of those pieces must trust that doing that thing is going to give them something that they are going to get value from doing that thing. So for example, if you have an email list, nobody's going to join that email list. If you say something like join the email list to be the first to know, nobody wants to be the first to know. I want to be the last to know. People are emailing me too much stuff instead. What you should say is something else, something valuable, join this email list to get strategies every Friday on how to have better apps. I don't know, something like that. That's more compelling than to be the first to know about blah, blah, blah. So just a little example. So in order for this to work, you need to make every stage of your funnel awesome. It can't suck. So your social media stuff has to be awesome. Your podcast has to be awesome. Your email list being subscribed to it and opening and reading the emails must be an awesome experience. Your community must be awesome. It must not suck or nobody's going to want to hang out there. And of course, whatever it is, whatever product or service that you sell, whether it's your business or someone else's business, it also must be awesome and valuable. So people are not going to do these things if your stuff's mediocre. So number one, your stuff has to be awesome. And then number two, the thing that even people who have awesome stuff miss is that you've got to tell them to do the thing. You have to tell your audience to do all of those things. They're not going to just do it. You can't just put it out there and sit back and hope that people find it and love it. The product is not going to sell itself. If you build it, nobody's going to know and nobody's going to show up. You can't just wait and hope they do it. So when a listener is at any given stage in the funnel, when they are in your Facebook group or you're on your email list or they are listening to your show and they've gotten value, right? The thing has been good to them and they like it. All you have to do is tell them about the next piece and tell them the value that they'll get from doing the next piece and they will gladly do it. So for that reason, in order to get people from each layer in the funnel, you have to ask them to do it. You have to CTA call to action or in my opinion, a better phrase, compel them to act CTA. Call to action. All you have to do to get people to go to the next step in the funnel is to make a compelling and clear call to action, right? And so there are a few reasons why people will do what you tell them. People will heed a call to action. They're going to do it number one. If they believe that there's something in it for them, if they take that action, there will be a benefit to taking that action. Number two, there's a good reason to do it right now instead of waiting till later to do it because they're human beings. We wait until later to do everything unless we have to do it now. So you have to tell them why they should do it right now. Number three, it's crystal clear what to do and how to do it. That's another thing that most people miss. If you're a podcaster and on your show, you say something like visit our website to learn more, what's your website address? You know, like it has to be crystal clear what to do and how to do the thing. By the way, I don't recommend you ever say, check out our website. There are better calls to action to make. So here's a call to action template that you can use to get your listeners and your audience to do literally everything credit to Maxwell Mueller for this one. If you want to get result, right? Then take action, the thing that I want you to do now. So you can achieve benefit in time frame. All you have to do is clear easy instruction. So for example, you're going to hear me invite you to the free Grow the Show Facebook Group and what I'm going to say is something along the lines of if you want to get even more assistance in building out your listener funnel, then join us in the free Grow the Show Facebook group now so that you can have an effective podcast listener funnel in a matter of weeks. All you have to do is click the link in the description. Aren't you compelled to act right now? So I just call CTA to go somewhere else in my listener funnel. If you do a call to action like that, people will do it more so than if I just said to you, if you want to connect with other podcasters, join us in the Facebook group. That's very vanilla, right? There is nothing inside you that said, oh, I want to do that. But when I did it in this way, you did it, right? If you haven't already, you might already be in the Grow the Show Facebook group still listening to me right now after clicking on the link in the description. For best results, I recommend you only CTA one thing at a time. A lot of podcasters are like, go to my website and join us community and follow me on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and leave a rating and review and definitely tell a friend if you like it's like too much, too much one thing at a time. Let's me to do one very specific thing. Here is the secret though that's going to make your listener funnel the most effective. It's this. Those middle three layers should always be driving listeners to the other two layers, right? So these three layers, your podcast, your email list and your community should always be CTAing each other. Your podcast is always getting people to join your email list. Your email list is getting people to join your community all the time and your community is always getting people to listen to the podcast and to join the email list. Your podcast is sending people to community always, right? Just regularly. It doesn't always have to be like every day, but regularly at least a couple of times per month, each of those things, CTAs people to the other piece and just like your community sending people to the podcast, that happens when you discuss the podcast, right? So you'll have discussion posts about each episode and people like, oh, I want to hear what they're talking about. Your podcast at the end of the episode's not at the beginning, not at the beginning, but at the end says, hey, if you want more of this, you should join our community. Here's what you're going to get, just like I did before. So don't say, oh, if you want to connect with other people, join us in the community. Give a specific reason why they should join today and what you're going to be talking about and why they're going to love that discussion and why they should want to participate in your podcast can send people to the email list if you have what's called lead magnets. So if you have any like PDFs or cheat sheets or whatever it is and you say, hey, like I just talked, we just talked about this thing. If you want to get this resource, click this link in the show notes and you'll get a free ebook or something. And then you can ask for the email exchange for that. That's a little less effective. I don't do that too much. Your email list should indeed, with every single podcast episode that you publish, send a note to your email list saying what the episode's about, what you talk about and why you think the listener's going to love this one. Send that to your email list and watch your podcast down. Let's go up. Your email list should indeed tell people to join the community regularly. And finally, this is the little hack that I really love. Your community can get people to join your email list. If you have a Facebook group, you can have one of your questions ask if they would like to give their email in exchange for being added to the email list. And again, in exchange for some sort of bonus, that is the quickest hack to grow both your community and your email list at the same time. So that's the secret. Have your podcast, CTA, the community. As soon as they join the community, you ask for their email. And then when you email them, you send them back to the podcast. And then suddenly, it's just this flywheel. And this is how I have grown, grow the show to a 17,000 person email list with not really spending, you know, any time thinking about it. So the last piece is, okay, how do we get these people to actually become customers of something? So when they get to the bottom of the funnel, if you're monetized via your product or service, that is when you tell them to book a call or send them to your web, a or advertise your product or whatever it is. The secret to that is not selling the product or service itself, but selling the next step in your sales process. So if you have a coaching program, you're not going to sell the coaching program on your podcast episodes. You're going to sell whatever the next step is for them to join your coaching program on your podcast episodes. So for example, you might have a 30 minute discovery call for potential coaching clients. On your podcast, don't tell them the benefits of joining your coaching program. That is not the time to sell the program. Tell them the benefits of booking the strategy call at the end of the podcast episode. You will get way more people to book the call because you're selling the call, not the program. It's on the call that you can sell the program. One thing if you have a webinar that sells products, whatever the next step of the process is, sell that more so than selling the product. If it's yours, unless it's a physical product, then you can sell that. If you're monetized via a membership, of course, tell them to join your membership. You've got to call the action it. I can't tell you how many podcasters the patrons are like, how come nobody's joined my patreon? I'm like, how many times you've asked them to? They're like, twice. I'm like, you got to ask them over and over and over again. And then finally, of course, if you're monetized via sponsorships, your ad reads are literally telling them to buy your sponsors product. So here's a little secret though. If you have sponsors, don't just plug your sponsors on your podcast. Do it in the community as well and especially do it on your email list if your email list is good. I'll tell you right now, we get way more conversions from our email list than we do from our podcast. I do get conversions from the podcast and I do have ads on the Grow the Show podcast. But the Grow the Show email list is where we get the most folks to check out our sponsors products, which we only ever talk about products that I as a podcaster use and fully, fully endorse and the same thing in the community. So that's another thing that podcasters miss is that they only talk about their sponsor stuff on the show. You want to talk about it on all three things. Same thing is true. If you are selling a product or service of your own, you want to talk about it not only on your podcast, but also on your email list and within your community. So the cool other thing about this funnel, the way of thinking about it like this, because again, this is just more of a mental model to think about the how you have your podcast business structured. If you have this funnel set up, it's way easier to think about how to get new listeners. So all the podcast growth tactics that you know and love and probably haven't frustrated by, they they drop the listener. They drop the potential audience member at different places in the funnel, right? So for example, one of my flagship frameworks for growing an audience is called targeted daily engagement. And what that basically is is you spend 15 minutes a day growing your social media audience just by engaging with other people instead of just posting all the time. It's really effective. It's an incredible way to grow a social media audience. And when people discover you by you doing TDE, it's going to drop them here. It's going to drop them at this point in the funnel. So the question is how do you get people who discover you via TDE to listen to your podcast? You must ask. You must hop into the DMs and ask them to listen to an episode organic social media growth. So you know, a real or tick tock or Twitter thread growing going viral that will also drop them in the has received micro value bucket. And so in order to get them to the listened bucket, you must ask them. You must CTA them. You must tell them to listen. This in my opinion is the most effective way to grow a podcast audience, getting yourself featured on other shows, paying for podcast ads on other podcasts or in podcast apps. And again, if you're prioritizing podcast downloads, that's why these strategies in my opinion are the most effective for growing a podcast audience paid social media ads. And lead magnets that you mentioned on your podcast and then organic community growth, which once you have if you have a Facebook group and it's growing and it's performing well and it has high engagement, Facebook will actually tell other people who have never heard of you to join your group. So that's a nice little benefit of having a great community. You want to have each of these things CTA-ing the others because people are going to get dropped in the different levels of the funnel. So that's why you want every level to be CTA-ing them to go to other places of the funnel so that they can get that community. You can have a way to contact them. They can enjoy your podcast episode. They can enjoy micro value from you and of course, they can become customers so that you can get paid to do to be a podcaster, which is what you want, which is why you just spent the last 20 minutes listening to me. Yeah, about all this. So that I'm sure is how you feel right now. I know it was a lot. So again, this was my presentation for a podcast. If you want to join us in the Grow the Show free Facebook group, I'm sure you have a billion questions. We are not at a conference right now. And so if you have any questions about how to make a listener funnel work, please join us there. Ask the question, tag me in it. And then finally, of course, if you are an entrepreneur who is looking to grow their online business via a podcast and wants to skip all the knowledge and skip all the figuring out yourself and would like my team to coach you one-on-one and also provide editing services to you. Go ahead and apply to the Grow the Show podcast accelerator. Hopefully you enjoyed this. Either way, I'm so grateful for you. Let me know how I can help you grow and monetize your podcast. Thanks so much.