022 Doug Sandler: Marketing Through Podcasts

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In this episode, Barbara and Doug discuss:

Using a podcast to boost your community
Distributing your podcast
Figuring out your show format

Key Takeaways:

A podcast can be an engaging tool in social media
Make sure to use royalty-free music, otherwise you risk your podcast being bumped
Having the goals of your podcast outlined first will give your podcast direction

“Let the pro’s do what the pro’s do best, and you do what you do best. Don’t worry about the learning curve of all that back-end admin to do your show.” — Doug Sandler

  Transcription

022 Doug Sandler

Barbara Hales: Welcome to the latest episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors. This is your host, Dr. Barbara Hales, and today we’re talking about podcasts. Health professionals and businesses nowadays are increasingly using podcasts to improve their prospects. And for those doctors considering a concierge practice, podcasting is a powerful marketing tool.

Podcasts have become the new talk radio on mobile devices. In fact, the increased usage of mobile devices has led to the explosive growth of podcasting. Today we have the good fortune to have Doug Sandler on the show, a maven in podcasting. Doug is a business leader with over 30 years of experience building a successful business as a professional speaker, writer, entertainer, and podcaster producer. His book, Nice Guys Finish First as a number one ranked Amazon bestseller. And his podcast, The Nice Guys on Business has been downloaded, get this guys, nearly 3.5 million times in 175 countries. Welcome, Doug.

Doug Sandler: I’m just tired listening to that. Thanks Barbara. Thanks for having me on the show. I’m excited to be here and congratulations on the early success of your new show, and it’s not so new anymore. You’re getting to be a veteran at it, so congratulations to you.

Barbara Hales: Yes, thank you. One of the benefits, as you know of podcast is having increased traffic. They help you reach out to new audiences for your business. They build familiarity with a wide range of audiences, and your audience may recommend the podcast to others who may be interested in them, thus increasing your reach considerably. I think you’re a great example of growing downloads, Doug, and traffic generation. Could you please tell our audience how you attracted more listeners and how you got your meteoric rise?

Doug Sandler: Sure. And I appreciate you asking the question, good one. In the beginning, when I first started podcasting back in 2015 I really didn’t know all of the benefits to podcasting. I had no idea what it was about, how to really reach an audience. And we just stumbled upon some really great strategies that would help us boost our community. First way that we use podcasting to boost our community is by actually going on other podcasts. When I come on a show like yours, I’m exposed to a whole different market. I’m exposed to doctors that are listening for marketing tips and while that might not necessarily be a direct line of who my ideal customer is, it’s amazing how many of those community members in your community and others have come back to us and said, “Hey, I heard you on Barbara’s show or I heard you on John’s show. Would you be interested or would you be open to sharing a little bit about your services?”

So that was one way. The other way is just through social engagement, through taking the show and not using it as a broadcasting tool, but actually using it as an engagement tool on social media. Somebody listening to our show, we can engage them on social media as long as we know who they are and oftentimes they’ll reach out to us when we share our social channels, our social handles on our show as well.

Barbara Hales: Well, that’s great advice. Podcast also helps in building better relationships with listeners. It gives a feeling that the listeners know the person speaking on the podcast. Such a good relationship helps in building trust and we certainly can use you again as an example. You’re easygoing manner and rapport between you and your partners Strickland is entertaining and funny while getting your messages across. How did you and Strick form the partnership?

Doug Sandler: It’s interesting. We go back 20 plus years. We were both represented as entertainers by the same agent in in Washington, DC and when I moved out to LA and he moved to Austin, Texas, we just continued the relationship. We started the show before we both made the move and so our banter back and forth does give us an opportunity to share a lot of that insight information and our business experience. He being the president of a large agency and me being an entrepreneur and owning a bunch of businesses, it gave us a really good variety of topics to talk about and then when you put a third person in the mix, I guess, that has some experience and knowledge on their own, it really does create an entertaining and educational experience for our listeners.

Barbara Hales: That’s one thing that’s great with technology, all of you in terms of partnerships as well as listeners could be anywhere in the world and still be in touch as though you are in the next room.

Doug Sandler: Yeah, and we are, I mean, it’s great. Our listeners, our community oftentimes thinks that we are in the same room, although we’re half a country apart. And the same with my guests. Very rare, just like in this interview, I’m today in Santa Cruz. I live in LA, but I’m in Santa Cruz today. And you’re in your home and what’s interesting about it, or your office, and as we talk about this, 99% of my clients or my guests are remote. I very rarely do a face to face interview and I’ve done, geez, almost 1000 episodes and almost 700 of them have been interview episodes. I probably have only done five of them face to face.

Barbara Hales: Wow. Well, as you know podcasts are easy to create, at least working with you it seems that way. Creating a podcast does not involve a lot of steps. The equipment required for it is reasonably priced and also available easily. You would need a good quality microphone and headphones for creating a podcast. What microphone do you recommend for our listeners?

Doug Sandler: Well, it depends on whether I’m traveling like I am today. A really simple microphone. This is called the ATR2100, it’s a $70 microphone, very inexpensive. It’s just plug and play USB connection to my computer. My Bose headset, I have just little earbuds or you could use headphones like you use over the ear headphones and you could probably get earbuds or headphones for probably less than $50. So for about 150 bucks you can have the equipment. Or in my home set up, I have a studio in my home and I think the microphone might have been 150 bucks. And I’ve been using that same microphone and this same ear buds for the last five years. So very inexpensive upfront regarding equipment for your podcast.

Barbara Hales: And you’ve certainly gotten your money’s worth,

Doug Sandler: I would say so. I think I’ve gotten my money’s worth. I don’t think ATR or Blue was making much money from me. I recommend their microphones all the time, so I’m hoping they’re making a little bit money on that side.

Barbara Hales: Once you’ve created the podcast, you can start promoting it to increase its exposure and reach out to a larger audience as you know. For this, you would need to make the podcast available on a variety of distribution channels. How did you do this?

Doug Sandler: And you asked some great questions, Barbara, and I appreciate the research that you’ve actually done in putting this together. So as far as distribution goes and how do you find the distribution? You need a couple of different sources in the beginning. You need a host that will house your podcast. That’s where your template for your show goes. So, every time I make a recording and edit that recording, after it’s done editing, I put it up to my host.

Doug Sandler: The host then sends it to what we call an aggregator. The aggregator is a distribution source, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Pandora, Google Podcast, Stitcher, Overcast. These are all areas where you want to distribute your show. And depending on who your host is, they may distribute it for you at no additional charge, or no additional labor for you. It’s very easy to do. So you want to look for a host that actually has a wide range of distribution sources for your show. And the one we use is just a company called Libsyn.

Barbara Hales: Well, that’s a good idea. Where would royalty music be obtained if you wanted to have music on your show?

Doug Sandler: Great. Yeah, you definitely don’t want to use commercial music because if you use a song just because it’s a toe-tapper or something that you really into, but it’s commercially produced, meaning you didn’t create that song and you don’t have permission to use it. Any of the platforms that you’re going to go on are going to either bump that episode if they hear that music because they have a digital ways of trying to figure out if you’re using copyrighted music. Or they’re going to pull your show altogether and you don’t want to have to deal with the hassle there.

So, if you just go to Google and you type in royalty free music, you can probably find a whole host of variety of companies that do it. We use a company called AudioHero, it’s a subscription service and we use it for our clients and that enables us to get royalty free music. We don’t have to worry about our shows being pulled or bumped from any of the distribution sources. And again, relatively inexpensive for just a couple of dollars. For less than 100 bucks you have music that you can use for a lifetime.

Barbara Hales: That’s great. One of the biggest compliments that I got was on a song that I created being asked if I had permission to use it.

Doug Sandler: That’s good. “Hey, where did you get that great piece of music?” “Well, I wrote that song.” That’s great Barbara. Good story. I love that.

Barbara Hales: What format do you suggest for putting together a podcast? There’s a formula perhaps when you’re thinking about doing a podcast. So how would the audience think about creating one themselves?

Doug Sandler: So before I answer that, let me come back to something that I think is pretty important before you even start podcasting. You have to understand what your goals are for podcasting. Is your goal to build influence, to build community? Do you have goal of making money from your show? The goal of your show will help you determine, to answer your question, will help you determine the format of your show.

So, if you want to build influence and you do a monologue episode, it’s going to be challenging for you to build a community just doing monologue episodes. So, if your goal is to be an influencer, you want to invite other influencers on your show because you’re going to be guilty by association. So, if I’m an entrepreneur and I want to be an influencer in that space, Arianna Huffington, Gary Vaynerchuk, some really big names when it comes to entrepreneurial vision would be guests on my show.

So for me, an interview based show to gain influence is a way to go. Also, if you want to build community, you want might want to look at your show as an interview based show, but you’re interviewing other community builders, people that have large social followings. So a format of a show, monologue, interview based, mornings zoo format, panel discussions. There are so many different formats and you have to figure out what your goals are for your show and based upon your goals, start to weave in and out of, okay, well, how do I backend? How do I reverse engineer this so that I build a show that’s all about monetization? Or a show that’s all about influencer? A show that’s all about community building? And that will help you to determine what the format of your show should be.

Barbara Hales: That’s a great tip Doug. Do you have any other tips for us?

Doug Sandler: Wow, jeez, that’s a loaded question. I could spend the next two hours just giving you a tidbit of information about how to build a proper podcast. The thing I would really stress with people that are looking to get into the podcasting space. And it is a great opportunity for those, especially in the professional services arena. Doctors are ripe for this because they can do things like if they want to build their practice, they can invite on their show referral sources for patients that come into their practice and interview them, build a relationship with them and help them to see why it would be important for them to use that doctor’s office or that practice as a referral source. So there are many, many opportunities to use this as a business builder.

You could use it as a passion project if you’re not looking to make money, but you have something that you’re passionate about and want to share that message with a community and grow a community. You could use it that way as well. So many different opportunities. But the thing to really stress, if it came to, if there was one tip that I would have the opportunity to share it with those that are in your community, it’s just like your practice. You are not as a doctor let’s say, you’re not up at your front desk welcoming people into your practice. You’re not weighing the people as they come in the door if you’re a family physician, let’s say. You’re not doing all of those activities that you have other team members doing for you or alongside you with you to support your practice.

And I would say the same thing with podcasting. Do what you do best. Talk about the subject. You are an expert in marketing. You shouldn’t necessarily know how to, or need to know how to, or deal with the practice of producing your own show. Why would you have to deal with the social media side? Why do you need to deal with the editing? I encourage people as they’re listening to this, if you do decide to get into podcasting, let the pros do what the pros do best and you do what you do best, and don’t have to worry about the learning curve of all of that. All of that backend admin to do your show.

Barbara Hales: Well, that is absolutely great advice and that kind of segues into what I was going to say next. Many health professionals and businesses have already started augmenting podcasts into their marketing strategies. It helps to convey your messages and shows you to be an authority in your field. Doug, you have a business of editing and putting together podcasts for other people, so I really wanted our audience know about that. Could you share a bit about this and how people can reach you for your services?

Doug Sandler: Sure. Thanks, Barbara. Yeah, there’s a couple of ways that we get involved with podcasters. The first area that I would always tell people to focus on is have a discovery call through a production company or a company that will help you build your podcast. That way you can start to narrow in on what your goals are for podcasting.

The next step after you did go through the discovery around is you want to put yourself in a position where you understand from concept to launch the steps that you need to take. And by hiring a production company like ours, you’re learning how to go through that process from concept to launch. You take your goals and you actually put together a template for your entire show. It usually is about a 30 to 60 day process beyond that discovery call. Then following the launch of your show, you want to make sure, again, you have a professional organization that’s editing and producing and distributing your show as well. So, between those three phases, that’s where we really pick up.

We do the discovery, we do the concept to launch, and then we do the production and beyond. And that’s really where our services come into play. The best way to reach us is just go to turnkeypodcast.com/gift G-I-F-T. We have a marketing piece. It’s five ways to make money podcasting. And if you have somebody in your community that says, hey, I like the idea of doing it, I just want to do it on my own, turnkeypodcast.com/diydoityourself, D-I-Y, and that’s our go it yourself course. And right now, we’re running a special on our DIY program, so it’s a newly launched program and we’re excited to have it out there.

Barbara Hales: Well, thanks so much, Doug. You’ve been really very helpful and I’m sure our audience will love hearing about you and working with you in the future.

Doug Sandler: Thanks Barbara. And I appreciate you having me on the show and I wish you a ton of success with your show, and as you continue to build it, I know your community is loving you, and they’re going to come back over and over again for you. So, thanks for having me on your show.

Barbara Hales: Thanks a lot.

Connect with Doug Sandler:  

Website: TurnkeyPodcast.com

Twitter: djdoug

Facebook: dj.doug.sandler

Website: turnkeypodcast.com

Email: doug@turnkeypodcast.com

Phone: (410) 340-6861

Instagram: turnkeypodcast

LinkedIn: doug-sandler

Connect with Barbara Hales: 

Twitter:   @DrBarbaraHales