Marketing Podcast Chapter 7: Publish Your Own Podcast Series
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Hello and welcome to Tactical Execution, an information series exploring innovative marketing and strategic business positioning for entrepreneurs and small businesses in an increasingly competitive world. My name is Patrick and I’m your host. You can find written versions of these podcasts at TacticalExecution.com and I encourage your candid feedback at the same location. Today, we’ll be talking about podcasting and YouTube so let’s get started.
Obviously, podcasting is dear to my heart and I think it only makes sense to introduce this chapter with my own story. Back in late 2005, I was doing public seminars about mortgages and real estate finance. I was holding the events at hotels and marketing them in newspapers and on the radio. It was costing me a fortune and although it remained profitable, I was getting very frustrated with the costs, particularly the newspaper advertising.
In October of that year, I held one and had 21 people show up. That doesn’t sound like a lot but believe me; that was actually a pretty good turn out. Then I held off during the Christmas season and held my next seminar in late January and only 11 people showed up. I was so frustrated. I was at the end of my rope. I’d spent over $2500 putting the event together and had just 11 people in the room and it didn’t look like any of them were interested in doing a purchase or refinance. Here I was throwing $2500 to the wind and getting almost nothing in return. The whole thing was a huge waste of money.
I spent the next day angry and sulking. But on the next day, I woke up and watched the news like I do every morning, and there was a short story about the Iraq war and they were interviewing a “podcaster”. What in the world was that? A podcaster?! I had never heard of that before. So I put “podcast” into a Google search and started my research. I was fascinated and soon put “creating podcasts” into a Google search and found some great simple advice on how to publish my very own podcast.
I had to buy a microphone and headphones so I went to Best Buy and got what I needed. I also had to download some recording software but it was free and I did that pretty quickly. You see, I already had all the information. I was doing these seminars already and could easily record the same information in audio format. So that afternoon, I wrote an introduction to my “Beyond the Rate” podcast series and recorded it. I opened an RSS hosting account for $5 per month and uploaded my new MP3 file. I then went to iTunes and registered my new podcast so by 10:30 that same evening, my first podcast was publicly available on iTunes and I felt like I had really accomplished something.
Six days later, I recorded my Chapter 1 podcast and went to upload the file. And when I did, the platform told me my Introduction had already been downloaded 17 times! Who were these people?? I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t told anyone. All I did was post the file and 17 people managed to find it all on their own. Amazing. A week earlier, I spent $2500 and only attracted 11 people. And now, only a week later, 17 people had listened to my Introduction and I’d spent almost nothing. Maybe this was the ticket. Maybe this was a way for me to finally find an audience.
Well, I kept it up, posting a new Chapter every week and in early April, a company in Texas called MortgageDaily.com wrote an article about MY series. I didn’t even realize it myself but my Google alerts sent me an email letting me know. Anyway, as you can image, my downloads surged. Later in May, a real estate coaching company called Sparta Success featured my series in their monthly newsletter. Again, my downloads spiked as a result. And then in June, the big one came. About.com wrote a short article about my series and the downloads went off the charts. At that point, my “Beyond the Rate” podcast series was the third most popular mortgage-related podcast on iTunes! Even today, more than a year later, if you put the words “mortgage podcast” into a Google search, that About.com article comes up first out of 2 million listings. And as of this recording, my “Beyond the Rate” podcast series has been downloaded over 14,000 times in 27 countries. Amazing!
My experience with podcasting solidified my opinions about acquiring expertise and giving it away for free. I received emails from all over the world and did mortgage loans across the United States. Soon, I was asked to give a mortgage workshop in a local adult education program. So here I was, actually getting paid a few bucks to give the same mortgage seminar I had paid $2500 to give nine months earlier. And now, the people coming to my seminar were PAYING to be there while my earlier events were all free. So the attendees were all serious about gaining knowledge and, in most cases, doing a purchase or refinance. All in all, it was working out great and I’d recommend podcasting to anyone.
Today, I’m creating two new major podcast series: this one and another one called Financial Audio. Between the two, it’s a huge project. Each chapter is about 2500 words and I’m writing the first 20 chapters for each series before I even start recording. So that’s 20 chapters for each of 2 series, or 40 chapters in all. And at 2500 words each, I’m typing 100,000 words just to get it started. That’s a colossal effort but I’m happy to do it. It gives me a way of demonstrating my knowledge – demonstrating my expertise – and inviting more opportunities into my life. And I can’t wait! In fact, by the time you hear this, I’ll already be in the thick of it and I truly hope you contact me and let me know what you think. Write me a quick email. Write me a testimonial and I’ll post it on my website. Hearing from my listeners is the best part of the exercise. Let me know how you’re using the information. Believe me; that’s the best feedback I can get.
So, let’s look at the business model behind podcasting. For many people, including me with my initial “Beyond the Rate” series, the idea was simply to get my name out there, develop some credibility and become a recognized expert in my field. But for many others, they provide beginner and intermediate information via podcast – which is FREE – and then cross sell more advanced information products that they SELL on their websites.
This isn’t such a bad model. In fact, I think it’s pretty fair for BOTH parties – the podcaster AND the listener. By providing the beginner information via podcast, you demonstrate your expertise and allow your audience to sample your approach. If they like what they hear, they can spend their hard-earned money to get the more advanced information you provide. If you think about it, this is very close to my own business model. I’m putting a TON of information out there into the public domain and then selling more advanced products separately. Of course, I’m also making my public speaking programs available as well as consulting services. And for those services, the podcast medium is perfect because it gives my customers an opportunity to sample my knowledge AND my delivery before making a purchase decision.
Like I mentioned in the chapter about building an email list, I’m also providing additional related resources on the website but in order to access those resources, you have to register and login, thereby giving me your email address. You always need to be thinking along these lines. We’re all here to try and succeed online. In order to do that, you need to provide real value, build trust and gain an audience. But you also need a way of staying in touch with that audience. That way, you can start making other products and services available in the future with virtually no marketing expense.
The same mentality exists on YouTube. For example, if you search for guitar lessons on YouTube, you’ll find a bunch of people who’ve posted video guitar lessons for free. Turns out, these guitar lessons have been viewed more than 3 million times. And in most cases, the free videos available on YouTube provide beginner and intermediate instruction and then the teachers then cross sell more advanced lessons for SALE on their websites.
I’m working with a woman right now that trains and communicates with horses and I’m encouraging her to post beginner horse-training videos on YouTube. I’m quite sure she’ll find a hungry audience for her skills and then she could cross sell more advanced horse-training videos on a separate website. These are very real opportunities for people to demonstrate their knowledge and build a revenue model around it. Take a minute and think about what knowledge YOU could share!
I know another guy who’s used YouTube in a brilliant way. He’s an incredibly talented musician and singer, and does mostly Frank Sinatra impersonations. He was looking for more gigs and decided to post videos of himself singing Frank Sinatra tunes on YouTube. He did get a small following but then he did something brilliant. He found people on YouTube with huge followings – quirky people who post all kinds of stuff on a regular basis and end up with huge audiences of people watching their videos – and he then modified Frank Sinatra tunes to specifically address those YouTube celebrities by name. He then videoed himself singing the new modified songs and sent them in digital format to these virtual celebrities. Not surprisingly, the recipients LOVED being serenaded with their customized Frank Sinatra songs and, in many cases, they posted them on their own popular YouTube homepages. All of these posts link to HIS YouTube homepage. The first time he did this, he got over 1600 hits in a single weekend!
Today, he’s so busy that he’s basically become an agent, booking all kinds of other shows for other performers he knows. The strategy put his talents in front of a huge audience and he got slammed with new inquiries and new business. Given his history doing impersonations, he knows people who do Marilyn Monroe acts, Dean Martin acts and Sammy David Junior acts. Well, these days, he’s booked solid for his Frank Sinatra acts and is now arranging gigs for these related acts and taking a cut on all of them!
In a way, it’s the exact same strategy, just packaged differently. He gave the public a free sample of his talent and essentially cross sold his underlying revenue model. I mean, in this case, he never actually mentioned the fact he does gigs for money but it was obvious and he got tons of requests. Take a minute and think about this stuff. Think about what YOU have to offer. Think about how you could sample it for the public to see. And think about what you’ll offer for free and what you want to charge money for.
So, let’s bring this down to the tactical level. If you want to start a podcast series, you need to buy a good microphone and headphones. In some cases, you don’t need the headphones but I highly recommend buying them. It’ll allow you to hear your own voice as your record stuff and you might be surprised how it sounds. Believe me; you’ll make adjustments automatically when you hear it at the same time.
As for the microphone, you can spend anywhere from $10 to $400 and I think we should spend a minute or two discussing it. I paid about $50 for my microphone and it came with a small tripod for my desk. I think it does a fairly good job – and you can judge that for yourself – but there’s no question the better microphones do provide better sound quality. The most important thing to consider is what they call the “pop filter”. When you record into a microphone, your B’s, D’s and P’s tend to pop into the mic and, therefore, into the ears of people listening to the recording. This happened in my “Beyond the Rate” podcast series and I eventually went to a music store and bought a foam-rubber pop filter for about $10. It’s one of those big foam-rubber balls that sits on the end of my mic and it eliminates those pops. If you’re going to do podcasting at all, you absolutely MUST get one of those pop filters.
Now, the software I use is called Audacity. It’s free and you can find it easily by putting Audacity into a Google search. It downloads and installs easily and I think it does a great job. After you’ve recorded something, click on Edit and then Select All. Then click on Effect and select Compressor. By lowering the horizontal bar, you compress your voice file and it makes your voice sound all buttery and smooth. Believe me; my voice is pretty good for this stuff but it sounds a lot smoother on this podcast than it does in real life.
Once you’ve recorded a podcast, you need to host it somewhere. It’s a special type of account called an RSS hosting account. If you’re curious, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Anyway, I use LibSyn.com – that stands for Liberated Syndication – and I love those guys. Their basic plan costs just $5 per month and I’ve never had a problem. You can do your own research if you want but definitely check out LibSyn.com before you make your decision. And by the way, I have absolutely NO affiliation with those guys and will receive absolutely no benefit if you decide to use them. I’m just passing the name along, that’s all.
You’ll need a graphic for your podcast and I suggest spending some time and money on this BEFORE you launch. A good graphic goes a long ways and you can see the style I like by looking at the Tactical Execution graphic. Anyway, you can do what you want but it’s important to have a graphic by the time you register with iTunes because it’s a pain in the neck to add the graphic later.
For podcasting, that’s about it. You really don’t need a lot to get started. And to me, that’s the beauty. Just about ANYONE can do a podcast and you can get it up and running quickly.
Obviously, YouTube requires video files and that requires a lot more equipment and usually at least one helper. That’s the nice thing about podcasting – you can do it by yourself. But with video, you probably need a helper or a tripod at the very minimum. To do a professional job, you may need some lighting as well. Of course, these days, you can get a lot of this stuff pretty cheap and push the camera feed directly into your computer but it does take some expertise and I recommend you do some research before jumping in.
The beauty of video is that it gives your audience a much more complete experience. In that sense, it’ll probably do a much better job “selling” your expertise. But the downside is that your audience can’t easily watch it on the fly. That’s another advantage of podcasts. People can listen to it while driving their car or working out at the gym. Audio files are much more portable and far less distracting. Take your pick. My preference is obvious.
Please visit TacticalExecution.com to get an itemized list of things you can do TODAY to start getting results. It’s a FREE 1-page PDF file in the members-only section so you have to register and log in, and then you’ll find it under the “Resources” tab.
You can also view upcoming topics by clicking the Marketing tab under Podcast Chapters. If you have a suggestion for future topics, please use the Contact form to let us know. And finally, all the websites referenced on this podcast have been included on the Links page.
Okay, thank you very much for listening. If you like what you hear on these podcasts, please tell a friend about them. Modern technology like podcasting can help elevate new and innovative thinkers but we all have to play our part to help spread the word for those who deserve our endorsements. If I am deserving of yours, my thanks.
I DO offer workshops, seminars and keynote speeches as well as consulting services so please email me at Patrick [at] TacticalExecution.com for more information. I’m also doing an extensive podcast series on stock market investing, real estate finance and the economy. It’s called Financial Audio and you can find it on iTunes.
Stay tuned. There is a lot more to come. In the meantime, think big, take action and market strategically. Bye for now.
