The following is a snippet session from Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition. You’ll be hearing from Danny about how podcasts and summits work together in beautiful synergy. Take it away, Danny!
Danny Ozment: Hello, and welcome to Podcasts Build Successful Summits. I am Danny Ozment and I’m going to take you through this today. Whether you are a seasoned podcaster or just starting out you will learn something from this presentation today. Now I want you to close your eyes and think for a second. Think about what, when is the last time you listened to a podcast?
If you’re a podcaster you likely listen to a lot. So how many of you have listened to a cast in the last week? How many of you have listened in the last 48 hours? The last 24 hours. Now I’m going to have something that may seem maybe a little inappropriate, but we’re all friends here. You can’t see me. I can’t see you.
How many of you have listened to a podcast while you were in the shower? I’m raising my hand. How many of you have listened while getting ready in the morning, maybe half-dressed in front of a mirror. Me too. How about while you were sitting on a toilet? I’ve done that many times. And that’s the point here is that.
There’s an intimacy level between podcast listeners and the podcast host that makes so many things possible. And we’re going to talk a lot about that today. Here’s what you’re going to discover. We’re going to talk about why podcasts create those listeners who know, like, and trust you, why they increase your status as an expert.
I’m going to share some statistics that you may know already you may not, but it’s something you should know about how podcast listeners consume your content. We’re also going to talk about summits. We’re going to talk about why summits are awesome for an audience that trusts you when they go into the summit.
And here’s some secrets that you may or may not hear from other people. First of all, summits are more effective at creating revenue. When you build a relationship and establish a bond of trust with your attendees before the actual summit starts, and podcasts happened to be the best form of content for building the level of trust within your community, that leads to successful monetization.
Now here’s. One of my guiding principles, rather than thinking of podcasts as content marketing. I really think of them as referral marketing on a grand scale. And if you ask most business owners, they will say that most of their business comes from referrals. It comes from other people who have used your services, telling other people about you.
And to go to you. So podcast hosts in a way, because you’re creating a level of trust with your listener because you’re creating friendships with your listeners. Even if they are one way you are essentially referring yourself to your listeners and they will come back to you as if a friend referred them to you.
So they are referral marketing on a grand scale. Now, before we dive in, I just want to let you know a little bit about me. I always wanted to be a musician. I even went to college. I have a Master’s degree in orchestral conducting and choral conducting, and that’s me there at the Kennedy Center. But in 2008, my life changed.
My daughter, Elena was born and suffered a brain injury. During birth. And it meant really quickly that our careers were going to change and I needed some flexibility. So I drew on some skills that I had from my music background. And that was recording. I knew a little bit about recording and in college, I had participated in acapella groups.
So that was naturally what I wanted to record. I’ve worked with groups like in that bottom corner. You see there, the ladies with the red ties, that’s Divisi If you know the Pitch Perfect movies, that is the group. Those movies are based on. I even worked on NBC’s The Sing-Off. And during this time, as I was starting my business, I was listening to podcasts and podcasts really helped me.
They helped me learn how to grow my business. They helped me learn how to get over some things personally and get through some things and develop. My skills, but what I noticed was that many of these podcasts, they were helping me, but they sounded terrible. So I took my skills as an engineer, and I reached out to these hosts and I said, Hey, let me help you.
I love your stuff, but it really sounds bad. And just let me help you. I started to do it for free and then really quickly it turned into a business now where we are working on over 30 podcast episodes a week. Working with many leaders in the industry. You can see some here over 2000 episodes in the last year.
Speaking about this topic at many different conferences and. All of that has taught me a lot about podcasting, but you know, very recently in the last year, I’ve learned how connected the virtual summit and the podcast can be and why they can work together. So first let’s establish what is a virtual summit?
What is a virtual conference? Those types of things. If you look at the entrepreneur.com definition here, you typically video interviews, like you’ll see on this summit experts on a given topic, people have to opt in to watch. Sometimes they’re free for a short period, you can purchase all-access passes, those types of things.
They’re live, recorded, interviews, presentations – you’ll see all types of stuff. Just like a conference, but virtually done. Now, why do they work? Why do we do them? Well, first of all, they’re high value-add for your community at low cost of good will people trust you. They don’t want you to just sell and sell to them.
So this is a lot of curated info for not a lot of cost which is really nice for them. They maintain that bond and trust because it’s not a salesy webinar. It’s not another funnel. It’s not you selling another course or asking them to join another mastermind. It’s something really of substance that doesn’t require a lot of buy-in from them.
It grows your email list in general, a virtual summit does because you’re bringing together a group of experts who are usually working. Together to get an audience. And then your email list grows from those registrations. It’s also a big marketing rock because you’re getting all these people together.
There’s buzz that’s created around it, and your email list will grow simply from that. You can also monetize them. So whether it’s selling the tickets, the registrations upgrades, bonuses, products that grow out of the summit, it’s a way for you to make money. And then finally, it’s also a way for you to repurpose content.
Especially if you’re a podcaster you think of it this way, if you curate maybe a few of your video interviews from your podcast together, and then record a few more, that can easily be packaged as a summit that people will buy simply because they don’t have to go searching for that information. It’s brought together for them.
Ease of use Now this is what I want you to take away from this presentation. Podcasts are the most powerful tool for building relationships and creating successful summits. So why is that? Now, if you have a podcast you may have seen this effect already that podcasts build relationships with engaged listeners who grow to know like, and trust you.
The average podcast listener listens to a lot of stuff. Six episodes a week, six hours per week, 95 minutes per day of audio content. If you were to put that in perspective, think about, pre-roll ads on YouTube to equal that amount of time. That’s 1,440 15-second ads. It’s significant amounts of time.
They listen to everywhere, right? They’re at home. They listen in the car while they’re walking their dog, while they’re at work while they’re working out while they’re running. Your voice is in their ears, millimeters from their eardrums. And you’re sharing stories. Now this is a primal thing for most humans.
This is something we’ve been doing since we were in caves together around the fire, sharing stories, telling each other things, passing it along by speaking. This is how it feels for most people. When they listen to a podcast, they feel like they’re there with you, that they’re hanging out with you, even though they don’t.
And I know, you know it too, because you listen to a lot of podcasts. You know, you have those relationships with podcast hosts. I’ll tell you a story about one of my clients, Michelle. Michelle was, is a therapist who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and started her podcast to share some of the helpful things she was doing with her.
The people that work with her personally, and over the years, it’s grown into a pretty large podcast. So much so that, about a year or two ago now she was on vacation in Spain and one of the members of her party had a headache or something like that. So Michelle went down to the local drug store, the local pharmacia I believe this was in Barcelona and went in the door looking just to get some ibuprofen or something like that.
And as soon as she opened the door, the woman behind the counter said, Oh my gosh, you’re Michelle Chalfont I listen to your podcast, you have helped me and just kept going on and on all the stories Michelle had told all the things that she had done to help her. They were friends, even though Michelle didn’t know this woman knew her, this woman felt a connection to her.
They also showcase your expertise and authority. Most likely if you started a podcast, this is why you did it. If you can spend a few episodes talking about a certain topic or sharing your knowledge, telling stories, sharing stories of people you’ve helped and advice, people are going to treat you as an expert.
And if they already think of you as a friend that is going to happen much quicker, much faster than a video or a blog because they spend so much time with you. I’ll tell you a story about Mike Kim here. Mike is actually one of my mentors. I met Mike way back in 2016 now almost five years ago at a podcast movement, a podcast conference.
And as podcasters do we exchanged podcasts? He said, Hey, this is mine. Check it out. And I shared mine with his, with him. And month later I started listening to his podcast and my mind was blown. Mike is a personal branding expert and just the ideas he had were amazing. And I started trying them and they worked.
So I bought one of his courses and I tried that stuff and it worked every single thing he told me worked. So I joined his mastermind and eventually he became my client and we are still friends. I’m still in his mastermind today, all because of his podcast and that expertise and authority that he showed that I trusted because I had met him and got to know him through his podcast.
I did what he said. I bought what he sold and it worked. Now podcast listeners are a very desirable demographic, but here’s some stats that really stick out to me. There’s so many people listening to podcasts. Now over 50% of Americans are listening to a podcast. You’ve got 40% of 35-54 year olds, adults with disposable income.
You’ve got almost half of 12-34 year olds listening. To podcasts. So if those are your audience, you should look at them. They have household income, they’re educated. They’re, full-time employed. Now. These are the big ones though. 74% listen to podcasts to learn new things. This is higher than YouTube.
This is higher than audiobooks if I want to learn how to fix a sink, I will go to YouTube, but if I want to learn how to grow my business, change my life, learn something very significant. I’m going to a podcast before I even go to an audiobook because the podcaster is most likely going to have multiple recommendations for books that I could check out.
And here’s the huge one 93% of podcast listeners listen to more than half or all of each episode. That means if you did a 30-minute episode each week, you’re guaranteed to have almost all your listeners. Listening to 15 minutes, 20 minute compare that to the amount of time that people spend watching a YouTube video or reading a blog.
And you’ll see how significant that is. And here’s the significance for you from a blogger? This is one of my clients, Ernie, the attorney Ernie was one of the first law bloggers way back started in 2004, 2005. Former lawyer wanted to help other lawyers. Go paperless automate use systems to be able to leave large firms and start their own practices, their own firms and Ernie over.
10-15 years now has built a very successful business online business from his blog. Now, a couple of years ago, he started his podcast cause we had met at a conference and we’d been talking about it. He started his podcast and I will tell you, he’s told me multiple times now within the first three to four months of doing his podcast, he said to me, Danny, if I had to do this all over again, I would have started my business with a podcast because the engagement I’ve seen in just these few months has been higher than anything I’ve seen from my blog ever.
Now, the final thing you really need to think about in terms of podcasts and how they help you is that they are an evergreen asset. Okay. So they’re not short term. They don’t go viral. You can’t just think that they’re going to blow up right away. They are an appreciable asset. They. Grow over time. People recommend your podcast to other people.
They share them because they really trust you. And that consistency compounds. So they’re a long play. You have to stick with it. You have to stay consistent. And if you do, you will see effects like this. They can be a funnel delivering ROI for years, because what happens is people they might discover you at episode 50.
Episode 30, but as soon as they like you and they listen to that episode, they will go back to episode one and keep listening. So think about that as you’re designing your content. Here’s an example of that from Mike that I mentioned earlier, this is his episode 41 all the way back in 2015, where he shared some business templates that help him out a sales call script Onboarding questionnaire, things like that.
And he sold them for 40, $50. Well, he still sees three to five purchases a month. It’s almost six years later. That’s his electric bill covered every month from something, some seed he planted almost six years ago. So, those are just four of the reasons why a podcasts are going to help you build a successful summit and see that success because of the trust you created.
But I know it’s hard for podcasters. I know it’s a lot of work. I know a lot of you probably struggle from time to time, With, whether you’ll keep going with your podcast or whether you need to skip this week or that so I want to give you just a couple of strategies that I use all the time with my clients to help them continue to grow their podcast, to help them save time so that you can have time to commit to creating that summit that you’re thinking about.
So here’s some of those podcast strategies. First is repurposing. Okay, repurposing your content. And some of you may already be doing some of this, but this is the flow that I like first off. I tell everyone, record your podcast live whether you’re broadcasting it using stream yard or Facebook live or IGTV or whatever broadcast it live.
So that you’re putting that video out there, that you have your recording video so that you can satisfy that. Audience, the person that wants to watch the video, then pull the audio from your video that you’ve recorded. Pull that audio down, edit it into your podcast. Then transcribe the audio, take that, or have a copywriter that you’ve hired from Fiverr or something like that.
Have them write a blog, have them create something that people can download a lead magnet, then grab clips for audiograms, grab quotes that you can use to share on quote cards and memes And then after you’ve posted some quotes, take some of the more popular quotes and record some short videos to create some more micro-content around your podcast.
So that’s just one strategy then, If you don’t have time for your podcast, and you’re thinking about giving up at least become an expert where you can share your expertise as a guest on other podcasts. And you can do this anyway because borrowing audiences going on other podcasts is going to be your best way to grow your audience anyway.
So think about it in your industry or related industries. And the way to do that is just, start contacting podcasters, you know, or join a community like poddit.net You can even use services out there, like interview connection or interview valet. Where you can pay for them to book you on podcasts, but you want to be prepared.
So you likely already have a good mic. The one that I love is the ATR-2100 from audio Technica. The current model is the ATR-2100x It’s just a great dynamic microphone that can be used in all sorts of settings. And it’s easy to use because it’s USB. You want to create a media kit? So this could be just a simple one or two-page PDF that has your bio on it.
That has your headshot link that has suggested topics. So what are you going to talk about and then give the host sample questions and your answers. If you asked this question, Danny’s going to answer this way. So why does podcasting work? Why does it work to build a successful summit? Well, let’s go back.
It builds that relationship. Okay. It builds a relationship where people think of you as a friend and not only that, but they trust you. They trust you as an expert. They trust you as an authority on things. And these are already people, podcast listeners, they’re people who want to learn something.
There are people who listen to long content and they’re available to that. They really like that. And then finally, It just, it’s an evergreen asset. It keeps going and going and going. So people will continue to go through your podcast episodes and find summits that you’ve mentioned. If you have an evergreen summit, things like that, you can always drive people to register and register and register.
So think about how many of these ideas could you put in motion tomorrow? How much of this stuff could you get done right away? And I want to encourage you to start ugly. Don’t wait, because if you sit around and sit around. And want to make this perfect. It’s never going to get done. And I have some ways to help you first, if you want to get these slides from this presentation, just go on over to dannyozment.com/sws. And if you do that, you’ll also get my podcast interview checklist. When you download the slides as well, and I do have a mastermind for podcasters. So if you’re a podcaster that wants extra help, wants extra help growing wants a community. Where you can work together with them and discuss things. And wants people, you can practice things with or other people that you can connect with and interview bring on your podcast.
I encourage you to check out my podcaster mastermind at dannyozment.com/mastermind. And then I have my podcast getting ready to start season three. I’ve changed the title a couple of times. So the easiest way to find me is just search “Danny Ozment” in any of the places that you listen to podcasts.
Thanks for joining me today.
If you want to learn more about growing and monetizing your podcast – without sponsors! – join me and Danny over at Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition. You can get access to Danny’s full presentation along with all of the other amazing sessions – for free!
If you want to learn more about Danny, go to https://emeraldcitypro.com/