Why Educational Content Isn’t Converting

Hard truth time, showing up is not enough. It's not about just doing more.

It's not about releasing more episodes. It's not about changing the day they release.

Being consistent is not the same as being effective, and that’s what we’re digging into today.

Welcome to The More Profitable Podcast with Stacey Harris. I'm Stacey. 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.

Too many business owners assume that showing up and hitting publish is enough. That’s the bar, that’s the goal, that’s what we’re doing.

"If I can just get a show out once a month, bi-weekly, every week, whatever it may be… If I can just get this show out at this cadence, sales will follow."

However, we’re going to pull back the curtain a little today. We’re going to dig in on a hard truth, which is: most podcasts that aren’t converting aren’t just not publishing enough, they’re misaligned.

You’re creating incredible content, just not the kind of content that actually moves a listener towards a decision. And that decision point is the difference maker.

So I want to dig in today on what is keeping your show from checking the box you actually want it checking, which isn’t, “Is it done or not?” But instead, “Is it supporting my sales goals or not?” That’s the box we need to check, and that’s the box we’re going to make sure we’re checking today.

A quick heads-up before we jump in, if you’re considering joining us for Summer Camp, make sure you check that out. If you want to have a chat with me before you sign up for Summer Camp, you really gotta decide that now, because we’re going to be kicking off in just a couple of weeks.

Head on over to uncommonlymore.com/summercamp to get all the details. If you have questions, if you have more information you need to find out from me, I’m happy to chat.

There’s a contact form on our website, uncommonlymore.com/contact, or drop it in my DMs, it’s over on Instagram. Send me a message on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you. I am happy to answer absolutely any questions you’ve got.

I want to start this conversation off by sort of myth-busting a little around valuable content, because content can be helpful and not be a nurturing, educational tool.

We see this a lot when we’re posting a lot of tips, a lot of tricks, a lot of quick and easy DIY options. You’re not being helpful. You’re not educating. You are giving them a list of things to hold in their head—or really, screenshot and save in their notes app—that they’re never going to touch.

You’re creating value, you’re not creating change. You’re not giving them any kind of value that’s actually going to impact their current results. It feels helpful. It feels helpful to you and it feels helpful to them, without ever actually being impactful. This is where the disconnect lies. Educational content is not the same as conversion content.

Now, does this mean that we’re not educating in any way? No. Absolutely, we’re educating. We talk about things all the time here that are tips, that are tools, that are tricks.

Last week, we talked about repeatable series. That is valuable content. That is informative content. We talked about ways to use it. I shared an example from a client who did use it. That’s helpful.

What it isn’t is the surface-level first three steps of something and then nothing else.

Instead, it was a perspective shift, a mindset shift, an opportunity for you to hear about a tactic that you might use, and an invitation to join a container where we’re actually implementing that.

I’m educating you into a decision. I am not educating you into hoping that maybe you’ll actually implement this idea, because that’s not ever going to get implemented.

You know how I know?

I too have a Google Drive folder full of PDF downloads and freebie materials, and podcast episode opt-in upgrades, and I have a whole doc in my project management software that is linked to helpful episodes and TikToks and Instagram posts that I have seen that I’m absolutely going to do something with someday, and some of them are ten years old and they’ve not been opened since they were added to those lists.

Because here’s the reality check: I’m not actually going to do anything with that. And neither are you. And more importantly, neither are your listeners.

Your podcast cannot be built to show off how smart you are and that you know these three tips and tricks. It’s not built to impress your peers. It’s not built to appease the freebie seekers. It is built to help your audience identify that you are the right solution to their problem.

And part of that is educating them on their problem, not just the solution, giving them an understanding that helps them identify what’s happening now and what they’d like to see different, and then educating them on how that different works so that they can decide if now is the time for them to access that different.

If you are getting a ton of great episode feedback but not a single inquiry,

if you’re getting your, you know, we talked about this in the “Should you quit your episode or fix it?” a couple of weeks ago, but if you’re ending up with your peers in your inbox and your colleagues and not your prospective clients, these are red flags.

If you’re getting a ton of “I can’t wait to implement this” and not a single sales call calendar ding, you got a problem. This is where your problem lies. You’re giving them content, absolutely. But that content is not built to do anything. And that misalignment is killing your momentum. Because it makes it harder for you to show up for the show.

It makes it harder for you to keep moving forward with your offers. This is the dangerous thing I see, people are making whole-ass business decisions based on thinking their podcast isn’t working. And so they’re changing their offers, they’re changing their niche, they’re shifting who they’re talking to and what they’re talking about on the podcast, further and further and further away from who they actually want buying.

Further and further away from who they actually need interested for their offer to work as their offer works. Or they start building these offers that are in no way connected, so you have no client retention. Because a client can’t move from A to B, because you’re so desperate to put a client in anything that you start building offers that aren’t wholly connected to what you do.

The biggest place I see this is where service providers suddenly start becoming business coaches. They have been providing a service, I'm going to make up an example.

Let’s say they’ve been a graphic designer. They’re struggling to sell their graphic design services. They’ve got a bunch of people in their DMs who want all these behind-the-scenes looks, and they start talking about how to do design. Six, eight, twelve months later, I see them rolling out their design program to teach design to designers. "I’m going to teach you how to get clients from your podcast, even though I can’t, which is why I started selling to you guys."

That misalignment is going to keep driving this divide further and further and further. And that's why we see these folks end up in these businesses that are like, "This is not what I wanted. This is not what I wanted to do." I don't want you getting lost, and I don't want your listeners getting lost. But for that to happen, you've got to shift your process of planning your content.

It has to be offer first. I'm going to teach you how to build a strategy. This is literally what we're going to do in the Summer Camp. Are you ready? What are you selling? Who are you selling it to? How are you selling it to them?

Those are the questions you need to answer. Because from those questions, we reverse engineer the path towards it. If I know what you're selling, and I know how you're selling it to them, and I know who you're selling it to, we can map out what they need to know, how much time they'll need to make their decision, so that you're able to speak to buyers.

You're able to speak to the folks who are actually paying attention—not just to your content, but to their problems—and who are actively seeking a solution to that.

We can create intentional stepping stones towards the offer when we know first where we're going and who we need to get there.

I want you to start looking at building episodes around the objections you're getting on sales calls. Answering FAQs. Highlighting client stories. These are often the three most commonly missed pieces I see when someone tells me they're using their show as a sales tool.

Start looking at series. You've got a launch coming up, build a series that walks them from awareness to decision. This is the repeatable series you heard us talking about in the repeatable series episode last week. When I'm sitting down and I'm talking to Nicole, when we're talking through what was possible for her, what changed for her in building that repeatable series. That repeatable series is made up of episodes that walk someone through from awareness to decision.

Every episode needs to speak to, "Am I ready to solve this problem now?" It's not going to be a yes every episode for them. But for the right folks, as they keep listening, it will become a yes. Because they will be able to identify that they have the problem you solve, and that you're the one they want help solving it.

I want you to be turning your podcast into a meaningful sales asset. And that means shifting your podcast from a way you provide value into a sales tool, into a member of your sales team. That's one of the reasons I've really shifted when I talk about content planning, I don't want you to think about it as content planning. I want you to think about how you're building your sales strategy, and content's just the medium in which you're delivering it. I don't want you to build yet another content plan. I want you to build your sales plan.

That's what we build in Summer Camp, is your sales engine. It's the process in which you're going to be moving clients from "Huh, I don't know" to "Yes, solve this for me."

Maybe most importantly in there, shaking off the folks who are going to be not right, either for this offer or for working with you entirely, whatever it may be. Because the folks who are not right for this offer but are right for you, they're going to reach out anyways.

You heard in last week's episode. You heard in that clip one of the fundamental things I say to clients all the time, to an annoyingly high rate: When you sell one thing, you sell everything.

When you position yourself as the solution, they will see you as the solution, regardless of what form the offer, the solution, is taking right then. But that only happens when you're very clearly speaking to an offer.

We're not just looking to get content out. We're looking to build a show that sells for you. That's what we're doing in the Profitable Podcast Summer Camp. I want you to be spending this next two months building a show that supports you as you move through the back half of this year. Here's the reality check we all need: People are buying. They're just taking longer to do it.

Sales cycles are longer. It's the reality. We have a much more cautious lead pool than we've ever had, not just because of what's happening economically, by the way, but because they have matured.

The internet has grown to a rate in which we've got a savvier buyer. Certainly, our best-fit clients are savvier buyers. If, like me, you're working with people who have been online for a while, they've been in business for a minute, they've been doing this whole thing, they've probably been around long enough to get screwed. To buy the course from somebody who was full of it. To hire the person who disappeared or underdelivered.

So it's going to take longer to build trust. When you layer on that, the economic uncertainty that continues to happen, you've got a longer buying cycle. You've got even more emphasis and importance around building trust. That's what your show can do for you if you set it up to do that. Because trust is not built by simply being there. It's by being there and being a trusted resource.

Tips and tricks are not what make you a trusted resource. An understanding of what your best-fit clients need right now, what they need to hear to make a decision, guiding them through the uncertainty of deciding, of even identifying their problem, and then deciding on the solution, that's the role your podcast should be filling, and that is how you build a profitable podcast.

If you want to spend the summer building your more profitable podcast with me inside of the Profitable Podcast Summer Camp, head on over to uncommonlymore.com/summercamp and reserve your bunk now.

We are keeping this small. When the spots fill, the spots are gone. So if you're interested in joining us, make sure you have reserved your spot so that when we get started June 12th, you are on that call with me. All right, uncommonlymore.com/summercamp. Book your spot. I will see you around the campfire.

Thanks so much for listening to this 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.

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. The last favor I will ask, because social proof is endlessly important for sure, is to leave a rating and review for the show. If you go to ratethispodcast.com/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. This is just the start of the conversation. Reach out so we can keep it going. Talk soon.