How To Pitch To Be On A Podcast (Or Any Other Channel)

If you want to increase your visibility quickly, then outreach is the best way to do that. It puts you and your business where your target customer are already consuming content and helps to build trust with them (I talk more about all the reasons outreach is great for your marketing in What Is Outreach And Why Do You Need It?). For service-based businesses in particular, being on podcasts really allows you to connect and share your message with potential new clients in an intimate, concentrated way that social media or blogging just can’t compete with. In 2018, 36% of my income came directly from people who found me on other people’s podcasts.

But how do you actually get on a podcast? How do you pitch? What do you say? How long should the email be?

I have pitched to be on podcasts, and now I receive pitches for people wanting to come on Grow With Soul, so I know what works from both sides. It’s important to note however that any content owner, whether they are a podcast host, magazine editor or blogger, will have their own things they personally prefer to receive in pitches. Some people will want a couple of lines, some will want to be able to include their own ideas, some will want an easy yes/no decision. The point is that there is no one definitive, 100% effective pitch template – the advice in this post gives you some generics so you can tweak the details when you write your pitch.

Research

Don’t skip this one and jump straight to the next point! We all know we should research the podcast we’re pitching to, listen to it, take note of the style and sort of content they put out. But it’s amazing how many pitches I receive from people who either didn’t do this research, or if they did decided to disregard it.

Is it quite a practical podcast with takeaways, is it more philosophical and conversational? What are the topics and industries they cover? Who do they say they’re for?

It’s highly unlikely someone is going bend their structure to fit you, so when you’re pitching adjust your pitch to fit in with what they usually publish. So don’t pitch your idea about getting a promotion at work if the podcast is about entrepreneurship, and don’t pitch a long story if the podcast as more of a ‘how to’ style. I know it sounds obvious, but so many people don’t do this.

Pitch a topic, not yourself

Most of the pitches I receive are long emails with people telling me their business journeys, what they do and where they are now. A lot of these are very interesting, but I’m no clearer by the end of the email on what this podcast episode is actually going to be about. What are we going to talk about? What questions might I ask? What are the learning moments for my listeners?

In the nicest possible way, as podcast hosts we simply don’t have time to spend a few hours unpicking your email, reading between the lines and trying to draw out what the topics and takeaways from your story might be. I need to be able to see pretty immediately what this episode will be about and what the value is, so make it obvious – list the main talking points, show me the takeaways you expect people to have.

The rule of thumb I have when reading pitches is ‘what would the episode title be?’. If I can visualise that, it’s an easy yes to your pitch.

Keep it short

With pitching, your first obstacle is getting your email read, and there’s a much higher chance of that happening is your email is two paragraphs rather than two pages. I would personally always rather follow up with someone to get more information on an idea that’s sparked my interest than to have to slog through a long email with too much detail.

Make your email easy to read with short, sharp paragraphs – drafting it in advance and coming back to it a few hours or days later makes it much easier to objectively cut things out. Some people won’t like them, but a bullet point list always works for me.

Pitch structure

As I said at the beginning, different people will want to receive slightly different styles of pitches. However, any pitch you send will need to include the following:

THE IDEA

This is the most important thing, so I always like to see it first (yes, before you introduce yourself). This is the moment to be thinking about that episode title – what is the key, inspiring point that’s going to hook them in a keep reading?

THE DETAIL

Build upon your idea by showing the sorts of things you might talk about, the important points to get across and the value for the listener. This is where you can demonstrate that you’ve thought about why this pitch is best for their audience.

ABOUT YOU

We are all the least interesting thing about our pitches – it’s the idea and its value that’s most important. Close the email with a bit about you and what you do, with the aim being to show why you’re the person that the host needs to get on to talk about this topic.