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This is Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schmidlin. I am your podcast growth coach. And in this episode, we are going to talk about how you can get more listeners to take more of your calls to action, meaning you'll be able to get more of your audience to do what you ask them to do. Whether that thing is to go to your website or buy from your sponsors or join your patreon, or buy your product or service or rate and review whatever it is. This episode is going to help you get more of your listeners to do the things that you're asking them to do. What this episode is not going to go into is exactly what you should say, right? So we're not going to give you a script for your calls to action. I'm not necessarily going to tell you exactly when in your episode you should make calls to action, and I'm not going to tell you exactly what things you should be cta. What I'm going to do instead is give you eight reasons why listeners will actually do the things that you ask them to do. 8 reasons why listeners will actually take action. Your call to action. And so if you're a podcaster who is struggling to get your listeners to do anything, this episode is going to hopefully give you a couple of ideas for how you can get more of those listeners to do that thing. And the reason why I make this is because I've worked with hundreds of podcasters, and I have seen podcasters, some with really large audiences, struggle to get their listeners to do anything. On the same token, I've also seen podcasters with really tiny audiences who, who get, like, all of their listeners to do whatever they ask. And the reason is because they're really good at making calls to action that work, that get their audience to do something and not only do the thing, but want to do it. And so today we're gonna dive into what those eight reasons are. The eight reasons why listeners will actually take the next step and take a call to action. My goal is for you to pick up one or two things that you can improve about your calls to action. So my goal is not to say you have to do all of these eight things every single time you make a call. Action. And my goal is not to give you more work to do and more stuff to think about. Maybe focus on the one or two that you could really improve the most. And by doing that, I really think you're going to get way more listeners to take the calls to action that you want them to take. So let's dive in. What are the eight reasons why listeners will actually do a call to action? Well, reason number one, I've kind of already mentioned they want to. Human beings don't do anything that they don't want to do. That is a controversial statement that I really strongly believe in. But we don't have time to debate today. But suffice it to say, if people are not doing the thing that you've asked them to do, it's because they don't want to do it. Think about it when you say, visit my website to learn more. Do you think anybody wants to visit your website? Why, they probably don't. Now, before I walk through these eight reasons, I want you to think about the calls to actions that you have been making on your podcast. Okay? Think about what it is, what they are. What have you been asking your listeners to do? How have you been asking them to do it? And at what point in your episodes have you been asking them to do that thing? So I want you to have that in your mind because I'm going to be referring to that throughout this process. And I want you to think about that for each of these eight steps. Okay? So I'm assuming now that you've, you've got it, you're like, okay, this is the call to action. This is the thing that I'm always asking my listeners to do that they're not doing, that I want them to do more of. So how do I make it better? So let's dive in. The eight reasons why listeners will take the next step. Reason number one, they want to. So ask yourself the call to action that you want more of. Do people actually want to do that thing if they're not doing it? The answer is no. You have to make them want it, which we'll talk about in the later ones. But overall, fundamentally, people are not going to do anything that they don't want to do, especially if you're not forcing them to do it. And I have seen tons of podcasters burn themselves out really fast by trying to give somebody something they don't want or by trying to get people to do something that they don't want to do. For those of you who have children or who have ever seen children, have you ever tried to get a child to eat when they are not hungry? I don't even have kids and I know that that is a miserable experience for both of you. The same thing is true for your listeners. If you are trying to get them to eat when they're not hungry. If you're trying to get them to do something that they don't want to do. They are going to fight you tooth and nail to not do that thing. So number one, they must want the thing that you're offering. They must want to do the thing that you're asking them to do. If they're not doing it, they don't want to. And so you must make them want to. And that's what two through eight are going to help with. So, number one, they need to want to do it. Number two is that the thing that you're asking them to do needs to make sense as the next step for them to take in their journey with you. So for this, the. The analogy that I like to make is dating. I can't tell you how many podcasters, I listened to their episode for the first time and they essentially asked me to get married on the first date, right? So when you go on a date with somebody, when you are recording somebody that you are interested in, you do not sit down at the first date and propose, right? There's an order of operations. First comes date, then comes second date, then comes. Well, it's different depending on each person. But you get what I'm saying. There is an order of operations here. I see a lot of podcasters get things way out of order. So I might tune into a podcast episode, press play, and within the first 30 seconds, that podcaster is selling me on why I should join their coaching program. They're proposing to me at the beginning of the first date, before we even got the appetizers for you, for the call to action that you want to drive more of. Think about it. Does it really make sense as the next step for them to take in their journey with you? The same thing is true for you podcasters who are not business owners, who aren't trying to drive business to an online product or service you might be trying to monetize with a Patreon. And in the very first beginning of the episode, before you've delivered any value, you're asking people to do something. You're asking people to rate and review. Like, doesn't make sense to ask them to do that thing. Now the other analogy that I'll use is that have you ever sat down at a restaurant and instead of bringing you the menu, the waiter walks up to you and asks you to leave a five star rating on Google? No, it doesn't make sense. It's out of order. First you gotta order your food, then they gotta deliver it. It's gotta taste good, they gotta give you great service, and then they can ask you for a rating. So for the call to action that you have in mind that you want to drive more of, think about it. Are you making that call to action at the moment where it makes total and perfect sense for the listener to take that step? It feels natural. So if number one is they will take the next step when they want to, number two is it must make sense for them to take that step now. Number three is they trust you. Now, audience trust is something that's thrown around a lot. Basically what it just means is, have they gotten any value from you before? If you haven't figured this out already, I don't believe that you should ever call to action stuff right at the beginning of your podcast episode, because that's just not the time to do that. And this is another reason why that doesn't work. Can't tell you how many times a podcaster asks me for help. I press play on their episode and the first thing that I hear is why I should buy their coaching program. Now, I have just pressed play on this episode. I have just given you some of my attention, and in exchange, I'm expecting some value. I'm expecting you to entertain me or educate me or empower me, and instead you're asking me to do something else. Why would I trust you? I just gave you my attention and you didn't reward my attention with value. You rewarded me by asking me for more of something. Right? So I don't trust you anymore. I'm like, why would I do what this person wants me to do? They didn't even give me a good podcast episode when I pressed play. Now, the message here is not only that your call to action should not be at the beginning of the episode. The message is you should ask for your listener to do something after you have delivered value to them, after you have done something to make them trust that you know what you're talking about, that you are entertaining, and that if they pay attention to you, they're going to be rewarded for it. You have to earn the right to ask them to do something more. And by the way, it's not good enough to be good. You must be one really good. Mediocrity is death in this content game. There is an abundance of content. There is more content than anybody could ever consume in a thousand lifetimes. So in order for anybody to give you their attention, your stuff has to be so relevant and so good and it has to over deliver so much or else you're never going to hear from them ever again. And number four is the one that I think will be the most impactful for you. When you ask somebody to take a call to action, you must make it clear to them specifically what benefit they are going to get for taking that action. This is the one that I think will be the most impactful, because it's probably the little adjustment that you can make that'll make your calls to action way more effective. And it is this. Anytime you ask a listener to do something, when you ask them to do it, tell them what specific benefit they will get for taking that action. And when I say specific, I mean specific. So, for example, let's say that you're calling to action, that they join your Facebook group. What you don't want to do is say, join the Facebook group so that you can get connected to other people like you. That's not specific. And what that does is that leaves it up to the listener in their brain to figure out what benefit they're going to get from getting connected. Right? So it's not a benefit in and of itself to connect with other people. The benefit comes from whatever that connection brings. If you're calling to action joining a community, you can't convey the benefit of connecting with others. You have to convey what the benefit of connecting with others will be. Right? So, for example, if I wanted to call you to action to join the Grow the Show Facebook group, I would not say, you should join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group to get connected with other podcasters like you. What I would say is, you should join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group so that you can get actionable advice from other podcasters who have already achieved what you're struggling to achieve. Right? So by pointing it that way, you're thinking, I want to get some advice from podcasters who have already achieved what I'm struggling to achieve. Therefore, I'm going to join that Facebook group. What you're not going to think is, I want to get connected with other podcasters. I mean, maybe you will, but fewer of you will. Fewer of you will be so compelled by getting connected that you actually take the action. Another example is when I hear podcasters asking for ratings and reviews. Some podcasters say, it would mean a lot to me if you rated and reviewed the show. Right? In that case, the benefit that you are conveying to taking that action is that you will feel good. The podcaster, that does nothing for the listener, they don't really care if you feel good. If instead you said, if you enjoy the show. Please rate and review in the app that you're listening so that we can get bigger and more impactful guests on the podcast. As the listener, then I'm like, ooh, I want to hear from bigger and more impactful guests. That gives me a benefit. Therefore, I will rate and review. It's subtle. Instead of talking about what you would get out of them rating and reviewing the show, you're talking about what they would get out of rating and reviewing the show. So by doing that, you're making it clear what specific benefit the listener will get by taking that action. So for the action that you have in mind that you want to drive more of, my question for you is, what is the specific benefit that the listener will get from taking that action? If you don't know, they're definitely not going to know and they're not going to do it. If you do know, then tell them, make it clear. Take this action so that you can blank number five. The fifth reason why people will actually do what you ask them to do is it is easy to do it. And for this, I'm going to tell you about a hack that I figured out that made it way easier for people to join my Facebook group. When I first started out with Grow the Show, I used to say, as I still do, my call to action was join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group. Now, for a while, I couldn't figure out why, even though I was calling people to act, even though I was making this CTA and I was asking tons of people to join the group, it wasn't working. People weren't joining it. And I wasn't sure why that was until one day I was talking with a friend of mine who listened to the Grow the Show podcast and I mentioned the Facebook group. I always said, have you joined the Facebook group? And he said, ah, yeah, yeah, I've been meaning to do that. And I was like, been meaning to do that. Okay, so this person wants to do it, but they haven't. And I've made it clear what benefit they'll get, but they haven't done it yet, so what's the deal? And so I said, well, what do you mean, meaning to? Why? Why haven't you joined it yet? It's pretty easy. He said, actually, I was listening to your podcast, and I clicked on the link in the show notes, and then it brought up the Facebook login page, and I didn't want to log in, so I left. And I was like, oh, my goodness. So in that moment, what I Discovered is that if you share the link to a Facebook group and a listener clicks on that link and Facebook gets opened anywhere except the Facebook app on their phone or a browser where they're already logged into Facebook, then what happens is they get shown the Facebook login screen. And because Facebook is so good at not making us ever log in, nobody remembers their Facebook password. And even if they do, we're human beings who are incredibly lazy. They don't want to type it in. They don't want to join your Facebook group badly enough to take the time to type in their username and password. So they leave. And that's what was happening to me. So how did I solve this? Well, I found a tool called URL Genius. You sign up for that tool, I think it's free for a certain amount of clicks, and you type in your Facebook group and then it gives you a new link to use. And if you use that link instead of the direct link to your Facebook group, here's what happens. If somebody clicks on that link on a mobile phone. What that link will do is before it brings them to the Facebook login page, it'll check to see if they already have the Facebook app installed on their phone. And if they do, it'll instead of just loading the page, it'll jump them into the Facebook app and put them directly logged in into your Facebook group. I made that little switch. I switched from using facebook.com groups growtheshow to using my URL genius link. And guess what happened? Tons more people actually joined the Facebook group. Why? Because when they clicked on a link, instead of being shown a login page and being like eh, and not logging in and joining the Facebook group, they were thrown right into the Facebook app, already logged in, and they can just click join. What does that mean for you? Well, if that little step of just typing their username and password into Facebook was enough to keep my listeners from joining my super valuable, incredibly awesome Facebook group, What steps in your call to action are keeping your listeners from doing what you want them to do? And so think about it. How many discrete steps does somebody have to take in order to take that action? If it's more than two or three, it's way too much and you need to somehow make it easier for them. So number five is you have to make it insanely, unbelievably easy for your listeners to take that action or else they're not going to do it. Number six plays off of number five, which is not only must it be easy, but they must know how to do it. And for this one, it's very simple. If my call to action to you right now was to take a photo on your smartphone, that's really easy to do, right? Ah, but what if my call to action was for my grandma to take a picture on my smartphone? It's easy to do. She doesn't know how to do it. What do you think the odds are that she's going to take a photo on my smartphone? Pretty low. So not only must it be easy for your listeners to take that action, but they also must know how to take that action. The best example here is that I heard from a podcaster who made it possible for his listeners to donate to his show via bitcoin, but his listeners were not well versed in Bitcoin and so had no idea how to buy bitcoin, let alone transfer it to his bitcoin wallet. So I said, listen, I know to you it's easy to buy and sell bitcoin, but most of your listeners have no freaking idea how to do that. And so even though they want to donate to your show in bitcoin, it might be the right time to ask them to do that. They might trust you. They might know what they're going to get in return from giving you bitcoin. It might be easy for some people to do, but they don't know how to do it and therefore they're not going to. So don't assume that your listeners know how to do the thing that you're asking them to do. That especially applies to those of you who are trying to grow a Patreon. There are a lot of podcast listeners who have no idea what Patreon is. They don't know how to make an account. They don't know how to sign up for your tiers, and even if they get that far, they don't know or remember that they have to go back to Patreon and log in to get whatever bonus content or whatever perks that you sold them. So that's another piece. You have to make it not only really easy for them to do, but you have to educate them. Or you have to either pick something that they already know how to do, which is what I recommend, or if they don't, you. You have to teach them how to do the thing that you want them to do. Number seven. There must be some urgency to them doing it. Human beings do not do anything today that they can put off until tomorrow, except for the best ones. I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. It's a joke. I'm totally kidding. I'm just as bad. I'm worse than everybody else. I'm putting stuff off. But it's true. Your listeners are not gonna do anything today that they can put off till tomorrow. They have to have a really good and compelling reason to do that today. And so there's two ways that, that you can create that level of urgency. One is that you can just implement some sort of scarcity upon whatever it is you're asking them to do. And so if you're selling a product, you might say that There are only 10 of these products available. That's why when you see a commercial for some sort of new dish at a fast food joint, the commercial always ends in available for a limited time. It's also why every single infomercial ends with one while supplies last. In both of those cases, those businesses are gonna make sure they have enough. They're gonna keep the product available as long as people want it, and they're gonna make sure that they have enough supplies to sell as many as they can. But just by saying available for a limited time or while supplies last, they create urgency, where you're like, ooh, I better get that now, before they run out. They're never gonna run out, but you think they're gonna run out. So you go and you get it. Which, ironically, is more likely to make them run out. This is also why you see conferences and festivals progressively raise the price as the event gets nearer. Because if they didn't do that, nobody would buy their tickets to the festival or the conference until a week before, and they would have no way to plan how many people were showing up or how much food to buy or how many speakers or musical acts to have. Instead, they set the price really low way in advance and progressively raised the price to so that people have some urgency to buy their tickets now, or else they're going to have to pay more later. So that's something else that you can do with your calls to action. You can add artificial scarcity or urgency to your thing. Now, you might not want to do that. The thing that you're asking them to do, you might not be able to do that. Like, I wouldn't be able to say, you can only join the Facebook group for the next week. That doesn't make sense. So if that's you, or if you just don't want to put any artificial urgency or scarcity on your call to action, you can also generate what's called internal urgency. You don't actually make the thing that you're asking them to do any more scarce or you don't rise the cost or anything like that, but you make it clear to them why they should take that action today. So, for me, my favorite example is this. I had the princess of podcasting, ha, the Taha as a guest on the Grow the Show podcast. And she came onto the show and she talked through how to make really, really great social media content. At the end of that episode, I told my listeners to join the Facebook group if they want me, my team and my community to give them feedback on their social media content. But in order to make it more urgent, this is what I said. I said, join us in the free Grow the Show Facebook group if you would like feedback on your next episode's social media content. That way next week you have the best content you can possibly have instead of content that really doesn't work. So by saying it that way and by making it clear to them that if they join the group today, they'll be able to get feedback so that their content next week will be better than it is now, they now have internal urgency to join the group. They're going to be like, oh, yeah, if I don't join the group today, my content next week isn't going to be as good as it could be. Therefore, I'm going to join the group today. I didn't have to add any artificial scarcity or artificial urgency to it. I just said, hey, you better do this now or else you're going to continue to have subpar social media content until you do. And it worked. Tons of people joined the Facebook group after hearing that call to action. So for you, how can you add more urgency to the call to action that you make? You can make something limited. So if you have a Patreon, you can say there's only two more slots available at this super special tier, or you can add internal urgency and give them a reason why they should want to do that thing sooner rather than later. So that's number seven. Number eight is the most important one. But first, let's recap one through seven so the eight reasons listeners will take the next step and actually take the call to action that you make. Number one, they actually want to do it. Number two, it actually makes sense as the next step for them to take with you. Number three, they trust you that it's in their best interest to do that thing and that you will deliver value if they do that thing. Number four, they know what specific value they're going to get. In return, they know the benefits specifically that they're going to get for themselves by taking that action you're asking them to take. Number five, it's really easy for them to take that action. Number six, they know how to take that action already. Number seven, there's some urgency that's making them want to take that action today rather than tomorrow. And number eight, the big one, the most important one, and the one that I see everybody miss, is you must ask them to do it. I can't tell you how many times podcasters say, kevin, nobody's listening to my podcast. And then I say, how many people have you asked to listen to your podcast? And they say, nobody. I'm like, so then why do you think anybody would do that? Likewise, Kevin, nobody's joining my Patreon. How many times have you asked people to join your Patreon? Once, six months ago. You have to ask them to. It's really easy for us as podcasters to think that if we ask for something once, everybody's going to hear it, and by asking multiple times, it's going to be annoying to others. But I'm here to tell you that's not true. Your listeners definitely haven't heard your calls to action as much as you think. They definitely don't remember as many as you think they do. And they're not going to be annoyed if you call to action something too many times. Because here's the thing. Any listener who hears the same call to action over and over and over again, the reason why they've heard it so many times is because they love you and your content. If they've heard your call to action 20 times, that means they've listened to 20 episodes of your podcast. If they've listened to 20 episodes of YOUR podcast, they like you enough to be okay with hearing your call to action 20 times. You're not going to annoy them. They want to support you in the show. And in order for you and the show to keep going, and you need to make more calls to action. So that is number eight. In order to get people to take the call to action, you must call them to action. If you take away anything from this, it is that more calls to action will mean more action. All right, so that's going to do it for today. Once more, my goal in this piece is not to make it so that you have to overthink every single call to action that you make. You do not need to make them perfect. There are tons of people who are. Who have way more listeners and have made way more money than I will ever make, who have never thought of this and who don't do it perfectly. And so you don't have to do it perfectly either. Hopefully, if you implement one or two or maybe three of those eight things to the call to action that you want to drive, that you've been thinking about this whole episode, I believe that you are going to get much better results just by implementing some of them. So that is going to do it for this episode. I want to know though, if you think that there's anything that I missed or if you have any questions. My name is Kevin Schmidlin. I am your podcast growth coach. I will see you in the next episode. Go make more calls to action. That's my call to action to you. Till next time.