300 and Something Podcasts – Marketing is a Long Game
I was chatting with my Dad about my podcast and I said, “Marketing this podcast sure is a long term game. I’ve got 300 and something episodes and I’m not sure I can tie a single $ to it” All good marketing is a long term game and anyone who tells you otherwise is just high on some trend that is going to come and go.
Trust me, I’ve seen a LOT of trends in my 16 years in business. If you want to build a real business that generates leads consistently over time you have to invest time and money into your marketing because it is a long game. It takes time to optimize a YouTube channel. It takes time to build traction for a podcast channel. It takes time to optimize a blog and the search results. None of these things happen over night. That is why I always recommend macro content.
One of my client Christine, CEO of Sleep Like a Boss has been using the Social Media Made Simple System for over 18 months now and is booked out consistently for sales calls…all organic. We live in a society where we have the expectation of stuff being done yesterday and that simply isn’t how good marketing works. Macro content takes time to create and time to optimize but the payoffs of this evergreen content can be weeks, months or even years.
All too often entrepreneurs quit before the even have the chance to see results. I’ve heard it time and time again, 3 months in they will say something like, “well, I haven’t seen an ROI yet so it must not be working.” There are ways to absolutely get an ROI in 3 months but it takes labor. If you aren’t willing to put in the work, it’s going to be really hard to succeed as an entrepreneur.
Often times, entrepreneurs will prioritize posting on social media rather than creating that long form macro content and therein lies the mistake. That micro social media content doesn’t have a long shelf life, hours, or maybe even days. So in today’s episode I share the importance of marketing for the long game.
Like what you hear? Apply to work with us! Click here.
Transcription Below
This is OMG radio 300 and something podcasts later. Marketing for the long game. So I was chatting with my dad the other day and we were chatting about my younger brother. I’ve a very big family, a very modern family. I have two actual siblings, one half sibling and two step siblings. So I’m the oldest and my youngest sibling I think is 18. So like it’s a really, really wide gap. Anyway. Um, so many of my siblings are much younger than me and they’re like, uh, just getting started in their careers or they’re like in that weird space where they’re trying to figure out what they want to do.
And I was chatting with my dad about my, one of my brothers wants to start to be a gamer and I knew this cause he was messaging me about it the other day and he was talking about like YouTube and Twitter and all this sort of stuff. And I was chatting with my dad about like the monetization process of that and making money online and really how to leverage and grow and scale up and all that sort of crazy fun stuff. Um, and I was joking with my dad and I said, look, I’ve recorded 300 something podcasts and I don’t think I’ve made a single dollar from the podcast itself. And you know, many people will be like, well why the heck are you still podcasting? And the fact of the matter is, I’ve been podcasting for where a year and a half for those who don’t not know it all, or maybe a little bit more than a year and a half.
It’ll be two years in April, I believe. And for the first 18 months we did four episodes a week. They were really short episodes. And so that really adds up to a lot of podcast real quick. Um, but now we’re doing it two times a week and part of the reason why I bring this up is because marketing is a long game. Especially if you want to build a sustainable business and you want to build a business that generates leads on repeat. If you want to really just create something that’s going to make you money on repeat, then you have to invest in the long game and a podcast or any form of macro content is going to give you ROI longterm. I was even just talking about this on a call with my BEB members where we were talking about the investment of macro content is such a game changer because that macro content, podcasts, YouTube blogs, the are going to generate results for you.
Search results for days, weeks, months, years, right? Versus those social media posts that are going to give you a quick hit but they’re not going to continue to pay off and generate traffic and leads over time. And one of the things that I think is really, really important to talk about is that macro content, podcast content, YouTube content, blog content. It’s not going to return an ROI immediately. Yes, you might generate some leads from it out of the gate, but it’s not going to be consistent when you first get started. And part of the reason why I believe in the podcast that I do, why I am investing time into YouTube, why I’m investing time into blogging is because it’s SEO rich, it’s repurpose of bowl. It lives beyond the hours or the days that you create it. And it is going to create evergreen content that I can use and repurpose and seeing ROI from over and over and over again.
And you know, it’s funny, I’ve had a lot of conversations about this today because the online marketing landscape is changing. It’s changing drastically, it’s changing rapidly, and it’s something that if you are not taking the time to invest in that longterm content, you’re not going to get to where you want to be because you’re just always going to be hopping on whatever that next trend is. And I have been doing this for a really, really long time. I have clients that have been doing this for a really, really long time. One of my clients, Christine shared with me, she has been using the social media made simple process to a T for 18 months. It took her a full year to get consistent leads from it. So like one or two a week. Okay. And she’s got a very niche business which I will link here at sleep like a boss. And so she’s been a very niche business. It took her about a year of following this process to get consistently is one to two a month. Now she’s been doing it for 18 months, just a little bit over 18 months and she’s fully booked up. She is charging for her sales calls and she is like crushing it. She has sales calls booked ahead for the next 30 days and that is all organic. She is not doing anything, for pain. And so I share this with you because when you have a niche and when you have a system in place that can systematically create content for you, marketing is a long game and it’s a long game because it’s an investment of time. It’s an investment of resources, it’s an investment of so many things. So while I can’t be like, Hey, this podcast generated these leads, just like Christine can’t say, Oh, this blog generated this many leads, she knows that she’s doing this same thing over and over and over again and she’s getting leads over and over and over again. And I share that story with you guys because yes, you can turn on Facebook ads and Facebook ads will immediately generate an ROI for you in some instances. And in other instances it will make you next to no money at all. Um, it will literally be like flushing money down the toilet, especially if you don’t have the right system set in place.
And I bring all of this up because marketing is a long game. And that’s not to say you can’t get leads faster, right? Like ways in which you can get leads faster is more of an investment of time. So you can post in groups, you can create relationships, you can network, you can create affiliate relationships, you can create referral. That relationship, like there’s a lot of ways in which you can generate leads faster then this macro longterm stuff. However, if you want to create a business model or business that runs on its own and generates leads on its own and your list builds and all of that fun stuff, so you’re not like manually out there like working your butt off to generate leads, then it’s time that we have that conversation around investing in macro content. And many people are like, I can’t even tell you.
You know the first I’ve been in business for, it’ll be 17 years in September, which is crazy and I can’t even tell you how many people in my 17 years of business, especially on the done for you side of things that have said to me, well, Jame, I did this for three months and I can’t see an ROI, so I’m going to stop doing it. And like, Oh my God, that breaks my heart because it is stick to active ness of being consistent, doing it every week, looking at the data, tweaking the numbers. Really just like taking everything to that next level that makes all the difference in being able to actually build a sustainable business online. And for some of you it might take longer than a year to start generating consistent leads, especially if you have not like honed in on your niche and what you want to do.
So when I work with people, my biggest thing is always like identify your ideal client and identify who and what you’re selling to them. Don’t try to do two, three, four, five, six different things. Sell them one thing for one year and really hone in on that niche because when once you get really, really popular in that niche from a search engine perspective and from an optimization perspective, then you can start to broaden that and you’ll get found because it already knows that your content is relative, like relevant to other people in that particular category. And so oftentimes I see people make the mistake of being too general when they should start to be like a really, really hyper-specific. So some of them love specific. So, um, you know, I think that that’s a really important thing to talk about in marketing for the long game and how to do it and why you need to stick to it.
And you know, it can be kind of scary when you start to think about like, Oh shit, I’m going to have to make 52 weeks of content over and over and over again. But the more strategic that you can get out of the gate and really honing in on those foundations of your online business ecosystem, make all the difference when it comes to really that phase two, when you start to actively market your business, it’s like a game changer. So I bring this up because I get asked all the time like, Hey Jay, Hey James, should I start a podcast or a YouTube channel or this or that and the other. And the fact of the matter is absolutely yes, but you have to stick to it for at least a year because what you’ll start to see is, and we are seeing this now with the YouTube, right? We are seeing organic leads start to come in.
So I’ve been doing YouTube consistently inside my niche probably since July, and I am just now starting to see five, seven leads come in each and every week because it takes time for the channel to do its thing, right? And it builds momentum. And so it’s the same thing with the podcast. You start to see that and you start to gain momentum and you get more downloads and then you rank higher. And so the biggest thing with any of this is know your niche, know your ideal clients, sell one product, focus on that one thing, and then stick with it. And that’s the hardest thing. It’s hard to stick with it because if you want to monetize this stuff, it doesn’t happen over night. If you post one video, you can’t have the expectation that it’s going to go viral. Right. And if it does, it’s like a total fluke that doesn’t typically happen. So I share this with the folks who are out there who are listening, who are contemplating starting a YouTube channel, who are contemplating starting from who contemplating all these other things. It’s all about the stick to witness when it comes to marketing because marketing is a long game, especially if you want to monetize it. Whether you want to monetize it through ads or sponsors or clients or however you want to do it, you have to stick with it and you have to be consistent and you have to do the same thing at the same time every single week. So I hope this is super helpful to you. I super appreciate you for tuning in.
If you haven’t already. We have a couple of spots open this month for our OMG business ecosystem builders program. It is literally changing the game for the people in there and that’s exactly what it’s about. It’s all about building your online business ecosystem. We help you with the foundation, we help you with the lead magnet, the nurture sequence. We help you with the ongoing marketing and it’s literally everything that you need to grow and scale an online business and there is no other program on the market out there that’s like this. We are like crazy supportive with our clients. In here we have a technical call where you can come on and ask any questions. We have a video call, a social call, a strategy call. Like we just try to support our clients in so many ways so that they can succeed cause I know it’s really hard to be in business for yourself and it’s really hard to succeed when you’re by yourself. You just not sure what to do. So if you haven’t already had an over T O M G apply.com and sign up, you can get a call with me and we’ll walk you through, learn a little bit about you. We know not accept every person into this program. We’re pretty picky because we want people who are actually going to take action and implement and then we know that we can support. So thank you so much for tuning in. I super appreciate you and have a fantastic day.
