Where to Put Calls to Action in Your Podcast so They Actually Convert

Let's talk about the timing of your podcast calls to action. When you make your asks and what kind of ask you're making at each point changes how well they actually convert. Most podcasters are making one call to action per episode, usually at the end, usually rushed, and wondering why their show isn't converting.

Here's what that one-CTA approach misses. A pre-roll ad does a different job than a mid-episode mention, which does a different job than a live read outro tied to the episode's content. When you only use one, you're skipping the placements that actually move listeners toward a decision. And the live read outro, the one tied directly to what you just taught, is the call to action most podcasters skip entirely. It's probably the one costing you the most clients.

In this episode of The More Profitable Podcast, I'm walking through the four places to put calls to action in your podcast, what kind of ask belongs in each spot, and how to layer them so they work together instead of fighting for attention. I'm also getting into why you should be using at least two of these in every episode, three in most, and why the resistance you feel about "selling too much" is usually the exact thing keeping your show from converting.

0:08 - Why the timing of your calls to action changes how well they convert

2:08 - Why one CTA per episode means you're spinning your wheels

3:14 - Why you'll always feel like you've talked about your offer a million times

4:43 - How actively selling filters out the audience that was never going to buy anyway

8:54 - The pre-roll dynamic ad and when to use it for timely promos

11:27 - Why I keep pre-roll ads to 30 to 45 seconds

13:09 - The mid-intro CTA and why this is where free offers belong

16:06 - The live read outro, the CTA most podcasters skip

16:28 - How to plant seeds earlier in the episode so the live read outro actually lands

21:39 - The pre-recorded outro as the catch-all for ratings, free offers, and awareness

23:07 - Why more than three asks in the pre-recorded outro confuses the listener

Mentioned In Where to Put Calls to Action in Your Podcast so They Actually Convert

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Transcript

Let's talk about timing. I want to talk about when to make what kind of asks in your podcast. So we're already on board with the idea that we're using our podcast as a sales engine, as a lead generating tool in our businesses.

Let's talk about timing though. Let's talk about when we do it and what kind of asks we're making. Welcome to the More Profitable Podcast with Stacey Harris.

I'm Stacey, and this is the spot to learn more about the strategies, tactics, and tools you need to build your more profitable podcast. My team and I work every day with podcasters like you to shift shows from frustrating time sucks to productive members of your sales team, because your show should be built to generate and convert leads. So let's get into it.

We're going to talk about four calls to action times today. And what I want you to notice is not just the when, but the what, because we're using these different timing mechanisms to drive different kinds of asks. And that's what allows us to layer these in a way that makes them most effective.

I also want to say, because I feel like this is like the PSA part of this episode, I also want to say that you should be using at least two of these all the time. At least two of these. In 95% of my episodes, you hear three of these.

And from time to time, you're going to hear me, that's right, roll out all four. I'm going to hit things at all four of these calls to action opportunities. And so I want to encourage you as you have a feeling of resistance, or if you have a feeling of resistance, come up and be like, that's a lot, Stacey.

It's not actually. Because of how we're using each of these touch points. And also, I want to remind you and, and honest to God, this may be the audiogram for this episode, but I want to remind you that if you are a coach or a consultant or a service provider who is using their podcast to build trust and drive traffic and interest to your offers, and you're not doing these things, you are spinning your wheels.

Plain and simple. And quite frankly, if you're only doing one of these, you are spinning your wheels. You are sort of like performing checking the box without actually moving the needle.

And that's the difference, right? That's the part where we need to be really honest with ourselves about how many touches, how much talk it takes to get someone to listen. And not just listen, but actually hear it. Last caveat for this, I want to remind you that at some point in your podcasting journey, you will feel like you have talked about something a million times.

I, I say this to every client. We just, it's funny. We just, I just had a meeting with a client who just finished a launch.

And we were talking about their content from the quarter and planning their new quarter. And they were really excited to get to talk about some other things and like have some other sort of shaped episodes because they had spent a lot of time talking about their launch. And they once again got on the call, just like I have done, just like nearly every one of my clients has done and said, you're never going to believe this after XYZ podcast episodes and XYZ amount of social posts and Instagram stories and whatever emails, whatever else.

I just got an email before we got on this call of somebody asking me when the doors were going to open for their program name. It happens to us all, no matter how much you talk about it, no matter how much you feel like you've done nothing but talk about it, there's going to be somebody who hasn't heard it. And that's why we talk about it all the time.

And the folks who are bothered by that, the folks who are like, oh my God, you're selling too much, which by the way, happens way less than you think it does. And the fact that you're worried about it is one of the biggest signs that it likely won't happen. But those folks, we're not going to buy from you anyways.

And so part of what we do by actively selling our offers is remove those frustrating parts of our audience that are never going to buy, are never going to support, are never going to refer, are never going to share. They're just taken, taken, taken. And personally, maybe this is a hot take.

I don't mind saying goodbye to them. I absolutely want to be of service. I absolutely want this show and everything I do to be of value.

With that said, with that said, I can only be of value if you're going to do stuff. And I can only be of so much value here. All right.

So it's okay with me to let folks who are here mostly to complain about how I'm doing things while they don't do things. I'm happy to let them go. And I'm going to guess you are too.

I'm also going to guess somebody just spring into your mind, somebody who sends you a lot of emails critiquing something, or is the first person to point out a mistake and a typo in a piece of content. Yeah. We all know, we all have that person on our email list who follows us.

I'll be honest, I started blocking people years ago, especially when I still had pink hair and I would regularly get people telling me how I would be taking it a lot more seriously if I would just stop coloring my hair, which is funny because I stopped coloring my hair and literally nothing changed. All right. Before we dive in and spoiler alert, this is one of those calls to action times.

I do want to let you know, we have a private podcast. That's right. The podcast newsroom is coming back.

Right now you can go and listen to some Q and A and some audits I've done in the past. They are really good episodes and there's a lot of really helpful information there. And this summer we are going to be bringing back the podcast newsroom.

It's going to look a little different. We're actually going to be running a series of series over on the podcast newsroom throughout the summer and into the fall. I'm really stoked about it.

Our first one, our first series will be launching in May. If you would like to be the first to hear what's happening, I'm going to be real with you. This one is going to be around launching, which by the way, listening, even if you're an established podcaster, listening to content built around launch stuff is a really good way to run an audit.

Go in and make sure your foundational stuff is still good. So we're going to be running years and years and years and years ago, I had a launch your podcast opt-in. It was actually, this is how old it is.

It was actually an opt-in we ran when we were still running the hit the mic backstage private membership community, which hasn't existed for, I think, five or six years at this point, six years at this point. And we, in that, inside of that membership, I had a rockstar guide to podcasting, which taught you how to record, launch, produce, and release podcasts episodes. Anyways, we are re-imagining that training, bringing it to the future, turning it into a 2026 asset.

And we will be running that as a series on the private podcast, the podcast newsroom. This is how we're going to be using the podcast newsroom this year is we're going to be running just a couple of series so that you have something that you can revisit. You have something that can really walk you through a process, but I'm really, really stoked about it.

And that's going to launch in May. If you would like to make sure you get it and check in with the old episodes of the podcast newsroom, again, we've got some really cool audits and Q&A questions I've answered over there. You can do that now at thepodcastnewsroom.com. Or of course, as always, there's a link in the show notes.

Let's, let's dig in. All right. I want to talk about these sort of one time location at a time.

And we'll talk about how we use that time location. So the first one I want to talk about is pre-roll. This is your most timely promo.

These are generally, and I say generally, I'm going to, for me, this is 100% how we use these for all of our clients. These are how we're using these. These are generally dynamic ads.

And so we're running them across most, if not all podcast episodes. I say most because sometimes there's podcast episodes where it's really not a fit. For example, if I am running a program that is focused on established podcasters, I'm probably not going to run that dynamic ad again, in front of episodes that are built and like speak very specifically to someone who hasn't launched a show yet.

And so like, that's what I mean when I say most, but in a lot of cases, I'm running those across every single episode, but this is timely promo. This is something that you need to know about now. A big way I use these in this show and in my business is when we run the only thing in my business that has a real timeline, which is the podcast summer camp, profitable podcast summer camp.

That has an actual timing mechanism because it is a small group program. It runs at a specific time of year. It's my only offer that is not available kind of all the time, you know, barring capacity and things like that, but it runs once a year.

We run it in the summer. This year, we're going to open the doors in June. We're going to actually run the calls July and August.

And so come May, come June, you might start hearing some dynamic ads at the top of the episodes that are me talking about that program. Spoiler alert, in case you want some insights on my upcoming marketing, but you will start hearing a dynamic ad for the podcast newsroom. As we roll out that launch series in May, you will hear assorted podcast, profitable podcast summer camp, new dynamic ads up at the top of the show as we open the wait list, open the cart, close the cart, et cetera.

Those are times of the essence. These are also really great if you're running a webinar, if you are doing a live event, anything that has a real date to it, that is a, Hey, before we jump in, here's this. One thing I really want you to consider with these is brevity.

This is not about telling them everything they need to know about this offer. This is not an audio sales page that sits at the front of your podcast episode. This is a reminder.

This is a nudge. This is a heads up because one, if they're binging your podcast, they're going to hear it lots of times as they go from episode to episode to episode to episode. And two, we don't want this to be so long that they lose interest in listening to the thing that made them hit play.

And that's the biggest thing I want you to be considering is keeping it brief enough. I try to keep them 30 to 45 seconds. Occasionally I'll hit a minute.

Uh, I really recommend going no longer than 90 seconds. And at 90 seconds, you're buying some, some big time trust. Okay.

So be mindful of that. And different ones may need different amounts of time, but you'll most often hear mine come in 30, 45, at most 60 seconds. Uh, and they really are a, Hey, before we get started, I want to remind you, if you haven't checked out the new launch series on the podcast newsroom, you're going to want to do that now.

Make sure you sign up at the podcast newsroom.com. We're talking about gear. We're talking about strategy and we're talking about actually getting your show out instead of just building yet another podcast plan. Join us now at the podcast newsroom.com. Literally that is what I remember of a script from my dynamic dad.

So that's what we're talking about with this. It is a reef baby. It is keeping it tight because this is just about getting that touch in.

All right. The second thing, the second timing is what you heard me do today. When we talked about the podcast newsroom and this, this launch series we're running, it was between my sort of like episode intro and the first point I made in this episode.

So between me talking about what the show was going to be about and really onboarding you into this idea and talking about that pre-roll dynamic ad, we talked about the podcast newsroom. That's that time. This is most often free stuff, an opt-in, a webinar, a training.

If you're working on a collaboration with somebody, I have a client who used this in a really cool way recently. They mentioned a big podcast they had been on. It was a great credibility marker of like, Hey, I was on this cool show.

And it got people to go listen to that show, which a, the host of that show also appreciates, which is a really good way to get other, to get invited back to that show, which was a big show and a really good lead magnet for her or get on other shows. One of the things hosts are looking at when they're looking at, at booking somebody onto their show is are they going to share it? Because yes, it's about you coming on and getting in front of my audience, but it's also about my show getting in front of your audience potentially. And so we want to be mindful of that.

So that was a really cool way that I have not used it, but I thought it was really interesting. And honestly, I might use it, but this is most often free stuff when it can be paid stuff is in a time where you do sort of have a news piece. So maybe you've got a live event you're launching.

I would make that launch announcement in this kind of space. If I wasn't doing a whole episode dedicated to it. And if I was doing a whole episode dedicated to it, I would still have a moment at early in the episode saying, Hey, if you're liking this so far and you're excited, don't miss your opportunity.

Get on the wait list for when tickets open up for this live event. Or I have used this before because we only have so much capacity for our launch accelerator offer. I only take on so many of those at a time.

This is a great place for me to go, Hey guys, we have one spot open. If you want to do this with me, because it's early in the episode, they're still paying attention, but it's a quick drop for me. And it's just a little bit of news.

And so that is the timing where I will make this something that is maybe a paid ask, but it's more of an invitation and less of a traditional structured call to action. Most often though, this is your free stuff. These are your resources, your quizzes, your PDFs, your webinars, your trainings, your, your private podcasts, your whatever.

That's the time to do that. The third point in which we should be making calls to action is before our recorded outro, but at the end of that episode's content, this is the one that is what I like to call sort of your live outro. This is the one where we are tying our specific offer to our specific episode.

This is tied through the content by planting seeds. And if you've listened to the show for a long time, you've absolutely heard me talking about this. It's so funny.

I just had a conversation with one of our production clients about shifting how they do this because oftentimes it can feel like we're doing this because we'll say things like when I work with clients or in my work or when people work with me, but those planted seeds are actually most effective. If we name the thing, we're going to be trying to sell them later. So if I'm building an episode where I'm selling the podcast launch accelerator, I want to make sure I'm naming the podcast launch accelerator in the points I'm making.

So let's say I'm doing an episode on launching and five mistakes people, this is an episode that actually exists by the way, uh, five mistakes people make when they launch their podcast. I could say, you know, for mistake number two, whatever it was in that episode, I don't remember. It was a long time ago.

I recorded it. Although I will include it in the show notes because I've talked about it so much at this point, but I can say, this is something that comes up all the time when I sit down with podcast launch accelerator clients because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's me planting the seeds.

Then when we get to that live read outro and I'm making the offer, I'm tying this to them, right? I'm, I'm tying these together. I'm making sure it's clear that all of the things we talked about, this is how you get them. And so it can be as simple as if this episode resonated, come learn more.

Uh, or it can be as artful as if you're sick of dealing with the frustrations of getting your show out of your project management system and into a podcast host and the earbuds of your ideal clients, it's time for us to have this conversation because we actually launch podcasts. We don't just plan them. Come and book a call with me, blah, blah, blah.

And so that would be the whole sort of bag of banana sales pitch, right? That's where we have a bit more time. This is where it is worth laying out and really tying back to the points you made, how this offer solves those problems. So don't worry so much about this being 30, 60, 90 seconds.

You have a couple of minutes because you have bought their trust by providing value throughout the episode. And frankly, this is the call to action. Most podcasters miss.

This is the one that gets skipped and it drives me crazy because this is the one where you're probably talking to the people most likely to make that move. Most likely to click that button by that program, sign up for that call, attend that whatever event. This is the one most likely to get in the ears of your most interested listener.

So don't speed through this and don't soften it to the point where it's unrecognizable. Don't act as if they're doing you a favor by reaching out. Make it clear that this is their opportunity to solve the problem they clearly have or they wouldn't keep listening.

None of us are looking to waste time and listen to content so that you feel better about putting it out. We're listening to your content because it is solving a problem for us. It is helping us get a better perspective, a better understanding.

It is challenging our thoughts. It is giving us a better way or maybe just another way. There was value there.

Now make your ask. Make that change real to them so they can actually get the thing that they're so fired up about after listening to that episode because we all know and I say this as somebody who is a podcaster selling podcasting. Podcasts don't solve problems.

Service providers, consultants, coaches, experts solve problems. Doing the work solves problems. Consuming content doesn't.

That's why you need to make it clear to your listener that although listening today gave them awareness, it is not a solution. Here's the solution and if you are not providing them this solution, you're basically just having them walk the plank and they're just jumping off your boat into open shark infested waters because now they know they have a problem but you've not presented yourself as a trusted resource. So they're going to go try to find their solution elsewhere and you and I both know that in every space, every expert has an understanding of the one person in their industry, in their space.

I'm not even going to call them a competitor because I don't think they are but the person who when you get on sales calls with people are like, yeah I worked with so-and-so and it was bad. When we do not give them a solid call to action, we have primed them to be ready for that person because that person has no qualms making a call to action. The final one I want to talk about and this is the one that most people get because it's kind of a layup.

It's your pre-recorded outro, your actual outro. I call this the catch-all. This is where we ask for ratings and reviews.

It's generally a generic free offer. You'll see in mine as we wrap up the show, you'll hear sort of a generic promo for the podcast newsroom. There'll be an invitation to come rate the show at ratethispodcast.com slash more question mark.

I think that's it. It's kind of the catch-all. I do like having this there just because if someone's listening to the whole show, they might do something.

It is probably your least valuable call to action. Doesn't mean it shouldn't exist, but it's probably the one that's going to get the least traction. Don't put too much here.

I think oftentimes we sort of, because especially, you know, maybe I'm guilty because I'm calling it this catch-all, but we try to put a lot in there. I say one ask, that's for you, that's your ratings or review. One ask that's free for them, that's your free offer.

And one offer awareness kind of thing. So, you know, if you're interested in upgrading your podcast, be sure to reach out for podcast production services or something sort of semi-generic like that. That's kind of the most I would do.

More than three and a confused mind says no is a cliché for a reason, right? You've given me too many offers, too many options. Maybe it's a Southern California girl in me, but I call this the In and Out approach, right? They don't have a huge menu, but I also don't have to sit and look at it like I'm wildly overwhelmed and go, I don't, I don't know. Like I do when I go to say a Jack in the box menu, right? Like why does Jack in the box sell teriyaki bowls? I don't understand it.

I will never understand it. I don't care. Anyways, I want you to have the In and Out approach, not the Jack in the Box approach.

All right. All right. As we wrap this up, I want you to know that your calls to action and your asks feel like something for you, but I want you to reframe it because you are providing incredible value with your show.

You are moving people to make a decision in your content. You're helping them self-qualify. You're better understand your work.

You're helping them better understand why they can see results from the way you do your work. But none of that is helpful if you're not pairing it with these call to actions. And you'll notice that at the top of the episode, I said, I use at least three of these in most episodes.

You're almost always going to hear me make that, that call to action between the intro and my sort of first major point. You're almost always going to hear me do the sort of live read outro that I'm about to do. And you're always going to hear that prerecorded sort of catch all outro.

The one you'll only hear from time to time for me is that pre-roll, that dynamic ad. And personally, I think the fact that it's only there from time to time is part of what helps make this super effective, but you're always going to hear the other three because it is my job to show you the way to a solution. And that solution is not this show.

It's work. If you are looking to get your podcast launch or improve your podcast this year, we do have one spot each for the podcast launch accelerator and podcast production. These are largely very similar services where we are building strategy together.

And then we are producing content for you. One is just for established podcasters. And one is for new podcasters.

The containers look a little different because with our established podcasters, we know you're in it to win it for your show. And so we work together over a longer period of time. With our launch clients, I want to make sure you enjoy doing this.

And so we build just your first season together. I will tell you that everyone who has built a podcast with me, and I love this fact, has a podcast still. This is not about building three episodes that are going to go die on Apple Podcasts forever and ever because you lost momentum.

Every single podcaster who has launched a show with us is still running a show. And those shows are growing and those shows are doing good work for them and their businesses. Because they built something with support and they built something to stand the test of life pressures.

All right. We can do the same for you. If you want to know more or you want to book a call to talk to me about either of those options, head on over to Uncommonly More, or of course, all the links are in the show notes.

All right. I'll see you right back here next week. Thanks for hanging out with me.

Thanks so much for listening to the show. Remember that content consumption does not make changes. So commit to doing something from today's episode.

Maybe it's taking action on what we talked about. Maybe it's reaching out to me and learning more about podcast strategy intensives or what podcast production looks like with our team. All of that is over at UncommonlyMore.com. And if you haven't yet signed up for the podcast newsroom, I want to remind you that is a great next step.

If you're not really sure what comes next, hang out over there, get those exclusive private episodes. That's over at PodcastNewsroom.com. And the last favor I will ask, because social proof is endlessly important for sure, is to leave a rating or review for this show. If you go to RateThisPodcast.com slash more, that's the easiest way to do it.

But I would love to hear what you thought of the show, what you think of the show, and if the show has been helpful for you. I can't wait to chat with you. So this is just the start of the conversation.

Reach out so we can keep it going. Talk soon.