How To Implement Podcast Growth Strategies To Grow Your Show & Business! Feat. Mark Savant

Authentic Leadership Podcast, a podcast where seeking to lead change while also seeking to understand. We're also here as a platform for leaders to come together to make, develop and empower other leaders in the areas of business, family and community. I'm your host, Lafayette Lane joined by my co-host John Lebrun. Today, we are joined by our special guest, Mark Savant. Put those hands together, put those clap emoji's in the comments section. Make Mark feel real good and right at home. Right here. Unscripted. He has joined us to have an amazing conversation on how to implement podcast growth strategies to grow your show business. Just a little bit about Mark. Marks of our help. Some business owners create better content in less time by helping business owners implement systems to create and repurpose anchor content. He focuses on the power of digital media to help you stay on top of mind and build and know like and trust with your desired audience. His YouTube channel has reached over 600,000 views. His show, The After Hours Entrepreneur, frequently ranks at the top 1% of podcasts. He generates organic traffic and fresh leads daily, and he has joined us right here tonight on the Unscripted, Authentic Leadership podcast. Mark, thanks for coming on. Yeah, Lafayette, Jon. Pleasure to be here. Excited to talk shop. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's get right into it. Listen, we know that there is there are so many podcasts right off a to say it's probably in the millions now how many podcasts shows there are in so many different types of shows, so many different variety of categories, and you specialize in growing your podcasts with such a dense population of podcasts and categories out there? How does one differentiate their show from another to get noticed? Well, there's obviously there's a lot of different things that you can do, and I think that one of the most important things that you can do is is be your own unique self. I think that a lot of times when people turn on the mic, they turn on the camera. They kind of like change who they are. They think that they need to talk like Tom Brokaw or something like that. When, you know, I think that what really separates great shows is a host or hosts that are just being authentic, you know, authentic themselves. I think that people really respond to that. And, you know, furthermore, knowing your audience and knowing how to speak with them, trying to drive engagement is really important and also really difficult. I find with podcasting, you know, podcasting oftentimes is a one way street. You know, you say the words, people listen to it into their ears. How do you get that feedback? And as you develop systems to get feedback, I think that's when your your show can really grow and you can build a super fans that drive your business forward. So in other words, you're saying that it's all we're one of the leading podcasts because we're hearing the Authentic Leadership podcast that you're on the right track. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That we're talking about growing strategies. What are some growing strategies that you've seen that work? What are some growth strategies that you've seen that not work that don't work so well? I find that when when I have shows or when I see huge new influxes of of listeners, it's generally because I'm getting a big share, right? And in generally speaking, that's one or two ways. But it all really revolves around connecting with another podcast host and having them share with their audience. This past year, I had two very large spikes in listenership, and that was one Jasmine star whose great creator shared my podcast with her community on her podcast, and I saw a huge influx of downloads. And then another guest I had on the show, Mike Armstrong, shared with his audience that I got a huge influx of shows. And when I say share, like different audiences are more engaged than others and there's different ways you can share, like just retweeting or reposting something into an Instagram Story. You get a little bit, maybe a couple of listeners here and there, but when you really get the listenership is when someone loses out to their their male audience, to all their emails, or may they share on their podcasts or YouTube channel directly. So I find that collaboration is king when it comes to podcasting. See, you mentioned systems for feedback, because when you first statements can you can you kind of unpack that a little bit? Yeah, well. Everyone's different and, you know, everyone is going to have a different place to get engagement. Generally speaking, I think you want to have we go real deep on this. You want to have one place where your long form content lives in one place where your short form content lives. Right? In the long form would be like your podcast, RSS feed or your YouTube channel. That's a place where people are going to go and they're going to listen for a long period of time. Statistically, people that download your podcast and listen are generally going to listen to the whole thing. And that's really, really great in a world where attention spans are so short, so short, right? Tik Tok, by the way, is the most visited website on the internet by it right now. I don't know if have seen that tick tock even more so than Google. Tick Tock is the most visited website on the web, which is pretty fascinating considering it's built off of 15 to 32nd video clips, right? Right. So at any rate, you want a place where your long content lives, where people can listen and kind of absorb or be taught something, and then a short form place where people can engage and you can get more more conversations going like Instagram or LinkedIn. I find those to be really, really popular places. one of the things that that I also try to do with my emails is I try to make them conversational, right? So, you know, I've got an email list of several hundred people about anywhere up to 500 people now. And with all those emails that I send out, I really try to get people to email back so I can drive conversations. And, you know, frankly, try to generate leads for my podcast production agency. So finding ways to bring conversations and keep conversations going, I think, is the key. OK, so then within that, within the conversation of getting someone to agree to converse back, they say the email because that's very it seems very static like you send out a newsletter. They read it. How can you? Can you give a couple of tips on how somebody can get that response back? Because I know with like on Facebook or some of the platforms went down several months ago, people freaked out. And then also, I started hearing everywhere we should have had a newsletter. We should have a newsletter and we, you know, we have a newsletter. It's relatively new. It wasn't because of that. We had already been in process of that, but that is it. That is something that can be kind of challenging. Like you send one out readers. The views opens are pretty good, but then how do you get that conversation back? Well, you need to give a direct call to action a say, you know, a direct question. And the other thing that I think that people tend to do in their emails or in their content is they make they make it too long or too like impersonal. Like if you ever read an email, it's just kind of like, it just sounds like a marketing email, you know? And I mean, that's 90% of them. But I think that when you actually start typing in your own voice and typing it a way that people are kind of like, feel like they're almost having a conversation. And at the end you leave a direct call to action, respond to this email and tell me what your 2022 goals are, right? Or, for example, something that really worked out well with Jasmine I mentioned earlier was a direct call to action. Go to Instagram, find at Mark's about media and dmy keyword secret. Right, and so you give a direct call to action and tell them exactly what you want them to do. I think a lot of times we we kind of dilute our calls to action by giving too many. Right? Make sure that you like and you subscribe and then leave a comment below and make sure you go to my website. Marks Font Medium.com. Oh, and by the way, I have a Facebook group. Definitely check that out. And so what happens if you get this kind of analysis paralysis, this this kind of like overwhelmed with too much and people end up not doing anything. So being clear and concise with your call to actions, I think is a big is a big game changer. That's that's really good. That's really good. You help people simplify podcast production. What do you mean by that? What does that look like? How can people simplify their podcast production? Again, it really comes down to systems. I have a team of six people now that are helping with the production of of my show and several my client shows, hopefully looking to build that up this this coming year. But over the last four years since I started podcasting, I've just hit every pothole on the way. You know, I did it. Just everything that could go wrong with the production has gone wrong. And I think that learning from those mistakes has got me to a place now where, like, podcast production for me is simple and fun. You know, like get on a show, I record it. I upload a Google form. It automatically populates my customer relationship manager notifies my team. They start editing, producing everything. So I think at the end of the day. There's a lot that goes into podcast production, there's the the there's the planning, the connecting with new people, the outreach, there's the the setup of the meeting, there's actually doing the recording, there's the post-production , there's the the all the copywriting, there's all the editing, there's the pushing out and all of a sudden someone's like, I just wanted to have a quick show that I could share with my audience so I could build, know, like and trust. Right. I'm a realtor and I want to stand out in the marketplace. I want people to listen to me and know that I'm for real. That you know that I understand what I'm talking about. I want to stand out in a very busy market and in podcasting can do that. The problem is, if you don't really understand podcasting, you're kind of it ends up not being fun. And that's why the vast majority of podcasts are just dead. They don't. They're, you know, they don't go. I don't remember the exact statistic, but it's something like 90% of podcasters quit before episode seven. And that's because they don't have the right systems in place and they don't really understand, I think, what they're getting into before you get into it. He's to I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I do want to say that, you know, one of the things I think is really powerful about podcasting as well is it can be kind of like the core, and you mentioned this in the intro piece of anchor content, right? The podcast is like the core of your entire social media presence, your entire online presence. Right? Because you can you can take that core long form content and then you can break it down into clips or anecdotes, to memes, to carousels, to different pieces of social media content that will help you stand out on the highly engaged platforms like we talked about. You know, you said you upload to Google Forms. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. What do you mean by that? I'm not familiar with that. OK. So there's different ways that you can do this. But basically when me or when one of my clients finishes recording an episode, they'll go to a Google form that we've set up for them and they'll fill out the various questions and answers like, are there any timestamp moments that you thought were really good that you'd like to highlight? You know, what's your proposed title for the episode? What is, you know, what date do you want this to be released, etc.? You know, just a bunch of like pieces of relevant information. And then, thanks to the power of the internet, takes things the power of technology and automation. As soon as they fill out that form, it starts putting all these different wheels in motion. Right? It's like turning the key in the ignition to a car that all of a sudden all the rotator and rotors and and everything starts moving and doing their thing. And so that's that's really what I try to focus on is making it simple and easy. Do the episode fill out the form? We've got it from here, you know, because once you filled out that form, it sets up an automation to set up a spreadsheet and notified this team member and that team member it. It sets up a timeline and dates and deadlines for pieces of content to be completed. Different steps, the process to be completed. Yeah, good stuff. Go ahead, John. So basically just streamlining the process to make it super simple for them. Yeah. And to be fair, like, you know, you don't have to be as thoughtful about it as I am, but you know, for me, because I'm producing multiple shows, we really have to have this process in place, especially in all the leaders out there. Understand this. There's only one you, you know, and and by by setting up this system in this process, it allows me to automatically let my team know, OK, this is what your job is for the day instead of me calling them or setting everything up manually to form the form just sets everything in motion, which is just , I mean, a huge time saver. So for the person who's listening, who's a leader within their company or a business owner, and obviously they're leading the company who's considering starting a podcast like, Hey, I've heard this can be beneficial. Maybe I should use the podcast. Can you talk to obviously, you've worked with several companies and they have various reasons for starting it. Toxic. Can you unpack why it would be beneficial in most cases or many cases for somebody to consider using a podcast for their business? Yeah. And this is a great question, and I think it's really the key because if you're thinking about running a podcast for your business, you to understand what it gives you. But the first one, I think, is know, like and trust. There's there's no better way I think of building no like in trust with your audience than showing up every week and then listening to you in their ear. Right? I mentioned realtors before because there's like, I don't know if y'all have ever bought or sold a home, but as soon as you mention a one person, you're thinking about selling your home. Everybody's a realtor, I vultures, everybody, you know, and so then is it, you know, if you can have a business card that says, I'm a realtor, check out my show. And then it's got like a little QR code and then they can listen to like, Oh, this person knows what they're talking about. They're my area. Oh, they know the mayor, that's cool. You know, it kind of sets you apart. And again, you know, the other thing is, you're building, you know, you're building that, that professionalism, that experience, people understand that, OK, this person knows what they're talking about. I'm listening to them. I know them. I like them. I trust them. So those those are, I think, are big ones. You know, keeping the attention like we're living in this idiot, the attention economy right now. You know, we talked about this a few minutes ago. Everything, everywhere all the time is fighting for your attention. We actually talked about this even before the the the the the interview today is turning off notifications on your phone, right? Because your phone is bleeping at you all day, all the time. So a podcast again is just a way of keeping someone's attention for a long time, because most of the time when people are listening to a podcast or they're driving on the way to the work or they're on a treadmill, you know, and they're not, be distracted by this other stuff. They're just listening to your voice, explaining some sort of complicated topic or or again building that relationship with them. You know, I saw you made a post about getting down low spikes by reaching out to local schools and universities. Thought that was interesting? How does that work and how does that correlate to podcast growth? So this is not, you know, that's a great question. And and frankly. Podcasting is really about collaborating and connecting, right, we talked about that's one of the big ways that I've seen huge spikes in downloads. That's another again benefit to your business. If you can collaborate with other business partners because you've got a podcast, all of a sudden you're able to get potential clients on your show. It gives people an excuse to actually connect with you because you're not just getting on a sales call, you're getting them on on a podcast where you can provide them value and hope for reciprocation, right? But the same thing applies to schools, local organizations. You know it can. Maybe it's tough to get on a phone call with the dean, but if you've got a podcast, maybe you can connect with the dean there. I know a guy locally. Jason Hill, who who moved to Florida, started a podcast, and he is collaborating now with the Florida Atlantic School of Business, FSU School of Business. And so once a week, he's on campus, connecting with the entrepreneurship department, meeting, shaking hands. He's doing presentations on campus, you know, connecting with people that lead Ted talks down here. And so again, just connecting with organizations is a great way of getting your name out there. And again, networking. You know, and the other thing it's like you never know who's going to listen to your show, right? You show up maybe at one school school meeting, right? And you're like, OK, Mark, I run this podcast. I've collaborated with some of the people here. Like, sometimes it could only take one person hearing you to to change your life. You know what I mean? Or change change the scope of your business because of some sort of collaboration. I just think that for most business owners, schools and universities are a good university, specifically a good place to go because you've got a lot of people that are on a professional trajectory. If you would make sense. Yeah, go ahead, bro. So then if we go. To add on to it, you said I just had a second thought. two thoughts. first of all, since we've been in the podcasting community, I can attest to the fact that I don't think I've been a part of a lot of different business communities , networking communities, different things of that nature. I don't think I've been in a community that was so willing to help out a fellow podcaster as the podcasting community took us several months to kind of find the communities, and we're still always finding new ones. But I don't think I've ever met any of them. They're like, Oh, of course, nobody said, How big is your podcast? Or it was more of? Does it fit with? What I am talking about was the on the usually on the question, does it fit outside of that? It rarely ever hear. How big is it or anything of that nature? Obviously, you can tell a little bit by just watching them how how mature they are, how many episodes they have. So I'm sure people look at that. But nobody makes you feel inferior for being new and everybody champions you. Nobody is holding back information, or at least they don't appear to be versus. I've been in networking groups, business groups where it's very vanilla information they've given out or they give you enough to where you can't ever outdo them kind of thing. But in the podcast community, it feels like there's, you know, our friend Troy Sanders. She's a marketing guy, he said. You know, the the sky is enough room for everybody to fly or something along those. Yes, and that's kind of how he he says it way better than me. But that's that's kind of how it feels. It's like an abundance mindset, right? Correct. Yeah, there's no lack of ears, basically, like, hey, people listen to multiple shows. It's OK, and you may lose one fan to another show and you buy a game to back that that sort of feeling so sure. Anyways, I think that, you know, and I think you guys might agree with me here, but you know, if you were just give value to people and I know that term gets used a lot. But like if you just help other people, I just feel like you get you get back what you give out, you know? Yeah. You know, if you put if you put good out there, if you're if you're helpful to other people, if you show love, I just feel like you get it back, you know, and it's not always obvious how that's going to look right. But that is one thing I love about the podcasting and the YouTube community as well, which is something I'm really passionate about. Yeah, the creator, the creators are just great, really great in this space. Let's talk about that giving value. So I think part of the reason people drop out of podcasting by is, you said episode seven, there is a lot more to producing a quality show than everybody sees. Most of the time, the scenes only 30 minutes is even in front of a camera 30 or 40 minutes. But I I believe because I read a stat that most part there's like 90% in there. What the stat I said I had read was most don't make it to episode 50, you're saying seven below. So, OK, we're like, we're almost at number 70. You know, we do it once a week. We've been very consistent, but I think part of me believes that the reason people get in is because they get in with the wrong. I would say, I think they believe it's either going to be easier or they get it with the wrong. What's the word I want to use, like they don't get in to provide the value? I think some people get in hoping. I just want a big audience, so my business will be bigger. But they forget that to get the audience, you have to be willing to give them something to listen to. Like, give them your tips. Give them everything you got. Don't worry about them stealing your information. Like, Can you talk to that? Let's talk about giving value and the importance of that for your podcast. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, it's, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this a lot. You know, give away your best stuff for free, you know, and it's really hard for people to do that. I think because you're like, why would they ever pay me for anything if I'm giving away my best stuff for free? But it's it's counterintuitive, you know, because in a world where everyone's trying to sell, sell, sell, if you're give gift giving. I think people recognize that, you know, and you know, you can change someone's life with a quick tip. Like, I had a carousel the other day where someone's like, Holy crap, I tried out this tip from your carousel and it worked, you know, like, my sound is ten times better now. Wow, that's me, you know? And now that person is going to come back and they're going to, they're going to listen more. I saw another stat here where it takes 27 hits, 27 touches before someone actually purchases. Right? You need to show up on someone's radar a lot before they actually buy something that you're offering, right? Well, and if every time, if every touch is is is about me, me, me, click my link by my course. You know, it doesn't hit the same. I can't remember who said this, but people don't remember what you say. They remember how you make them feel. Mm hmm. Right? If you if if every time they walk away with like, wow, now I'm a little bit better because I watch this. I just think that's where the dividends pay off, right? Yeah, Gary calls it the give back economy, basically saying, give your best stuff. They're not. He said a few people are going to take what you gave him and run on their own. But most people don't want to do what you're doing. They're listening because they're interested and they're like, You know, I need marks about media to help me with my podcast because I want the podcast. I don't want to do all the work for the podcast. Therefore, we have, you know, people like yourself who can specialize in the area and they can help me achieve my goals faster. As you say, spend more time doing what I love. I think that's one of your quotes, but you said 27 hits. So doesn't that kind of go back to, you know, like and trust? I feel like that has to fall right into no like interest to get to that. 27. Oh, it's I mean, 100%. And you know, I think the challenge a lot of people have is, you know, they wake up in the morning like, well, what am I going to post today? Like, I need to be on social media, right? Everyone kind of has this belief that we have to be on social media, right? And I do think it's important. But then you run into this thing where you're like, What am I going to post today? I don't know. What am I going to do? But when you when you leverage a podcast is like the core of your content, it becomes so much easier. You know, I've got three weeks of content already planned on. I need to do anything like if I was to pass away today, God forbid, I still would be showing up on social media for three weeks, right? So it's just three weeks of me still raw and you still got three weeks to mark, you know, your team, you know, stop that three weeks. Keep it rolling, you know? But yeah, again, it's just it just it gives you a nice framework, I think, for for creating the content. Plus, again, you know, we talked about this time and time again is that collaborative economy that we're in. You know, you never know who's going to share what with who, and it's really in something's really going to really going to touch someone's heart or brain. You know, it's really it's really it's just so weird to me. You know, there's days, you know, in building a business is really hard. There are lots of ups and downs. You know, you lose a client and your debt. Your entire day is shot. But you just never know what a new day is going to bring. And off the back of this podcast, the actor and entrepreneur podcast that I run, I just I get people deeming me almost every day like, Oh, I heard your episode, let's talk and let's go on a phone call. And it's just really it's just really powerful. What can happen when you've got a show that that highlights you? And I think we also should mention like, y'all might agree with me here, but it's a really special part and point in time. Like what point in history that could you? Pump your voice out to billions of people for four very low cost. Historically, you need to be in a radio, you know, a radio studio or be in a TV studio, and you can only hear a few different stations. But it's just I think that we underestimate how special this moment is in time. Mm-Hmm. So you talk about developing that know, like and trust. I'm assuming there is a progression there and there might be sort of a systematic way of developing that along that journey. Could you dove into that real quick? I, you know, I don't think it's longevity. Yeah. Well, longevity is definitely part of it. Consistency is the key. You know, consistency is king. And again, that's really what I try to focus on with with business owners is let's get you to a place where it's simple, you know, because if it's hard, if there's friction, if it's not fun, it's it's not going to work right. So let's get a system in place to make it simple so that you actually enjoy the process, you know? Consistency is the key. I don't think that you really need to overthink. Like, how do I build this progression of know, like and trust? I think consistently showing up and being yourself is, is this what I look for? Because again, I know the first time I recorded the first episode of The Awesome Dad show, which was which was a prior podcast that I was I was running to listen to it, by the way. I was just like a complete robot. I was listening to all these these shows on how to do an interview, and I was very robotic. It's kind of funny listening back to my first episodes, but but now I'm just like, You know what? Like, you don't. We live in a really cool time. You don't need to have a college degree. You don't need to have a suit and tie with 200 dollar shoes to to actually make a life for yourself and your family. You know, you just got to show up and be yourself and and connect with people in a meaningful way. Hmm. Mark, if there was one last piece of advice or one last suggestion that you would give to our audience that that is listening, the entrepreneurs that lead us out there, what would that be? My my one piece of advice and how I'm starting off all my shows here for it is take action, take action. And I think most entrepreneurs get that. We understand that there's going to be a lot of failure along the way. You know, but I just encourage everyone to take the action. If you're not sure what comes next or if, if, if you're curious about podcasting, take action. Send me an email, send me an email contact. It marks about Medium.com contact at Mark. Stop me Adcom. Shoot me an email. I take the action. We'll hop on a call and maybe I can help you or answer some questions you might have about podcasting. So take the action if you've been thinking about doing something this year. Absolutely, and Mark also offers coaching and helping businesses create better content, less time. He helps you refine your brand messaging systems and also helps you with your social media strategy. You also can connect with social media. Instagram was at Mark's of our media. Also, he is Mark's about Facebook and LinkedIn. And as he just mentioned, you could find him at Mark's about media dot com. Again, we say thank you to Mark for having this amazing conversation with us. Stay connected to us here. All unscripted. We are unscripted leadership on all social media platforms. That's unscripted-leadership.com. You can find our podcast on all streaming platforms. Thank you, Mark, for coming on and have this amazing conversations on how to implement podcast growth strategies to grow your show business. As always, we pray that you'd be the leader that God has called you to be. We're here to build bridges, not walls. Bridges connect and the walls divide. Until next time. God bless you.