Promoting everywhere isn’t as good as being intentional and specific about where you’re promoting and who you’re targeting. In this episode, Hosts Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard share intentional podcast promotion tactics you need to know if you want to succeed. Remember, time is way more valuable than money. Don’t spread your time too thinly over platforms your core listeners don’t use. Instead, focus on learning one social platform at a time where you know your valuable listeners are. Are you itching for more tactics? Tune in!

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Intentional Podcast Promotion Tactics That Set Your Show For Success

I’m Tracy Hazzard along with my partner and my husband, Tom Hazzard.

I was going to say your better half.

I’m getting a lot of people who are spread thin. Our budgets are contracting for some companies. You’re thinking about, “Where do I cut? What do I do?” A lot of it might be the focus of how you’re spending your marketing dollars or your time. Remember, time is way more valuable than money. I want to make sure that we’re considering that. Your time may be spread thin too as you’re having to do lots more things than you anticipated doing before.

We need to think about that. We’re going to talk specifically from a podcast marketing perspective. You can think about it for any aspect of your business. Are you spread too thin? Are you doing too much in any aspect and part of whether you’re growing or scaling your business? Is it focused? Is it targeted?

When it comes to our show, what takes up an awful lot of time with a lot of people is promoting the episode. If you’re spending enough time recording it and you got to do that because while we do as much as we can for you when you’re working with us, we can’t record for you. Once you record and it’s published, there’s promotion.

The reality is, you can incentivize your guests to promote, which we do if you have a guest but you’ve got to do the promotion. While you want to be promoting, I would say very intentionally and strongly, sometimes promoting everywhere isn’t as good as being intentional and specific about where you’re promoting and maybe being more targeted. Are you wasting your time and doing more busywork rather than promoting in ways that are more effective?

I’m going to talk about this in terms of social media because we’re here on Facebook doing a Facebook Live. We’re also podcasting this through this. We’ve got to focus here. Thinking about how we’re utilizing this, what we’re doing and where we’re going with this. We’re here on Facebook. Now, we understand Facebook deeply but do we really? Do we understand how to reach people? How to do the outreach? How to engage? How to do all of those things is a learning curve.

These are things that we have to learn about the platform that we’re promoting on. I can say that I have tried really hard over the years to promote on Twitter whether it’s a mismatch between my personality and Twitter could very well be whether it is the way Twitter functions and works. I don’t have enough deep knowledge on the algorithm that could be as well. I haven’t gotten advice from the right people on Twitter.

These could be things that are holding you back. If you have to have some deep learning in a particular category and platform then either take your time and learn one at a time. Don’t try to learn all of them at once. Take these social media classes that teach you all the platforms and how to set yourself up. It’s one thing to be there and have a presence and another thing to actively be working to promote within that.

We do post to Twitter now. We chose to drop it as a promotion platform. What we do is we auto-post. There’s an autobot that posts from our website and sends it to Twitter automatically every time a post is made. I don’t have to think about it. I have a presence there but I’m not purposely promoting on Twitter. I’m visibly there but I’m not promoting.

These are some of the ways you can ease up on what you’re doing and not have to worry so much about how you’re doing this. We got to get deep into one category. We got to understand how we’re promoting and who we’re promoting to. That’s the most critical factor when you don’t know your audience yet. We get the idea that we got to be everywhere at once.

You do it first to figure out what platforms are going to be more effective for you and, which ones you enjoy participating in and get more out of. I remember for years, you did engage in Twitter. You were active in it. It never produced many returns for us. It depends on what promotion you’re doing. The thing about Twitter is it’s there for people that are active and live on the system at any given time.

Time is way more valuable than money, so don't spread your time thin. Click To Tweet

If people aren’t active and live when you post something to Twitter, they’re likely not to see it. Unless somebody retweets it and they’re actively on when that person retweets what you had. Whereas, platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook if you’re not active on Facebook while we’re doing this live then you’re not going to realize we were live.

If you don’t understand how things work, you belong to this group but you don’t click the Notifications to be notified or when we’re doing these Facebook Lives and you don’t remember to set your own alarm for every Wednesday at noon. If you’re not utilizing the platform to its utmost then you have to understand heavy users because they’re your focus. The random users like you might be are barely ever going to see what you’re posting. It has to be directly shared with them.

They have to search and try to find it. It’s not going to be useful to those people. The people that are going to be useful are the people out there looking for podcasts on Facebook. That’s who we’re promoting to, the podcast listeners who are looking for new shows on Facebook. There are people that are out there doing that.

 

Now, we want to dial that in. They might be the podcast listeners on Facebook looking for recommendations for new podcasts in real estate investing or women’s empowerment. They’re also probably likely within the women’s empowerment groups, the real estate investing groups. We have to understand the function of how all of that works to get our podcast seen by the right people who are active there and using Facebook.

You got to raise awareness in the groups that are in alignment with what you’re talking about.

We’re not here to teach you about Facebook. What we’re here talking about is that if that’s daunting for you, if that’s not something that you’re ready for and capable of then you’re not fully utilizing and doing a targeted approach within a platform or a promotion type. I’m promoting on Facebook, I’m posting on Facebook but, “I’m just posting,” is not a promotion. I want you to be careful and understand that. Paid promotion and organic promotion are two different things as well.

Are you going to engage in that? Are you going to engage in something that’s paid versus something that’s organic or effortful? You have to go and post into the groups. It creates engagement, discussion and sharing. You have to create that model. It’s either going to spend time or in some cases, some of you are going to go out there and spend money. Here’s the thing, if the listeners that are the most valuable to us are not in that space then it’s not worth the time and effort to learn how to use a platform. We’re not already heavily user of or very comfortable in. Instagram might be the case.

I hired somebody to handle our Instagram because I didn’t have the time. I didn’t want to spend the effort to learn how to change up what we’re doing on Instagram and make it work for us. I needed someone who understood that from a core basis already and could tweak our assets, help us bridge that gap and build a higher promotion and engagement. It took us a while to get the promotions matching and get the things that we were pushing out there for people to recognizing, seeing, liking, sharing and viewing. We’re working on increasing engagement within that.

Can we get them commenting more? Can we get them doing these things? You’re always tweaking and adjusting these things. It’s an Art, Science and Math at the same time because you’re tapping into an algorithm. This is a lot of effort and I’ve paid money to find someone who will work on that and do that directly for us. I believe we have a lot of core listeners’ potential out there and core customers directly resulting from listening to the podcast and then becoming clients.

Promoting your podcast everywhere isn't as good as being intentional and specific about where you're promoting and who you're targeting. Click To Tweet

We had that path that’s clear on Instagram because we see that in all of you out there who are our clients and listeners, who tell us that you are on Instagram already. We’ve already surveyed that and understood that. We need to spend some effort and time building our Instagram. It’s been one of our goals in 2021. I expect it to take a year for us to get into a system and a rhythm of what’s working and then staying on top of algorithm and Instagram changes.

We will level off into where we’re comfortable with our messaging on our side of it but we have to stay on top of things. This is daunting. As you can see, when you’re trying to do Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and you’re trying to do all of them, it gets extremely overwhelming especially if you’re just launching your show. If you’re in this fast growth and high growth phase of you wanting to increase listeners within your show. How do we attack that?

Here’s the thing that we have to sit down and understand intimately about our show and find a way to get to that. Why is our show here? Who are we speaking to that are the most valuable? For some people that might be becoming clients is it the value or valuable because they’re the super sharers? I hate to use the word super spreader so we’re not using that.

We used to call them super sneezers. That’s also not usually busy these days.

We’re not doing that anymore. For every one listener we acquire, we get 3 or 10 new ones because they share it. That will be like a megashare. That’s our goal. How do we get to those people? For others, the goal might be is, “I know that most of my best guests become my best clients.” If that’s the case, “I get those best guests on LinkedIn already. Now, I need maybe a better LinkedIn strategy.” I guarantee you, there are probably listeners on LinkedIn that I’m not tapping into.

I may be doing this direct messaging, reaching out to people to become podcasts guests. I’ve got that system dialed in but am I reaching the listeners in that process too? Maybe not. I’m going to shift my promotion work to try to work on the posting side of things and see if I can get more listeners increasing when I’m totally fine with my guesting strategy. Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to interview them but they became clients anyway?

It saved a lot of time and energy. I’d be doing even more. It seems like a likely targeted place to start from. These are some assumptions. We have to make a hypothesis about what we believe is going to work and then target that and test it. Is this working? Is it having a return? Are we seeing this? We also have to give it enough time.

That’s a significant problem with many of you who are already spread thin in terms of time and money is that you can’t devote yourself to this strategy after you’ve already gotten yourself so overwhelmed and thin everywhere else. You’re unwilling to now let go of the other platforms. This is what we find very often. It’s switching from a shotgun approach to a targeted approach is hard when you’re so afraid to stop posting on Instagram or Twitter.

Hopefully, this will make sense to most of you reading that focusing on one social media platform, doing that well and getting results, taking a deeper dive into it, mastering that first before spreading yourself thin and taking on a 2nd, 3rd or 4th. If you are touching a little bit of each one, you’re not going to be able to fully engage and get the most out of it. I agree with you, Tracy. You’ve got to focus on one then maybe another one, if you can add that. Once you’ve got one dialed in then focus on the second and adding it. Trying to be everywhere at once and figuring out how to succeed on all the platforms, that can be a full-time job on its own.

It’s a recipe for disaster at the end of the day for you. What I want to point out is that we learned this in the product business. When we were working with clients, there would be a lot of them who liked this shotgun approach. They wanted to bring hundreds of designs and items to the presentation with buyers. We started saying, “That’s great but one way to go.” Wouldn’t it be better if we devoted our attention to doing a handful of designs that we believe very strongly in?

That we could bring to a customer and show them why these are more valuable. It’s because we spend more time on them because it’s not physically possible to design hundreds of designs in our particular case, not enough hours in the day. You can’t pay me enough to design hundreds of designs and put this type of attention and detail into it. Are we starting to see the analogy?

Your quality suffers.

 

The approach to it, the why behind it, the messaging in it, all of those things are suffering. This is how we designed and created the best-selling office chair that has been at Costco for almost a decade. Very few products that don’t name brands that have been there for that name-brand loyalty like Procter & Gamble products or Kleenex.

If it’s a Patron, Tequila or Jack Daniels Whiskey or something, a liquor product would be at Costco consistently for a decade.

A name brand you don’t know. This is where we come into this. This doesn’t happen. Those products go in and out. Maybe they get two years if they do well. This is common in this marketplace. We designed a chair that was 1 of only 3 chairs we presented to Costco’s buyer. We’re shocked because they were used to seeing a room full of designs and products.

When we came in there and said, “These are the three chairs we believe the most in. Here’s why we think your customer, your member is going to love this. Here’s what we’ve built into it that is going to give attraction.” There is a nice match between an understanding of the audience, the membership in this particular case. Thinking about the same thing in the groups you’re participating in and the platform you’re going to. Is there a membership match that you intimately understand and build your product, service and podcast specifically for?

When we went in there and did that, the buyer looked at us and said, “Which one then do you believe is going to be the best seller?” That was easy. We pointed to the right one, to the exact one. That is the one that has been there for a decade. Design slightly changes. The color changes. A few minor modifications because Costco can’t be seen as not bringing in new things but essentially it’s 95% the same chair every time.

It’s never changed its price either. An interesting model of going about it. That sells at about $20 million a year for our client that we designed that for. That’s an incredible threshold to meet for any given product. You can imagine whether you’re in real estate and you only have ten months of tenancy in. That when things go in and out like they normally do, they don’t get that reach and that sales consistently year over year.

It’s not as profitable then. If you’ve got more turnover, you’ve got more one-time costs on bringing something new in. This is a little different than posting on social media. The principle is the same as what we’re talking about.

The philosophy of how this works and being more targeted, concerted, strategic and tactical about this. What we found is time, this is the long-term higher payout for you in terms of better-targeted listeners that will get to you that are going to be higher converting listeners at the end of the day. That’s the focus that we want to put on you is that it seems like, “I’m limiting my audience.”

The reality is that if this targeted approach works, not only is that audience going to grow over the long-term to be a higher return on investment over the long run in terms of getting you more listeners long-term. The listeners that you get are going to be more active and valuable to what your purpose for doing the podcast is whether it’s building your core business, selling a book, getting more services or building a great show at the end of the day.

That’s a philosophy that we want to bring to you. Imagine the relief. This is a smart strategy. This is that relief from this fear of missing out that all of you have of, “I’ve got to do all of these things because everybody else is doing all of these things.” Instead say, “Let’s sit back in the mindset of, “I’m taking the smart, targeted, methodical long-term approach to growing the right audience for my show.” At the end of the day, that’s going to be the most valuable thing that I could build.

I don’t think I could have said anything better, Tracy. That’s great.

Take the smart, targeted, methodical long-term approach to growing the right audience for your show. Click To Tweet

I’m giving you some thoughts about how you can do this. Think about how relieved you’re going to feel when you let go of some of this. I can tell you the huge sigh of relief when we switched over to the bot and I never opened the Twitter app ever. I do open it once a month to check and make sure nobody messaged me directly. I have a message straightened my Twitter. If you go to Twitter, you check @HazzDesign and you look at the message that says, “I’m not here live. If you want me to go to LinkedIn and Facebook.”

It says that specifically. Anyone who is serious and checks out your profile and it goes, “I’m going to jump off of Twitter.” If they’re offended by it, they’re probably not right for me anyway. Sometimes I get a nasty message from that but rarely. I have to tell you the huge sigh of relief when I never had to do that every single day, check in on that, feel like I was not posting and I had to work on that was a huge relief. Did I see different listeners? No. I didn’t see any change in what we were doing. Pretty soon after because I was focusing on one area, that had to change.

It’s about getting focus, specific, being less busy, more targeted and effective. That’s really at.

 

This is the four-hour workweek. We’re all working towards where our most effective time can be spent. It’s spent in the 4% in the four hours. It’s spent in those small things where we put concerted, personal effort into making it unique, special and working for us that we make those deeper connections that have a long-term residual value that is highly valuable.

That’s what we want you to think about now. Podcast promotion, it’s not all things to all people everywhere out there. It might be an extremely targeted, narrow niche approach and getting that right and live learnings from that, apply it to the next platform that you work on and set the other one on some autopilot.

Get support and have somebody else do some of that work for you once you figured it out. There are even AI, software and things that do this for you depending on the platform. Lots of options there.

Some food for thought. Trying a targeted podcast promotion approach and see if it works for you.

Thanks for reading. It’s been Tom and Tracy on Feed Your Brand. We will see you next time.

 

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