How to Make Episodes That Convert? Ask Yourself THESE 3 Questions Before Recording!

As you come up with topic ideas which turn into podcast episodes, are you starting with the end in mind? If you’re using your podcast as a marketing tool to grow your business, there needs to be a method to the madness when it comes to what kind of content you actually publish. It needs to be the right content to attract and provide value to the right people.

So in this episode, I’m going to give you a simple system to create high-value content which will attract your dream clients. This is Profits Through Podcasting, where we help health-focused entrepreneurs generate leads and revenue for their businesses through podcasting. I’m your host, Joel Oliver. So first of all, why does this matter?

Well, as entrepreneurs who are creating content, especially podcast hosts, everything we publish is marketing, okay? And most people create content backwards. They think of a topic, and then they create it, and then they hope that it works. That’s not the right way to do it. The better way is to start with the end in mind.

You need to reverse engineer content that is going to convert and then tie that to the podcast itself, So think every episode we record is designed to attract our ideal listeners who then eventually become clients because they’re the ideal clients as well, naturally. So what are the three questions that we need to answer before creating a piece of content and, that core idea of the episode?

What do we need to be thinking about and asking ourselves every single time before we create the episodes? Okay, so let’s go through those three questions here today.

Question one, who is our ideal client or person? I see a lot of businesses who just don’t have any idea about this. Okay, so that’s a fundamental first. Like, before we can even think about what we want to create for these people or what will be valuable to them, we need to understand who are those people, right?

And I’m not talking about broad demographics here. I’m talking about specifics. So their age, the stage of the business that they have, the stage of the life that they’re in, the biggest frustrations that they have, as well as their dreams, their values. Where do they hang out online and where do they hang out offline?

All these types of things, okay? To create a very specific picture of the type of person that we want to reach. So as an exercise, you can create a couple of avatar names, like specific names, a first and last name of a person. Write their story out in first person so you can really start to get a good picture of who they are.

And then from there, you’ll know how this actually shapes your content. What kind of tone would you wanna talk to them in? What kind of examples would you wanna use in your episodes? Where do you need to be showing up mostly, you know, in terms of promotion? the length of the episodes, are they busy or do they have a lot of time to spare to listen to an episode?

All these sorts of things can shape how you deliver the content, okay? So you need to know who that person is. And from there, we need to get deeper on there. I touched on this briefly in question one, but question two, now that we know who the person is, question two is: what do they want? Okay? So think about their surface desires versus their deep emotional wants, their before state versus their after state.

Where are they at, and where are they trying to get to? Okay? We really need to understand that because a common mistake is that we talk about what we offer as a business or a service provider or whatever it is that you offer, instead of what these people crave, the ideal clients. Okay? So in the example of this podcast, I shouldn’t be talking about how we help people get podcast listeners.

Okay? That’s just too surface level. It’s not really hitting the pain point. But rather, say, growing their business, that’s, that’s a bit better. Generating more revenue, that’s a bit better. You know? That’s kind of honing in on what they would want. It’s less about us, more about them. But then really think like, how about creating more freedom to spend time with their family?

That could be something very specific. And when you understand the type of person that you’re, you’re trying to reach, that may be very relevant to them. Maybe they are a parent and they’re, they’re trying to spend more time with their family, trying to develop a business to give themselves more freedom, but they’re really stuck.

And then if your solution helps them out of that, that’s great. But you’ve got to talk in the language that really helps them understand. So that’s why question number two here of what do they want, understanding what they want is really important. ‘Cause let’s say we all want our businesses to grow, we all want more money, but those are not necessarily the most effective ways of saying it and resonating with your audience and your ideal client.

in the specific case of, say, health and wellness, it’s not having more energy. We’re gonna give you more energy. It’s you’re gonna wake up six AM every morning refreshed with a fire underneath you, ready to get out for that morning walk and lose that extra ten pounds. Whatever it is, you know, very descriptive language that is, exactly matched to the type of person that you’re trying to reach.

And, you know, talking to those people is a great way to figure that stuff out. You won’t just understand this by making it up in your own head or asking ChatGPT. You really want to actually talk to people who are in your ideal demographic and really get to know their deep desires. From there, we wanna figure out what action do we want these people to take?

So we’ve identified them, we’ve understood their desires and how to communicate with them. Now we wanna think about what is the next step for them, the conversion step. How are you actually gonna help them? So you wanna be, again, very specific with this. It’s not just work with us, but the smallest next logical step.

So that could be a book a call, join a wait list, download a free resource, respond to you with a, a question, give a question for the next episode, listen to something else, follow you on Instagram, whatever that is. Okay, so those are examples. You don’t wanna have a whole bunch. You wanna figure out one. ideally, my preference is some kind of a discovery call or email list, something that can really help you solidify that relationship and have them take the next steps towards becoming client.

And the way this should all work is that your content should make this action feel like the next obvious move. You are bridging between their situation now, where they wanna go, you are bridging with your content, because you’re gonna be having them at, by the end of your episodes asking, “Well, what do I do next?

Yep, I understand that you’ve got this solution, and it sounds like this is a good fit for me. what’s the next step that I need to take as a listener?” Okay, so ultimately you’re giving massive value, and then you naturally position the next step. Once you’ve got them hooked, once you’ve shown that you understand them, because we went through those first couple of questions, now they’re wondering, “What do I do?”

And you enter here with your call to action, the conversion step of the podcast episode. Okay? So it’s who is this person? What do they want? And then what action do you want them to take? That’s the three questions that you need to be considering as a basis, as a fundamental for every podcast episode that you put out there.

So now with all of that in mind, you can filter your topic ideas through Those questions and see what remains, specifically the first two questions. Maybe even become inspired on new types of content ideas when you begin to understand your client better, uh, or you’ve had conversations with these ideal people, and you’ve really started to get an idea of, “Okay, I didn’t think of that, that before.

This is what they want me to be speaking about. This is the type of pain that a lot of these people are going through.” what would be way that you can help them further? Maybe you need to add some client interviews to your podcast or some short bonus episodes because they’re busy. There are all types of ways to interpret this, but ultimately, getting that understanding and then filtering our content through it is key.

AI is an obvious tool to get some inspiration for topic ideas, but there are many other ways, and probably better to some extent as well, like your day-to-day work. If you’re actually working with clients now, you’re talking to them. You know what their problems are. If not, then you should go find some of those people and have conversations with them.

But yeah, what you’re hearing from your clients, what they’re struggling with, what you see on social media people are struggling with, perhaps YouTube, your own life. If you can relate to these people, then What struggles are you encountering in life that you know firsthand or you have in the past and can speak really well on, and you know the language, right?

The pain points. So gather as many ideas as possible and then, again, filter those through. Consider if they’re very relevant to the audience you wanna reach, if they can help you provide a huge amount of value to those people, your ideal clients, and then go with that. AI can be great, but the downside is it doesn’t always hit the nail on the head when it comes to actually really deeply understanding these people, of yours, the ideal clients.

It might be just getting surface level or stuff that’s not a complete match. The only way to really know is to talk to those specific ideal people. then, of course, when you create these podcast episodes, you repurpose that content. It ends up everywhere, far beyond just your podcast and any content that you make For that matter, should have the same goal.

So you’ve got this podcast episode. Every episode you make, you’ve thought about the type of people you need to be making it for, how to make it valuable to them. So you’ve got a very incredibly valuable piece of content. You make that into other formats, so social media, email newsletters, whatever the case.

So you- now you’ve got a whole bunch of content. Your whole strategy is shifting because you’ve now got in mind who is this really for, and you should have that in mind with any piece of content you make. even outside of the podcast, if you’re making specific pieces for Instagram or YouTube, always have this in mind.

It’s the only way you’re really going to resonate with the people that you ultimately hope come work with you because you’re really showing them that you understand them and that you can help.

So before we depart for the day, what I would suggest to you as a challenge is take your next five pieces of content and run them through those three questions that we outlined here on the episode today and fix what doesn’t align, particularly those first two in understanding who it is that you’re trying to reach.

So think about that, and then how are you bridging the gap between their problems and your solution? You need that conversion step in there. And make sure you’re doing that in all your episodes. Look back at some previous ones if you have to, if you wanna kinda get this going sooner or otherwise look forward at the next pieces you’re going to create, and make sure you align things better with what we talked about today.

Align them with the people that you ideally want to reach. And if you, at this point, don’t even know who your ideal client avatar is for your business, obviously that’s step one. You really need to sort that out first before we can proceed with trying to figure out what type of content will be useful to them if you don’t even know who it is, and we don’t wanna be too broad on that, as I mentioned up front.

It can’t be very general, can’t be just women. It’s gotta be very specific onto the type of people that you help. Okay? And if you do know who your ideal client is already, you’ve got a, a fairly good business built, but you’re struggling, you’re feeling like you’re spinning your wheels because there’s so much to do to scale it and get the message out there, and you just can’t keep up, well, that might be where we could help because we help with podcast production, which as you’re– if you’ve a podcast, you already know the benefits of it.

You know that it can help to be consistently creating quality content and putting it out there. But you feel like Maybe that’s not the biggest priority on your schedule. Somebody else should be doing that. A team should be helping you with that. You do the recording and someone else does the rest.

That’s where we can help here at East Coast Studio. If that sounds useful to you and you’re looking to offload some of your work immediately overnight and free up some valuable time to either go enjoy life more or build your business more, get in touch. Book your Podcast Vitality call. You can do that with the link in the show notes. Till next time.