Article Description: Most business owners are watching their ad costs skyrocket while trust in the marketplace hits all-time lows. This article breaks down why being a guest on podcast is the only way to build trust at scale, reduce your cost to acquire a client, and futureproof your business in today's skeptical marketplace.

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Alex Hermozi, Russell Brunson, Leila Hormozi. What do all of these people have in common? Wherever you look, anytime you open up your phone and go on YouTube or Spotify, they're appearing as guests on other influencers' podcasts. And it's not random. There's a reason why all of the biggest names in entrepreneurship are prioritizing being a guest on podcast.

If you're still relying on the same marketing strategies that worked in 2019, you're going to get left behind. The market has fundamentally changed, and the only way to win in today's marketplace is to optimize for trust, not tactics. And the fastest way to build trust at scale with your ideal client is by being a guest on podcast.

Here's what most marketers won't tell you: You can have record revenue months, but if your profitability is suffering because your cost to acquire a client keeps rising, you're fighting an upside-down battle. The underlying reason why your ad costs are increasing has nothing to do with your ads and everything to do with the fact that trust in the marketplace is at an all-time low.

Why the Market Has Fundamentally Changed and What It Means for Your Business

The thing you absolutely have to understand that's driving all of these high-level entrepreneurs' actions is this: The market has fundamentally changed. And if you don't understand this or apply it to the way you're showing up in the marketplace, you're going to pay significantly more to acquire your clients.

Eugene Schwartz in his book, Scientific Advertising, talked about a concept called the five levels of market sophistication. Understanding this framework will show you the obvious reason why people are prioritizing being a guest on podcast right now.

Here's the reality: We're not in level one or level two market sophistication anymore. We're in level five market sophistication, which is the most skeptical, trust-depleted marketplace that's ever existed. And the marketing tactics that worked in earlier levels simply don't work anymore.

The Five Levels of Market Sophistication and Why We're in a Trust Recession

Let me break down the five levels so you understand exactly where we are and why it matters.

Level One Market Sophistication is like first mover advantage. Somebody's new to the market, you can just put your offer online and people are going to buy it. Think Clickfunnels in 2014-2015 when it was the new kid on the block with no competition. Or think 2020 when everybody started doing business online. The first people who capitalized on that opportunity became exponentially rich because there was very little competition at the start. All you had to do to win was be first.

Level Two Market is what we call the growing market. Tesla came first, then Lucid showed up, then Rivian. A couple of competitors start to see what you're doing and copy some of your tactics. At this point, there's still not that many people in the market. So all you had to do to win was spend more money to acquire a client than everyone else. Dan Kennedy always said whoever can spend the most money to acquire a client wins. In level two, that was still true.

Level Three Market Sophistication is when multiple people are operating in your space. Everybody's running ads, everybody's doing everything, and prospects are seeing a lot of different offers. This is where skepticism starts to enter the market because people buy somebody's offer and it doesn't work out. What does that do subconsciously? It embeds the belief that if they buy something again, the same thing will probably happen.

The solution to winning in level three is what we call a unique mechanism. You can't just say "I help people lose weight." You need to say "I help people lose weight using this specific method." When you have a specific method, that differentiates you from the competition. That's why so many business coaches say they have a proprietary method instead of just saying "I help you generate leads and close sales."

Level Four Market Sophistication is where skepticism becomes rampant. There are so many people in the market now. Using the business coaching example, this is where people who had their first $10K month suddenly become business coaches. A lot of people have really good front-end marketing, but their delivery and fulfillment is complete garbage. So what happens? Trust starts to recede. And when trust recedes, ad costs skyrocket. It becomes harder and harder to close. It's a salesperson's worst nightmare.

Level Five Market is where we are right now. People have been burned time and time and time again with programs that promised the world and delivered nothing. We've all had that experience where we didn't get the result, the program was terrible, we tried to get a refund, and the company had all these conditional clauses buried in the agreement that made it impossible.

Trust is absolutely demolished. Especially if you sell a service or high-ticket offer, people do not trust you. The thing you need to optimize around in a level five sophisticated market where there's an all-time high of skepticism is simple: You need to optimize for trust. Whoever can build the most trust with their ideal client wins.

Why Level Five Market Sophistication Means You Need to Optimize for Trust Not Tactics

Here's a great example of this in action: Alex Hermozi. When he sold Gym Launch, he wanted to build his brand because he wanted to transition from being the gym guy to the business guy. So what did he do? He went on podcasts. He posted the long-form podcast content. The podcast hosts posted the long-form content. But more importantly, he leveraged the content from the podcasts and turned it into all of the content he would ever need across social media.

So now he was omnipresent. Everywhere people looked, all they saw was Alex. And what ended up happening? He had a book launch where he sold $105 million worth of a book slash course. The biggest launch of all time, probably by double. Jason Fladlien previously had the record at around $57 million.

Here's what you need to understand: The only reason Alex was able to get people to spend $24,000 without even a sales call was because he had so much trust. People believed and felt psychologically safe enough to say, "I believe that this investment is going to be worth it."

And that's the problem right now. A lot of marketers running ads and focusing on client acquisition tactics don't understand the psychology of the consumer. Before someone wants to buy a program or spend a bunch of money, they need to feel psychologically safe enough to make that decision.

Let me give you another example. One of my mentors is Jeremy Haynes. He helps people hit million-dollar months. He charges somewhere between $4,000 to $6,000 per month to be inside his community, and it doesn't start with a four or a six. So it's a lot of money.

I started watching a bunch of his YouTube content. You know what happened? I came to the logical conclusion that I wanted whatever he had because I trusted that he had the particular solution to my particular problem. His sales guy hit me up after I opted in and said, "Hey man, let's schedule a call." I said, "I don't even need a call. Just send me the link. I'm ready to go."

Why did I make that decision? Because I felt safe enough to make that buying decision. But the problem is the marketing tactics and strategies that people are using now are outdated. Trust didn't need to be as high in earlier market sophistication levels. That's why even if people are getting new clients and having record months in terms of revenue, their profitability is so low because their cost to acquire a client is so high because so few people trust them.

How Being a Guest on Podcast Builds Trust Faster Than Any Other Marketing Strategy

The reason you need to prioritize being a guest on podcast is because it's going to allow you to build trust with your audience faster than anything else.

What we need to optimize for is making sure that the person we're hoping to attract into our sales process feels psychologically safe enough at the time we ask them for the commitment (when we ask them for their money) to say, "Yep, I believe subconsciously that you're going to deliver on what you're saying."

But the only way we make people feel psychologically safe is if they first trust us. Think about it in a relationship. When you first got your girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse, you only felt safe around that person when you felt like you could first trust them. If you couldn't trust them, you wouldn't feel safe enough to trust them with your biggest secrets.

So the question becomes: How do we build trust?

Why Trust is Spelled T I M E and How Podcasts Maximize Time With Your Ideal Client

The way we build trust is by understanding how trust is spelled. No, it's not t-r-u-s-t. The way we spell trust is t-i-m-e.

If you can increase the amount of time that your ideal client spends with you prior to even entering your sales process, the more likely they are to trust you. And the more they trust you, the more psychologically safe they feel with you. And the more safe they feel with you, the more likely they are to convert with you.

So the thing we have to optimize around is not necessarily trust directly, but the thing that will build trust, which is increasing how much time your people spend with you.

Here's what I love about appearing as a guest on a podcast: Number one, you're getting in front of people. Especially if you're doing it right and you're getting on more niche-specific podcasts instead of these big-name podcasts that you're obsessed with going on.

When you go on niche-specific podcasts, people listen to those shows because they're there to learn. They are there with high intent. They're there because they specifically are looking to solve a problem in their business or life, or because they're trying to reach a goal. They're not just there for pure entertainment.

So now when you go on that podcast that's niche-specific and highly specialized and talks about exactly what you do, you get to spend 60, 90, sometimes even 2 hours in front of people that are literally your ideal client. You have the opportunity to not just sell people on what you do, but more importantly, sell people on who you are.

In today's marketplace, whoever can get people to buy into them rather than their product is ultimately the people that are going to win. The reason people bought Alex's offer wasn't because it was the greatest offer of all time. It was because they trusted that Alex the person, not Alex the businessman, would be able to deliver on the promises he was saying.

So the number one thing you need to understand: If you want to be successful in the modern marketplace and futureproof yourself (because trust is only going to continue to get worse), you need to be a guest on podcast because it's going to increase the amount of time that your ideal client spends with you before even entering your sales process. That's ultimately going to make them feel safe enough to make a buying decision.

How to Get Attention for a Fraction of the Price Without Increasing Ad Spend

When you appear as a guest on podcast, you will get attention for a fraction of the price of what it will cost you if you run paid advertising.

Let me give you a real example. We worked with a client named Tanner Chidester, really big name in the online marketing space. He came to us because he had one problem. He said, "My CPMs are rising. It's becoming increasingly expensive to get eyeballs. What that results in is your profitability goes down."

For those of you who don't know, CPM means cost per impression, which is how much it costs you to get in front of 1,000 people. If that continues to rise, your cost to acquire a customer also starts to rise.

Tanner said, "My goal is to be able to get eyeballs without having to increase my ad spend." His CPMs at the time were $20, meaning it cost him $20 to get in front of 1,000 people. And he was spending about $250,000 to $500,000 per month on paid advertising at the time, depending on the month. But it was getting more expensive.

So what we did was we got him on 12 hyper-specific, hyper-targeted podcasts. What ended up happening? Tanner actually doubled his business.

Now, side note, I'm not taking responsibility for the dude doubling his business. I'm sure he did other things that contributed to that result, but this was definitely one of the things that played into it.

I asked him one day, "Tanner, how much money does it typically cost you to get eyeballs?" He said, "Typically it costs me $20 to get in front of 1,000 people." We got him in front of about 5 million people through podcasts.

So what ended up happening? We saved Tanner $100,000 in ad spend while helping him double the business and keeping that ad spend in his pocket. So now he has new clients which he can ascend to his higher-level program, therefore increasing the lifetime value. He didn't have to spend more money on ads, but more importantly, he's building trust in the marketplace.

If he does it the right way and deploys the content from that podcast inside of his organic and paid marketing as well as his sales process, everything becomes more profitable.

Once again, I'm not saying that if you go on podcasts you're going to double your business and get millions and millions of people to see you. What I am saying is that it will cost you a fraction of the price to get attention if you prioritize being a guest on podcast.

I'm not saying don't run ads. It's great to run ads. But if you also want to be able to scale more profitably and get attention for a fraction of the price, you need to be a guest on podcast.

This is a huge reason why a lot of these big-name individuals are prioritizing being a guest. It allows them to leverage other people's audiences to get in front of their audience for literally $0 or a fraction of the price of what it would cost them through traditional marketing methods.

Why the Familiarity Bias Makes Your Ads More Profitable When You Appear on Podcasts

When you appear as a guest on podcast that your ideal client specifically tunes into, it's going to make your ads more profitable. And the reason why is because of the familiarity bias.

When somebody sees you on a podcast, you're no longer a stranger. Now they at least recognize you. And when they see your ads, they're going to say, "Wait a second, that's the person I just tuned into on that specific podcast."

So now click-through rate is going to go up. Why? Because they already recognize you, and there's some level of trust that was built throughout that interaction from the podcast they saw you on. Obviously, all other metrics are going to increase because if you could just double your click-through rate, that's the easy way to just double the amount of conversions you have within the business.

I'm not saying that's guaranteed to happen, but what I am saying is that it will decrease the ad cost and how much it costs to acquire a client because when somebody sees you on a podcast, you're no longer a stranger when you pop up on their Instagram feed or Facebook feed with your direct offer.

How to Turn Podcast Appearances Into Compounding Assets That Work for You Over Time

But that's not the only thing. A lot of our clients and what we're really big on at Podcast Guest is showing our clients how to deploy the content from the podcast inside of their paid ads.

For example, one of the clients we work with has his most profitable ad as an entire podcast that he was on. It's literally a direct response ad where we run an hour-long podcast and then drive it to his call funnel. They land on the video sales letter page. The video sales letter is also a different podcast. Then they book a call, and on the confirmation page, we layer in more content from the podcast.

What happens is even if somebody shows up from an ad, because they consumed so much of that podcast content, they show up educated and well-framed, which ultimately leads to being able to acquire more clients profitably.

The great thing about appearing as a guest on podcast is now you have content that, instead of looking at the podcast like a one-time event, you're able to turn it into a strategic asset that continues to compound and work for you time and time and time again.

Unfortunately, what most people think is, "Oh, I'm only successful if I go on a podcast and I get clients directly from it." That's actually the least profitable way to view being a guest on other people's podcasts. The most profitable way is to view it as an opportunity to build a compounding asset that continues to work for you over time.

The Results in Advance Strategy That Pre-Frames Your Audience Before Sales Calls

Now, the next thing, going back to the psychological element, comes from a concept by Frank Kern, one of the legendary marketers and probably my favorite copywriter of all time. One of the things I love that he says is results in advance.

The easiest way to get somebody to pay you is to help them get a result for free. When you go on a podcast, it is your way to build an extreme level of trust by simply helping people get results before they ever pay you a dollar.

When you're going on a podcast, if you know how to strategically guide that conversation, you're able to do two things. You're able to educate your audience so that you're actually providing value that helps them get a result for free. And when that happens, it makes them think, "If their free stuff was that good, I can only imagine how great their paid stuff would be."

So what that does psychologically is people have an increased level of safety because if you're giving them that much value now, they can only imagine how much value you would give them if they were to pay you.

Why Podcast Content Turns Education Calls Into Actual Sales Calls

But more importantly, not only does a podcast serve the purpose of educating your audience, it serves the purpose of framing your audience. And more importantly, pre-framing your audience.

If you do it the right way, you're able to plant and engineer and orchestrate the specific thoughts, feelings, and beliefs inside the minds of your ideal clients that you need them to have in order to make a buying decision and ultimately work with you.

The big mistake people make is they just go on podcasts and they think "I talk." No. How you should view it is you go on podcast and that is your opportunity to engineer the mindset that person needs to have in order to take the desired action that you want them to take, which is to buy something from you.

So now what happens is they show up to your sales call or webinar already educated on what it is that you do. So now your sales call, which usually turns into an education call because people just show up and say things like "I just want more information. I'm not ready to make a decision," now it turns into an actual sales call where people show up to make a buying decision because they've already been educated enough because you did it the right way on the podcast.

How Being a Guest on Podcast Increases Lifetime Value and Generates More Referrals

Here's the last thing. It is becoming increasingly expensive to acquire a client. So if you are able to attract higher-quality clients inside of your business that already view you as the authority and are pre-sold on working with you prior to even speaking with you or your sales team, what's going to happen?

Not only are you going to get a new client that's going to be a lay-down lead because they came from a podcast (which they typically are because they spent so much time with you, therefore they feel psychologically safe enough with you), but now they're going to come in and they're going to view you as such an authority that you can almost do no wrong.

In order to mess up that relationship, you really have to try to mess it up. And what ends up happening is if you just deliver on what you say, that person is not going to want to leave. They're either going to want to continue whatever service you're offering or they're going to want to ascend to the next higher-level service that you have, which is going to increase the lifetime value of your client.

In a market where it's becoming increasingly expensive to acquire new clients, the clients that we can ascend or continue or have send referrals become even more valuable because we don't have to pay for any of that.

Not only by you being a guest on podcast is the cost of acquisition low because podcast is really not a hefty investment compared to ads, but now it's going to lead to an increased lifetime value where there's more continuations, ascensions, but ultimately referrals because if you do good by them, guess what they're going to do?

"Oh my god, I heard this great guy on a podcast. He's amazing. You have to check him out." And they're going to send their friends, their business partners, and their family members to you specifically because of how much of an affinity they have with you, which started from them listening to you on a podcast.

Why Ignoring Podcast Marketing Will Cost You More Money and Leave You Behind

So I need you to understand: If you do not prioritize being a guest on podcast and you totally ignore this strategy, you are literally missing out on the one opportunity that you have now to build trust at scale with your audience.

This is not only going to help you be more profitable now, but it's also going to help you be more profitable for years to come. We're in a level five market where trust is demolished. Ad costs are skyrocketing. The cost to acquire a client keeps rising.

The marketers and business owners who understand that trust equals time and who prioritize getting in front of their ideal clients for 60 to 90 minutes through niche-specific podcasts are the ones who are going to dominate. They're going to acquire clients for a fraction of the price. Their ads are going to be more profitable because of the familiarity bias. And their clients are going to have higher lifetime value because they came in already viewing them as the authority.

Don't ignore this strategy. The market has fundamentally changed, and the only way to win is to optimize for trust, not tactics.

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