The One Thing Every Business Needs to Survive

Podcast Monetization Secrets

Learn how to get more leads for your business by implementing a simple change to your website. In this episode, Christy Haussler shares how she was able to increase her conversion rate and get more leads by making a small change to her website.

"If you don't have a reliable way to generate leads each month, then I would question whether you might have whether your business is very sound at all."

I was having a conversation with some fellow podcasters about the fact that many of us have a hard time monetizing our podcasts. We all agreed that it's a universal problem and that we need to find a way to fix it. I shared with them an example of how I recently had to go back to the basics in my own business in order to increase my conversion rate. In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. How much does it cost to acquire a customer?

2. How can you recapture leads that fall out of your funnel?

3. How to shorten the time between when someone begins planning their podcast and when they're ready to launch?

Resources:

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cahaussler/

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/Team_podcast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christyhaussler/

Website: https://teampodcast.com

Transcript:

Alright, so today I'm going to talk to you about something that I have struggled with and still am struggling with. And you are too, probably because almost every person that I talk to and every consultation I do, those people have the same problem too. So it seems to be kind of universal. So why don't we talk about it? I'll tell you what it is and how we can fix it right after this.

Hi there. Welcome to Podcast Monetization Secrets and I am Christy Haussler and in case you haven't met me yet, I'm the founder of Team Podcast. We're a full service podcast production company and for the last four ish years we have just been going deep, deep, deep on Monetization. And I'm glad that it's now on your radar too, because I firmly believe that we need more podcasts making money. And I've just made a decision in my life that I will not start another podcast unless it can be monetized, unless it's going in that direction. And I'm not saying if you aren't starting it for money that you're wrong, it's just that's not where I'm heading.

I think too many people have started podcasts with the hope of making money and they never knew how and they don't know where to go from. I've gotten started and so I don't want to put any more people in that situation where we continue to have podcasts every single month that fade away.

And right now it is a good time for us to sometimes go back to the basics. And part of the reason I say this is because you might have felt a little bit of a crunch with like maybe even your revenue dollars or ad dollars or other campaigns that you're doing and money that you're spending on. And you think, how is it that I'm not getting the value that I once did for the money that you're spending? Right?

I mean, I think we're in a situation where we're feeling that on every aspect of what we're doing. And so many times when we get in a situation where we can't just rely on throwing money at it and throwing money at an ad campaign to get it to convert, many times we have to go back to the basics. And I'm going to tell you about a situation where I've had to go back to the basics on a couple of things and it really has been a lesson that I'm like, I knew this and I just ignored it and it wasn't even on my radar. So putting it out there on your radar today, we're going to talk about it and make sure that you're not missing it too.

But one of the things, if you have a business, if you don't have a reliable way to generate leads each month, then I would sometimes even question whether you might have whether your business is very sound at all. Let me just say it that way. And one of the things that differentiates like a business from a successful business many times is that lead pipeline, the fact that you always have methods out there and channels out there where you're getting new leads every single month. Now, I'm not saying they're free. I'm not saying at all that getting leads are free. In fact, getting leads for your business is probably one of the most costly parts of your business.

That's why in marketing, there is a separate number called cost of acquisition. And so that means how much does it cost you to get a customer? And when I say get a customer, it includes all of it. Like the marketing you did to get somebody into your top of funnel, the sales person that talked to them or the appointments that they scheduled and the closing of that. And just all these things go into acquiring a customer. And it's a very high cost most of the time for most businesses to acquire a customer that has a high lifetime value, if that's what our businesses are. And not just a one off type buy it once, and not just a one off type buy it once product, and you never see or hear from your customers again. So most of us are in the recurring type, customer base, type services and products and that sort of thing.

So you should know as a business owner how much it costs you to acquire a customer. And that is part of the determination of how much you can pay to acquire a customer. I think Dan Kennedy said it best once when he said, whoever can pay the most to acquire customers wins. And that just means it's kind of like, you know, you're buying attention and you're buying influence and you're buying the attention of your ideal customer and getting them into your top of funnel, getting them into your ecosystem, and suddenly they're aware of you and they know about you, and then you begin nurturing them to become customers.

So I did something with my Google Ads. I run Google Ads all the time for our podcast production company. And it's one of the ways that we can constantly have a pipeline of people that are actually looking with search based intent for our services. And so one of the things that I have found is that often whenever people come to our website, the call to action is basically schedule a call with us and let's talk about what your needs are. Let's talk about how we can help you. And I'll give you the whole work up and the pricing and kind of how we'll work together, and we kind of go about it that way. But oftentimes people there's no barrier of entry to going to the website and scheduling a call. And at the same time, when I do get you to schedule that call, I have you fill out. I think it's answer five questions about yourself and your podcast so that I can know and have a little background of who I'm going to be talking to.

So from the end of last year, like, let's just say last quarter of 2021, fourth quarter, I began noticing I was having less conversions on my Google Ads. And it turns out, as we dug deeper, there was a change that I made to our website that I would say is probably responsible for this. Now, it's one of those things where you do something in the moment thinking it's the right thing to do. And for me, the change I made to our website was whenever Facebook shut my account down, and I was in the middle of marketing for challenges and putting out ads and that sort of thing for our challenges, and because I no longer had the Facebook Avenue, which was doing very well for us, I put our challenge information on our website. But where I put it and where it was, it was creating a real disconnect for all the traffic that I was getting from the Google Ads.

So Google people were searching for podcast production companies, how to get your podcast production done, and all that sort of thing. And they were coming to our website, and because of where I put the challenge information, that was the first thing they saw. So there's a real incongruence there with what they were searching for and what they were seeing when they came to the website. So what it did is it bottomed out my Google Ads. And so no longer was I getting consultation scheduled and getting leads from my Google Ads and the same volume I was prior to that.

So then I figured it out, figured out what was going on, and made a bunch of changes to the website. And part of what I wanted to change about the website was that I wanted to make the schedule a call more prominent because we had kind of gotten some other ways. Like we had sort of confused our market with like, oh, you can email us or, oh, you can call us, or you can do all these things. But really what I want is them to schedule a call. And so I went back to that one singular call to action and that focus, and made changes about two weeks ago. Now, made changes about two weeks ago. And since then, our conversion rate, and I'm talking about conversion rate for getting a call scheduled, has exponentially increased over what we were doing after I made that change in first quarter of this year to our website and bottomed out my Google Ads.

So I was talking about this to one of my marketing Mastermind groups that I'm in and one of the things that came up and it was a completely valid point, and I got so busy, like sometimes if you're like me, you grow your business as best you can sort of by yourself, and then you get help and people come in and you know, more, you do better, you learn more. But a lot of times there's some missing fundamentals on the ground level that you never actually circle back and fix. And so what I realized in talking to my Mastermind people is even once people schedule a consultation from me, there's a certain percentage of those that don't show up whenever it's time for our call. Despite text reminders and email reminders and other things, it's still a no show. And we were talking about what I was doing for those people, and most of the time I just reach out to them and try to do a very nonjudgmental and not trying to throw shade or guilt or anything like that, but sort of, hey, I see you missed our call time. I know something must have come up, you're probably very busy, as am I, and if it's not a good time still, and you want to still schedule a call, here you go, you can reschedule, I'd still love to talk to you, kind of thing. So I do that manually a lot of times. And sometimes I get people following up and like, oh no, I just forgot, or something happened or something came up. And people do eventually schedule.

So one of those things that you can count on is that 100% of your free consultations that people schedule are not going to show up. And so we began talking about how I can nurture people back to that same mindset in that same place where they were whenever they were prompted to go to Google and search for podcast production companies. And so I've been working on really honing in my nurture campaigns.

And the thing is that this is an area that I find most of my customers and most of my clients are struggling with as well because it's not an immediate thing on our radar, but we all have not just people that don't show up to our consultations, but we don't close 100% of our calls. And so the real challenge then is how do you segment those people out and make sure that they're properly getting followed up on through email and other ways that you're in touch with them so that they're eventually potentially going to be able to come back and be a customer of yours.

Bottom line is you paid for that lead. I paid for that lead. I paid for it through Google whenever I went out to get an ad that would return search results that they were looking for. And when I paid for it and then it converted and I got the call, there's a whole lot of dropping the ball on my part. That happens if I don't end up getting a sale and a new client from that potential lead, right? And so I've been forced to go back and look and say I'm not ringing out every bit of value on the back end, on the nurture sequences.

I've got clients right now that we're working with that it's the same thing. Like we've got to build out nurture sequences to get people back to that same place where they were motivated to get the help they need. And we've got to get them coming back through and like re-engaging them in our content, reengaging them in what we're talking about.

So that's my focus right now. And that's my focus for several of the clients that we have. Because when you're putting out a certain amount of money on the front end and then you have a certain percentage of those fall through and not even show up now, you also have to remember that not showing up also brings a certain amount of shame and guilt on that person's part that they're sort of afraid to show their face again.

So what can I do to get them back there and bring them back to the fold and say, no, it's okay, I understand something came up or you freaked out or whatever, but let's talk about this because the fact that they eventually might come around to the same place they were when they were in that motivated state and you can get them there, is very high. So how I handle that is one thing, but then how do I handle the people that talk to me and don't take our service?

They might not take our service for a lot of things. In podcasting, there is this very long time between when you start planning things and you're trying to get your ducks in a row and you actually are ready to get off the ground. And what can I do to shorten that time? And can I start helping people by giving them a nurture sequence that will get them there faster? And then if I help them get there, then aren't they going to probably want to talk to me about my service again if I'm the one responsible for helping move them in the direction they want to go?

I wanted to point this out and I wanted to use this as an example today because it's something that I see so it's something that I see just so frequently and so many times our efforts are just all on the front end. And I think when you're in marketing groups and that's where you start, you start with the front end of stuff. But if you really talk and really listen to tried and true marketers, what you will find out is that many times they expect their campaigns to barely break even on the front end so that they can get people in their email list into the funnel, consuming their content, consuming their products even. And then they continue to nurture them and get sales over the lifetime of that client, that lifetime of that contact, I should say.

And so what you begin to think about is that they're sort of doing whatever it takes to get them in the front end of their funnel, knowing they have systems and processes and let's just call it safety nets, to keep recapturing these people that fall out of their funnel and keep putting them back in. And many of us have not built that out. My sole focus this week is to get our nurture campaigns and our sequences and all of our tagging of our email list and all of those things set up. Because if I do that once, then it's forever going to run and it's forever going to be in place and I'm never going to have to think about it again. But I'm also never going to not optimize a lead again. If I'm paying $20 or $30 a pop for a lead, then I need to make sure I'm doing everything in my power. And that means the low hanging fruit of the consultation calls and the low hanging fruit of the follow up emails.

But maybe there needs to be a certain nurture sequence that starts long before my consultation call. Right now I've got calls booked several weeks out. That means weeks of time that I can begin nurturing them, getting them ready for that call. What am I doing? What am I doing to build out ways to move them step by step by step, closer to me, step by step, closer to our services, step by step, closer to being your ideal client. We can do that with our marketing emails. We can do that with how we create content.

I'll give you a scenario the other night, the other day, that scenario that happened. And sometimes just doing something different than everyone else does makes you stand out. And I have clients that many times I get off a consultation with them and they want a lot of different things and they sort of need a lot of different things. But if they already have all these entities going, sometimes I want to take a minute to look at what they're doing already to see if it sort of matches up with what they're telling me or to see if I can even see how they're getting their clients and where their traffic flow is coming from and all that sort of thing.

Because I'm interested in way more than just their podcast. I'm interested in way more than just podcast production for them. I'm interested in strategy and making everything successful. And so I had that happen a couple of weeks with a client. It's now a client, but it was a potential client at that point. They hadn't signed up yet. And one of the things that I noticed was there was just some real low hanging fruit that we could pick off with marketing. So I knew I couldn't convey this in a regular proposal that I would do. So I sat down and I made the proposal. But I also made them a video going through each aspect of it so they could understand what I was looking at and understand what I was saying and understand how it can impact them.

So this is something I don't do that often, but I have done it a few times. And they told me right up front, Christy, we're talking to a bunch of other people. We're talking to you're, one of the masses, sort of, so to speak. And when I showed them what we wanted to do, they realized it was way more than production. And they were immediately I became a category of one immediately. Nobody else existed in their world. And it was just, can we figure out how to work together? Can we figure out how to untangle ourselves from the things that aren't working and move it over to things that are working?

And so one of those high touch things about making videos or making content specifically that you could send out to a very microtargeted person on your list might be a great way to separate yourself. And I could do that with nurture sequences prior to someone's podcast production call. Then that would set me up for also doing it after this free consultation for podcast production, whether they don't show, whether they do show and they don't become a customer, they're not ready yet, they're not making a decision today, whatever it is, we have the opportunity. But until I've gone through all of those, I should not count that lead as let's just call it a dead lead yet, right?

I should do all of those things and continue nurturing them to the point where they're going to have to be the ones to make the decision of unsubscribe. Don't follow. Not interested in podcasting anymore, whatever else they're wanting to do. But I just thought I would share this with you because even as much as I mean, these aren't things that I don't know, but all the time, it's just because I know something doesn't mean I've actually implemented and executed on it. And so it may be that for you too. And so I would encourage you as money gets tight, maybe tighter, or you begin to feel the effects of inflation, or you begin to feel like your add costs are going up and you're getting less qualified leads or less leads altogether, I would encourage you to go back and look at your process like I'm doing and make sure that you're properly filling the holes in your...