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Choosing executive leaders as your podcast’s target audience can be tough. With the busyness they face daily, one may think that sitting down to listen to a show is the last thing these people do. That is why you have to make your podcast worth their time because once they do listen, the rewards will just be amazing. So how do you do it? Tracy Hazzard lets us in on her on-air podcast coaching with Elizabeth Bachman, the host of Speakers Who Get Results. Together, they discuss how to reach busy executive women by having a re-energized podcast content strategy. They go in-depth into LinkedIn Live, keeping your existing clients engaged and converting new ones by getting them to take action. Learn how to not only build a number of connections but also quality ones as Tracy and Elizabeth give some tips and tricks to improving your podcast game.

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Reaching Busy Executive Women with a Re-energized Podcast Content Strategy – On-Air Podcast Coaching with Elizabeth Bachman, host of Speakers Who Get Results

We’re going to do one of our coaching sessions and I’ve got Elizabeth Bachman here. Elizabeth is a client. She’s got a fabulous show called Speakers Who Get Results. She is very methodical about what she does. She’s strategic in her thinking and tactical in how she executes. I love that about Elizabeth. She’s always thinking about how to improve, how to up her game, what the strategy is. She shows up on coaching calls. She’s a gift as a client. We absolutely love those clients who participate in the process because they have a higher likelihood for success. When I reached out into our community and said I was going to feature six of our clients on these coaching calls, Elizabeth was one of the first to take action, jump on, and be able to come on the show with me here.

What I love about Elizabeth’s show is that it has a targeted audience. It’s got a specific business purpose. It’s exactly the show that many of you out there are creating. Yours might be different. It might be in health and wellness and hers is in corporate speaking and improving that. She’s got a great background and that background leads to deep insights, great guests, great topics and a great view on how she can help her clients. It’s not your typical coach doing the same thing. Elizabeth has her niche. She has her uniqueness and that has come across in her show.

Elizabeth Bachman is the go-to person for advanced level training and speaking presentation skills, sales and leadership. She has a lifetime spent perfecting the art of presenting. She helps high-level clients master a message that brings the funding they need, the allies they want and the recognition they deserve. She’s a sought-after speaker and strategist in Silicon Valley. Nationally and internationally, Elizabeth works with leaders and influencers who need to become concise and compelling presenters. She helps them present as smart, down to earth, loose, friendly and even funny and still be taken seriously. As Elizabeth has directed such luminaries as Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo in more than 50 operas around the world, giving her a wealth of tools to help business professionals become respected presenters. She’s fluent in five languages and is adept at working with presenters from many countries, bringing her global experience to our clients. Strategic speaking for results when you want to make a difference, not just a point. I love that catchphrase. That line is great.

Elizabeth’s Speakers Who Get Results is an interesting podcast. You definitely want to check it out. It’s got different guests that we see. There’s a lot of these speaker podcasts that are focused on the programmatic side of speaking like how do you get more stages, how do you pitch event planners. This is not. This is focused on how you improve your presentation skills. It’s internal speaking as well as external speaking and she addresses both. We’re going to talk about her outcome and strategy of what she’s looking for. Elizabeth is looking for a dialed-in, how do I reach the right clients and use my podcast as an example for why they should work with me, how it is to work with me and compel them to come and meet me and have that conversation so that they can be on a path to becoming my client. That’s Elizabeth’s outcome and the look of what she’s trying to go with for her show. Let’s talk about her challenges and see if we can shift her outcome for 2021.

Elizabeth, Speakers Who Get Results, I love talking with you because you’re a pro.

Thank you, Tracy, so are you. I’m happy when I was going to be a pro and was going to go with the pros. I’m thrilled to have you guys be doing this for me.

Busy Executive Women: Don’t care about the number of connections you have. Care about the quality of that connection and if it’s putting you in the right community.

We love working with you. Some of the things here, Elizabeth, is that your shows come along. You’re over 50 episodes. You’ve gotten some learnings under your belt. I’ve listened to some of the episodes and compared to the early ones, you’re much more relaxed. You’ve got things going on. You’ve got great original guests who most of us have never heard of before because your reach is international. You have an interesting audience. You don’t see the same guests on your show that you see on everyone else’s show and that’s a great benefit.

Thank you. I’m asking people who are interesting.

If you’re interested in them, then they’re interesting to your audience as well. When we were talking a little bit earlier, you were talking about some of the types of things that you’re trying to accomplish as a show. Let’s talk about the fact that your show was built so that you could reach a specific profile of client to attract them to become your client. Talk a little bit about what that is.

I am a presentation skills trainer and I’m a former opera director. I’m using the opera skills to help high-level women in tech and law, women who are hitting a glass ceiling to use presentation skills to help them be heard. A lot of my podcast is information. How do you do this? How do you get out there? How do you talk to people? I have no idea if I’m reaching the high-level corporate women that I’m looking for. That’s the thing I would like to solve. I think I’ve got fabulous content. How can I get them to find me?

Let’s take that on as a challenge. When we first started your show, there was the two levels of it. One is that you wanted to also service the existing clients that you have, which you’ve been doing. You’ve got solo shows. You’re serving your existing client base. You’re giving them topics. You’ve got some things going on. You indicated to me that that’s working. Tell me why that’s working and how that works in your show.

It’s another way of setting up my content, the sorts of things that I say all the time. I’ll be talking to a client and they say, “We’re having this and this and this issue,” and I say, “Go back to April 14th. There’s a good podcast episode about it. Here it is.” The other thing that I’ve done is I’ve set up a resources page on my website right next to the podcast page. That’s where I’m posting a lot of the resources that are either solo shows, talking about how do you make a data-heavy speech interesting or men and women not communicating some gender communication issues or particular guests who are helpful. Fundamentally, it’s putting an online course out there. I’m just doing it in the forum of podcast episodes.

Busy Executive Women: Posting consistently every single day during the same time of day, the more likely people are going to reward you with an invitation to LinkedIn Live.

Maybe one strategy as you start to get more shows here is to have a special feed on that page as well so that they could sit there and listen to all those selected episodes. I call it a favorites list, but you could call it whatever you want. We can create a spin-off feed that is what you consider to be the best one-on-one episodes for someone who’s new to you, who’s finding it out and you can go there and they go to the page. It looks exactly like your other podcast page. It has a private feed to it so that they have to listen to in your website because you want them to go to the quiz. You want to be able to serve them up and all the other things. You don’t want them listening in Apple and other places.

You want them listening on your page. They can go there and they could get the shortlist of the ones that they should start from if they’re getting their feet wet, trying to understand why this is important and what they can do with it. You can also have a private page eventually for clients behind a portal if you’ve got a course and you’ve got other things. You can also create shows that are behind that pay gate essentially. That’s a future option for you as well with your client base in terms of how you’re servicing them. I think we could better shift the two things together. You’ve got great shows that are supposed to attract executive women and helping them get results from speaking. Maybe not on stages though but speaking to audiences, making a presentation to boards of directors, that type of model and that’s the new client base or the new clients you’d like to attract.

Your existing clients are looking to you to get continued success. They may have hired you, you did a project with them but they’ve got also to keep themselves up and they’ve got to brush up and improve over time as well. You’re serving that existing client base, new clients and existing clients. We want to maybe balance out what you’re doing to get both at the same time. That’s what we’re looking for from a strategy. Let’s think about what those shows are structured like. You mentioned to me that your new clients and your existing clients, but the new ones especially are busy. It’s hard to get their attention. From a marketing perspective, what are you doing besides the podcast, to get attention in that world, in that realm of the target demographic?

The best way I get attention is by doing speeches. Speaking is a lead generation thing for me. If I knew the right podcasts that these women listen to, I would then apply to be a guest there because that’s another way of doing my thing and telling my story. That is my best lead generator.

What about LinkedIn? Are you successful using LinkedIn?

I am working on doing more on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is helpful. It is still a backup. Every once in a while, I get someone out of the blue on LinkedIn, but mostly someone has heard from me through referrals. People say, “Yes, you know about Elizabeth. You should know about her.” Every once in a while, there’s someone who’s heard me on a podcast but most of the time it’s someone I know who’s referred them.

I’m going to suggest maybe repurposing because what I like to do is make sure that we’re using the assets you already have. What you’re already doing, let’s use them in a different way and see if we can get better results. Let’s make incremental improvements here because we don’t need to throw everything out and start all over again. I’m not a fan of that. You’re doing some things that are working right here. There’s no reason to mess with that. Let’s see if now we can maximize that to get a more targeted or a better result with the right audience. LinkedIn is much more executively driven than the other social media platforms. Chances are that your high-profile women have to have a presence there whether they want to or not.

They have to participate there. They check it out. They’re probably inundated with horrendous private messages that tell them that everyone should have virtual coffee with them. I don’t know about you, but I get them probably every five minutes. They’re not going to respond to that. They’re too busy for that. That violates every rule of relationship building that we’ve all learned. Someone out there still thinks it works and does it. That’s not what we’re going to go here. We’re going to go and do what you do when you’re on stage and they see you, which is you’re going to be you. You’re going to show how great you are. Having a LinkedIn posting strategy is extremely important. You’re already curating a community.

You’re friending the right people. You’re connecting with the right people. People are referring you to others who connect with you via LinkedIn. You invite all your audience to connect with you as well when you give a speech, whether it’s virtual or live. When you do that, you’re inviting that audience to connect with you. Those right people, because you were in front of the right audiences, their community starts to become your community. Now we’re cultivating it within the right community of people and being very careful about that, being careful of who you let in. I have it where I get a lot of vendors in the podcast industry reach out to me and on Fiverr and other stuff. I’m careful not to allow them into my LinkedIn network, that I refuse them.

I don’t care about the number of connections I have. I care about the quality of that connection if it’s putting me in the right community. That’s our strategy. If we’ve got those right people in our community, someone is bound to see what we’re doing and share it with others. That will then be more of the right community. How can we get them to share little bits and pieces of our podcasts, of our shows, of our tips, of our great ideas? One of the strategies that I’ve found that works for myself, it works for many other clients, I’m going to call them co-op groups that go and do this together as a team. They like each other’s stuff and comment on each other’s because that’s important to create engagement.

They put out a post that usually poses a question. The video that you attach to it is the answer to the question or feeding what you’re pondering and what you’re thinking about in some way, shape or form. It’s usually 1 to 2 minutes long. It’s not a very long video. It can be a clip from anywhere in any of your podcasts. It’s easy to take a clip. You can use a free tool like Headliner and create an audiogram if you don’t have video from your show. You can also create a clip in places like Repurpose.io, Restream, and all of those other places where you can create clips or you can come back to us, Elizabeth, and ask for clips. These are the things that can be done. This is the hard part for those of us who are busy. You want to carefully curate the section yourself because it needs to be what you believe is the most valuable point of what you said for the community that you’re trying to reach.

I’ve got a podcast, an interview of somebody or if there’s a solo show and I say, “Here’s the best part,” then I could go to you and say, “Could you make me a one-minute clip from here to here?”

Busy Executive Women: If you get the women to then take the action, now you have a good potential client.

For those of you out there doing it yourself, you can use one of those tools that clip it right at the moment that you need it. Whether you work with a team or not, there’s a way to get that piece out so you don’t have to learn any editing skills. I can tell you that right now. Go to Headliner or go to Repurpose.io, or come to us and we’ll take care of it for you. That’s why we’re here. Doing those things and getting that short clip, it doesn’t need bumpers on it or pretty graphics on it. Its point is to look like you went on air and did it. LinkedIn Live is new and upcoming. You have to be invited to be able to do LinkedIn Live. I would love to see you get to do that, Elizabeth.

I’m waiting for them to answer me.

I know, and so are so many of us. The trick that I had heard that can get you doing this is if you post consistently every single day at the same time of day a video clip, or at least every three days or something like that. If you do that, they’re more likely to reward you with an invitation to LinkedIn Live. This is a trick to get them to show you this is what you’re going to do when you do LinkedIn Live. When they see the engagement and the value of it, that’s going to get your invitation sent to you. I think that’s a good strategy for you.

In the posting portion, you’re going to pose the question of or something you want to get engagement on in the comments area. That’s where you want to pick your clip just right. If you did want to know where women are getting their information, do an episode about where you get your information, how you stay up on your industry or something like that. Take a clip from that and then ask the question, “Where do you improve your speaking game or how do you?” Asking an open-ended question, not a yes or no one obviously. Trying to put a question in there or something that spurs engagement, “Do you believe in this and why?” Those are things that you can do. What tactics have you used?

I post questions and I reach out, share and comment. There are a couple of groups that I’m part of where we comment. I do it when people pop up in my feed rather than saying, “Today, I’m going to be promoting Tracy Hazzard and tomorrow I’m going to be promoting somebody else.” I am not consistent about it. I do it when they pop up in my feed.

Let’s have a strategy, a plan. Let’s think about that. That’s a way to go about this. If you’re thinking and you’re saying, “I have an episode that comes out every single week. There’s got to be 2 or 3 clips from each episode I could post on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday, post my episode on a Tuesday,” or whatever day it goes live. “On a Thursday, I will share something of my guest. I will share their video, their podcast if they’re a host, their article if they’re a writer, a speech they gave, a YouTube video,” whatever it is. If you can get it from within LinkedIn, better off. If you can’t get it from outside and bring it in, that’s okay too. Now you have five days. You created five days, five posts that you can plan ahead because you record your episodes ahead.

I can plan that ahead. Once the podcast publishes, I would do this after it publishes so people can click on it right away.

After it publishes, but you can tease up to it because you are likely to have your clips ahead of time if you’ve recorded enough ahead. You’re likely to have your little clip you can play and the podcast is coming up on Thursday or whatever day of the week you launch yours. You can tease up to that as well in the post. As soon as the episode airs, in the comments of that old post that was two days earlier, not that old, you can add the link and say, “This episode is live now in its entirety. Here’s the link,” and sending them to the blog post for the website with that episode there and not to Apple. Now you’re able to take what was the short post and give them the longer place to go.

Everyone who commented within that who has their notification set on gets the notification that your episode is live. Now you’re increasing your listenership as well. It’s a simplified strategy. You can use a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite. We use MeetEdgar here. You can create that system for setting that up or you can hire a virtual assistant. You can have someone who handles the scheduling of these posts. What I do personally is my social team receives my host notification email that comes from Podetize. They receive that because it has all the asset links in it. They plan out the daily episodes based on my strategy of what I’ve given them. I want a video post on day one. I want a quote post on day two.

I have the plan laid out for what goes where and what those look like. They do a lot of the writing and a lot of the posting and I do all the approving. That’s how we do it with the system. I’ll go over and approve it before it’s allowed to post live. We’re 1 to 2 weeks ahead of time. Occasionally, they don’t have the full link until a couple of days before. They’ll go back in and edit it, but I’ve already approved everything else. It makes it very simple for it to flow through. I never think about it. In LinkedIn, I have my notifications turned on. The minute someone comments though, I see the comments and I’m able to go in there and start engaging with them live because I can see that flash on my phone.

There isn’t any missed opportunity in the engagement side of them. You must turn those notifications on. Even if you turn off all the other ones, turn those ones on so when people comment on your posts and engage. That might be a great strategy for you because what’s going to happen is you’re showing them. You’re not telling them, “Come work with me.” You’re showing them the tips, the kinds of things, what it’s like to work with you and what it’s like to hear the great advice and deep experience you have, Elizabeth, because you have tremendous experience here. I think that you also may want to shift some of the content to be talking about not just speaking on stage but speaking in different situations and creating a variety.

You’re choosing the clips that make it clear. When you post, you’re talking about like, “This is a great boardroom strategy.” You’re putting it in context. As a reader, as a listener, as a viewer, I know when I might be able to use this. If this applies to me, it becomes clearer. I like your solo shows, Elizabeth. They have a lot of strength to them. They have a lot of great stories in them and deep experience. I do love that you reference other interviews and other shows that you do from within your solo shows. You’re creating a dynamic cross-feeding of the different episodes, which is great.

It’s on purpose.

You’re planning that in. I love it. What we want to start to drive then is what’s in it for me. How can I improve? How can I get better results? That’s the name of your show. That’s what you’re about. How can I get better results for what I want to achieve as a high-value executive woman? Whether it’s, “I need it to convince my board. I’ve got to convince investors,” whatever that model is, that’s what’s in it for me. Always thinking about that in how you’re messaging things, when you’re putting it out there, that’s the crux of everything. A good example of this is your quiz offer at the end. When you have that quiz offer, the way you make the offer is nice. It’s an invitation to come to do that, but you’re forgetting to tell the audience what the outcome for them might be by taking the quiz.

We’re getting very attuned to having a lot of quizzes and having a lot of self-assessments going on in the virtual world. Everyone has one on their website. It’s becoming prevalent but for the most part, we realized that they’re lead generators, not necessarily evaluators. Yours is an evaluator. It’s helping me evaluate where I am, where I might need more work, where I have strengths. It’s helping in that evaluation process. It’s helping you evaluate them too but it’s helping with a self-evaluation view. Making it clear that I’m going to get a lot of insight from taking your quiz, what’s in it for me again, that could get you more traction into that process. You’ve not only met and been in front of executive women that you wanted to, but you’ve got them to take action.

I do always invite people. If you’d like to see how your presentation skills are going, go to my four-minute quiz, SpeakForResultsQuiz.com, and that’s where you can see where you’re strong and where you might need a little bit of support.

Strengthening what you’re saying there, Elizabeth, is probably more important. You’re not saying anything wrong. It’s just not compelling enough to demonstrate to me why I need this. How can we strengthen the part that says the most common problems we see is that you’re not as influential or you’re not as persuasive as you could be in your speaking process? Why don’t you see where you fall on the spectrum of persuasiveness? I’m making this up because I have taken your quiz to be honest some time ago. I don’t remember what all the questions are.

If you do that, if you have a section or you know that this is the most common area that is weak for the executive women you want to reach, you want to push them into that nagging doubt that I may already have that I’m weak here. Pick 2 or 3 and switch them up when you do the invitation and see which one starts to get more play. If you use one in a given weekend, then you see a boost in your quiz. You’re like, “That one hit a hot button.” If you get the women to then take the action, now you have a good potential client. They’re already self-screening through that process by taking action. You know that they’re going to become good clients because they’ll show up on the coaching calls. They’ll do what you say you’re supposed to do. They’ll participate in the process.

We want those active people. If we’re not getting them to take it because we’re not compelling them enough to make them realize, “I need this,” then we’re not helping them get out of their own way. In general, I think that that’s part of what it is for you is that your client base or your potential client base doesn’t understand the value of not doing it. What’s the cost of me not playing at a top game? That’s an interesting view of it rather than the cost is paying you and then an unknown gain and improvement. If it costs me something that I’m going to lose, people don’t want to lose out on something. If it means I’m going to lose a deal or I’m going to lose my position on a board or I’m going to lose the next promotion, that has a high value to me. I don’t want to lose something.

That’s brilliant, Tracy. Thanks. It tells me exactly where I need to change things.

I love the idea for you of taking a more leadership role with this group of women that you want to reach, both your existing client base. That’s one of the things is you can encourage them via LinkedIn through the tagging in the comments field, you can link a client. You’re recognizing clients. You might say, “@JulietClark, I know you do this brilliantly.” You’re typing in the comments. “Share the story about this or share a tip about this.” You’re inviting your clients to participate in the engagement of the post. You didn’t tag them all at the top of the post because that’s tacky. Do you know those posts that put @ at all these people’s names? Do it in the comments field and with a targeted amount, and don’t do more than one client per post so it’s not overwhelming and spammy. This strategy is going to help you keep engaging your existing client base and helping them improve over time.

When you’re in front of them and you’re giving them both acknowledgment, you acknowledge them as an expert because you ask them for a tip because they’ve gone through your program. You’ve asked them for a tip, you’ve acknowledged them. On the other side of that, it compels them to return the favor too. The Law of Reciprocity kicks in. They also say, “Thank you, Elizabeth.” They thank you in that process, which now creates an association of the value that they received. Whether they give you a testimony on that process or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that they thanked you. All of that provides continual growth, support and community so that the potential new clients out there are looking at that going, “This isn’t someone who’s putting out some spammy posts, got some social media strategists working for them or some virtual assistants phoning it in for them. This is a person who is participating in the process. This is authentic. This is an expert and she has real clients too.” All of that removes barriers of the process of hiring you.

Thank you so much. That’s what I want. That’s why I wanted to be on this show to get you to help on the great things. Now that I’m up and running, how do I make it better?

Let’s tweak. We’re not making giant moves because you’re doing a lot right and you’ve got to give it the time, but these tiny little tweaks are going to shift us into the right audience. That’s where we want to go with that.

Busy Executive Women: Speaker Who Get Results Podcast

I’ll have to come back and tell you how it goes.

Speakers Who Get Results, Elizabeth, a great show. There are lots of us out there who could use improvements in it. You’ve got some interesting guests that have different views on the world. I personally love your view as an artist because you have an opera background and I have a love for the arts. More on the visual side and then the performing side but I still absolutely love the idea of combining art and business. You do that well. I can see why your tech clients love you because that’s a product-based view, an outcome-based view of the world, not a sales view of the world, not a persuasion for persuasions purpose. It has power and story in it as well.

Thank you. One of the things that I’ve often thought about in my 30 years in opera is that if you put it in a business context, my job was to take a team of very smart, talented, opinionated people and get them all pointed in the same direction. I pull the best out of each person as we went and then deliver results by a deadline because 8:00 Saturday night is going to roll around and there will be people who paid a lot of money for those tickets.

That’s under great pressure. That’s exactly the definition though of those of us leading teams, leading companies. We have to do the same thing. It’s just a different model of deliverable.

It’s a different vocabulary.

Elizabeth, we look forward to more shows from you. I look forward to seeing the shift. I look forward to seeing your posts in LinkedIn. I’m glad we’re already friends over there. Everyone can check out Speakers Who Get Results anywhere you listen to podcasts. Also, don’t forget to connect up to Elizabeth’s website. Check out her quiz so that you can see what a true self-assessment quiz is as well. Thanks for reading. Thank you, Elizabeth, for being here and being willing to be a coaching guinea pig.

Important Links:

• Speakers Who Get Results
• Headliner
• Repurpose.io
• Restream
• Buffer
• HootSuite
• MeetEdgar
• SpeakForResultsQuiz.com

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