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I thought it might be good to share a few thoughts I’ve had as I’ve reflected on what’s been happening over the past few years. I’ll tell you the story because it’s always good to look at where you’ve been as you’re moving forward. [Remember this is a direct transcription, so excuse any weird typos lurking about!]
I know that sometimes we can spend a little bit too much time thinking about our past and how it’s affected us rather than thinking about our future and what we want.
I think that’s probably a topic for another podcast.
Today, I want to reflect on some of the messages that have landed with me as I’ve thought about what has worked with the podcast and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Before I do that, it would be remiss of me if I didn’t give a shout-out to our checklist and our social media marketing report as well.
You can download both of those; it will help you get started with your marketing and help you identify where you are.
You can find them at www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl, for marketing checklist, and www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/smm, for social media marketing.
Of course, if you would like to give us a shout-out or a review, it’s so much easier now on iTunes to do that and on Spotify, and Google, and all the other places where we are. We would really appreciate it.
1. From the Beginning
Let’s talk about 300 plus podcasts and a few lessons over the last eight years. The very first podcast that I recorded was in 2013. I’m recording this in 2021, so I’m sure for the majority of you who are pretty good at maths, you can work out that this podcast has been going for eight years.
I decided to record it back in the day because I wanted to do something that was part of, at the time, more of the rich media movement.
Podcasts were starting to appear, and I wondered about sound versus video.
In honesty, I just thought, which is likely to be the easiest to do? At the time, I decided that you know what? I guess I’m going to go with podcasting.
It seemed a little bit less – what’s the word? I’m not going to say confrontational, but with the best will in the world, it’s not always easy to stand up and be out there in front of a video.
It wasn’t for me at the time.
Obviously, I’ve managed to navigate that fear now; well, most of the time 😊
At the time, it was like, “Okay, this seems a good thing to do.” I decided to choose it because, at some point, you’ve got to pick something if you want to move forward.
I focused on what I thought I would be good at because I’d done a little bit of voiceover on various things back in the day in my corporate days, so I thought, “Well, let’s give this a go.”
I’ll be honest and say, I hadn’t a clue how to get it to work. A friend of mine who was in the same mentoring was a bigger techie than I was at the time. I said to him, “Look, could you just create a product for me, and I’ll buy it off you.”
He was talking about how he wanted to create a product for some time on how to get a podcast together. I was his first purchaser. I got the podcast information, went through it, and learned how to do my first podcast, and everything around putting it on iTunes, getting it approved, getting the visual done, looking at the music, and all that sort of thing.
That’s where I started; by looking at something I was good at.
2. Just Make a Start
The second lesson was, everyone starts as an amateur. I can honestly say that the first few podcasts had multiple takes because (and even to this day, occasionally), I’ll leave the ringer on my iPhone, or I won’t put the phone on “Do Not Disturb”, or Flo would bark!!
There are multiple minefields in anything that you do. Podcasting is no different. You start as an amateur, and I think our American friends say, “You’re probably going to suck at the first few”, and I most certainly did.
When I go back and listen to the first podcast we ever did, it was okay, but they are a lot better now; I’m a lot more natural in them now.
That’s the same with everything. You have to accept that if you want to be successful, you have to do the hard things, and sometimes the hard stuff is stepping outside of your comfort zone, doing something you’ve never done before and practice, practice, practice, and you will get better.
3. Set Up A Process
The third lesson that I got is, work out your format and have a process. We were talking to some marketeers in our Superfast Circle call the other day about the fact that, as a marketeer, you will always have multiple things that you need to do. It’s a busy role; it’s got many outputs and inputs and all of those lovely things.
You do need to map out the process. I decided on the format of this podcast. I’ve stuck to it for the majority of the ones that I’ve recorded.
I decided to make it harder for myself because I decided to use this podcast as a teaching mechanism.
There are very few of these podcasts where I have a guest because the format of this is to help people with marketing their recruitment company. We also talk about sales and how to improve sales through marketing.
This is a tutorial format. It probably would have been a lot easier if I’d interviewed people because then I don’t have to come up with the content or write the content, research it, or put it all together. Instead, I could have asked someone else a few questions, and then those questions are formatted into a podcast, and that’s how it goes.
That is a good starting point. If I were to do this all over again, maybe I’d do a little bit more interviewing, actually getting a bit more help with the podcast.
Anyhow, it’s worked for me.
Many people are amazed that I’ve still managed to keep doing this every week, which we’ll come on to.
The format you’ll notice we have – I will do a very hooky intro at the beginning. If you are a marketeer, always hook people in so they want more. I will share a little bit about the number of the podcast and the topic area. Then I have a voiceover. I recorded a couple of different podcasts, and the voiceover on this happens to be a lovely Scottish lady with music when you listen to this.
There’s a voiceover with the hook about what you will get from listening to the podcast. Then we get into it. What I do with this podcast, because, as they say, it’s a marketing tool; there is no free lunch.
I have set up two separate landing pages. At the moment, we’re promoting the marketing checklist, and we’re also promoting the social media marketing report. I share the URL at the start of this podcast, which is useful for other people.
If you’re thinking about doing a video channel or having your own podcast, what could you do? Mention where people can find more information. Of course, for me, many people find the podcast on iTunes, on Spotify, they may have come across a link that we’ve shared on LinkedIn, or they may have come across our blog, which is optimised for the search engines, but they might not be on our email list.
My goal is to get people to join our email list because once people join our email list, we can have a more intimate relationship with them. That’s why I always share opportunities to come further along the line with us and become a subscriber.
That is a great lesson that I’ve learned, is always have a call to action. There is also a call to action at the end of this podcast. We have a format; we have a process. I record the podcasts. They are transcribed, and then Ana, one of our team members, puts them all together. She puts the intros together. We also have an outro at the end where we talk about Superfast Circle and what you need to do if you want to find out more.
That’s a process that we go through. I record them. I am batching this at the moment. I am recording this at the beginning of September, and today, I am recording five podcasts. I often do that because it makes it easier for me to batch because I’m a marketeer. I also train. I also do some writing for clients. I have a busy schedule. I find it much easier to batch everything.
One of the things that I got around marketing through doing the podcast is batching. It becomes so much easier, and because you get into a flow, your voice sounds better, you become more confident, and it works well. Once I have recorded the podcast, it is then sent it off to be transcribed. The transcription ends up on our website, and it’s used in multiple ways and shared on social media and shared with all of our different partners as well.
4. Adopt A Value-Based Approach
A value-based approach always works. Now, I share and reveal a lot on this podcast, probably more than people realise. If you went through all the back recordings on this podcast, a lot of your marketing and marketing funnel information that you need is mapped out. I do reveal a lot. I also use this as a vehicle to seed more information about us and our products, which I strongly recommend everyone does so that people I know for a fact will listen to this podcast. If they’ve listened to it on iTunes, they’re going to go over to our website and have a look at things.
I use it as a value-based tool because it’s what works in business now. Give them value, and at some point in time, when they are ready to come and work with you, that is exactly what they’re going to do because also this is all around the preeminent strategy that I shared last week with you. It helps to build your authority in the market. It just plain works when you’re giving value to people. As Frank Kern always says, “Show them you can help them by actually helping them.”
The other thing about this particular podcast is that you appreciate what people like to listen to. They want to listen to you and your story, and the more you share stories in your marketing, the more it works.
I’ve had people that have said to me, “Oh, I remember that story about the Wigan Athletic T-shirt.” I’m thinking, “Oh, which one was that?” Or, “I remember that story about pharmaceuticals.” Or, “I remember that story about the Abba Tribute Band.” Or, “I remember that story about you going to the dentist.” People love stories. One of the things that I always remember as people talk to me, they would say, “I feel like I know you.” Because obviously, they’d been listening to my voice on the podcast for some time.
5. Utilise Search Engines
Now, the next thing is search engines work. Many people have said that they found our podcast just by Googling podcasts about recruitment or podcasts about marketing in the recruitment sector, and we appear. Now we are also on multiple platforms. Our podcast, you will find on Google podcasts now. We appear on the first page of Google. If you Google the Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast, you will see our last three podcasts on Google Play there.
We’re also on Spotify. We’re on all the major channels, and when you think about the search engines that iTunes and YouTube are if you are going to use a rich media like podcasting or video marketing, think about, “How do I work with the search engines to make this work for us?” We have many listeners in the States and Australia, all of whom have found us by jumping onto iTunes or Googling things like podcasts for recruiters. Think about whatever you do, whatever marketing strategy you do, “Could this work for me from a search engine perspective as well?”.
6. Recognising The Gain over the Gap
Now, we talked about stories. We talked about the fact that it’s good to do hard things. I think something else thing that I would say about this particular podcast and what I’ve learned is around the gap and the gain because back in the day, it was a real push for me to do this podcast along with everything else I was doing.
Nobody at that time in the sector was doing a podcast. I’ve seen many new recruitment marketers out there talking about the podcasts they’ve been doing for ages. Then I go and look, and they’ve got 50 episodes.
I’ve been doing this for a long time, and it’s very easy to become complacent, but hopefully, I don’t do that. I always like to look at how far we’ve come because it’s very easy to think, “Oh, I still need to do an awful lot more.” It’s good for me to sit here and think, “Okay, where am I now versus where I started?” Well, we’ve had thousands and thousands of downloads, probably well over 100,000 downloads now on this particular podcast. We regularly have hundreds and hundreds of people listening to each podcast that I create.
7. Do More and Stay Consistent
I think the final thing is to talk about consistency and the do more strategy. One of my mentors always says, “How many offers have you made, Denise?”. How many offers have you made? Your success is directly proportional to how consistently you’re out in front of your market and how often you are.
You might be trying to work out, “I wonder when they did all the podcasts then?” We’re over 300 podcasts now. When we first started, we only used to do one a month because that’s what people did then. They only did once a month.
That’s what I did. I followed that process. Then I thought, “Do you know what? I think I need to do a bit more of these.” I was getting positive feedback, and people were, “Oh, I always look forward to your podcast.” Then over the last two or three years, we have ramped up how many we do.
There will be at least one podcast a week. In fact, during COVID, I did a special series, ‘Handling what is Happening’, and I think I did something like 21 podcasts over 21 days. Every day, I did a podcast to help people navigate where they were both emotionally, mentally, and from a lead generation point of view in handling what was happening in their business.
Consistency is key. I’ve already given one clue around the fact that I batch everything, but for you, think about what channel could you choose? What idea, what strategy would work for you? Something that you can be consistent with.
I hope you’ve enjoyed a little ramble around 300 podcasts and some of the things that have landed with me over time.
How We Can Help
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Thanks,
Denise
