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How To Write A Successful Pitch For Podcasts
Last week we talked about 10 different lead generation strategies you can implement alongside your content marketing in order to grow your business, and I mentioned that this week’s podcast episode was going to be all about how to pitch yourself to be on someone’s podcast. This question has come up inside my membership many times now, so I thought it was probably time to address it.
In today’s episode, I’m sharing the six steps to writing a successful pitch for podcasts, and I’m sharing what will immediately get your pitch deleted without a response. Oh, and at the end, I’m reading four actual pitches that I’ve received recently that were immediate deletes so you can see a bad pitch in action.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there!
- This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/
- This week’s action step: Create a spreadsheet to track your pitch list. This is a space where you can keep track of all of the podcasts you’d like to one day pitch, and then also the ones you have pitched.
- This week’s book recommendation: Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.
Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!
Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
Last week we talked about 10 different lead generation strategies you can implement alongside your content marketing in order to grow your business. And I mentioned that this week’s podcast episode was going to be all about how to pitch yourself to be on someone’s podcasts. This question has come up inside of my membership many times now, so I thought it was probably time to address it.
In today’s episode, I’m sharing the six steps to writing a successful pitch, and I’m sharing what will immediately get your pitch deleted without a response. Oh, and at the end I’m going to read four actual pitches that I’ve received recently that were immediate deletes, so that you can see a bad pitch in action.
You’re listening to episode 164 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own copy at amandawarfield.com/book.
How do I run a successful business for my home? How can I possibly wear all of the hats? Am I the only one that struggles with staying organized? What am I supposed to do about work-life balance? How can I create a solid schedule and routine? How do I even stay productive? And the biggest question of all.
How do I manage it all? And can I really create a business that I love without being chained in my laptop? Welcome to The Chasing Simple Podcast, where hard conversations and actionable education meet simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, time management coach, online educator, and crazy Cat Mama. My mission is to help overwhelm biz owners get more done and less time so that they have more time and energy for what matters most.
If you feel overwhelmed or occasionally lost in the rollercoaster, that is entrepreneurship. I want you to know that you aren’t alone. Those things you’re feeling, you aren’t the first or the last to feel that way. The hard things you’re going through, someone else has already been there too. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps.
And a judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on simplifying your biz. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?
Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you. My book, chasing Simple Marketing is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that Master’s of Business Administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business.
To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amanda warfield.com/book. I’ll see you there.
So what do all bad pitches have in common? Let’s start with that. Well, the first thing they have in common is that it’s all about them. They immediately begin by talking about themselves and what they’re known for, and then probably continue throughout the entire email talking about themselves and all they’ve accomplished and what they can do.
Bad pitches also make it very clear that the pitcher has done no research. As to the podcast that they’re pitching. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten pitches where chasing Simple isn’t even mentioned by name, let alone anything about the podcast. And then the other thing that bad pitches have in common is that the pitches are generic and they don’t speak to my audience specifically.
So there may be a mention of I could teach your listeners about this thing, but there’s no, I know that your listeners are this. And I know that your listeners struggle with this, and I know that your listeners want this. There’s no mention of any of that, and so it’s very clear that they haven’t done any research into what my podcast is about and who I’m speaking to and who listens to it.
And so I can’t trust that they’re gonna be able to come on and give you really great information. I know for a fact that almost every podcaster would agree with all of those. We are very, very, I don’t wanna use the term mama bear, but we are very protective of our listeners in the space that we’ve created.
Because it is limited time. There’s only for many of us one episode a week or less. And so within a year, there’s only so many episodes we can put out and we wanna make sure that we are serving our people to the best of our ability. And if a pitch comes in where it’s very clear that they don’t care about my specific listeners, they only care about growing their business and getting in front of new people, whoever those new people may be.
It’s gonna be a no. Now, the one thing that I think is gonna be a, a controversial take, I don’t know if others are gonna agree. I may be the odd man out here, and I think it’s also gonna be surprising. I. For you as listener, which I’ll tell you about in a minute. But if your pitch comes from an assistant or a PR firm, I’m 90% more likely to reject your pitch.
And I know that that seems so counterintuitive to all of the things that I teach as far as saving time and keeping things simple and delegating and all of that. But I have found there to just be too many instances where someone has outsourced communicating about a collaboration. Through an assistant or a PR form firm and they show up unprepared or they don’t show up at all, or there’s some kind of miscommunication.
And if I’m gonna be honest, I want. If you’re going to come onto my show as a guest, I either have sought you out or you’ve taken the time to say, this is a podcast I really wanna be on. And I’m very invested in getting in front of those listeners. And to me, outsourcing your pitches to an assistant or a PR firm tells me that you don’t care about who you get in front of.
You just wanna get in front of more people. And that may not be true for every business owner. So if you’re listening and you’re like, that is absolutely not the case for me, I’m not saying that that’s always true. There are some that I’m sure that do outsource to an assistant or a PR firm, and maybe they’ve done their research and they’ve done the work, and then they just outsource the pitching.
Maybe that’s what’s happening, and I don’t re outright reject every pitch from an assistant or a PR firm. I’m just more likely to, I’m, I’m 90% of the time going to reject it because I wanna make sure that the people that are coming onto this show, I wanna make sure they’re invested in you and can give you really great information.
That’s my hot take of the day, of the week, maybe of the year. I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m not sure how people are gonna react to that, but those are things that bad pitches have in common for me. Those are pitches that I’m just not going to sign on and say, yeah, I’ll bring you on. If you can’t prove to me in your pitch that you care about my listeners, it’s not gonna happen.
So how do you go about pitching yourself? Step one is to determine what it is that you can share. Come up with a topic and end goal that you want the listeners to have at that end of that episode, and come up with the main points that you’re gonna take to get them to that end goal. Bonus points, if you can come up with three to five questions that you can give the interviewer to ask you to make sure you move them towards that.
So for example, one of my topics is the feast and famine marketing cycle, and the end goal of that episode is I want to. Open up the listener’s minds to the idea that you can create content consistently without it taking up all your time so that you can serve your people, your clients really, really well without.
Spending all that time marketing because with the feast and famine cycle, you end up marketing, filling your client roster, and then not having enough time to market anymore. And then the main points that I have to get them to that end goal are, okay, well what is the feast and famine marketing cycle?
Let’s talk about it and how it affects your business. Okay, now we know that what happens, Is that, you know, we spend all this time marketing. We fill our client roster. Then we’re so deep in client work that we don’t have time to market. And then we realize, oh no, I’m about to offload my last client or my second to last client, and I have no other clients lined up because I haven’t been marketing my business.
And it’s feast and famine. We understand what that is. Now we need to talk about how do we get out of it? What are those main points of how do we get out of it? And then, You keep working down the line, right? I’m not gonna go through my whole, my whole process with you, but those are the kind of things of, okay, here’s my topic, here’s the end goal.
Let’s work my way through so that I can hand over this information to the host and they can spend less time preparing and we can make sure it’s a really great conversation because what can happen if you don’t hand off? Those questions, or you don’t at least give those main points. They’re not sure where to take the conversation, and they may take it into territory that isn’t what you’re trying to do at all, and then you kind of have to guide them back and it’s just not as creative of an experience for the listeners.
So, First, you’ve gotta figure out what it is that you can share. The next step is to do your research. I want you to make a list of all of the blogs, the podcasts, the YouTube channels that you wanna pitch yourself to be a guest on. We’re talking really specifically about podcasts for this episode, but you can tweak this pitching process for all of these.
So I want you to make sure that everyone you put on your list is going to have your same audience or an adjacent audience that can benefit from your area of expertise. So let’s say that you are a, you’re a coach for creatives that are within their first few years. Of business, right? That’s your audience.
And you want to find other areas, other avenues, other platforms that have that exact same audience. However, an adjacent audience would be people that are not tho that target audience, but are close to them. So for a really simple example, let’s say that you’re a diaper company and you sell diapers and parents.
Are your target audience parents when newborns are your target audience, but an adjacent audience would be grandparents because they also need diapers at their house or will buy diapers for their kids so that their grandchildren have diapers, right? That’s an adjacent audience. It’s not who you’re directly targeting, but you could also target them in some way to also bring them in because what you have would also work for them.
So if you’re that coach for newer business owners, maybe you. Market to mainly those newer business owners, but then you also branch out and start talking to audiences that are just a little ahead of that, right? So an audience is close by, but not the exact same. Or for example, let’s say, so my audience is people, typically educators, right?
That spend way too much time on their content. Well, an adjacent audience for me would be maybe other web designers. Web designers that. Are stuck in that feast and famine cycle, but they don’t even have, their focus isn’t on content, right? So it’s adjacent, but it’s similar kind of vibe. So anyways, you wanna make sure that everyone on that list has either that same audience or an adjacent audience.
And then you’re also going to want to make sure that they’re accepting pitches and that they utilize guests. Because if they don’t, it’s not gonna be worth taking the time to further your research and to actually pitch to them. Right? So right now, very basic. What are some people with your similar audience?
Do they accept guests? Do they accept pitches? Now, if they don’t explicitly say, no, we don’t accept pitches, consider that, that they accept pitches unless you go into, let’s say you look at their podcast. File on Apple Podcast and they don’t have a single guest episode, don’t bother pitching to them. So step three is to draft your pitch.
You want to turn this into an email template that you can use over and over and over again. Now, what I’m not saying is take the same template and use it. Exactly word for word for every person, but you wanna have a template. So what I do in mine is I’ll have, you know, some sentences and then I’ll also have some, insert this here, insert this here. So that I can go in and make sure that I’m showcasing that I’ve done my research and that I can actually help their audience. But all of my pitches have these same general flow and they all have the same information in. Side of them. And this is just really helpful because it takes a really long time to craft these pitches and having that template drastically cuts down on that time.
And it also makes sure that you don’t forget anything because it’s really easy to send off a pitch and then go, oh, I forgot to add my website in there. Or, oh, I forgot to say that I had been on this other podcast. When you’ve got a pitch, all of those details that don’t need to change from pitch to pitch can stay in there, and then you just make it unique to each podcast or youTube host or whatever.
So when it comes to your pitch, you want to start with a connection piece. Don’t start and just say, I’m this and I do this, and I want to come talk on. Don’t do that. Don’t start talk about yourself. Start with a connection piece, whether that’s we have this mutual friend and I’m so glad to connect with you or I saw on your Instagram that you really love cats. I am totally a cat mom, dude. Like find a connection piece with them to humanize you to each other and then share that you would love to be a guest. Hey, I’m so-and-so and I do this, and I would really love to come on your podcast. Say the podcast name and then share why you would be a good fit and how their audience would benefit.
I would love to come on because this is my mission and I know your mission is this, and I know that your audience is this, and I think that a talk about this thing would really benefit your audience because. Share what it is that you wanna talk about, and then include those takeaways or questions that you came up with earlier.
Here are some points we can make sure we hit on here. Some questions you could ask me. The end goal is this and give them what they need to really visualize whether or not your episode would be a great fit for their podcast. Finally share a really short bio with any credentials that you may have, other podcasts that you’ve been on different, you know, I’ve got this award, whatever that may look like.
Share that short bio and then sign off. So you’ve got your pitch, or at least your pitch template. Now you want to move into step forward, which is refining your list. Choose just a few opportunities from that initial list that you came up with to beat your first pitches and then do your final research.
I, I tend to try. Try being the operative word there, but I attempt to send three to five pitches each week. Start with one or two and you know, start with those, do a couple podcasts, see how that feels. And then as you continue, you can build up to more and more pitches, right? But choose what those first pitches are going to be.
And then I want you to do your final research. And this is really the key part. I want you to learn how they want to be pitched. So some people will have a specific form on their website or. They’ll say, email me at this email address. Some people will specify if they don’t specify, just find an email address that’s listed on their website somewhere that you can then take to pitch with.
If you cannot find an email address anywhere, go to the privacy and privacy policy and terms and conditions because we are required to have an email address listed in there by law. So, Everyone should have one, but find how they wanna be pitched. I also want you to learn about their goal for their podcast and their goal for their audience.
Find out who their audience is, find out what they’re trying to help their audience do listen to a few episodes, and then I also want you to see what episodes they’ve put out related to what you want to talk about so that you can share your unique angle. I’ve done this with really great results of, Hey, I know you’ve talked about this part of content marketing before, but I would really like to talk about this angle of it.
And that’s a really great way for them to, one, know that you know what you’re talking about and you’ve looked into what their podcast is, and two, show that you are unique in this way and you’re not just coming on a, talking about content in general, right. That you have a unique angle that you can take.
So do all this research to make sure that you can. Fill out that pitch in a way that’s gonna showcase that you want to help serve their people. And then step five is to update your email template for that specific opportunity. Take what you’ve learned about their audience and fill in all of those blanks that you have within your template.
Step six is to hit send, and then do not forget to follow up one to two weeks later, but give it one to two weeks. Honestly, most of my yeses when it comes to my pitches comes. Because I followed up, but I also just had one of my good friends complaining about this this week where she had someone follow up less than 48 business hours later.
That’s way too soon. None of us are getting through our inbox that quickly. Frankly, I’m really only getting through my inbox once a week, and I assume most people are the same. So give them one to two weeks to follow up and. Then follow up with them again, but do follow up. Now I want to read you some email examples that I have of some pitches that were just not awesome, and in fact, I think all of these got an immediate delete.
When it comes to pitches. I delete the really terrible ones that shows that they put zero effort in. And the ones that are decent, I will actually respond to and say, Hey, I’m gonna put you on my list for the future. So I only respond if it’s actually going to be. A decent pitch, and if it’s a terrible pitch, I just delete it.
So anyways, I’m gonna share some examples right now. I’m gonna read you at least parts of ’em, um, without sharing too much information as far as who they are. We’ll keep it, we’ll keep it anonymous, but just so you get a feel for what doesn’t sit well. So the first one I have for you starts off, hi, Amanda Warfield.
I hope all is well. This is. Blank. I came across your page through podcast Collaborative, wondering if I could refer my client to speak to your podcast. She is an author, speaker, and coach. She can also talk about personal development, health and wellness, passion of purpose, healing, forgiveness, self-care, entrepreneurship, et cetera.
Your audience can surely benefit from her talk. Here are some suggested topics you can discuss. Um, Without going into the details, because again, we wanna keep this anonymous. I’ve, I’ve been given names of four different topics, and then this presentation is about, well, I’ll, I’ll say this. This presentation is about who you are and the journey to who you’re becoming.
That’s it for most of these, it’s just one sentence, just like that below some useful links to know more about her. Looking forward to chatting more about this. Let me know how I can schedule her an interview for her. So, So many things wrong with this, but first and foremost, there’s no talk about Chase and simple, right?
It’s not even mentioned in here. It just says your podcast. There’s no talk about what it’s about, who it’s for, anything like that. There are suggested topics, which is nice, but the topics don’t tell me anything about how my audience can learn from that. It just says what it’s about and then. What really is infuriating here at the bottom is here are 10 different links where you can look at all of her things and learn more about her.
So this person is requesting to come onto this podcast, has clearly done no research about the podcast, but yet wants me to do a bunch of research into their client. That’s a no. So that one got deleted. I did not respond to that one. This next one is much longer and it says, hi, Amanda. Happy Friday.
Introducing name who is a digital marketer, ad strategist, founder of Blank, and. Blank and then does some name dropping, which is kind of funny. Their agency offers a team-oriented approach to her marketing services for startup companies in the e-commerce, wellness, sustainability, and tech space, and focuses on a tailored approach to supporting her clients’ campaigns.
She believes blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’d love to see if she’s a fit for an upcoming podcast episode. Uh, it goes on to talk about how she got started in her business and then she’s known for. Her extremely impressive results earning over 500 K in sponsorship revenue for her clients in 2022. All these other things that she’s done, there’s a whole paragraph about all, all of her accomplishments.
She can speak on the following topics, and then there’s a whole list of topics and you can find her here, here, and here. Look forward to your thoughts. So again, it’s the same kind of thing of you’ve clearly my, again, my podcast isn’t mentioned at all. By not even by name. Um, and it’s also very clear when you share who she speaks to, like the tech space that you haven’t done any research to.
Who my audience is. My audience is very much not in the tech space. And then the topics, I’ve got 10 different topics here and not a single word about how it could benefit my listeners. And then again, at the end. Do your own research, learn more about her to see how she can fit. Like it’s just, The same kind of, oh, we’re, we wanna be on your show, but we’re not gonna put the time in to actually do the work.
Now, this one, this third one I have for you. Hey, Amanda. I just listened to building strong roots for your business. Sometimes we lose sight of the passion behind our projects, or let trivial details get in the way of making our businesses run things such as finding and empowering a good team, prioritizing creativity and cultivating content.
Confidence are key to success. I have an episode and guest to recommend, and they recommend the title and the guests. Your listeners are looking for tips, tricks, and inspiration from leading entrepreneurs so that they can learn the best avenues to grow their businesses as well. In this episode, listeners will walk away with the toolkit for building their entrepreneurial confidence and lean into their business ideas with actionable tips.
I’d love to connect you with. Person. Um, and then a short bio. Other expert topics. There are three. Would love to connect and build book an episode. This one is not as terrible as the others, at least at the, the first read through. Right? They mention a recent podcast episode, although it’s very clear by the things they say about it, that they’ve simply looked at the show notes maybe, and that they didn’t actually will send an episode because it’s just very generic and basic.
And they, they do say, your listeners are looking for X, Y, Z. Although I’m not sure where they pulled what they think my listeners are looking for, because that’s not what I would say. And probably not what you would say. That you’re, you come here for tips, tricks, and inspiration from leading entrepreneurs.
You come here to help simplify your business. Right. So there, there was an attempt made here, um, but it still was just very poorly executed and executed in a way where I can tell yeah, no, this, they didn’t do any research into this podcast at all. The very last one that I’m gonna read to you, it says, hi Amanda.
This is name. I am the podcast booking specialist for name, a financial specialist, private money lender, real estate investor, and member of blank. They wanted me to reach out to see if you’d be open to having them as a guest to talk about growing safe, predictable, and guaranteed wealth regardless of market conditions.
If so, they are open to having an introductory call to see if you two would be a good fit to get a better idea of what they do. Here’s some links to their stuff. Um, there’s so many things wrong with this one, first and foremost, again, no mention of my podcast, my people, anything like that, but then also just this.
This whole topic is completely wrong for this audience. I don’t, I don’t think you’re interested in growing safe, predictable, and guaranteed wealth regardless of market conditions. At least not in the way that it’s presented here. Right? And then you, you’ve got the, oh, here are 10 different links. And I’m not exaggerating when I’m saying 10, like I’m literally getting 10 licks from these people of.
Different YouTube videos, websites, and maybe their strategy is to just get you onto their website. I’m not totally sure, but all these different ways for me to go research this person. But what really gets me is that they are open to having an introductory call to see if we would be a good fit.
In this scenario, I should be the one saying, Hey, let’s see if we’d be good fit. I’m interested in what you have to say. Not. Oh, they wanna see if you’d be a good fit. You should have asked to see if we would be a good fit by one, doing your own research on my stuff, but then two, by inviting me to come help you connect or to come connect with you in some way, versus, I wanna be on your show and I’m open to connecting to see if we’d be a good fit.
Anyways, those are just a few of the. Hundreds, I get a month of just bad pitches. Um, and I just love to be fun too in this episode by reading some of them to you and just kind of showcasing like, Hmm, this, this wasn’t done very well. So this week’s action tip is I want you to create a spreadsheet to track.
Your pitch list. This is a space where you can keep track of all of the podcast or guest blogs or whatever that you’d like to one day pitch, and then also which ones you have pitched so you can know when you pitch and make sure that you’re able to follow up because. Right now as you get started, it’s very easy to know.
I sent two podcast pitches and I need to follow up with them. But what’s gonna happen is once you build up over time to that place of pitching X amount per month, it’s gonna be really hard to keep track of who you’ve pitched to and when. And so having that spreadsheet is gonna be a really great way to say, okay, I pitched this person on this date, and then each time you do pitches, you just check back up and go, okay.
It’s been long enough for me to follow up because I haven’t heard back from them. Or, Ooh, I need to give ’em another week. Let me come back later. Right? It just gives you a good way to keep track of things. So go ahead and create that spreadsheet so that you don’t wind up in a mess and then realize you need one.
And then this week’s book recommendation is every summer after by Carly for June. I just learned that she’s a new book coming out today actually, and I’m really, really, or the book isn’t coming out today. I just learned today that she’s a new one coming out. I’m really excited about it, but this book, It’s not really a meet cute because it’s about these kids that grow up together essentially.
Anyways, it’s a great book and it’s a great summer read and it’s, it’s got a lot of, um, You know, themes of like nostalgia and growing up and things like that. So highly recommend. If you wanna check it out, you can check it out in the show notes. But every summer after by Carly Fortune. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your life.
And Biss,
thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. If you loved this episode, it would mean the world to me if you’d leave a rating and review. This is a great way to help spread the word about this podcast. And. Help other wonderful women like yourself find it. You can find this episode show notes as well as tons of other great resources over@amandawarfield.com.
And if you aren’t following me on Instagram yet, I’d love to connect with you over there. I’m at Mrs. Amanda Warfield. Shoot me a DM and tell me what you love most about this episode. Thanks for being here, friend. I’ll see you next time.
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