In this episode, Matt Johnson shares how to get on 100 podcasts in a year to  sell more books, and make a bigger impact (without the work and without having to travel to do it).

Resources mentioned

Podcasting Pitch Assistant Training: www.pursuingresults.com/training
One Funnel Away Challenge http://ellenlikes.com/ofa
(Ellen’s affiliate link to the challenge.)

Website: www.pursuingresults.com

3 Key Points

Podcasts get more engaged listeners than any other medium.

It’s easy to connect with podcast hosts.

Let them know that you appreciated the opportunity and ask how you can help them and you will solidify the relationship quickly.

Show Notes

[0:51] Today my guest is Matt Johnson. Matt Johnson is a marketer, entrepreneur, podcast expert and musician. As founder of Pursuing Results, a podcast PR & production agency based in San Diego, Matt runs a worldwide virtual team helping business coaches and agencies break in and dominate their niche through podcasting.

Matt currently hosts niche business podcasts such as YouX and Real Estate Uncensored, and recently launched the Podcast Pitch Assistant training to help experts get pitched to podcasts consistently by their internal staff. He is a frequent podcast guest and event speaker to audiences around the US, Canada, and Australia.

[4:11] Podcasting pays a lot of dividends. A speaking engagement across town takes half the day and traveling takes 2-3 days out of Matt’s schedule to talk to 100 people.

Even with all the podcasts, the average gets a couple hundred downloads each
And people are listening to 80% or more of the podcasts; they aren’t scrolling on; they are engaged. It will put you in front of more people than the average speaking engagement. When you compare marketing strategies, that’s how Matt looks at it. Every podcast is the engagement of a speaking engagement without getting on a plane or in the car. And the quality of attention is better.

[6:22] Matt asked this question when he thinks about being a podcast guest: “What’s the most surprising thing you have to say?” That’s what you lead with.
To get on, being interviewed… and always lead with that. It forces you to get really clear about what is different about your point of view. It’s what you should always lead with.

[8:13] It helps to have a business that is focused and know who your ideal client is. Who would you work with all day long if you could? Who would you work with for free? What shows are they listening to?

[8:41] The mechanics of where to find them: start with iTunes and Google searches.There are people out there who have put together lists of top 10 podcasts in different niches. There are plenty of podcasts in niches like for dentists, business consultants or real estate agents for example.

[9:11] It’s easy to find the information on the host. It’s usually on LinkedIn and on their website. There are some fancy tools out there as well to make it easier but LinkedIn is great. And LinkedIn message are really helpful.

[9:28] He has a client who reaches to super, super high-level sales consultants who gets 40-50% response rates on their outbound LinkedIn messages. He gets yes to a podcast or to come to a meeting just through LinkedIn messaging.

[10:05] Even if they only check their messages once every couple week, LinkedIn messages stand out because not that many of them are being sent out. And it’s easy to filter out the spam messages on LinkedIn vs. email where it’s way harder to tell.

[10:34] Its easier than you think to find the podcasts, and the hosts thank you; pitch yourself and LinkedIn is a great place to do it. But if you can track down their email, you can send them a slightly longer message with some links to you in some other places for credibility.

[10:58] If you’re pitching yourself, which I don’t recommend, but if you’re just starting out, it’s a great place to start, and they can see your connections right away, which is a great, great thing.

[11:14] Once you get to the point where someone is pitching you, and you want to get there as quickly as possible (they’re the ones who are using LinkedIn and pitching you) then Matt has taught people how to authentically and smoothly kind of name drop.

[11:34] You always want to find that mutual connection and LinkedIn is a great place to find them, but there are other ways to do it. For instance, who else has that podcast host interviewed?You can look at other podcasts that the host has been on.

Are they one step away from relationships -good friends or business acquaintances that they can leverage?

Find some common ground.

That’s one of the things Matt teaches in the Pitch Assistant’s Course. How to find those people and create the right emails that get you pitches.

[12:36] How do you start?

Everyone starts from somewhere. If you don’t have interviews that you can point to, Matt would focus on the quality of the conversation. The topic that you are going to cover being so juicy and compelling to that podcast host that they are going to say yes to you, even if you don’t have a bunch of interviews that you’ve been on.

[13:10] Start with the right ones first, the ones that are in your niche…where your ideal clients are listening and you probably have something interesting to say. Not the biggest audiences, but the right audience, and, sometimes, those might be the smaller ones.

[14:01] Then, after you’ve got a few under your belt, you can start reaching out and say, “I was on this show and this show and we had a great conversation about X Y and Z. I thought maybe your audience would get benefit out of it too, would you like to talk about having me on your show? It’s a simple pitch, super easy.

[14:26] I recommend reaching out to small, medium, and large shows consistently, but you never want to stop pitching smaller shows because they are focused and targeted with a smaller more dedicated audience.

[14:45] The larger ones talk to the masses, and they have different problems than the elite. So, if you’re selling something high-ticket, you are probably selling to the cream of the crop.They believe different things, feel different things, and deal with completely different challenges.

Matt has hosted shows for each of these markets He says the one that appeals to the cream of the crop has a smaller audience that caters to the elite generates multiple 6-figures off the back of it and if he were selling a high-end product, the smaller one is that one he’d sell to.

[16:45] What do you think are some good ways to start the conversation on LinkedIn?

Never, ever, ever start by talking about yourself, which is weird because most people start a pitch with “My name is…” Everything starts with “I” “Me” or “My”. That is a dead giveaway.You always want to start with how you came across them. Maybe you found them because you searched for them, which is fine.

Matt would say, “Hey I came across you from so and so. I heard them interviewed on your show and started listening to the show. I really enjoyed it.

Or “I came across you on LinkedIn, and we have a bunch of mutual connection sin our space like so and so and so and so and drop a couple of names; people they would know well, and people I genuinely, authentically know. So, start with them.

[18:20] Then, Matt would go into, “I might be a great guest for your show because of X Y and Z.” I would explain what’s in it for them, what’s in it for their audience, what’s the conversation that we’re going to have and why I’m a good fit for their audience.

Ask yourself, “What’s in it for them? Why are they hosting this show? Are they trying to build a show for the masses and sell a membership site? Are they building a show with a small, niched appeal? And they are selling high-ticket high-value services on the backend like coaching or consulting? Why did they start the podcast, and what do they get out of it”?

That’s the best way to match up what you have to talk about to what they want to talk about on their podcast. And it will improve your pitches without even putting much effort into it. Be aware of the other person and figure out how you can support their mission.

[20:00] Don’t you think they can have both low-end and high-end offers behind that?

You will find that. You have to have a path to take them from the low-end product to the high-end product. They get into trouble when they offer two kinds of services and confuse the market because they are two different types of people-not the same people at two different stages.

[21:07] How should they promote their book on the show?

1. If you’re doing a launch, you can send them to Amazon. But always have two different options. “Here’s the easiest way to go grab the book from Amazon or Kindle. But here is where you can go and get onto my email list and get all these bonuses that I’ve set up for you.” (The name of the game is building a list with permission to keep in contact because one book doesn’t cut it.) It’s a series of books that make you the 7-figures over the long run.

2. Craig Ballantyne came up with a kit. The book was a free + shipping offer, then the next step in this funnel was “Hey, we have this kit.” And it has these 17 things in it. The kit was $199. He sold 30,000 books, 5,000 of the kit at $200 a piece. So, he could get a lot of people into the funnel. Now he has all their information. And when the next book comes out, he has the contact information for all those people and that changes the game.

[23:55] How did he get them?

The most successful thing turned out to be the podcast interviews. He was sending them to a site that he controlled to get the book, not to Amazon. And he probably had an Amazon bestseller in place before he switched over to that.

Second, he was running ads to cold traffic on Facebook and Instagram to the same top of that funnel.

And then, the third thing he did was he did affiliate mailings to other thought leaders and influencers that he had relationships with.

Ellen shared that you really have to have those relationships with people who have big lists.

Matt agreed and added that now days they have a podcast, so the best way to get those relationships is to ask to get on their podcasts.

[25:40] Ellen was excited to learn that getting on podcasts can get you in as an author because in the past it was difficult for new authors to get a big reach, especially if they don’t have money for advertising So, to know that you could actually create that by doing an Amazon bestseller campaign and backing it up with 100 podcasts is phenomenal.

[26:10] Ellen was taking the One Funnel Away Challenge [http://ellenlikes.com/ofa] and learning the exact strategies that Craig used, but Russell Brunson, who teaches it, had said to keep the first offer low-like $37- and his was $200. That’s a BIG difference!

Matt said he hasn’t seeing anyone else doing an upsell for that much money, but it’s a good kit. There is not much in there that by themselves is super high-ticket in terms of high cost but Craig put it together in a genius way.

[27:14] Going back to the masses and the few, Russell Brunson with Click funnels and what he’s doing, is all aimed at the masses. Then you have his higher-ticket offers that are only sold to the people who already have 6-figure funnels and are now looking to make them seven and eight figure funnels. So, when he says to go out and imitate what’s working in your industry, that’s good advice to get something up and going quickly. Once you’ve done that and it works, it pays to go and do the opposite of what everybody else is doing.

Ellen added…” Or at least to try, what the hell, if you can do it for $199 instead of $37!”

[28:14] You’ve done the interview…now what’s the single most powerful question you can ask after the interview?

Matt loved the question because he said this is why podcasting changed his life… because it changed his relationships.

After it’s over, he would say, “I really appreciate it, this has been awesome. It’s such a great opportunity to chat with you, how can I help you? Who can I introduce you to? Who’s that one person you’d like to meet? Maybe it’s a referral partner, a mentor, whatever that I can introduce you to?”

It catches them off-guard. And they are so blown away by the question, they may not even be able to come up with an answer. And, sometimes, there is a real-life introduction that comes out of that. Sometimes, you can make a quick introduction by email. But even if it doesn’t happen, just the act of asking, and then the natural reaction is “How can I help YOU?” when they get done thinking about themselves.

That act of unselfishness, that apparently is very rare in the podcasting world, gets the relationship off to a good start-to the point where he can reach out to podcasters and guests that he hasn’t talked to in a year or two years and they are so glad to hear from him.

So, the quality of his relationships don’t just come from podcasting, but from the follow up. Do keep your eye out and introduce them to somebody because that cements the relationship.

[31:24] How do you keep track of all your contacts?

You can do a fancy CRM and that’s fine, but Matt likes Trello because you can separate out your podcast hosts that he wants to build a relationship with, in one column. In the next column he adds influencers. And you can also grab their picture and throw it onto the card to help you remember who’s who. So, he has a rolodex of relationships that are key in his life. When he wants to look for introductions, he goes there. He asks himself, “Who are good podcasters? Who are good guests?” And he’ll look for ways to match them up-or if he gets a speaking opportunity that he can’t follow through on.

It also goes into my CRM too. But, it’s more passive, he doesn’t live in there like email and LinkedIn, and Trello makes it easy.

[33:13] ] How do you automate following up?

Matt said he uses Send Out Cards and likes them because you can do some fun things with them. He has a stock format that has his logo on the front and is blank on the inside. Send out Cards has a function where anyone can log into your account, and you can take a personal message and type it in, and it comes out looking like it’s handwriting. But it doesn’t really matter, it’s the thought that goes into it that counts.

Every day, his assistant in the Philippines sends him a message and they use an app called Voxer to exchange voice messages. She’ll recap who Matt spoke to the day before. Then Matt will say what to say to that person, “Thanks for having me on your podcast, I really loved the conversation, I hope it was super valuable. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I’m sure we’ll talk soon. Matt.”

She’ll transcribe it, and she’ll pop that into the Send-Out-Cards site, and she’ll kick out a thank-you card. It just takes him a minute of mental thought and the rest is taken care of. That’s a quick and easy way to kick out thank-you cards every day that he doesn’t have to write himself.

[35:46] Ellen thinks podcasting is a great way to connect with people and it’s fun because you’re always learning, and you do make relationships with people.

[36:26] If people are interested in creating their own podcast, Matt has a done-for-you service. But also, he knows that people are probably thinking, they don’t have the time to track down the podcasts and send these messages to pitch themselves. Matt was in the same boat; it was very doable; one pitch a day, but it never got done, so he now has someone on his team who is consistently reaching out and pitching him.

So, once he figured it out, he bundled it up into a training for other assistants. So, if you are the person who could be a podcast guest and needs someone to do the pitching, the scheduling and communicating with the podcast host to make this happen, Matt has the training for that.

You can learn more about the course at: pursuingresults.com/training
It’s not for you; you buy it and give it to your assistant or your VA or an intern as long as they are reasonably smart and have decent writing skills; they don’t have to have crazy expertise, or be a $100 an hour assistant. It can be someone who makes between $8-$15 an hour.

They can pitch you week in and week out and get you on 100 podcasts this year. Matt and his team actually do live calls with your helper to refine those emails and pitch messages that are going out to podcast hosts, to make sure that they are crisp, short, powerful and punch- to put you in the best light. They will be there for your help for those first few critical weeks to make sure that they are equipped and empowered and have everything they need and have a great pitch email to send out for you. There’s a free training on the link Matt mentioned to get started.

[38:46] Closing Thoughts (Extra tip)

It’s an audio medium, so whatever call to action you are giving, set up a specialized link on the website, which is a redirect. Don’t send them to an outside site. Don’t send them somewhere with a bunch of dots, dashes or hyphens. Podcast listeners are out in their car or at the gym and won’t be able to catch the link if it’s complicated. It has to be easy to understand and remember.

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