Podcasting has become one of the most powerful tools in modern marketing, offering brands a unique way to connect with their audience. But with so many options—starting your own show, being a guest, or leveraging interviews for brand growth—where should businesses focus their efforts?
In this episode of Before You Market, we’re diving into the world of podcasting with one of the best in the business. Tom Schwab, Chief Evangelist Officer at Interview Valet, helps brands and entrepreneurs grow their reach through Podcast Interview Marketing. He knows what works, what doesn’t, and how businesses can use podcasting to have real, meaningful conversations with their audience.
We explore the biggest missed opportunities in podcasting, the fear of “no one listening,” and how to track success. Plus, Tom shares expert insights on brand positioning, guest strategy, and what makes a podcast appearance truly valuable.
If you’ve ever considered podcasting as part of your marketing strategy, this conversation is a must.
Jon Bailey 00:00
All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are live. Okay. Welcome to the Before You Market podcast where we challenge you to rethink marketing to help us in this endeavor, we've invited some of the best marketers around to enlighten you on your path to a brand-first awakening. So today we're going to get a little meta here. We're going to have a podcast about podcasting critic. You know, it's all good, and we have one of the best podcasting experts around to help us with this. Tom Schwab is the chief evangelist officer for interview valet. And what they do is they help entrepreneurs with high-level brands, and nonfiction offers authors to grow their businesses and reach their ideal audience with podcast interview marketing. So we're going to get into some of that. So Tom, is there anything else you want to tell these people about yourself?
Tom Schwab 01:16
Well Jon, thanks for having me here, and I think it's more powerful today than ever, right? Because what is marketing at its heart, it's it's talking with someone that could be an ideal client, and that's what podcast does. And the other thing today, it's not only the ideal clients that are listening, but it's the large language models. And I really believe that this long-form collaborative content is what's going to get us referred by those platforms. And I think they're going to be our best referral-sources by 2026.
Jon Bailey 01:49
And now we're getting technically meta, real meta. Here you mentioned large or large language. What is it?
Tom Schwab 01:59
Yeah, the large language models, chat, GPT, or, as we call it around here, Chad.
Jon Bailey 02:07
Chad, GPT, so we're going to go a little inside baseball and podcasting. But I honestly think that this is really useful stuff for our audience and just for marketers in general. So I'm excited to talk about this. Are you ready? So I have been saying for a long time that marketing is a conversation. It is, it is a conversation that you have with your potential customers, your existing clients, and just the public at large and large language models, podcasting, or whatever you want to call it, because podcasting is kind of a silly term at this point, but it is an obvious extension of that. So I'm curious what are some of the most missed opportunities in podcasting today, in this conversation that we're having with our clients.
Tom Schwab 02:17
Well, I wish you would have told me that marketing is just a conversation that would have saved me a lot of years and 10s of 1000s of dollars. I finished my MBA, and I think my grandfather could have told me that, right? Because, you know, God, God rest his soul. God love him. He understood that marketing was a conversation, and while he wouldn't understand the Internet, he would understand, oh, so I can tap into these different audiences, just like I used to do with the Rotary Club or, you know, being on television or in the paper. It's the same thing. So I think the big thing that marketers, I believe, are missing is that this idea of bigger is better, right? We're we're all playing this game of, what are the what are the numbers? Well, it doesn't matter, because you can't say enough of the right things to the wrong people. So I think there's this, this idea of abundance and bigger is better. I think a lot of people start marketing for their ego and not for their wallet, right? What are you trying to optimize for? Right? I get all these emails every day that say we can get you more leads. It's almost like Facebook likes now. I am not optimizing for leads, right? As a good marketer, you should be optimizing for profits, right? And profits comes from happy clients that value what you do so much that they'll give you the money. To me, you know, lots of leads mean lots of sales development reps, a lot of cost in kissing a lot of frogs to find that Prince. So I think with these conversations, I would say, Are we having the conversations with the right people, where they're making the business decisions, right and are we having different conversations? Emotions, right? We don't want to do Groundhogs Day over and over and over. So being very specific on why am I here, who's here, and what can I talk to them about? Because, you know, content is King, but context is God.
Jon Bailey 05:17
Amen to that. And speaking of Groundhog Day, you know, it wasn't a terrible day. He learned piano. He got to drive with a groundhog. I mean, who can say that? But anyway, so I often talk to business owners and marketers who fear, you know, when they start a podcast that no one will listen or watch or whatever the kids are doing these days. But what would you say to these people, or is it better for them to focus on becoming a guest on other more popular podcasts? Or is it somewhere in between?
Tom Schwab 05:55
First, I think it has to be what your goals are, right? Because should you be an Uber driver or an Uber passenger? Same platform, but totally different goals. So think about it from a podcast perspective, right? If you want to nurture your current leads, if you want to nurture your current clients, well, then you've got to have a podcast, right? Be the host, but if you're looking to get new exposure, new leads, new backlinks, all of that, then you've got to go into other people's audiences and tap into there. Now the sad reality in podcasting is that most podcasts die within the first 10 episodes. It's called pod fade, right? It's really easy to start it and it's hard to keep it going. And too often, it's one thing if you're doing it personally, right, but if you're doing it for a business, that's your brand, right?
And so often I see businesses start the podcast, they they're promoting it, and then a quarter later, somebody asked them about it, and it's an embarrassment. So a great way to do it. It's almost like, you know, trying to see behind the curtain, right? I had a client say it was like being in a wedding, right? That it's one thing to attend a wedding. It's another thing to be in the bridal party. It's another thing to run the entire thing. So by being a guest, you can see how the process goes. You can get comfortable with it. You can see what you like, what you don't like. And there's always that time when you're launching a podcast. We call it phase zero. There's probably three months between we're going to launch the podcast and when iTunes actually releases it. So with that, that's a great time to go out there and start guesting on other people's podcasts, because you know, the best place to find podcast listeners is listening to podcasts. And some people will just say, Hey, I just want to be a guest. I don't want that big commitment? Well, you can get more results quicker by being a guest.
Jon Bailey 08:05
And there's no better way to learn than to do in my opinion. So that is phenomenal advice. And you mentioned brand. You know, how important do you think brand is in this marketing conversation that we're talking about. I mean, do you think that companies need to know their brand inside and out before they even look at podcasting? I know it's a bit of a leading question, but, you know, I wonder if, if, if they're skipping ahead. You know what I mean.
Tom Schwab 08:42
I wish I knew my brand forwards and backwards, right? We're 10 years into here, and my marketing manager, I've called her the defender of the brand. She's the one that comes back and says, Tom, do you want me to redo that? Because that's orange, but not our orange, right? Or that's the wrong type font. So I think there's has to be a sense of who you are, why you're there, what you do, what you believe. And I think those points of view can be so powerful on a podcast, because if you're talking about all kinds of different things, you can confuse the market with that too. So I think it's important to have a sense of why you're doing it, and that can be your brand. The other thing too is, I think it's important to be consistent with your brand. Dave Ramsey, love him, hate him, whatever. That guy always shows up in his uniform, right? And his uniform is jeans, a sport coat and a shirt, right? Sometimes I see people, they'll show up at a live event, you know, with a suit and tie, and then you see them on a podcast, and they've got the hat that's backwards or sideways, and I'm like, Who is this person? Is this the same brand? Because one of the great things is, you know, if I speak at a live event, unless you were there, you're not going to see it. And even if I'm off brand, you may notice it, but if you're recorded, like on a podcast or a podcast interview, that's going to live on, and then people will see that. So I think it's important to understand who you are, why you're there, what you believe, and I think that's core to the brand.
Jon Bailey 10:27
By the way, I'm not sure if you knew this, but jeans, a t shirt and a blazer that's called the tech mullet. Someone at a conference told me that, and I just can't shake it, and I think it's hilarious. So anyway, so now we're talking about, obviously, your brand and and this conversation that we're having, and so many companies have subject matter experts, but I think some of these subject matter experts are nervous about getting on a podcast. So, you know, obviously they have a lot of great things to say, and it's always the subject matter experts that that don't think they they they think of it. Think they have anything of value, but we all know that they do. But my like, long winded question is,
What would you say to prepare them to be a podcast guest? Should you just throw them to the wolves or or are there things that that need to happen to prep them?
Tom Schwab 11:45
That is such a great question. And if you feel like you're not an expert, or what would I talk about, you're going to be a great guest, right? Because it's the people that are like, Oh, I know everything I can talk about, everything. What's the empty pot makes the most noise. We have seen over the years that often people with that imposter syndrome, or some people that are more on the introverted spectrum, actually do much better, and it's because they've thought through things. They are better on one on one conversations. They give more thoughtful answers, they prepare. And one of the things that a friend of mine helped me with is I used to hate the word expert, right? There's a lot of people that are influencers, self proclaimed experts and gurus, and I'm like, I'm not an expert, and Nick is a lawyer, and he's like if you look at the legal definition of an expert, it's someone that knows more by their training, by their education, by their life experience, than the normal person. That doesn't mean you're the undisputed expert in something, but you have expertise. So if you think about it, if you're running a company, man, you've got expertise in that. You've got knit that niche, you've seen so many things. So you have expertise, right? If you've been doing something for years and years, you've learned from your lessons, you have expertise. If somebody asked my opinion, that's the one thing that I am the undisputed expert on. But the thing is, is when you go on a podcast, you know nobody's going to ask me a question about monetary policy and macroeconomics, right? I know nothing about that, right? That's not why I'm here. We've already set the topic and the agenda, and the host wouldn't invite you on unless they thought you had value, that you had expertise. So give yourself credit on that. What's ordinary to you is amazing to others.
Jon Bailey 13:52
I think so many people forget that. I think that's such an important point to make, is that not everyone knows what you know and what you know could easily fill a book, especially if you are trained in something and so that is just phenomenal advice. So silly question, how do you track the success of podcasting? I mean, it seems obvious to me but maybe not so much to others. Maybe they're we want it to go viral, or, you know, like, what does real podcasting success look like?
Tom Schwab 14:30
Oh, it's not ego. And the problem is, is that so many people are throwing stuff against the wall and not even seeing what sticks, so they're not using the data that's available now, right? Some of it has to be, you got to pay for it. It's licensed, right? To figure out what they're trying to accomplish, what podcasts would be ideal for that, what audience would be ideal for that. And then there's a lot of people out there in marketing today that say, well, you can't, you can't attribute traffic from a podcast. Well, if you do it right, you can. And I love one of the stories that ran, Fishkin from SEO Moz talks about, he's like, if I am on the stage talking at a conference, somebody hears me, and they Google me, and they get it slightly right. But Google takes them to the site. Google's going to say, we bought you that traffic. And then they get confused, right? They get, you know, there's a fire going on, they open another tab, they leave the site, and with Facebook retargeting, they get brought back to the site, and they buy, well, Facebook is going to say, well, we brought you all that traffic, right? We've got pure data. We've got all this. And this truth is, is that if they wouldn't have heard you from the very beginning, then none of that else would have happened. So this idea that it could be perfect attribution is wrong. That still doesn't give you the out to say, well, I don't have to track it. No, the best way to do it off of a podcast interview is always send them to one dedicated page, right one page evergreen site for evergreen traffic. And you know, if they hit that page, that's where they came from. Now, that's a Google Analytics way to do it. But for a lot of us, and you know, B to B, high ticket sales, we're having conversations with our clients. And so you ask them, how did you find out about us? And to me, that is more important, because the analytics may say, you know, the first point of attribution was Google. But if you ask them, they'll tell you what was most important, right? I heard you speak at an EO event, or a friend of mine was talking about you, so all of a sudden, you figured out what was most important to them, not just what Google or Facebook is, is saying in order to prove that they're they're worth.
Jon Bailey 17:02
Man, I can hug you right now because I was just on a stage the other day speaking about this marketing conversation, and how we get so fixated on data that we forget to ask these important questions, and it's these questions of, how did you hear about us? What led you to us that really gives you the truth that you're looking for? So I could not agree with you more on that.
Tom Schwab 17:34
Going back to what you said at the beginning, right? Marketing is a conversation. Right? Marketing is, while data and analytics are important, you better have the right conversation too. So ask your clients, where did they find out about you? What does this data really mean? Instead of just looking at it and going, oh, we did a great job, because, you know, because our visits were up, but we got so many more leads. Often I'll talk with clients, and they said, well, how many leads should I expect? Like, how many? How many leads do you want? And you're like, oh, the more leads, the better. Then, here's what you need to do at the end of the podcast interview, say that you're giving away a Tesla, right? Is come back to the website, sign up for it. And I said a vast majority of the audience will come and sign up, and they're like, well, how will that help my business? Like you said you were optimizing for leads. If you want to optimize for profits and clients, then be very clear of this is who we work with. This is the value we bring. This is who we don't work with, because I think so many marketers, and I've been guilty of this too, you know, we think it's supposed to be magnetic, right? It's supposed to draw in all of these clients. That's not how a magnet works, right? A magnet attracts the right things and it repels the wrong things, right? So you should be only attracting your ideal clients. I think podcasts and podcast interviews can be great for that, because after somebody listens to you for 30 or 45 minutes, they're turning you up or turning you off. They're self selecting. And at the end of the day, you know, we don't want more leads, we want more great clients.
Jon Bailey 19:20
Okay, so Orshie Herbein, is one of our brilliant brand strategists, and also a fearless leader, and also a friend of yours, recommended you for this podcast. And I'm now going to have to sheepishly admit to her that it was a good idea that you bring the goods. So I love the way you think. I love what you're saying. And speaking of Orshie, she has a question, and her question for you is, what surprising pattern or trend have you noticed about which podcast appearances tend to drive the most meaningful results for your clients?
Tom Schwab 20:04
It's all about focus, right? And that's what I talked about before, there's ego, and then there's the focus. There's so many people that are like, well, what podcast do you want to be on? Well, I want to be on Gary Vaynerchuk and Joe Rogan, and it's like, well, why, why? Oh, because everybody will hear me. And I was guilty of this early on, Jon, right? I was on this podcast, and it, it had 10s of 1000s of downloads, and I'm like, oh, this is going to be great. I got on there. It was, it was an interview, right? I probably got a handful of leads right? Then, shortly after that, I was on another podcast, and we got on with the host beforehand, and she's like I I have about 200 listeners or downloads per episode. I was like, oh, okay, well, you know, it was still a good podcast. I like the work she was doing. We did that. I think we got over 50 leads from that podcast. And I look at that and say, my ego, if my if I would have let my ego get in the way, I would have said, oh no, I need to be on, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk. But the thing was, is, like sometimes, like the bigger podcast, it's like fishing in the ocean, right? You know, there's fish there, but there's a lot of ones that you don't, that aren't your kind. Find that podcast that is the barrel of fish, and go there every time and when you're doing it right and you attribute this traffic. Now you know that was a great podcast. So how can I get back on that podcast? What other podcast do people that listen to that also listen to? Because you can find that data now. So once you find that that ideal fishing spot, keep going back there. And that's one of the things we've seen. And the other thing that we've started to do here, too is not just me go back, but why don't we have other people from the team? Right? We've got a team of 20 now, and so they've got different expertise, different viewpoints on things, right? They connect with different clients, right? One of the verticals we focus on is health and wellness, right? I am not in my 50s with this much gray hair. I'm not Instagram ready for health and wellness, but we've got other people on the team that can speak to that, and they resonate a whole lot better with it.
Jon Bailey 22:36
And by the way, if you talk to Gary Vaynerchuk, he'll tell you that content is the answer, like, it's like, it's some gospel truth. And then you and then you gotta look at him sideways. And then if you go on Joe Rogan's podcast, you have to be fully prepared to talk about UFC, because he will find some way to bring it back around.
Tom Schwab 23:01
We had a client, and this was a couple of years ago, and they were doing an initial public offering, and they wanted to do a road show, you know, the pony show, whatever it is, based on a podcast too. It was a great idea. And we do walk through interviews with all of our clients to get on with the CEO. And he's like, Yeah, I should. My assistant said, I should be on the Joe Rogan show. And this was just after Joe Rogan and Elon Musk toked it up in the studio. I mentioned that, and I'm like, you know, nothing illegal with it. It's in California, right? Would you be comfortable being on there with a professional comedian and a joint and he just looked at me, he's like, my board would kill me, right? I'd be fired. That's why you picked the podcast, and my assistant doesn't. So there's that whole thing about brand affinity, and you're judged by the company you keep.
Jon Bailey 23:59
Well, I think focus is such a brilliant piece of advice, and I think it's the piece that so many business owners miss when they're when they're thinking about marketing. They want to go macro. But really it's always, is the micro and the Nano influencers, and that's the micro and the Nano podcast that have that really extreme focus where you can actually move the needle, like you were saying with the 50 leads, that's what matters. That's such great advice.
Tom Schwab 24:35
But it's like, who is, who is the micro or the Nano influencer? It's the host, right? You did not jump on this podcast today because it's like, Oh, Tom Schwab from interview, valet is going to be there? No, it was. I trust Jon. I love Brand3, right? I know whoever they bring on is going to be value. They have vetted them. So you, Jon. Them say micro, not Nano. Micro influencer here, and you introduce someone, right? And then they get to have that conversation. I think for most businesses, you ask them, how do you how do you grow your business? Well, I get introduced to the right customers, and then I have an extended conversation with them. I can understand that. I can't understand the ever changing SEO algorithms.
Jon Bailey 25:25
Don't it's a fool's errand. Run away. Absolutely. Well, Tom, this has been just great and and you have not only validated a lot of my opinions, but also just given me some things to think about. And I really appreciate you coming on here. I really appreciate your time, and I cannot wait to share this with our audience. So thank you so much.
Tom Schwab 25:56
Jon. I appreciate all you do. And you know, before you had asked, well, how do you attribute the traffic? How do you track it? Okay, here's behind the curtain. So the best practice is always to send them to one page and give them three ways to say, yes, meet them where they are. So this is what it sounds like, right? If you'd like to learn more, go back to interviewvalet.com/-bym which stands for Before You Market, right? So that's that's the dedicated welcome page. That's how you track it, and then you meet them where they are. So there's an assessment, right? 10 Questions, will podcast interview marketing work for you? I wrote a book podcast guest profits, how to grow your business with the target interview strategy. You can get it on Amazon or just go there. If you're in the States, I'll mail you a copy. If you're overseas, I'll email you a copy, right? And then finally, if you're like, oh, this makes sense, I'd like to talk to you about how we could use it. Well, just go back to that page and I'll put all of my contact information there, my calendar scheduling link, all of that will be back there: interviewvalet.com/-bym.
Jon Bailey 27:12
Ladies and gentlemen, that's how you do it, right there. That was your pro tip. So if you stay to the end, you got the goods. So Tom, thank you so much. I cannot again. Wait to share this with everybody. We'll include the link in the show notes and interview valet.com/-bym. Go there. Download the stuff. Thank you again. Tom.
Tom Schwab 27:43
Thank you Jon.
