Most freelancers and solo marketers focus their marketing efforts on prospecting, networking, or LinkedIn.
But guesting on podcasts that your target audience listens to? Not so much.
And that’s too bad, because appearing on podcasts can be a powerful way to build your brand, meet and network with great people, generate leads and establish yourself as a thought leader in your market.
In this episode, I sit down with Angie Trueblood, a seasoned podcast publicist, to explore how freelance writers and solo marketers can harness the power of podcast guesting.
Angie shares her unique journey into the world of podcast publicity and breaks down why being a guest on the right shows can make a huge positive difference in your business. We dive deep into actionable strategies, including:
- Why podcast guesting is an underused but highly effective strategy for freelancers
- How to identify the podcasts that will bring real value to your business
- Insider tips on crafting a genuine, irresistible pitch
- Practical advice on preparing for your podcast debut to maximize impact
- How to track and measure the success of your podcast guesting efforts
Whether you’re looking to expand your client base, increase your visibility or simply explore new avenues for growth, Angie’s insights will open your eyes to the untapped potential of this marketing strategy.
The notes that follow are a very basic, unedited summary of the show. There’s a lot more detail in the audio version. You can listen to the show using the audio player below. Or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Key Topics and Bullets:
- View interviews as conversations.
- Mirror the host’s energy; adjust professionalism.
- Use stories for expertise; avoid naming clients without permission.
- Build confidence through practice.
- Be genuine to attract similar work styles.
- Balance personal and professional tones.
- Use interviews for networking, not just leads.
- Unexpected value can come from host referrals.
- Use impactful information over long bios.
- Propose one topic with depth (3-5 talking points).
- Ed finds multiple ideas can occasionally be beneficial.
- Use specific search terms for relevant podcasts.
- Ensure relevance to the audience.
- Avoid generic pitches.
- Structured follow-ups: initial and final two weeks apart.
Timestamp Overview:
00:00 Angie– I was in outside sales for my career. And then when my husband and I had kiddos, I decided to come home to spend a little bit more time with them and run a part time business of my own and totally different business. I was serving mothers, and I recognized that I needed to grow my visibility in that space, so I started guesting on podcasts. I just reached out to host with a topic idea, and they either said yes, no, or no response. And some of my friends who also had businesses were asking questions of, well, how did you guest on that show? Like, how did you get to be in interviewed there? And I learned very quickly, like your listeners most likely, that what I am skilled at is something that not everyone else is, and a lot of people don’t like the idea of pitching themselves. So I pivoted the whole business and started as a freelancer taking on clients.
04:37 Ed– So let’s set the stage here a little bit in the context of a freelance solo marketer or writer or copywriter, publicist, etcetera. Why even look or why even consider podcast guesting as part of your marketing mix? What are some of the benefits?
Angie– There’s a lot of pros to it. I mean, first of all, from a purely marketing getting in front of more people perspective, it is a one to many approach. So you are getting in front of someone else’s audience. They are ushering you in as a thought leader or at least someone that they trust, just like your listeners are likely thinking, okay. Well, Ed invited Angie on. She’s legit. I’m gonna at least listen and respect what she has to say. So it’s a way to increase your influence and authority just by the nature of being a guest on someone else’s show, and you’re reaching a larger audience than if you were just reaching out 1 to 1 in a LinkedIn DM, which I still do, and it’s a really big part of how I create, client. Like, how I find and convert clients. But getting that initial exposure is really helpful in kind of seeing, well, who’s interested in this? Who raises their hand after that interview goes live that I should connect with? The other piece of it, and I think this is you know, I’ve been doing this for 7 years, is first, I was marketing on Facebook, and then I was marketing on Instagram. And now I’m on LinkedIn, and the others have kind of gone away. So social media is such an evolving platform, and, candidly, it’s one I don’t always love spending my time on. And guesting on someone else’s podcast, having a conversation like you and I are having, it just kind of warms my heart and reminds me that I’m in this human focused business, and relationships are at the heart of it. So it’s sort of a feel good approach to marketing for me. And then specifically about freelancers, they’re in demand.
08:44 Ed– That’s a really interesting perspective and one that I wasn’t really expecting because I and I get pitched, 2 2 times a day, 3 times a day, and which is crazy to me because, I mean, I have a long standing show. We’re on our 12th year now. But which is, like, whatever, 70 years in this business. But it’s still a small show because it’s a niche show. I was under the impression that it’s really kind of the big authors and speakers and thought leaders who get the traction as opposed to, well, I’m a practitioner. I’m a freelance copywriter in the healthcare industry. Who’s gonna wanna talk to me? And, I mean, of course, I know that people do wanna talk to you, but you’ve just validated this idea that, no, actually, a lot of podcast hosts would prefer to talk to you because they’re being inundated by all the, you know, the thought leaders, the experts, the authors. And, you know, that’s great.
Angie– I think, yeah, I think a lot of it depends on the types of shows you’re pitching, and I know we’ll get into that. But you mentioned health, health , what did you say? Health care wellness. Yeah. If you imagine a host who runs a coaching program for either health care practitioners or health and wellness practitioners, It would be great for them to have someone come on that is talking about how to specifically grow your business or what does an SEO look like for health care practitioners. So freelancers and I know I’ve listened enough to know that not that you have a love hate relationship with niching, but you don’t think it’s the end all, be all. The beauty of guessing on podcasts is that you can kind of niche your pitch. And I know I get bored sometimes when we have clients who are in the same industry, and then I love when I get some sort of, like, fresh blood and I get to put my eyes on their strategy. You can pitch to shows in the healthcare space, for instance.
10:12 Angie– At the same time, you can take that pitch and tweak it and make it really relevant for shows that are in the legal space. So that’s how you can stand out. So getting on the giant shows that we all know is a little bit more difficult, but there are a ton of really engaged audiences like yours that are speaking to a very specific audience, and you can sort of massage your expertise to fit that audience.
Ed– Well, let let’s start getting into that then. Okay. And I’d like to start by asking you this question. Okay? So you know that my audience, their clients, their own target audience is, you know, marketing directors at all size companies, but a lot of midsize larger companies or, you know, in many cases, maybe a founder, you know, of a SaaS company. Sometimes they’re dealing directly with a founder because it’s small enough where they don’t have a full marketing team. So we’re talking about, you know, people who are very busy. They’re inundated already with a huge to do list and a bunch of people, like, you know, reaching out to them. Do these people those audiences, do they actually listen to podcasts? You know, on the drive home after that kind of day, do they listen to podcasts, or are they trying to just completely get away from any more marketing and business advice?
14:19 Angie– So there’s definitely the networking part of it. And in that point, I mean, the audience is just, you know, a cherry on top. You’re getting to share and help someone else’s audience in a way that they couldn’t. There’s definitely the lead generation, but then there’s also just allowing people who might be interested in your services to feel how you are different from the next person who offers the same type of services. There are a number of podcast booking agencies out there, and I definitely have a different spin, a different flavor and take on it than some of the others, but listeners would never really know that without hearing me have that conversation. So it really helps in that sort of, like, attracting versus repelling. I rarely get wrong fit people booking discovery calls with me, and that’s because I’ve guested so much or they’ve heard my podcast and been able to get a sense of who I am.
Ed– You make a great point there that a big part of it is someone getting to really know you, and there are few channels that are better suited for that than a podcast. When I mean getting to know you, getting to know the person. I always equate it to if you’ve ever binge watched a show on Netflix and, let’s just say Breaking Bad, by the end of season 2, you feel like you know Walter White. Like, you’re you have an intimate relationship with this person. You know, you know him inside now. And that’s really, really powerful. And it’s the same thing with I found with podcasts. You know, I take them everywhere.
18:14 Ed– I’m a b to b health care writer slash copywriter. And my clients are typically health care systems, hospital systems, b to b medical device companies, you know, that sort of thing, where do I even start? What are some different ways to attack it?
Angie– So first of all, the clarity that you shared right there is what trips so many people up is they don’t go into searching with a clear plan of who they want to connect with. They think, I own a marketing agency. I wanna get out there and talk about marketing. But, really, you want to get in front of audiences that at some point might be interested in hiring you. That’s often the goal. Right? It could be networking. It could be brand awareness. But most of my customers myself, it’s lead gen. Right? You wanna get in front of the right audience. And so it’s like declaring who and what types of shows would those people even be listening to? And that question doesn’t get answered inside of Apple Podcasts. It can when you’re thinking, I know my client. What type of show would they be interested in listening to? What would they listen to to get complimentary information on the type of work I do for them? It sounds like to me, they might be listening to general marketing shows, but they also might be listening to marketing for health care shows or shows that are talking about hospitals and how hospital systems can connect with their community or marketing. So it’s really clarifying. Let’s get a couple search terms that we can just pop into Apple Podcasts, which is what we always go to first, and then you search with a search term, not the rankings. I see a lot of people go in. They’re like, well, let me pick a category and see who are the top podcast in this category.
21:15 Ed– Well and and what I’m hearing from you too is that, you know, I’ve been the example I use is very vertical focused, you know, a specific industry, but it could also be horizontal positioning. Like, we could really approach like, maybe maybe my specialty is writing long form content, researching heavy long form content, which means that I can write for many different types of industries. So now I have a whole new set of searches That I can make, right, and a potentially different set of shows.
Angie– For sure. And con marketing, like, that’s another search term. So it’s really about having the terms that people would use to find the types of shows that you think you wanna guest on. It’s really defining the show as, I wanna be a guest on the show that’s talking to this type of person, right, marketing professional in the healthcare industry about this type of thing. And in that example, it would be marketing strategies or I mean, outsourcing marketing would be great, but that’s probably not gonna like, that would be a perfect fit. But, yeah, it’s just getting really clear on what terms would you put into Apple Podcasts to find the type of show that you think is an ideal fit for you.
23:26 Angie– We already know for our clients and for yeah. We know for our clients the topics that are gonna be most appealing in front of the people that we want to get them in front of. So we have those already fleshed out, so we’re not writing an email from scratch. But we personalize the beginning of the pitch. We even personalize, like, why this would be relevant to that person’s audience. So for you, it would be an acknowledgment of knowing that you work with and that your listeners are freelance writers. I thought a topic that might be helpful for them would be x y z. Right? So you’re crafting the pitch and basically sharing why the topic, why you find it to be relevant to their audience.
27:36 Ed– But so I guess a couple of things. 1, I wanted to get your take on that approach. And second, do you find that it’s best to offer one idea, or do you feel as best there was a time when offering 3 without going too deep into each one seemed to be a better option. So thoughts on that.
Angie– So first off, I wanna call out that the sentence that you mentioned is, I have someone that I think will be an ideal guest. That thought is so important because when people email and say, I have a guest who I know will be an excellent fit, you’re already putting the host on the defensive. You don’t know my show. You don’t know my people. Just you knowAnd you would never speak to another human like that. Like, I know I have something that’s a perfect fit for you. We all hate salespeople like that, so we don’t do that in email form. So we always give the host an out because we like to lower the defenses, then their gut reaction to delete. We do include, and it’s not a bio. It is like a one sentence descriptor of our client, and that’s really just sharing credentials, level setting that they are an expert and qualified to be a guest on their show. We’re not doing a paragraph. We’ve seen 3 paragraph bios be included in pitches. No. You just need to and, again, your writers are skilled at this. Take their large bio and pull out the most impactful pieces of it so the host gets a sense of, like, okay. They check the box on the level of expertise that I want on my show, and then you go into the pitch. So we have a sneaky way of only offering one topic. I do think it’s important to offer one topic because I don’t wanna give the host any sort of work to do on their end.
32:33 Ed– Before we leave the pitch itself, tell me a little bit about follow-up, your philosophy on follow-up. Should you follow-up at all? And if so, how many times do you feel is ideal?
Angie– So you definitely have to follow-up. I mean and I was listening to one of your episodes, and you said the follow-up really is where it’s at, and it is 100% true in this. So there’s a difference between hounding and doing your due diligence to follow-up. So our sort of timeline that we follow is we send the pitch on a particular day. 2 weeks later, we send a follow-up, and we actually use the original pitch email and kind of resend it and just put a really short sentence kind of circling back to see if you’d given any thought to hosting Susie q as a guest on your show because the pitch itself will then be in line, and whoever’s reading it can scroll down and see exactly what we had pitched before. So we don’t need to reinvent the wheel and clog up and give them a lot of content to go through. So we do a second follow-up then, and then we’ll do another last follow-up 2 weeks after that.
35:16 Ed– Let’s talk about, like, moving on to I’ve landed an interview. You know, let’s talk. I know there’s a ton we could cover here in terms of getting ready. But any ideas, suggestions, maybe some that are not as obvious.
Angie– One, recognizing it is a conversation, and that’s where folks who are new to podcasting, especially when we’ve supported clients that might be a little bit more corporate in nature. It is a conversation, and so it is typically not the person getting on there and just sharing brain dumping content and expertise. So you gotta show up kind of casual, get a feel for the other person. I like to sort of mirror, and I think all of us do this inherently, kind of mirror the energy that the host is giving you. If they seem to be super professional, then maybe you sort of tighten up your persona from what it normally is. Like, that’s just sort of interviewing, you know, human skills 101. The other piece of it, and especially for freelancers that have, you know, a back not a backlog, but a catalog of client work, you have case studies in your brain, hopefully, somewhere else, where you can really bring to life some of the expertise that you are sharing. So rather than coming on a show and talking to health care marketers about how they can leverage white papers, you can give specific examples, and you don’t have to share the client’s name unless you know that they’re comfortable with it.
39:18 Ed– Be yourself within reason. Yeah. Right? I mean, don’t be yourself like you would be with your best buddy, you know, completely unfiltered. Unhinged. Unhinged. So, you know, that have some boundaries. I think that’s really smart. I I wanted to mention something before I forgot to speak to a point you mentioned earlier where, hey, don’t look at this strictly, and I’m paraphrasing, as a lead generation vehicle. So you do wanna interview. And if you don’t get 5 leads, you know, that that’s a failure. In fact, I would say if you get one lead at all from that, that’s amazing. Look at it as a long game and think of it as a multifaceted strategy where the benefits can come from many different sources and many different ways you didn’t expect. You mentioned one that’s happened to me and it’s actually happened recently to a client of mine who does podcast guesting. She gets on podcasts, b to b marketing, and other types of podcasts.
42:09 Ed– Well, why don’t we talk a little bit about results and tracking? Maybe let’s talk about it as success. How would you suggest one track and measure success? Because I do need some way. I mean, it might be, you know, gut feel. That’s fine. But what do you suggest your clients do?
Angie– So for your audience, I would almost take the most simple approach to tracking, and we even find this with our clients. We’ve gone through iterations where I’ve suggested we might even look at their Google Analytics, their website visitors, even their domain authority because of backlinks, and only a handful have expressed any level of, oh, yeah. That matters to me. So I think first of all, you just gotta figure out what matters to you. And likely as a freelancer, you going on these shows is ultimately to grow your network and to potentially generate clients or leads that you can nurture over time. So traditional KPIs that we track, love them or hate them, for me, when I guest on shows, it’s LinkedIn followers. I just track that normally anyway, so I just wanna see that that’s growing. I also for our clients, ask them if you had conversations as a result of your podcast going live, let’s keep track of it.
45:52 Ed– Since you mentioned, you know, working with you, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on when it makes sense to maybe work with somebody like you. So if somebody is listening, is thinking, I’ve either been doing this on my own and, you know, I don’t know. I don’t like doing it or I got too many things on my plate or I wanna try this, but I don’t wanna go at it alone. When does it make sense to reach out to somebody like you?
Angie– I think, honestly, whenever you feel like your lack of time or skill set is holding you back from putting your foot out there in the space. So assuming you’ve decided, I wanna give podcast guesting a go. If over and over you have found that it never makes it to the top of your to do list Mhmm. Then I would reach out. There are a 1000000 different ways to get support running spanning the gamut from you doing it a 100% DIY to fully outsourcing it. We have offerings where we’ll craft your strategy, your pitch topics, give you a pitch list, show you how to do it, and give you some support while you do it, but you’re the one doing the implementation. So just know that if you’re listening and you’re like, oh, I’ll never be able or I don’t wanna outsource something that big in my business, which I get as a freelancer. Fully outsourcing it can be a big line item on your budget, but there’s ways to do it without it being a 100% either way.
47:47 Ed– That that makes sense. Yep. Anything that I as we wrap up, anything that I haven’t asked you about that you feel is really important to know or understand when it comes to guesting on podcasts for people like us?
Angie– I mean, I think it’s just highlighting the overall theme that has been the through line of the conversation. I mean, I’m saying it’s not rocket science. Right? So let’s not make it be something bigger than it is. If you are already a strategic writer, if you are already an expert in marketing, you very likely can figure out who is it you should be talking to and what should you be talking to them about. That’s really what it is. Right? Getting in front of the right audiences, talking about the right things, and it’s just writing a human email to see if that’s a good fit for a particular host. So I think it’s just, like you said, lowering the temperature a little bit. This is just one form of outreach, and it may be great for you. It may not.
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