Stewart Townsend is the Chief Revenue Officer of PodcastHawk.com, a company advised by Pat Flynn & Jordan Harbinger that helps guests automate getting booked on podcasts.
Topics Covered
- Mastermind groups
- Networking
- Podcasting for lead gen
- How to get interviewed on a podcast
- How to increase your podcast booking rate
Show Transcript
Paris Vega (00:01.180)
welcome to the first customers podcast today we have stewart townsan c m o of podcasthawk a company advised by pat flynn and jordan harbinger that helps guests automate getting booked on podcasts stewart welcome to the show
Stewart (00:17.120)
hey i i was gonna say morning afternoon and evening let’s cover all the basics great great to meet again barris i’m in sunny well it’s not sunny because it’s it’s early evening in lancashure in england so big city wise hundred miles north
Paris Vega (00:23.940)
where are you recording from
Paris Vega (00:31.980)
okay
Stewart (00:33.800)
chester
Paris Vega (00:35.460)
all right and at what time is it there
Stewart (00:36.640)
yeah
Stewart (00:40.160)
it is surrounded about quarter to ten nine forty five so hey no it’s a pleasure it’s quite an interesting story because it was quite a painful experience in terms of you know what’s like you build a product and you go to market and you think is going to come and it’s tumble weed
Paris Vega (00:44.800)
awesome well i appreciate your making time for us today
Paris Vega (00:49.680)
all right let’s kick it off jump right in and talk to us about how podcasthawk got their very first customers
Stewart (01:10.080)
so essentially our first customers came through our networks so myself and a the co founders and we literally went out to our networks and knew there was a challenge because we built it to solve our own pain point and went out to were in the dynamite circle is like a private master mind group that we’re in and we went out to our linked in network and we went out to a couple of community podcasting communities that we know and then it started to really so
Paris Vega (01:10.360)
yeah
Stewart (01:40.580)
come through then so within the first sort of couple of months we had fifty plus customers using the platform giving this feed back and we continued that for a reasonable period of time but those sort of first four weeks after launch was yeah a little bit nerve wracking you’ve built this product you’ve tested it ariialywantet and yea it was quite a challenge but yeah the network connection was the main aspect for us first to get those customers
Paris Vega (02:09.099)
okay and in the master mind group did you say that was involved with podcasting
Stewart (02:12.380)
it’s a yeah so it’s actually the tropical nbapodcast dana andrew they have a group called the dynamite circle so it’s a paid group you meet up every year and they have juntas so we know a lot of people in there that are either got businesses they want to promote as a guest and wanted to get on podcast and ve been talking about this pain of actually doing that so we reached out to them first
Paris Vega (02:22.120)
okay
Stewart (02:41.819)
so put your money we your mouth as you you said that you want this product and we’re built it now so come on and they were they were very local customers really good customers
Paris Vega (02:47.060)
yeah
Paris Vega (02:54.640)
that’s interesting that’s very similar to episode one of this podcast where chase bowers was in a master mind group and basically built a tool to solve his own problem and then other people in the group said hey i’d pay for that if you made it a customer facing product and it just took off from there that seems like a really really good method
Stewart (03:11.059)
yeah and that was yeah it was the same with our concept we come we wanted to go on podcast to promote our brands or our businesses or whatever were doing and the same people in the mastomin group were saying that it’s like how do we get new marketing channels we’d like to do podcast but we can dress this up a little bit but we’re too lazy to be ho it’s too much like hard work because it’s not simple but being a guest is a lot easier because you can
Paris Vega (03:35.320)
yeah
Paris Vega (03:38.880)
yeah
Stewart (03:40.779)
up and then you can go away get all the content but of course nobody wanted to build the product they just so will keep on doin what we’re doing so it was to scratch our own ice but also some of those people that were looking for new marketing channels as well
Paris Vega (03:41.740)
yeah
Paris Vega (03:45.520)
yep
Paris Vega (03:56.260)
okay so give us a little uh view into how it works you sign up for your service and then some how you get guest request
Stewart (04:01.980)
yeah so simple yeah simple ah si simple sass product in terms of what it takes away the pain of is literally spending a sunday afternoon going on google or going to a product like listening to those other sort of products out there and final podcast you want to be on and then actually finding out they’ve not broadcast or show for three years i’ve just spent all this time building this list and sound really good
but they’re not live case or start again so our product allows you to search for two point five million podcasts find the ones that are actually live now find the ones that have relevant relevancy to you in terms of the audience and then we provide you with their social handles and contact details to reach out to them and then on top of that we’ve built an outreach feature so that rather than just send in blanket email you can send and customer mails that customers you can actually listen to the podca
Paris Vega (04:31.420)
yeah
Stewart (04:58.080)
so if you’re interested want to be on it and actually be vocal about it and insert some details in there and then those emails are automated literally you can send them out and go and if you get a reply i stop and if you don’t get a reply after ctingutmemails to stop as well so that’s the automation piece it saves hours upon hours anybody has ever done this as wanting to be a guest will know it solves that paying point
Paris Vega (05:24.780)
so is email the only channel that is
Stewart (05:36.960)
well then i lost or for a second though it is at the moment yeah so we’ve got a feature on the road map for the ability to choose a channel you want to go through so i may be actually you want to warm up and go through social channels first twitter linked in et cetera that sort of thing and then use emails as a back up aspect because the host is more vocal on their social chat
Paris Vega (05:40.707)
okay is email the only channel that’s automated related to outreach
Stewart (06:06.860)
well suddenly are in their email so we’re building that functionality into the into the road map over this quarter
Paris Vega (06:19.218)
let’s pause right here because for some reason the video stopped and started multiple times there so let me do
Paris Vega (00:01.140)
okay we had a few technical issues on my end so let’s just recap that question you mentioned automating email outreach to get booked on podcast tell me about any other potential ways that you guys automate outreach
Stewart (00:17.578)
yeah so we’ve got a feature on the road map that’s coming through that we have the social handles we go in excuse me gather that date and we manually check this data as well whether it’s email or social handles so i’m a feature which allows you as a guest to reach out initially and send a message by a social whether it’s twitter all linked in or facebook a lot who of a good facebook page and go down that route before actually send an email so it may be as part of a sort of an outreach actually make
make the host aware that you exist and put some messages out about some of the podcasts and what you’ve done before you then start on email so yeah that that is definitely on the road map and ironically enough it’s something that we have thought about and customer said would be really cool it’s like yeah sounds great idea why didn’t we think of it yeah so when we were sort of launching the product and building a lot of the futur
Paris Vega (01:08.220)
right talk more about how you got that customer feedback
Stewart (01:17.538)
set out and getting the data already i personally on boarded every customer so fifty plus you know any any call from fifteen minutes to an hour and we’ve got customers that write books in the middle of the forest in canada somewhere that are not very technically save and those that write programs so it was you know it’s a very varied audience in terms of what they were looking to do but also from their skill set as well
Paris Vega (01:36.200)
yeah
Stewart (01:47.458)
when you’re doing a search some people didn’t stand how to build a search term or what they were looking for from that and that’s what really came out of those fifteen minutes to an hour type sessions with customers walking them through understanding what they wanted to do what their pain point was and then getting the feedback of things that we took for granted didn’t make sense to them but also features that we’ve not thought about before actually yeah just gold saving so much time in sort of some of the things
we’re built into the platform you just i’d say to anybody that’s looking at those first customers taught to those customers taught them as much as possible and just understand what they’re doing and watch what they’re doing as well because that’s the best thing ever from a u x aspect
Paris Vega (02:36.920)
so after the master mind customers got on boarded what was that bridge between those first few and getting up to those first fifty what kind of taxes tactics did you guys use
Stewart (02:48.438)
so a lot of that was through referrals so my background is from channel referals resailers that sort of concept so i pushed that quite heavily so we built into the platform very quickly in affiliate system so if you brought a new customer on board you could get paid against that customer so a lot of it came through word of math through hey i’m using podcast hall
so tween i’ve got some shows but also actually going on shows like this talking to host and then the host became customers not so much you know actually was a promotion of the product on on the podcast because that’s the idea of it but the host were saying well i want to grow a show i’ve seen the patfulineffect and yeah come on so we get off the show and then we do a demo so it was it was a multitude of that and that’s that’s part of where we’re growing at the
Paris Vega (03:21.900)
yeah
Paris Vega (03:25.660)
sure
Stewart (03:40.298)
when pastors first customers is on podcast and talking to hosts and agencies around that sort f side of things and not you know we’re not focusing down on sort of niches as such it’s just really wide we’ve got sass founders book authors podcast hosts kicks people ruling kick state campaigns is a multitude
Paris Vega (04:01.080)
okay because it doesn’t really matter what type of podcast it is you just have it set up to be a automated outreach system for just podcasts in general
Stewart (04:10.938)
yeah but again so i love cars i don’t think i’ve got i’ve got a lot o i love cars so i’ve been reaching out to go on podcast about cars because i love cars you know but i’m using podcasthawk to do that whereas before trying to reach out to those shows and looking at hundreds of them and trying to work out for live especially something like a car show that can be very
the seasonal or just go for so many shows and then they realize it’s so hard but yeah you know people people have used our product not just for going on show as you’ve used it also to research sales lead so let’s go and find somebody that’s been on the show listen to what they said about what they’ve done reach out to the host to get some notes found out that person so they’ve used it from a sort of warming up a cold lead with some reference points or that
Paris Vega (04:49.460)
okay
Stewart (05:04.678)
like all some people have used it to build consultency services so yeah it’s been interesting
Paris Vega (05:13.660)
yeah
Paris Vega (05:15.900)
okay yeah i looked at the website a little bit and started to see that okay i could see using this service
Paris Vega (05:23.440)
i was a little confused on how the pricing broke down so it was like the lowest plan as forty nine a month i think and what does that get you
Stewart (05:30.698)
yeah so it gets you access to the platform or the searches everything reste restriction is on every pricing plan is how many contact details you can get so to think of it as like a zoominfo you can go and find everything you want
look at millions of shows but if you want to reach out to them you get so many credits per month to get those contact details so you know it starts i think like twenty five credits up to a hundred credits and then you can buy more credits so that’s what you’re paying paying for access to the platform or the limitation is the number of whose details you can get yeah so start doesn’t have that in there
Paris Vega (05:57.300)
okay
Paris Vega (06:09.840)
okay and then is it the higher plans that allow automation like automated outreach
Stewart (06:19.438)
and again because my fee back was it was a little bit more complex to set up because you have to authenticate against your email you have to spend some more time building a temple and sort of thinking about it whereas the starter plan people would come into that and drop off because they start trying to use a campaign or where they didn’t actually need it so i’ve put that in the middle a plan from that side and it’s not from a cost aspect it’s more just people are coming we so turn because of the
barrier being there of that sort of thing where somebody is paying fifty forty nine dollars a month just wants to reach out to some shows they don’t need to ultimate that they’re not going to do a high value and it’s more about can research them and get the details i can test out a little bit and then when i’m ready i’ll move to this full automation because i realize the time it’s going to save me
Paris Vega (07:10.080)
how many shows can you reach out to for the forty nine am i
Stewart (07:14.238)
so that’s twenty five crelitsthat’s twenty five show contact details we get a show and that’s all the social details or email et cetera it’s all the sort of context details on there and so yeah so what we’ve done is we’ve collected all the day to the last eighteen months from various sources but then we have
Paris Vega (07:22.740)
okay
Paris Vega (07:25.560)
so and the value you’re saying is these are shows that have been vented so it’s kind of a curated list of quality contexts that are actually actively producing shows
Stewart (07:44.458)
humans like me and other people going through and verifying that so as a user does a search and puts it into our campaign aspect we know that that’s something that’s interesting and saying but it’s a search or campaign and it goes into a back end feature where before that sent out we verify it and have a human check is this right is it wrong is it validated so cleansing our data based on customer requirement there’s no point in cleansing data of
shows that have not broadcast for three years unless you can use that for a different model so we’re always looking at the latest latest and greatest
Paris Vega (08:24.320)
okay and do you have any kind of numbers on the like book rate like how often like twenty five lead just sounds i do it sounds kind of like a risky thing because it’s like is that enough based on how many bookings actually happen from just contact and twenty five shows
Stewart (08:45.058)
so twenty five is not probably a number to basic against but if you look at a hundred shows or a hundred contacts on average between me and ray when we when we’re doing this we’re getting on twenty or thirty shows out of a hundred out reaches but that’s very that’s highly tytntythe percent but again it’s been
Paris Vega (08:52.540)
hm
Paris Vega (09:02.260)
okay
Stewart (09:07.478)
we’re highly target in the shows we want to be on and spending time to do that and go well actually the tool out as the customization aspect of it and the research is not just i’ve got twenty five people’s names are going to send this single email that says we have seen hi i’d like to be on the show it’s like well well great tell me something about you and that so so we get high percentage rate but that’s not to say that is going to get some people get more because i’ve got a really good story
Paris Vega (09:26.000)
yeah
Stewart (09:38.418)
e can sort of put that into a clear message really well and like you know paris the more shows you’ve been on the more chance you’ve got getting booked as a guest or as a host because you’re known whereas those starting out we tell people don’t go for joe rogan you don’t go up there start on smaller shows like you know that’s said unless by in
Paris Vega (09:38.540)
hm
Paris Vega (09:58.500)
yeah
Paris Vega (10:01.000)
the people go for to weldon
Paris Vega (10:04.520)
do people go for joe rogan using podcasthop
Stewart (10:06.138)
yeah they do yeah they do now and to be fair you know they’ll reach out to jordan and patflitin as well and we see the sort of data but but again i don’t know the context of those people we can’t see that but you know they do reach out but what we say to those that come into this new is you may have the great story may be the co of vodifotnsuch but you’re unknown so you need a start in the place that fits where you are in your profile
Paris Vega (10:09.460)
anybody gotten booked yet
Paris Vega (10:16.920)
yep
Paris Vega (10:21.980)
right
Stewart (10:35.938)
i think you know if you the covotophone you’re not going to go you’ve got gonna go going to show that’s relevant as well so there’s some tactics around it and we help articulate that and so guide people through that process as well but it’s yeah it’s a good percentage rate from for aturalbookings
Paris Vega (10:43.040)
right
Paris Vega (10:56.640)
okay can you speak to some of those tactics that you guide people on
Stewart (11:02.638)
yeah so well there’s a couple of books and lots of content but essentially it’s about that whole search capability it’s about numbing it down in terms of what shows you want to be on why you want to be on but what value you bring so if you’re looking to use podcastes away sort getting some awareness out there or getting your first customers as well from that and sort of going out there then
get those shows that have more than fifteen episodes but less than fifty the broadcasting every eye a new show coming out regular every couple of weeks or so they’ve got corn going on there and go and look at their social profile and their web metrics so this is data that we are bringing into the platform as well so it’s about showing actually you may want to go in a show that the host has just started fifteen episodes in the building momentum around that but you may
actually i’d like to be on some show you know somebody shows it’s done fifty episodes that person that host that’s got fifteen shows already may have a really great social profile a very highly targeted audience with a high domain authority battling the consent that is of more value to you but they’re just not a known person in the podcasting hosting sector yet so it’s about don’t just look at the joe rogan five thousand reviews et cetera et cetera look at what you
goals are and then use at all to identify the shows you want to be on that will give you the most reach and we we talk about podcasting as a guest from leave generation and marketing aspect it’s about going sharing your knowledge and truth and of what you know but do that in a way that you can get some with with the host that’s going to give you good value as well so you can share both your social network you can share both of each you can bring different audiences in there and get some
Paris Vega (12:36.280)
yeah
Stewart (12:59.258)
traffic back to you and a really high domain authority linked back to as well that’s that’s the crooks of it that’s what we talk about
Paris Vega (13:05.920)
at that
Paris Vega (13:08.740)
yeah that’s good so considering their audience and their network outside of just the current state of their podcast because there might be a whole lot more like the tip of the iceberg you know
Stewart (13:10.598)
yeah yeah yeah i was talking to an agency a couple of weeks ago and again what we helped identifies like trending podcasts coming through and there was one that was identified that had some chefs on there that we know well known the chefinsector in food industry but not in podcasting we spotted it and literally we got
some people on there and it did really well because once once you gain traction and people like ohxwyeds on there was like i’ve got to listen to that and the audience grew quickly but you were on episode six with that traffic then coming through and you got evergreen content coming back to you great you don’t get that with a lot of other sort of marketing type sectors so it’s those sort of things don’t just look at where that person is now and how many shows and how many reviews you’ve got
there’s more to it than that look at the look at it as part of your marketing funnel
Paris Vega (14:17.440)
that’s good so you’ve talked about your first customers and a couple different types of customers um that you go after that you’ve had what would you say is your best customer your ideal kind of customer profile for this service for podcast
Stewart (14:34.878)
as of yeah as of everybody but as of about two weeks time is podcast booking agencies because they allow us to go to more users
Paris Vega (14:39.800)
yah
Paris Vega (14:46.460)
okay
Stewart (14:50.218)
quicker and faster through that side if we’re looking at sort of b to see business of consumer the perfect perfect podcastcast is somebody that’s already got a really great story and typically sits in somewhere like a bulbokauthor or sass founder or a master mind because they come and use the platform but they know everybody else in that sect as well they know all the other people to go and tell em they can always promote it in the great vocal voices for us literally as you know
that’s how we expanded so that individual coming in normally will get individual coming in they’ll bring another five customers to us because he told told the friends down the pub but by promoting what they did pycimastmyn about podcast this week how do you do that because i’m using my own software so you know there the customers that can bring us more customers because of the networks they sit in the best because it just means it’s less
Paris Vega (15:27.800)
m
Paris Vega (15:40.880)
yeah
Stewart (15:50.578)
for us to do from a marketing aspect and the cost of acquisition is lower as well obviously
Paris Vega (15:57.540)
that’s good it seems wise to consider for any type of business and it seems like that’s why a lot of sass companies kind of involved towards having some kind of agency pricing or some kind of ter like that where you want to make it easier for people to bring on even more customers or refer programs and that kind of thing
Stewart (16:18.618)
yeah it’s ingrained of me ave been working in a channel for thirty or twenty years not not making myself older you i’ve worked in a channel for like twenty years so it’s like just i can’t get away
Paris Vega (16:26.080)
a
Stewart (16:30.238)
from that way you’re thinking so my background is i’ve worked in corporate and start up help building them reach to market through indirect sales so in normal terms that means through re sellers distributors referral part that sort of thing so third parties third parties selling your product and making money from it
Paris Vega (16:32.300)
now when you say work in the channel what do you mean
Paris Vega (16:51.460)
okay
Paris Vega (16:57.360)
okay so affiliate marketing and related things there okay i’ve never heard it referred to i guess you were just saying this channel this type of this little nitch in the industry unless there’s a
Stewart (17:02.138)
yeah yeah i think think of how microsophsell so microsofselves ninteight percent of their products through channel partners resale you don’t really sort of engage with microsoph you’ll engage with soft care or somebody else and a lot of times you won’t to see that but you’d be buying those products through that and saying with you know a lot of other sass companies do that as well
Stewart (17:32.558)
it gives geographic reach it gives localization gives boots on the ground but it reduces cost of acquisition as well s literally like i was just saying about podcast talk i get one customer ring me five that’s the same with a reseller i’ll be managing a resellerand they’ll have ten sales people so suddenly i’ve got ten sales people on my sales team but i’m not paying ten sales people that’s a sort of channel type model
Paris Vega (17:58.200)
okay all right let’s back up a little bit zoom out and talk about what you did before podcastalkpersonally where do you grow up
Stewart (18:12.018)
yeah so i mean from sunny manchester in england bit of a bit of a whirl wind journey to get into it but literally i became a mature i don’t know what the term is in the u s but i mature student went to university like twenty so i could get a job in it so i didn’t start in it until i as thirty
Paris Vega (18:15.660)
okay
Stewart (18:32.498)
and it worked for a company called some micro systems which depending how old you are you may know or you may not oracle acquired them and said oracle for about a year and that was then decided i’ve been running and so built out this accelerator start program inside sun and doing some investments and setting up a cloud service and at the other decided to go actually go and work for a start up yeah that was painful that that was like wow i thought i knew hard work
Paris Vega (18:38.220)
yeah
Paris Vega (18:58.500)
uh uh
Stewart (19:02.818)
yeah this was hard work was twenty person company called data sift and i was like the only i was the only person there that wasn’t a developer let’s put it that way so i learn again you know that was again how do you bring customers on board with a boot strap we were serious but were still got boot straps in a sense reselling twitters fire hose with one of three global licenses but there was no sales team we were building that out building marketing fun
and getting things going and again similar lesson it’s like we thought could we could sell the products in a certain way and then the market dean that actually know it’s not going to fly which was got yeah so a long time ago twitter was really good for developing on but also they came to an agreement to sell
Paris Vega (19:46.040)
so wait you said you said something that i didn’t understand you said you were reselling twitters fire hose
Paris Vega (19:59.880)
right
Stewart (20:02.738)
so basically all of twitters data is called the fire holes so if you access through an a p you get one percent we would be having access to a hundred per cent and then we could resell we could never resell a hundred percent of it any one customer could only take ten per cent there was as gnipandfigits japan there were three global licences for that service yeah what in terms of what we did to
Paris Vega (20:06.360)
gotch
Paris Vega (20:17.400)
m
Paris Vega (20:27.200)
what do they do with it
Stewart (20:32.598)
use it set customers or
Paris Vega (20:35.040)
yeah like what would the customers buy it for were they just developing like apse that use twitter data what i mean
Stewart (20:38.218)
so yeah like stock twits when the first financial customers tak taking that let’s say government governmental bodies under the guise of universities in america like to access that data there was that new case oh yeah there’s lots of conversations marketing organizations again doing social handle monitoring from that side we were doing political analytics at the time as well before
Paris Vega (20:55.100)
really
Paris Vega (20:57.660)
okay
Stewart (21:08.078)
it all sort of blew up did so essentially was like simple modeling but we had to see s plus plus real time ort o dat analytic to sit in front of it that was just awesome and you could pull dat of and then we’d also do married up data so we get demographic data and four square location data that sort of thing and sort of mappit together so you could build different profiles and pictures it was a marketing dream i know yeah
Paris Vega (21:34.960)
good old four square
Stewart (21:38.298)
i had to think of his name was like i’m sure oh yeah yeah it was a marketing dream at the time
Paris Vega (21:41.300)
yeah that was
Paris Vega (21:46.560)
uh yeah there was definitely that golden era with all these different services and yeah all the privacy or whatever the concerns we’ve had over the past few years the multiple layers and layers that’s been added to different platforms to make marketing much more difficult on the targeting end of things
Stewart (21:50.678)
oh yeah yeah
Stewart (22:05.058)
ah
Stewart (22:08.658)
yeah definitely definitely was and then at the last real job i had was left to go and work for a cony called zen desk pre pre po about two hundred and fifty people there and i stayed for about four years went through the i p o when we were about fifteen hundred people so i built a ten million dollar business unit in there around channel and then left and that’s what i decided
Paris Vega (22:20.560)
oh wow
Stewart (22:37.998)
i want to do a start i want to do my own thing because i’ve been in these companies and it’s really great and now it’s hard work what a gonta do and it took a couple of years to actually develop that into podcasthawk and found a co founder to work with because i knew that i couldn’t do it on my own i just procrastinate too much so you a couple o years of doing consulting and sort of revisiting the network and i’m wanting to do something i really enjoyed and was passionate about and get into
Paris Vega (22:55.900)
m
Paris Vega (22:58.780)
hm
Stewart (23:07.658)
and this was because there’s a mixuralsort of data layer in the marketing mix sales lead generation whole sort of stuff that i think it’s really cool and it meant also i could go and reach out and speak to people about cars and stuff and getinpodcast about casliyeahboom
Paris Vega (23:22.620)
yeah
Paris Vega (23:25.200)
well self serving okay
Paris Vega (23:28.840)
all right let me cruise down here in my list making sure i’m covering all the things
Paris Vega (23:39.000)
what do you think the the most effective tactics once you got to podcast talk and launching it um well what’s your total customers now first if that’s not too private
Stewart (23:51.558)
yeah so we’re just over a hundred customers were growing day on day weekly so we’ve got that traction now it was it was ourselves are limited to customers because the platform wasn’t it wasn’t it as never a hundred percent
Paris Vega (23:54.080)
okay
Paris Vega (23:59.580)
yeah
Stewart (24:07.198)
wasn’t a hundred percent that we were happy to release it fully to the wild
Paris Vega (24:07.800)
sure
Paris Vega (24:12.840)
and it is monthly right like it’s forty nine dollars or is it just one off payment every time you want to get more contact
Stewart (24:19.258)
yeah it’s monthly recurring it’s a thirty day contract had customers have been on the beater and sort of stayed with us for eighteen months or so around yeah customers come in for either short burst or long periods of time want those that get it just get it and just don’t even they just leave the platform in automation don’t have to do anything
Paris Vega (24:23.220)
yeah
Paris Vega (24:30.560)
okay
Paris Vega (24:39.780)
right
Paris Vega (24:42.660)
that makes sense um what do you tink as caused the biggest spikes in growth since you’ve launched
Stewart (24:49.098)
i think that the biggest spikes have come when we’ve done podcast we’ve done a blaze of podcasts because again at your own dog food so raided just over fifty last year in the last six months of last year i’m up to ten at the moment this year and i’ve got a target this year i’ve been on two hundred raise
Paris Vega (24:54.140)
okay
Paris Vega (24:56.480)
how many
Stewart (25:13.478)
i got a been another hundred and again not just about marketing and search about stuff that we like because i would love to do a carshowpodcast but paris i am very lazy i could not do what you do preparation or that sort of it is hard work you know it is hard work but it’s worth while because it helps you build a wider net where you need you know a load of people that can help build that
Paris Vega (25:18.360)
yeah yeah
Paris Vega (25:21.460)
sure
Paris Vega (25:30.560)
yeah i’m not sure if i can do it yet i’m just experiment
Stewart (25:43.638)
we’re with you but yeah the biggest spikes have come from when we’ve done podcasts ou know it was a campaign we’ve got an reached out and multiple podcast and it gives you attraction around that side ray’s been on patflain been on john lee as so we’ve got some good spikes from that and we do you know we have on going activities with other partners as well so i’ve got an event in manchester that hosting with a couple of under people in three
Paris Vega (26:00.780)
okay
Stewart (26:13.458)
once time speaking at a podcast event in london so we’ve always got multiple marketing streams going on segment across customers and then the biggest thing at the moment you’re just producing some content to do sales league generation through podcast is the best way of describing for that so we can actually reach out and help customers get there get their first customers think of it as a good channel move really quickly on don’t have to wait for us don’t have to wait for blog posts to go alive or whatever it is
Paris Vega (26:20.600)
yeah
Paris Vega (26:30.720)
right
Paris Vega (26:39.300)
yeah
Stewart (26:43.778)
um you can leverage and use other people’s harder networks give value back to the their audience so we’re gonna do to this year it wasn’t part of the strategy yeah man so sam seth s on podland news with james we’ve done some crazy things so when the facebook film came out
Paris Vega (26:51.760)
exactly you mentioned events how often do you guys do events as part of your marketing strategy
Stewart (27:13.998)
multiple years ago i can’t remember the name of it now but we hired a sendimin london on a whim and sold three hundred tickets for people to go so we had a conversation yeah social network that was yeah so we we sold the red tickets which yeah stressful tam it’s very expensive to hire a sin in london we were banking that we’re going to sell it so we had conversation a couple of weeks ago when we’ll do it so for for those that
Paris Vega (27:23.740)
the social network that movie okay
Stewart (27:44.158)
in sunny england a lot of activities happening around london but the podcasting industry in the u s in manchester sheffield liverpool leads are in northern cities so we’re putting an event on in june time so got some key speakers flying in from the u s for that and then we’re gonna do another one outside london in september so so that’s two events this year in terms of speaking events rays going to do a couple in the u s
i’m doing these two plus another one in the u k but actually i’m we’re raising to concentrate more on the sort of podcastang events because it biggest activity of that s but from a customer and getting customers and pushing the model out i’m going to speak at marketing events because i’m to leave generation marketing funnels and how to get customers so there’ll be more activities from from that side i’m hoping to get to at least two or three of those obviously not the keynote speaker but just
workshop or something to get that message out there so it’s a big part of i wouldn’t say normally and assess it would be a big part of the funnel but with us we’re in an educational market we have to go and educate the market for something that’s needed so we need to get out there and go face to face which we can do now
Paris Vega (29:03.060)
yeah definitely so are you speaking on that specific topic of likepodcasts as sales lead lead generation channel okay
Stewart (29:17.258)
yeah yeah so again we say were experimented with customers last year from on board and features it was also about the message in as well so podcastguesting doesn’t exist as a search term or being a guest on a podcast does but more of like how what do i do how do i do it yeah it’s that sort of thing where it’s actually what
Paris Vega (29:36.200)
how to it yea information
Stewart (29:39.258)
talking about is how do you get customers how do you et your first customers how do you generate that so i’m talking about now is leave generation marketing funnels putting in the mix all those sort of search term key words on that niceness but what are the benefits around that so that’s what the couple of books that have written around that and i’ve got another one that’s halfway through sales play book of le generation as a podcastguest to do that well that means what the benefits are
Paris Vega (29:55.360)
yeah
Paris Vega (30:09.080)
okay
Stewart (30:09.218)
also what you should do is a guest as well you know if you want to get the benefit from the someone’s show you’ve got t be respectful of their network and actually get off your ass and do something you can’t just go to the show when think oh that’s great now they’re gonna do all the work is like now you have to go out to your network and promote it and you know it’s about giving and receiving find some more guests for them as well you know do some of that leg work as it’s hard yeah so it’s about it’s those you know what’s he benefits and it’s a classic different use case
Paris Vega (30:28.160)
hm
Paris Vega (30:32.260)
the
Stewart (30:39.578)
so if you’re running a kick starter think of it as a book author go and go and promote that through podcast before it actually ends if you’re an enterprise sales guy go and research your customers and see if they’ve been on podcast and then reach out understand what they said on there and listen to it so it’s all these little activities you can do to bring it into a sales development type role or an enterprise sales or whatever it may be to to leverage the power of podcast they’re not going to war either
they’ve been been around for ages and people don’t get the sort of context and what you can learn from it
Paris Vega (31:12.860)
yeah
Paris Vega (31:18.500)
yeah and i can speak to that a little bit just from doing this show and seeing the patterns of what people talk about he they’re talking about getting their first customers and kind of the meta trend that i’m seeing is uh seems like the best sales people are the best founders or the people who grow the most or the fastest spend time connecting with their target audience before launching the business or kind of in tandem with launching their business to where
Stewart (31:48.798)
yeah
yeah yeah
Paris Vega (31:49.180)
start getting that customer feedback before they even have any customers because they’re so connected to that network within their target audience and they’ve defined that beforehand and that when they have a business and they kind of test that idea or just ask for feedback on the idea of their business you know they’re already kind of going through those early phases of owning their product to their service and this seems like a an extension of that
where you could start being a guest in things related to the nit you’re wanting to build a company in even or if you’ve already got to start up you can start connecting with your target customers audience are figuring out what your target customers listen to i think there’s a tool called spark tour by the guy who ran n i think used to be the founder of mas yeah i think it does something like that it shows you your your target audiences in
Stewart (32:25.138)
yeah oh yeah randall yeah yeah yeah really yeah
Paris Vega (32:48.300)
answers or something like that so you could
Stewart (32:49.398)
yeah the target audience and influences in sort and a segment of podcast and things like that and it gives that data that metrics on it and again you write so now some of our message into tess founders is you build in the company out but you need to build you out as a brand because you’re the founder or the co founder whatever it may be you can take that message out but the beauty is that with podcast it’s a highly target audience somebody isn’t going to come and listen to your show that likes fly fishing
Stewart (33:19.058)
they may like life fishing but they’re not going to listen to learn about life fishing do you know if you’re trying to sell like so say zendeskas at zendeskand you want to sell a customer service message about customer service platforms would go on those podcastthat focused around that core area or the sub set of it because you know that the audience i want to learn and listen about customer service customer success how to do it et cetera so it gives you a very you know it’s highly
Paris Vega (33:20.160)
yeah
Stewart (33:49.158)
it is so you also know not just the audience but the network of that person that host because they’re interest in it as well there’s no other medium that gives you that targeted approach really quickly on that outreach really quickly that you can research and go after you know you don’t have to do an you don’t have to wait for content to warm up or google to index it’s like out there i’ve got every green content you can take sound bites can push it out i can leverage that really quickly i can go back to in six mont
Paris Vega (34:17.520)
yeah
Stewart (34:19.438)
i can do it again i can re purpose that content again if something happens i can take a sound back out and drop it into a p r statement boom i said that six months ago on a podcast you’re talking about it now
Paris Vega (34:23.480)
yeah
Paris Vega (34:33.960)
yeah i really do think i podcasting is like a cheat code for business especially sales league and that kind of thing building your network um because the other angle of getting booked on podcast is you’re building that personal connection um at least somewhat with the person who runs that podcast or you know like in my case being the host of this one i get to meet all these different people that i have on the podcast some of them i’ve known before some ve never met
Stewart (34:38.658)
yeah yeah
Paris Vega (35:03.900)
like i’ve never met you before and now we’re having this conversation so i have a someone else who’s you know more connected in my network that didn’t know you from anybody before you know being i guess was a polly work yeah right i mean you guys if you over if you if you’ll cover travel i’ll come to that event and
Stewart (35:04.198)
yeah exactly and that’s the thing now we’re best friends and we yeah through pollywook best friends now that’s it but it is it’s that
Stewart (35:30.438)
as long as it’s not first class you’re okay but it is it’s that network into it’s that thing of you’ve got you know talking to a trying to explain it to a friend of mine the other day and so is a quick way of doing that seven and five degrees seven degrees of separation six degrees of separation whatever the number is of i want to i want to reach patflinokay how do yo want to do that well i go through this this and this and it just gives you that capability really quickly because
Paris Vega (35:33.720)
okay
Paris Vega (35:36.960)
yeah
Paris Vega (35:52.840)
hm
Stewart (35:58.238)
we’ll connect on linked in weave our network hair and will share out the message in and such and guess blogging posting all those sort of mediums doesn’t doesn’t give you that and also it doesn’t give you the trust piece of content that you row and you published on somebody’s side t they can’t hear your voice they can’t hear the ant hear the passion of what you’re talking about flat word and it probably is we’re going to get we’re going to get the word in it is probably been written by chat g p t anyway
Paris Vega (36:13.140)
yeah the same
Paris Vega (36:21.500)
yeah
Stewart (36:28.198)
oh
Paris Vega (36:30.820)
the bus words in there uh yeah definitely it seems like blogging and it’s going to get overrun or already is overrun now by a i content
Stewart (36:32.198)
we get the bus whirling yah
Stewart (36:42.978)
yeah yeah it’s one of those you can do it in parallel can’t you you can have multiple strategies with any sales funnel and marketing fun all its multiple strategies and some long term some a short time it’s not going to go away most definitely
Paris Vega (36:47.760)
so yeah it seems like guests blogging and all that i guess there still may be some technical benefits if you’re getting links and traffic and that kind of thing
Paris Vega (37:00.300)
yeah
Paris Vega (37:08.140)
yeah
Stewart (37:08.858)
those of like if you want to get warmed up quickly got on ten podcasts something you’ve got ten reference points there of what you said enpetenlinks ten potential audiences like when i talk about channel i view it as he acts like so now this episode would get released but you’ll broadcast into your network and our broadcast it to mine and we’ve got the network effects it’s like i’ve got hundreds of calls people working for me now
Paris Vega (37:30.780)
yeah
Paris Vega (37:35.920)
yeah that’s it okay so i think we’ve covered a lot of different strategies and tactics that people can take away and using their own businesses and obviously i guess the main one is hey try out podcasthalk i think i might have to sign up after this pretty much convinced me that you know nothing to lose decent price point uh and yeah at least try it for a month and see if i get any
Stewart (37:36.398)
oh h
Stewart (37:45.298)
oh
Stewart (37:49.998)
oh
Paris Vega (38:05.780)
kings from it and just go from there but
Stewart (38:07.898)
let’s say yeah just use it as a tool to try get some bookings as a host of reference what you do and promote it out again it is called a patflneff because it’s jonglydusat christen that about ten years ago because that’s how he built entrepreneur on fire
Paris Vega (38:23.180)
oh wow
Stewart (38:24.878)
getting on the show of day by going by going on other peoples shows when pat flim wasn’t big as he is now and john wasn’t either it’s been christened so we just use that term because it’s you you’ve already got a reference othyou’re a host you’ve already got show you’ve already got material the host knows you’re turned up you’ll be at be articular you can you know talk a story walk through provide insight to the audience and that sort of
Paris Vega (38:28.000)
really
Paris Vega (38:32.640)
oh
Paris Vega (38:35.200)
yeah
Paris Vega (38:38.400)
m
Paris Vega (38:46.380)
yeah
Stewart (38:54.998)
so it’s like a pre qualify you can have to take the cables down yeah yeah
Paris Vega (38:58.620)
yeah as long as i can figure how to get my mike to work properly we should be good it looks like it turned off i know it i’m gonna hae o get some tape or something um well i think we use up the time that we booked here so i’m gon to respect your time and i appreciate you taking time to record at night and go through all of this with everybody and um do you want to make one last pitch to let’s say your ideal target customer bunch of podcasts
king agencies are listening in what would you tell them the pitches
Stewart (39:31.358)
yeah yeah so basically you’re an agency we can save lots of time and lots of money in terms of search in altimaking those podcasts and we have an agency dashboard so you can have multiple customers under the same lodging account and essential i think the take away message is if you’re looking to get customers and you’re a founder of book
whatever you are start to think of podcasting has been le generation to don’t dismiss it so look at it podcasthalk can definitely help with that and we can provide materials but just start to look at it as a way of generating leads into you to your funnel that you can do really quickly and say that that would be a key plug don’t don’t dismiss it as let’s make podcasting bigger
Paris Vega (40:16.480)
yep business cheat code thanks again stuart
Stewart (40:19.958)
yeah i like tag line hey no problem it’s been a pleasure it’s been good donyeahi’m glad i’m glad we’ve got the mike sorted it’s a whole lot better with with that she
Paris Vega (40:23.300)
oh
Paris Vega (40:30.600)
yes sir
Show Links
Website: https://podcasthawk.com/
Stewart on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewarttownsend/
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