088: How to Align Your Podcast with Your Business Goals
Having a podcast is great. There are so many things you can talk about that people want to hear. But if you’re using your podcast to drive business goals, then you need to make sure they are both aligned.
In today’s episode, I’m sharing tips for making sure that you’re using your podcast in a strategic way to support your business goals and growth.
What’s in this episode of Podcast Your Business:
[01:50] The importance of having a schedule for your podcast and keeping it flexible
[04:21] How to track intangibles (such as who is listening to your podcast and how they’re interacting with your other channels)
[08:07] Understanding where your podcast listeners are in their customer journey and what call to action works best
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The Transcript for Podcast Your Business:
088: How to Align Your Podcast with Your Business Goals
[00:00:00] Caroline Hull The plan and having a clear schedule for your podcast is important for your business goals because we want to make sure that as we're setting these business goals, whether these are goals for growing social media, whether these are goals for selling a certain number of programs or hitting a revenue goal. How does the podcast relate to that? And if your content has nothing to do with anything that you're talking about or selling, it's not going to help you reach those goals.
[00:00:33] Ready to start a podcast for your business and share your message in a way that feels wildly authentic. Welcome to Podcast Your Business, where each week we share how to start a podcast and make sure it's working for you and your business. I'm Caroline Hull, podcast manager and consultant, and I've seen the power a podcast can have. Ready to share your voice. Let's get started.
[00:00:59] We've talked a little bit about setting goals for your podcast and measuring those metrics and what that looks like. But we haven't really dived into how to connect your business goals and your podcast. And a lot of times they are interconnected, especially when you have a strategically aligned podcast that is set up to help grow your business. So today I really want to look at how you can have your business goals and your podcast work together. And we're not just talking about having a podcast for your business, but having a podcast that's going to help you meet your business goals. And today, I want to give you some tips for checking to see if this is something that you're doing and how you can kind of measure the two together, right?
[00:01:50] So when we have a podcast for a business, we want to make sure that we have a plan or a clear schedule for our podcast. And I will be the first to admit, like, this is hard. This is one of those things that I feel like I'm constantly working on. I think any kind of content creation, you know, there's these moments where you just want to sit down and record and you just want to record whatever you want to record. And then there's days when you look at what you have on the schedule and you're like, I don't want to record that. That's not what I'm feeling today. And so the idea of having a mapped out schedule can feel really, I guess, daunting, but also boring sometimes.
[00:02:30] And so what we like to do with our scheduling is leave room for flexibility. But the reason why I'm putting this here as my number one tip is because we need to make sure that the content and the podcast episodes are tying in with our sales and promo schedule. And I'm actually going to talk more about this on next week's episode, which is going to be all about tying your content to your business. And so we're going to dove more into this content piece and how to make sure we have that in place and what making a plan looks like. So be sure to listen to that next week. But the plan and having a clear schedule for your podcast is important for your business goals because we want to make sure that as we're setting these business goals, whether these are goals for growing social media, whether these are goals for selling a certain number of programs or hitting a revenue goal, like how does the podcast relate to that? And if your content has nothing to do with anything that you're talking about or selling, it's not going to help you reach those goals. It's just not because it's not going to be setting people up to receive the other things that you're talking about and promoting.
[00:04:00] Right? And again, like you can build in flexibility if there's a day when something pops up and you really want to talk about it on the podcast, and it makes a lot of sense to talk about it right now. Shuffle things around, that's totally fine. But we want to make sure that when we are on a big launch and a big push, that we have a plan for that podcast content again. So it's aligned, right?
[00:04:21] The second thing I want to talk about is I haven't actually talked about this a lot on the podcast and I was in the middle of a strategy call with a client yesterday. I'm recording this on the Thursday and I started thinking about this. I was like, You know, I really need to talk about this more. There are some things that I just kind of assume everybody knows what sort of what to do and how to do it. But a lot of times when you're in the weeds, as we often are, we forget about these little things that we need to be doing. And one of these is creating things that you can track. So when we have our podcast, there's usually an ask or a call to action at the end. And we'll talk a bit more about the call to action here in just a minute. But we want to have a way to track our people coming from the podcasts.
[00:05:10] Are we converting people? This is really hard to do because there's no like set, you know? Hey. Hi. Excuse me. You just signed up to follow me on my Instagram. Can you let me know if you listen to my podcast? And then if you buy, can you tell me that whole funnel that you went through? Thank you very much. Like, we just don't do that. But there are a few things that we can track. And so one of the things that I am actually going to start encouraging people to do and I want to start doing myself, is creating a way to track what I like to call intangibles. So did you have a meeting with somebody today and they mentioned your podcast? Like, keep track of that. That is so important.
[00:05:50] I cannot tell you how many inquiry calls I've had, where I've sat down with them and they've said, I listened to your podcast episodes and that was kind of my introduction to your work. It happens a lot, and that's a main like indicator that the podcast is working for a business is when people are actually saying to you, Yeah, I heard you talk about that on the podcast. That was so great. When you're in a call or at an event or anything and you're talking about something, they're like, Oh yeah, you talked about that on your podcast. Okay, it's working.
[00:06:20] The other thing you can do is set up a links that you can track, and there's a lot of different ways to do this. It's creating special links just for this call to actions that you put in your podcast. So if there's any link that you put in your show notes or your description or anything like that, having a way to track it. I am not an expert on this. There's a couple of things that we've used before, like a bitly link, but there are other things that you can use as well. And so figuring out a way to kind of track how many people actually clicked this app from the podcast. And I believe you can also set this up on like your email software as well, where you have people come into the email software from a certain link and you can track where they came from. And so this is a really good way. Like if you're setting goals for growing a list or having this many eyes on something, creating trackable links that you can use in your podcast is, I think, something that we should explore more just as everybody, like all of us together.
[00:07:21] Hey, podcaster, if you feel like you're getting a lot out of this podcast, but you want even more, I have the perfect thing for you. The WHP Insider podcast is a private podcast for Members Only, which features two episodes per month, plus a monthly newsletter that takes a deeper dive into strategies and tips, specifically for podcasters who are using their podcast to help grow their business. This is something that up until now has only been available for clients of Wild Home Podcasting, but for a small monthly fee, you can join and be part of the club. So just head to WildHomePodcasting.com/insider for more information. And I can't wait to see you there.
[00:08:07] So let's talk about the call to action. So you want to make sure that your call to action is adding value, but also makes sense for your listeners. You're not going to hit your goals if your call to action is not aligned. And one of the common mistakes I see with call to actions especially is they're either way too big or they're way too little of an ask. So way too big. Maybe book a call with me and way too little of an ask. Maybe here's a free pdf download and sometimes that free pdf download works and sometimes that book of call works.
[00:08:42] And this is where understanding your customer journey is really, really important, and understanding where your podcast listeners are in your customer journey is really important. I know that a lot of my listeners aren't necessarily ready to book a call or book a package. I will still mention it for sure, but I get the most additions to my email list and my Instagram following when I give something away that is small and a value. And that's just what works for me. And this may be like a trial and error where you need to see, okay, what's going to work better? What kinds of things do I need to try? What can I switch up? If you're just asking people to leave a review, that's not necessarily going to help you reach your business goals, right? Having a ton of reviews doesn't necessarily mean equal a ton of sales.
[00:09:39] And so we want to make sure that we have a call to action that makes sense for our listeners. We also and this ties into it, we want to make sure that we have a funnel and a clear way to get podcast listeners from our podcast to our email list. I'm specifically going to say email list here, but I think there's also room for getting them to other places, whether that be a Facebook group or a Mighty Networks group or webinar, things like that. But you want to have a clear funnel. And so this goes with the call to action. You know, what is the thing that you want them to do when they're done listening to your podcast? And then how can we funnel them into that? And then what happens after they get into that funnel? And you really want to map this out, especially if it's, again, tied to a launch or a program or a service that you're offering and you're trying to move people that way from the podcast.
[00:10:38] So let's just kind of recap how this all works together, because I think I have kind of thrown a lot at you, probably not in the order in which I should have. And so let's talk about it. So first, we want to make sure we have a plan and content that is aligned with whatever business goals we have at the moment. We want to make sure that we have a really great call to action that aligns with that content and aligns with the goal that we've set for our business. Whether that be, again, a program, a service, maybe we're opening up a mastermind and we want to make sure that that call to action has only and that that link is trackable. And from there, we want people to go into a funnel that we've designed specifically for our podcast listeners. This is a really great way to have your podcast really align with your business goals.
[00:11:31] And this is something that, you know, you can sit down and map out or we would be happy to sit down with you and help you map it out because sometimes it's hard to visualize it. And then when you sit down to record, you're not really thinking about that, right? You're just thinking about the content. And so this is something that if you do on the front end is can be really powerful. And I think a lot of this goes back to, again, having that schedule set in place, knowing what your sales cycle is like, your promotional calendar, and creating a way to look at all of that together. For me, it's an asana board. It could be a spreadsheet but saying, okay, these are the things that we're promoting right now, and then laying out the content and seeing how it works together.
[00:12:14] And then that's going to help you then decide, okay, what call to actions do we want to use? What ad do we want to record and throw in? Where do we want to have people go so we can tell them more about this thing? Right. And then the last thought I just want to leave you with is to really recognize that the podcast is the vehicle, not the destination. I think a lot of business owners who start a podcast, they get this idea in their head that if they have a million downloads, they'll have tons of sales, will be super popular, everything will be wonderful and that may be true. But if we're not doing it in aligned, strategic way, it's not going to help you grow your business. It's just going to be this thing that you spend a lot of time on and the podcast.
[00:12:58] So why I say it's the vehicle, not the destination, is because the goal here is not to get a million downloads. The goal here is to bring in listeners who are our ideal clients and who will want to click and buy into the other things that we're doing. And so it's the vehicle, it's the thing that we're driving that is full of this library of knowledge that we're creating, that is bringing in and enticing people and sharing who we are and our values so that they can feel that they are aligned with us. Right. And that they want to work with us. And so as you think about, okay, my goals are this my podcast is this remembering that, you know, while you can have specific goals for your podcast that may include, you know, this year, I'd love to grow it by 100 downloads per episode. That's great. But also remembering that that is not the destination, that's not the end all, be all for us. We really want to focus on how the podcast is going to drive listeners to our business, right? So let me know if this podcast episode was helpful for you.
[00:14:12] And we're going to be diving into this topic a little bit more on my close friends list on Instagram. If you're interested in joining my close friends list, and I would absolutely love to have you, it is a place for mentorship, discussion and to really expand on these podcast topics and dive a little bit deeper into one of the things that we talked about today and give you a place to get mentorship from me, right, and a place to ask questions. So I love to have you head on over to my Instagram and you will see on my feed there is a close friends post, but there is also a stories highlight titled Close Friends. Right under my profile, you can click on either one of those and I'll tell you what you need to do to join and be sure to let me know that you heard about it on the podcast. I would love to know that and I hope you have a great day.
[00:15:04] Thank you for listening to Podcast Your Business. For more podcasting tips, follow us on Instagram @wildhomepodcasting. If you are ready to launch, uplevel, or grow your podcast, head to WildHomePodcasting.com to get started today.
