Love podcasting?
Podcasts are one of the best ways to build a strong, loyal audience, both as a podcast host and as a podcast guest.
It feels great to have people listen to your episodes and soak up all of your knowledge, experience and words of wisdom. Unfortunately, getting listeners is not the ultimate goal.
There is a hidden trap that podcasters face – Producing lots of content (which takes time, energy and effort) and never turning your audience into leads and sales.
In this article, I’m going to walk you through exactly how to take your podcast listeners and turn them into warm, qualified leads.
What’s the difference between a podcast listener vs a lead
A listener is someone who listens to your podcast. They might listen to every show, or they might listen occasionally. They might stream on Spotify or Apple podcasts. You don’t have their information, and you know nothing about their situation.
A lead is someone that you have contact information for. Maybe you have their name and email address, or maybe you have more information. You can usually contact these people outside of the podcast episode, and you’re not solely reliant on your podcast.
Why should you be getting leads from your podcast?
Podcasts are great for building an audience and strengthening your relationship with your listeners.
However, podcasts have one major problem. You don’t have access to much information about your listeners. Especially if you’re solely relying on Apple, Spotify or any other podcast streaming service.
You don’t usually have access to:
- The listeners name
- Their email address
- Their preferences
- Their level of knowledge and experience with your topic
Of course, some podcast hosts provide great overall stats, but this is generally on a global level and not specific to each listener.
Learn more about your podcast listeners.
Podcasts are a one-way conversation. You speak, and your audience listens.
This means by solely relying on the show, you can’t fully understand who your audience is and what they need help with the most.
This is why you need a simple system to take your listeners and get them to join your email list or your community.
You use the podcast to make them love you and then invite them to be part of your online community by joining your email list.
This is an excellent way for you to:
- Engage with your audience more closely
- Learn more about them and what they want
- Introduce them to new products and services
- Tell them when you have new content
- Expand their knowledge with bonus resources (tools and training)
Ultimately, you can deliver way more value directly to your listeners if you get them to join your email list first.
How to turn podcast listeners into leads
The best way to get your podcast listeners to join your email list is by offering something extra of real value. Give something away that compliments your podcast show and builds more trust with your audience in exchange for their contact information.
You could give your listeners something quick and easy, like a free PDF or cheat sheet, but I think you can do better than this.
How to get leads from your podcast?
One of the best ways to deliver value whilst learning more about your audience is to use a quiz or a Scorecard.
A scorecard allows you to ask some key questions before you give away a free gift. You get to learn more about your audience, and they get something as a reward. Sounds fair, right?
A Scorecard is made up of 4 parts.
- The concept
- The landing page
- The questions
- The results page (and gift)
These 4 parts make the ultimate quiz lead magnet when getting your podcast listeners to become email subscribers or leads.
How to launch a scorecard
The concept (what’s your scorecard about)
There are a few ways to decide what concept to use for your scorecard.
Let’s look at a few examples…
The Public Speaking Podcast could launch a scorecard and get people to answer 10 questions to test their knowledge level. They get a score at the end along with some key action steps to improve.
The Fiction Writers podcast could launch a short 5-question survey to get feedback from their audience and give them a free gift at the end.
The Freelancer podcast could launch an original research scorecard and get interesting insights that they can share with the world using a report or whitepaper. At the end, the podcast host could send the participants a free resource to help them grow their freelance business.
There are many ways to use scorecards to convert your listeners into leads, but the principles are all the same.
Podcast listener —> Take the scorecard —> They join your email list —> They receive more value
The landing page
The landing page for your quiz or survey is key to making people take part. If it looks dull or boring, then fewer people are likely to want to stick around and answer your questions.
On the other hand, if it looks fun and engaging and you add your own brand colours and styles, then more people are likely to get involved.
Podcast Quiz Landing Page
Your quiz landing page would be focused on helping people score themselves on how well they perform in a certain area. Use the overall topic of your podcast and create a quiz around it.
Podcast Survey Landing Page
The landing page you would use for your podcast survey would be slightly different from a quiz landing page. Here you might include images of yourself, podcast artwork and maybe a video of yourself explaining more about the survey.
Here are a few things you could include on your landing page to make it more effective:
- An image of you – Your audience already knows, likes and trusts you, so always include an image of you and your logo somewhere high up on the landing page
- An incentive – give them a reason to take part. Offer something that they might want, a free PDF, video training, or group coaching call. Be sure to showcase this on your landing page to encourage more people to take part.
- Social proof – Some people might not be as familiar with you as others, so it’s always a good idea to include some testimonials or other trust-building elements to make people comfortable about handing over their contact information
- A signup form – Without a signup form, people can’t take part in your quiz or survey. Most people are happy to hand over their name and email address, you’ll need this information to send them the free gift at the end.
If you need some inspiration, check out some quiz templates here.
If you’re sending people from your podcast to a quiz or survey, then the conversion rate is probably going to be pretty high because they already know you so well, so most people will take part. However, if you’re sending cold traffic to it, then a typical conversion rate would be between 20-40% depending on your niche, landing page and the incentive.
Your questions
The questions you decide to include throughout your quiz or survey can impact how many people stay to the end.
Quiz questions
With a quiz or scorecard, you would include questions that participants are scored against. The score will be calculated at the end based on how they answer the questions.
Survey Questions
Survey questions help you learn more about your audience so try to ask those burning questions.
Here are some things to consider:
- Asking fewer questions (e.g. 3-7 questions) will result in more people completing the quiz
- Asking simple questions that are easy to skim-read takes less effort for your participants
- Including multiple-choice questions makes it quicker for people to complete
- If you have an extremely loyal audience that doesn’t mind giving you some of their time, then you can generally ask more questions and get more information
- If you are using a scoring quiz, then you’ll need to assign points to each correct or incorrect answer
Ultimately, you have to respect your audience’s time, so try to keep questions quick, seamless and simple as possible.
The results page/ thank you page
Once someone has completed the quiz or survey, they’ll need to be redirected to a thank you page. This is your chance to deliver on your promise. If you are using a survey, then you’ll want to include a link to your free gift. If you’re using a scored quiz or assessment, then you’ll need to tell people how they scored. There are a few other things you can include as part of the quiz results page.Quiz results
Quiz results page
On this results page, you would present their score and include any relevant information to help them improve.
Podcast survey results page
On your survey thank you page, you would include a link to the bonus you promised along with a thank you message for those who have taken part.
You could include:
- A “next step” – Give people an extra link to take the next step with you. E.g. book a 1-2-1 call with you or buy a product.
- Provide more value – Provide some extra words of wisdom to help your audience get better results
- Get them to join your community, such as a Facebook or Slack group, to engage with your audience more
The more value you give at this point, the more loyalty and trust you’ll build with your audience.
You can then continue to deliver more value over email and introduce them to more relevant products in the future.
Podcast Scripts
Below, I’ve put together a few simple scripts that you can use depending on what kind of scorecard you decide to build.
If you are a podcast host and have built a quiz or assessment, you can use this script…
“If you enjoyed this episode, you’re going to love this. I’ve put together a FREE scorecard that you can take to access where you are right now and what steps you can take to improve.”
If you are a podcast host and have built a feedback survey, you can use this script…
“If you’re a loyal listener of this podcast and you’d like to do me a huge favour, then please take the podcast survey. It’s only seven questions, and it will help me improve the show and continue to deliver value. Plus, as a thank you, by completing the short survey, you’ll get access to my VIP cheat sheet.”
If you are a podcast guest and have built a quiz or assessment, you can use this script…
“Thanks for having me on the show. If your listeners want to learn more, they can take the quiz for free on my website. It will tell them exactly what they’re doing well and which areas they need to fix, and it will also give them a blueprint to follow to improve going forward.
Continuing to deliver value
Now that you have your podcast listeners on your email list, you can continue to provide value separate from your podcast.
If you would like an automated email sequence that gets sent after someone has taken your scorecard, you can use the link above and copy and paste those emails into your email marketing software.
Next steps
Once you’ve launched your scorecard, you won’t want to go back to typical lead magnets. Quizzes, assessments and surveys open up a world of opportunities for you and your audience. With feedback and insights from your audience provide way too much value to you as a host.
How to build a quiz or scorecard
If you want to build your own podcast quiz, try ScoreApp for free and launch your quiz in 3 minutes using our AI Quiz Builder.
