If you’re looking for information on how to grow a digital marketing agency, you’re in the business of relationships.
Relationships = partnerships, (and therefore sales).
The more conversations you have with the right people, the better your business will be for it. If we disagree on this, you may not derive much from this article…
If we agree, however, read on!
Imagine if you had a way to get a meeting with anyone you wanted to, and build a genuine value-driven relationship with them?
At scale.
A Tier 1 potential client. A great referral partner. An influencer who could promote you to their audience.
What would that do for your agency?
In this post, I’m going to detail the exact process for building those relationships at scale, in a very short amount of time, by using a channel that is massively under-utilized by agencies – podcasting for advertising agencies. Podcasting can be the key to how to grow a digital marketing agency.
Podcasting For Growing a Digital Marketing Agency
It won’t go into detail of how to properly launch a podcast – that’s another post entirely (or you can see this free video workshop here).
So with that, let’s get into it. But first, to dispel some myths:
Don’t I need to build an audience over 6-12 months before I see results from podcasting?
Short answer: no.
When most people think of the benefits of podcasting, they think of the primary content marketing benefit.
Build an audience of listeners, provide valuable content, give away free education and build trust in the eyes (or ears) of your listeners.
Eventually you will get leads, and those leads will be great leads, because they feel like they already know you. After all, you’ve been in their ears for 30 minutes every week. These leads are a major asset when it comes to how to grow a digital marketing agency.
And believe me, that’s a great benefit! It works—if you commit.
But… it’s a slow burn. Anyone who runs a podcast can tell you that it takes a while to get up and running, to the point where you are generating leads.
It’s not like your podcast is useless up until this point, though. It’s a great authority indicator for prospects, and immediately positions you as a thought leader in some form or fashion.
But that aside, you don’t need to wait to build that audience to start generating leads…
How? Well, outside of your primary audience, there’s your second audience… your guests.
What do I mean by this?
In much the same way as your listeners will come to engage with you, so will your guests – but on a much quicker timeline.
Think of it this way: every guest you bring on your show will know, like and trust you.
You’re automatically viewed as an authority in their eyes.
And that’s what I mean by your “second audience” – your guests, who have value to provide. You can get in front of them with a single email, and achieve a 90% response rate (I’ll get to this).
What could you do with that? If you had the ability to get pretty much anyone to know, like and trust you, in a very short amount of time? And from there build on that trust, and figure out ways you can work together for mutual gain?
It’s a practically instant win.
That’s what I’m going to show you how to do.
Podcasting For Advertising Agencies Is a Win / Win / Win
To briefly address a concern that may have popped into your mind:
It’s possible you have conjured thoughts of an evil genius, stroking their cat and puffing their cigar.
“Am I just speaking to guests with the sole purpose of serving my ulterior motive?”
No.
To be clear: yes, you will benefit from having them on as a guest.
But to put your mind at ease – so will they. And most importantly, so will the audience. 🙂
It’s a win / win / win.
Here’s how:
The audience wins by having two experts give away valuable information, for free.
You win by building a relationship that may result in a partnership with your business.
Your guest wins in a number of ways:
- Free exposure for their company and/or personal brand
- Positioning as an expert
- A platform to drive leads for their own business
These are some of the tangible ways your guest gets something out of being a guest on your show. People pay PR agencies big $$$ for this – and here you are giving it to them for free.
But also, importantly, they have a chance to share their message and give back. And people actually really like doing that. It’s a good feeling.
Think of it this way: if your high school or college asked you to come back as an established expert and give a keynote speech to the young up and comers – you’d do it, right? Even if there’s no money involved. And you’d feel pretty good about it too.
It’s an honor. A privilege. A chance to give back. A status bump. As humans, we’re conditioned to want that. It gives us the warm and fuzzies.
And the same principle applies to podcast guests – in addition to a free marketing channel, you’re giving them the “warm and fuzzies”, and that’s worth something.
Who should I bring on as a guest?
To be clear, your main priority must be to serve your audience first.
Not you, not your guest – although you will both be secondary beneficiaries, as outlined above.
So:
Do they have something of value to offer your primary audience?
That’s the first question you need to ask yourself.
If the answer is yes, then you can think about inviting guests in these four categories:
- Tier 1 prospects – who do you really want to work with?
- Referral partners – who could introduce you to people you want to work with?
- Agency partners – who do you want to do work with in a partnership capacity?
- “Influencers” – it’s in “quote marks” because the word has become so overused – basically, who has an audience of people you want to work with?
This is where your goals for your podcast come into play.
Do you want to go hard on lead generation? Then invite more prospects.
Or is this a branding play? Then interview influencers and authorities.
You get the idea. And it’s perfectly reasonable to use a combination of these – that’s what I do anyway!
For the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus more so on the Tier 1 prospects side of things, but the same principles apply to all kinds of guests.
So from here, create a good old Google Sheet, and call it “Ideal Guest List”.
Start listing names – aim for 30 or more. You should see an acceptance rate of ~90% – that’s what we see when we use the script further along in this post.
With that 90% acceptance rate, you should land 27 or them. But let’s call it 75% to be safe – call it 22 guests on your show.
Or, more pertinently: 22 strategic relationships, with people you will provide value to. Before you ‘pitch’ anything, if it comes to that.
Now, don’t worry – once we’ve reached out and interviewed these people, we’re not going to give the hard pitch for what we want from them (although we will discuss how to bring up opportunities further on in this post).
For now, the goal is to build a relationship – even if you don’t do anything “proactive” with those relationships just yet (although we will). I don’t need to tell you, dear agency owner, how powerful strong relationships are in the B2B space.
Now, back to that list…
On your list, include the company (or personal brand) they are associated with, and a column for the category they fall into (prospect, partner etc.)
From there, fill out, or have a VA fill out the rest of the following columns:
Role/job title
Domain/URL
Topic
Guest type
Email address
It need not be any fancier than this, as an example:
You now have a list of 30 people who can help you in a big way, most of whom will likely want to talk to you!
How do I approach a potential guest?
The basic principle is the same as in any form of cold outreach – make it about them. What do they get out of it?
Here is a template I use:
Subject: Can we feature you {{first_name}}?
Hey {{first_name}},
I love what you’re doing over at {{company}}! Your take on {{topic}} really resonates with me. Would you be interested in being a guest on my podcast?
You’ve got a great message and I know our audience would get so much out of it.
We’d promote it to our email list, social media channels, link back to anywhere you’d like us to, and distribute it through iTunes and podcast directories.
Interested? Let me know and I can send over more details!
Thanks,
{{your_name}}
—
If you have a sizable audience, you could include a line about that. Even if you have, say, 1000+ Linkedin connections – you can drop that in (“I’ll share it with my network of 1500 Linkedin connections”). That adds some extra weight.
Like I said, this kind of email gets about a 90% acceptance rate.
Can you imagine a cold email getting a 90% response rate? And not only 90% response rate, but 90% “let’s jump on the phone and talk for 30 minutes”.
Why does this email work so well?
For reasons listed above – they are getting something if they respond.
Exposure. Fame. Authority. The “warm and fuzzies”. They get these things, if they respond.
So, now that you have a podcast guest, what do you TALK about with them?
I’m so glad you asked. Stay tuned for part 2 of this podcasting for advertising agencies series, coming at you later this week, for that answer and so much more.
To learn more about how to grow a digital marketing agency, visit AMI at our blog and check out our other amazing articles.
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