It looks like podcast interviews are going mainstream in the world of business coaches, consultants and thought leaders.
With live events being sidelined for the last year, all the folks who would normally be on the speaking circuit are looking at podcasts as virtual stages and shifted their focus to getting interviewed on podcasts.
And I love the strategy. It’s the first thing I recommend any expert do, especially those on the introverted side, who don’t want to spend all day making Tik Tok videos just to reach potential clients.
But with all the attention that’s coming to this strategy right now, podcasters are flooded with pitches that are poorly written, researched and executed.
Many are hiring pitching freelancers who take a “Spray-and-Pray” approach, and that’s hurting experts’ ability to get featured on podcasts that could make a huge impact on their business.
So I surveyed some of the best people I know in the business podcast space and asked for their pet peeves when it comes to the pitches they’re getting right now. And they didn’t hold back. So we’ll start with the tactical mistakes first, and move up into more strategic mistakes, and finish with something podcasters disagree on. Let’s jump in!
Podcast Pitching Pet Peeves
Pet Peeve 1: Sending a templated email with little or no customization.
This one comes from a good friend in the industry, Matt Aitchison, better known as Matty A, host of Millionaire Mindcast, a fantastic show for anyone who wants to build wealth and create freedom in their life.
This is one I hammer home to anyone who pitches me. Never, ever send an email that is an obvious template. While it’s great to start with a well-written template, you have to copy/paste in such a way that everything is consistent, and then customize that template for each podcast host you reach out to. Absolutely NO spray and pray cold emails.
Pet Peeve 2: Obvious lie right off the bat.
This one comes from Christopher Lochhead, host of Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different and Lochhead on Marketing, which has hit #1 in the marketing category, an incredible achievement in a very crowded space.
Chris is one of those guys who has a very finely tuned BS meter, and is not fond of people reaching out with an obvious lie right in the first sentence. In chatting about his pet peeves, he shot me screenshots of an actual exchange between him and someone who pitched him on LinkedIn that was quite hilarious and revealing.
The guy actually responded and explained his thinking behind the pitch, where he claimed to be a big fan of the show and then dropped Gary Vee’s name in a positive light. Anyone who knows Chris would know that he rails against the hustle culture and is about as far as you can get from a Gary Vee fan, so that was the worst possible name to drop in a pitch email. It was a dead giveaway that him being a “big fan of the podcast” was an obvious lie, and Chris called him out on it.
Here’s the takeaway: If you say you’re a big fan, you better be a big fan. If you claim to know a previous guest or a friend of the host, you better actually know them. If you just found the show and there’s no real connection, don’t fake one.
If you want to pitch someone like Chris, with a finely tuned BS meter, just be direct. He doesn’t mind getting a cold pitch, he just doesn’t want to get a crappy pitch that wastes his time. Tell him you have a potential guest, what’s compelling and different about them, and why you think Chris and his audience would enjoy the conversation. That’s what he cares about. You may not always get the Yes, but at least you won’t end up with your pitch being used as a poster child for “obvious lie marketing.”
Pet Peeve 3: Not knowing anything about the show.
This one shows up a lot when I talk to podcasters.
For example, Chris Naugle, a client and host of Real Estate Money School, put it this way, “They don’t know my audience because they never watch my podcast.”
“Not knowing anything about the show, obviously never listened to it.”
That’s how Steve Werner puts it. Steve is the host of Grow Your Impact, Influence & Income. He’s one of the most thoughtful and professional interviewers I’ve ever encountered.
I deal with this one all the time with my real estate podcast. The majority of pitch emails we get are for people selling courses and coaching for real estate investors. But the podcast is very clear that it is for real estate agents, not investors. It’s right in our tagline and description, it would take 10 seconds to see it just by looking at the show on iTunes, let alone if they actually listened to a single episode.
If you’re going to reach out to podcasters, make sure whoever is pitching you is taking the time to understand the show and construct a customized pitch for that host.
They should do enough homework to understand who the host is, why they host the show, who their listeners are and the content they cover. They won’t be able to know everything, but even the most jaded podcasters respect when someone has done their homework, even if they don’t understand everything perfectly.
Those are the easy, tactical mistakes people make every day when pitching podcasters. They’re also the easiest to prevent and avoid.
Now let’s get into the strategic mistakes, and some things that not all podcasters agree on.
Pet Peeve 4: Too much focus on how awesome the guest is
“Framing it as if the guest is doing the host a favor, drunk on self-glorification.”
That’s how David Greene, co-host of Bigger Pockets puts it.
Bigger Pockets is consistently one of the top ranked business podcasts in the world, and easily the #1 podcast in the real estate space.
David is a good friend in the industry and a multi-time guest on my real estate podcast, so we probably get a lot of the same pitches. One of his biggest pet peeves is also one of mine. Focusing on how awesome the guest is, rather than how awesome the conversation will be for the host and their audience.
There is a balance here, because of course the guest needs to be legit in their own right.
Yes, podcasters want to bring on guests that are credible, maybe even guests who have a brand name and a following in the industry. After all, podcasters love guests who can bring their audience to the show. But if the pitch is all about the guest and not about the podcast, that’s going to rub the host the wrong way.
Pet Peeve 5: Hidden Agenda
This one comes from David Greene of Bigger Pockets. For many in real estate, Bigger Pockets is the holy grail of podcast appearances, a massive credibility signal and access to a sizable audience of listeners who buy courses and coaching.
In industries full of fly-by-night course creators, trainers and “experts”, podcasters are wary. If you operate in one of those industries, be up front. If you sell courses or coaching, great, just don’t hide it. One way to deal with is to specifically state in the pitch email that the guest makes no overt pitches, and instead promotes ways for people to connect online or join an email list.
Pet Peeve 6: No compelling story
This is a common one. Dana Malstaff, host of Boss Mom says, “It’s been at least a few months since I featured someone on the show that talks about how to grow your business. I’m drawn to interesting stories that lead to interesting topics. Those are the pitches that catch my eye right now.”
Here’s how David Greene of Bigger Pockets puts it: “I like when they tell a story. Something that makes it easy to see why they’d be good. Something that makes it easy for me to see they would connect with the audience.”
For those who are driven to teach, train and lead, it can be difficult to focus your pitch around your story, I know I resisted it for various reasons. I want to focus on the topics I would enjoy teaching and training on.
But that doesn’t always catch the attention of podcasters in spaces that have lots of experts who all enjoy teaching and training.
So look for ways to change your pitch to focus on stories.
That can be your Discovery Story (how you discovered your original insights and developed your expertise), or you can focus on smaller, more specific stories pulled from your life. You’re looking for stories that are attention grabbing, interesting, unique and compelling.
A great example is Matthew Pollard’s story of going from massive introvert and failing salesperson to “The Rapid Growth Guy” with million dollar sales growth in multiple companies. Within that overall story are specific stories from his early days as a salesperson that changed his view of sales and himself, which led to his first breakthrough.
Pet Peeve 7: No Problem Being Solved for the Audience
As Chris Naugle of Real Estate Money School put it, “They never focus on why the guest will solve my audiences problem.“
This is one of the most insightful statements I’ve ever heard from a podcast host in the business space. When it comes to niche business podcasts, the audience is listening specifically for solutions to their problems. Give the host a concrete idea of the problem you’re going to solve for clients, and make sure it’s an interesting problem.
I see a lot of pitches where the focus is so much on who the guest is and why they’re a good fit for the show, that the topic is almost an afterthought.
Dana Malstaff of Boss Mom said, “I get a lot of pitches where I look at the topic and say to myself, How are we going to talk about that for 30 minutes? I’ve only got 4 potential episodes a month, is this really a valuable enough topic to displace one of the other 100 people who have pitched me?”
If you’re going to pitch yourself to a niche business podcast, and you don’t want to focus on a compelling story, I recommend pitching one overarching topic idea that’s eye-catching and has a lot of depth to explore, plus a few bullet points that expand on that idea.
One of the best questions to ask yourself before you construct a pitch email is, “If I had to give a TED talk tomorrow, what would I speak on?” If you can come up with 2-3 topics or bullet points that would make good TED talks by themselves, that’s the quality level of topics podcasters are looking for.
Pet Peeve 8: Long or Short?
Now we come to one that causes plenty of disagreement among podcasters.
Some like pitches short, sweet and to the point. Some don’t mind longer emails that give more background and ideas for topics and talking points.
When my team pitches me, we focus on a short, impactful 3-4 paragraph initial email, with one goal. Get the podcast to say “Yes, I’m open to the idea of featuring Matt on the show.” Then we follow up with more detail and get the final Yes.
If you break up your pitching process into stages like that, you can send a very focused initial email that’s all about the compelling story or topic you want to share, what value you bring to the audience.
That leads into our final mistake…
Pet Peeve 9: Putting the Mental Burden Back on the Host
If you want to get the Yes, make it easy for the host to say Yes. At each stage of the pitching process, from initial email to final scheduling, I recommend that every piece of communication builds to one question with one ideal answer, YES.
Don’t put the mental burden back on them by leaving the topic up to them, or making them wade through paragraphs of background on you, or being unclear on next steps.
You’d be surprised how many people do this. They don’t put themselves in the shoes of a podcaster, who is probably looking at pitch emails while in line for coffee, or scanning through a bunch of pitch emails once a month to find 1-2 guests to fill out their schedule.
By taking the mental burden on ourselves at each stage, we end up with a pitch process that doesn’t require anything from the host other than to say YES.
Final Thought: Who is Pitching You?
As a coach or consultant, your time is incredibly valuable doing client work and building your business.
Beyond reaching out to your extended network and getting your first 10 podcast interviews on the books, I don’t recommend you spend a single minute pitching yourself cold.
So I see way too many experts pitching themselves, and either they fall off after a couple weeks or it just doesn’t get done at all. Even for authors like me, research and writing my own pitch emails basically guaranteed it didn’t get done. Many experts spend so much time researching and listening to podcasts that they only send an occasional pitch email, and miss out on podcasts they could have booked.
[Side Note: If you want someone trained to pitch you and get you booked on podcasts consistently, grab the free Trello Pitch Board Template and Video Walkthrough, just pop in your name and email below. It shows the simple system for how my Pitch Assistant researches podcasts, gets my approval, and pitches me. Plus you can steal my Trello board template and use it yourself.]
The other benefit of having someone pitch you is this: It puts a bit of distance between you and the pitch process. By having someone pitch you, it takes the burden of researching and constructing the pitch off your shoulders. You might find your assistant reaches out to shows you wouldn’t think of, or shows you don’t think you’re ready for, and you might be surprised by who says Yes.
Make sure you check out the podcasts featured in this article, and leave them a 5-star review if you enjoy the show. Every podcaster loves a genuine, authentic review on Apple Podcasts.