Become the Go-To Industry Authority In Your Niche by Going on a Podcast Tour with Natalie Koussa
Jul 17, 2024Episode 825
Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie
Natalie Koussa, a podcast tour strategist who helps her clients shine in their industry by mastering podcast tours, breaks down how to become the only choice for your audience and shares her secrets on creating a successful podcast tour.
We also get into the nuts and bolts of handling rejections and making your message resonate with potential clients.
Natalie Koussa, a podcast tour strategist who helps her clients shine in their industry by mastering podcast tours, breaks down how to become the only choice for your audience and shares her secrets on creating a successful podcast tour.
We also get into the nuts and bolts of handling rejections and making your message resonate with potential clients.
Listen to Pod Damn - a free private podcast to help you turn your message into a movement, with a "so good it shakes up your industry" Podcast Tour
Speaker 1:
So welcome back, and I've got a guest here. If you can't see her watch on YouTube already, please, but her name is Natalie Cusa and she is a podcast tour strategist. She helps her clients become the only choice in their industry by going on a podcast tour. So listen up if you want to be known for what you do and the only choice in people's minds, because she's going to teach you how to go on a podcast tour. She's the creator of the Speakeasy, which is a group program that helps online entrepreneurs grow their business by speaking on other podcasts and her clients. She's from the UK. Her clients have been featured in the BBC Women's Hour and in the Guardian. Her clients have been featured in the BBC Women's Hour and in the Guardian, which, from what I hear, is a big publication.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it is. It's like the equivalent of the NYT as far as in the UK.
Speaker 1:
Oh all right.
Speaker 2:
All right.
Speaker 1:
So thank you for being back here, Natalie, and well, we've had quite a ride with the first episode, haven't we?
Speaker 2:
We have. I don't think anyone would have guessed where it went, but yeah, it's done.
Speaker 1:
And that's just the point, though. Right like we're just chatting, we're just getting to know each other, and nobody would guess where the conversation would go if we're sitting down. For well, would it be a coffee or tea over in the Republic of Ireland, where you're at?
Speaker 2:
Oh tea for Irish people, tea, but for me. Coffee're at. Oh tea For Irish people, tea, but for me coffee. Okay, for.
Speaker 1:
Irish people tea. You know it would have been coffee for me, but I haven't had coffee since last September, just caffeine and milk, and that combination just stopped agreeing with me. You know Hashtag getting older, gracefully, gracefully. So what we're talking about, dear listener, you know hashtag getting older, gracefully, gracefully, gracefully. So what we're talking about, dear listener, to clue you in, is in the show notes. Below you'll get a link to the first episode. It's already there. You're not going to get it. It's there To the first episode where me and Natalie were getting to know each other, and this whole before we hit record segment or get to know Natalie segment.
Speaker 1:
It's just so you can just get to know her. You know it's an attempt to record all the cool conversation that happens when two podcasters get together and we just kind of have chit chat to create a vibe before we hit record. But really some of the cooler conversations happen before we hit record and I just feel like if you care about knowing natalie past, just like the expert strategies on how to get more sales by becoming like the sought after guest for other people's podcasts, then after you listen to this episode, go listen, listen to that one and you will hear some pretty cool things and you will hear how well I won't, I won't, I won't air your dirty laundry. They'll have to go listen to the whole thing about geography. But I identify with you, natalie. I was going to say people can't quiz me like you, the States. It's harder because there's so many more States and they come up with these quizzes. I'll name all the states that start with an.
Speaker 2:
M or name all the states that touch the state of New York and. I'm like I don't know, it's not my strength. I'm better at podcast guessing. Everyone will be delighted to know.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, great, I mean. So we ended the episode, the last episode with me asking so we ended the episode, the last episode, with me asking how do you guest on so many podcasts that you're getting plenty of client referrals and referrals to your program? And one specific question first was is it that you have thick skin and you're just doing lots of pitches? How do you handle rejection, please?
Speaker 2:
please talk about this with me and the listener. Yeah, sure, so. Of course there's some rejection. Of course there is, but I don't tend to just send hundreds of pitches to hosts that I don't know. I do cold pitch, but I do it in a way where they can tell that I've really taken the time to get to know them, their listeners, their podcast. So even if it's a no or a not now I tend to get response. Most people will at least say, hey, thanks so much for your pitch. It's not a great fit right now because X, y, z, good luck or whatever, or get back in touch in a couple of months for the next season. So I don't tend to get ignored or, like you know, angry responses back or or anything like that, because people can really tell that that I've done the work for them.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, okay, cool. So for the listener right now, you've made a bold statement, and that statement was that going on a podcast tour is a great bet in 2024. I'm just going to change that and say going on a podcast tour, if you want to make more money in your business, it's probably where you should be spending your time, like what you should be spending your time doing in 2024. Why, though?
Speaker 2:
So we're seeing buyer behaviors change at the minute, aren't? We? Buyers are being more discerning, and I think that is a really good thing. So we saw this kind of height in the pandemic of everyone was just at home, they were bored, they wanted to invest in learning something new or starting a business, or you know whatever it is that that they were doing. So, especially course, sales went through the roof really easily, didn't they? And now we're seeing a drop back down to people have lives outside the house again.
Speaker 2:
There's they'll there's concerns you know there's all of that kind of stuff going on but also people. The industry as a whole is maturing and getting older, so our clients are becoming more discerning, and the reason that I think is a really good thing is that if somebody is buying with you today, the chances are they trust you and they've taken the time to get to know you and they've taken the time to prioritize whether the thing they can help you can help them with is something that's actually going to benefit their life. And speaking on podcast is an amazing way to get in front of those kinds of buyers, because they listen to you for like 30 minutes an hour before they join your email list or they dm you on instagram and say loved what you were sharing. What's the next step?
Speaker 2:
And my experience in my own business and what I've seen in clients business is that the kind of buyers that you call in from speaking on podcasts because of that transfer of trust that happens between the host and you. You know the host has been building this community for years, sometimes before you speak there. That transfer of trust leads to amazing client relationships and calling in the kinds of clients that get incredible results from working with you. So then it's this like beautiful, like spiral. Then they refer other people to you. So it's just kind of. It's just this brilliant way of creating demand by literally showing up, being yourself, sharing everything you've got to share and calling incredible people and incredible clients on the back of it okay, that makes 100 sense to me.
Speaker 1:
One thing that is confusing to me, though, like straight up, when I guest on other podcasts, and I'm sure, like the listener would want to know too, like, what is what should we be sharing about when we guest on other podcasts? Cause you know, at the end you know the host will say okay, how can somebody find out more about you? And we're just like, well, I would love for them to come and work with me in my program, but is it? Is it a call to action to DM? Is it a call to action to come listen to my podcast? Is it a freebie? Or is it a direct call to action to the offer that I have? Like, what's the better one to do as a guest? Any?
Speaker 2:
of those can work pretty well. I've seen all of those work pretty well. I think the thing to think about is your business and your strategy for your business. So if you work with a handful of really high-end clients, I can think of one of my clients who to work with her is multi, tens of thousands of dollars. So she only works with a handful of clients in that way every year. The thing that works best for her is asking people to DM her or send her an email, because she only needs a few listeners to come in and they tend to be the kind of people that then go on to hire her.
Speaker 2:
If you are playing a numbers game I mean it depends. If you know you might be all about social media I always tell people get them on your email list. I'm a die by your email list kind of girl. The kind of like freebies that I'm seeing work really well at the end of episodes at the moment audio freebies, so you'll hear I've got a private podcast that I'm going to share with you and invite you to download. The reason that works so well is because, if people have already heard you, they love your voice, they love that style of taking in information and getting to know you, then obviously it's just more of the same. So that works really well.
Speaker 2:
And another thing that's working really well at the moment is if you've got a micro offer, so something you know $9, $27, maybe you typically run ads to it. If you want to use that in podcast guesting, give the host a code, or share a code with the listeners and give it to them for free as a thank you for joining from that podcast and bonus points. If you set up a landing page that literally says hey, you found me here, here's your free gift and invite them onto your email list in that way. And then finally, don't worry if you've not got like an amazing freebie. I have seen just inviting people to join the waitlist for your program or your email list directly work really, really well because you can use the interview as a freebie. By the time people have got to know you that well, they're like yeah, I'm all in. Send me the emails, let me know the next steps, give me more of this good stuff.
Speaker 1:
The interview is the freebie. So then offering them just a lead magnet to get on your email list is kind of like the default, the way to go.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Wow, okay, it's kind of what we've seen right, but you don't have to when you're podcast guesting. You can totally just say to people come over, meet me, meet me on my email list, hear more about X, y, z, link it to what you've been talking about in the interview and you're good to go.
Speaker 1:
Okay, speaking of email lists and things to link to what you've been talking about in the interview, this interview is nowhere near over, but you wrote down this thing called pot. Damn is how I'm going to say it, but how do you say it? What is it about? A free, private podcast to help you turn your message into a movement?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's called Poddam and yeah, it's a private podcast. Three episodes to help you understand the unique ways that podcast guesting can grow your business. It'll help you get booked on bigger podcasts and it will help you sell more from your interviews without being salesy. It's totally free. It's at nataliecusacom. Slash visible.
Speaker 1:
And that's going to be linked in the description below by the. Your last name is spelled k-o-u-s-s-a, so nataliecusacom. Forward slash visible. Now I'm asking for the listener, not for me, just for the listener. But how do you set up a private podcast, because the listener always want to know? I already know, um, because I've seen them a lot more. I've seen them a lot more. I've seen them a lot more. Now, like a lot of people are doing private podcasts and yeah.
Speaker 2:
So there's loads of ways to do it. The way that I do it in my business is I use hello audio, which is just a software. It's really, really easy to use. You you create the episodes, upload them directly in and then hello audio manages everything for you. So they'll give you a code to sign up. They you know people can give you their email list and then they get an email with a qr code to then listen to the private podcast. They're brilliant. I use them as a freebie. I also use them as audio or used to as audio for my course. Yeah, it's, it's really good, hello audio. It's cool hello audio.
Speaker 1:
I'm typing that into our show notes right now because I want to go and check that out. I'm just so. But basically a private podcast, it's just pre-recorded episodes and do you drip them out, or are they all accessible once somebody signs up?
Speaker 2:
you can. You can drip them. Mine's all accessible um straight up.
Speaker 1:
But yeah, you can drip them as well if you want to okay, cool, I'm gonna have to look at that, not that I'm going to do it, but you know, to share with the listener who might want to do something like that.
Speaker 1:
So talk about, please, if you would, this idea of creating a plentiful flow of high caliber clients. Like, could you from a podcast tour, without being salesy, can you connect the dots on how, like, okay, I get that you show up as a guest and the trust that the host's audience kind of is transferred to you because the host is trusting you to be on the podcast. But, like in your business, how do you go from there to, I guess, leading somebody down the customer path so that they're realizing you can help them in your program, the speakeasy, or or that your program's not for them? But how do you, how do you do that?
Speaker 2:
yeah. So there's tons of ways. One way that I really like to help people think about it if they're kind of newer, um to thinking about podcast tours is think about every time that you guest on a podcast. That episode has three main sections and you want to just be ready for each of those sections. So the first section is where the host says hey, tell people who you are, why you do what you do.
Speaker 2:
All of that and what we tend to hear so often is especially kind of in the online business space.
Speaker 2:
People say something like oh, I worked in corporate and I got burnt out, so I started my business and there's nothing wrong with that at all, but what you want to do is it's basically like a hook to to tell the listener, like the listener's thinking, do I want to spend half an hour with this person?
Speaker 2:
So you want something super memorable, super specific, and one way of creating that is thinking about what's the moment that you knew you were starting your business, or what's the moment that you thought I can't do this anymore, I'm doing something different, or the moment that you were called to do the thing that you do now. Start there, land the listener right in the middle. Don't worry about all the stuff that happened before, just land them right in the middle of what you're doing. So that's what that's going to do is that's going to help the listener like actually listen to the episode. They're going to be totally invested in what you're saying. They're going to be listening. They're going to be like really getting to know you instead of just listening to like the hell too, you know. And then when you think about the middle of the episode, yeah, go on.
Speaker 1:
No no, I like that. Let's keep going. What's the moment? Okay, I knew I wanted to do what I'm doing now. That's the key that you share in in the beginning when somebody and it'll tell so much about your personality.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, like for mine, my, we didn't. We didn't get to this, but one of my moments is putting the key in the lock of my brand new apartment that I'd bought by myself, newly single, opening that front door and thinking I always, always, just want a thing of my own. And it started as a place to live of my own and it's now a business of my own and like a way of making my own money and not relying on anyone else. So for me, that's that's that. And then the middle of the episode is the bit that people typically think about. Right, it's like where you have the conversation, it's where you share all the good stuff and a really simple way of like really setting yourself up for success.
Speaker 2:
There is thinking of one signature speaker topic, so one topic you can easily talk about for half an hour, an hour, whatever the host throws at you, whatever questions come your way. You've seen it all before, right? You've seen it with your clients. You've got stories from your business, all of that. You just need one signature speaker topic and then every time you pitch or speak in a podcast, you want to think of a slightly different angle to that speaker topic, and that's where you don't just have repetitive three ways to do xyz kind of conversations. You can have a couple of those, but there's nothing wrong with them but you want to be able to really help people be invested in your message. That's how you turn your message into a movement, and one of the ways to do that is by talking about your message in a slightly, slightly different way, so it's all coherent, you get known for your thing, but it's not just oh yeah, that's her again. I've heard her talking about this in exactly the same way. Oh my gosh, this is good, thank you.
Speaker 2:
And then the end of the episode have a really, really juicy invitation for people. I call it the welcome drink, like you know. You know when you arrive somewhere and somebody's there to meet you and they're like, what would you like to drink, we have like all these lovely bougie options. Kind of, take your coat, make yourself at home, you know, you just feel so welcome and so kind of you know that the night's just beginning. That's what your invitation to listeners should feel like at the end of the episode. Something they're like yeah, yeah, what was that? You've got a weird surname. How do I spell it? Okay, kusa, let's go. And they want what it is that you're offering.
Speaker 1:
This is the clearest framework for being on a guest or for being a guest on another podcast that I have ever heard. Thank you, you.
Speaker 2:
I'm using this for me well it's years of like working it out right, seeing what works, what doesn't, how to explain it in a way that like it's really memorable. So people are like, yeah, cool, I just need to do these three things actually the moment I knew I wanted to do what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:
Now I feel like I might just start asking people that question at the beginning of my podcast. It's yeah. I might have to do it like that, but I'm going to remember this when I'm and I hope the listener will remember this too. I think I'm just going to have to put this in the show notes.
Speaker 2:
Actually, I'm going to have it typed out and put in the show notes because that is really good, natalie thank you if it helps people as well, like it's kind of it's just like real go-to of a way of like really helping listeners just connect with you easily.
Speaker 1:
Okay, all right, all right, and so what is the next step? Again, I know you already shared your free private podcast, but somebody who's listening right now the listener and maybe me if, like, we want to be guests on more podcasts so we can turn our message into a movement. Do we DM you? Do we just go and get the Poddam free private podcast? Where do we go?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so for me, come over to Poddam so that's the slash visible on my website that we were talking about and, yeah, so I have a group program, the Speakeasy, and I've also just started, like literally last week this is May when we're talking on this podcast. It's the first time I've ever said this on a podcast, but I've just started a done for you service as well where, if you want me to, I will do the whole shebang for your podcast tour all the positioning, all the strategy, all the pitching, all the booking, all supporting you to show up as a brilliant speaker. Yeah, so that's a brand new way to work with me as well.
Speaker 2:
Oh that sounds very intriguing.
Speaker 1:
Especially for someone like me who just gets caught up in like am I writing the right thing? Am I doing like the right pitch? Is my subject line good enough to get past the gatekeeper and get opened and sent to so and so, and oh my gosh. And then you know, I just take way too long to write an email that doesn't get a response anyway. Sad tears, natalie, you can do this. You can do it for me, for the listener. Okay, what's the link for that? Did you say what the link for that done for you service was?
Speaker 2:
it's not even on my website yet, but if you're interested you can send me an email. We can put that in the show notes. Or just DM me on Instagram is probably the easiest.
Speaker 1:
Okay, I'm just.
Speaker 2:
Natalie Cooper.
Speaker 1:
Okay, cool.
Speaker 2:
Instagram, we can chat.
Speaker 1:
Cool Right on. Well, then, that will in the show notes below and if you're watching on YouTube, it's in the description below. And, natalie, that framework was fire and thank you for just being here and hanging out with me for the past two episodes.
Speaker 2:
No thanks for having me. It's yeah, it's been fab. I've loved the getting to know you episode. I've never had anyone do that before. It's really hard.
Speaker 1:
I'm glad you just liked getting to know me too, because I enjoyed getting to know you so well. Until the next time we see each other, take care, be blessed and see you in the next one, bye.
