403: Interview Valet: Reach Your Ideal Audience Using Podcast Interview Marketing

Robert Plank 0:00 Marketer of the day, number 403 interview valet, reach your ideal audience using podcast interview marketing with Tom Schwab, Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. I want to start with a really quick I get sort of apology, and it's that we had a really fantastic guest on the show, Tom Schwab from interview valet. They're a they're a podcast guest booking agency. He talked to us about podcast guest marketing, and this is the first time in 400 plus episodes that this has happened. And what happened was, we were getting ready to start the show, and my mistake was that I plugged in a new headphone, I guess, Jack new headphones into the audio jack while we were getting started, and I should have just had it plugged in the whole time, and by doing that and ended up not recording Mr. Tom's side of the conversation. So I'm really embarrassed. I'm really bummed out about it, especially because he is a podcast guest booking agency, and we're still going to talk all about interview LA and talk about Tom and all that stuff. But I'm just really bummed out, because this was my chance to shine. This is my chance to show off to Tom and his and his people. But you know, I dropped the ball totally my fault. I shouldn't have plugged in a new headphone jack in order to make our call happen, I record using Camtasia recorder. It picks up my microphone, and then it also picks up what's called system audio. It

Robert Plank 1:27 picks up everything that I hear through the computer, and for some reason, just plugging in that headphone jack after the fact, it made it not pick up that one thing. So there is an audio recording that it didn't record, but it recorded my side of the conversation and not Tom's side. So I'm really, really sorry to especially Tom and interview Valley if you're listening, but we're going to salvage this. I took notes. We'll go over many of the talking points, and it'll all work out. So podcast guest marketing, what is it? It means that if you have a product, course, service, app, book, then you should appear on other people's podcasts. Why is that? Because podcasts are the hot thing, and blogging is okay, but blogging is sort of going, I'm not really going away, but it's, it's dated, right, going on a website and reading a bunch of stuff is just it's not as effective as it once was. And guest blogging, which means that you spend days and weeks writing the perfect article for maybe Huffington Post or Ink Magazine. That's great if you can land Huffington Post or Inc Magazine, but maybe you're not quite there, or maybe you're looking for other opportunities while appearing on other people's podcasts is a great solution. So I think back, and I would say that in the last couple of years, I've only appeared on maybe, I would say maybe 20 other people, 20 people's podcasts over the last, like, handful of years. And I definitely need to get myself out there more, because so few, so many people that I deal with, and then this is like a timeless common problem is that they make a website, they make something great, and then no one knows about it. Can you relate? I would guess that. And if you're a internet marketer, an entrepreneur, which you probably are, if you're listening here, you probably fall into one of two problems, either you don't finish what you start, or you did finish, but then no one knows about it, so you don't know if it's any good, right? So the first thing finishing what you start. Just this morning I was, I was reading an email from a really cool guy, and a guy I got to start working on to get on my show. His name is Benji Bruce, and he used the analogy of, well, you wouldn't start building a house, and then you have the house half built, and then you run into a snag, like a wall doesn't line up, or the plumbing line won't fit, or something. You hit a snag, and you say, let me just bulldoze the whole house and start a new house somewhere else. But unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs do that. They build half the house. There's one difficulty, one hang up, and they say, let me just forget all this. I'll start over on a new house. And the result is, I mean, what good does 1020, 30 half built homes get you nothing. And, and would you and you know what? How with this, would you rather have 30 half built homes, or three or four totally built homes that are ready to move into, ready to rent whatever I'd rather have, the fully built homes. And so that's just the analogy that helped me feel better about that helped motivate me today. So that's one thing. But then something else is that, well, you've made this website, you've spent years on this book. You need to get it out there. No one knows about you. How do you start? Everyone used to say, I want to be on TV. I want to be on Oprah. I want to be on my local morning news. But if you've written, if you've written something mass market, like weight loss, I mean, I guess you could appear on the local morning news, but that seems like a lot to compete against. And if you've. Created something really, not obscure, but in a niche. Who, and you go on the morning news, who is really gonna get excited about that? So you might, for example, have a lot of expertise about drone racing. You have a book about it, and you go on the news, and some people might say, Oh, that's a cool thing, but who's actually gonna go and rush to buy something like that, or what I do is I sell a lot of different like WordPress plugins or courses on how to make a membership site or a podcast things like that. If I go on the morning news talking about membership sites and podcasts, there's only a very, very small percentage of those watchers and listeners who are going to relate to that, and most of them aren't going to be rushing to my website to go and do something. So the answer is to show up where the enthusiasts already are. So in this day and age, in the same way that used to be, like three TV channels, now there's YouTube and Netflix shows and Hulu shows, and I think even like overstock.com is making TV shows. You know, Amazon has shows, all that stuff. So there is so many new opportunities for you. You might look at it as well. There's all this competition. Well, no, there's all these new ways in for you, and there's all these new shows, all these new audiences out there who want to hear exactly what you have to say, who want to buy exactly what it is you have to sell. So what you need to do is get yourself on some of these other podcasting shows and talk about your app, talk about your book, to someone, to an interviewer like myself who's super eager and excited and interested to talk your ear off and hear all about what it is that you do, what it is that makes you stand out. What do you do that makes a difference, helps others. That's a nice wow moment, or a huge breakthrough moment, or a surprise or something like that. And of course, at the end, promote your stuff. So that sounds well and good, but where the heck do you start? Do you start at the top of the iTunes chart. You stop at the bottom of the iTunes charts. It seems like a lot of work, sending out a lot of emails, figuring out a lot of stuff on the schedule, and then, well, what do you offer? How do you know if you have an interesting message, or how do you know if you're hitting the right like points, or what about the follow up? Or what about, you know, what about talking person, getting them scheduled, and all this stuff. What the heck do you do? Well, instead of shooting in the dark and of contacting some random hosts of podcast shows, what you should do is sign up to one of these podcast booking agencies, such as interview valet, and the place I want to send you right now today is interview valet.com. Forward slash Robert. We're still not done. We're talking about all kinds of fun stuff about how you can market your stuff on podcast, but it's one to get that URL for you right now so you can jot it down, so you can have it for later. That is interview. Valet.com forward slash Robert. And so let me tell you a quick two minute, three minute micro story about this thing called a podcast. I used to record a podcast once a week. It was just me, I would talk about whatever was on my mind. But to be honest, I started to get bored with that. I started to find myself grasping for new subjects, and I just needed some fresh blood. The answer was to switch from a show that was just me into an interview show. And not only that, but for some crazy reason, I decided that I was going to have the show be an everyday show, be every weekday, five episodes per week, sort of show. And so I went out there and I found a bunch of guests and things like that. And before long, I began getting emails from other people wanting to be on the show, and some people were great. For example, one person that comes to mind is someone had a quiz, like a online, hosted quiz service. So what you could do is you could set up your own quiz and have an embed that on your website instead of just the usual, boring, opt in form. So that was a great person to have on. But then sometimes people would say, can I be on your show? And they didn't have it didn't seem like they had much to say. They didn't have a bio. They didn't have what's called a one sheet. I found their website, but it looked like they made it themselves, and I just wasn't so sure. But then here's what happened. I began receiving emails from some of these booking agencies. And I would say that there are three booking agencies out there that I get regular contact with, but for the purposes of today's episode interview, valet is the best one. And so here's what happened. Instead of having some random person contact me, I would get some booking agency contacting me. And usually I would recognize the person, the representative of this agency, and I would know the person, and they would say, Hey, I've got this great guest for you. They have this app, or they're in real estate, or they're in business, or whatever. And here's their one sheet. Here's this beautiful one piece of. Paper that has their picture, their bio, their websites, different talking points, possibly sample interview questions. So I would say, Well, great. I mean, I don't need to know anymore. Just get them booked on the show. And so this is a way to avoid wasting time in so many different ways. You avoid all the legwork of reaching out to hundreds and hundreds of podcasting shows, and then you and this way, you can use someone who already has an in with some of these podcasters. So this show, if someone comes to me, and if you're an interview, valet guest or customer, I guess you'd say or, I guess clients the more politically correct term. If you're an interview valet clients, and one of the interview valet representatives contacts me and says, Hey, there's a person who wants to be on your show. Here's what I know. I know that they have vetted you, that they they have not turned you away as a client. I know that they have worked with you because I believe that interview valet has some sort of a boot camp to get you ready to be on podcasts. And I know that there, that there's just all the the essential stuff in place. I know that I'll have that bio. I know that I'll have that one sheet. I know that when we have a conversation, that you'll know what you're talking about, and it won't just be a total drag of a conversation. And I guess I haven't really had any, like, really terrible guests on my show. But you know, some guests are better than others. There have been some guests, for sure, where I feel like maybe I I annoyed them, or maybe I insulted them, or something, where sometimes the conversation is just pretty rough, but never where the interview valet guest or never, just in general, with a guest that came from a booking agency. Here's something else, a frustration. Well, I guess there's. I could say there are two main frustrations that happen from being a podcast host, and they're not really huge frustration. Number one is if the guest, if they can't, if they miss the the appointment, the meeting, because what we do is when so and let me just walk you through this process. I guess I get an email from someone saying, I have this great guest for your show. I'll check them out really quick. I'll see if, if they're way off out of left field or way crazy, and usually they're not. If it's a yes from me, I say, here is the link to schedule a time slot with me. So here are my open office hours, but you choose a slot that fits your schedule, and usually we can work something out there. And sometimes, when it comes time to contact that person, I call them on Skype, the phone rings no answer, which is okay. Sometimes things happen, but then sometimes someone just just flakes on me, or they will not be able to make the meeting, like 10 minutes or an hour before, and they'll schedule for the following week. The following week rolls around 10 minutes before they move it back a week. So it doesn't ruin my day, but it's a little I mean, it would probably piss you off, right? If, if you had a hot date with someone, and then you showed up, and you were on your way in 10 minutes before they said, Oh, I can't make it. And he said, All right, how about next weekend? You're 10 minutes before heading down there, I can't make it. How about next weekend? You'd start to feel like they're wasting your time. So that's, that's, I guess, tiny, tiny pet peeve number one, with a podcast guest, guest, and then tiny, tiny pet peeve number two, with a podcast guest is if they're running late that day. So what I mean is, say it's 11 o'clock AM, time for our meeting. I call them right at 11. They say, Oh, can you wait till like 1105? 1110, and I don't take offense to it, but I say, No, I can't I can't wait five or 10 minutes because that will run into the next call. So I will cancel our appointments. Feel free to reschedule. And then, you know, we'll just, we'll figure it out then. But here's the thing, if someone is a podcast guest and they're paying money for this media exposure, then they're not going to be late. Or if, if they are, they're gonna take things seriously, and they'll do their best to have that time blocked out. And that's what I love about working with guests that come from these booking agencies. So let's talk about what would happen with you when you're booking with a booking agency. So what they ask you is about your overall goals. And so you know, they might ask about, you know, how many interviews that you want to do, and usually, according to when we spoke with Tom, it the the people either choose two, four or eight interviews per month, depending on what fits their needs. And a lot of people that they work with want to just go crazy and be on every single show out there. But what they say is, well, instead of doing all that extra work, instead of just like blindly shooting in the dark, they have all these relationships, all these connections, and they would rather go and find the right shows for you with the right audiences, or, even better, start on some of these small shows, and you get the kinks ironed out, and then you work your way. From there and then. So, so I thought that was great. And then I was asking Tom about, well, how, how do you measure how well a podcast does? Like, how do you show that person some results? And so I don't want to go too specific into the the pricing, but Tom basically told me that for a 10 interview, it's a little under three grand. So it's like a couple $100 per interview, but they find you they're really, really good ones, and they show you which ones got the most results. They show you which of your interviews got the most traffic back to your website. And so at that point, I asked, Tom Well, I said, How do you even track that? Because a sort of a drawback with podcasting is that you will mention, I'll mention a URL, but I don't have a way of tracking that click, right? So it, let's say that I promote Robert plank.com that's the the show here, or I promote interview valet.com, forward slash Robert. And if I post that to Facebook, then there's, then there a little something is passed along where you can see, okay, that click came from Facebook. Or if I have a link right on Robert plank.com or in the show notes to interview ballet.com/robert

Robert Plank 16:15 they can see that that click from somebody came from Robert plank.com but if I just mention it on a podcast like this interview, la.com/robert if you write it down, if you tap it in your phone, you type it in the web browser, how do you track that? How do you track people going to your site? So I asked Tom about this, and then his answer made all these connections fit in my head. And it's this. It's that if you have your website, you create a custom landing page for the show that you appear on. So interview, valet.com/robert, mentioned about 20 times this episode. That's okay, though, but that is a special page just for you listeners right now today. Okay, so I had one of, one of the best interview valet guests, a Ron Walker. I could never tell if he I called him Aaron. Other people call him Aaron. He calls himself a Ron. So whatever. But he's a really great guy. He has a book and a mastermind and all this stuff called view from the top. And when he was on my show, the link he gave was view from the top.com forward slash Robert Plank. And I'll actually bring that up right now, since we're talking and you know, we can go there together. I'll go there with you. And what he did was he made a landing page that said something like what we'll know in a second, but it said something like, welcome visitors from the welcome Robert Plank Show podcast listeners. And then he had a little bit of a blurb of, I hope you had fun listening to us. And then on that page, there were a few different things to click on. So on you from the top.com/robert, plank, there is on the sidebar a free personal assessment, 25 questions to get the life he wants. And then on the bottom there is a link to apply for his forum and a link to apply for his mastermind. There's his contact details. So there's a few resources there, but the reason why they set up a special page just for me is that way they can track the traffic I send, whether it's a link click from the show notes, or whether it's just me mentioning here, right here on the show to go to that particular web page. And so I guess you could do that yourself, just like you could reach out and talk to a bunch of different podcasts and all that. But how much time would that take, and how much of a $5 an hour worker, sort of labor would that be for you? So it makes a lot of sense if you're pressed for time, if you don't want to fool around, and if you want to make use of these podcast booking agencies, existing connections, they'll find you the right fit for the show, and then that way, you'll know that the host that you're being hooked up with is a decent person can hold the conversation, and then that host will know that you're a decent guest for the show, because you've already gone through a little bit of the boot camp that interview valet has to offer. So then when Tom and I were talking, and so I was realizing, Oh, this is awesome. There's view from the top slash Robert Plank. There's interview la slash, Robert, anytime one of these guests appears on a podcast, they have this special landing page with some special freebies, some resources, and they've set things like, well, these these resources are exclusive to Robert Plank show listeners, because if you just went to the front page of the site, you couldn't find the freebies there unless you went to the special page that that person created for the podcast. I hope that makes sense. So then I began to ask, all right, well, what appears on this landing page? What do you put on there? And I kind of looked at Aaron Walker's or a Ron Walker's landing page. And I thought, well, I'm seeing a few things, but what's the formula? What things were going through your head as you made it what elements were you making sure to include? And here's what he said. He said, first of all, we have this landing page where there's a picture of both the host of the podcast and the guest. Well, why is that? Because people need to know that they're at the right place. So if they click through from the Robert Plank show to view from the top, they know they see my picture because I'm the host of the Robert Plank show. They see air a Ron's picture because he was the guest who we were on. So right off the bat, they recognize at least one of us, if not both of us. So there's that part. And then they like to put three offers on the web pages, three different, three quick things that someone can grab. And so it could be something like infographic, a report and then a product. And Tom explained this as having a small, a medium and a large, and then maybe the medium the large could be even links to paid things. So for example, you could have an info, like an infographic report and a product. You could have a video, a checklist and a quick webinar. Or have your your large in the small medium large be a free consultation, or like something like that. But keep it simple and and I think the reasoning behind having the multiple offers, it's so it's a little less salesy. It's not just buy my one thing or watch my one webinar. People can choose to buy something or subscribe to the list, which goes counter to some of this copywriting stuff. But you got to figure, if someone is coming to your site from a podcast interview, they're probably a little colder than someone who clicks over from Facebook. They're probably someone who's not as yet ready to buy but still, if someone took the effort to check out a podcast interview and click over to your site, they there's, there's still a pretty good lead. But anyway, having all these custom landing pages and having this format allows them to track the clicks of the site, and then that way, if you do the huge package with interview valet and go on 10 interviews in one quarter, then you can look at and say, well, which interviews are most worth your time? Should you go back and hop on other interviews, but that's a great way to get that continual flow of leads by hopping on other shows, and it avoids you having to be the jack of all trades, the person that does everything. The way Tom put it was that Sinatra only sang. So if you put all this effort into being a thought leader, or having coaching clients, or making a book. Now you've got to pick up all these new skills to figure out how to how to reach out to people and take phone calls and all this stuff. Why not just go with a booking agency to do it instead? And and so use interview valet.com, forward slash Robert to check out interview at ballet and see how this whole thing works. They had clients like they had a software as a service client who was really big on the numbers and said, Okay, well, I want to put you to the test. We have this, this monthly app that makes us this amount of money and if and we would like to pay X amount of dollars to acquire a customer, if we can get that cost down even better, but still, let's get some customers. Here's the amount we're willing to pay to acquire this customer. Let's try this podcasting thing out. So if you're if you're on either side of the spectrum, if you're someone who says, you know, I know that I need to get myself out there. I believe in branding. I believe in getting my name out there all this media exposure, I don't care about the numbers, great. But if you're the kind of person that says, I need to make this worthwhile, if I pay this amount of money, I need to at least make this number of sales, okay, this number of new clients to make that make sense of that, right? Because if I put money in, I don't know, just want to waste, I want to get that money back. And so if you're a data driven sort of person, then they use the special landing page, and they use this, these, you know, this link tracking and stuff like that, so that they can show you how many new visitors to your site. That any particular podcast interview you do want someone else to show how many visitors, how many clicks back to your site? That equal to and then, if someone went and bought from you after that, then you can see what that cost of acquisition is, because you showed up on someone's show, you talked about your software as a service, or your book, someone went to your web page and then it tracked their activity all the way through to that sale. And so you need to be on other people's podcasts, because staying in your own world is only going to get you so far. You're only going to get so much traffic yourself just from blogging or SEO or posting and all these free sorts of things. That's what everyone else. Does. So do you want to be like everyone else, or do you want to be a player? Do you want to be a big time? Do

Robert Plank 25:04 you want to be the person that goes up slightly, goes slightly above and beyond what's expected of you and hops on all these shows? So the old way was to try to get on NBC or CBS or something, but I mean, good luck trying to go on some of those TV shows right out of the gate. Plus, you don't want that mass market. You don't want to be on Oprah. You want to be on enthusiasts. If you have a dog training product, be on a podcast where the listeners are dog training enthusiasts, and they all click through. So anyway, you could do all this research and try to find all these shows to appear on, and try to get yourself booked, and try to learn all this media preparation stuff and show up, and then follow up with them afterwards, and then try to track the results and make these landing pages and do all the stuff. Or you could have a team of people do it for you. And you don't have to train a new virtual assistant. You don't have to try out different people to do it for you. This is what they do. This is their specialty. There are a podcast booking agency, so you should check them out at interview valet.com, forward slash Robert, to find out how you can get this extra traffic and get the people that you want and need, especially if you're in the business area or the faith area, they specialize in those sorts of niches. So it can't hurt to reach out to them and just tell them your situation. So tell them about what you have. Tell them about how many shows that you want to appear on. As I said, People either do two, four or eight interviews per month. And as part of the whole process, I believe they require you to do like a three month commitment, but as part of the whole process, they will tell you what you need to know. They'll prepare you, they'll they'll build these relationships with the people who shows you want to appear on, and it will be a much smoother process for everybody involved. So if you want to get yourself out there more, and I think that you know you need to, if you want to get a business that grows faster and bigger, which I think we all want that, then it means that you need to get yourself in front of new people, talk to the people you need to be talking to, and then enjoy the extra traffic that comes as a result of that, which interview valet tracked for you and show you what happened. So make sure to check out interview. Valet.com forward slash Robert again, apologies to Tom for having to redo our episode together, but I think I covered most of the talking points here and and yeah. So again, it's about 270 to $290 per complete interview, and if you think about it, that avoids having to find the right podcast, hash out the time and date with them, or convince them to be on your show, get get the thing booked, do the follow up, do the landing page instead, just show up and do what you do best, and then have the team that you pay do everything else for you, and that way you don't have to do all this switching gears. That way, if we say something like, go to eight interviews, and you say, oh my gosh, have to do all this stuff. Well, no, it's like making eight phone calls. It's like talking to eight people really quick. So you do what you enjoy and what you do best. Sinatra, only saying, and then have the team do it for you. Interview. Valet.com. Forward slash Robert, glad to be talking to you again. Glad to tell you about this great opportunity called podcast guest marketing, which everyone should do, including you. So hop on on the people's podcast by using interview valet, and we'll see it in the next episode. And thank you. This is Robert Plank, and I'm guessing that you're working too hard in your business, plus you aren't getting the traffic leads and exposure you'd like. Do you want to change all that? If so, check out interview valet. They're a podcast guest booking service that will get you on podcasts that are the right fit for you. Check out interview valet.com/robert, to discover how you too can avoid the hassle of doing it all yourself and enjoy the benefits of podcast guest marketing. You.