Most people pitch podcasts the wrong way. I recently had Johnny Seaford on my PR In Your Pocket podcast ; he’s a senior producer at a national network and looks after about five or six shows. Celebrity food, celebrity makeup, celebrity parenting, celebrity nineties, celebrity mental health, plus some corporate ones too. So he books a lot of guests. And what he said about pitching honestly explained why so many people get rejected without even getting a reply.
Here’s what producers really want, and the simple shifts that gets you booked.
1: Pitch to the producer
When you decide you want to be on a podcast, what do most of us do? We go and find the host. We slide into their DMs. We email them through their website. We send the same little intro paragraph saying “hi, I’d love to come on your podcast.” And then we wonder why nothing happens.
The bigger the podcast, the less likely the host is reading any of that.
Most podcasts at scale are presenter led. There’s a presenter and a producer, and the producer is the one sourcing guests, scripting episodes, and pulling clips for socials. If you’ve gone in cold to the host, it’s unlikely the host will come back to you. That’s just the reality. Either no one sees it, or it gets handed to the producer with a polite no.
So lesson one. Find the right person. For network podcasts that’s almost always a producer or a PR gatekeeper. In the case of smaller indie podcasts, it might still be the host, but treat it like a professional pitch, not a fan message.
2: Make the producer’s job easier, not harder.
Johnny was really clear about what makes a successful pitch : he wants to see your social numbers. Instagram first, because Instagram still converts to listeners better than TikTok. TikTok is great for going viral, but the correlation to actual podcast downloads is weak. LinkedIn matters in corporate podcasting, less so in celebrity or lifestyle. So if you’re pitching, you need to know which numbers actually count for that show, and you need to lead with them in your pitch.
Then he wants the angle. Specifically the angle for that podcast. Not the same five bullet points you’ve sent to twenty other shows. Because here’s what producers think about that. If you’ve already said the same thing on five other podcasts, every clip is going to be the same generic clip. There’s nothing to make you stand out. Nothing for them to pull a viral moment from. And if a producer can’t see the social media gold in you, they’re not booking you.The mindset shift here is huge. Stop thinking “I want to be on this podcast.” Start thinking “what am I giving this team to work with?”
3: Be aware of how podcasts are changing
Because remember, a podcast isn’t just a podcast anymore. Johnny broke this down really clearly. Every episode is now three things at minimum. The audio version that someone listens to on their walk. The YouTube version that becomes its own TV show. And the clips that get cut up for Instagram and TikTok. Producers are thinking about all of that when they assess a guest. Are you camera ready? Have you got a story that hooks in the first ten seconds? Have you got a take that could go viral?
So when you pitch, give them something to imagine. Five facts about you. The angle for this specific show. The headlines you could speak to. The hot take you’d be willing to share. Your social numbers. A reason this isn’t a story you’ve told anywhere else.
And honestly, a tiny bit of research goes a long way. Listen to a couple of episodes. Mention something the host did recently. Make it obvious you know what their podcast actually is, not just that you’ve heard the name.
4: Keep pitching
The other thing Johnny said that I want you to sit with. You have to be okay with rejection. If you feel like you should be on a podcast and they say no, that’s allowed to happen. Doesn’t mean your story isn’t good. Doesn’t mean you’re not ready. Sometimes it just means it’s not the right fit, or the schedule’s full, or they’ve got someone next week saying something similar. Keep pitching. Keep refining. Keep going.
If you treat podcasting like PR, which is what it is, then you’ve got to play the long game. The pitches that land are the ones where the producer can already see the episode in their head. The clips. The headline. The download spike. Give them that, and you’re so much more likely to get a yes.
If you want help getting better at pitching yourself to media, including podcasts, listen to my podcast PR in your pocket. You can listen to the episode dedicating to pitching to podcasts here: And, you can grab my freebie )a 10 minute guided training, designed to show the step by step process of writing the perfect pitch) here.
