Leverage Your Podcast for Relationship Marketing with Veronica Romney

Hey Friend!

Did you know your podcast can be your number one way to build deep connections with people? Those connections could mean growing the number of podcast listeners and their time listening to each episode. Deeper connections can also mean other influencers, podcasters, and leaders you come to know and learn from in your niche industry. It’s called relationship marketing, and through relationship marketing you can leverage your podcast for deeper connections and greater sales.

My friend, Veronica Romney, is a relationship and identity marketing expert. She helps CEOs master their roles, nurture their teams, and elevate their leadership. I met Veronica at a speaking engagement and quickly realized that what she portrays online is exactly who she is in life.

Veronica shares seven relationship marketing strategies to grow your online business and leverage your podcast for more connections in your industry and more sales.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING STRATEGY #1 – GETTING PEOPLE TO SAY YES TO YOU

Stef: Tell us how you got into marketing.

Veronica: I didn’t know I was going to be a marketer. My parents are Cuban immigrants who value education. To them, education changes your destiny. Hence, I loved learning, math, and business. I planned to go into finance and accounting; however, I couldn’t secure an internship in finance. The only thing that was available to me was marketing. That was almost seventeen years ago.

Marketing is art and science, creativity and data. I love that I didn’t have to choose one side of my personality or the other, and I have been wildly loyal to my profession. I am a marketer just as much as I am a wife, a mother, and a Christian woman. These are parts of my identity. I look at the world through a marketing lens which I can’t undo. Anything I see or consume, whether a movie, a concert, or politics, I view from a marketing lens. Marketing by definition is the ethical persuasion of getting people to say yes to you. Yes, to buy and learn from you. They act because you told them to.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING STRATEGY #2 – SELF-MARKETING

Stef: What is the most important relationship marketing strategy when starting a brand and online business?

Veronica: Solopreneurs must learn the art of self-marketing. In other words, how to market yourself in a way that tells people what you do in a natural, comfortable, confident way. Self-marketing shares your struggle or pain and how you made a solution for yourself or figured out a better way. Now you want to help others out of the same pain you were in yourself.  You desire to teach others how to achieve the same success or results you did. Self-marketing says, “I did this. You can, too.”

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING STRATEGY #3 – HELPING IDEAL CLIENTS

Veronica: The entrepreneurial journey naturally starts with self-marketing. Then at some point, relationship marketing evolves to not being about you. Your ideal client shouldn’t buy from you because they want to become you. They should buy from you or through your company because you help them become the best version of themselves. You help them reach their fullest potential.

In my opinion, if you and your brand or online business don’t transition relationship marketing from self-marketing to helping others, you will stay in a small business mind capacity.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING STRATEGY #4 – IDENTITY MARKETING

Stef: Interesting. So tell us how to make the shift in mindset and message from self-marketing to client-focused, helping others, marketing?

Veronica: The shift happens when you stop saying Buy This, Register for This, Order Now, Click Here and instead say Be This or Do This to Become This. The latter is called identity marketing. Brands move to a whole other stratosphere when they focus on identity marketing.

An example of identity marketing is Taylor Swift. Someone doesn’t go to her concert to become Taylor Swift. They go to her concerts, buy her albums, listen to her songs, and buy merchandise because there is an identity in being a Swiftie. While the lyrics are her story, every time someone listens to those lyrics, it makes them feel something about their story. She speaks for them through her songs.

Another great example of identity marketing is Harley-Davidson. Thousands of people every year are buried in Harley-Davidson caskets. Families commission personalized caskets in the logo and coloring of a Harley Davidson. And they bury their loved ones in their full riding gear. We know that garments and memorabilia are symbolic of what someone believes in or how they see themselves in the eternities of their lives.

Now, I’m a small business owner. I’m not Taylor Swift or Harley Davidson. How does this relate to me? Self-marketing shifts when your message is you don’t buy from me to become me. You want to work with me or buy from me because I can help you be the best version of yourself. I’ll help you become what you believe about yourself but don’t know yet how to get there on your own. I truly believe after seventeen years in marketing and business that the wallet achieves what the mind believes about itself.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING STRATEGY #5 – PODCASTING

Stef: Buy This to Be This messaging. That’s good. What marketing channels do you recommend for people to make the biggest impact in this identity marketing? What has worked best for you that you believe is powerful for a solopreneur trying to grow an audience or make a few sales?

Veronica: As a marketer, I try to have my foot in all the things because traffic comes from a variety of places. There is paid traffic, social media traffic, search traffic, and relationship traffic. Relationship marketing is my favorite form of marketing because it is fundamental. Before the Yellow Pages, the Internet, or social media, marketing was just people doing business with people and helping people.

That said, of all the marketing tools I have at my disposal, my podcast has been the most powerful tool in my relationship marketing endeavors. That’s because when I meet people in person perhaps at a conference, networking, or introduced through someone else, we connect and start a relationship. Before I know it, I’m on their podcast or they’re on mine. The podcast is the easiest way now.

So many things have come from the podcast. I got invited to a huge speaking opportunity with 1500 chief marketing officers and business leaders, the VP of marketing for Netflix, and the CMO for Mattel, Barbie. Those are big names to share the stage with, and I’m on the roster of speakers because the organizer listens to my podcast.

With podcasting, the valuable metric is not how many downloads but rather the quality of people who listen. People who listen to a podcast are more qualified individuals to work with than people who just watch you on social for thirty seconds or less. I feel listeners are buyers. If they are willing to listen to you for thirty to sixty minutes, they are telling you their inclination to further invest time and effort, if not money, with you, too.

Stef: So good. I just love that we landed here because I have seen that in my own business and my students’ businesses as well. The sales happen through the listeners of the show. While we use other marketing channels, they point back to the podcast because that’s where the conversions happen.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING STRATEGY #6 – REVERSE ENGINEER WHAT YOU WANT FOR YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS

Stef: Tell us more about how you strategically invite guests to the podcast to meet them, learn from them, and become a part of the opportunities they have.

Veronica: I am a very intentional person. The number one ingredient in making any of it work is intentionality and effort.

At first, I was like a baby at podcasting. I didn’t know what I was doing. I invited my friends to come on and have fun and talk. Then I made a shift a couple of months into it when I realized I needed to use the podcast strategically for its full potential.

So I reverse-engineered what I wanted. For example, I wanted to speak on stages, so I invited some of the biggest conference organizers or event coordinators to share on the podcast. I said, “I have to tell you that I am in awe of what you do. Do you mind if I ask you some questions because I’m trying to carve a niche into this also?” Or I say, “I am in awe of what you did to achieve the results you did, and I want to tell your story. It would be an honor to tell that story.” I do not make them look like an idiot nor do I debate them. I make them look good because I really do think what they did was brilliant. That’s my approach.

When I invited conference organizers or event coordinators to the show, I asked them to share what they look for when vetting keynote speakers. That did two things for me. I heard from them as experts on how to position myself to become a keynote speaker, and it created a relationship through the podcast. Hopefully, they think of me when I am a keynote speaker. All of my podcast guests have been wildly generous sharing what did and didn’t work for them. And they generously introduce me to other people.

I also wanted to be invited to particular masterminds or different networking groups or different circles or tables that I didn’t have access to. So I invited those who had their own masterminds and networking groups to come on the show. As I write my first book, I want to interview people that I could mention in the book because someone else’s words in my book are more powerful than just my take on it. I reverse engineer what I want, and then use the podcast to get me there.

Being able to say, “I want you on the podcast” or “I want to feature you in the book,” flatters people. Podcasting has opened virtual doors for me.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING STRATEGY #7 – INVITE GUESTS TO SHARE ON YOUR PODCAST

Stef: That’s amazing. I love how you are courageous and willing to ask. Some people might be thinking, That’s so amazing for Veronica. She’s getting all these huge people on her podcast, but I could never do that because they would never say yes to me. My podcast is small. What do you say to that thought that might be creeping in for people?

Veronica: I haven’t once been asked to show a potential podcast guest my download numbers. As far as they know, I have zero people listening or I could have a hundred people listening. Perhaps only my Cuban family are listening. Inviting someone to be a guest on your podcast is flattering, and they take it as such.

Stef: I have been podcasting for six years and not one person has asked my podcast listener metrics either. Tell us how you ask someone to be your podcast guest. Does your team send an email or do you personally send them a direct message?

Veronica: All of the above, but mostly, I do the inviting through a text or a direct message. I love voice direct messages because the potential guest knows it’s me, they hear how genuine I am, and it gets a higher listen rate. As I invite, I am detached from the results of whether they say yes or no. A potential guest can sniff desperation.

I hope you take Veronica’s seven relationship marketing strategies and use them to grow your online business and leverage your podcast for more connections and friendships in your niche industry. Use this conversation to evaluate how well you are using relationship marketing and identity marketing to help your ideal person and get more sales.

Your podcast is a powerful tool. If you need help reverse-engineering your podcast to get more qualified listeners ready to buy, coaching clients, and course sales, Podcast to Profit Mastermind, my six-month group coaching program is your next step.

I pray this blesses you!

Xo,

Stef

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