Brand Podcasting: Building Influence and Monetizing Content | Tony Guarnaccia

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Tony Guarnaccia, head of marketing at Castocity. Tony has grown over 10,000 small businesses and a dozen Fortune 500 companies, including ADP, Ford, and AutoNation, and became the Google Partner of the Year. Later, Tony returned to his entrepreneurship roots to bring the strategy, tactics, and resources normally reserved for large enterprises to small businesses. Today he is focused on bringing that same vision to podcast hosts and guests to make podcasting profitable. Tony, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Tony Guarnaccia: Thanks so much. Appreciate you having me on today. David McBee: Absolutely. Tony, I don't know if it's just because I have recently started this podcast that I'm noticing it more, like when you buy a new car, and you start to see that same car everywhere, but is everyone launching a podcast these days? Tony Guarnaccia: It's really taken off, especially I think throughout the pandemic. A lot of us were stuck home, and what did a lot of us have to do? Well, we kind of find new ways to entertain ourselves, and so that's kind of where podcasting really started to take the next stage in its growth. Because I mean, they've been around for a while. People don't really think about it, but really during the pandemic, you started to see that inflection point where it got more and more popular. And then a lot of the bigger players started getting into it like Apple doing more, obviously Spotify. There were a lot of acquisitions, and so they just got a lot of buzz, and then it kind of trickled down where people are like, yeah, we really should start looking at this as an opportunity. David McBee: Now, I think a lot of times people think of a podcast being a way to promote themselves as an individual, but today I want to focus on the idea of a brand podcasting, which is exactly what I'm doing for Simpli.fi. So in those terms, what are you seeing in the marketplace? Tony Guarnaccia: Yeah, so I actually have a book coming out on a lot of these topics, and kind of the thread that I'm looking at is if you look at the world of marketing today, what's happening? Well, you're getting a lot more competition. So everything is very kind of oversaturated. It's becoming more and more fragmented. So I talk about the kind of media evolution. So years ago you were a subscriber. You'd have a newspaper they send to you. You get what you had. Then all of a sudden you had broadcast media, radio, tv, more distribution, but it was pretty simple. Then all of a sudden, the internet caught caught fire. You need Yahoo, a directory to organize all this, then it became impossible, so you had Google search engine. Obviously everyone knows what that is. Then the next iteration, of course, was social media where it was all about your followers. Now, I think we're going into a new season where it's really about the content you're providing and leveraging that to build your influence. So now you have the rise of Amazon and the recommendation engine that's been around for a while. That same kind of idea is now being incorporated into things like TikTok, into YouTube. And so it's become a great opportunity for people to really take advantage of a podcast to grow their influence. And the reason kind of why influence is important is, again, if you look at marketing, it's very fragmented. It's very oversaturated. Even if you getting a channel, how do you differentiate yourself? And the last hurdle is technology. And so podcasting solves a lot of those issues because all you have to do is record one thing, and then you can kind of repurpose that one asset into many different channels. You can take it and really there's four. You have audio that you get out of it. You get video of it, which again, then shortened for short form content. You get text, especially with today and AI, you can generate all your text, and obviously, you can leverage images for things like social, quotes, social media posts. And so that's kind of the gap that my software company works to fill, but it's also something everyone should be aware of because that's really where marketing is going. David McBee: Are there examples of brands that you have seen really do this right? Tony Guarnaccia: Yeah, I mean probably one of the best examples, especially in business to business, is a company like HubSpot. Look no further than them. And so HubSpot has kind of taken it to the next level because they actually have a network now. So they don't just have one podcast like a lot of brands are doing. They have a network of podcasts with all these either podcasts they acquired or started on their own, and they all serve kind of the same niche. So they're going after those small business owners, maybe even larger businesses that ultimately leads them into their funnel. And so why would they do this? Well, it's a great way to demonstrate thought leadership. Obviously HubSpot has been one of the pillars. The pillar of their strategy is content marketing, and so they kind of created the idea years ago. And really, a podcast is an extension of that same strategy. It's also a great way to build your influence. So even if you're a nobody, you might be able to get guests that have more authority than you just by them having on your show, you can borrow that authority and build your own credibility, either as a guest to get on a show or as a host to borrow that host, that guest authority. Then of course, the big thing that people forget about, it's one of the best ways to create relationships. So say you're an enterprise, and you're looking for acquisition partners. You could be talking to those folks. Maybe you want to look at affiliate or joint ventureship channels. Great way to do that. And so one of the things I learned way back when, when I launched the program for Ford Motor Company and became Google's Partner of the Year, one of the reasons we were able to get that growth is we essentially did a joint venture between Ford and Google, and that's what gave us that kind of scale. And so people forget that part of it, but the key part of a podcast is really building those relationships, which leads into many other different things depending on what your business model is. David McBee: That's brilliant stuff. So now I'm putting on the hat of an agency owner, and I might be thinking a couple of things. Number one, should my agency start a podcast? Do I have someone on my staff that could host it, and who would we talk to, and what would we talk about? But then also, let's say I'm working with a brand, and they're asking me for the newest, coolest things. They're doing social media. They're doing SEO. They're doing targeted advertising. They're doing CTV. And they're like, "Let's do the next level thing." And I say to them, "It's podcasting." How do I help them create a podcast that's going to be effective for their brand? Tony Guarnaccia: Yeah. So where I would start is probably not actually with the podcast, especially if you're working with executives, probably the easiest way to get and start real, I mean, I guess what you're asking is how you start a podcast agency. Where I would start is on the guesting side. So you work with the executives, get their buy-in, get them booked on podcasts, which they love, and that can be on brand. So you make sure when you create the marketing assets, they're all branded the same way that speak to not just their personal brand, but the corporate brand. Because let's face it, people think of corporations as kind of non-entities, like it's not a... But behind a corporation is people. And at the end of the day, executives, having worked with a lot of them at the highest levels, they all are very concerned about their personal brand. And there used to be, at least, if you go back far enough, in search like I do, you're an old fogey, you might remember reputation management. So it's been around for a while. It was for companies, but it was also for individuals. So if I was going to start from scratch and wanted to build a podcast agency, I would start with guest booking services for executives in whichever niche you want to apply to. And then from there, they obviously love it. Usually the directory, someone becomes a guest, and then they're like, "Wow, this is amazing. I want to do a show." ,And then you start providing the show services. From there. You really want to build, again, a good network. So a lot of times the way I think about podcasting is four Ps. You have the planning. What kind of content we're going to have? Who am I going to have for guests? What are we going to talk about? How am I going to book them? Then you have the production. I got to make sure this looks good. How do I edit this. You might need an editor for that. And that's really where most people focus, and also why most podcasts fail. My systems focus on the other two, which is really blue ocean because no one else addresses this, which is, how do I promote the show so people actually are listening to it, which part of it is advertising what your company supports. Then obviously, what's the business model? How do I make it profitable, which is the marketing and the monetization components. So that's really what we focus on. David McBee: That's great stuff. So tell me about the title of your book. When's it coming out? What's it all about? Tony Guarnaccia: Yeah, so I actually have a series of three books for hosts, three books for guests, and so, I guess, technically there's six books coming out. One, and they start with the trajectory that people go on. So from a guest perspective, it's called Get Interviewed. Then there's a second one called Market Your Message. And then the last one is Income from Interviews, which is how do you monetize this? So a lot of people get booked on podcasts, and then they don't do anything with it. And so we talk about how do you market it before and after, and then ultimately how do you turn that into revenue? That's on the guest side. On the host side, very similar. We talk about, okay, how do you launch your podcast? How do you then market it? And then how do you make podcasting profitable? So those are the different ones, but the one I'm really excited about that I mentioned is called Influence to Income, which is really how you build a platform for yourself, build your personal brand and your business brand so that you can then monetize that. And again, that's Influence to Income because that's really the only differentiator today. If you look at the world today, let's face it, everything's getting commoditized. You got AI. There's 10 people, 100 people, 1,000s of people that do exactly what you do. What's the one thing that's still going to be a differentiator? Well, influence. How do you build your influence? Build a platform. I personally think podcasting is the best way to build a platform because you get all that leverage. You do one thing, you get all the things out of it like we talked about just previously. David McBee: That's great stuff. I'm looking forward to getting a copy for myself, or maybe all six copies. Okay? Tony Guarnaccia: Yeah, thanks. David McBee: All right. If people want to get in touch with you, how would they do that? Tony Guarnaccia: Yeah, so probably the best way, because I know I talk a lot about a lot of different things and a lot of different topics, and depending on which course is right for everybody, it's hard to say where you go. But thankfully, I have one place to go. If you go to my personal website, which is called meettonyg.com, you can get a sense of my background, what I've done, and then you can also reach out to me. There's a form there. You could contact me. I'll actually respond personally, and that way I can help anyone, whether it's a question regarding podcast guesting or hosting, or if it's an agency questioning, because I've done this for 25 years at pretty high levels, I'd be happy to help you out any way I can. David McBee: And thanks for being my guest today. I really appreciate you being on the show. Tony Guarnaccia: Yeah, no, this was a lot of fun. I really appreciate you having me today. Thanks. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching Simpli.fi TV, which is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading, media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit Simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.