Lead Generation Strategies for Podcasters in Wellness

Lead Generation Strategies for Podcasters in Wellness

I’m Jamie Kennedy, Executive Podcast Producer at Brave Moon Podcasts. Today, I want to share with you some insights and hacks on how to use your health and fitness podcast for lead generation.

In the competitive world of health and fitness, differentiation is key. One often overlooked tool that can help you stand out is podcasting. Not only does it allow you to share your unique insights and stories, but it can also be a powerful means of lead generation.

In this episode, we talk about…

• Why lead generation is the missing key for many health and fitness businesses — and how a podcast can fast-track it.

• How to define your dream client, capture their contact information, and turn listeners into loyal customers.

• Actionable strategies like using lead magnets, newsletters, and interactive podcast features to grow your audience and income.

Transcribed Podcast Episode

I failed my first business at 33. I started a health and fitness social media marketing business, helping health and fitness brands create and publish social media posts. I had a couple paying clients and a decent Instagram at the time, at its height having around 8,000 followers with great engagement.

But I was doing absolutely nothing to generate new leads. I posted over and over again, only stirring likes and comments, but never actual leads. And as you can imagine, my lack of new clients made it impossible to sustain a business. And I ended up going in-house with one of my clients. But I laugh about it now because I can see what I was missing. Clearly, I was missing lead generation. If you're a health and fitness professional, generating leads is key to growing your business.

So what do I mean by lead generation? Well, when you're generating leads, you're essentially attracting individuals or businesses to your product, service, or content. So much so that they provide you with their contact information. That makes them a lead. You can then go do your thing and turn them into paying clients through emails and sales calls, AKA conversion.

This episode is going to be all about how to use your health and fitness podcast as a way to generate those leads quicker, and faster than any other marketing strategy. Because when you're generating more leads, you're giving yourself way more opportunities to make more money and stand out in a saturated market.

Thank you for joining me today. I'm Jamie Kennedy, Executive Podcast Producer at Brave Moon Podcasts. We've produced podcasts for Virgin Active Health Clubs, Functional Training Institute, Wellbeing Coaches and Speakers, and many more. I'm including all of the insider secrets I've learned along the way being a podcast producer for some of the top health and fitness brands on the charts today.

So whether you're a small business owner, health and fitness professional, or a wellness enthusiast looking to boost your brand through podcasting, this podcast is for you. For a comprehensive list of the equipment and software my clients use, head to my website and grab my free start a podcast guide. I've condensed months of research into this guide, offering you the industry's best choices. Download it today, the link is in the show notes.

Now let's jump into it. How to generate leads from your health and fitness podcast. Before we can even begin to talk about lead generation, I really want to make sure you decide on your target audience. Who is your dream client? Who do you want purchasing your product or service? Take some time with this.

Ask yourself what traits they have. Age, gender, income, because knowing this will help you better understand the struggles they face on a daily basis and how your product or service can become the solution they need in their life. You can almost work backwards here.

Let's say you're a personal trainer. A lot of your clients have been asking for a weekly training program instead of just an in-person session. So you've decided to create a digital training program that your clients will pay for. What are the struggles your clients are experiencing? AKA, why do they need this training program from you? Ask them directly.

Let's say that they struggle going to the gym by themselves. Without your guidance, they don't know what to focus on. They feel lost and a little embarrassed to be working out with so many people around.

They also struggle with what to eat before and after the gym, and ultimately, they struggle with feeling fit and confident in their body. Because you know these struggles, you can now really identify a target audience. Let's say the target audience is women in their 30s looking to boost their confidence.

Yes, you'll want to spend some time backing this up with market research, but don't get overwhelmed by this process. Every marketer out there will make market research seem incredibly hard to do, but I would so much rather you choose a target audience and stick with it than getting lost in the weeds of market research and skip this step altogether.

So once you're aware of who your target audience is, your goal is to make all of your marketing efforts speak to them directly. This is going to feel really tough to do. You second guess yourself with, is your target audience population too small? What if I attract other audiences?

But when you really get confident in your target audience is when your target audience will find you. When I'm talking about digital marketing or online marketing, I'm talking about everything online. Your website, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, email newsletters.

Wherever you are online, you should be talking to your target audience there. And importantly, your podcast should speak to your target audience too. Why? Because when you speak to your target audience, you're ultimately creating content they can relate to. And when they relate to you, then you become their go-to expert. So now you know it's all about your target audience and their struggles. So now we need to find ways to capture their contact information.

Remember, that's a huge hurdle to achieve because once you have their contact information, you can use it to call them, email them, essentially work toward converting them into paying customers. But until you have their contact information, you can't really do much to convert them.

Sure, you will maybe get that random customer that just found you online and fell in love with you and just started to pay for your services right away. But getting their contact information from them willingly drives them that much closer to being a paying client of yours.

So where to collect that information? Because you can't collect leads on an actual podcast. There's nowhere for them to enter their contact information and nowhere for them to opt in.

Here's the top five places you should collect their information.

1.) Your website via a lead magnet page.

A lead magnet is usually a helpful resource or guide that your target audience is interested in. Enough so that they provide you with their name and email in order to download the guide. Oftentimes, this lead magnet is directly related to a struggle the target audience faces.

For example, in the case of the personal trainer who is trying to sell a personalized weekly training program for his clients, I'd recommend a resource such as 10 go-to gym exercises you can do every day. You'll create this lead magnet and then create a web page on your website that allows a person to download the guide in exchange for their name and email address.

2.) Your website via a contact or booking form.

If you're a service provider, I highly recommend you offer a free 15 or 20 minute call on your website. This not only helps put you face to face with a potential client, but also means you have their contact information. So they're now officially a lead. Alternatively, if you hate phones, believe me, I get it. You can also add a contact form to your website so that people can email you directly through your website.

3.) Your website via a newsletter landing page to have them opt into your email newsletter.

You know I am a huge fan of email lists, right? Because email lists are the one thing you really own on the internet. Plus the engagement rate, AKA open rate, is so much higher than you can get anywhere else on the internet, like Instagram and Facebook. So I highly recommend you have a pop-up or section on your website so that people can sign up for your mailing list.

I'll come back to ideas about this later in the episode.

4.) Collect information on Instagram using an automated form generator like ManyChat.

I've included a link to that in my show notes. If you're on Instagram, you may have noticed that some people, myself included, are asking you to comment a specific word or number on their posts. Something like, subscribe or I'm in. and then you'll immediately get an automated DM speaking to whatever the post was about. This is called ManyChat.

You can also use it to subscribe to someone's mailing list. I highly recommend signing up with ManyChat as it's a great place to score leads directly from Instagram.

5.) Social media hosting a giveaway that collects entries and opt-ins.

There's a few ways to do this, either through ManyChat, which I just mentioned, or through your website. You'd essentially set up a website form or a mini chat form and in order to enter the giveaway, the person must provide their email address and opt in to your email list. To summarize the five places I mentioned, they were a lead magnet page, a contact or book a call form, a newsletter signup form, all three of those on your website, or a mini chat automated form generator and a social media giveaway form.

I recommend that you have two to three of these at least. Now it's time to actually create content that turns your podcast listeners into leads.

First, you should always include at least one compelling call to action in your podcast episode and show notes. Either encourage your listeners to sign up to your awesome newsletter, book a call, download your lead magnet, et cetera. Make sure you include a direct link to this call to action in your show notes and let your listener know they can find it there.

Second, even if you don't mention it in your actual episode, be sure to add links to your opt-in places to your show notes, no matter what. I don't know about you, but when I'm invested in a podcast episode, I will absolutely go to the show notes to read more about it. And if I'm loving the podcast, I will definitely consider signing up for the host newsletter or download the lead magnet because I know that the value will be there.

Third, you should be writing blog articles related to every episode.

This can either be a direct transcript of your podcast, or it can be a summary of your podcast, or even both. This will make every podcast episode more searchable on search engines like Google. You always want to make sure you're embedding the episode in your blog articles, or alternatively, link the blog article back to your episode in the listening apps. Within the blog articles, add links or banners to join your email list or to contact you.

Fourth, start getting featured on other podcasts. I know, easier said than done. But there are actually a ton of podcast shows out there that are always on the lookout for podcast guests. As your podcast gets bigger, they may very well find you and reach out to you directly. Always say yes, unless you do not vibe with them and their podcast looks or sounds terrible. But remember,

Even as your podcast gets big, there's a huge likelihood that you'll need to be the one reaching out to podcast hosts. The good news is that they will probably be excited to get your email in their inbox. So don't hesitate to reach out. When you do get featured on a podcast, be sure to send the host links to your signup or lead magnet form. This way, the host can put your links into their show notes, which generates new eyes on you.

Now for my five hacks.

Hack number one. The journey of a lead can be one day or one year or even more. I've had leads that have taken months or even years to come back to me and say they're ready for a podcast. This very well can be the case for you. So don't give up on leads. My business coach told me once that she never stops following up with leads until they do one of two things. First, they give her a firm no, okay. completely understood. Second, they do something or act in a certain way to make you realize that you actually have no interest in working with them.

So what that means is once you get a lead, keep nurturing them. Send them value-filled emails. Check in with them and see how they're going. Some people just need a little push to get them over the finish line.

Hack number two. Nail your newsletter opt-in copy. Like I mentioned earlier, it's a great idea to have a landing page and or pop up on your website that turns a looky-loo into a lead. And part of this is about nailing your newsletter opt-in copy. After all, simply saying, sign up for my newsletter, probably doesn't sound as appealing as you think, even when you know your newsletters are next level awesome. I'll share just a few ideas which I heard from the amazing Maha Copy Co.

The first is, "Invite us into your inbox, kick us out anytime." That's the one that I use. The second is, "We promise it's not another newsletter." The third is, “Join the email list everyone and their mom is talking about. (mostly our mom, though).” I'll add those prompts to the show notes as well as a link to Maha Copy Co on Instagram. They're incredible.

Hack number three. Integrate interactive elements within your podcast to engage listeners actively. Pose a too-good-not-to-answer question. Link to a contact form on your website that asks this question, and in order to submit, they must add their name and email address and opt in to your mailing list. You could offer a prize for entering, turning it into a giveaway.

Hack number four. Use timestamps to encourage listeners to click on your call to actions. In listening apps like Spotify and Apple Podcast, if you add a timestamp minute mark to your show notes, a listener will be able to click on that timestamp and be taken to that exact moment in your episode. So use this to your advantage by adding direct timestamps to call to actions and points that matter. Then include a direct link to that call to action next to the timestamp.

Hack number five. Your podcast episodes don't have to be available forever. In fact, what if you shared on your episode that each episode is only available for one month? And in order to listen to archived episodes, a listener will have to visit your website and log in so they can see archived episodes.

You can use a platform like Patreon to give them access to those archived episodes. Remember that this is also a monetization option and that you can have people pay a monthly subscription in order to have access to your archived episodes or premium exclusive episodes too.

There you have it. Thank you again so much for joining me on your podcasting journey. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five star review. It helps people like you find this podcast as well.

Until the next episode, keep those conversations flowing and keep being the amazing powerhouse that you are. And as always, remember that consistency authenticity and promoting your podcast are key to your success. Happy podcasting.

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