How Podcasting Can Help You Grow Your Online Course Business And Sell More Digital Products How two ordinary people achieved great success in their podcast journey, and how you can too.
By Tina Dahmen Edited by Jessica Thomas
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Podcasts are one of the most powerful ways to build rapport with your audience and one of the best ways to build a brand and market and sell digital products, especially online courses.
Once you have figured out how to create an online course that sells and you are ready to set it on autopilot, you need to make a decision on how to drive consistent traffic to your core piece of content. Podcasting is a great way to do that.
Podcasts are a place where you'll find people with long attention spans, who interested in your niche and are craving more information. Why would they be subscribed if they weren't? Podcasting is the ultimate place to sell digital products, because there's an engaged audience and you get to network with other awesome people in your space.
Related: 3 Effective Marketing Strategies For Selling Digital Products Online
What are the benefits of podcasting when it comes to selling online courses specifically?
Your listeners spend some of their most intimate time with you while they are either driving their car, going for a walk, getting ready for work, working out at the gym or before they head to bed. This builds what Joel Brown, the founder of the Addicted2Success podcast calls "the best friend effect." Most course creators are fighting to be seen and heard on social media, and this can be an expensive and exhausting game to play. In an email interview, Brown wrote that "All you need is to record an ad for your course, which will be placed at the start of each episode. As each listener gets to know you and becomes familiar with your voice, they will remember you next time they are looking for a course to join. Not to mention if they are listening to a lot of episodes back-to-back they will hear your ad multiple times, which in turn makes it more likely they will eventually purchase your course if they believe you have a solution for them."
You become a well-versed speaker when you commit to a high volume of episode creation. If you are a coach, a podcast is a powerful value exchange you get to offer other coaches, speakers and authors, which will allow you to build a network of friends in your industry.
Related: The 3 Most Common Mistakes Online Course Creators Make
Interviewing celebrities on your podcast
Podcasts are a place where you can establish yourself as an expert through the power of "hijacking other people's audiences," as Russel Brunson would say. Using the power of other people's audiences by getting influential guests on your show can instantly build your credibility and authority in the industry.
Brown managed to get huge names such as Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Jay Shetty, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, Grant Cardone, Gabrielle Bernstein, Lisa Nichols, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Brendon Burchard, Bob Proctor, John Assaraf and more through a combination of perseverance and luck. His podcast has been downloaded more than four million times, and the YouTube videos of his podcast episodes have more than two million views.
Brown's three secrets for getting celebrities on his show
"I messaged Gary Vaynerchuk and told him I would purchase 25 copies of his book Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hook and give them away as a competition on my social media channels in return for a quick 20-minute video interview," Brown wrote to me. "He loved the idea and said yes."
"I set a calendar reminder in my phone on the 21st of each month for 12 months straight to remind me to try another way to get in touch with Tony Robbins," he wrote. "It took nine months and nine attempts until I finally got a yes from Tony. By the time he agreed, he had heard my name and Addicted2Success mentioned to him a few times from a few gatekeepers. It was perfect timing as his new book Money: Master The Game had just come out."
"John Assaraf, who was in the hit movie The Secret, was running a Masterclass to promote one of his courses," Brown told me. "I put myself in his shoes and knew that he would need support to get as many subscribers as possible to fill his course. I offered to promote his course to my social media followers and email list, which at the time had 30,000 subscribers. He said yes."
How long does it take to see traction with a podcast?
For Addicted2Success, traction picked up very quickly once it hit 10,000 downloads per month. That kind of success is achievable when you have a solid game plan and strategy to consistently get all-star guests on your platform and are promoting each episode to your audience multiple times. It helps even more when you ask and encourage people to share your episodes with their friends, fans and followers too.
This more quickly you grow and the more listeners you have, the more you'll be picked up by podcast algorithms. That helps you rank in the top charts on Apple's podcast app and get featured on the main page of Soundcloud, for example.
Let's take the closer look at Scot Chrisman's podcast, The Athletic Stance, which focuses on mindset, nutrition, fitness and more for skiers. "I was blessed to see a lot of traction quickly," Chrisman wrote in an email. "It was the top podcast in sports on iTunes within 90 days. I was able to interview a lot of the best skiers and influential minds in skiing — think of the Tony Hawks or the Michael Jordans of the skiing world — including two-time Olympic gold medalist and six-time world champion David Wise and 16-year-old bronze medal winner Nico Porteous. Getting these athletes on the show was a matter of persistence and passion. I sent out lots of requests, and I literally only got one no. The rest just ignored me if they didn't want to be a part of it. It helped that I was an up-and-coming pro, but it didn't mean it was always easy."
Three tips for how Chrisman got big guests on his show
Try multiple social media platforms and methods of outreach
Don't be shy
Don't be afraid to hear no or not hear back
Coaches, consultants and course creators can hugely benefit from starting a podcast, because it encourages them to create "Gary Vee-style" content that can then be broken down, multiplied and posted across social media platforms and blogs. To be able to keep selling online courses consistently, you need as much content as possible.
Podcasting is a great practice for speaking about your topic, diving into your expertise, creating content regularly and systematically syndicating it out through multiple mediums.
So, when are you starting your podcast?
Related: 4 Crucial Things To Consider Before Creating An Online Course
