When we continuously grow our podcast businesses, we want to make sure that every aspect is perfect. If you’re looking for ways to get better engagement, then why not start creating podcast confirmation pages like the pros? Join your hosts, Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard, as they guide you to a process that could scale your business up! They explain their tactics and the best practices so you could amp up your influence in this industry. Learn the importance of adding a confirmation page so you can level up your podcast business. Make them into something that delights and impresses the guest and highlights how wonderful you are in what you can do.

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Watch the episode here

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Pro Podcast Confirmation Pages That Delights Your Guest And Amps Up Influence

We want to talk about some tactics and best practices you might consider for how to get the most out of every podcast interview, especially with every guest.

These are some advanced tactics and pro-tactics. If you’re starting out, you don’t maybe need to encumber yourself with all of this. This is for when you get things dialed in, you want to start to streamline them and turn them into something that generates a guest rapport. You delight your guests in this process. It also can impress the heck out of all the people that are coming through and booking.

Especially if you’re working with publicity agents who are booking guests for you, this stuff is impressive and it will help them promote your show. There’s a two-folded way that we’re looking at this. There are two sides to it. We’re looking at it from the guest education standpoint. We’re going to educate them in the process and show them what we do in the process or what we’re going to do with them. We’re getting them hyped up and excited. This can help you grow your shows through that. We’re doing a lot like getting the guests on the show. We want to make the most of it.

I’m sure most of you that interview guests have done something to automate the process of guest booking in some ways. You have a booking calendar link for them. We always recommend to our customers that they have a form that the guest has to fill out and collect certain pieces of information so you don’t have to chase down the guests for it later. They can’t even book on our calendar until they provide their headshot, bio, social accounts, email, and all sorts of information. That’s the best practice that a lot of podcasters know and take advantage of. This is something more and comes after that.

When someone’s done booking on my calendar, which I’m using Calendly, I have my calendar set to auto-forward to an external page. For those of you who are using a free Calendly, this doesn’t work or a free version of any calendar software. Usually, it’s a paid version. I still think it only costs $16 a month or something on Calendly to have this version that does this.

It’s an external forwarding URL. It forwards to a specific page on my website that is not navigatable. People can’t get there otherwise. Only the people who book on this calendar can go to that page. That’s exactly what it’s for. I call it my confirmation page. When you book with someone, if you do it in Calendly or in any calendar program, usually it’ll say, “You’re booked. This page is booked.” It’s usually branded for the calendar program. This moves out of that.

What happens is on the top of my page it says, “Your interview on The Binge Factor is booked.” It’s giving them that confirmation at the top of the page, but it immediately folds down into other things that we want to provide them. There are three sets of things that I want to accomplish on my particular page. We’re going to share the page with you. If you’re reading, you want to go check it out. The page is TheBingeFactor.com/Confirmation so that you can get to it right away.

In the three sections on the page, I’m confirming everybody right at the top, then I’m getting them into what I call the next steps. What do I expect of them next? What do I want from them? What do they need to do to prepare? My show is somewhat programmatic. It has a process that it follows. I have five questions that are engaged in it. Instead of telling them that, I give them a sample episode that I want them to go check out. They should listen to the show to understand the format. I’m trying to get them to do some best practices because my podcast is focused on podcasters. I want them to do a better job of being podcasts guests. I’m training them in this process by getting them to listen to the show. That’s the first thing that I do.

Here I shared a great show with Kim Seltzer that I enjoy. Most people would like it because a lot of people who become my guests are coaches, and she’s got a great podcast that is for coaches or that is modeled on the coaching model. That’s what I’ve got here as my step one. Step two is to follow me and friend me everywhere. We want to encourage that early. That way, I send them out in the follow-up emails, but sometimes the emails are going to the publicity partner or the PR agent. Whoever is putting it is not necessarily the person who’s doing this, but they’ll realize this is important and they’ll usually send this information out.

There’s value in streamlining the process in your podcast business. Click To Tweet

They’ll usually make sure if I’ve got a high-value guest, that the social media team knows about these links or that the person who I’m going to be interviewing gets them as well. This encourages that friend and follow thing that we want to do but it doesn’t earlier, which allows me to maybe do some pre-excitement posts or tag them saying, “I can’t wait to have you on the next show.” It allows me to do that if they friend us sooner. That’s why I’ve got those there.

Step three tells a little bit about the fact that I’ll open an invitation to come and check it out. I’m inviting them into our group here on a freebie to let them check it out. I’ve given them an opportunity to join our Facebook group by clicking in and being able to come into the group here. They can’t get that anywhere else. I don’t do that in the emails or anywhere else. It’s the only thing that I know that they’ve used the confirmation page if they asked to come into our group.

That way you know that they paid attention.

I know that I might have the right type of person. I’m talking to an active guest, an active team or the team that’s working with them. That’s section one. Section one is informing and educating them. What do I get from an interview on The Binge Factor? That’s my next section. What am I getting? What are they getting by being on my show?

I’m giving them a lot of value and I want to outline that value for them. I’m showing them how high a value that is. I’ve got all of these different things that they’re getting from me. They’re getting the podcast. They are getting featured on all of these different places like Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio and Spotify, places where they might not have been featured before.

Most podcasters know this but it’s still not a bad idea to share this with them. I’m getting to them that they’ll get a full graphics package and that they can market the show. I talk about them being featured in articles. One of the benefits that you get from being a part of my show as well is that there are subsequent articles. BuzzFeed is another part of that.

I’m giving them all these pieces and I’ve outlined them. There are seven things that they’re getting in value. I’ve said, “This is a valuable hour you’re spending.” I’ve set the tone for that from this section here. For most people, sometimes they didn’t realize, “I thought it’s just a podcast interview. I’m going on, being on air, and maybe some podcast listeners will pick it up.”

They don’t realize they’re going to be on YouTube or on an article. They don’t realize the blogs that are going to come up, the graphics that they are going to be able to use, or the social posts that are going to happen, which is my next section on this whole thing. That’s the third thing that I do with this confirmation page, which is I’m sharing with them all the types of examples of the types of promotions that they will receive. I say this and more because we never know. We’re always switching it up and changing up the kind of posts that we do here. I haven’t updated this in a while. I don’t have what we do on TikTok and Instagram.

 

It’s a little bit different from what you see here because that’s just an audiogram example. It’s giving people an idea of the kind of post that they’ll expect. The quality of the graphical standard of them is important here too. I’m sharing with them how high-quality our branding and graphics are. That’s also another reason that we’re impressing them in the process of what we do.

For my purposes here, if someone’s coming through my guesting funnel and not through a publicist, I’m putting them into it but it’s truly someone who I wanted and who we want to become a client. We’re wooing them in this process. We’re getting them through this. This is the first touchpoint that I usually get because all of my guests are podcasters. The first thing they said is, “Who did your confirmation page? This is beautiful.” My answer is, “If you were a web maintenance client of my accompany Podetize, you could have this page added within a few days.”

It’s an easy add for you. This is something you could do for your monthly maintenance fee, but if you’re also a client, this is something you could request in the process of having added to it. They’re not a standard part of our programs here. They are added things that are easy and low cost to add but with a high return on investment of that because you get this high value back. They asked that and they’re like, “That’s amazing.”

This is one touchpoint coming to the confirmation page and a chance for them to come back and say, “That’s so professional. I want that.” The next touchpoint is when we start sending the stuff out to them and their pictures are on there. They were expecting it but there’s something special about that. It makes them feel more official and then they love it when it starts coming out. They are more sure because when they see it and recognize it on social media, they comment and engage more. What I found is by prepping them with these things, there’s an engagement in the process that’s going on.

For our purposes, because ours is a guesting funnel, we’re showing them what we do in our process all along the way at this high level advanced pro-tactics model. That in and of itself creates a high close rate for us. It’s worth the value of the time and the effort that we put through into this. All of this stuff is pre-done, predetermined and templated. There’s no work on my part to do any of this anymore. It’s already set up and in the process. This is just an example of what’s going to happen to them. Theirs is going to flow through our normal process at any given time.

It depends on your purpose for podcasting and your business. If you’re not trying to put your guest into a funnel to lead generate from them, then maybe some of what we’re talking about and showing is not going to be for you. If in any way, your guest, either some of the time or a lot of the time are people that potentially are going to be your customers or your clients, then doing something like this can help you. Since in The Binge Factor, Tracy is interviewing successful podcasters, then they see everything that we do for our podcast. They’re like, “That’s amazing. Can you do that for me?”

It’s a little bit like I’m one-upping them too because mine is better than theirs. They’re like, “I need an expert to help me, even though I’m an expert.” That’s where we’re demonstrating that we have value in that process. These are some things that you can do. If your business is on social media, amp up your confirmation page to show how wonderful you are at the social media.

Give them examples. Show them how great it’s going to be when they’re on your show. If you’re an expert in LinkedIn, make sure you’re highlighting the LinkedIn things that you’re doing for them. Give them some expectations about the things that you are doing. You’re showing them and bringing them through experiencing with you your process.

That’s where we get to be pros. Not just pro-podcasters but pros with what we’re doing with our podcast. It was just the idea of adding a confirmation page. One-upping, next leveling, what you’re working on, what you’re doing, taking these pro-podcast confirmation pages and making them into something that delights the guest and impresses, how wonderful you are in what you can do.

People are potentially going to be your customers or your clients, so creating confirmation pages can help you. Click To Tweet

I have been communicating with an awful lot of podcasters about booking guests on their shows. It’s something that we’re doing as a company. I’m surprised how many podcasts that are established, not rookie podcasts but established that have at least 50 to 100 episodes, don’t even have a booking calendar link that they’re using to book people on it.

I’m so glad you’re saying that, Tom, because I interviewed podcasters who are supposed to be experts at this and who were supposed to be successful. I have some who don’t have calendars in it. They’ll come back to me and be like, “How did you create your calendar?” I’ll be like, “You have 100 episodes. You should have one by now. Why don’t you?”

You’re making more work for yourself by not setting the system up and making it simple. You don’t need this confirmation page on day one. Maybe after 25, 50 episodes or whatever it might be, you go, “It’s time to add. I have enough posts and examples. I’m ready to add this.” There’s a way to get this whole process to be working in your favor and utilizing the great things that you’ve done in the past, showing them to people to make yourself so likely to be the choice to have great guests on. It’s the show of choice.

I’m always one that is more in favor of taking control of a situation. Taking control of your fate and making things happen, not just hoping or waiting for things to happen. What do I always say, Tracy?

Hope is not a plan.

Hope is not a plan and not a strategy. I’ve seen too many problems, especially in 2020. I don’t know what it is about email programs and email communication these days. One month, people will be getting my emails or I’ll be getting their emails. The next month, something’s missed and I don’t see it for a week because it’s gone into junk, or they didn’t get my email and didn’t have the awareness that I responded to them saying, “We could schedule it this day or that day. Which would you like?” I responded with which one and then it’s crickets after that.

While email is still a critical means of communication, we all use it and we all need to, not everybody is as hyper-diligent about checking that junk or spam folder every day like we probably need to be doing. Having this booking calendar link eliminates a lot of miscommunication. People start second-guessing and making assumptions, “Maybe they don’t want to be on the show. Maybe it’s not very important to them because they haven’t taken action yet.” The booking calendar link cuts out a lot of those problems.

With Calendly, we have an Outlook Calendly. I don’t think it’s called a plugin.

 

It’s an integration into our Microsoft Outlook email program. An add-in maybe they call it.

You can have a Calendly one. I can go to The Binge Factor calendar and give them a couple of proposed times if they happen to be this person who isn’t someone who’s going to go to a page. They do have to eventually fill out the form and go to a page because they’re clicking the link for the time slot they want right on my calendar in the email.

It does make it easier. The problem is if they click a time that’s already taken by somebody else, it spits them out into the normal calendar program. Sometimes they get unhappy about that but there’s nothing we could do. They didn’t respond fast enough to get the time slots I proposed to them. These are some things. You can use that add-in integration and make that even if you still prefer that more personal thing.

For any of our customers, we do have and provide for you a boilerplate form for your booking calendar of recommended things you collect from a guest when they book. That’s a resource you can have and check out for making your own. It’s not rocket science but just the things that you’re going to want to know about the guest, the information you want to have. You don’t want to have to chase them down for it later, which is inevitably what happens if you booked somebody through a custom email, “Let’s meet at this date and that time. Here’s my link for our meeting. Please send me your headshot, bio, contact info and all your social media handles.”

Usually, that’s such a laundry list of things. They start going blind on it like, “I’ll get to that later,” then they don’t do it. If they’re forced to do it in order to book the appointment, they’re more motivated. It always made them more excited about being a guest when they’re booking it. It is a good time to get them to provide that information instead of having it be just an afterthought.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been reached out by a publicist about the pages that I’ve created here, this confirmation page in particular. There are some others that support things along the way but this is the one we’re highlighting. They reach out and said, “I’ve shared this with my client and I can’t wait to bring you more guests.”

It engenders this like, “I’m dealing with a pro here. It’s not going to be difficult for me. I’m going to look good.” When you’re dealing with an assistant, a publicist or someone in the middle there, they get to be like, “This is a show. It’s easy for me. I can make this work. I’m going to be successful putting clients or my boss here.” Those things are what make it pro.

Thank you for sharing that confirmation page. It’s very professional. It does the job and it works. Go to school on that. Those of you reading the episode and haven’t been able to see what we shared, go to Podetize.com where you can watch the video of this, see some screenshots or that page, and learn what that confirmation page is all about.

Thanks, everyone, for reading.

Important Links:

• Calendly
• TheBingeFactor.com/Confirmation
• Kim Seltzer
• The Binge Factor
• Podetize.com

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