How To Pitch a Podcast: It's not the podcaster - it's the audience

Welcome to the inaugural episode of "Pitch a Podcast," where I, Dave Jackson, expose the world’s worst podcast pitches (because apparently, reading a show’s description is just too much to ask).

Ever wanted to land that coveted podcast guest spot? Well, you’d better know something about the show you’re harassing—maybe even listen to an episode (revolutionary, I know).

Tune in as I explain how to stand out from the sea of generic spam and actually deliver value to a host (hint: it’s not about copying and pasting your life story).

What Podcasters Are Looking For in a Pitch

Every single podcaster wants to deliver value to their audience. So think of it like a secret Santa. When you find out you have Harold from accounting, you need to figure out what Harold likes. There is nothing different in podcasting

If you want to deliver value to the podcast audience it starts with knowing:

• Who is the audience
• What do they want?
• What do they need?
• What are their biggest pain points

The More Your Know the More Value You Can Deliver

The better you know the audience of the show, the larger the value you can deliver. It's not hard, you just have to know the audience.

When you pull upside to the host of the show and explain how you have an idea for an episode with a guest who can WOW the audience, and then share anything that proves you listened to the show - you are miles ahead of all the other guests and agencies doing "Spray and Pray"

What is Spray and Pray?

Spray and Pray is where someone writes a form letter. They later pop in the name of the show and, if you're lucky, your name. There is no amount of detail about your show, but they will let you know they love it, and then they make it all about themselves or their guest and how they invented sliced bread, cured cancer, and you would be insane to not have them on your show.

The problem is they never connected themselves or their guests to your audience, and they've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they've done zero work on learning about your show and what your audience wants. They send these letters out in bulk and fill everyone's inbox with spam.

Somewhere there's some fool that will put this person on the show because all they need to get on their show is a pulse. They're not interested in delivering value to the audience. They're probably hanging their hats on programmatic ads that pay $0.002 per download

This Show Will Expose Bad Pitch and Praise Great Pitches

While there are giant mountains of bad pitches we will be spotlighting, we would love to hear when someone sends in a good pitch as well (we're hear to learn - I'm from the School of Podcasting after all - education is my jam).

Leave Your Story

You can leave your story by going to pitchspodcast.com/story and in addition to your pitch story (good or bad) if you are looking for guests, who (or what type) of guest would be the "perfect guest" for your show?