Dear founder,
I want new prospects to receive the maximum possible value the moment they register for Podscan, so I treat them as customers before they even come to the page for the very first time.
Here's the Podscan Dream Customer strategy — from idea to execution.
🎧 Listen to this on my podcast.
A few months ago, I started thinking about preparing data on Podscan for people who would be ideal customers for what the product currently is — a social listening tool. The easiest approach seemed straightforward: get the names of brands and influential people I’d want as customers and start tracking them. And over the last few weeks, I’ve turned this idea into a systematic customer acquisition strategy.
The infrastructure for this has been there from the start. Any tracking of any brand requires an alert in the system, so I created these alerts privately under my own account. I’ve been waiting for results to trickle in, thinking about how to eventually expose this data to potential customers.
Understanding the Target Market
I’m not just throwing darts in the dark here. When it comes to the Eugene Schwartz hierarchy of product awareness — which goes from people being unaware that they even have a problem to being fully knowledgeable about all products in the market, I’m targeting people who are at least solution-aware, if not product-aware. These aren’t folks who are unaware or just problem-aware – they’re people who already know that social listening is valuable and can benefit them. I’m specifically focusing on influential people in entrepreneurship, business, and software because that’s where I have the strongest connections that make initial conversations easier.
I’ve tracked the names and brands of several hundred people in these industries. The system collects podcast mentions, brand references, name drops, and conversations about or with these potential customers. This data collection has been running for months, and recently, I decided it was time to transform this passive monitoring into an active sales outreach process.
The Three Pillars of the Strategy
For this approach to work, three critical components needed to come together:
- Make it possible for people to import their existing mention data into new accounts automatically
- Present this information outside of a logged-in account through designated landing pages
- Tell these people that this valuable information exists about them
With my designer and engineer hat on, I spent the last week building exactly this system. The landing page now pulls in 8-15 recent mentions for any tracked person or brand. It displays full mentions and several highlighted ones, showing the data’s depth. Most importantly, it presents podcast covers in a visually appealing way, immediately demonstrating to potential customers where people are talking about them and their brands.
The Technical Implementation
The system uses a specific hash code for each alert, preventing random imports of other people’s mentions. When someone imports their data, I can track this action and begin building a relationship with these accounts. But the most challenging part for an introverted software engineer like myself? The outreach component.
Instead of generating AI-driven messages, I created a template system for cold emails and direct messages, customizing each one with pre-warmed data. The outreach includes screenshots of actual mentions, complete with podcast information, timestamps, and ratings. I automated this process by rendering web pages directly into inline images, which can be easily pasted into emails.
Initially, I included text versions of conversations in the emails, but I found that screenshots with highlighted conversations work much better. These screenshots include the podcast image, timestamp, ratings, episode numbers, and other contextual information that makes the mention more valuable and actionable.
Finding Contact Information Through Data
What’s fascinating is how my own database became a goldmine for contact information. When people are mentioned in podcasts, their social media links or websites often appear in show notes. From there, finding their email addresses becomes surprisingly straightforward. This pre-warmed information makes my cold emails much more effective – they include visual examples of mentions that prospects would get if they tried Podscan.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Even when people aren’t interested, they’re grateful for the valuable information I’ve shared. This approach has opened up an interesting recursive opportunity: every time one of my users triggers a mention of their brand, that podcast itself becomes a new target. I can reach out to the host, who’s often an influential person themselves, saying, “Hey, someone just found a mention of their brand on your podcast. You might find it interesting to track your own name and podcast mentions too.”
Building a Sustainable Process
I’ve set up a weekly cadence for adding interesting people from my community, events, blog posts, books, and tweets to my dream customer alert funnel. A script notifies me once ten mentions accumulate for any person, prompting me to either reach out immediately or adjust the alert parameters.
The podcasting world is full of experts who would benefit from knowing when they’re mentioned. Every podcast guest is a potential customer who might want to track their mentions to find new show opportunities or connect with similar podcasters. This creates a natural expansion of the potential customer base – every podcast episode introduces new experts who could benefit from Podscan.
Data-Driven Sales and Marketing
What I’ve learned is that my impact is strongest when sales and marketing decisions are not just data-driven but data-enabled. Instead of convincing prospects with arguments, I can show them actual data about their online presence. This approach aligns perfectly with my style and provides continuous insights into improving Podscan.
Recent additions like sentiment analysis and entity extraction have added valuable context to mentions. People can now see not just where they’re mentioned, but in what context and sentiment. We extract keywords from full transcripts to provide episode context, showing users exactly what conversations they’re part of. This contextual information often proves to be as valuable as the mention itself, helping users decide whether and how to act on each mention.
Front-Loading Value
The strategy’s success lies in providing immediate value at every step. When I send a cold email, the recipient gets actual, useful data about their brand’s presence in podcasts. The landing page gives them free access to several mentions without requiring signup. During the trial period, they can import hundreds of mentions immediately, allowing them to experience the full power of the platform while evaluating it.
This approach creates a natural progression: from receiving valuable information in an email, to exploring more data on a personalized landing page, to importing their historical mentions during a trial. At each step, they’re getting tangible value before making any commitment.
Looking Forward
As a developer by trade, sales and marketing aren’t my most confident areas. But using data from within my own database to create a customer outreach funnel that connects to a CRM feels like the right approach for a data-driven business. The system keeps improving as I discover new ways to present and contextualize the data.
I keep finding new nuances to improve - like how showing extracted keywords from episode transcripts gives prospects immediate insight into the context of their mentions. Every time I analyze these mentions for potential customers, I discover new ways to make the platform more valuable.
The key is providing value upfront – whether through the initial email, the landing page with free access to mentions, or the immediate data import during the trial period. By focusing on data and impact rather than pure persuasion, I’ve found a customer acquisition strategy that feels authentic to both me and my prospects. It’s a system that grows naturally with the platform, getting better with each new feature and data point we add.
If you want to track your brand mentions on podcasts, please check out podscan.fm — and tell your friends!
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