How to Grow Your Podcast Through Promotions and Sponsorships feat. Joe Casabona

Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the all systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sell systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis

Chris Davis 0:31
welcome everyone to another episode of The all systems go podcast. I’m your host, of course, Chris L Davis. And on this episode, I’ve got a new a new friend. And the reason why I can say friend so quickly, every everybody I don’t use that word lightly. But it’s because we immediately connected over our love and usage of automation. Okay, so today’s guest is Joe Kassa Bona, he is a podcast and automation coach who helps coaches, course creators and authors grow their podcast into Authority building lead generators. He does that through expert tested systems that come with 10 years of experience podcasting, 15 years teaching and over 20 years working with the web. Can you all see how we just bonded so quickly? Alright, you can learn more about him at Castle castle bona.org. Joe is here on this episode to teach us about effective podcast strategies for growth. Joe, welcome to the podcast, man. How are you doing?

Joe Casabona 1:51
I’m doing great. Thanks for that intro. I appreciate it. Yeah. We’re like kindred spirits. Like we like had like one column like, do we just become best friends?

Chris Davis 2:02
It’s all it took, man. That’s all it took. So I’m glad to have you on the podcast, I had the pleasure of being on yours. And listeners, just let me say this, we have to be disciplined. Because Joe and I can literally just keep going sharing strategies. On one of our calls, I walked here, I showed him some of my podcast stuff. Before this call. He just showed me some stuff that blew my mind and make and we’re talking about workflows for automating graphic design. It gets dangerous quick with this. Alright. So I had to put the pause on it and say, Wait a minute, Joe, our listeners our listeners need to know about podcasting. And mainly because what I found is, you know, I started my podcast when I was working at Active Campaign as the director of education. And at that time, Joe, there were no video, YouTube wasn’t doing podcast, podcasts, were literally if you were in iTunes, that’s it. And everybody associated it that way. So it wasn’t as open as it is now. Right? Like, if you don’t have an RSS feed today, you could still have a podcast, like people don’t care about the technical structure. And back in there, like, every week, I go to YouTube and click a button and I watch this podcast. I’m like, well, that’s a video Oh, okay. Anyways, podcast, I get it. So so in that what I learned roughly was as a digital marketer, I was frustrated with how hard it was to track performance. And since I couldn’t track performance, it was very hard to, like, optimize. And I had to learn all of these strategies with like using redirect URLs within your podcast, and, you know, taking time within it to do a, like an ad yourself and things of that nature. I don’t do all of the strategies that I know. But it’s been very hard. It’s been very hard. The platforms like Apple and Google and everything. They’re very tight with their analytics. And definitely, it’s all anonymous. You’ll never know from them who’s doing what. So I thought it would be very appropriate to have you on man, it just really helped us podcasters and aspiring podcasters who also have a love for automation on how to navigate this space. You’ve been doing it for a while. You know what, y’all just jump right in? I know you they don’t. And they’ve heard about your experience. Just give us the 10,000 foot view of what your path into podcasting consisted of?

Joe Casabona 4:35
Yeah, so I think I have always been two things right. From a very young age. I’ve been a person who likes to use technology to solve problems. Yeah. And I’ve been an entertainer like I used to. This is a very, not well known story, but in second grade. I went to Catholic school my whole life well Like pre pre K, through grad school. And in second grade I would put my sweater over my head and I would tell people to call me sister Josephine. I thought it was like a funny bit. Going to school in the 1990s. And my teacher, Miss McCullough. Now she’s Sister Mary, actually, she ended up becoming a nun. She asked me if I knew what drama club was. And I said no. And she said, stay after school today. I was in second grade I assumed they called my parents not something I thought of logistically. But she said say after school where meaning the drama clubs meeting, and I like fell in love, right. My first role was a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. And so I I loved entertaining, faster forward to post grad school, something another passion I found was teaching. I really enjoyed teaching, I would teach my web design clients how to use their, their, their websites, I was a TA throughout grad school. And so I actually got an adjunct professor job at the University of Scranton, my alma mater. And I taught there for several years before moving away, when I moved away, I knew I wanted to keep teaching, and I knew I needed an outlet for entertaining. And so even though I was still in the WordPress space, the web development space, I started a few online courses. And initially, I wanted to promote those online courses. Through my podcast, I owned a domain how I built it, I bought the domain on our honeymoon in Italy. Just because I was like, floored that nobody owned it. And, and so like my back to my podcasts name into that domain. And I was talking to a lot of friends in the WordPress space about how they started their online courses. And I thought I should make these public conversations. And so that is how, that’s how I got into podcasting. Pro properly. Like I had a podcast in 2012, where it was just like me and a couple of dudes talking about like, nothing that we actually knew about. Yeah, but that was like, you know, that was like practice. So

Chris Davis 7:20
yeah, yeah. Now Now for me, like I mentioned, when I got into it, I am coming as a marketer, tasked by this company that I’m working for to start a podcast. So first off, I was overwhelmed with all of the equipment. I didn’t know what microphones to use, I’d never used an XLR microphone in terms of podcasts I had experienced with them in the music industry, but not you know, in podcasting. Were in one room. How do you sit? How does? How do I cancel out the voice what? I didn’t know what the audio interface was. So there was an entire learning on that side. And once I got all of that done, I was kinda like that was a checkmark, I know how to podcast. And then once you start to run the episodes, that’s when I realized, wait a minute, how do I know how it’s performing? So for you how long when you got started properly? How long was it before you started to realize like, wait a minute, this is not like a website where I can see where people are going and you know, get email addresses easily. What was that awareness like for you?

Joe Casabona 8:26
Yeah, that was really interesting, right? So I use Libsyn. I use Lipson to host my podcast then we’re taught we’re I mean, this was 2016. But again, like my first podcast, I launched in like 2012. And so like they were like the OG for a very long time, like they were the only game in town. And so I would obsess over download numbers, right? So and like downloads are not listeners or not, viewers are not. It’s just,

Chris Davis 8:56
yeah, some apps like auto download, read or listen to the app or how to download it. Yeah,

Joe Casabona 9:01
exactly. Yeah, exactly. This was before Apple podcasts had any engagement. Spotify wasn’t even around well, wasn’t doing podcasts yet. And so that that was maybe one of the early mistakes I made was thinking like downloads meant engagement. And so I hit 100,000 downloads in the first nine months, which is still really good, right? It’s like more than most. And I thought, like 100,000 downloads in the first nine months, I’m gonna launch a membership and charge people five bucks a month, and like two people. And I was like, maybe 100,000 downloads is not mass market penetration.

Chris Davis 9:45
And, and it takes a little more right than just say, Hey, I got this thing. You know, yeah, we’ll get it. Yeah. And now I would say

Joe Casabona 9:55
I would say today, like my membership still isn’t where it needs to be. where I’d like it to be. But one of the things I learned about doing a membership right is like early on until you get a lot of members where it’s worth it. You know, do low effort for you high value for the listener. Yeah. And so like ad free extended episodes. low effort for me, right? Yeah. About to get lower effort for me, actually, since I moved to to a new podcast host that has dynamic ad insertion, but and like, and so it’s like that and like a weekly newsletter column for members only. And so that’s like, pretty low effort for me that stuff I’m already writing about or making, like the sawdust of my business available for for the members. And so. But that’s like, still something I want. I’m trying to build up a bit more.

Chris Davis 10:56
Yeah. So so for you. You know, you have that awareness. Okay, well, wait a minute, downloads aren’t everything. But then you also start to see themes and observe and you do a lot of testing. It goes without saying, but you do a lot of testing and experimenting. And as you were doing that, and I want to put the new podcaster as an avatar for you, the me of old that their achievement. And they put their flag down the minute their first episode or episodes we’re seeing in iTunes or Apple podcasts. They’re like who I made it, I have a podcast, and they have no idea how how to grow from there and what it entails. Give them a little bit of the anatomy of a growing on a growed up podcast.

Joe Casabona 11:53
Yeah, so right. This is like another hard fought lesson I want you to skip over right is I don’t I don’t want you to fight for it. I mean, it was I took a very Field of Dreams approach, right? If I build it, they will come. I think in 2016, I hit a little bit better. I got a little lucky. Because I picked the right topic. Yes, I was more dedicated to quality than most podcasters were at that time. And I probably benefited a little bit from about three months after my show launched. NPR launched a show called how I built this. So my show was called how I built it. Yeah, their show is called how I built this. Yeah. And so maybe I benefited from quote unquote, brand confusion. But the data point I look at there is that I didn’t see like massive amounts of downloads one week. And then no downloads the next week, right, I saw very consistent growth. And so even if people were finding my show, because of that search, they were sticking around because of the good content. And so I talked about, it’s like a seven point framework for podcast growth. Okay, I think the first thing you need to do is get your mission, right. You need to know, especially today, who you’re talking to, and what problem you’re trying to solve for those people. 78% of people listen to podcasts to learn something new. And so unless you’re a big production agency, like wondery, or rt 19, where you have the capital to produce to do a highly produced fiction, or true crime or other deeply researched thing. You need to be solving a problem for somebody, this is also the way that you’re going to establish your authority, right? So I think the first thing you need to do is define the problem you’re trying to solve. I like to put it in the in the context of a mission statement. My podcast helps audience solve problem by and then fill in the blank with with with each episode, right. So my podcast helps creators make money through their Creator business by interviewing successful creators about how they do it right by offering free coaching calls from successful creators. Yeah, I think that’s the number one thing you need to do. Right? Yeah, we can like I was just talking for a long time we can stop No,

Chris Davis 14:35
I want to jump in because this is this is very important because I was just on a podcast I was on a podcast and as a guest as a guest you help me be better. If you let me know your audience, right? Let me know. Are they technical or not like where they stand so I can frame my my appearance and In all of my educating in value appropriately, and I finished up with this podcast, they didn’t really have a clear defined avatar goal, or hey, let’s just talk about some stuff. And afterwards, let me tell you, I went to the website and looked at the other one, like the other podcast guests. And they were all over the place. They were doing real estate, Business Development growth. And, and I’m like, You know what? The audience, you asked me to go techie with this audience, and they probably have, I probably overwhelmed them, you know, so if you don’t know, the mission, what problem you’re solving for who one is going to be very hard for you to instruct and get true value out of your guests. And to as a podcaster, it’s going to be very hard to find guests when you if somebody approaches you and say, Hey, what kind of guests are you looking for? And you’re like, oh, anybody, anybody with a mic? As long as I got a good internet connection, and you’re in business, that’s tough to really produce a valuable, valuable podcast.

Joe Casabona 16:01
Yeah. And then you’re not you’re not making people want to come back. Right? You’re not. And this is one of the reasons my show grew so so much in the beginning, right? It was very focused in the beginning. And here’s a little more anecdote than then hard data back, right. But I got a bunch of downloads in the beginning, because I was interviewing WordPress developers on how they built their WordPress business. Right. So like WordPress, the WordPress WordPress developers, I knew who I was talking to. Then I felt like I ran my course through the WordPress developers. I wanted to diversify. Right? Somebody pointed out that I only had white guys on the show. And I was like that. I mean, that’s like, it’s a valid. It’s a valid criticism. Yeah. And it was like a function of like, well, I’m a white developer guy. And I know mostly white developer, guys. Right. Right. And so going outside of of developers, I was able to find more, a more diverse crowd. And so I started talking about marketing and building your business. But then I generalized, right. And my downloads dipped, and it was very obvious. I lost people who were really interested in just WordPress development. Yeah, yeah. Makes last year, I changed again, I did like this kind of glacial shift from WordPress developer businesses, to WordPress businesses, to businesses, to creator businesses, right. And so I went narrow to wide back to narrow my downloads from my monthly downloads from January 2022 to December 2022, doubled from 34,000 a month to 75,000 a month. And so knowing who you’re talking to, right, because then you’re solving a problem, then you’re like, oh, man, I don’t know how to build a community. Oh, yeah. Well, you know what, I just heard this guy podcast episode from a guy who interviews creators. Yes. Here’s his here’s how to build a community from an expert in that field. Okay, so I think that’s really important. Episode, titles and descriptions are also going to be really important. Even more now that Spotify is like trying to put this front and center and YouTube is getting into podcasting. You can’t just have like, Episode 123 John Smith, right. Like who cares? Right? It has to be like, why your community is failing? With drew Dylan? Right. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s the actual episode, what I called it, but like, that’s attention grabbing, right? So you need to think about that. So those are like the the little technical like the SEO quote, unquote, level changes, you need to make know your audience. Make sure to position your content so that it’s so that people want to actually listened to it. And once you scroll on by it, your first 60 seconds are going to be really important. Right? You got that cold open. You need to grab people in that first 60 seconds. Yeah, pre roll ad notwithstanding. Right. People will just skip that. If they want to, or they’ll listen to it, whatever. But there is there is one, I believe tried and true method. I think a lot of people believe I’ve gotten pushback from a couple of people on LinkedIn about this kind of effectiveness. But there’s like one tried and true method. I know I just I’ve kind of been talking a lot. So I want to I don’t know what to

Chris Davis 19:31
show, man. I intentionally am quiet so the guests can have the highlight. They hear me. Yeah.

Joe Casabona 19:36
Awesome. Awesome. So the I think a tried and true method is podcast swaps. Right? And so Chris, Chris and I are doing this right on a little unintentionally, right, right. This is not we got connected through someone else. I think who’s had us both on on his show. But it kind of happened organically. But this is what you do. Right? You reach out to other podcasters. And you ask if you want to do a promo swap with them. There are there are really four kinds of swaps, right? There’s the promo swap where you let I’ll use Chris and me as examples so that we’re not like talking Uber generalities. Chris will do a 32nd promo of my show at the top of his show. I’ll do a 32nd promo of Chris’s show this show on the top of my show, right? So hey, if you like this, I’ve been talking about automation that like definitely check out Chris’s show all systems go. Wherever you listen to podcasts, or at this link, right? Then you could do guest swaps. That’s what you and I are doing. Right. We’re both going on each other shows. I’ve already mentioned my podcast, I know you mentioned yours at the end. I’ll link it in the show notes, etc. And then there’s crossover episodes, right? Where you and the host, you and the other host like so you and I might get together and do one episode, and then release the same episode on each other’s feeds. Right. And so

Chris Davis 21:07
Oh, yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

Joe Casabona 21:10
So this is something I did with Nathan Wrigley. From WP builds podcast, I wrote a very strongly worded article about how I think virtual event speakers should be paid. And Nathan runs a pretty big virtual event where he doesn’t pay his speakers. And I wasn’t throwing shade at him, necessarily. I think he does it does it better than most people who are like, oh, yeah, speak for free. Also, you have to promote our event. Like anyone who’s like, you have to email your lead. I’m like, I’m not doing that. Yeah. I’m bringing the content. It’s your job to bring the people. But anyway. So we decided that we were going to do a debate on this article, and release it on both of our feeds. So we recorded just the debate. And then we added the bumpers and whatever our ad spots later. Yeah. And the reason that these things work so effectively, is because you are targeting lookalike audiences, who are who are already listening to podcasts, right? Friends, I’m going to tell this story really quick. I love this story, because I’m a 90s. Kid friends is my show, right? When friends first came out in the 9495 television season, right? They were getting they were on Thursday night TV, NBC Thursday night lineup was legendary even then. So they had a slot there. They were getting maybe 17 to 18 million views on Thursday nights. Which sounds like a lot by today’s standards. But I mean, that’s what people did. Um, there was no streaming anything right? You were you had four channels, basically that you had to watch. Right? So this is what people were doing. Then they had a two episode arc called the one with two episodes. And in part one, they had the cast of mad about you on the show. Fun fact, Lisa Cujo, played Phoebe buffet and friends shows she played Ursula Wu Fei, a snarky waitress in Mad About You. So in universe they were twin sisters. But the cat Helen Hunt and somebody else from the show went into Central Park, in part to Rachel hurt her ankle and has to go to the hospital and is treated by two young doctors, those doctors were George Clooney and no while from er. After those two episodes, friends averaged 20 Sick per night. So they increased their viewership by 20 22% by doing the crossover event, right, which NBC promoted right, but like, the important part here is that they were looking like audiences, people who watched mad about you, first of all took place in New York City, young 20 Somethings trying to make it in the big city while working and managing their love life. Right? Er, not a comedy but still young 20 Something professionals that took place in Chicago trying to make it in a big city while trying to balance work and life and love. So this really it was really the same avatar that they were going out for. So when you understand your audience, you can effectively do podcast swaps and that every time I did a podcast swap last year, I saw a bump in my downloads and my newsletter signups and it was really effective.

Chris Davis 24:49
Wow, wow, these are good. I I hadn’t thought of the promo of course, I’ve done the guests. I’ve had extreme success with being a guest on others. Podcast. And then the what did you call it? The swap? What would you say was the crossover? Yeah, the crossover. Yeah. The crossover. It sounds fun. It’s like an event. It makes it an episode and event you’ve got collaboration to people pushing to the same thing. And then what’s the last one?

Joe Casabona 25:20
There’s promo swaps, guest interviews, crossovers, and then feed swaps. I’d actually mentioned that one but feed swaps. That’s basically where you and I would take an episode of each other show and drop it in our feed. Right so full episode.

Chris Davis 25:35
Oh, interesting. Yeah,

Joe Casabona 25:39
wondering and Stuff You Should Know do and I’m sorry, wondering I heart do this a lot. With I’ll say like, let’s create today’s episodes a little different than that. It’s actually the full episode of this other podcast I think you’d really like. And then they just play the episode fall. So you don’t have to go anywhere. You just listened to it. And I feel like he could subscribe.

Chris Davis 25:59
Wow. And this is why I have you on because I think that most people do believe in the build it they will come more so of the recorded and they will listen. Model. Yeah, right. Right. And I will be the first to raise their hand and say, the amount of viewership that I thought I would get even just based on people’s response from my webinars, the companies I work for and everything. I did not see a one to one, when that translated into when I created my own podcast. In fact, you know, and this speaks to, don’t ever get satisfied or content with your marketing. Because I have people I was just posting on LinkedIn, because we you know, we’re we at your part of the reboot of the podcast that we took a break. And one of my good friends like somebody who I’ve literally met in person many times, and we have talked and go, Hey, let’s get the family together. There. They do. They’re in the space of marketing as well. And it wasn’t until LinkedIn or you know, I’m posting his like, oh, sorry, my bad.

Chris Davis 27:12
Oh, subscribe. So you you just can’t assume reach when it comes to podcasting. So when you hear things like, I know, I can pretty much speak for almost everybody listening to this podcast right now that nobody is doing all four of those things. Right? You just mentioned

Joe Casabona 27:32
you, right. And again, if you if you do those things, you will grow your podcasts. It’s kind of like this, right? People. People look at Apple podcasts like YouTube, right? But the main difference is that YouTube actively recommends content, correct. Apple podcasts does not. It’s not a discovery engine. It’s like if you, you know, Apple podcasts is kind of like, you know, like in Walmart or another big box store, like you have aisles where there are certain things. And then you have those giant bins of just like $5 DVDs, or whatever. And then you have to like sift through them to find the one you like, that’s kind of what podcast discovery is like, I need to someone needs to recommend something to me. Or I need to sift through this big bin of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So podcast, discovery is not good. podcast is not a good podcasting is not a good discovery platform. What it is great at is nurturing and building those relationships.

Chris Davis 28:42
Yeah. And I always look at Tech. I love my wife. I use her though, as my barometer of has this gone mainstream, because she’s not in the tech space so I can truly leverage, Hey, what are you doing? How are you using it? What have you heard of and what else right? And we were having a conversation the other day, and she was like, Yeah, I like listening to his podcast, his podcast, his pockets. I said, timeout. When you say podcast, do you mean you just go to YouTube and like, whatever’s in your feed? She was like, No, in my phone. And when she said phone, it meant Apple podcasts because she’s got an iPhone. So she was like, in my phone, I’ll go and you know, look, so she will actively go and look to see if there’s a new podcast. I don’t know if she has notifications or anything like that set up. But when when I saw that, I said, Well, wait a minute. This is mainstream behavior then, because my wife is not techie. If she’s going to her YouTubes and subscribing to pages on YouTube, and then finding them in Apple and subscribing there so if she’s on the go, she can listen to it. This lets you know you can’t afford to not use at minimum these four strategies that you’ve told us so far, to ensure that your podcast has the biggest reach Ever, let me ask you this Joe, it would be foolish to work on all of these listeners and downloads without actually growing your list. And and we don’t have time to go into the reasoning why? Just know this, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you understand how important measuring the performance of your marketing is effective marketing always generates leads and convert those leads to customers. Now, if you have a podcast, you when you said I want to do podcasting, you also said I need to have a list grown from my podcast, you may not know that you said that. But you did say it. Alright, so do not settle for just listeners and subscribers. Make sure you have a means of taking them somewhere else. So you can stay in contact with them outside of the podcast and continue to add value. What are some of the things that some of the ways I’ll say one or two or more ways that you have seen an effective use of doing just that you’ve got the listeners, they’ve taken your strategies? And they’re like, Wow, look at my downloads. How can they make sure that they can also say oh, wow, and look at my email this?

Joe Casabona 31:14
Yeah, this is great, right? And you do the big box store method or the any store method, right? Oh, yeah. As you as you’re checking out, oh, what’s your email address? They just ask so casually. They write it real

Chris Davis 31:29
quick, Joe, it took me a little bit to find out that I could say no. Yeah, I used to didn’t think I could say no, I used to think that was part of the checkout process. And I’m like, No, thank you. And they just continue on. I was like, Oh, I could say no. Yeah,

Joe Casabona 31:44
I yeah, I would always I mean, I’m like a very forward New Yorker. So I’m like no, or why. Right? It’s almost like I have to put a phone number. And I’m like, Well, you better make something up. I’m not. Right. Yeah. But like, they just do it so casually. And like most people don’t even think about right. It’s not as seamless with the podcast. But that’s what you got to do. So here’s what I recommend. Most people save their calls to action to the till the end of their podcast, you’ve lost like 40% of your listeners, by your sign off, right? Like, look, look in Apple podcasts, look at the engagement, watch that line go down, you know, where you have everybody’s attention, the very beginning. Right? So here’s what I like to do. I try to keep it real short. Yeah, I say, real quick, before we get started. If you like this podcast, I want to tell you about a free resource I have called the podcast swap database. You can go get it over at whatever, whatever slash swap, put your email address, and and you will get the exact system I use to grow my podcast. All right, again, that URL is blah, blah, blah. Now let’s get on with the show.

Chris Davis 32:52
Come on, Joe. Get it? Listen, everybody, I’m guilty of that you will have listened to my podcast. You know, some of you while you’re listening, like ooh, Chris does that. So just know, I am changing my ways from this podcast on. Thank you for that. And keep going, Joe keep going.

Joe Casabona 33:10
I mean, everybody does that. Right? It’s the natural. It’s the natural point, right? It’s like the credits at the end of the show. Yeah. Oh, well, you’ve listened, you’ve probably got value. Now I want to show you. And some people will argue, right? If you hit them with a call to action, before you’ve provided them with any value, you’re eroding your eroding trust? I don’t think so. If someone’s not willing to sit through 30 or 45 seconds of me, giving them another free thing. They’re not my target. Yeah, they’re not my target. Yeah, right. Maybe this doesn’t work for, again, a true crime podcast, because you’re getting people from all walks of life. Or maybe it’s like, hey, sign up over here. And we’ll send you pictures of the crime scene or whatever you weirdo. Like, so like, maybe it still does work for that, right? But hit them at the beginning. And then mention it. I would say this is something I need to be better at. Because I’m like, really into the conversation. Usually when I’m talking to somebody but or if I’m if it’s my solo show, like I’m really into, like delivering the information, but try to do it a couple times throughout the episode, right? Because you, you only have, like half of someone’s attention. Yeah, new stats came out earlier this year, as we record this, that says like, 50% of people who listen to podcasts are doing something else, at least, or maybe it was 70%. But like 50 It’s like while they’re driving 36% while they’re at the gym, the 40% while they’re cooking or baking, right? I’ll listen to a podcast. I pick the worst time to listen to podcasts while I’m getting my kids ready for school where it’s like chaos. And it’s while I’m cooking dinner for my kids because my wife’s a nurse so she works 12 hour shifts. So on the day she works, I have my kids the whole time, right and so I pick them up from school, well, there’s no podcast in the car. And then I’m gonna keep listening to that. And I’m cooking, and they’re running around screaming, and I barely I barely hear what they’re saying, right? So you need to repeat yourself. You need to repeat yourself. And so like just mentioned it a couple times, by the way, that free resource, it’s over at whatever, whatever. Right Ramit Sethi does this really well on his I Will Teach You To Be Rich podcast, like answer questions, solve a problem. And then he’ll be, by the way, like, if you want to dig more into that go to here, and he has multiple calls to actions, he has a huge audience and covers a bunch of things. I would recommend, like, keep it to one year, at least one per episode based on the topic. Yeah, Amy Porterfield does that really effectively, she’ll have like four or five opt ins. And based on the topic of her her episode, that day, she’ll promote the most relevant one.

Chris Davis 35:52
Okay. And I’ll double double down on that and add to it to say make sure how you’re sharing is easily is is easy on the ears, and easy to type in. So if your podcast name is very complicated, then just get another URL, a shorter one that you’re going to use specifically for giving stuff away on your podcast. And for me, I never use a raw or naked URL, meaning if I do automation bridge.com forward slash community is one that’s that’s been on the screen. Best believe that’s not going to a webpage for slash community. It’s extending it’s, you know, it’s a redirect to go somewhere else. And that way I can track who’s coming from the podcast, by using UTM parameters. This is very technical talk. But just let me say, I can, I can track the URL.

Chris Davis 36:56
This, I can track where you came from, by doing some stuff in the URL. Okay, and now I’ve got downloads Joe, and then I could go into my analytics and say, I can also see how this podcast is generating visitors to my website for my techie folks. All right, non techie folks, just pause for a second. My techie folks use these UTM ‘s and the UTM content. Put your episode number. The sources clearly your your your podcast, and then the medium could be whatever you want it to be, but put the episode number in as your as your UTM content. And if you want to use for the keyword, the topic, you’ve got even more or the category. So if you’ve really got your content on your website, categorize really well put the category in the keyword now you can see which categories are driving people to your website. And now you’re

Joe Casabona 37:57
teaching me after our interview, I started using UTM codes a lot more. I found like there’s like a website like UTM, builder.net, or whatever I’ve been using. But episode number in the content that’s so smart right? Now that so for the ones that I set up, right? I I’m using transistor as my host, and they allow for a dynamic pre roll. And so for that, like I just have like the generic like promo. But you know, if I’m going to do that for the URL I’m going to share later, right, I’m going to include a bunch of stuff in the UTM code so that I know Hey,

Joe Casabona 38:33
yeah, and you don’t have to do it for everyone, I, I can be a little heavy handed because I worked in with the startups. And you just never knew anything. Like you’ve got hundreds of 1000s of users and listeners, there could be one piece of content that really changes everything. So I need to know what that is. Some of most people aren’t to that level. So just use your standard you know, podcast episode and if the categories there, you know, whatever, but because you have to create a new link for every episode, which by the way I use air table to automatically generate all of those types of URLs. But that’s another topic for another day. Definitely not here because because while I have you draw I wanted to ask you one more thing. Because this has been very, very, very helpful and informative for me. So I know it is for my audience. I want to talk about sponsorships and I know that this is like an entire workshop. In fact, Joe i May I do this often I get inspired in the moment I may have you come on and do a private training on sponsorships for the for the community membership. And but but here’s here’s the premise. I have I have a friend who has a very low low in terms of visibility podcast generates almost $10,000 in sponsorships right. I’m at tell you why I believe in a minute, then I have another friend who has a very large following, and is struggling to just make some type of money from the podcast, right? But people love listening. So it appears right now on one side, the guy who has less less of a

Chris Davis 40:22
less visibility, he’s in a very niche market. Like not not techie either, but very nice. I think he’s like energy or something like that, right? And then the other my other buddy who’s got a much bigger following. It’s a much more saturated and techie market.

Chris Davis 40:37
So for you, I just wanted to say, I saw that and I was like, oh, Episode numbers, or the amount of episodes you have are not a factor. And getting sponsorships, you know, at all. I’ve seen people get sponsorships after 10 episodes, don’t know how they did it. But there’s definitely a strategy to it. Give us you know,

Chris Davis 40:59
kind of like the quick hitters approach to getting your your first sponsorship, and what are the things that people are our companies are looking for? And in order to do that, because the belief is, I don’t have a big enough following. I don’t have enough downloads. So Is that true, Joe? Or is there there’s something else that we need to know about sponsorships?

Joe Casabona 41:22
Yeah, well, I’ll tell you this. I have three podcasts, or I had three podcasts. All three of them were sponsored before Episode One went live. All three of them, right? Oh, wow. First one was a whim that was like I shot my shot, right? Some guy asked for a backlink. And I said, Well, I don’t do backlinks. But for 99 bucks, you respond to the first episode on my podcast? Just ask

Chris Davis 41:45
better. Listen.

Joe Casabona 41:48
Don’t Ask, Don’t get I say that to my kids all the time, ask Wow. I said to my kids all the time, my daughter will walk into the kitchen and stare up at the pantry and then look at me, and then look at the pantry. And I’m like, What do you want? Say it? Don’t Ask Don’t get your vows. Yeah, so you got to ask but you hit the nail on the head there, right? The reason that that guy sponsored the first step was it was the same audience from my blog where he was asking for the backlink. It was a very targeted audience. It was WordPress developers. He knew he wanted to reach WordPress developers, and I was a trusted voice in the WordPress development space. And so we gotta go back to what we talked about earlier, your mission statement? Who are you helping? Right? Because if you are if you if you’re not helping anybody, or you’re helping everybody, brands don’t want that. Right. But if you are helping, again, I if if I’m helping coaches, course creators and authors build their authority through podcasting. Well, now I can think of five to 10 companies off the top of my head, who want to do the same thing. And I’ll get them to sponsor my podcast. I just did this actually, I pitched to a potential sponsor. I said, I’m thinking about doing this series. I think you’d be a great presenting sponsor for the series. Are you interested? They said, Yeah, I’m interested. We don’t have a big marketing budget. We’re a pretty small company. What did you have in mind? But you know what, I got him in the door. Now. It’s negotiation time. And this is the other thing you need to remember, everything’s negotiable. But I’m gonna steal this from my friend Justin Moore, brand deal wizard. Right. He said there are three types of campaigns. Okay, right of advertising campaigns. There is direct ROI or conversion campaign, right. This is where if I want to sponsor your podcast, I know for every $10 I spend, I make $100. So if if your podcast can’t do that, for me, I’m not going to sponsor this is the CASPER mattresses. The Squarespace is the Hello freshers. This is why they’re sponsoring the huge podcasts that have millions and millions of downloads for sure. They’re looking for mass market penetration. Then there is the brand awareness. Right? I’m gonna just spoiler alert, I forget the third one. But brand awareness is really what we’re I want to hit home here. They just want influential people talking about their product. Yeah, right. And so this is why even though your friend who does not have a lot of downloads, can get sponsors because he’s in a niche or a niche where he is viewed as an expert, talking about these companies. Yeah, this is why I was able to get sponsored so well, right, because again, even Yes, I have more downloads than most podcasters right. But there are again trusted voice in the WordPress space companies wants to be attached to that. Oh, did you hear Joe’s talking about us? Right? This is why people get YouTube videos for me too. I charge 50 bucks a YouTube video and look at the views they get. It’s like 10s, maybe hundreds on a long enough time scale. But that’s not the point. The point is, they can now take that video and share it with their audience and say, Look, you know that guy Jocasta Bona, he’s using our product to talk about this thing. So this is what if you want to get sponsors, this is what you need to focus on. Figure out your niche. Who are you talking to reach out to companies who are trying to help those same people and show them that your audience needs their product. Justin will say, ask your audience. What do they want? What do they want to hear about? What tools do they need help with? Yeah, and then their answers, you can just take them. This is why you gotta build your list too, right? Because you need someplace ask these people this question. And then you can say like, Hey, I’ll use a previous sponsor. Hey, Riverside. I was wondering if you want to sponsor about you know, there’s like a better pitch method for this. But I have an audience of creators, and podcasters, who are looking for a better way to record their podcast. And they’ve specifically asked me about this. I use Riverside, I think you’re great. Would you want to sponsor my podcast? That got a yes, they sponsored like six episodes, right. And so this is what you want to look for brand aware, people who are looking for brand awareness. Because they care less about the downloads and more about the chatter. Whoever’s doing,

Chris Davis 46:55
I’ve got to agree with this, because you know what, sometimes I’ll go to like a virtual event registration page, or somebody’s website that’s not prominent, they’re not a big figure in the space. And you know, if it’s an event that they’re renting, or podcasts or something, I’ll see sponsors, and I’ll be like, that’s a pretty big company. Now, granted, I understand connection, relationship and all of that. A lot of times you can leverage somebody that you know, to make that intro to get your first sponsor, but I don’t care how it comes about. I think the biggest thing here is understanding that that ask, is the most important aspect of it. Is you asking, Hey, would you like to, hey, I do this or hey, my audiences this, I think they would love your platform? Would you like to XYZ? I mean, if somebody asked me, it puts the onus on me to figure out why would I say no? And if I don’t have a reason to say no, and I truly, and I truly see a benefit. Thank you for reaching out to me, because I didn’t realize you had this audience. I didn’t realize existed in this capacity, you know?

Joe Casabona 48:04
Absolutely. And you want to make their job as easy as possible, right? So I’m just saying you want to sponsor my podcast, say, Hey, I think you’d be great. Here’s what I can do for you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. And the last thing I’ll say here, by the way, that third type of campaign is repurposing, which is why I always forget it, because a lot of people aren’t repurposing podcasts, like podcast episodes. But like, if you’re doing like short form video, or even YouTube videos, like, you know, there’s a repurposing campaign where the brand is just gonna pay you so they don’t have to pay someone in house to make that content. Right. And you could charge a lot for that, right? Because they’re, you’re, you’re saving them money. But I’ll also say this, right? It’s not just about downloads. It’s about your overall reach, right? And so I tell my students calculate your overall reach. Maybe you only get 10 downloads an episode, but maybe you have 5000 YouTube subscribers. Maybe you have 2000 people on Instagram and 1000 people on your mailing list. Well, that’s just I should use that numbers, because then I add them up. And I have to remember what I just said. But it sounds like you have 8010 people in your audience, right? Yeah. Run that back and do the math properly, I guess. But I think I said 5000 2000 1000. So then you could say, Hey, if you sponsor my podcast, I’m gonna do something that I Heart Radio would never do for you or Joe Rogan would never do for you. I’m also gonna mention you on my mailing list. I’m gonna give you a shout out in my next YouTube video, maybe I’ll do a live stream where I talk about your product. I’ll do a, an Instagram real or a tick tock video for you as well. If you sponsor my podcast, now you’re adding value for them and you’re getting them on more platforms and you’re integrating your entire audience. And not just your, your podcast audience. And then you can make that self referential, right so you could say, hey, this episode is brought to you by whoever these are the reasons I Love them. If you want to see me using their products, check out this YouTube video I did for them recently. The link is in the show notes.

Chris Davis 50:07
And it’s doable everyone because as an avid YouTuber in terms of watching more than the consumption of people watch them out on the web and proving that I see channels of all capacities, having sponsors, pausing and showing, doing some product placement and everything. So I think it’s definitely something that you need to keep on the table. And don’t eliminate yourself from being able to do Joe, this has been amazing. I have the tendency, as you know, I’ll keep this conversation going. But I want to not not want to, I have to, you know, come to an end. For our listeners sake, I want to respect your time in everything. There’ll be more Joe for us who are in the community, because like I said, I’ll extend the invitation and get you to come in and do a training for us. But in the meantime, people have heard you talk about podcasting, promoting the product podcast, getting sponsorships, and in there as peppered with some technical, advanced strategies here and there. If they want to connect with you find out more about you follow you, what’s the best way to connect with the Joe?

Joe Casabona 51:18
Yeah, well, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’m gonna set up this page for you. Let’s see, can I bring it up on the screen here, I don’t know if it’s gonna be over at. It’s over at podcast, you gotta fill out the rest, podcast liftoff.com/chris. And I’ll have there a free resource that is my sponsorship templates. So this is going to be a template of my pitch deck that I send to potential sponsors, it’s going to be emailed templates that I send to potential sponsors responses and things like that, as well as a little tracker. So if you go to podcast liftoff.com/chris, you can get that totally for free. I also have a link there to my my podcast mastery course where it’s over 100 videos. It’s like Netflix for podcasting, everything I’ve ever learned, there’ll be a little discount there as well. So, again, that’s podcast liftoff.com/chris.

Chris Davis 52:14
Listen, listen, every day, you all see this, this. This is this pleases my heart. Now, granted, there’s a whole lot when I say this, so those of you listening, I’m pointing on the screen to how Joe has conveniently placed his call to action to where you can see it. So if you for whatever reason, didn’t hear it, right. It’s right there on the screen, you can type it in as you’re going. These are small things, Joe, small things that really show one your understanding of podcasting, but also eliminate any barriers that they endure. You know,

Joe Casabona 52:54
if you’re watching on a Mac, go ahead and take a screenshot. And then when you open it in preview, you can just click that link.

Chris Davis 53:02
I didn’t know that. Let me do that.

Joe Casabona 53:09
So I have, like, does it all in one fell swoop takes a screenshot copies the text on my clipboard?

Chris Davis 53:16
Stop it. See this is this is the problem with me take this off the screen because I listen. Oh my gosh, Joe, this is this is exactly what happens, everybody. So you get a little bit of insight. But But listen, just let me be honest here. Let me level how long have I been in the marketing automation space? Over a decade now, you just heard me on a podcast with a fellow business owner that does automation to learn at least three things, not just about podcasting automation. So if that doesn’t show you the the depth of this space, and how you should never settle for whatever you think, you know, you may think you’re at the top of a mountain, but for someone else, that’s just a little crevice inside of their bigger mountain, right. So you’ve never arrived, you’re always improving. And as long as you remain teachable and willing to invest in your continued growth. That’s exactly what you’ll get back is growth. So Joe, thank you for growing me. Thank you for growing my audience. With this podcast man is greatly appreciated. listeners. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your ears. And for those of you who have taken action, and already gone to that URL or the URL that was on the screen for the community join. Thank you in advance, everybody, listeners and beyond. Continue to automate responsibly my friends, Joe, thanks for coming on, man.

Joe Casabona 54:49
My pleasure, Chris. Thanks for having me.

Chris Davis 54:52
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed arrived at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, and it can be found in Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out. And while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly. And you can access them all at all systems go podcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends