you're selling books on podcasts all wrong
👉 and here's what to do instead
Howdy folks!
Happy 2025!
Feeling fired up about your book marketing goals for the year?
✨ I am running a free LIVE 3-day workshop next week called
“How to Use Your Book Launch to Make a Breakthrough in Your Business in 2025”
Here’s what we’re going to cover:
Day 1 (1/15): The Viral Book Formula (that sells thousands of copies!)
Day 2 (1/16): Your Launch Strategy (sell 10,000 copies in Year 1 using only 2 things)
Day 3 (1/17): Your Podcast Episode & Your Podcast Tour
This workshop is perfect if your book is on your vision board for 2025 and you want to be set up for success.
Register here and come play (25 spots 16 spots available).
How to use podcast touring to sell more books and grow your business
Follow along as I plan my podcast tour for my upcoming group program launch in March.
These are the exact steps YOU need to take to market your own book in 2025.
Now, with you, your ultimate goal is to sell books to grow your email list and pack your pipeline.
With podcast touring, we always start with the end in mind, so that you can achieve your goals through the marketing activities you are conducting.
This strategy is credited to Kelly Mosser and her Hell Yes Guest program.
This is applicable to finding your ideal clients through podcast touring, whether it’s through selling books or building a waitlist.
Step 1. Set Meaningful Goal
A podcast tour is a finite set of time or episodes you tour on, e.g., 10 weeks or 10 episodes.
As an entrepreneur, when your book is live, the best thing you can do is tour on podcasts for the next 6-12 months.
noticed how his audience became interested in converting to his paid retreats when they read his book. My colleague Jessica Zweig doubled her personal branding agency in 12 months from touring on podcasts for 12 months.Meaningful goals will differ from person to person, as it can change depending on your audience size and the size of the podcasts you’re on.
An example is to sell 1,000 books on 50 podcasts appearances over the next 6 months.
Another example is to grow your email list by 20% over the next 8 weeks.
For me, my goal is fill up my waitlist for my group program launch in March.
As such, specifically, my goal is to grow my email list by 50% (600 people total) of high-buying intent multi-6 figure entrepreneurs who want to write and launch their book in 2025 and 2026.
Write down your meaningful goal for your podcast tour (or come to the workshop next week and we can do it together).
Step 2. Nail CTA
What do you want people to do after they hear your episode?
Do you want them to buy your book and get your bonus?
Book a call with you?
Watch your masterclass?
A useful example is for them to go to your landing page or book website and buy your book in exchange for your exclusive bonus (available only to book buyers).
Here are some examples of bonuses that my past clients have created, as well as an example of what Amy Porterfield did.
You want to make your bonus irresistible, exclusive, and extremely high-value (possibly a $500 value or more).
You also want to make it outcome-oriented and as much of a push-button solution as possible.
Instead of calling it, “Sex Life Resources,” I would call it something like, “Get 30 Orgasms in the Next 30 Days.”
Build out the delivery and landing pages before you go on tour, so that you know exactly what CTA to give to your host in the shownotes.
Step 3. Craft Your Story
Now that you have an irresistible CTA, that not only incentivizes people to buy your book and join your list, we now need to craft a podcast episode that warms the kettle to naturally lead to a boiling point.
Re: profitable storytelling.
This podcast episode is a prime example of how transparency, authenticity, and honesty creates affinity with people. Anne Beiler, founder of Auntie Anne’s pretzels, shares how she created a pretzel empire from a single recipe and a shameful secret. Take a listen:
This is why Anne’s episode matters to you: 👇👇
I recently listened to a podcast episode about an author who grew up as a plural wife in a fundamentalist Mormon household, but she was secretive about what was in her book. She said we needed to read the book first to learn the tall tales.
The problem with that approach is that she gave me no reason to want to continue listening to her episode, much less buy her book.
She got my attention, but she didn’t keep it.
You must not only keep attention, but you must keep it long enough to convert it.
👇👇
This formula is how you tell your story to attract, keep, and convert your podcast listeners’ attention:
Notice how it leads naturally and easily to the CTA pitch at the end.
“Thank you all for listening. I have even more in the book. Right now the book is on sale from $19.99 to $12.99, and if you just go down to the link in the shownotes and enter your email address and your purchase receipt number, you will get free access to a mini-course on how to get five 5-figure clients in the next 24 weeks. Thanks for having me on, it’s been a pleasure!”
Your listener is distracted AF.
(If you don’t know what AF means, just ask
, she’ll tell you.)Your story and value must follow a predictable pattern that humans all understand, even if she’s scrubbing the toilet or running to pick up her kids.
When you do that, and also tack on an irresistible, memorable CTA at the end, your listeners are more likely to click your link then-and-there, or remember to click it later when their subconscious reminds them about you and the solution to bring.
This is all about producing epiphanies and value-bombs.
Design your podcast episode accordingly.
Step 4. Choose Right Shows
Now that you know what you’re going to say, and the unique value your story and book bring to the table, then and only then do you find the right shows that match your mission.
Kelly Mosser’s thesis is that entrepreneurs make the expensive mistake of first finding shows that make sense, then wing the episode, fumble the CTA, and pray someone Googles them later.
You won’t make that mistake, because you reverse-engineered your outcome.
Once you have nailed your episode and CTA, you will then target 15-30 Top 10%+ Global podcasts that fit your mission and pitch to them.
At a minimum, in order to see an ROI from your podcast tour, guest on 15-30 podcasts both before AND after your launch date (30-60 podcasts total, minimum. If you’ve got big goals, which I know you do, go for 60-120).
There are 3 main ways to find the right shows:
PodMatch.com or other similar matching sites (that you pay for but save you a ton of time) (affiliate link)
Personal podcast databases (that you personally collect or buy, usually come with contact information)
Listennotes.com (free-ish but need to find contact info and build manually)
If you decide to build a pitch list manually, here’s my recommendation:
Choose
5 Top 8-10% podcasts
5 Top 2-8% podcasts
5 Top 2-0.5% podcasts
You will need to guest on 10ish Top 10%-5% podcasts before a higher-ranking podcast says yes to you, but this isn’t always true.
One of my clients guested on a Top 2% podcast within 5 guest appearances. It’s totally possible.
Now, drumroll…
You have successfully completed putting together your author podcast tour.
Congratulations.
I’m so freaking proud of you!
Now go borrow some audiences and grow your business!
If this sounds exciting to you, and you’d like do this together and get some momentum, come to the workshop next week.
✨ “How to Use Your Book Launch to Make a Breakthrough in Your Business in 2025”
Here’s what we’re going to cover:
Day 1 (1/15): The Viral Book Formula (that sells thousands of copies!)
Day 2 (1/16): Your Launch Strategy (sell 10,000 copies in Year 1 using only 2 things)
Day 3 (1/17): Your Podcast Episode & Your Podcast Tour
(Not only plan your podcast tour, but ALSO get the goods on how to write a viral book and launch it to the stars.)
Register here and come play (25 spots 16 spots available).
Can’t wait to see you there.
Much love,
Renee
P.S. If this email is in your Promotions folder — go ahead and drag it to your main Inbox folder. Thanks!