There are so many different ways and channels to grow your business, but in this guide I’m going to share my #1 audience growth strategy that works every single year:
- Regardless of SEO or Google changes
- Ad platform tweaks
- Or state of the economy
I used it to grow my blog when I first launched it, and get tens of thousands of visits overnight as a relative unknown, while also securing over 6 figures in sales.
Better still?
This works even if you’re a solopreneur or a small business with very little spare time, because it’s designed for maximum ROI for effort invested.
So let’s break it down…
Why do billion dollar movie companies get their actors to go on talk shows?
They have all this advertising budget and money, so why do they insist on putting Tom Holland on Jimmy Kimmel and other platforms?
It’s because they know that the fastest way to grow your audience and get attention to an offer, is to get in front of someone else’s audience.
In one appearance they can get access to millions of people.
But better still?
- It only takes around 30 minutes to do,
- The audience trusts the host and now they know, like and trust the guest
- and will check out what they’re selling and buy
Fun fact: When Oprah had guests on, her recommendations were so powerful that the company’s websites would crash from too many sales!
The good news is, you don’t need to be a celebrity to take advantage of this. In fact, I did it as a complete unknown with a brand new website.
So let me explain:
When I first launched my blog, I was starting from zero in one of the most competitive industries out there – content marketing.
I’m a nerd and knew how to grow a blog, but I didn’t want to wait months for SEO to kick in, and I didn’t want to spend money on ads at that time.
So rather than try and build an audience from scratch, I went straight to audiences that already existed, and I pitched podcasts.
So not Oprah, but definitely people bigger than me.
I had no public speaking experience, but I had done countless zoom calls and customer conversations, so I figured how different could it be? It’s just the same as me chatting with anyone else.
So, I sat down and I pitched 80 shows as a complete unknown, and got booked on 60 of them.
That’s a 75% success rate from a cold email!
These weren’t small shows either. I’m talking about podcasts like Co-Schedule, Active Campaign, CopyChief and more. All podcasts with my EXACT ideal audience, and thousands of downloads per episode.
The results?
Every time an episode went live, I got waves of highly targeted traffic to my website. And that makes sense, because studies show that 73% of podcasts listeners take an action after hearing a recommendation, just because of that trust factor I mentioned earlier.
So they would listen to the show, visit my site, subscribe, and some of them became customers almost immediately.
What I didn’t realize at the time is that the benefits would continue to stack up.
- You see, those episodes would continue to send traffic months after they aired.
- While other podcasts would hear me on these other shows, and then reach out and ask me to be a guest on theirs.
- I even got a job offer from one fortune 500 company who had heard me speak!
Even crazier still?
Within 3 months of doing this, my brand new website started to outrank competitors that had been running for years, thanks to how powerful the links from these podcasts were!
So yeah, you can say that I’m a fan of this channel.
However…
Most people do this wrong and can’t understand why they don’t see the same results, so I’m going to share my process that I like to call the Audience Avalanche method.
So let’s break this down.
How the Audience Avalanche Works
Like I said up top, I like to get the maximum ROI from everything I do if possible, because I would rather spend my free time doing other things.
With that in mind, the system I’ve created for this may seem a little complex but I promise its simpler than it looks, and it pays off.
Before I ever send a pitch to a show, I build the following assets.
The pre-frame content
First off, I’ll pick a product or service that I have, and I’ll write a piece of content for it.
This article should be on a topic that your ideal customer will be interested in reading.
Maybe it helps solve a pain point or it’s an aha moment they need to have before they are ready to buy, or perhaps it just helps sell them on what they want that your offer provides.
For example
Here’s a deep dive guide into how to capture more leads with old content:
This is a genuinely good piece of content that helps the audience, so that if someone found this organically it would also help them understand and move towards being a customer.
Equally as important though, I’ll make sure that this topic is interesting to a podcast host by making sure it’s something like an outstanding result or process. Basically something I know that the shows that have my audience would be interested in.
In this example I talk about the high opt-in rate of the method, but also how a student followed it and got a 1,570% increase in leads in just 90 days, leading to tens of thousands in sales – all from using their exact same content on a fairly small blog.
This topic ties into my offer, but it’s also sexy. It’s something the host will want to talk about, which is key to getting accepted.
The lead capture
Secondly, I’ll create a Hyper Specific Offer for that article. This is a lead magnet that’s designed to be the next logical thing that the reader wants to take.
For example
If my article is a case study that breaks down a step by step process of how I helped a student grow to 10k visits in 3 months, I would then create the HSO to tie into that. Maybe a video to follow along, some templates, an AI tool etc.
Here you can see the final version below that I went with:
Basically, I try to get in their head and understand what they are thinking at that time and what they want to do? If I can give that to them, I’ll see around 15% opt-in rates from cold traffic (but even higher from podcast listeners).
This then helps me capture the lead so I can have a chance to make sales later on.
The email automation
Finally I’ll create a basic email sequence that ties into what they opted in for, and my offer to help move them towards being a customer.
This converts well because we’re tailoring this to the exact reason they opted in. So the problem, pain point and goal are super aligned.
So to recap so far…
We have:
- An asset that is able to get organic traffic on Google
- A lead capture technique that works insanely well that’s connected to it
- And then an automated email sales sequence
Sounds good right, but what does this have to do with pitching podcasts, and why does this make it more successful then just going on and pitching an offer?
Well, there’s a few things happening.
Why this method works so well for solopreneurs
What I love about this method is all the additional benefits you get, while removing the common issues that come with being on a podcast.
It gets us accepted onto the show easier
Most people struggle to pitch shows because the topic doesn’t fit, or because they are trying to sell something to their audience.
But by aligning the pitch with our article topic, it shows that we know what we’re talking about and are more likely to say yes.
We can even include the article in the pitch email for proof that we are experts.
By pitching a content topic also, it helps us bypass any costs….
It gets us on the shows for free
When you pitch a show because you have a product going live, a lot of shows will want either a payment up front, or a percentage of sales that come through. As you can imagine, we don’t really want to pay or be bothered to set up affiliate commissions and tracking.
The good news is that by pitching the article topic you’re instead pitching them on something that you know their audience is interested in and that ads value to their audience.
The host needs topics each week so this helps them not have to come up with an idea, but better still if they know you can back up this information.
I’ve been on multiple shows for FREE that usually charge just to have a guest on who isn’t pitching, and they’ve accepted because the topic is something they really want to chat about.
It causes the article to rank
When you reference the article inside the episode, you’ll get a backlink from the show.
However, rather than that link going to your home page and doing nothing, or a squeeze page where people bounce, it’ll go to your article which will now rank higher in Google, meaning it’ll get free traffic from search engines:
Links like these are insanely powerful.
(That’s why even if you tried to buy them, they would costs thousands of dollars each on their own).
It’s not just traditional SEO that benefits from being linking to your article from shows though…
It causes you to show up more in AI search
By being a guest on all these shows and talking around the same article topic, will also impact your AI search.
How?
Simply because these AI tools like to recommend sites with ‘brand authority’.
So when you show up on multiple podcasts as guest talking about the same topic (but tweaked for their audience), you’ll start getting recommended for this topic again and again:
It drives more listener traffic from every episode
During the episode you’ll be talking about the topic, but probably not in as much detail as your article. So it’s really easy to hint at the things covered in your guide, and then get far more people to click across and check it out. This means much more traffic per show.
However, if all we did was pitch a lead magnet, even if the episode was great and you were on fire, far less of the listeners would want to click across, because they don’t see the immediate value or want to be pitched.
Even if the lead magnet is something they really want, it’s not super exciting to click across to. It’s easy for it to become a task ‘they do later’ but never come back to.
But if they’re listening to the show and want to learn more, and your article covers it?
Well then they’ll click like crazy and come across ASAP:
Some will even do it while listening and pause the show, just so they can learn more ASAP.
When done correctly, the article captures leads
The industry standard opt-in rate is about 2%.
But when you use an HSO like this alongside your article, you can get around 15% from a cold audience.
However, I’ve seen podcasts traffic convert at around 40% because they’re already super warm leads after listening.
This means you can convert far more of that lost traffic into potential sales, and then sell them via automation over time.
It becomes an evergreen asset.
Although podcast appearances can drive a lot of traffic on launch and then for a few weeks later, the traffic will eventually die off.
However, because you were smart to build links to an article instead, it’ll now get traffic for years to come, all while capturing leads and converting to sales.
Fun fact: I still have an article I promoted via podcasts that gets me traffic and leads and it’s been at least 5 years since I promoted it using this method!
Not bad right?
You gotta love it when you can do something once and it continues to pay off.
It’s time to try this audience growth strategy for yourself
Like I said up top, this audience avalanche method is a little more effort up front, but it increases your success rate of being accepted, while also increases the traffic that comes across, as well as leads and sales.
You can then pitch as many relevant shows as you want, and each time they go live expect to see a burst of sales not long after.
I like to do bursts of them where I pitch maybe 50 shows and go on 30 or so over a few months. It’s a great way to get a lot more leads and sales, and I can batch out going on the shows.
It’s honestly one of the best audience growth strategies I’ve ever used, and it can work for businesses of any size. But it’s especially great for solopreneurs and smbs because:
- You make the evergreen asset
- Record a show for 40 minutes
- And then see thousands of visits and sales
So if you’re stuck for time, you can see huge results all on your own, again and again.