Not every podcast has guests. But if yours does, you already know that the right guest changes things.
It's not just about the conversation. When someone with a real following appears on your show and shares it across their channels, their audience sees it. Some of those people will tune in. A guest with genuine clout online can do more for your growth in a week than months of steady publishing.
The problem is most podcasters wait for guests to come to them. And it's hard at the start, especially when you're still building your listener base. But if what your show covers genuinely aligns with what someone cares about, they may well find the time to talk about it. You just have to reach out.
I've run outbound systems for over 50 companies. The ones that work are consistent. The below is how I'd build one for a podcast.
Most dream guests aren't looking for shows to appear on. You have to go find them.
Define your IGP (Ideal Guest Profile) first
Before you start looking for anyone, get specific about who you're actually looking for.
It’s sometimes easy to go too broad. "I want marketing experts" - that's a category, not a profile. What kind of marketing? What size audience? Are they actively making content, or just well-known in the industry? Do they have a following with the kind of people who listen to your show?
That last question matters more than most. A guest with 30,000 YouTube subscribers in exactly your niche is worth more than a well-known name whose audience skews completely differently.
Finding them on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram
Once you're clear on your IGP, Prospety is the tool I'd recommend. It lets you search across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for creators by keyword and pulls contact details at the same time.
Prospety lets you search across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and more
YouTube tends to give the best email coverage of the three. Creators usually put a business email in their channel description and Prospety is good at picking those up. TikTok and Instagram can be patchier, but worth including to widen the pool.
Let's use a real example to make this concrete. Say your podcast is in the fashion space - specifically sneaker culture, where to buy the latest drops in the US, and whether certain pairs will become collectibles. (I made that up, but go with me.)
Here in Prospety, I kept it simple. Searched for keywords: sneakers, sneaker drop, designer shoes. Filtered for 500+ subscribers. You could fine-tune further based on how how many videos they have or posts etc.
Prospety search - keywords and subscriber filters applied for a sneaker podcast
Here is what we can preview, which does not cost anything.
Prospety results - a list of matching YouTube channels ready to review
Great - there's Luh Sneakerhead with 10.4k subscribers. That's exactly the kind of engaged niche creator worth reaching out to.
Luh Sneakerhead - 10.4k subscribers, sneaker reviews and unboxings. A solid potential guest.
UrAvg'Snkrs Guy - 100k subscribers. A bigger name worth a shot.
Oh and look - My First Kicks Podcast. Already doing exactly what we talked about, 1.89k subscribers. That might be better as a collab than a guest pitch. Either way, we're already finding interesting channels / shows just from a quick search.
My First Kicks Podcast - 1.89k subscribers. Sneakers and stories, new episodes every Friday.
Cost to get your first list
You are now ready to export the list. Here is the costs of doing so and price per credit. Youtube is most expensive. To give you an idea a list of 200 youtube channels with emails costs 500 credits which is only $5. Decent!
Scoring your list for audience overlap
Once you have a list, it's worth working out who to prioritise before you do anything else.
What I'd recommend: upload the list to Claude and ask it to score each creator based on how well their audience overlaps with yours. Give it an example creator's bio or channel description alongside a brief on who your show is for. Always worth a spot check on the ones it rates highly - it won't always get it right. But it removes the obvious mismatches fast enough to be worth doing.
One thing worth adding: a guest who isn't a perfect fit isn't worthless. They still get to hear about your show. A lot of these creators have newsletters, their own podcast, their own audience. There's often a cross-promotion or sponsorship conversation in there even when the guest angle doesn't land.
Not every contact needs to become a guest. Some of the best opportunities come from people who were almost the right fit.
Getting their contact details
Prospety gives you emails directly in a lot of cases. Here's what that export looks like. The good thing is that it gives you the channel description, engagement rates, and the other social handles linked to the account. So you can see straight away if they're active on other platforms too.
Prospety export - email addresses and channel data ready to work with
If you would like to also find their LinkedIn profiles, then Clay is useful and has a waterfall enrichment feature- it checks multiple data sources in sequence until it finds a valid result. Hunter, Prospeo, DropContact, Apollo and others. Better coverage than relying on a single source, and it can surface LinkedIn URLs at the same time. The downside is that Clay can get pricey! With their lowest plan around $150.
Clay waterfall enrichment - searches providers in sequence until a valid email is found
Hunter is the simpler and cheaper option. Give it a name and a domain, and it finds the email. You can upload a bulk list. It’s just one source rather than several, so coverage is lower - but for most use cases that's completely fine. You just won't get LinkedIn URLs without a separate LinkedIn scrape mentioned below.
Verify before you send
Before anything goes out, verify the list. Sending to bad addresses - catch-all and risky results especially - damages your domain's sending reputation over time.
Inside Clay you can verify with tools like Million Verifier or Reoon. Only export the safe results.
Your domain reputation is one of those things you only think about once it's already damaged. Verify everything first.
LinkedIn alongside email
Linkedin can also be used to find guests.
The filters I'd focus on: keywords matching your guest's content area - same terms you used in Prospety - location if your show targets a specific market, and whether they've posted recently in the last 30 days for example. You can get a free trial of Sales Navigator to build a comprehensive list.
Save the leads, export them, push into Clay to enrich with email if you need it, or just use directly for LinkedIn outreach.
A nice list of potential podcast guests
You should now have a list of potential guests who fit your show - verified emails, LinkedIn profiles if you want them, and a rough sense of who the best fits are.