Selling to Your Podcast Audience At Scale | Chris Williams

"How's it going with monetizing your podcast?" When asked this question, most podcasters sigh and explain that it's either non-existent or not going as expected. But there's good news! Generating a full-time income through podcasting doesn't have to be a dream. In this episode, Chris Williams explains how you can begin to sell to your podcast audience at scale, even if you have a small audience. Get ready to unlock the secret to the highest-yielding podcast monetization strategy!

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Takeaways

Understand your audience's dreams, drains, and doubts to create a product or offer that addresses their needs.
Build a minimum viable offer that provides a solution to the audience's challenges while minimizing time and effort.
Promote the offer through your podcast and existing platforms to reach your audience.
Take action and do the work to achieve results.

Chapters

00:00 Monetizing a Community
01:10 Identifying the Audience's Dreams, Drains, and Doubts
05:01 Building a Minimum Viable Offer
09:10 Promoting the Offer to the Audience
14:29 Taking Action and Getting Results

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/273

📊 This month's Independent Podcasters Report is now available! To see podcasting industry insights that matter for indie podcast hosts and podcast guests, please visit https://PodMatch.com/Report!

Chapters

• 0:00 Monetizing a Community
• 1:29 Identifying the Audience's Dreams, Drains, and Doubts
• 5:20 Building a Minimum Viable Offer
• 9:29 Promoting the Offer to the Audience
• 14:48 Taking Action and Getting Results

Transcript

0:21

You're listening to Podcasting Made Simple. I'm your host, Alex Sanfilippo. For this episode's guide and resources, please visit podprose.com slash 273. And now let's get to the episode. We've all experienced that point in building an audience, their podcast, on a blog, anything we're doing in a live or virtual community, where we have the community going and we're trying to monetize the community, not because we're greedy, but because we got to make a living, right? Either your staff has grown, your product has grown, your company's grown, or you're just starting out and you're like, I got to figure out how to do this in a sustainable way. Here's the path to do that. It's not hard. It's very simple. I'm going to leave you with three things today. three things you can do today to take action, to actually get your community monetized or monetize at a higher profit margin than it already is, because you can bring them what they want. It's really not that difficult. So here's how we're gonna do this. I want you to take out something you can write with, take a notepad, grab your iPad, grab your computer, whatever you need. We're gonna dive into several things. Number one, you know who you're speaking to, okay? The more specific, the better. When it comes to selling at scale, the more specific, the better. We want to build something highly profitable that you can sell in a scalable way. The more specific that audience and their problem set is the easier it's going to be for you to build a product or something you can deliver and sell it. Let me explain why. You're looking for your audience's dreams, drains and doubts. Okay. Here at Group Coach Nation, we call those the three D's. Dreams. drains and doubts. The dream is what your audience wants. What do they want? What's their big dream? They want more time. They want more money, health, relationships, space, freedom, a certain feeling, happiness. What is it that they want? What is the dream? Okay. Write that down right now. Write it down. What comes in your mind? What is the dream? Secret tip here. It's probably your dream also. Okay. If you're passionate about this subject, it's probably because You've been through this process and you want that same thing. So what is the dream? Write it down. That's D number one. D number two, what are their drains? Drains are external issues. Things that are keeping us from getting that dream from the outside. All right. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time. My partner doesn't want to do that. I'm not sure I have the opportunity. Something in the economy, the world, whatever, something is keeping me from doing this that's outside my control. Write those down again. probably similar to your experience. Many of us are guiding our audiences through a process or through life in a way that we've gone through it or a way that we're trying to currently get through it. And we're just kind of one step ahead of them sometimes even like helping them through this process accomplishing your dream. What are the drains? What are the external things that are keeping you and your audience from achieving that dream? Write those down. Things that are outside of your control. The things that you or they could blame. Well, I would. but so and so or this thing or that event or whatever is keeping me from it. Okay. Those are the drains. Number three, the third D dreams, drains doubts. The third D is doubts. Write down the internal issues that are keeping you or your audience from accomplishing those dreams. Again, you and your audience are probably very similar. Keep leaning on that. It's a really great hack for this process. What are the internal doubts that are keeping you or your audience members from accomplishing that dream? Is it fear, fear of failure, fear of success sometimes, right, fear of being seen out there in the public space and not knowing if you're gonna get it right or wrong or if you're gonna get it all tangled up, whatever it is. Is it imposter syndrome? Is it, oh my gosh, what if I do this and I run out of money? What if I do this and I run out of space? What if I do this and I don't have enough time to execute? What if I've failed three times in the past or a hundred times in the past? How do I know this is gonna work this time? What is it about? the dream of making more money, having more time, having better relationships, more health, more happiness, more freedom, whatever it is in life. What is it about you inside of you inside of them that makes you worry? You won't accomplish that dream. What are you worried about at 2 AM in the morning is frequently a good answer for this. What are you worried? It's going to be about you. That's going to keep you or them from accomplishing that dream. That's a big deal. Okay. Write those things down. So now you have. A list of dreams, some basic things they want, more freedom, more time, more peace, more space, more relationships, more health, whatever it is. You also have a list of drains and doubts, the external and internal issues that are keeping them from that. If you've written one thing down in each category, big win. If you've written two or three things down there, awesome. You don't need a list of 10 in each category. What are the big issues? Okay. Now we have dreams, drains and doubts. That's thing number one. Okay. You've just done homework for the first point. Yay you. You're already on a great track. The next two are pretty simple. Once you anchor down dreams, drains and doubts, you need to build a minimum viable offer. Again, at Group Course Nation, we call that MVO, minimum viable offer. And this is an offer that you can give to your audience that helps them accomplish the dream while overcoming their drains and their doubts. Not just an offer like you're going to put on a sales letter or on a landing page. But an offer that's real and legit, that's very, very simple, minimum viable. The reason I say minimum viable there is because we want this to be the minimum amount of stuff, time and pain. All that stuff that gets in the way of us succeeding the minimum amount of time and pain that you can give your clients, your prospects, your audience to accomplish their dream, how can you help them get to that dream? And now here's the truth. You can't help them get all the dream they ever want in one big swoop, right? It takes years sometimes to accomplish those dreams, but where are they now? What do they need to get over? What, what hurdle in the drains and doubts they need to step over right now to get real traction and to really help them move forward. That's what you're looking for. That's a minimum viable offer. What's the smallest amount, the minimum amount of work you can do and they can do to give them the next big step forward. Okay. Got our dreams, drains and doubts. Now minimum viable offer. Let me give you an example or two. Let's say you're helping people with relationships. Okay. And they want better relationships with the key loved ones in their lives. That could be a partner, a spouse, a kid, a parent, a sibling, whatever it is. Right. What is the biggest thing you can help them with? If it's just something simple, like just having good communication. All right. I can't help them fix everything in that relationship set for the rest of life. But if I'm like, you know, the biggest thing I keep seeing in my audience is communication issues, what I can do is I can put together a simple four week long meet once a week zoom call in a group setting where I can bring my audience members together, charge them some money and they can show up. And for four weeks, we sit down for an hour and a half each week. And we talk about key communication skills, one big communication skill each week for the first three weeks. And the fourth is just to wrap up that entire concept. with practical application, giving people a chance to practice that throughout the week. Now, they're going to learn to communicate better. Maybe the person they're living with doesn't communicate well, but we're going to be able to talk to those things in and out for a week, every week for four weeks. That's a really powerful minimum viable offer that allows them to take a significant step forward while not requiring an enormous amount of my time to help them through that process. Let's use a business example. Let's say you want to help people. with marketing. They're trying to get out there and get more leads and that's your expertise. That's what your podcast is about. Great. Now there's so many things you could do in marketing, right? You could spend five years with all your clients and prospects and never get through all the marketing stuff they could do. Pick out the thing that your audience needs the most help with. Maybe it's just identifying their avatar. Maybe it's clearly identifying what they deliver. Maybe it's something simple like, hey, just freaking get your LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, Instagram profile, whatever. up to date and really able to convert. Whatever it is, what is the simple thing you could teach them really easily that allows them to take action and overcome some drains and doubts and fears of showing up like on LinkedIn the right way and actually get the real thing done that you can deliver really rapidly. So you can help them get to the answer really quickly and they can get traction really quickly. And then you've sold them something, right? They were able to jump in a scalable process, teach that in a group setting. If you can. And now you've got all these relationships, people who have paid you to show up and do the thing, teach them their stuff. And now you can work with those people even farther in the future. You have a lot of relationships. You already have acknowledged buyers who want your expertise and you know if you want to work with them or not. And you can offer the next step, whatever that is, a bigger group coaching program, a mastermind one-on-one done for you, whatever you want to do, right? It's a scalable way to monetize your podcast audience. Okay. So. We have our three big areas, right? We covered two. The first one was what are the dreams, drains and doubts of your market? You've identified those. You've taken those dreams, drains and doubts now in phase number two, and you've built a minimum viable offer. Something very simple. You can help them accomplish that gets them very serious, good traction right away. It doesn't take a lot of your time or effort to implement and get to them. That's the minimum viable offer. Now let's talk about how are we going to get that out there to them, right? How are they going to find out this is what's going on? This is the easiest part of this. You have a podcast. Oh my gosh. And you're probably launching it on YouTube and you're probably doing something on LinkedIn with it. And you probably are putting something out there on Instagram or Facebook. And you got all the places, right? Good for you. Use those platforms. Don't reinvent the wheel. You already got something going, right? These people are already listening to you. If that's a hundred people, if it's a thousand people, it's a million people. They're already listening to you. You need to use the commercial spots that you have on your existing show as promos. for your offer, all you gotta do is like in the middle section of your podcast or at the beginning or at the end, make a real ask. It's okay. People want your advice. That's why they're listening to you. Step into that role, take it, be a powerful person there. They're asking you to lead. That's why they subscribe or download. Make sure you step into that leadership role for them. All you're gonna do at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end, somewhere in that process. you're going to simply stop and say, hey folks, thanks for listening. I know that y'all are all experiencing and list out this dream, this drain, this doubt. You're hoping to accomplish this freedom. And here's the stuff that's keeping you from it. Drains and doubts. I get it. I hear it all the time. And so what I've done is I put together a special group, a special process, a special place for you to hang out where we overcome those and name them by name, drains and doubts to accomplish, name it by name, the dream. I would love to talk more about that with you. If you're serious and then give them a challenge. If you're serious about making a change, if you're serious about accomplishing that dream, if you're serious about getting off the couch, getting off the fence, getting off your butt, getting off of whatever and actually getting somewhere with this thing and being a person of power and of influence and of life and of hope and of freedom and of more money time, freedom, relationships, whatever it is, name those dreams. If you're serious about getting those dreams, I wanna invite you to have a conversation about this. Let's see if this is right for you and let's take the next step for you. You deserve this. You can do this now back to the show. That's simple. Obviously you'd want to mention in there, Hey, check out the show notes below. Check out our link. Here's where you can go. Here's our website, whatever you want to put in there. Super simple. Let me roll through that script one more time. A little bit faster without all the explainers in there. So before the show, middle of the show, after the show, put a commercial in there. A lot of people sell these commercials to other people on your show. Oh my gosh, you have a sellable commercial spot. Use that. You're the one who needs that commercial spot more than anybody else. So let's do this. Here we are in the middle of the show. I'm gonna give you the commercial more times, a little bit faster through. Hey guys, let's take a quick break here. I know that so many of you are worried about your relationships, your health, your money, and you're trying to actually reach those financial goals that you've had, trying to reach the health goals you've had, whatever it is. I get it, but there are so many things that distract us from that. the drains and doubts in our life, the economy, the other people in our life, the relationships, my internal fears. When I was first figuring this out, I was so scared of how to move forward in this, but I figured out soaking you. So here's what I've done. I've put together a special group. We meet real time in person on zoom. I'm there with you and we're going to go through a process with you to actually get you in a place where you can win. You can overcome the drains, the doubts, the time, the fear, the freedom, all the stuff that you want. You can overcome the stuff that's in your way. You can get to the stuff you actually want to accomplish. I'm gonna walk you through that. Go to our website at www. and have at it. Like I wanna talk to you, find a time on the calendar that works and we'll spend a couple of minutes together talking this out. You can do this. That's why you're here learning. I know, I get it. I was in the same place. Let me get you to the next step so you can have what you've always wanted to have and accomplish those goals and quit dealing. with the drains and doubts, the fear, the worry, the partner issues, the money issues, the not having enough time issues. Let's get you through that and get you results. That's what we're here to do. Go again to www. and make sure you find a time on our calendar. Send me a quick note. Let me know you picked a time on the calendar. Can't wait to talk to you. Now back to the show. And that's it. A simple promo like that, that's very connected to remember this. The dreams, drains and doubts. That's all you're talking about. The dreams, drains and doubts in your promo and saying, I get you. We have a spot for you. That's what we've created this. I want to talk to you about that and then give them a challenge. If you're actually serious about taking the next step and really changing your life, this is for you. That's what this is all about. You can do this. So we're going to build the dreams, drains and doubts, create your minimum viable offer, and then create a simple promo for this process and make the ask. Okay. That's your homework. Here's the risk of homework like this. We learn a ton. We're like, Oh my gosh, that's so helpful. Chris, thank you so much for doing this. Here's the thing though. It's not helpful at all. If you don't take action here at group coach nation, we always say at the end of our talks and I'll say it here, do work to get results. Do work, get results, do work, get results. I'm not a big fan of a hustle lifestyle, working a ton of hours. You don't have to do that. You can build something scalable and simple. But you gotta do the right work to get the results. So do the work and get the results. If you enjoyed this episode, please visit podprose.com slash 273. Then share the link with one person that you believe it would add value to. Until next time, thank you for listening.