AP 0605: How Do I Convert Podcast Listeners into Website Visitors?

AskPat 605 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody, Pat Flynn here. And welcome to Episode 605 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week. We have a great question today from Pete, but before we get to Pete's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is ZipRecruiter.com.

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All right now here's today's question from Pete.

Pete: Hi Pat. My name is Pete Matthew. I live in the UK and I'm the creator of a site called MeaningfulMoney.tv, which is a personal finance education and inspiration website. I began five years ago doing short videos explaining the different concepts of personal finance and then, inspired by you, and by Michael High, and others, I began my own podcast in late 2012.

Was doing really well, I'm getting an excess of 20,000 downloads per month, across 130 episodes. But my question to you is, how do I get those people who consume my podcast to come back to the website, where I can build my list?

My list is currently only about 600 people. They're fairly engaged, but obviously, I'd love that list to be more. Is it because I'm not creating much content other than the podcasts? Should I be writing more? How do I convert podcast listeners to website visitors? Currently. I'm getting about 1,700 uniques per month to the website.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, Pat. Thank you so much for all you do. You continue to be an inspiration to me, this side of the pond. I particularly loved the “You Versus You” Podcast Movement Keynote, so more of that stuff, please.

Fantastic. Thanks so much. Cheers.

Pat Flynn: Hey Pete, what's up. Thank you so much for the question today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the comments on my Keynote at Podcast Movement. I truly look forward to going there next month, in a couple weeks actually, from the date of this podcast episode going live. Hopefully, I'll see you there and everybody else out there who's going to be visiting Chicago after the 4th of July. So really looking forward to that.

Now related to your question, the question, “How do you get people who listen to your podcast to get onto your website?” And hopefully obviously get them onto your list and provide more value to them. Turn them into customers, raving fans, and whatnot. This is a very important question because a lot of us, I know, we have podcasts and we aren't really doing much to get those people onto our websites. We just assume that they're going to go there, and you shared the numbers. 20,000 downloads a month, and you're having about 1,700 visits to your website. And I think that could massively be improved and there are a number of ways to do that.

So the first thing you need to know is, you need to provide some reason to come to your website for those who are listening. Now there's a little bit of difficulty there because a lot of people listen on the go, and that's kind of the benefit of listening to a podcast is you can consume content without having to be in front of your computer. Now, people will be consuming content on their mobile device and yes, their mobile device can gain access to your website. But again, you need some sort of incentive or reason for that listener to come onto your website. So there's a lot of different reasons that you can provide.

The first reason, kind of the one that should be most obvious, is the show notes. So handy links and resources that were mentioned in that episode available on the website. And you want to kind of train your audience or make it really easy for them to get on your website. So for me, for example, for each episode of the Smart Passive Income podcast, I have show notes related to that episode.

For example, Episode 121 is SmartPassiveIncome.com/session121. Episode 205 is SmartPassiveIncome.com/session205. And I keep track of those through Pretty Link, which is actually the tool, the WordPress plugin that creates those nice short links that redirect directly to that particular episode. Now if I could do it all over again, I would probably just have the number, not the “session” and then the number, but I started out that way and I just … that's how I initially trained my audience and that's how the rhythm is now. But Amy Porterfield does AmyPorterfield.com/49, AmyPorterfield.com/52. Those sorts of things. And that just makes it really easy for her audience to go back to the website.

And again, two parts here. You want to make some reason to go to the website, and you want to make it easy. So that makes it easy, and the show notes, the resources, having helpful links there is one sort of primary reason people might want to come to the website. But there are other things you can do too.

Providing some incentive or download that people can get access to, related to a particular episode is very, very helpful. This is something that by far, Amy Porterfield, again, does better than a lot of others. Tim Paige from Leadpages … he runs a show called Conversion Cast. Leadpages does the same thing. They bring people who listen to the podcast onto their site because they give away certain things. And they give away certain things in exchange for an email address. So not only are you getting web traffic back to your website, but you're also getting email subscribers. And so that is also something to think about, Pete, when … well what happens when people come to your website? Well you want them to subscribe and that will grow your list, and that is great.

So you can use Lead Pages to deliver those lead magnets or some other tool that you might have. People subscribe to your email list and on the first follow-up message, they might get access to that download. So that's another incentive for people to come to your website.

Another one is to leave comments and participate and discuss. This is one that works very well, especially when there's some sort of contest involved. And I found that when I'm on an interview with a guest and that guest has something to give away, they often require that guest … we talk about it on the show but we get that person to leave a comment in order to gain entry to potentially win a prize or some sort of giveaway or drawing of some kind. And that always brings people back to the website. And that's enough incentive, and again making it really easy for people to do that will definitely drive traffic to your website.

And lastly, if you have a list already, I would definitely email your list when you come out with a new episode. Yes, they're going to get a subscription or hopefully they will have subscribed to your show and will get that show automatically pumped into their device, whatever device they use, to listen to your show. But you could also send out an email to your existing list, these are people who have pretty much given you permission to send them information and notifications like this, and so send them that email, bring them back to the website. Put a link in there to the show notes and the resources and any sort of additional value that you could provide in there, that would be great. Especially if there's some sort of call to action but yeah, that's really the four … was it four? Three or four things that you could do to … and they're not that difficult either but that's how you get people to take action from the show when they're listening, to your website where they can then take action, subscribe, and go down the funnel that way.

So Pete, thank you so much for your question. I really appreciate it. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Thank you so much. And thank you to everybody else out there who's asking questions. I appreciate it. If you have a question that you'd like here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and I might select your question, just like we did with Pete today. And I would send you a t-shirt, free of charge. And yeah, doesn't matter where you're at. We'll send over the pond for you Pete.

Also, I want to mention that FreshBooks is a company that has also sponsored this episode. FreshBooks is an amazing company that helps you manage your business finances and this is something that's obviously very important, but you might not know when you're first starting out, and you want to make sure you get with the right software to help you keep your books, and manages your finances, and give you all the reports that you need for tax time, and also help you with the invoicing that you do, if you have any students or clients or companies that you consult with, it just makes it really, really easy.

So I highly recommend checking out FreshBooks. To do that, for free, for 30 days, go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat, and make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again, that's FreshBooks.com/AskPat. And enter “Ask Pat.”

Thanks so much. I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day by none other than Steve Jobs. And that is, “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.” Keep being excellent everybody. Cheers. See you the next episode. Bye.