How to Find Best-Fit Podcasts for Guest Appearances

Hey, it’s Trent. You might’ve seen me presenting at a webinar. Or as a podcast guest. Or rambling on LinkedIn. I’ve helped hundreds of clients figure out how to find best-fit podcasts for guest appearances.

If you’ve seen me, you’ve probably heard me talk about this thing I call Content/Context/ Audience/Reach. It’s a framework I created to find best-fit podcasts for guest interviews.

But what is it really about? Why did I create it? 

And most importantly, how can you use it to land your clients more podcast guest interviews? 

I’ll answer these questions (and more!) by the end of this article. Ready? Let’s go.

Why I made it

Two years ago I took over Podchaser’s Connect division. It was a guest booking agency that sat on top of our Pro database. (It’s since been acquired). 

We had dozens of clients who paid us to get them (or their clients) booked as guests on podcasts. No two clients were the same. Some were great. Some were not niche.

The great ones? Household name brands in dating apps. VC-backed CPG startups. PhDs at Tier 1 research institutions.

The niche ones? Fingerboard skatepark accessories. Intimate rejuvenation products. Karmic life coaches. Water desalination engineers.

So many topics. So many subjects. So many angles.

Thankfully Podchaser Pro has data on literally every podcast to ever exist (5.4M currently). So no matter how niche the niche was, we could eventually find SOMETHING for anyone. 

Oh and our talent bookers had varying degrees of experience. Some junior folks. Some traditional media vets. And even an offshore team who’d never been to the US (let alone understand the cultural differences between free range organics vs pasture raised sustainables).

I needed to build a process that would work for any client, could be used by any team member, and oh btw, needed to be repeatable.

Why repeatable? Because across dozens of clients, we had to make 80 matches every month. 

My predecessor had done some work gathering useful intel from clients. But one client had a google doc, another had a Slack thread, countless others were scribbled by hand on coffee stained post-its. 

We gathered up all the notes and looked for similarities. Almost half had some arbitrary reach metric, like 10k listens per month. A handful had bold top-level categories listed like HEALTH, or INVESTING, or DATING/RELATIONSHIPS. 

Then a couple notes had things like “VERY IMPORTANT: looking for RESIDENTIAL real estate podcasts, NOT COMMERCIAL real estate pods. And then I found a note that said “ICP = F25-34, fitness enthusiasts, live in NYC/SF/LA/CHI/MIA”

It was still a mess, but threads started to emerge.

By pulling these common threads, I arrived at a solid framework. I called it Content/Context/Audience/Reach:

Content – what podcasts discuss topics / subjects that align with my clients’ areas of interest/expertise?

Context – what perspective / POV do these pods have on said topics / subjects?

Audience – do these pods cater to my clients’ ICPs?

Reach – do these pods have requisite listenership for my clients’ desires?

The goal was to find best-fit podcasts for our clients, based on these criteria. Distill a Total Addressable Market, into a Serviceable Addressable Market, before finally reaching a Serviceable Obtainable Market. Or, put another way:

5.4M podcasts → 1k podcasts → 357 podcasts → 24 podcasts

Thankfully, we could use Podchaser Pro for every step.

Now you’re probably thinking “Great Trent you’re very smart but what does this look like in action?” I hear ya. My boss said the same thing. 

So let’s find best-fit podcasts together. 

Using Content/Context/Audience/Reach in Practice

Here’s a practical application of C/C/A/R, using a hypothetical example.

Client: CEO of VC-backed AI-sales enablement tool (“Enabl.io”)

Brief: Get sales leaders who spend months training new AEs/SDRs on industry knowledge in google docs to consider Enabl.io as a time-saver and outcome-improver by sharing how Enabl.io integrates Salesforce customer data with industry publications, public financial statements (like 10-Ks), and target accounts’ published content so that AEs/SDRs can ramp and hit revenue faster

Here’s how I’d run the client thru C/C/A/R

Content:

I know what the tool does (sales enablement) and I know who it’s for (sales leaders). But I also want to expand (and narrow) my keyword search criteria.

Why? Because a top-level “sales” search nets 12k podcasts. And that’s too many to sift through. 

So here are some derivative search terms:

Let’s double-click on “sales enablement” because it’s the most direct path to speaking with content-aligned audience

Yes, there will be fewer podcasts to choose from. But I want to score a quick win that’s content aligned. 

So let’s enter the term “sales enablement” into the Podchaser Pro search bar. Immediately get 99 results. But we should also make sure these shows are active and feature guests. (Luckily Pro offers both ‘active’ and ‘has guests’ filters)

After applying those two filters, we’ve 13 podcasts to choose from. This’ll bring us to Step 2 of the four-step C/C/A/R process, Context.

Context:

Quick refresher on Context – it aims to unpack what kind of perspective a show has on a given topic. It’s a good way to qualify shows in, or out.

For this exercise, we’ll pull contextual qualifiers out of the example client brief. 

I like laying this out in a table format so it’s easier to process visually, but definitely not required. 

The “context” column will include pull quotes from the client brief. Typically will look like a statement of fact. You can get these facts from a client-submitted brief, conversations with a client, or both.

The “qualifier” column makes a judgment on the facts. Kinda like a conditional “yes, if…” logical statement.

The “disqualifier” column should represent “no, if…” logic. 

The “impact” column is exactly as it sounds. Is it a big deal, kinda important, or no sweat.

So using the example table above, “get sales leaders” = big impact for contextual selection. Why? Because fictional product Enabl.io sells into sales leadership, which is why “qualifier” column lists management and above titles. We’ll talk about audience qualifications in the next section.

Another contextual qualifier: salesforce users. How do we qualify that in/out?

Couple of ways. First, I want to make sure the 13 shows Pro gave me aren’t hosted by, produced by, or sponsored by Salesforce competitors. Or my client’s competitors for that matter. Most branded pods will prominently feature a logo somewhere on the cover art. Here’s one example from my list. A branded show run by Revenue.io (great podcast btw). Unfortunately, that’ll be a “no” for me though, dawg.

But back to Salesforce contextual qualification. In the “episodes” tab of the remaining 12 podcasts, you can actually keyword search terms. So in this case, I’ll look up “salesforce” on each. No mentions, but that doesn’t mean I’m done. I’ll also throw in “enterprise” into the episode search because SF is preferred by enterprise orgs AND we’ve already ID’d “enterprise” in another contextual qualifier from the chart above. 

And that’ll bring me down to 6 shows that remain a fit based on Content and Context. So let’s proceed to…

Audience

I briefly touched on Audience above, but now we’ll go deeper. If you’re not already a Podchaser Pro subscriber (ahem, go schedule a demo. Yes, now.), you probably had no idea it was possible to get a podcast’s audience demographics. 

But you can with Pro! I’ll eschew the specifics, but there are two ways we derive demographics.

The first way includes creation of a social graph from the podcast’s social following (across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X). 

The second is what we call predictive demographics. More on that here.

What kind of demographics are we talking about?

• Age
• Gender
• Marital Status
• Parental Status
• Interests/Affinities
• Household Income

And why should you account for audience demos in your target show list creation? Simply, to make sure there’s alignment between your client and their ICP and the podcast’s audience.

In the fictional Enabl.io example, we outlined how managers, directors, and VPs are gonna be our sweet spot. Though imperfect, we can use age as a proxy for seniority. A quick google search tells us most sales managers are in their 30’s and up. How do we find that within Pro?

Pretty simple! Every podcast page has an insights tab and under that tab there’s a section labeled “audience demographics.” You can also see median age demos directly in a table view, like so:

What other audience demographics might be important to our fictional friends at Enabl.io?

I’d say listener location and household income. Geography isn’t explicitly mentioned in the brief, but let’s assume U.S. We can also infer at least average, but ideally above average income. We can check geos and HHI on any podcast insights tab.

And voila! We found ourselves a matchy-match for Content, Context, and Audience. But what about Reach?

Reach: 

Let’s talk about Reach. And level-set on expectations. I’ve onboarded close to a hundred clients. At least half began the convo saying, “We need to get on Rogan.” Or The Daily. Or How I Built This. Listen, I get it. They’re podcast powerhouses. And they enjoy massive reach. But let’s be realistic. Those shows find YOU (or your clients). Not the other way around. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t find success in podcastland. In fact, most of our clients felt greater impact from guesting on mid and long-tail shows. 

This is why I like to describe podcast reach as a spectrum. Spectrum? What, huh? 

On one end of the spectrum you’re gonna find the big shows with massive reach. They’re typically hosted by a celebrity. Or influencer. Or athlete. They go a mile wide in terms of content and appeal. But many of ’em might only go an inch deep on any given subject. Worth pitching? Sure! But temper expectations (please!). 

On the other end of the spectrum, you’re gonna find small, but focused shows. These are typically hosted by subject matter experts. And they appeal to the SME’s peers. Invert the miles to inches ratios mentioned above. These shows allow your clients to nerd out on the topics they’ve devoted their careers to. Often times that’s better! 

Then of course you’re gonna find shows in the middle of the spectrum. The vast majority of your guest pitching success will happen here. 

Here’s the spectrum, visualized. Albeit with an example from pharma/healthcare:

So how do we apply the reach spectrum to our fictional Enabl.io client?

Well, first let’s take our “based in reality” pill. Guy Raz may one day interview Enabl.io’s CEO, but today’s not that day. Since it’s a new startup, with a fairly narrow ICP, I’m inclined to start on the Clinical/Technical end of the reach spectrum. A quick LinkedIn Sales Navigator search for folks with “sales enablement” in their title shows ~1500 individuals. Most likely we’ll find a show with ~1k listeners per month. 

Will your clients pushback on this? Yes. Can you spin it into a positive? Also yes. Here’s how:

“Mr. CEO totally understand you’re looking for more reach. Curious though, how much did it cost to sponsor that off-site happy hour after SaaStr Day 3 when 17 people showed up? Plus flights and lodging? Oh and the time spent away from working on the biz? With this interview, you can reach 59x more people for no additional cost, and you’ll only be out of pocket for an hour. What do you think?” 

Okay yes somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But you get the point. 

Podcast reach info appears at the tip top of a podcast page’s insights tab, as so:

There’s something to be said about building the guesting muscle here too. Being a great interviewee is a skill. Skills take time to develop. Getting reps in with smaller shows will help prep your clients for primetime opps. 

In addition to skillset development, guesting on smaller shows also helps establish your guests’ bonafides. Somewhere between 10%-25% of shows I booked clients on asked for my guest’s previous podcast appearances. Why? Because the host wanted someone with experience in the medium. 

And wouldn’t you know, 3 podcasts from our initial list satisfy every step of Content/Context/Audience/Reach. 

How to Find Best-Fit Podcasts for Guest Appearances:

There you have it. Content/Context/Audience/Reach, soup to nuts. Hopefully you now understand how to find best-fit podcasts for guest appearances.

Proper show selection can make or break your podcast guest booking campaigns. And that’s not just my opinion. I’ve talked to dozens of podcast hosts who’ve complained about irrelevant guest pitches. The hosts say things like, “this person didn’t even know what my show’s about.” Or “good enough pitch but they want to discuss topics that I’ve literally never heard of (or care about).” 

Now for a few parting thoughts:

In the Enabl.io example, I only used one subject/topic “sales enablement.” I could’ve used every term/phrase in the table. I suggest doing that as you get acclimated to the process. Before long, you’ll be able to map this all out in your head.

You might think this is overkill. You might be right! But if you’re gonna do something, you ought to do it well. Yes it takes time. Yes it requires thought. And when you follow this process you’re going to get more predictable results. At least I did. And so have hundreds of other guest bookers. 

You probably want to know what comes next. Aka how do you write a pitch that lands your client a podcast guest interview. That’s another deep dive (like this one). In the meantime, find some quick hitting pitching tips here. 

If you’ve made it this far, bravo! Thanks for your time and attention. Can’t wait to hear your clients as guests on podcasts. 

Oh and btw if you’re not a Podchaser Pro subscriber, go ahead and schedule your demo now.