Listen to the full interview here ( 38:13 minutes)
Full Transcript
Welcome to the inbound success podcast where the world’s leading inbound marketers pull back the curtain on their campaigns and share actionable tips and insights you can use to dramatically improve your marketing results. Here’s your host, Kathleen booth.
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I am your host Kathleen booth, and this week my guest is Dan Moyle, the chief marketing officer of interview Valet. Welcome Dan.
Thank you, Kathleen. It’s a pleasure. Happy to be here.
Yeah, it’s great having you. And you’re somebody who I’ve met a few times and, and we’ve talked because you’ve put me in touch with some amazing podcast guests, so I’m kind of interested to talk to you and get a peek behind the curtain of what you do with interview valet. Um, before we dig into deep though, can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and about the company?
Oh yeah, sure. Uh, so, so Dan’s my name, obviously I’m a marketing geek, but outside of that professionally and just doing it out of passion to um, I’m a, I’m a dad, I’m a husband, I’m a biker. Have you got my harley that I love to ride when it’s nice out and I’m waiting for that right now. Let’s see. I love to, to read and educate myself. I just started recently a reading program I guess to every morning I’m up early to educate myself and develop myself. Gosh, I’m a podcast host myself. Uh, I love listening to podcasts, so yeah, and I’ve been doing marketing for a number of years now around maybe 10 years or so, something like that. Started off in the TV news business and moved into marketing and did some amazingly fun inbound marketing. So yeah, it’s been a quite a ride and now I’m working with interview Valet and basically we just, uh, we work with clients, inspiring thought leaders, we call them, so coaches, consultants, authors, a brands, emerging brands, sas companies, uh, to get them to a new audience, you know, it used to be you could guest blog and reach a new audience and get great seo, that kind of thing.
Well, guest blogging has become a very crowded marketplace, still works for a lot of folks. But, uh, now instead of trying to interrupt or, or shout above the noise, we have held our clients become part of the conversation with an engaged audience through podcasts. So we specifically get podcast interviews that are relevant and engaging and, uh, and bring them value. So,
so who described to me, you said to your client base is, is inspiring thought leaders. So if somebody is listening to this, how might they know if they are a good candidate to become a client of interview valet?
Absolutely. We, we look as somebody who has a budget to invest in their advertising, marketing promotion. So it’s not just I want to get on podcasts, right? I mean, that’s, you can go do that yourself and got a bunch of, at least a few shows anyway. But, um, but we want to make sure that they have the budget and the means to, to invest in themselves, right? To get an Roi. So that’s, that’s one of the things I’m so simply selling books and it takes a lot of book sales to pay for working with an agency. Um, generally it’s going to be more than quote unquote just an author. Authors are great connections for us and great clients for us, but so doing a book launch with them has been awesome. We’ve worked with Morgan James, publisher, Simon and Schuster for some of that. With that said, it’s generally going to be nonfiction books, so somebody who’s written a book about business or sales or marketing or leadership or something like that, and they often will have something else besides the book write a consulting business or reaching a new audience for speaking gigs, that kind of thing.
So if you, if you wrote a book and just want to sell it, you know, podcasts, interviews may not be the best way to go. However, if you have other things in that, that whole machine behind the scenes, that’s very good. And then for us it’s working with people in basically three pillars of, of client. We work with anything to do with business. So that could be, as I said, sales, Marketing, leadership development, coaching, real estate investing. So financial stuff. We, one of our clients is a CPA, so he runs the gamut as far as business goes. The other one is health, wellness, nutrition, so a fitness coaches that have online courses, that kind of thing. And then the other one has faith and Christianity and we have a lot of connections to faith based podcasts. Uh, so we help help with that as well. So that’s kind of our, our world.
Nice. And um, it sounds like what I’m hearing you say is that the people that are coming to your best clients are really individuals interested in building their personal brand and guests. Being a guest on a podcast is one way to do it as opposed to individuals interested in promoting like a corporate brand.
Well, uh, that’s, that’s a big part of what we do. But we’ve also signed on some great companies that do want to promote their brand to through their people. Right? So if it’s only a brand, probably not, but if it’s your brand through people. So for instance, one of our clients is a software as a service company that helps people, helps people with their social media advertising. Now we, the founders that the two co, two of the Co founders are our actual clients, so they talk about their company, they talk about their story as co founders and as one as the marketing person. One is the business setup person that are not set up, but you know, the, the kind of nuts and bolts of it. All right. So like that we work with, we work with, with hubspot is one of our clients. We’ve worked with a couple of different executives to get out there or there. There are different personalities to get out there for the brand and for themselves. So it’s your right. Kathleen is not just the brand but it’s somebody within that brand. So, um, yeah,
and fair to say that that somebody within the brand needs to be someone who’s really passionate about and dedicated to content creation.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The nice thing about podcasts interviews is that you are creating content as you’re just talking, right? It’s like, like we’re just having coffee talking, right? Um, but you’re creating that content, but you definitely have to be passionate about it. It takes time. It takes effort. And it takes a knowledge base to be able to comfortably talk with podcasters around the world.
So anybody, as you said earlier, anybody can go be a guest on a podcast, you know, and, and certainly there are people who hustle and get out there and make the contact. Um, I feel like from my little exposure that I’ve had to interview valet, I was able to immediately see you have a much more structured process around this. So first of all, talk to me a little bit about the process that you all use for positioning your clients and, and doing outreach and securing these interviews. And then there’s even a process around how you follow up on the interviews you secure. Oh yeah,
yeah. I mean it’s all your successes in our systems, right? And relationships. I mean it’s not just a system, it’s relationships, but, but the systems are, are huge for us. If, you know, if I wouldn’t want it to go up first, I just got a bunch of podcasts. I’d have to go search for the right kinds. Think about on my own in a vacuum, what my audience is. And so often I don’t know my audiences right, you know, I just, just spouting off to myself, I can’t measure that, I guess what somebody else sees as my audience or has other ideas. So we work with our clients to figure that out. Um, you know, me as an individual, I could just try and go research a bunch of shows, but I’ll tell you what, Kathleen, there’s or 400,000 podcasts in apple podcasts alone. So good luck with that.
And how do you search them? How do you figure out what kind of terms that your keywords and that kind of stuff. They have some of that, but not everything is great. How, how are the numbers? Do they have a good audience? Uh, so all that research, we have those systems in place. We have a team, uh, we call them podcast porters and they had those relationships and those porters are the ones who research shows, who know them, who had that relationship, the systems in place to find them. And then that relationship is built on people, right? You know, you don’t talk to a dozen people at our company, Kathleen, you have one person, probably the resets you and says, I’ve got a few guests. How do these look so that you’re not being inundated with a bunch of stuff from our company. So those systems are in place to be able to find those podcasts.
And then then, yeah, outreach. I mean, Gosh, we are state of podcast interviews report recently found that the more downloads a show has or the more, the bigger the audience, the, the much less likely they are to take a cold pitch, you know, so, so me as an author, Dan, as an author, if I want to go try and pitch myself to a show and they get a lot of downloads, they never heard of me, they’re not going to even take my pitch. But if they’ve heard of that agency that they trust, now all of a sudden it’s got more weight and it’s not a cold pitch anymore as a warm introduction. So those, those processes and systems are in place for us and you know, and it’s things like regular email, um, you know, we, we use a little bit of automation, we love automation, but in this age of automation, the relationship is so important and so, you know, we reach, do outreach very organically using things like videos, uh, you know, loom video in an email goes so much further than just a bunch of text, right? Um, you know, the, the one sheets that we create for our clients are all very consistent in their quality and so it’s not just some person on, you know, Ms Paint with a word doc, you know, this looks good.
So talk for a second about this one sheet because that was one of the first things I noticed when you all reached out to me and I should clarify, interview valet reached out to me not to book Dan. So He’s here because I actually chased him down and said you need to come on my podcast but, uh, about somebody else about a client of theirs. And that was part of what reminded me, I needed to contact you, but you had a really nice, as you call it, a one sheet which is sort of like a prospectus on the potential guests. So can you describe that a little bit and maybe we can put a link to an example of one in the show notes?
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so a one sheet has two functions. Number one, it gets the most attention or the or the producer of the show. Some shows have been good to have, like putting producers are a gatekeeper, some kind. It gets their attention. So it has to be, has to look good and be consistent, you know, our branding is very consistent so they, as they get used to seeing those, it’s easy just to glance at and go, okay, I know who this is,
I wish. And side note, I wish the listeners could actually see what I’m seeing right now. So Dan was saying his brand is consistent and we’re, we’re recording this on zoom. I use the audio, but I get to see Dan when we talk and he has his, um, the colors of interview valet or black and red and I know this because he is sitting there and a pullover that is black and red that has interview valet embroidered on it in red and white. And then he has his mic with the red cover and then he has his sleeve around over his mic that says inbound evangelists, Dan, while, and it’s all black and red. It’s all unbrand. So he has, he is walking the walk.
Uh, we, we do. We try to. Anyway, I think it’s great. It’s like we’ve learned from the best with impact and hubspot and all those guys. So anyway, a nice little plug for you guys because we, we admire what, there’s so many great marketers out there doing it that we just, we try to learn from the best. Um, but yeah, so there’s one sheets are, you know, we’re ready to get your attention as a host a, there’s going to have the headshot on there of the clients. So you could see them, would like to see people, right? It has their name obviously and then like a tagline of some kind. So on mine it’s Dan Moyle and inbound evangelist and then there’s a key focus of some kind, you know, empowering business leaders to be better or whatever that might be a. and then there’s the bio and we try and keep it concise.
I don’t, I try not to have a ton of paragraphs on a ton of words because we know everybody’s busy and you’ve seen the same bio again and again. So we try to make it a little bit unique compared to every other bio that that client might have a or if they have a really, again branded of their own and their words will, will use it, which I keep it concise. And then there’s typically a suggested show intro, you know, maybe one paragraph, maybe two at the most. Because again, we know that the show hosts are very busy and if we can give you the tools to, to create your own intro from what we have or if you want to read ours, that’s fine. Which I make it easy on the host as much as possible. So all of that adds up to, to a yes, right. And then the other functions of that one sheet is to, um, to, to help fuel the conversation.
Right. So the suggested interview topics, these are the things that the client, the certified guests that we’re offering up is very well versed in. It’s their talking points basically. So it’s as the whole season hopefully they’d say, oh yeah, these are great headline looking subjects. I’m very curious. I want this for my audience. And then it helps fuel that conversation during the interview of. So tell me more about this, you know, tips to be a great guest, Dan or this kind of thing, but that’s my one sheet. So all that adds up to be this professional looking document that we create for our clients. I’m the host. Say Yes. And then have a great conversation
now. Now I feel like I have to ask you about your tips to be a great guest.
Yeah. Gosh, you know, it’s fun.
Something that you do you actually coach your clients on that?
Well, we do. Yeah, we went when a, when a client comes on, we have what we call a kickoff call and um, I, I put on my hat, I take off the cmo hat and put on the onboarding coordinator hat and I, and I talked them through all of this. So we coach them on how to promote the show afterwards, how to be a great guest. We send them beforehand a welcome package that has a professional microphone. You mentioned my, my mic and everything here. Uh, this is what we send them. We send them a microphone, uh, an atr professional microphone. So the Audio Technica Atr 2100 professional mic so that they really that so that they sound good, right? So being a guest be a great guest means you sound good, you have a solid Internet connection, you’re either doing it on a phone and a tunnel.
We coach them through all of that. Um, we are, of course, we’re always in the process of improving, right? So right now interview Valet, I’m improving the process of all that and the training as it were. And I’m creating video training that walks them through each one of these steps, you know, here’s some tips on how to be a great guest. Here’s how to set up your microphone, here’s how to help us with the one sheet and all these kinds of things. So we’re creating that too. We do that on a kickoff call. Um, so yeah, so we coach them through and that’s why we call our clients certified guests because they’ve gone through that coaching and, and we always do, we try to go back and listen to their shows as often as we can and if we have constructive feedback to give them, we will, um, they want that. So we try to help them improve all the time.
It’s amazing how much the little things make a difference on podcasts to you because it’s somebody who has a lot of guests come on and some are clearly more experienced than others. You know, I found myself putting together an email that I tend to send out in advance. I don’t think I sent it to you because I knew that you would know all of this, but I have to cover things like please don’t rustle papers on your desk as we’re talking because I don’t think realize like how much their mikes pick up on and all of a sudden, you know, I should do it right now just as a, as a here. I’ll do it. Like that sounds. Or if I started to type it, it’s called like pounding, but people don’t realize it. And so sending that that guidance out and letting people know in advance to not, you know, leave the ringer on their cell phone. It all sounds really obvious, but it’s Kinda like when you go to the movies and they have to tell it to you before every movie, you still have to tell it to people beforehand. So it is great that you guys are covering that and preparing your guests.
Some of that feedback came back from our survey that we did, that we put together that report, that host told us that stuff. And it’s things like, like you said, godliness will no kid at common sense. Right. But we don’t think about it. You know, when I, when I, when I launched a podcast and started recording interviews, I would take notes. The camp, I’m going to be a great interview. I’m going to take notes as I’m typing is super loud. Like I had to stop that very quickly. So yeah, I, yeah, it’s, it’s encouraging them as is you call the little things, but they’re big
things aren’t even the click of a mouse. I remember one of the first podcasts I did and I was like, what does that sound? What does that sound? That keeps happening. And it was my mouse clicking. So learned those lessons very quickly. Well, I want to turn to, to really the most important thing which is how does being a guest on podcasts get you better inbound results? Because that’s really what this podcast is about. It’s about, you know, improving the results you’re getting from your inbound marketing campaigns. So you must have plenty of stories, whether they’re anecdotal or actual data that you can site about the impact that being a guest has had on either yourself or your company or your clients.
Absolutely. So the nice thing is, you know, when you’re talking about inbound marketing, there’s courses, all the official definitions, one from hubspot and some from others or whatever, but really what it comes down to is drawing people, drawing ideal customers to you with your concept, right? And then since everything else, but drawing them to you, it means becoming part of that conversation. So being on a podcast and being in that conversation and being a thought leader is step one. Well having listed as great, but that’s, you know, it’s like views on our website. It’s a vanity metric. You can’t have conversions without views but only views. So same thing with listeners, it’s only a vanity thing. So we like to turn them into leads by on coaching our certified guests. I’m sending them back to your website, right? You always, as you’re talking to someone and you’re giving those tips in the and the host says, well, that’s really great.
You know, where can we learn more about that? We’ll go back to my website and learn more. Now here’s the thing, here’s, here’s the magic sauce. A pull back the curtain a little bit. It’s not just go to the homepage, right? We send people back to what we call a welcome page and that welcome page. The listeners hear it on the podcast. Then they see it in the show notes. For those who go to the show notes, it’s link, which creates that seo link and sends value back to your website as the sort of, I guess, right? It all works together and it’s a, you know, my website slash this podcast is the structure. Very simple. So like even, you know, even for, for us on the, um, on your, on your. So Kathleen, I’ve got a interview valet.com/inbound success. I was going to say, you better have a link, right?
I do say so inbound success listeners can go download, you know, a tip on how to be a great guest, right? They can conduct, can connect with me there on social media. They can read a little bit about more about me and get to know me and they’ll see your shows artwork so that they begin to go, okay. Yeah. Dan was on Kathleen show. I do remember that. This is really cool. Kathleen obviously had them on there, so I know I trust. Damn right. If your listeners know, like and trust you, they’re going to get to at least know me and hopefully trust me from that. So we send them back through that welcome page and that welcome page on digital marketing. We often use the term obviously landing page and I think of a landing page as a page with, with, with a, a form and no navigation.
I have to take that one single action. Well, we like to tell her our certified yeses that listeners are at different points in their path with you. After listening to you on that podcast. They might, uh, they might kinda like you and that I kind of get it, so they’re willing to take a small action. So we have a CTA on that page that’s a small action, very little barrier entry. Maybe it’s an infographic with no email gate. Okay, great. Pretty. Seems pretty simple. And there’s a medium. Yes. And for some people that might be by the book, you know, if, if I’m a, if I’m a sales evangelist type author, maybe I have my sales evangelists book on there and you can buy the book and now 12 bucks on Amazon is a pretty low barrier entry, but it’s still something. Or maybe it’s a video, a free video tutorial that you have to give me your email for and you watched my videos.
Now I’m hearing you in the podcast and I’m seeing you on video now we’ve got a relationship and then the heck yes is the no, no barriers to doing big business with me. It’s the buy now button basically. Right? So for consultant that might be booked time on my calendar, um, you know, for a speaker it might be, uh, you know, uh, have a discovery call to see if I’m right for your events, whatever that might be. It’s, it’s the, the heck yes. The big yes. So that’s the inbound part of it is getting those listeners to go back to that website and it’s all, it should always be very easy, you know, if I’ve got a very complicated name, sorts an acre or something, we all know Arnold, right? But I have a hard to dispel name, make that url symbol simple as you can. And then the slug afterwards, as simple as you can, if you have a, a long show name, we’re gonna, we’re gonna. Make that a concise, uh, you know, a slug as it were. So, um, that’s really important to us too, that, that’s, that’s kind of the inbound side of it.
So you’ve got these welcome pages and obviously people will be able to see an example of that when they, if they check out the show notes and click through on yours, what kind of results in terms of conversions? Well, traffic and conversions do you see on those?
Conversions are awesome when when people do go to this, they are in conversions are and we’ve seen them as high as 75, 80 percent. Yeah. It’s incredible. It’s, you know, I always happy with way back in my mortgage marketing days, I was happy with my, uh, my landing page is getting a 40 percent conversion rate, you know, that was like unbelievable. I’m 20 percent was like, okay, we’re good. Yeah. These are converting at 50 percent and above for the most part. Now traffic, that’s the other side of it. That’s where, you know, how many of those listeners are going. Um, how often is the host putting the actual, a welcome page link in our show notes. That all depends obviously on their audience, right? But we found conversions to be incredible. And so we, we, so I’m gonna tell you a story about one of our, one of my favorite client stories, uh, Craig cody is a CPA and he lives in New York and he wanted to expand his reach beyond just his borough in New York.
I don’t know if he’s at Manhattan, Brooklyn where is exactly, but he’s in a, in a borough in New York and he was doing pretty well. They wanted to help other companies and other people expand their reach entrepreneurs expand their portfolio as it were. And so he decided to start doing podcast interviews and you know, the Roi on this for working with us. It’s 12 interviews minimum and we suggest two interviews a month minimum. And that’s gonna be $700 a month. So there’s those you’re going to ask you about pricing. So you’ve already answered my question on that. Yeah. So Pretty, pretty plain pricing. And of course that includes everything that we’ve just discussed, right? There’s no upsell, there’s no premium, there’s no, we will do all this for you, we will help you with getting ready for promotion. We do all the prospecting, all the followup, I mean all these things.
So my razor tech comes out to about $350 an interview. Yep. Yeah, that’s really reasonable. I mean, if you were trying to get interviews yourself and you factored in the time value of money, you’d probably spend that anyway. Oh, at least. Yeah. And so you’ll. So Craig decided this was gonna work for him. So he goes on, he starts getting interviews and 3:50 per interview, uh, isn’t, isn’t cheap, but it’s reasonable for depending what you’re doing. Right. But it’s not just 20 bucks a pop. Right. And so he goes out and he finds the value of a new customer for him, whatever that is. He, he figured out that in the first nine months of working with us, I think it was, he had a 600 percent Roi. So whatever he spent with us, he made back six times as new clients. Incredible. Well then after working with us for 18 months, that 600 percent became 1200 percent.
And part of that is because of the evergreen nature of podcasts, right? I mean, if I’m listening to this podcast, six months from now, all of a sudden I hear, you know, the value that I go back to the show notes and I come back and now all of a sudden I’ve got returning people, which is awesome. So Craig found that and so yeah, after 18 months it was like 1200 percent Roi, just incredible. And, and he’s growing his brand well beyond just his, his area as a CPA. He’s consulting companies around the country and that return value for his clients is huge. So
yeah, I imagine it’s like the gift that keeps on giving because it’s a little bit like when you discover a great new series on Netflix and you’re coming in and season three, but you can go back and binge seasons one and two, you know, in no time. And I think a lot of people do the same thing with podcasts. I know, I certainly do. I just started bingeing a new one this past week. And um, and so you’re absolutely right, like the actual episodes may have been recorded a while ago, but for those people just discovering the podcast there, they’re just hearing it. And so there are certainly a lot of evergreen value there. Um, that’s, that’s really interesting. And uh, do you find that your guests, once they have worked with you for a little while, it starts to snowball and they begin to get asked to come on podcasts, you know, on their own. Is there a graduation phenomenon, if you will?
Yeah, yeah. It’s funny you say that word snowball because, uh, first of all, this snow this morning here where I’m at in Michigan, but secondly, I just actually wrote this kind of idea for our team of every interview is a snowflake that adds to a blizzard of awareness that you create. So it’s, so, it’s funny that you use that. It’s like you reminded to an avalanche. Yes, it does. It’s funny because some of them, as you build your brand, you do get invited on other podcasts. You know, the, the podcasting world, as big as it is, it’s a small world. And so as, as, as people are listening to it or you know, as a host of my own show, you know, I listen to other podcasts, I said, oh, that’s a great guest. I’m going to go call them or email them or whatever it is or tweeted them and invite them.
And so. So that definitely happens out there. We have, we have clients who have been doing this for three or four years with us now and they’ve stuck around and that’s great. And we’ll keep doing it. Will keep going forward because they know that it takes us the, we help them manage those invitations to right when they get an invitation. We’ve got a Guy Aaron Walker who wrote a book view from the top and he’s a big business companies, you know, a big keynote speaker. He’s got a huge business and runs masterminds and stuff. We run his inner pack as interviews because he doesn’t have the time to even answer yes, this is a good podcast or not, you know, we can say, Yup, we’ll schedule them. Here you go. And then we’ll get him to brief sheet that helps prepare him for the interview. We’ll get his one sheet over to the host as you’ve seen all that stuff that we do, we do for him. So he stuck around. Awesome. We have other guests that come on and I’ll do 12 or maybe 24 interviews with us or do it for one year and they’ll say, okay, I think I’m feeling pretty good and they’ll move on. Okay, great. No problem. We’ve taught them how to be a great guest and the value of podcast interview marketing as a tool. So the bigger we can create that category and make great guests out there, the more we all win. And we love that part of it.
Yeah. Well, and I think if the Roi is there, it’s a no brainer. Oh yeah. And even the cost itself is very reasonable. Just before you consider Roi. So. So when I’m dying to ask you is what are some of the gets that you’ve gotten most excited about? Like the show placements, like are there some where you were like, we just got so and so on this podcast, you’re not going to believe it.
We’ve worked with some amazing shows. We’ve been able to place guest on her podcast, Harvard Business Review. Of course, some of that is, uh, you know, the guests themselves, right? If you’re an hbs because you’ve either been published by Hbr or you went to Harvard or something like that. But because we had that connection, that was awesome. We had a guest placed on Louis House, which is a pretty big up and coming show. Um, we work regularly with the ziglar show. Uh, the Zig Ziglar brand, Kevin Miller of the host of that is a big fan of ours and we place a guests on there. Um, yeah, we work with some ratios and it’s funny because we really aim to work in the top 20 percent of all shows when it comes to audience. And so, you know, the biggest shows out there that the Joe Rogan’s of the world of the Gary v’s of the world.
That’s like the top point one percent. Right? And it, you know, it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna take a PR agency, a $35,000 to even have a meeting with them. They only have 50 slots in a, in a, if they’re a weekly show, they have 50 guests, right? And they’re bringing on former first lady’s or whatever, like, you know, good luck. Um, but we work with the top 20 percent and we work with often with the top five percent of shows, like some of them are, some of our favorite people. I’m a finance show that we work with, stacking Benjamins Joe Saucy. Hi, what a great name. Right, right. And, and it’s, it’s a great show and it’s had a huge audience. Um, w we were able to place A. Actually Craig cody that I mentioned, he was a guest on their show twice actually. So there’ve been some great guests. And it’s, it’s funny when you try to name drop some people, you know, if you’re not a regular podcast listener, some of them you may not know or if you are, but you won’t listen to business shows. Stacking benjamins made me nothing to you. That’s okay. Or, you know, or if you’re in the health and wellness area, Zig ziglar main, you may not have never even heard of Zig, let alone the ziglar show. So you know, it, it’s, it’s all perspective, right? They’re big in that world. So.
And it’s all about who their audience is really, because that’s what matters the most. Right? Yeah, absolutely. So what tips do you have for somebody listening who is interested in building their personal brand and maybe considering this as an option?
Absolutely. I think, you know, I think podcasts, interviews are absolutely amazing and powerful. So I think anybody even thinking about it, I’d say do it, just do it. I’m one of the first things is to get a professional microphone and use your, your laptop out, a wired Internet connection. Okay. So don’t think about podcasts, interviews as well. I can just plug in, I can have my, my airpods or plugging my earbuds or whatever to my phone and then that’ll be good. Right? It’ll work. But honestly having quality conversations so much better. Um, so that’s number one. Get a microphone and the Audio Technica Atr 2100. I think is around $60, maybe it’s not a big barrier entry, so, so look at that. The other thing is figure out who your audience really is, right? You want to build your personal brand. Who is that brand going to matter to?
Who is your ideal customer, your ideal listener? Who Do you want to work with? And then go find the shows that you think they’re listening to, right? If you have a big value to, let’s just pick something out of the air. If you have a big value to millennial entrepreneurs, who are they listening to, you know, find those kinds of shows and then figure out, you know, follow them on social media, leave them a review on apple podcasts a and get to know them and then pitch them right. Reach out to who you think is in charge of that show. And you can get that through. Obviously the host, you know, is one of the gatekeepers, if they’re a big show that I have a producer or a scheduler, but that’s, that’s a big one. Um, if you can afford it, go to one of the amazing conferences out there that focuses on podcasters.
A pod fest in Orlando, Florida is awesome podcast movement and moves around the country. They’re in Philadelphia this year. A great conference. You can meet podcasters and get to know them and kind of thing and obviously don’t want to walk in just trying to pitch yourself as a guest, but, but go into meet people is as awesome. Those are a couple of tips. And then just finally be a great guest, right? Be prepared, be on time, know your story, don’t be too salesy. Um, know the lingo of, of their audience, know the host name and use it, all those kinds of tips. Just be a great guest.
Yeah, that’s great advice. Um, and if somebody was interested in working with interview valet, what’s the best way for them to reach out and contact you all?
I mean, I, I’d say listeners out to go to interview valet.com, forward slash inbound success and download the tips to be a great guest. Others, I think nine of them I’ve got prepared. Um, you know, they can read a little bit of from our blog or whatever there and figure that out and if they’re interested, there’s a very easy connection right there. They can get on my calendar to talk about it. They can just go to one of our many different ways of contacting us and learning more about us there and do business with us if they want to. Yeah.
Great. Uh, and, and I want to ask you the two questions I ask all my guests, um, first of all, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?
There’s so many amazing people that I’ve followed him that I’m fortunate to be friends with and, and acquaintanced to try to pick just one. I think my, my current obsession now is, uh, and I hope your listeners don’t think this is set up because it’s not. Um, I was thinking about this and that and I, George B Thomas George has such a good dude. I’m such a heart to serve others and I love what he’s doing with teaching people how to do video and bringing people to him. And His story and you know, both for impact brand and design, but also just for him personally, I think he does a memo marketing amazingly well and guys just got a good heart.
Yeah. I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with George. He is a great guy. Absolutely. Um, second question. You know, you’re somebody who’s been in marketing, particularly inbound marketing for awhile. Uh, it’s a field that is changing all the time as any aspect of digital marketing is. How do you stay up to date? How do you stay on the cutting edge? What are your favorite ways to educate yourself?
Uh, I love, I love listening to podcasts. You listen to the shows like inbound success, listening to other podcasts out there that talk about it and have thought leaders. That’s huge. Um, I listened to podcasts on one point five speed so I can listen to more, uh, and when I, when something catches my attention really, like I really want to go back and always go back and listen to it again or whatever. I’m obviously reading is huge. In fact, I just started very recently here. I set my alarm for about an hour and a half earlier every morning to get up and have some me time to read a specifically professional development books because I just, I know that that’s important. And, and as the weather warms up, I’m in Michigan, so as we get out of winter, eventually here, um, I want to be able to go for morning walks and listened to books, the audio books as I’m walking, listening to a book and a or a podcast or whatever it is.
So those are a couple of my, my things. And then find the other thing. Just think of, you can’t think of only one person as an ideal audience, right? But I think about me as a consumer. What do I want to, how do I want to take in information? How do I want to find a new company? How am I turned off by promotion or marketing or advertising? And I just keep trying to stay ahead of that curve, right? If I get annoyed with facebook, uh, feed interruptions is everybody I don’t know, maybe. And then I go look at that, you know, the data for the to support that obviously, but I just think of my ideal customers and how, how would I want to interact with them if the tables were turned, I’d like to think that keeps me on the edge a little bit because I’m trying to not be annoying as a marketer. I don’t want to ruin everything like marketers like to do. Um, but I, I just, uh, yeah. So podcasts a, setting aside a time, setting aside time every day to, to very purposefully and deliberately improve yourself through your books and podcasts. And I guess huge.
What are some of your favorite books and podcasts right now?
Okay. Um, let’s see. My favorite books, I love reading anything from Scott stratten. Unbranding was his newest one. Uh, I go back to unmarketing sometimes. I’m one of my, one of my favorite is Marcus Sheridan. There, again, not to like, you know, keep telling the impact flight, but you guys are awesome. And the fact that Marcus came on board, I love they ask answer, I want to, I want to go read from good to great. Uh, that’s come up in conversation a couple of times recently and I honestly, I haven’t read it. That’s part of my, my new push to read new books. That’s going to be my next one. I’m the, one of my favorite isn’t necessarily a marketing book, but it was, it was life changing the 12 week year, uh, that, that was huge for me and I think of my life now in 12 week years rather than rather than just quarters.
It’s a whole different mind shift. So the 12 week year is a big one. Um, yeah, those are most of my favorite books. Podcasts. It’s harder than others. There’s so many Catholic children for you right now. Even if you have one, you’re not allowed to say it. Right? Right. And I go back and forth. I mean, do you do this? I’ll listen to what you said. You’ve been right. I’ll go listen to one and it’ll be great and I’ll find a new one and I’m not. I thought the other one’s bad, but I’ll, I’ll kind of forget about it. I don’t have enough time in the day. Even at one point five speed, I bounced back and forth between shows. I listen to a few and I’ll come back to a different one. I’ll go back. Like I, there’s just too many.
I’m the same way and I tend to listen to them when I’m like walking or working out or my other favorite place is still listen to podcasts or grocery shopping and vacuuming and yes, I tend to, I tend to have like two or three at once that I’m kind of really focused on, but probably 10 to 15 in my total list that I bounced amongst.
So
there you have it. All right. Well Dan, thank you for sharing all of this with us. That was really interesting and I think you know, anybody who is interested in doing more podcasts, guest interviews should definitely check out interview valet. There’s some really great resources there and if you’re a podcaster, there are some really great guests that you can get through interview valet. So, um, I will put those links in my show notes, but, um, if you enjoyed what you heard this week, I would appreciate it if you would consider giving us a review on itunes, stitcher, or the platform of your choice. And of course, if you know somebody doing kick ass inbound marketing work, please tweet me at work, mommy work because I would love to interview them. That’s it for this week. Thanks for joining me, dad.
It was absolute pleasure. Kathleen. Thank you so much that it was an honor to be in on the show. Thanks.
That’s all for this episode of the inbound success podcast. Be sure to visit impact and d dot Com to learn more about our inbound marketing solutions. While you’re there, subscribe to the blog and check out our resource center. Creating inbound marketing campaigns that deliver world class results is possible. Learn how right here on the inbound success podcast.
Hmm.
