Media interview ROI is the return you get on the time and preparation an interview costs you, and it comes from one decision made in advance: what do you want people to do after they hear you? Airtime by itself is not the return. In the video above I talk about it as return on investment, and the investment is bigger than most executives admit.
What an interview actually costs you
Nobody sends you an invoice for a media interview, so it feels like it costs nothing. It does. You spend time thinking about it. You build your messages and your sound bites. If you are doing it right, you practice on camera and watch the recording back.
That is real executive time. If you would not spend a morning on a meeting with no outcome, you should not spend one on an interview with no outcome either.
Media interview ROI starts before you sit down
The return is decided before the interview starts, not after it airs. The question to answer in advance is simple, and almost nobody asks it.
If you cannot answer that, the interview will inform people and then evaporate. They will nod, maybe think you were good, and move on with their day.
Five steps that turn airtime into a return
1. Count the investment honestly
Write down what the interview will take: preparation, message work, sound bites, practice. Knowing the cost makes you serious about the payoff.
2. Decide the action
Pick one thing you want the audience to do. Not five. One clear call to action you can say naturally, more than once if the interview allows it.
3. Send them somewhere specific
If the action is a web page, think one step further: what happens when they land there? A page that just says "welcome" wastes the visit. Give them something useful to download or watch.
4. Capture the connection
The useful item is the trade. In return, people give you an email address, or join a community you run. Now the relationship does not end when the segment does.
5. Keep talking to them
This is the step that separates an interview that was fun from an interview that paid off.
Before you accept your next interview, finish this sentence: "When this airs, people who liked what I said will go to ___ and get ___." If the blanks stay blank, you are not ready yet.
Treat every interview as an investment
The executives who get the most from the media are not always the most polished on air. They are the ones who planned the next step and built the follow-up before the camera came on.
If you want your team to plan the call to action, write the sound bites and practice them on camera before the next big interview, get a quick quote for media training. For the in-the-moment side of this, read why a call to action belongs in every interview answer, and for the podcast version of the same idea, how to get business from podcast appearances.