What do you want your podcast listeners to do after listening?

You probably have a vision for what you’d love your listeners to do after they listen to your podcast episode—maybe it’s subscribing to your newsletter, sharing the episode with a friend, or another simple, meaningful action.

But if you’re feeling a little shy, worried about being pushy, or uncertain if it’ll put them off, here’s the truth: you’ll never know unless you actually ask! In this coaching session, I’m guiding April as we workshop her calls-to-action for the Door Key Podcast. We’re examining where those CTAs are placed, if they’re the ones that truly matter to her, and what tweaks could boost the chances of her listeners taking action.

😋 FREE COMPANION GUIDES are available the Thursday after this episode is released. https://coffeelike.gumroad.com/

✨Tandem Audience Growth Coaching Program (the one on one coaching I'm demonstrating this season with April): https://www.coffeelikemedia.com/coaching.html

📜 April's Door Key Podcast places online: (history)
Buzzsprout | https://doorkey.buzzsprout.com/
Substack | https://doorkey.substack.com

🪐 Want more audience growth tips? https://podcasttoconnect.substack.com/

Podcasting Tools: These are products I adore so I recommend them highly. Includes affiliate links.

✨ Microphone: Samson Q2U✨

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• UK: https://amzn.to/4g2pVlr
• Germany (ships to Denmark): https://amzn.to/4f2iY2t

😋 Host on Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2022201

👀 Record and go live with Restream: https://restream.io/join/Kro9rJ

😊Need podcast help? https://www.coffeelikemedia.com/

Transcript

(((Steph and April talking)))

Steph:
When they are listening and then get excited about history, what do you envision them doing? What is the action you'd like them to do? Or they finish listen to a podcast and something, they do something, what is that action?

April:
So they could learn more about whatever topic I'm, I'm talking about.

Steph: 
Okay.

April: 
Because what I give is a pretty basic outline and so I'm hoping that they'll get interested enough to dive, want to dive deeper. 

Steph: 
Okay. So that's the non selfish answer. Let's now delve into the selfish answer.

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(((just Steph talking)))

Steph:  

Hello and welcome to the third season of Podcast to Connect where we are sharing ways for you to grow your audience by looking at your greater media presence and longer term project goals. I am so excited this season to be joined by April from Door Key Podcast. And you'll see her in just a minute. But I wanted to tell you some information first about this conversation that we had about calls to action, your CTAs, your podcast. 

Why? 

It might seem obvious, but marketing studies have shown that people do things more when you tell them what you want them to do them. I know. Look, you can't argue with research. So ask your listeners to follow your podcast to share the episode with a friend and so on and so forth. 

In this conversation we're focused on clear, actionable and simple CTAs that your listeners can do. Any of them. That any of them can do. I guide April through workshopping her podcast intro CTA. The CTA are the calls to action that she has in her podcast episode. But we don't stop there because I go for practical right? So we actually plan out the CTA she wants where to put them in the podcast. 

And through all of that planning we actually dive into her Apple podcast consumption data over on Apple Podcast Connect. It's super fun to look at to see how long people listen to your podcast. So we do all of that in this short episode that you can take and use to grow your own audience by having them do actions to help you spread the word about your podcast. 

Now remember that all of these episodes this season come with a companion guide to help you do for your podcast what we're doing for April's podcast in these episodes. They are available at over at podcasttoconnect.substack.com the week after the episode comes out. The episodes are every two weeks and the companion episodes are the alternate weeks. All right, let's get back to April's call to action. Let's dive into the unselfish ones.
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(((Steph and April talking)))

Steph: 
Now, as someone who's building up a podcasting community, whether you plan on monetizing at some point or not is not the point right now. But as someone who's building up the community, what action do you want them to do for Door Key?

April: 
I want them to subscribe to the podcast, listen to every episode, and if, If they know someone that would be interested in that particular topic to pass it on, share it, that. That sort of thing.

Steph: 
So I love that. So your goal of the podcast is very non selfish. You really want to get people interested in history. Yeah, love that. Can hear that in your episodes. Absolutely. The non selfish ones are the ones to, you know, perpetuate the...or to spread the community, to spread the podcast, to keep growing as an entity. You've got four of them now. The big question is, do you have these call to actions, the four things you want them to do, the actions you literally want them to do, do you have them in your podcast now? Where do you have them? And we might go into where they might be in the newsletter, but we'll probably stick to the audio for now.

April: 
Sure.

Steph:
Now, your intro's the same. It's a recorded one. That's the same in all of them, right?

April: 
Yes, yes.

Steph: 
Okay, so we don't have to listen to more than one. So let's listen to one. I'm gonna play the intro and we're gonna listen. We'll both listen and make notes, either mentally or on paper, if we hear any of those four or. And. And if we hear anything that's not one of those four.

April: 
Aha.

Steph: 
Yeah. So because funny thing is, in our intros and outros, we tell ourselves things that we forget to, you know, put anywhere else remind ourselves, that kind of thing. Okay, here we go.

(((April's podcast CTA clip)))

You can reach me at doorkeypod@gmail.com. Let me know what you think of the podcast. Let me know if I left something out or got something wrong.

Or let me know if there's something in particular in history that you'd like me to talk about. There's a Facebook group called Door Key Podcast and all the other social medias are @doorkeypod. Join them and be part of our growing community, but also to get extra tidbits about episode topics like facts and pictures.

There's also now two different ways to donate to the podcast. If you'd like, you can donate through PayPal or But Me A Coffee. Links to both methods are on the podcast's website and in the show notes.

Also, please rate, review and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're hearing it. It helps the podcast grow, but more importantly, your feedback will help me make this a better podcast. This episode was edited by Stephanie Fuccio of Coffeelike Media.

Thank you so much for listening. Until we meet again, friends. 

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(((Steph and April talking)))

Steph: 
Okay. And then we go into the episode introduction. I did find it interesting how different your CTAs were to what you said, and there's nothing wrong with that. The big thing in this, in this reflection, the CTA reflection is making a conscious choice of what you want in there? Does it match what you want, or is it kind of what you think should be in there or something like that? For the CTAs, the call to actions, which ones did you note?

April: 
Oh, I did tell people to subscribe. I told them where they could.

Steph: 
I heard a rate and review and how to. How to financially support the show. So, like, where to go to to pay to support the show? Perfectly fine. Well, the rate and review one, I can argue all day on the financial one is completely understandable. We need to keep these puppies going. Big question is, do you have, because you use Buzzsprout, as do I, you have the option of a pre roll before the episode starts, a mid roll somewhere in the middle, and a post roll at the end of the episode. Do you use any of the other two?

April:
I do not.

Steph: 
Okay. Okay, so here's the situation. You've got 1, 2, potentially 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 CTAs and 3 spots. Okay, so what you can do, if you want to keep all six and just rotate them out, since you have two episodes a month, you could do. You could either do the same ones like 1, 2, 3 in those three positions for one month and then switch them out every other month. 

Or you could downsize to three of them and keep them in forever and never have to remember this or forever until you change it. Um, or you could do a more complicated version that I won't go into because my brain gets complicated. It gets way too complicated. Of those six CTAs, listen to all episodes, follow on podcast app, substitute follow, Substack, share with a friend, review rate and review and support financially. Of those six, which one? Gut reaction, don't think, feel. Which one do you want them to hear first?

April: 
Listen.

Steph: 
Listen to all the episodes.

April: 
Yeah.

Steph: 
Yeah, Cool beans. Okay, so what you probably want to do then is change that dynamic ad insertion to be that call to action and tell them why. Tell them what you said at the beginning that I want. I'm, you know, I want. I'm doing this to inspire you to learn to want to go and learn more about history. And I also want you to listen to all the stinking episodes. So when you're done with this one, be sure to go back and listen to a lot of them. Tell them that. Have fun with it. It doesn't have to be a minute long. You could do like, you know, 20, 30 seconds. Yeah, and I bet it would be so adorable. I mean, I don't. I don't want to downplay it like adorable can be an insult. I mean that as a compliment.

April: 
Thank you.

Steph: 
Absolutely. Do that. Okay, so what would you say is the second most important one?

April: 
Sharing.

Steph: 
Okay, where?

April: 
On their social media. Okay, I'm sorry.

Steph: 
Okay. I'm not trying to be.

April: 
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not a problem. It's just that a lot of listeners still don't know what to do, you know, so when we say share, they're listening on an app that has no sharing function and they're like, what do you mean?

April: 
That's a good point. Maybe it should be follow on social media so that that would kind of lead to them sharing.

Steph: 
You can actually two birds, one stone kind of thing. You could say something like, take a screenshot of this episode and share it on social media. Be sure to. To tag door key podcast.

April: 
Okay, yeah.

Steph: 
So when they tag you, they'll probably follow you. You can definitely follow them, blah, blah, blah. But you could do that. Most people know how to screenshot these days and if you say on any platform, then they can go to the social media. They know.

April: 
Okay.

Steph: 
Yeah. And that's part. That's primarily my problem with rate and review is that most people don't know how to do it or they don't have access to the ones that everybody talks about. Yeah, yeah. As an Android user, I. When people say go to Apple Podcasts, I'm like, I can't. I just can't. It's something I can do.

April: 
Yeah, yeah.

Steph: 
So you could do that as a mid role if you wanted. Again, it doesn't have to be long. Okay, but. But tell them how to do it because a lot of people are still unclear what to do, how to do it. So we still have one more you're. Before we get to the post roll, the big question, because that is a tricky place to put something. Do you know your Apple podcast consumption rates? Like how far into most episodes people go?

April: 
I do not. Anytime I have gone to the Apple app.

Steph: 
Yeah.

April: 
It's not giving me any, any information, so I have no idea what my consumption rates are. Oh, like these whole two years.

(((Steph pulls up April's Apple Podcast Connect data)))

Steph: 
Yeah. This is your podcast. Then you go to analytics. Here we go. So last 60 days, let's do all time. Okay. So what we want to look at, and this is in Apple Podcast Connect or for the listeners, it's where you submitted. Where you first submitted your podcast and then forgot about it. This is actually where you can, if you have enough data, see some information on your analytics. So we're on analytics and I want more. Why I Want more? I want consumption data, like the percentage that people are listening. Here we go. All right.

April: 
Oh, yes.

Steph: 
I love your reaction. All right, so the main thing we want to see, there's a 43 followers. Listeners, engage listeners, plays I'm looking for consumption data. This stuff down here, country cities. That's. I think a lot of that ends up in Buzzsprout. Although keep in mind, this is just people using Apple products. This is not everybody listening.

April: 
Right.

Steph: 
So, but I'm looking for. Here we go. Consumption data should be here. This one here. Average consumption. Okay, so 59, 95, 73, 65, 117. So somebody went back again to listen. 78. That's lovely. Right? I love when I see that. 66, 75, 33, 50. So what I'm looking for is how many people go to the end. Like, what percentage? Yeah, to the end.

April: 
And it doesn't look like many.

Steph: 
Now there's some. Oh, my God. 190% King Tut. Yeah, I can see that. 79%. Edgar Allan Poe. I re. Listened to that last week. Thank you for that. A. 94%. Okay. Jack the Ripper. 97. Wow, that makes sense. Because True Crime is a pretty big podcast. Very, very popular podcast thing. So I'd say 50 cents. You know what? You have enough people in the 90s and 100% that I'd say go ahead and do a post roll, but I wouldn't spend as much time on it as I would the pre and mid roll.

April: 
Okay.

Steph: 
Yeah. If you had. If most of your stuff was below 50%, I'd say don't even worry about that until we get the. The. The length of time that people are listening. Higher. But I think this is close enough. So I would do one now. Which one do you want to do so far? What's up?

April: 
I'm just really. I. I've never seen those numbers. I can't believe I. I was. People have been listening for like two minutes and then they're like, no, thank you.

Steph: 
No, isn't that nice? Yeah, that's the thing. It's like downloads and this data, it doesn't show everything, but it does. It does tell us a story. And the story is not only do people are people listening to a lot of the episodes, but some people are re listening.

April: 
Oh, my gosh, that's so cool.

Steph: 
And you can log into that later now because it looks like that glitch when we first started working together is over.

April: 
Okay.

Steph: 
And when you log back in, you can spend more time and go through all of the stuff in there and look at everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you have. So you have that post world that you can use now. So what do you want to do with that? Do you want. So you. What's left? It's follow on our podcast app Substack or support financially.

April: 
Follow on Substack.

Steph: 
Sure. There's no wrong answer. I'm just writing down what you say. Yeah, that's good. Because then in Substack you can have the different monetary support options.

April: 
Yeah.

Steph: 
So that can be like the next step for them. So it's like giving them different ways they can support the community and that's the next level.

April: 
Yeah.

Steph: 
And honestly, if they screen, if they do the first call to action that you have in the, in, in the. Before the intro, the pre roll, that's like listen to all of the episodes. If they do that, they're probably going to subscribe. So that'll take care of number two. So, yeah, I think we've covered the six in sly ways in three.

April: 
my gosh.

Steph: 
Yay. So now you have all the work to do. That's okay because you, you have to go record that pre roll, pre roll, mid roll, and post roll and then see if it works. Yeah, you can, you can track it maybe, but. Okay, let's talk about tracking for a second. Listen to all the episodes. You know what I wonder, okay, if you listen to this, when it is published, mark down the data goes out and see if your stats change in the few weeks after that.

April: 
Okay.

Steph: 
Because if people start hearing that and they go, yeah, I do want to hear more episodes. And you start seeing that in the downloads, then you know that that CTA is working.

April: 
Okay.

Steph: 
And you might even want to put a reminder for like a month after to definitely take a look at that. And if it doesn't look like it's working, then maybe go back and say, listen to one more episode instead of all of them and make it a little bit easier. But if it is working that first month, leave it. Okay. Yeah, so I'd put like a one month calendar reminder for that.

April: 
Is that like, not. I don't know if presumptuous is the right word, but is that like asking a lot to be like, listen to every episode? I mean, obviously that's like a pipe dream type.

Steph: 
The way you say it has such enthusiasm with it that I want to say, do it and see what happens. Okay. Worst case scenario, they don't listen to any, any more than the ones that come out. Yeah. Which is. No, no, loss at all. And a month of that, and then you see that those stats and you see what's happening and you go, okay, let's try one. And then you switch it out. So I would try it because I wonder, because the way that you. The way that you say it and the enthusiasm that I think you're going to put into the pre roll, I think people might actually go download a few and list them over like the next few days and weeks and what have you. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's fun and playful. I would try it.

April: 
Okay.

Steph: 
Yeah, it's all an experiment. You never know until you do it. So then the mid roll is share with a friend, and you're going to describe how they share it and how often. Make that one simple because the first one's a big ask. So make the second one a small ask, like share with one person today or email one person today or something like that.

April: 
Okay.

Steph: 
Third one, the post role is Substack, and that you can track by looking at your subscriptions. And again, I would do a month long, a reminder after a month to see if you're getting them. And in Substack, you can actually see how people are coming into the. Where they're subscribing from. Okay, so if they go from the podcast to Substack, it should show up in the information there. So that should be pretty easy to track. Okay, so goals and tracking. And. And this is the thing. We spent what, 20 minutes honing in on the three call to actions and like two minutes deciding on how to track it. Yeah, and that's how it is. Because it's the hardest thing to figure out what you want to. Want to ask them to do that's reasonable, that's doable, that you can put out there.

April: 
Right.

Steph: 
And then tracking, it's the easy part. Yeah, deciding and. Yeah, implementing stuff, that's the hard part.
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((( just Steph talking)))

Steph:  
So we have figured out how to put all of April's calls to action into specific places of her podcast. Now, this is going to vary per person. You don't want to follow her exact pattern because that fits her audience, her podcast, her consumption rate. So you want to take all this information and apply it to your specific podcast situation. Remember, you can get a companion guide that'll walk you through how to do that. The week after this episode comes out at podcasttoconnect.substack.com . 
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((( Steph and April talking)))

Steph: 
All right, cool. Until next time, say bye, April.

April: 
Bye.

Steph: 
Bye, everyone.