Agency owners are struggling to get their clients on the right podcasts. Traditional outreach methods are time-consuming, inefficient, and often lead to rejection after rejection. But AI can transform your podcast outreach strategy.
In this recap of the Social Pulse: Agency Edition, hosted by Agorapulse’s chief storyteller, Mike Allton, Kara Wood shares how AI can play a major role in podcast outreach. She pioneered the use of AI to revolutionize how agencies approach podcast outreach and media partnerships.
What do traditional paid media and outreach strategies typically look like for agencies and why they’re becoming just so ineffective these days?
Kara Wood: I’d be happy to. So probably about three or four years ago … I would see my clients go out and pay for these spots on different television channels, etc. … And then they would be interviewed by somebody that was sort of interested in what they were doing but not really.
They didn’t have any control over the editing. They didn’t have any control over getting stills. Any kind of content afterwards was like an absolute no go, but they were paying an astronomical amount of money for this. And it was just really sad because I was watching it going, it doesn’t have to be like this. And I don’t think this is right, but I didn’t have a solution at the time.
And I knew podcasts were percolating. I knew that they existed, but I had no idea how many podcasts were actually out in the world. There is a problem. The problem is sitting right in front of me. I see that there’s a lot of money being exchanged. I see that the products are terrible, right? The videos are terrible. The webinars are terrible. The questions are terrible. I can see because a lot of the companies I work with are public companies, so they have shareholders that are involved in where money is spent, etc.
Shareholders are blasting these videos and webinars on social media, saying, “This is boring. This is dull. I’ve heard this before.” So that sat with me for quite a while. And I thought there’s got to be something better out there. And people’s stories, I believe, can’t be told in sort of bite-sized TikTok dances. I love the platform for certain things, but if you’re a CEO of a public company and you need to tell a story about you’re having to close down one factory because you need to move it over here for various different reasons, a TikTok dance or an Instagram post is not going to work.
So that was where I was sitting. And I was getting a little sort of depressed just seeing, like I said, all this money being spent on kind of lackluster content. So, a PR agent friend of mine gave me a call a couple of months ago and said, “I am playing with this new AI platform that pitches podcasts. And it is amazing.”
And I instantly went, “OK, tell me more. Like, how does this work? How did it come across your desk, etc.?” So she does a lot of work with agencies and people in New York. And this particular AI platform was developed and came out of sort of a group of really cool people in New York.
And so they developed an AI pitching for a podcasts platform. And I thought, “Well, it’s a bit expensive, but I’ll take it. I’ll check it out.” And so I did. I have to tell you, using it in combination with ChatGPT [and] taking all of the work and various content and decks and research and stuff that my clients provide for me, putting it all together has been game changing and it’s been so exciting.
How are you using AI and these different tools together?
Kara Wood: So first of all this particular AI will analyze your client profiles. It will then take a look at you and will upload all the decks that your clients have for investor relations or for their company. I mean, it could even be a catalog. So it takes your client’s profile. It takes all of the information that supports who your client is and what they do and what their company does, etc. And then from there, it works similar to ChatGPT or sort of like a supercomputer. It analyzes all of that information and then it will go and it will match your client with relevant podcasts that are highly aligned with their messaging.
And it goes super granular. And then what it does is it automates your research. It automates the pitch creation, and then it even takes the most recent podcast that the host has done, and it will find a way to sort of tie in what your client has recently done, or is interested in pitching or wants to talk about and tie it all in.
And then it emails them. Now you have the opportunity to go in and fine tune it and tweak it and make sure that it’s great. But for the most part, it takes out all of the heavy lifting … I think there [are] 4. million podcasts out there, so it’s virtually impossible, I think, to contact all of these podcast hosts. And sometimes, these very niche businesses or areas that might be interested in your host. So AI has just flipped everything on its head. And it’s quite extraordinary. I guess this is what I’m trying to say.
So what’s the platform called?
Kara Wood: PodPitch. And there are quite a few podcast matching platforms out there, and I’ve checked them all out. I am a platform junkie. We’ll go and check everything out before I decide on one.
So I checked out Podmatch … Anything that has a pod, something connected to it, I checked it out. But PodPitch, they’re still fine tuning everything. I don’t even think this company has been around for a year yet.
But it has changed my business. It’s the best way to put it.
Share a little bit more about what that looks like.
Kara Wood: For example, one of my clients is in the circular economy. It’s a recycling company. I mean, that’s not super exciting stuff, right? But … if you are in the circular economy world, or if you’re in the closed loop recycling conversation, what they’re doing is really cool.
So I have probably worked with them for maybe five or six years, and we’ve struggled growing the email list. We’ve struggled getting them earned media because it seems so niche and just so complicated. It was really hard for us to try [to] find their community.
So last ditch effort, when I found out about PodPitch, I put our CEO’s bio up. I put up all of the information about what the company does, etc. He is on probably two podcasts a week now, and these are extraordinary podcasts that are so highly matched. The conversations are so authentic. And what it’s done is it started to build trust for them with their existing shareholders because of the conversations that these podcasts have with the CEO. Because they know the content, they’re interested in the content. They know their audience is interested in the content. So therefore the conversations are, really, really authentic, and they’re in depth and they’re interesting.
So it’s not just these five or six canned questions about investor relations and what investors might need to know. Which we were typically paying a ton of money for. But now this is earned media for the most part because the podcasters, they see the pitch usually takes two or three emails before the podcast host will respond to us or the producers.
But PodPitch takes care of that. It creates sort of three emails that it will sort of send out if you don’t, you don’t get an email back, which is very cool. And each email is unique to the most recent podcast that they put out. And the AI will sort of keep tying in what your client or what yourself does into their most recent conversation.
The AI has not missed a mark. I’ve had four or five clients use this with me. And we have not missed a mark. Every podcast has been just fabulous. And the podcast host has been just fabulous. There’s no kind of missing. Everything has been very sort of focused and impactful.
This is why I really, really like AI because it is just like having the smartest best friend, right? You have to come to the table with something. Listen, when you’re using PodPitch or even AI, it’s a supercomputer that you have to feed, right? I have to make sure that you have your client’s bio with everything in it that matters and you need to make sure that you feed the supercomputer or the PodPitch the decks that are relevant, the data that matters and the top five things that are important. This person might want to speak about or kind of what their expertise is or what they might want to sell. You still have to kind of come at it from a marketing point of view and also maybe a shareholder point of view like what shareholders might want to listen to or what?
You know consumers might want to buy. So, once you get all of that information uploaded the other cool thing with this, which I love is you can create various different campaigns. So if, for example, your client is an entrepreneur, but they’re also, you know, you can focus on entrepreneur podcasts and pitch for that.
But also if they also want to speak about recycling in that area, you can then create campaigns that just focus on recycling and even get down to just glass recycling. If that’s all your client wants to talk about, you can create these really, really niche campaigns.
And every time I think, oh, there’s not going to be a podcast out there that’s interesting or, you know, that’s talking about that. There is, yeah.
Mike Allton: I like your point because our CEO, Emeric Ernoult, he’s probably most well known for talking about starting a SaaS company because he’s a founder of a well known SaaS company out of Paris. So that’s usually what he gets asked to speak on on podcast, but he also wants to talk about social media. And if he’s feeling a little itch, he might want to talk about what it is. Kite surfing is his real hobby, you know? So he’d probably enjoy a kite surfing appearance. So I love that about that.
Now you talked about feeding the AI, all the relevant information up front, which is great. That makes it personalized, but how do you maintain that authenticity and the personalization? I think a lot of folks listening might be wondering, okay, cool. I can have the AI automatically find me podcasts and even automatically pitch and repitch and repitch.
How do I not sound like a robot and, and tick people off?
Kara Wood: That’s a really good question. And there is an answer for it. So when you sort of work in PodPitch, you have the opportunity to say things like, you know, do not use these words, do not use this language. And so that helps you shape the email that you send out. You know, use this voice. You can pick voices too, by the way. So if your client has a specific way of writing, of speaking, etc. you can put that into the pitch for the AI. So not only do you upload bios and content and research, etc., there’s also the opportunity to shape out what the voice is. So you can sort of shape the voice out and pick that voice when you’re pitching. The AI will present you with let’s say 50 podcasts, and you can quickly go through and go, You know, this is a hit, hit, hit. This is an absolute miss. This is a hit. This is an absolute miss.
So you can really sort of start to shape the very specific podcasts that you’re interested in. You have to teach the AI a little bit. And then with regards to pitching and repitching is sort of repeating yourself, [AI takes] care of that.
So each time that the AI will email a podcast that is a fit if you get a chance to approve it. It doesn’t just sort of happen on auto unless you want it to. Each email is special, and it’s unique and it’s different. And you only send three emails out. So if you don’t get a response after the third email, the platform stops sending emails to that podcast.
I don’t work for them, so I don’t know all of the nuances. But it seems to be able to understand if you get a response back, then, the AI will stop pitching. So it knows to stop if, if the podcaster has responded. And then it actually has this wonderful platform that will move that podcast into Responded, and then it will move the podcast into Booked once you’ve booked a podcast. There’s still a little bit of back and forth that you still have. When you respond, you have to respond from your own email, but when you’re checking out the podcasts and what’s been sent and all that sort of stuff, you have to do that on the platform.
But the wonderful thing about it is you can say, for example, you have four different clients for different emails. You can use all of those different emails to send your pitches out from. So it’s not just coming from like, you know, Kara at charlie. io. If I’m working with Regenexx and I have an email with them, I can send it from my email. So it’s that’s kind of a fun thing …
It’s not just sort of one agency, send it all out. You can look like you’re working internally for a client. Maybe you’re working on the agency side. Sometimes the lines get blurred for me anyways.
How does this approach help agencies who work in highly regulated industries like finance or healthcare?
Kara Wood: With regards to compliance, that falls on the agency shoulders or it falls on my shoulders in the sense that I would have to say to the podcaster, listen, you can’t ask them about forward forward-looking statements. There’s certain lines that we can’t cross with regard to when it’s a public company, if the information is public. We can talk about it, but if not, you can’t ask. There’s a little bit of a disclaimer, but for the most part, a lot of these podcasters, they’re already experts in either the industry or the sector that they’re talking to people about.
So I’ll give you an example.
A lot of the podcasters that are interested in this recycling company, they themselves are analysts. They’re bank analysts. They’re investment bankers. So they’re people that actually work in the industry. And so that’s one of the wonderful things that I’ve really enjoyed about working with these podcasters is they’re coming to the table and their depth of knowledge about what you’re doing often will surpass you.
what your understanding of the industry is.
So when it comes to compliance and regulation and that sort of thing I’ve been very lucky. But also I’m pretty cautious. I make sure that the matches are sound. And PodPitch makes that possible because you can fine tune the right sort of who you want to pitch to.
There’s a section in there where you know you can say. You can use keywords. Obviously, it’s not done by keywords, but you can definitely say if it has to be highly regulated and you want a podcast where people understand that you can’t just sort of throw caution to the wind and discuss what’s kind of going on behind the scenes. You know, you can sort of stick to banking, investment banking, or SEC, or, you know, you just use the words that would make sense to keep you in the safe zone, right?
How much time are you investing?
Kara Wood: Literally, maybe two hours of an investment of time of setup, getting all of your information, getting all of your research, you can enter up to something like 30 pages of content with regards to your bio or the client.
Say for example, I have a client, he is a plastic surgeon, but he’s also a scientist. And so he has a ton of research behind his name. That’s really important. So I was able to upload all of that information into his bio. And. So set up like any platform you sign up, you pay your fee, they, they ask you to do, which I love about them. They ask you to do sort of a little you have to meet with somebody from PodPitch before they turn you loose into the platform. And I appreciate that because there are so many little nuances about the platform that just makes your experience extraordinary. Once you know how to do those things, you’re off to the races …
There’s just these little things that you want to know that just make your pitching extraordinary. So you upload your client’s information or your own information. Then you just go through a couple of more. You choose your voice.
So for example, if your client has written a lot of work and they have a very specific way of writing and talking, etc., you can upload that content. So the AI can kind of shape the pitch when they send it out to sound like either your agency or you. And then you pick some keywords that really align and sort of sharpen the pitch and then you turn the AI loose.
And then AI will present you with 20 podcasts. And it says, “Do you think this is a fit? Do you like these?” And it’s almost mind blowing because the podcasts that it presents are so usually on the mark, so cool. And you’re like, “Wow, okay, now we’re cooking.” And then you can set [if] you want to pitch five podcasts a day.
Do you want to pitch 30 podcasts a day? Here’s where things can kind of get a little.challenging, unless you have a Calendly or a way of booking your client. If you get a lot of emails back, they come directly into your inbox and you have to respond to it in your inbox. And then you have to book your client on the podcast.
And that’s where I find things can just slow you up a little bit. So pitching any longer. Now it’s the booking.
I’ve known my clients for quite a while. A lot of them have been with me for many years. So I can say to them, “You book yourself, you figure out how to do this and you book yourself. You know I’ve done the introduction. Here’s the podcast that wants you. Now you book, you book it and you manage that.”
That’s where I think agencies and people get hung up. Because if you have, let’s say five people, you’re booking them all for podcasts and they’re nailing and getting those podcasts. That’s the issue. So what you can do now is you can include a Calendly link in your pitch. So you can say, if you want to book this person or my client or me, here’s my Calendly link. But then you’re kind of missing a potential conversation or a little bit of your personalization. So I don’t love that, but if you need to do things kind of fast and furious, you can sort of possibly do it that way.
Once PodPitch has sort of got me the podcast and the podcaster and they say, “Yes, I’m really interested in the client.” I like to have a conversation with the podcaster and [get] a little bit more personal about the client. And then I connect them and then they go off and they do the podcast. And I’m usually kept in the loop. So, you know, the podcast will record and then they will put it out on their social channels or in various different ways, but then they’ll send it to me. All the information about when, where, how, why, what video, it just came out. And then I take that information and then I put it onto LinkedIn.
I put it on the website. I send it out in newsletters for my clients. And I know everyone loves data, right? And I love data as well. So this one client I’ve been working with for probably almost 10 years, and we have been trying to grow newsletter signups for as long as I can remember.
And we’ve done everything. We’ve done LinkedIn, we’ve done Facebook, we’ve done Instagram, and we’ve done the paid, right? We’ve tried to pay to get the ads out there to get people to sign up for the newsletter. We’ve done webinars. We’ve done roadshows, we have done everything to grow this newsletter and it has maybe fluctuated a hundred here, a hundred there.
We’ve done three months of podcasting. I would say my clients have probably been on, let’s say, ten podcasts and in three months we’ve grown the email list by a thousand. And these are those that are interested in the story. They want to stay on. They like what they hear. They trusted the podcast.
And so that, that for me was enough.
And then if I went to Google analytics you know, this company was just coasting along at a certain level. Every time we’re on a podcast, we jump up. I mean, the most we’ve jumped up is 3, 000 visitors, but these are people that are interested in the story.
So we’ve been able to just get more eyeballs on the story, get people who have signed up to sort of have more consistent news from us. So that was a real telling data point for me was the signup for the newsletters …
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