Podcasts have been booming across the online world for years, and it does not matter the industry you are in or the niche you occupy – you can build a popular podcast.
With the right mix of notable guests, hot topics, and even some controversial discussions, you can grow a devoted and engaged following for your podcast.
A successful podcast engagement allows for easier and more seamless reputation management and brand building. It lets you achieve higher lead generation, conversion, and a myriad of other micro-goals.
Here’s what you need to do to optimize your lead generation strategy and grow your business.
How Do You Generate Podcast Engagement and Leads
To turn engagement into qualified leads and potential customers, you need to generate engagement for your podcast internally and externally. You can consider internal engagement as the engagement and interactions you gather on your podcasts directly through your website and podcasting platforms.
These podcast listeners are leaving comments and interacting with the episode itself. If you’re hosting a live podcast, all the people who engage with your brand while you’re live are considered internal engagement.
External engagement refers to interactions on other platforms like social media or when a listener reaches out directly via DMs, email, and more.
Here’s a quick checklist to make sure you’re generating interest with valuable content:
- Optimize your podcasts for SEO and visibility on Google.
- Host your podcast on popular podcast aggregators to reach a wider audience.
- Spread the word on social media with regular announcements.
- Create reel-type videos regularly with engaging snippets from your episodes.
- Incentivize people to reach out with suggestions, questions, and comments.
- Talk about the value of being subscribed to your email list.
Over time, with regular posting, value-driven content, and notable guests, you will start generating engagement. You can then start following the best practices to boost your lead generation efforts.
Monitor and Leverage Your Social Media Accounts
Social media management is one of the most powerful ways to generate leads for your business and generate higher engagement for your podcast content.
Successful podcasters make sure to have a comprehensive social media strategy. These strategies focus on short-form video content that teases important topics and pulls your target audience to your full episodes. Consider this an opportunity to drive leads and generate more engagement for your podcast, identify the most engaged followers, and turn listeners into leads.
One of the best ways to reach your target audience is with social media monitoring, which will gather the relevant listener data and tell you what kind of podcast content they engage with the most. You can use this to identify patterns and learn which episodes resonate with your target audience the most–allowing you to ideate personalized messaging and create content that resonates.
Utilize Social Proof to Boost Lead Generation Efforts
Social proof is a part of marketing psychology, and it’s when people mimic the actions of others because they’ve already bought something from you. This is a powerful way to generate more leads through reputable podcasts and build trust with your audience. After all, a listener will follow in the footsteps of your other viewers who have already had a positive experience with your brand.
If you want to build social proof, you must showcase the best brand-consumer interactions in your episodes. These include positive reviews and testimonials and user-generated content in general while being a thought leader in your field. Remember that podcasting has a visual component, so even though people can use podcasts as an audio form, they should also have the option to watch it.
This allows you to include visual calls to action, social proof elements, and promotional segments that will help improve your lead generation potential and conversion rate.
This is a great time to make your product reviews more visual so that you can include engaging popups and visual overlays in your episodes. You can complement these with some spoken promotional segments, or you can have them pop up during the episode without interrupting the conversation.
Have a Strong Post-Show Follow-Up Strategy
It’s important to complement every episode you publish with a follow-up strategy that will capture leads and reach out to the people who have engaged with you in some form.
If it was a live session, for example, this is a great opportunity to note down all your viewers and log their interactions. If they made a comment or posted a question in the chat, or if they clicked on a link in the description–all of that is an opportunity to reach out with a personalized message.
You can automate this process and reach out to all the viewers who interacted with an episode (live or on your site) by sending them a follow-up in direct messages. On LinkedIn, for example, you can use LinkedIn message automation to reach out to professionals and business leaders in your industry, using a more formal and professional tone.
On Instagram, Facebook, and other non-professional platforms, you can automate your follow-ups with a more approachable and casual tone of voice. These platforms are great for B2C follow-ups where you’re directly communicating with individuals, trying to incentivize them to sign up to get updates on new episodes, download free materials, and more.
On professional platforms, on the other hand, you can send lead magnets that directly fit the prospect’s needs. This leads us to the last crucial point–personalized engagement.
Personalize Your Messaging to the Type of Engagement
People can engage with a podcast episode, brand, or host in a myriad of ways, and at different times during a live podcast, as well. All of these are cues that you can take to personalize your follow-ups, promotions, and all other messaging.
But personalization is not just about addressing the person by their name, it’s about understanding their needs and why they interacted with a specific piece of content you published. You should also gather information such as rewinds and most played segments of each episode to see where people were engaged the most.
You can then craft messaging outreach strategies that specifically talk about the segments that were the most interesting and relevant to different viewers and groups. This lets you take personalization to the next level and turn viewers into leads quickly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Podcast Lead Generation?
Podcast lead generation means leveraging your platform, voice, and engaging content to inspire your viewers and listeners to engage with your business. This can mean inspiring them to get in touch with you, follow a link in the description, or take any action that results in you obtaining a way to get in contact with them.
If you have a powerful enough CTA and a compelling narrative, you can even inspire your viewers to go directly to your product pages or subscribe to a service. You can use your podcast to generate leads as well as conversions.
What are Some Best Practices for Podcast Lead Generation?
One of the best ways to generate leads with your podcast is to make the episodes as engaging and valuable to your audience as possible. Delivering a ton of value for free is a great way to establish yourself as the authority in your industry and build trust with your audience.
You can then leverage your trustworthy voice to promote your products and services.
To do this effectively, it’s important to optimize all elements of your podcast to elevate visibility and enhance watch time. Make sure to optimize titles and descriptions with relevant keywords, disseminate your podcast across aggregators and social platforms, and engage with viewers through feedback and comments.
How to Measure Podcast Engagement and Lead Generation?
Be sure to monitor a few key metrics to get a good understanding of how your podcast and your CTAs are performing.
- Daily listens
- New subscribers
- Number of downloads
- Website visits
- Leads generated via podcast link
- Conversions attributed to podcast CTAs and links
- Churn rate and unsubscribes
You must monitor your audience drop-off rate along with the average watch time to understand how best to retain your audience.
How Do You Promote Lead Magnets on a Podcast?
When it comes to lead magnets such as eBooks, reports, guides, and templates, you can incorporate these easily throughout the episode.
When you talk about these free materials, make sure you have them linked in the description. Use a CTA that focuses on the value of the lead magnet to inspire people to follow the link and download the lead magnet right away.
Over to You
Building a successful podcast is one of the best ways to take your brand and your business as a whole to the next level in terms of lead generation, conversions, and brand reputation. Once you start garnering some attention from your viewers and you start engaging with people during and after every episode, you can use that opportunity to convert viewers into leads.
Use these tips to qualify prospects for your sales funnel, and leverage your podcast and brand trust to guide them through all the stages toward conversion. Just don’t forget that long-term customer retention is the foundation of success, so keep delivering value with every new episode.
