Ep. 28: Use a Podcast for Lead Generation (Even With a Small Audience) With Stacey Harris

Meg Casebolt 0:01
You’re listening to social slowdown a podcast for entrepreneurs and micro businesses looking for sustainable marketing strategies without being dependent on social media. Social media is a double edged sword. It’s a wonderful way to stay connected. But it also can feel like an addictive obligation. And it’s even more complex for businesses, your audience might be right there, but you’ve got to fight with algorithms to maybe be seen by them. So whether you want to abandon social media altogether, or you just want to take a month off, it’s possible to have a thriving business without being dependent on social media. This podcast is all about finding creative, sustainable ways to engage with your audience without needing to lip sync, send a cold DMS, run ads or be available 24/7. Let’s get started. Hello, Hello, friends. And welcome back to the social slowdown podcast. In this episode, today, we’re going to be talking all about how you can potentially use a podcast in order to grow your business and to grow your lead generation systems. Even if you have a small audience, we’re not going to be talking about monetizing and getting sponsorships and getting as many downloads as humanly possible, we’re really going to be talking about using a podcast to promote your business and get the right people to find you. So this podcast would be a really good fit for you to listen to, if you’re either thinking of starting a podcast to talk about your business and to educate your audience, or if you already have a podcast, but it’s not necessarily generating the leads that you want, then definitely tune into this episode, because I am chatting with Stacey Harris. Stacey is the founder of uncommonly more, which is a podcast production agency that helps experts and service based businesses to use their podcast to generate leads, and to build bigger impact by using their voice to reach a larger audience. Stacy herself has recorded over 500 episodes of her own podcast, which kind of makes my jaw dropped and like my brain freeze a little bit when I think about that. And so I asked her to share some wisdom all around how to figure out what it is that people are interested in and what format works best for your audience. And she gives some really great advice around how to give tons of value to your audience in your podcast to educate them on whatever it is that you’re trying to sell. So that not only are you building brand awareness, but you’re also shortening your sales cycle, you’re using your podcast to help people figure out what it is that you do and how you do it. So that by the time they get onto a sales call with you, most of the work is already done. And because Stacy has this backlog of episodes, and her people are really interested in listening to these, she’s able to convert a lot of new people to her podcast agency without necessarily being dependent on social media. So if that sounds interesting to you, I cannot wait for you to hear this episode. So let’s dive in. Hello, Stacey, I’m so excited to have you here on the social slowdown podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Hi,

Stacey Harris 3:07
thank you for having me. I’m really excited.

Meg Casebolt 3:09
If you don’t mind, let’s get started with you sharing with our listeners. what exactly it is that you do at your agency right now and how people can work with you.

Stacey Harris 3:18
Absolutely. We are a digital marketing agency that focuses on podcast production. We work with service and info based businesses. So think like coaches, web designers, accountants, things of that nature,

Meg Casebolt 3:33
just heard accountants and I was like, Oh, my God, I don’t want to listen to a podcast about accounting, but I’m sure someone else does.

Stacey Harris 3:39
I’m sure someone who potentially needs an account on again, that’s true. I mean, I could send you some very interesting accounting podcasts, I’m just saying there’s a lid for every cup. The model of our shows is not dissimilar for you from from the show you and I have, which is we’re using this show as a way to provide value to a listenership who’s looking to get a specific result. Now, generally speaking, that specific result is going to come from working with the host or investing in a program or buying a course, or whatever, you know, booking them to speak at their event, whatever the case may be. They’re not looking to monetize through sponsorships and ad revenue and things like that. And sometimes the listenership is completely served with what’s in the podcast. That’s one of the things I really like about our show, is I get emails all the time where people are like, Hey, you answered my question and solve my problem. And I was like, Yay, we did it.

Meg Casebolt 4:35
And I didn’t have to get on a call with you. And I didn’t have to take time out to write an email to you when you asked me the question. It was just already there for you to find and listen and gain.

Stacey Harris 4:46
And they didn’t have to spin around in indecision, trying to decide which thing they should buy and who they should buy it from. They just solved their problem what I like, and so we focus on that and we do that two ways. We do that on the free side, of course with our podcast. asked uncommonly more. But also we have podcast production services where we actually strategically produce shows for our clients. So they’re meeting with us once a quarter, we’re making decisions about content. Then we do everything that comes after raw audio and goes before marketing the episode like posting the audio Graham, we built you on social, everything in there, we take care of. And our clients go, oh, wow, I totally forgot this episode was gonna go out today, which is the other kind of email I really liked to get.

Meg Casebolt 5:30
Which is, people are really loving this episode that I forgot that I had this conversation because it happened so long ago. And now it just kind of happened. It just magic happened. I recorded a podcast and then it was promoted and sent out and people are enjoying it.

Stacey Harris 5:44
Yep, I got a DM from a client a couple days ago, there was like, I totally forgot I recorded this episode because they batch. So next level, recorded stuff we were releasing in late February, before with our winter break, because we take our agency and a lot of our clients, but our agency specifically closes the last two weeks of the year. And so we always have through that after that January when we return produce for our clients before we leave. Yeah, and this particular client went hella far and like done through the end of March before we went on her break. She forgot until till people started jamming her, as she told them to do in the episode. completely forgotten. She was like, I got this together, like what did it feel? Like I need to go listen to the episode on what I said, so that I could respond to the DMS. That’s really fun. It was like, wow, that’s next level. That’s next level.

Meg Casebolt 6:43
And I love the clarification that you made there, which is that we’re a podcast production units. The uncommonly more is a podcast production agency that helps service businesses to connect with people that may want to buy from them. You know, I think a lot of the larger podcast networks and the big names in podcasting, they have sponsorship deals, they are you know, like email, fire lets you pay to get on to the podcast, the guests are paying. And so they have different monetization strategies that make it make sense

Stacey Harris 7:14
infomercial, that’s what that makes it is

Meg Casebolt 7:18
that make your podcast profitable, that make it worth the time that you’re investing in the money that you’re investing in an agency if you’re choosing to outsource that. But I think a lot of people kind of expect that that is the model for podcasting, not podcasting as lead generation, which is a very different structure than monetizing the podcast itself and building the monetization into it. So how do you help your clients figure out how to get people to take action from the podcast? When you’re producing it?

Stacey Harris 7:48
So it, it often depends on what they want them to do what what the investment is. So we always work back from a couple of questions. And this is the part you’re gonna want to like pause and write down or, like, revisit later, because you’re gonna want to be able to answer these three questions whenever you sit down into your content strategy. And that’s who are we talking to? What are what do we need them to do next to solve their problem? And what do they need to know to be able to make the decision to do what comes next? If you can’t answer those three questions about every single episode you’re doing, there’s really no purpose in releasing the episode. It takes too much time and too much money to have a show and release that episode. If you can’t answer those questions, because the episode won’t be of service to you as a business owner, or to the audience member listening to it. Because I think we’ve all I think we’re really at this time where this is evolving. But we’ve always sort of been drowning in inspiration for the last five years. And it’s time to sort of take a deep breath. And that deep breath is action is doing something right it is it is moving forward. And so I look at every single episode, who is this episode for spoiler alert, it’s your ideal clients. What do we want them to do next? Book the call, buy the course, enroll in a program, you know, whatever your language is, you maybe just get on the email list, whatever it is, and then cool. So what’s the way I get them there? What’s the question they have first. And so for us, it’s a lot about empowering our listeners of our show that they know enough to know what their next solution is. And so it’s empowering them with just enough knowledge. Because sometimes we go so far into value, thinking that’s what’s going to convince them that we just dump everything all jargony at them that we know, trying to like prove that we’re the expert, not often helpful for anybody involved. And so we’re really focusing on what will get them to say yes to this next step. What do they need to know to make the decision and only giving them that much information and then Giving them that next step and making it stupid easy for them to take it. So one of the ways we do that is the call to action doesn’t sit at the end of the podcast, it sits closer up to the top and then is reinforced at the end. So that you’re reminded that there was a next step. But also, at the beginning, you’d be like, Oh, yes, I knew she was going to talk about this. That’s why I hit play, because I saw the title or whatever. Let me go make sure I have it so that that email, that sales page, whatever is on my computer, in my inbox, whatever the thing is, when I’m done listening,

Meg Casebolt 10:34
are you maybe if you don’t get to the end of it, you’re like, clicking through to the shownotes. And getting to whatever that call to action is, while you’re listening to it, because you also are integrating that information into the show notes and making sure that people have it in their podcast episode description. And, you know, really thinking through podcasting as an awareness tool and relationship building with your audience versus just, oh, it’s a form of entertainment. And I think

Stacey Harris 10:58
you hit it right on the head there with the word relationship. I have a whole episode of my show called this is your show, because my show doesn’t belong to me. If I did a show that was for me, it would be all like shits Creek memes. And and I don’t know, records, like just talking about vinyl records. Like that’s what it would be whatever sort of ADHD hyperfocus. This week, right now, it’s crochet dinosaurs because I made a mistake and went to Barnes and Noble over the weekend. But whatever the thing is, I’m obsessed with write, that would be my show, it would just be a terrible look at the inside of my brain. That’s not the purpose of uncommonly more, that’s not the purpose of the show. I’m hosting. It’s to serve the listenership. It’s to serve my business. And so I need to be making sure we’re having conversations in that place. And so my episodes are really built to build a relationship with the listenership. I know I’ve done my job when I get on a sales call. And this happens 80% of the time, and people do one of two things. They either tell me right up front, I’ve already decided we just need to make sure that the flow is going to work because we do have a pretty specific system we’ve built and we put clients into our system, we do not integrate into theirs. Yeah. Because generally, they don’t have one, lovingly, or two. And this one makes me sound egotistical, but I promise you, it just happens. And I’m not trying to be weird. But now they kind of like, I listen to you every day, or I’ve listened to all the podcasts, especially if I get on a football. I’ve been doing this eight years.

Meg Casebolt 12:31
556 episodes. Oh, I’m gonna like episode 20. And I’m like, this is hard.

Stacey Harris 12:39
It is it doesn’t actually. I mean, we could talk about that if you want it. There’s, it’s hard. There’s a new ways. Like life, really. But there is there’s one of those two moments. And that’s how I know I’ve done my job. Because they’ve already been educated on it. Everything they need to know, they just need their gut check. Yeah, I’m here for or they’re like, super excited to be there. Because we’ve bonded. I don’t know it yet. But we’ve bonded through some stuff.

Meg Casebolt 13:07
I love that feeling it weirded me out so much the first like 10 or 15 times that it happened where people were like, wow, I’m actually talking to you, you know? And, and to me, it’s just Well, I’m just me, what do you mean? But then I’ve had people say, like, you’ve you’ve been on my walks with me. You are like, when I’m cooking dinner, I’m watching your trainings, when you know, I’m on the treadmill, I have you in my ears, like the ways that people are engaging with our content. You know, for me, it’s mostly been YouTube until this past year with the podcast. The ways that people engage with us are intimate, and the ways that they’re hearing us talk, it really does feel like we’re talking to them, which is sort of the point of this. But then when you get into those one to one relationships, there is an I do it to where I’m like, like Stacey, I’ve known of you. You said you’ve been in business for 11 years, I’ve probably known of you for like five or six for when you were still in your social media days. And so when we got on a call the first time I was like, oh, oh, you know, like you like bought something from me and I saw your name pop up. really gets exciting when you have that moment, especially when it’s a mutually like, admirable situation.

Stacey Harris 14:19
It can go the other way. And that’s more awkward. No, it isn’t so much. My favorite one ever is back when we still interacted face to face as humans, you know? Yes. For time’s up. I was at an event at a conference. And at the time, I still had hot pink hair. So I was fairly recognizable. That was about your most event someone came up to me and this very lovely gentleman which by the way 97% of my audience is female identifying. But this very, very nice cisgender white man walks up to me and he goes, we shower together ever awake and I went, Oh, God. Well read the room, bro. Just take a big step back. Now he did it in. Amazingly, what’s the least threatening way, which also helps it I am like five nine and not particularly petite and

Meg Casebolt 15:17
presence will say you have presence in the room. Like,

Stacey Harris 15:20
hello now keep in mind this gentleman is 2025 years older than

Meg Casebolt 15:25
I? Well, it’s quite an introduction.

Stacey Harris 15:29
He’s like Tuesday mornings every week, my show comes out on Tuesday and I was like, Cool. And we proceeded to talk for a while he was very nice. I did tell him at the time that this would be a story I told forever, because it’s just the best way anybody has ever. Um, but it is it is a you don’t always necessarily understand the relationship you’re building with your listenership until you do it. I can’t express how much value I put on the people who DM me and the people who yes, ended up working. I mean, also, we have put together strategic content pieces in the last year or two to support our services that literally every client who has bought from me in the last 12 months listened to before they bought from us. And then they got on the call. And they were like cool, yeah, let’s do it. When can I start like that’s what that’s the information on my sales calls. So we’re also not building just weird senior citizens shower relationships, but actual sales conversations. That’s just the side of it. You don’t realize the impact you’re having. I also have people from back in my so for four years, I ran a membership site that had social media trainings in it. And it was a super fun time. And I had a great time with and I loved running that community. And the podcast sold that membership. And I get so much excitement now. From people who said, I never joined the membership. But I’ve been listening to every single episode. And take an action as this is what I built. This is because I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is because I took the XYZ course that you talked about on and they can tell me the podcast, I talked about it on theirs in impact, there is result there is something happening. And let me just say if you’re listening to this episode, and may has done that for you, or you listened to me before, or there’s another podcast that you just thought of that you were like, yes, there’s somebody tell them all, please go tell them because the the reciprocity, to us as hosts is so incredible, because it’s really easy to be like why am I doing this? This is hard. No one listens to it, because you spend two hours in your office talking to your computer, and it’s lonely and isolating. And maybe I’m just an extrovert living in a pandemic. I don’t know. You know,

Meg Casebolt 18:01
I think I’m the same way though, where when I’m having the interview conversations, I definitely feel like Oh, I’m getting some value out of the conversation with you. You know, I joke sometimes, like podcast episodes are just free consulting for the host where we get to ask questions to people and get that information. And I’m the same way as a guest where it’s like, Great, let’s, let’s talk about whatever you want. Let’s use you as an example. Like it’s a really fun consulting environment, but also like, I feed off the energy of the people I’m talking to. But I know that you also do a lot of like, so episodes, and those are the hardest for me, even though they’re shorter, they’re more concise, I go in with a really clear intention versus kind of opening the door and seeing what happens. But they’re so energetically draining to me.

Stacey Harris 18:45
Oh, absolutely. I am unequivocally extrovert. And so I so when my show first launch, we had a guest every week, and it’s transitioned over the years. And I say that mostly to highlight the fact that whatever you decide, today only has to be your decision for today, your show can evolve. Because now eight years and 550 episodes in, we only have know a handful of guests a year and most often their clients. Because when I look at the data, and I look at the numbers, that’s what works best for the you know, bla bla bla bla bla bla, data ruins everything. Data ruins all it does it it makes everything better. But in the meantime, I occasionally have to tantrum about it. I think it’s healthy relationship to have with data. And so you know, the data set, like what sells what works, what keeps the listeners showing up and engaging was getting the value they showed up for not the value of Mike sort of guessed as you’re right. And so for me, and we really transitioned out of it. And it’s been really hard because I had to learn and we have like in our house built SOPs and in my business built SOPs to support me on days I batch solo episodes because like, at the end of the day, I’m wiped imagine if you are an introvert and Imagine that you had to spend the whole day at an event of like 1000 people, and how tired you would be at the end of the day, I feel the same way after having to record episodes alone for two to three hours.

Meg Casebolt 20:11
I’m the same way. It’s like so draining to me, YouTube, podcasts, whatever it is, you know, whenever I don’t have a feedback mechanism. Yeah, it’s really hard for me. So I’m glad to hear I’m not alone in that, you know, some people, that’s all they want to do is like, I have this idea, I want to get it out into the world. And so it’s interesting to hear that you went from like, almost exclusively interview format. And then 500 episodes later, you’re almost exclusively solo episodes,

Stacey Harris 20:40
we did always have solo. So when we first launched, we did two episodes a week, I had a solo episode, which hold on to your chairs was 45 minutes long, don’t do that. It’s too long. It’s too long. In fairness, there were nine podcasts in 2013. Okay, there weren’t as many options. And like two of them were hosted by women. Okay. It was, it was fine. Um, but I also in addition to that, I also released a guest episode every week. So we had Tuesday, Thursday episodes. And it was a great idea. Because literally even now I’m like, if I could survive, that I can do anything

Meg Casebolt 21:16
that we’re doing right now through may just to launch the podcast. And I’m like, I’m looking forward to easing off a little bit back into one a week. Yeah, but I wanted to come out of the gate strong, and I had a lot of ideas. And so yeah, I feel the pain on that one.

Stacey Harris 21:29
So I think that’s, that’s the Achilles heel of every new podcaster is I have so many ideas. Yes. Um, but it is, it is patience. Um, it is good upfront, I find the biggest benefit for me of two a week was it felt like a one for me one for them kind of exchange, because they would get a solo episode that was value. And then I would get a conversation with somebody who I found interesting, because I very much use those. Because this was pretty early in my business. I think it was maybe your three of my business, I had made some big transitions. I was a little bit looking to like, get some free professional expert. Yeah. There is one question I would like to ask you. And so instead of booking it out, or what do you like to call on my, one of nine podcasts? And they said, Yes. And so I got to talk to really cool people. So it did feel like and I think that’s a fun way to start a show one for me, one for them kind of vibe. But at this point, I’m really focused more on building an asset library that drives sales that drives leads that serves and helps inform the decision making of the people who want to work with me, and maybe even more importantly, the people who don’t want to work with me because like, if you don’t want to work with me, I would much rather you go find somebody you do want to work with, than like, sit in discomfort in my pool, like, no, go go find go find the right pool for you. And so it a lot of it was changing the perspective on how my show was built to serve both the listener and my business.

Meg Casebolt 22:57
Yeah, so with 550 episodes, how do you help people know where to start without feeling overwhelmed.

Stacey Harris 23:07
I really work to make every episode an entry point. So I try not to make any wild assumptions about the listeners expertise. I talked to everybody like grownups, certainly not remedial. Um, but we make it. I’m always talking about like other episodes, you can find that would be helpful, or, you know, whatever. I look at my show, and I think you’ll appreciate this. Anybody could walk in at any point, there is the same way you look at like your blog posts and SEO, when I google the thing when I go into Apple podcasts, and I search for podcasters. Or, I mean, you should really sit and go on Apple podcasts or podcasts. And I cannot think of a better when you go in and you search SEO because you’re looking for a podcast on SEO. I want you to find not just my show, not just the script, but an episode that’s going to help you so that you will subscribe and keep listening. Because almost never has the list of episodes been so enticing that I was like yes, yes, this show was for me. No, it’s that I found an episode that I thought was interesting. I listened to that episode, and I either never listened to that show again. Because let’s be honest, that does happen. I a little bit fell in love with the person and then felt the incredible need to tell them that they had also been in the shower with me. You know, like, I fell in love on that level. And so I try to make every episode a place where you could come in, get what you need, and decide if you want to hang out at this party.

Meg Casebolt 24:43
And that’s what I teach with with SEO too, which is like every everything that you create can be an introduction to somebody based on what it is that they’re searching for. And what you just described is just podcast SEO. It’s just you know, going into the Apple platform or into Spotify versus going into Google But now even Google’s, you know, indexing podcasts and able to show those in the results. So if you’re looking for a specific podcast, you can go look for that I was looking up. Here’s, here’s the, like, tight fit for you, I was looking up the zones of regulation method of emotional, like regulation for kids because it was something that one of the teachers in my kids school was like Sam’s really, you know, getting along with and he like, understands this color system, you should do it at home. And I’m like, Well, I don’t want to read a book about that. So let me just find the founder in podcasts and go jump around to different podcasts that founder has been on. And then once I found that phrase, zones of regulation in my podcast editor, or not podcast editor, podcast player, then it made sense to me that I could stay with the episodes where I liked the host. And I learned more about sensory processing, and all sorts of other you know, neuro divergent kid things, because that’s the introduction that we need. But I dropped in at episode like 123. And I was able to do that. So when you’re thinking about whatever it is, that you’re creating for your content, know that people can drop in at any point, and then they might stick around, and they might not. And when you have that depth of, you know, 500 plus episodes, it’s like, every single one of those can be a point of introduction, which is so powerful, and also probably terrified to ask people. What am I gonna come up with 500 ideas you don’t need to do

Stacey Harris 26:30
you want to talk about? You’re not I don’t have 500 different episodes of my show. So first of all, let’s put this into context. Like we talked about, I used to focus on social media. And so there are older parts of my show older episodes on the show, that are not even about what I sell anymore. Yeah. Now, some of those we are are updating to align what we were talking about in social media specifically for podcasters. We have one coming out. In the next couple months, where we redid an Instagram episode we did specifically for how podcasters can be using Instagram and engaging with Instagram to grow their listenership. So somewhere evolving like that. But here’s the wonderful thing, if you go to the last 12 months of my show, spoiler alert, there’s really only like four or five episodes. I’m talking about the same thing, six different ways, because no one, but me and my team are listening to every single episode of my show. I say in the outro of my show, and if you’ve ever heard it, you know, if you made it to this point, statistically, that’s unlikely. You should really listen to what comes next. That’s the big that is the it is a pre recorded SPOILER ALERT guys behind the curtain. That is a pre recorded outro that sits at the very end of every episode. So if you have listened to it, you know, that’s your cue to turn it off. I also listen to podcast guys, I know what you do.

Meg Casebolt 27:59
But I want to talk about that transition from doing social media for people being in social media, teaching social media, and then having a recognition at some point that like, this isn’t the thing for me. And I because this is the you know, the whole premise of this podcast at this point is like, how do I get off of social media? How do I spend less time on social media and you were like in it all the time? I’d love to hear if it was I want to get out of social or I want to pursue this new thing. Were you running away from social or towards podcasting or a combination of both?

Stacey Harris 28:32
The answer was yes. So to take it a little bit back briefly, my degree is in audio engineering. My first exposure to marketing and sales through social media was right after college, I worked for a local radio station, a local label that had a web radio station before Spotify and Apple music exists. This was an embedded HTML player on our website, knew that technology well. My job at 19 years old, prepare yourselves was to go to bands in Phoenix, Arizona, and try to convince them to submit songs to this radio station. Not a terrible job for a 90 year old single girl. But my space is critical so that when you walk up to the band at the show, they have some understanding of who you are. Because I found that if we did not start on MySpace and a like, here’s what’s happening, and here’s why I want to meet with you after the show. There was a different dynamic.

Meg Casebolt 29:34
Let me know that you go so far back when you’re like, Oh, well, my social media career started without outreach on MySpace.

Stacey Harris 29:41
It did. It did. I have been in both audio and social media for 20 years. Because I am prehistoric.

Meg Casebolt 29:54
Well, digital prehistoric. Yeah. I mean,

Stacey Harris 29:57
in terms of the internet, I am an actual Dinosaur and crochet dinosaur. Exactly. That really explains my adult affinity for dinosaurs. But no, I so yes, really we so we launched the agency in 2019. As a full service agency, it’s called uncommonly more because I wanted to provide uncommonly more for our clients. Because often I find that expertise sits in one of the silos. But when our marketing strategy doesn’t connect those silos, none of them operate efficiently. And so I wanted to be able to make those silos operate efficiently. And spoiler alert, I hate it. Social media has changed a ton in the last few years, I’ve been in business 11 years I’ve been in social media, in one way or another for 20 years, I have only ever really used social media tools professionally. Before that we before MySpace where I was using it for a job. There wasn’t I mean, Friendster doesn’t count guys, it just doesn’t. Remember the blogging platforms. Anyways, I’m just

Meg Casebolt 31:05
Live Journal I had, I had

Stacey Harris 31:10
homestead where you could build your own like little

Meg Casebolt 31:12
website, I had like a geo City’s website. You know, they had like the different neighborhoods. So I was South Beach.

Stacey Harris 31:21
But I never really used those before I started using them professionally. So when we launched the agency, I was like, no, no, I actually have the advantage of understanding the connectivity here. We need to use that. And it was hard to do all of that in the uncommonly more way that I wanted to do it to do it in a way where there was really depth in each of those places. And so we shifted, and we really focused on the thing that I’ve been doing for a really long time you eight years, hosting a show, especially these eight years of hosting a show, I have seen podcasting transform, and expand. I mean, I remember a world without Joe Rogan. Okay, it was a wonderful place full of joy, and wonder. Um, and so I’ve been in it a long time. And so I knew I could offer something different. And so the point we were making earlier, there’s not a lot of resources for people who are building this kind of show. Yeah, the conferences, and the courses are most often geared towards people looking to monetize through ads and sponsorships. And when you are using this as a lead generation tool, that can be appealing because you see that fancy word man monetized and you think money in the bank. But in reality, it is a whole lot cheaper, and I monetize that at a way more profitable level, looking to get a couple of clients a year from the show, than I do to have to do the work to get the listenership to garner that equivocal amount of money in sponsorship dollars consistently.

Meg Casebolt 33:03
Everything that I do about like the number of listeners that you have the number of subscribers, that you have the number of followers that you have only matter if your business model is around monetization. So if you’re writing a book, if you’re trying to sell sponsorships, if you’re trying to get like AdSense revenue from to a blog post, then yeah, that matters. For the rest of us who are providing services who are selling products who are doing software, who are consultants, like volume is not the metric that we need to be tracking the noise on loans that you’re getting on your podcast doesn’t matter if it’s all the wrong people will

Stacey Harris 33:37
not buy from you. And by the way, the amount of downloads that you think is not that much, it’s probably about average, because we have we have no concept. Bonus Tip of the day, if you want to have a real idea of what downloads are actually looking like go to buzzsprout.com/global stats, the average most months, the 50% of all shows are getting somewhere in the mid 20s of downloads in seven days.

Meg Casebolt 34:05
I have above average already. I’m only like 20 episodes in WoW.

Stacey Harris 34:11
In that first seven days, you’re in the top 50% of shows. Wow. So your downloads really, really, really, really are not ever as bad as you think. And you’re exactly right. That number is the least relevant podcast that I have. It matters

Meg Casebolt 34:31
are the relevant podcast stuff, give me the ones that you do look at for your clients.

Stacey Harris 34:35
So for me, we look at engagement. So did this end up with people in my DMs because that means I activated them on a topic to the point in which they needed to respond because they opened another app found my name and damned me or they hit reply to the email or they I frequently say on my show I accept everything except carrier pigeons and that because I don’t do birds. But no, but I send me a message. So engagement, but also, there was a call to action. And when we have we have dashboards that all of our clients in it and we have what was the call to action for this episode as part of the dashboard, so we know exactly what we wanted them to do. Did that happen? Am I seeing email, signups? Am I seeing calls booked? Am I seeing conversation started? In however I start sales conversations, right? Yeah. And then the other way we look at it is when I get into those sales conversations, specifically for service providers, pay attention to how much those questions are your words? My favorite thing is when people asked me podcast questions, and I know they listened to the show, and that’s how they got the question. Because they used my words, they described the question to me in the same way I described the question to them on the podcast.

Meg Casebolt 35:58
Apparently, they didn’t listen to the answer of the question on the podcast, or they want to know how it’s applicable to them in their business. And

Stacey Harris 36:03
we tend to all think that we are magical fairy individuals, and that whatever general advice is given certainly doesn’t apply to us. I am as guilty of this as the planet. And so yes, usually is like, well, I want to give you the specifics of my situation. And then I go, you give me a baby. So and then I repeat the advice that I gave on the show generally, tying to them specifically, why that advice. But but that’s what happens. And so those are what I’m looking for downloads to me, are really only a metric that tells me the value of repurposing it, if I got a bunch of people to pay attention to it once Cool, let’s get a bunch people to pay attention to it again. But it only mean something because of the other things. Because I’m paying attention and engagement because I’m paying attention to that relationship building. Because I’m paying attention to that closure. Also, don’t be afraid to ask people to get on sales calls with you do some of the show, because they will tell you absolute better or worse,

Meg Casebolt 37:06
they’ll they’ll tell you everything. I mean, and from you know, I’ve my primary business, this is just kind of a fun conversation starter, I have no idea how I’m gonna make money off of this. It’s just kind of a fun thing that I’m doing right now. It’s a community project more so than anything else at this point. But my primary business is search engine optimization. So people will come in and be like, how did you find me? And one of the options is always like a search engine or Google and it’s like, great, what was your keyword? Even if they didn’t, they found me on that day. They don’t remember what the phrase that they’re searching for. But especially podcast, it’s like I heard you on someone else’s podcast, and then I came over to check out your podcast, you know, when you know that people are want to engage in a certain media format, then you can continue to engage them across all of those different channels too. So that’s really powerful. Absolutely. So obviously, I’m going to send people if you guys are interested in learning more about podcasting about especially doing it for a service based business, which is who Stacy’s talking to go on over, we’ll link to her podcast in the show notes. Stacey, how else do you want people to connect with you? What do you want them to learn from

Stacey Harris 38:12
you here, everything is over and uncommonly moore.com. The best place to go. If podcasting is something you’re really paying attention to right now or something you’re looking maybe you’re in sort of a learning moment your data collecting is head over to on commonly more.com/newsroom. It’s actually where we have a secondary private podcast, where we release sort of the podcast news you need. That month, we do well, and then we do from time to time offer some bonus episodes. These last couple of months, I’ve been talking about a another podcast I’m watching. That’s excessive, but exciting. And in fact, just this month, we’re dropping an episode about why we’re pushing back the launch of that and being really honest about what’s involved in launching a show. Especially if it’s not your first show. Yeah, or a second show,

Meg Casebolt 39:04
you probably think it’s pretty easy to launch another podcast because you have Well, I mean, you in particular have a podcast production agencies. So you can be like, alright, I recorded another thing, go put it out there. But the process of launching and getting people to listen and growing an audience is you have to start from scratch every time.

Stacey Harris 39:22
Also, this show is in a completely different space. It’s a different kind of show. This This show has different goals. And we talk a lot about that in the course of the launch. This new show that’s going to be launching is much more of a passion project for me. It’ll be sponsored by the agencies, mostly because the agency will produce it it’s a pro bono situation. I know a guy and so we will produce the show but it’s it’s built for me to go have some really fun conversations that I want to have in a in a different space and so that I can do some learning about a a different industry that I would like to be supporting, and I would like to be connecting with. And so it’s got very different goals. And that means making very different decisions. And so we talk a lot about the comparison of how I make decisions for you. Mm, and for the podcast newsroom and how I’m making decisions for this new show. So it’s, it’s very interesting if it’s something that you’ve sort of got in your purview, and maybe you feel like you are over and or under thinking

Meg Casebolt 40:27
like over and or under thinking either way, kind of getting the behind the scenes of how this is all working together.

Stacey Harris 40:33
If you want to know how to professional would do it. Here you go.

Meg Casebolt 40:38
Well, thank you so much for being here with us today. I really appreciate it.

Stacey Harris 40:41
Thanks for having me.

Meg Casebolt 40:44
Thank you so much for listening to the social slowdown podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or come on over to social slowdown.com and sign up for our email list. You never miss an episode. We’d also love if you could write a review to help other small business owners find the show you can head over to social slowdown.com/review Or grab that link in our show notes for easy access. We’ll be back soon with more tips to help you market your business without being beholden to social media. Talk to you then

Please forgive any typos as this transcript was automatically generated by otter.ai.