How To Become A Guest On Popular Podcast Shows with Daniel Gefen
In the podcast:
00:37 – Guest & Episode Overview
03:30 – How It All Started
12:39 – Making A Good Podcast
18:18 – Tips in Pitching on a Host
23:11 – Process in Audience and Category Research
29:10 – Attraction on Podcasts
35:04 – Do’s and Don’ts of Podcast Guesting
46:34 – Determining The Effectiveness of Shows
2:18 – Learn More About Daniel Gefen & PodBooker.com
Guest & Episode Overview
Ilana:
Welcome back to another episode of Teach traffic. I am your host, Ilana Wechsler. And today we’re going to be talking about something a little bit different.
Today I’ve got a very special guest called Daniel Gefen, from PodBooker.com, as well as Gefen Media Group. And that is going to be talking to us all about appearing as a guest on other people’s podcasts and how that can be a traffic strategy, as well.
And it’s something that I have done a lot of Personally, I didn’t realize that it was such a strategic strategy. But Daniel’s coming on today’s show to talk all about how to go on other people’s podcasts to obviously promote your business.
So welcome to today’s episode, Daniel.
Daniel Gefen:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me on Ilana, excited!
Ilana:
Yeah, me too. And I am such a massive fan of podcasting. As a medium. I feel, you know, somebody like myself, who obviously has his own podcast, appears on other people’s podcasts, speaks at events, and does lots of other forms of marketing.
Honestly, by far and away, podcasting has been one of the most successful mediums to you know, for my content marketing. So I’m excited to talk to you about this today, because it’s something that I’m actually really, really passionate about.
And it sounds like you too, which is awesome. Yeah, yeah. So I’m curious, though, before we kind of go into the strategies that people can, you know, adopt for themselves.
Your backstory, like how did you get to sort of being in the podcasting space and sort of yet, how did you arrive here?
Daniel Gefen:
Okay, cool. I’ll try to give you the abridged short version, because they could be you know, I could be talking for days otherwise.
So, so really, it started four years ago, four years ago. I remember very clearly, I was playing tennis.
Are you a tennis player? By the way?
Ilana:
I am actually.
Daniel Gefen:
Yeah. Well, if you’re ever in Israel, you know, I’ve got a great tennis court, and we’ll have it. We’ll have a good game. I’m very competitive. So…
Ilana:
That’s okay…
Daniel Gefen:
Bring your A game because I’m gonna you know wipe the floor with you in Tennis. (laughs)
Ilana:
If you’re in Australia by the way.
Daniel Gefen:
If I’m in Australia, I’ll bring my five kids with me to Australia just to play you tennis. That’s gonna be a very expensive tennis game. Let me tell you.
Ilana:
Well, I have to bring my three children. So it’s not like it’s gonna cost me any that much less.
How It All Started
Daniel Gefen:
That’s true. I The truth is, it’s not even the price, it would probably be the flight, I’d probably commit suicide halfway halfway through because my kids will be, you know, just driving me absolutely nuts.
But anyway, four years ago, I’m playing tennis. And I get this phone call in the middle of the game, and I pick up the phone.
And this is gonna sound very cliche, but it’s very true. This is a phone call that changed my life.
So this guy, who I’ve never heard of says to me, Daniel, I, you know, I heard that you have an interesting business story. I’d love to have you on my podcast.
And I’ll never forget my response to him, which was, “What the heck is a podcast?” Okay. I had no idea what a podcast is, at all, like nothing. In fact, just to kind of give you context. And for people listening to this, like, I had no social media following.
Like, the only one that had a social media account was my wife, and she had it for Facebook to like, share your pictures of our kids, which I never understood, but whatever.
Like that was, that was my so I had no social media following I had no online presence at all. If I typed in my name, yeah, if you typed My name into Google, back then I didn’t exist pretty much. So I had a successful business, but that was offline.
And when this guy invited me on to his podcast, you know, I was curious, and I was intrigued, but I just didn’t know what it was. And when he explained it to me, I thought, wow, this is really cool.
You know, I get to, you know, basically speak to people who I haven’t spoken to before. And, you know, it’s a good way to maybe, you know, get myself out there.
You know, the only experience I had, you know, speaking in public was in high school, jumping on classroom tables and getting detention for that.
So you know, here’s someone actually asking me to speak. That’s amazing.
So I get on the podcast. I’m sitting there in my pajamas in my bedroom talking about my, you know, my story. And then at the end, the host said, well, thank you so much, Daniel. That was great.
Thanks for coming on the show. And I was like, Wow, that was quick. You know, it was a whole hour, but it felt like five minutes, and I fell in love with the microphone.
But I had this one question, right. And the question was, I’m staring at the wall, like, Who am I speaking with? Like, who’s who’s actually listening to this besides for this guy’s mother? And who knows what, right?
So I said to him, you know, how many people are listening? And I was really expecting him to say something like, you know, 2030 people, which would have been fine.
So when he said, Daniel, there were over 1000 people listening, I fell off my chair. I’m like, What? Are you? Are you serious? 1000 people. He’s like, yeah.
I said, Where are these people? He said, Well, they’re all over the world. And he starts listing all these different countries. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, this is huge. I need to get into podcasting.
Right. So two weeks later, I start my own podcast, and I called it Can I pick your brain? And I decided, I’m going to pick the brains of the most successful business, you know, business founders and entrepreneurs in our generation.
There are only two problems. One, I didn’t know any successful, any successful business leaders to interview, I had a very, very tiny network.
And number two, is how do I get people to listen to this podcast? Because remember, I had no social media following no online presence, like how do I get people to listen to the podcast?
And that’s when I had this aha moment where I said, Hold on a second. That guy had over 1000 people listening. And he invited me on his show, and I’m this nobody, right. So if he had me, then hopefully, there’ll be other podcast hosts who will also have me as a guest.
And I could just talk about, you know, my story, but also talk about my podcast. And hopefully, they’ll come and listen to my podcast as well. And so essentially, I decided I’m going to leverage other people’s audiences, instead of trying to figure this whole thing out myself, like, how do I create an audience?
That’s the number one question everybody has, right? As a marketer, you want to know, how do I build an audience? Well, instead of trying to figure it all out yourself, go where the audience already is. Right?
Go to where people are already there. Like, Ilana, I’m on this podcast right now. And you’ve spent all this time building an audience. And now I’m coming along, and I’m not even paying for this and I’m getting full access to your audience. Right.
This is amazing. So no, do not send me an invoice after we record. I know you’re thinking, yeah. So I started getting on podcast as a guest. And it was crazy, the results. So I ended up scaling my podcast to over 300,000 downloads.
I ended up interviewing for billionaires, the smartest man alive, the leading hostage negotiator for the FBI, the US memory champion, New York Times bestselling authors, and some of the biggest marketers that you’ve probably heard of like Russell Brunson, and Yannick silver and Noah Kagan and Robert Kiyosaki, and all these all these big name, you know, people that I kind of grew up reading their books.
And that just happened so fast that it was in less than two years and ended up, you know, getting to be one of the top business podcasts on iTunes, then wrote a book and became a bestseller through that.
And it was all by guesting on podcasts. So that’s the first part of the story. The second part of the story is I started getting bombarded with emails from PR agencies and people trying to be a guest on my podcast, too, you know, they wanted to promote their product, promote their business, promote their book, whatever it was that they’re promoting.
And the problem was, is their pitches just sucked, like, I just kept sending them to spam, like at least 95% of them. And I’m getting dozens of these a day.
And the problem was these two things. Number one, they didn’t have a relationship with me. So I didn’t know who they were. They didn’t know who I was, clearly they didn’t do their research.
And two is they didn’t know how to present themselves or position themselves, that made them seem different to everyone else. They all just sounded the same, right?
So after months of me sending them all to spam, I woke up one morning, this is about three and a half years ago. And I had this lightbulb moment that went off.
And I said to myself, you know people are paying a lot of money for these sort of PR agencies to reach out to hosts like me, but they’re not doing a good job about it at all.
Why don’t I start my own podcast booking agency? You know, I’ve got my own top rated podcast. I’ve already got contacts with all these top rated hosts. They’re my friends. They trust me.
I’ve been on over 60 podcasts as a guest and I’ve interviewed over 150 high profile guests. So I know what a great guest sounds like, I know how to position a guest.
I know what top rated hosts are looking for in guests. And so, that’s how Geffen Media Group was born. And we ended up working with some really big clients and getting them on the top podcasts, we only work with the top 250 podcasts.
And then what happened was about a year ago, I realized that I’m only servicing a very small market, because there’s only a small amount of people that can afford to hire an agency to get them on, you know, a select amount of podcasts.
But there are so many people out there that want to get on podcasts, right. And on the flip side, you’ve got, you know, I’m working with the top 10% of hosts. But there’s over 1.5 million podcasts now out there.
And so you’ve got all of these podcast hosts who are looking for guests, but they can’t find them, because there’s no way to get you know, where they’re going to find these guests.
They’re not big enough to get pitched by these PR agencies. And so that’s how I had the idea for pod book or.com, which essentially, is a marketplace for guests to get booked on podcasts easily, and for hosts to find guests and invite them on their show.
And that’s the backstory.
Ilana:
Amazing. And as you say, like solves a really big problem for many of them I don’t even know how many podcast shows there are out there on this one.
There’s literally millions and…
Daniel Gefen:
1.5 million right now.
Ilana:
Yeah, this is not you know, and as you say they’re all starved of content need to be interviewing people.
And so I can see that podbooker.com definitely solves a massive problem at four, for all the one half million podcasts that are out there, especially if you’re not in the top 250.
Because, as I say, like they would be getting pitched all the time. And it’s funny, you know, like, my podcast is not one of them.
But even so, I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly getting pitched by people wanting to come on my show. And you know, I’m no expert at pitches, but their pitches are terrible, that like, way, I wouldn’t even consider these people.
So maybe I thought we could talk a little bit about that. I mean, I think most of our listeners can see the merit in terms of why you’d want to appear as a guest on somebody’s podcast, that obviously is to get in front of their audience and to build your authority and all that kind of stuff.
I don’t think we really need to touch on why you’d want to guest podcast, maybe if we can kind of touch on the how aspect of it how to form a good pitch even sort of, possibly if you without needing an agency?
What are some of the tips that you could give some of our listeners in order to get on some good podcasts? Where is your audience?
Making A Good Podcast
Daniel Gefen:
Great question. So I think the number one goal is attention. Right? As a marketer, that’s your number one goal.
You know, I hear people talk about reach a lot, like you know, I can get 100,000, you know, views on YouTube, or Facebook or Instagram, whatever it is.
And I really think that reaches overrated, right, you know, getting a million hits on a, you know, on a website, if it’s not the right traffic, it’s not really worth much, right.
If you’re on Instagram, and you’ve posted an ad, and Suzy sitting on the toilet till her thighs go numb, and she’s scrolling through that feed, and you might get 1.2 seconds for attention, that’s not going to, you know, do much she’s not gonna be buying your product, right, that’s not the right time to get to get in front of someone.
Whereas with podcasts, the attention is insane. Because over 85% of people that listen to podcasts, listen to the whole thing from beginning to end, and the average podcast is 45 minutes long. That’s insane. That’s a gold mine.
Now, the question is, though, is how do you keep someone’s attention for that long? And the way that I look at it is that you want to there’s three things.
So number one, is the story. Right is getting into the story. And the story is all about relatability is, how do you become relatable to the person listening.
And we’ll get into that in a minute. The second thing is, is your message and your message has to be very, very concise and clear. Because we’re living in a world now where there’s so much information out there, there’s an information overload, and most people don’t know what to do. So they go on YouTube, and they type in, you know, how do I do x.
And the problem is, there’s so much content and so much information that they just get overwhelmed. And when a person gets overwhelmed psychologically, they don’t take any action.
That’s why the biggest problem with a lot of what people do is they’ll try to get in front of everyone. And the problem is if you’re trying to get in front of everyone, you end up getting no one.
And when you’re trying to sell too many things in one, you know, appearance, you’re again, you need to be very clear on what’s the action that people that you want people to take, like what are you doing, what do you want to be remembered for?
And the third thing is it is important to have a mission. Because at the end of the day, people don’t buy products. They buy first into the person like who the person is, and two is what is the person stand for? What is your Why? What is your mission?
That’s why if you look at any of the major brands today, what are they spending their money on? They’re spending their money on building a movement, they’re building a mission based movement, because that’s what people want to belong to something that’s greater than themselves.
So those are the three key elements. The story is going to be all about, how can they relate to you, when you were in their position? Right? So you might be a business coach.
And you might be teaching people how to earn seven figures, for example, I’m just throwing out an example, right? Well, a person who hears someone saying, “Oh, I, you know, I make seven figures.”
You know, that’s not relatable because you know, I’m trying to make six figures, right, how do I get to sit?
Right, but when you talk about your backstory, and you talk about how so if let’s take my story, as an example, why did I share with you that when I started out, I didn’t know what a podcast was? It’s because I want to show you that I was, I was even worse than you are. Right?
If you’re listening to a podcast right now, you know what a podcast is. Okay. And I didn’t even know what a podcast was. So I was, I was worse off than you are right now.
And now that makes me relatable to you. Because now you say, Wow, if this guy didn’t even know what a podcast was four years ago, and today, you know, he’s getting people booked on the top 200 podcasts, and he’s managed to, you know, have all this success in this business. And, you know, I can do that, too.
So the story really is three stages. stage number one is the underdog, right? It’s, and this is in any hollywood movie, right? You have the underdog, you have the struggle, like what’s the struggle? So you have to think about who your clients are, who your buyers are? And what is their major struggle, what do they, you know, worried about? What’s their main concern, and you want to hit that struggle, and then you want to show them how you struggled with that thing, too.
Step number two, and by the way, what I’m sharing right now is not just podcast, it’s not just what you do on a plotter, this should be in every single one of your marketing. Everything you do in marketing should should be using these things.
So step number two is what’s the breakthrough. The breakthrough is that aha moment. So remember how I shared that my aha moment was, Hey, hold on a second. You know, I was on that podcast that had over 1000 people listening, why don’t I go and leverage other people’s podcasts? That was my breakthrough moment, right.
And then stage three is the success. The success is now this is what you can get, if you have that breakthrough, this is where you can be. Right. So getting to, you know, a top rank podcast, interviewing billionaires, you know, building successful businesses, you know, you know, becoming a best selling author, those are all successes that people want, right? So…
Ilana:
Curious, though, this sort of conveying of your story of that process, which is actually like a classic copywriting technique.
And I think they call it the “Dip”, you know, but anyway, is this story conveyed in your pitch to, to podcast hosts? Or once you’re on the show?
Just to clarify…
Tips in Pitching on a Host
Daniel Gefen:
Yes, that’s a great question. So the answer is really both. And so on the podcast itself, you want to go deep, right?
That’s where you want to really build the connection. And you want to be able to take the listener essentially, on a journey.
And then at the end of the journey, they’re at a point where they’re like, Okay, I’m, I’ve bought into this person, like, I’ve related to them on a human level, right, I relate to them. I’ve built this emotional connection with them.
I feel the pain that they felt, I understand the breakthrough that they’ve managed to have, I get it that they can help me with this breakthrough, I get that they’ve succeeded.
So they’ve got the credibility, I want that success. What do I have to do now? And that’s when you have the action step, that’s when you get them to take action. So on the bio, you don’t want to give away everything. Right.
And this is a big, big mistake that people make. And I’ve looked at hundreds and hundreds of bios. And I can tell you that the bios usually fall into two categories.
Okay, they either are too vague, which means that the person hasn’t really given me enough information for me to say yes, in which case, I’m going to say no automatically because I’ve got enough people pitching me I don’t need to do more research on you. I’m not going to waste my time.
Or the other category is that you’ve given away too much. So to give you an analogy, you know these Hollywood trailer trailer teasers that they do or Netflix they do these trailer teasers. So usually it’s like a two minute trailer just to kind of get you to watch the full movie.
Well, if you notice some of the trailers, they give away so much information about the movie that I kind of feel like I don’t need to watch the movie anymore. You just gave everything away. That’s a big mistake.
Yeah. On the flip side, sometimes a trailer is just not it doesn’t really get me it doesn’t like it’s just too vague. I don’t know what this is about. And I’m not interested in watching it the best.
There’s no hook. The best trailers are the ones that leave you with this curiosity, this burning sensation of Oh my God, I need to know what happens, right? That should be your number one goal when you’re writing your bio.
So when you’re reaching out to a host, the number one goal should be you want to get this person curious enough to be like, Oh, my goodness, this is really intriguing. I really want to know more about this person, I got to get them on the show.
So you know, when people are reaching out to hosts on PodBooker I always tell our users, you know, don’t just reach out and be like, “Hey, I’d love to be on your show. Let me know if it’s a good fit. Check out my profile.”
No! Bad move! Because hosts are not going to check every single profile out, you’re being lazy when you’re reaching out to them.
Use a personalized message. First of all, the great thing about PodBooker is that you can actually go on the hosts profile. And it will tell you what they’re looking for. Like we literally did all the work for you.
You don’t even need to guess, you can actually find out what they’re looking for and base it around that.
But using teasers gets them curious. That’s, that’s number one. That’s the number one thing I would say about when you’re pitching hosts.
The other thing is you want to show them what you’re going to do for them.
Most people when they pitch, it’s all about them. It’s all about, Hey, I just wrote a book, hey, I’ve got this product, I want to sell it, I want to promote this, I want to talk about this, me, me, me, me, me, I don’t care about you.
I care about me, I care about my show, I care about my audience, I care about getting more downloads I care about, you know, making sure that my audience is gonna, you know, share this episode because it was so good. That’s what I care about. I care about my guests, sharing my episode with their network so that I grow my podcast, I get more downloads, that’s what I care about as a host. So you need to get into the head of your host.
What can you do for them? Could you leave them a review on iTunes and copy and paste it? And then send it to them and say, Hey, I left your review, because I checked out your podcast, and it was awesome.
Oh, that’s great. You’re using reciprocity. Now? Could you tell them about how many followers you have on Instagram? And well, how many emails you have in your email list and how you’re going to share it, and you’re going to make sure that you promote their podcast.
Oh, that’s great. That’s gonna benefit me as a host? Can you tell them why you believe that your audience is gonna love the episode? Because this is the kind of thing that they need to know about? Oh, that’s great. That’s useful.
Like, these are the kind of things that you want to think about when you’re when you’re pitching a host.
Ilana:
Yeah, awesome. Just on that. I mean, let’s say you’re doing your research out to find particular shows that you think your audience, you know, hangs out at, or listens to like, I’m just curious how you do that research.
I mean, you can look at the title of the show, and you can look at the title of the episodes and somewhat guess, but are there any ways to really get more research into?
Is this really your right audience that you’re trying to get in front of?
Process in Audience and Category Research
Daniel Gefen:
So I’m glad you asked that. Because before I launched PodBooker, in my agency, I would, we would do a lot of research.
So we would look at, like you said the name of the show, we will look at the description of the podcast, we would look at topics that they’ve covered before in the past, we would look at previous guests that they had to see if it’s a match, right, we would look at, we would even listen, we would listen to a podcast episode just to kind of hear, you know, what they talked about.
The one of the beautiful things about PodBooker is that, again, we’ve taken away all of that research because you just click a button and you see that profile.
And, you know, you’ve got all the description about the podcast on there, all you got, you could see their previous guests from there, you can actually listen to their previous episodes on their profile.
You can also see there’s a section called ideal guests. So they’ve actually, you know, said what kind of guests they’re looking for. And that gives away, you know, sort of what the show is about, you could look at reviews, so on the pod book or profile, they actually have all of their iTunes reviews on there.
So you can see how many reviews they’ve got. So we’ve kind of made it super easy, like, you know, saving you a lot of time having to do research.
Ilana:
Okay, but I mean more in terms of like, when, from what I’m saying you still have your agency, but the research process that your agency would go through because, um, you know, PodBooker might not have all the podcasts that perhaps some of our listeners would would want to go on at this point maybe isn’t the time of the recording, maybe in not the not too distant future they will all be on your platform, but in, in the situation that they’re in It’s not on your platform like what are some strategies that people could do some research to find a really good and appropriate show for them to then go?
Okay, yep, this is the right show, I’m going to then pitch to this particular podcast.
Daniel Gefen:
So currently, you’ve got a few, there’s a few places that you can find out, for example, where a podcast is ranked. So there’s something called Chartable.com.
And on Chartable.com, you can see where a podcast is ranked, according to which category as well. So let’s say you’re targeting health podcasts. So you can go to the health, they’ve got a, I guess what you call a ranking system, right, like a ranking table, and you can go and search based on category.
And you could see now here’s the downside to Chartab;e. The downside to chargeable is that they only show you the top 250 ranked podcasts in each category, which means that you’re very limited, because like I said, there’s 1.5 million podcasts out there.
And so, you know, if you want to get on the really big ones, that’s great. The problem is, it’s very hard to get on unless you have a relationship with them.
And unless you are someone that they sort of, you know, feel is is is that no high enough caliber for their show, if some of them only go for like celebrities like Joe Rogan, for example, you know, you don’t get on his show just by reaching out, right, you know, I’m saying like, he’s only looking for people that he really wants to have on his show.
So that’s the only downside about Chartab;e is that it’s very limited in the amount of podcasts that they feature, because they’re only showing the top 250.
The other way to do it is you go to iTunes, iTunes is the biggest podcast platform, right now, Spotify is a close second, Spotify has actually invested close to a billion dollars in the last year in the podcasting space. So you know watch Spotify carefully, because they’re gonna overtake iTunes pretty soon. But that’s the other way to do it is you can go on iTunes, you could search by category, and you could look at the various podcasts based on on where they’re ranked.
And I would also look at reviews, the number of reviews that they’ve got, will also give away sort of the quality of the show.
The other thing that you want to look out for is how consistent are they? So how many episodes have they produced, right, so if they’ve only produced three episodes, you know, it doesn’t matter if they’ve got, you know, 100 reviews, they’ve only produced three episodes. So you don’t know if they’re going to be around for very long, because a lot of podcast hosts, they start and then they kind of get a little bit demotivated because they just don’t have enough traction.
And after let’s say, you know, 10, 20 episodes, they you know, they basically pull the plug.
So you do want to make sure that the podcast is consistent, and that it’s produced, you know, a decent amount of episodes, you also want to make sure that they’re still producing, right, so a lot of podcasts that are on iTunes.
Even though they’re on there, they’re there, you know, you could listen to them. But the last time they produced an episode was, you know, you know, six months ago, in which case, I wouldn’t waste my time reaching out to them because they probably are not producing any more episodes.
So we look at how recent was their latest episode that they’ve produced. And if it’s more than a month, we don’t even bother. They’re just wasting your time.
You also want to look at previous guests. So for example, if they’ve had some big names of people in your industry, that’s a good indication that they are a quality podcast. That’s another thing that we look at as well.
Ilana:
Yeah, awesome. That’s a very, I’ll definitely check out Chartable.com.
That’s pretty cool. Yeah. Okay, so we find a podcast that we want to go on and think it’s a good fit, we pitch them with our story and make our story relatable.
Is there anything else that we need to do in terms of getting a good chance of guest podcasting?
Daniel Gefen:
Are we talking about converting the listeners or just being a guest on the Podcast? How to be attractive?
Ilana:
Yeah.
Attraction on Podcasts
Daniel Gefen:
So attraction is really to do with a lot of it unfortunately, I say, unfortunately, but like, it’s a game. Let’s all be real here, right?
I hate when people kind of, you know, pretend like it’s, you know, it’s a game. Everyone’s playing the game, right? So I’ll give you an example.
When I had my first big guest, like, you know, someone that was famous. It was so easy after that to get big name guests, because all I needed to do was say, hey, by the way, you know, I had Russell Brunson on my show.
And then everyone’s like, Oh, you had Russell Brunson? Well, now in that case, I can come on like they don’t even need to know anything else. Right? And then you know, you have a few more people and then suddenly now you’ve got a list of big name guests.
And now, you know, you basically play the game right? It’s the same thing as a guest, If you’ve been on one big podcast, right, so now it’s like, oh, well, I’d be on this podcast and I’m like, oh, okay, you know?
Yeah. John Lee Dumas had you on his show? Well, you know, then oh, Pat Flynn had you on his show? Okay, great, then if he hadn’t show, then I’ll have you on your show.
So it’s kind of like who knows who the other thing as well is, there’s a lot of vanity that goes on, right? There’s a lot of vanity that happens.
So for example, if you’ve been featured in Forbes, like, you know, I’ve been featured in Forbes, but between me and you, it’s not really that big of a deal. Like people make a big deal out of it. But if you know the right people, and you write the right article, and you make it easy enough, and you know how to work the system, you know, you get an article unfolds, you know what I’m saying?
So, you know, you’re playing, it’s a game, and everyone’s sort of playing the game. And so you just, you kind of have to know how to play the game. So being featured in places that are noteworthy in your industry, whether it’s health or business or, or self development, whatever it is, that’s, that’s where you want to be featured, you want to be featured in those places. If you have a book that really helps, by the way, really helps.
Yeah, because hosts, like when you have a book, because number one, it’s an easy thing to offer your audience, right, it’s an easy hook is like it’s $15 to buy a book, like, you know, most people can afford 15 bucks, right.
And, in fact, people who listen to podcasts, they are people who read books, because they’re investing in themselves, which is also why you want to be getting on podcasts, because the people who listen to podcasts are people who are proactive, they’re investing in themselves, they buy into, you know, coaching programs, and they buy products. And so those are the people that you want to be pitching to anyway. But they love reading books.
So if you’ve got a book, you know, hosts know that their audience loves books. And by the way, it doesn’t even have to be a whole book, it could be an Ebook.
So if you don’t have time to write a book, which, which is fine. I don’t necessarily think there’s, you know, a lot of people say, oh, I’ve got to write a book, no, just just write an Ebook, like spend a weekend, take the most valuable information that you have in your industry, put it into a 10, page 20, page 30 page, whatever it is Ebook, make, go on fiverr.com hire someone for five bucks or 10 bucks to create a nice looking cover, boom, you’re an author, you’ve got a book, right?
You don’t have to be a number one bestseller on Amazon, to be an author, you could be an author just by having an Ebook, and just putting in your great content. And then you use it as a hook to get people to get your free ebook.
And now it’s even better because now you don’t say, Oh, you know, buy my book, you could say I’m giving away my book for a limited time, or whatever it is. And you could download it for free.
And here’s the website, and then they go to your website. Now you can convert your listeners into buyers, and now or not buyers, but you know, I guess contacts in your email list.
And of course, as you know, you’re all savvy marketers listening to this. So you know that the, you know, the money’s in the list, right? The money is in the email list.
That’s what you own, because Facebook can change its underpants every day. And suddenly, you know, it’s not working anymore. The algorithm and Google as you all know, you know, I got burnt by Google’s algorithm with its, you know, Zoo that it came out with Panda and Penguin and all that crap. You know what I’m talking about? Yes, yeah, exactly.
So we don’t own any of that, like, you don’t want to ever have a social media platform or any platform holding you by the balls, literally, like they had me by my business balls. And my, you know, my first.
So I that’s why I’m a big advocate of growing your email list. And the best way to do that is by converting the listeners that are listening to the podcast into email subscribers, and the best way to do that is to give them a very sort of easy no brainer, like, hey, I’ve put my best information into a small, easy to read Ebook.
People are not even interested in buying, you know, 200 page books, they’re much more interested in getting like a 10 page or even a five page Ebook that can just give me all the information that that you know, and I’ll give you my email address for that. So they go to the web, they go to your landing page, they download the ebook, and now you’ve got their email. Now, of course, you upsell when they actually buy.
I mean, I don’t need to teach this. But you know, they, they know, they download the ebook, they get the upsell, right, and then you’ve got your email list, and then you’re doing the whole email campaign, the whole funnel thing.
Yeah. So that’s the other thing.
Ilana:
Okay. So I guess we’re sort of getting into the part of where I wanted to talk to you about, let’s say, you, you know, you do manage to get on these guest shows.
You’ve mentioned obviously, sending people to a dedicated page on your site, possibly an Ebook or something like that. Is there anything else that you recommend people should do as a guest on a podcast?
I mean, you touched on the fact that you know, you built your own podcast show to over 300,000 downloads that was by guest what’s called guest podcasting.
Do’s and Don’ts of Podcast Guesting
Daniel Gefen:
Podcast guesting oh yeah 100 percent. have not spent any money on advertising for my podcast, my business. You know, I run a successful agent and I run a successful agency that basically has never had any advertising spent on anything.
It all comes from my network that I’ve built through a podcast guesting the book I didn’t the book became a number one bestseller on Amazon. I didn’t spend any money on marketing at all.
I just did podcast guesting, and of course, the podcast, you know, that became a top ranked podcast. And that was also just podcast guesting.
So, you know, to answer your question, I would say what not to do? Well, so I had a guest on my show, for example, who came on? And every time I asked him a question, he said, “Well, Daniel, you know, on page 119 of my book, I answer that question. And then I was like, Okay, what about this? And he’s like, Well, on page 73 of my book, I’m like, Alright, schmuck, like, come on, there’s no way I’m producing this podcast, like if someone needed to train you on how to be a guest.
Because if you think that you’re just going to get on someone’s podcast and just become one big promotion. So then you need to go and learn how to sell because selling isn’t about selling. It’s about building connections. It’s about building human connections. And when you build a human connection with someone, they’re gonna buy into you. Okay, that’s how it works.
So this guy was over selling. So my number one recommendation, advice for anyone going on podcasts is don’t oversell, you will have your chance to sell. There will be times in the podcast where you’ll throw in Oh, by the way, you know, I have a course on that. Okay. And then you drop it, right, you drop it, you move on, kind of how I’ve been dropping PodBooker.
And it’s been sort of naturally in the conversation. I’m not going, saying you better go and sign up to PodBooker right now, because it’s free to join, right? I’m not doing that.
So you don’t want it. You want to lead with quality and, and value and the sales will come, you do want to have a call to action at the end. Because every single podcast host, pretty much will at the end of the podcast, say, hey, Daniel, you know, how can our listeners get in touch with you? How can they find out more about what you’re doing?
That’s your opportunity, then to basically go and, you know, give them the full sort of, you know, sales pitch while they can go here, and blah, blah, blah. But…
Ilana:
I can really attest to that as well. I’ve gone on a number of podcasts that admittedly, at the time, I didn’t actually realize how popular those particular podcasts were.
And I went on this particular podcast, and I completely gave away the farm. Like I gave away my entire strategy and strategy of cutting to remember what it was, but like I literally did not hold back with I was going to give away the farm.
And to my shock and horror, I was flooded with people wanting to, you know, become a client in my agency when I did a lot of agency work. And I’m like, but I don’t understand. Like I gave away the farm.
I told you exactly what I would be doing for you. Is there a mystery here?
They’re like “No, I just want you to do it for me.”
So, yeah I totally can agree with you with that.
Daniel Gefen:
Yeah, that’s that’s actually a very good point, you said because the advice I gave was not to be over salesy and what you just said was, and not only Don’t be sort of over salesy, but also Don’t be so like, don’t hold your cards so tight to your chest, because people are so scared that Oh, if I, if I tell them everything I know, like I’m sure when I talked about the Ebook just now.
And I said give away all your best content. I’m sure there are people listening to this going, wait, Daniel, give away all my best content and an Ebook that’s gonna shoot myself in the foot, isn’t it?
And the answer is no, it’s not because people mostly buy into your time into time and into your expertise.
Yeah, sure they know how to do it. Look, there’s very few things today, let’s be honest here, my son who’s 12. Okay, it’s my oldest son, you could probably build a space rocket spaceship just on YouTube.
Okay, it’s ridiculous. There’s so much information out there, you can learn how to do anything, the real reason anyone’s going to buy into what you’re doing or buy or pay you money to do something. They’re either saving time because they just don’t want to do it themselves. They don’t have time to do it. That’s not what they’re focusing on. Or B, is that they’re just so overwhelmed by all the different opinions and different options and different ways of doing it.
They just want one way to do it. Like just just you do it for me, or you just show me one way to do this because I don’t want to try to figure this out myself. That’s really all or it could be that you have connections or you know that those are the only reasons that people would actually pay because information isn’t really that valuable anymore.
Let’s be honest, it’s it’s, it’s not. It’s not like the olden days, you know, 50 Two years ago, 100 years ago, information was really, really, really valuable. You know, and only a select few people had access to that information and they could charge a ton for that. Today, everyone has access to it.
It’s like selling sand at the beach. Hey, you want to buy a bucket of sand? What the hell’s wrong with you dude? There’s sand everywhere. Why would I want to buy something from you?
Well, that’s what you’re doing. If you’re saying I’m sending you information. It’s not that they’re buying the information. It’s that they’re buying the fact that the information is packaged in a way that I don’t have to do anymore work. And I don’t have to feel overwhelmed. You’re showing me you’re holding my hand, you’re taking me step by step through the job. That’s what they’re buying.
Ilana:
Exactly. They don’t have to trawl through hours and hours of YouTube videos, picking out the tidbit of information that can be just distilled into 10 minutes through a course or something.
Daniel Gefen:
Yes. Yeah.
Ilana:
Cool. Okay, so that’s what stopped to do is to oversell, is there anything else that people should not do?
Daniel Gefen:
Well, they should also make sure that they are fully prepared for the podcast. So if you’re just starting out, you know, so I’ve done enough podcasts where I mean, actually, let’s Ilana calls me up today.
And I actually stupidly didn’t check my calendar. And I realized, oh, my goodness, I totally forgot about this. There’s podcasts that I’m booked on. And not only that, I didn’t even know I was booked on a podcast, I thought we’re doing a, you know, a, I thought I was doing a sales pitch to a potential client.
So I’m like, Oh, crap, I’m on. I’m on a podcast. Thankfully, I’ve done enough podcasts that I can literally, I told Ilana this, I said, you could wake me up at two in the morning, I probably won’t be very happy.
But you could wake me up at two in the morning, and I’ll get up and you could tell me, hey, you’re on a podcast, Daniel. And I’ll be able to just turn on the microphone and start talking. Because I’ve been doing it for that for so long.
However, if you’re new, and you haven’t been doing it for long enough, so I would recommend just being prepared for the show. So you got to know a few things.
Number one, how long is episode for, because if the episode is only 20 minutes, and by the time you finish your story, the host is like, well, I’m sorry, that’s all we have time for, you haven’t had enough time to really get into your main message. And, and and you know, into sort of what you’re offering. And so you don’t want to be sort of caught off hand, you want to know how long the episode is for so you can pace yourself.
Number two is you want to know who the audience is. You want to make sure that you have a good understanding. Because if you go on a podcast, and you start talking about, you know how to market on Facebook, but you’re talking to people who are offline businesses, I don’t know giving a bad example. But you know what I’m saying?
Yeah, so you want to know who your audiences are so that you’re giving them the right content. You also want to know whether it’s video, whether it’s audio so that you’re not caught off hand, you want to know if it’s on zoom, if it’s on Skype.
So all this information you want to make sure you have beforehand so that when you show up, you show up prepared because hosts hate it when you show up and you’re totally not prepared. It’s not, it’s not very respectful to their time…
Ilana:
Like you were today, don’t you? (Laughs)
Daniel Gefen:
Yes, no. And I put my hands up. I’m terribly sorry for what I did that was very unlike me as well. And it’s probably because you’re based in Australia.
And so usually when I’m on podcasts, they’re in the US time zone.
So all of my podcast bookings are in the evening for me. So when Ilana when you reached out in the morning, I was like, wait, this is a podcast. I’m not used to going on podcasts so early. But anyway, that’s just me.
Ilana:
It’s all good, you are a seasoned professional,
Daniel Gefen:
I think I would say…
Ilana:
Ah yes get going…
Daniel Gefen:
is try to be natural. I really, really hate when people are so scripted that they sound robotic. Right?
So I’ve had guests on my show who you could tell that they’ve just scripted the whole thing from beginning to end. like they’ve written it out. Right?
And they sound cardboard, wooden, plastic, it’s just like you don’t you’re not even having a conversation with someone, you’re just kind of hearing them give you a pitch. Like you’re giving you a script.
I’ve even been on podcasts a lot where the host is also very script. It’s like, okay, Daniel, so tell me about you know, something about yourself. And I’d be like, Well, you know, I’d say something and I talked about my grandfather and you know how he was in the Holocaust.
And he was in 18 concentration camps and shot and buried alive and survived. And then they’re like, Okay, well, what business book? Would you recommend our audience and I’m like, Oh, my God, you clearly are not having a conversation here. Like you’re just going to the next question is, that’s terrible.
So you got to just be comfortable enough to just have a conversation. You just imagine that you’re having a conversation with someone at a bar or at a cafe, like you just met, you’re just having, you’re just, you know, naturally talking about, you know, what you already know, like, there’s nothing to be nervous about in a way because you the host isn’t going to ask you anything you don’t know like, they’re just going to ask you questions about you and what you do. You Know that stuff.
They’re not asking you about how to knit a sweater. I wouldn’t know anything about how to knit a sweater. But I know about podcasting. So you know, I’m kind of in my element.
And do you know what if the host asked you sign that you don’t know the answer to guess well, you can also just be real and be like, you know what?
That’s a really great question. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s that that’s a really interesting I, I need to look into that. I don’t know. Right? And if you say something stupid, like I’ve said something before on a podcast, I’m like, Oh, crap, I really shouldn’t have said that. That was about my dad.
And I don’t know, I don’t think he’ll listen to it. But like, I feel bad. Like, that was disrespectful. I shouldn’t have said that. I can, you can politely ask the host. Hey, do you mind if you just edit that out?
I don’t know, my kids might listen to this. And it’s not really respectful to their grandfather that I said that, can you please delete it? I think most of the time, there’ll be, you know, they’ll be happy to do that.
So if you make a mistake, you say something. It’s not live. It’s recorded, and they can edit it.
Ilana:
Yeah, exactly. I’m curious. I mean, I don’t probably don’t know much about myself. But so I’m a bit of a data nerd.
And I’m curious as to how deep you go into determining the effectiveness of going on specific shows.
So for example, you know, you say you send people to an Ebook, like, do you create separate landing pages for the specific shows that you go on?
So that afterwards you can see how effective it was? Or do you just send people to a generic page, and therefore in lies that the gray area of how effective is this strategy for you?
Determining The Effectiveness of Shows
Daniel Gefen:
Yeah. So there’s a number of things you can do, I think, sending them to a specific targeted landing page is great, because then you can sort of measure based on which podcasts you’re on how successful they were, which is cool.
The other thing you can do is that if you have an affiliate program, I would highly recommend also, you know, saying and not all hosts will do this, by the way, some hosts are not.
They’re not Pro, you know, offering affiliate programs on their show, they kind of feel like maybe, you know, it’s, you know, they don’t want to do that for their audience. That’s fine.
I mean, the worst case scenario is the host says, you know, it’s fine. I’m happy for you to promote it. Just I don’t do affiliates. That’s okay.
Most people will say yes, because, you know, the host is having you on for free. You’re not paying this is free exposure, which is why I said at the beginning, I said to Ilana, before we did this, I said that podcasting right now, specifically podcast guesting is the most undervalued attention today.
Because everything, every single thing that you can think of that you need to reach out to your audience, you have to pay for, whether it’s Facebook ads, or SEO pay per click, or, you know, YouTube ads, whatever it is, you’re paying for that exposure.
For some reason, right now, I guess it’s because we’re in the early stages. Still, even though there’s 1.5 million podcasts, if you compare that to the number of YouTube videos, YouTube channels, there’s over 100 million YouTube channels, there’s over a billion blogs.
So 1.5 million podcasts is like a drop in the ocean. And so in the next couple of years, you’re going to see that spike, there’s going to be 10s of millions of podcasts. So we’re really early still.
And because we’re really early, the market hasn’t saturated. And because the market hasn’t saturated, it’s very, very, it’s like it’s free, right, you go on a podcast, and the host doesn’t charge you to be on their show, I believe that’s going to change soon, I think hosts are going to start charging for guests to be on their show.
And so that’s why I also think that if you’re thinking about it, don’t think about it going now, because you’re going to kick yourself in six months or a year from now when it gets expensive.
But to that point, since hosts are not charging, if you’re offering them a kickback, like you know, if I sell X amount of courses, you know, you you’re making this much money, or you can get 10% or 20% or 30% of you know anyone that signs up to the course or anyone that’s you know, buys the product, and then you give them an affiliate code. So that’s another way to track it.
And it’s also a win-win because you’re giving the host a way to earn some money as well. So that’s another way to do it. You know, the other thing as well is that it’s a long term game, right?
So with Facebook, you know you do, let’s say you take $10,000, you put it on ads, once that $10,000 is used up, you’ll never get a single lead again, it’s done.
It’s finished. Whereas with podcasts when you get on a podcast, so this podcast that I’m on right now, we’re recording on, you know, the seventh of December 2020 there’s a good chance that someone in 2022 will be listening to this podcast because they’ve stumbled upon Ilana’s show.
And it’s like, wow, this is an amazing show. I need to binge this, right. So I’m going to go back to the beginning and listen to all her episodes, which is, which is a normal thing. I mean, we do that with YouTube.
We do that with Netflix, we do that with all other, you know, sort of channels. So podcasting is no different. So there’s a very good chance that people will hear you on the podcast you are on for years to come, and that and it’s evergreen content.
So you may not get to track the long term benefits of it. So, me personally, I don’t necessarily track, you know, every single podcast I go on, but I do see the big picture and I see what it’s been doing for my brand. I see what it’s doing for my awareness.
And it also, you know, gives you more authority in your space as well, because you’ve been on all these podcasts, right?
Ilana:
Yeah, definitely. And I can definitely attest to the fact that people download archives.
As I said, I’ve been a guest on a number of other people’s podcasts, many, like, you know, four months ago, and it’s amazing how, I guess sticky that content is because people are downloading the archives of certain shows.
And it’s amazing I guess, it’s just an amazing medium. And I get sort of approached by people who feel like they know me, and as you say, like, like, I’ve been in areas for 45 minutes, while they’ve been probably, you know, going through the aisles of the supermarket doing the shopping. Right, or, or driving on the long drive or something.
I’ve had people come up to me at events and say, Ilana, I heard you on this podcast, and Baldwin, and it’s sort of, there’s an instant rapport that they feel that they have with me, which is a real privilege, I have to say, you know, that I definitely don’t take for granted in, in these crazy noisy world that we live in, you know, so um,
Daniel Gefen:
That’s the best part. Because you know, I get on calls with people now and sometimes I’ll get on a call and I’ll start giving my spiel, my sales pitch.
And they’ll stop me. And they’ll say, No, no, Daniel, I’m sold. I’ve been listening to you on podcasts. And I’ve heard your whole story. And you know, I’m already sold. Just tell me what it costs. And I want to start working with you. Yeah, that’s like gold. I mean, that’s incredible.
Right? You know, you, you can’t get that when you do an ad on Facebook or any of these other places. Like, they’re just clicking an ad and then coming in to find out more.
But if they’ve already heard you want to podcast, they already know your story. They’ve already built that connection, like you just mentioned Alona and I think that, to me, is one of the major major benefits that you can’t do in any other form.
Learn More About Daniel Gefen & PodBooker.com
Ilana:
Yeah, big time. Well, I think for our listeners, who hadn’t considered appearing on other people’s podcasts as a guest, will be onboard with the concept after listening to this episode, we’ve gone through many of the advantages out I can certainly attest to it being an extremely powerful medium, you obviously as well.
And yet, people can visit PodBooker.com to approach podcast hosts, as well as maybe somebody also wants to go through your agency at Geffen Media, is there any sort of last minute parting words you want to mention with our audience, or we’ve pretty much covered everything?
Daniel Gefen:
I think we pretty much covered everything, I would just say we just launched a new feature as well on PodBooker, which is that you can now get reviews from hosts.
And I think this is something that’s been missing in the market for a long time. You know, because on Amazon, when you want to buy a product, you look at the reviews. That’s the first thing anyone does, right?
They look at all the reviews. Well, the same thing here is if a podcast is looking at a guest number one thing they really want is they want to see reviews from other people who have had them on their show. And so that hasn’t existed until now.
So we’ve just launched it now on PodBooker and you can get reviews from hosts and then when you’re reaching out to a host, they just go to your profile, they could see all the reviews that you’ve had from other hosts and nothing speaks louder than you know other people what other people think about you so I’m very excited to share that as well.
Ilana:
Very, very cool. I would imagine that to be very powerful. Yeah, well, um, thank you so much for coming on today’s show. Definitely check out PodBooker.com and, Daniel, it’s been an absolute pleasure interview…
Daniel Gefen:
Pleasures all mine Ilana, thank you so much for having me on the show. Appreciate it.