3 (Non-Social) Marketing Channels High-Growth Shows Use to 2x Their Audience

Everyone loves to talk about podcasting's so-called "Discoverability Problem". But does it actually exist?

And if not, what are the marketing channels you as a creator can tap into to get your show in front of more of your ideal listeners?

In this episode, we break down three types of listener acquisition channels and how you can leverage them to grow your show... without social media and without a discovery algorithm.

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Topics Covered

00:54 Does the Podcast Discoverability Problem actually exist?
04:49 What the data shows about the effectiveness of various marketing channels
08:37 Writing is often a strong indicator of success in podcasting
11:18 How to pick the right marketing channel for you
12:06 The three types of marketing channels at your disposal
15:36 Owned media: The low-hanging fruit for many creators
24:14 What most podcasters get wrong about growth through collaborations
37:01 When is the right time to start paid listener acquisition?
46:34 How to kickstart word-of-mouth growth?
52:47 Your homework for this episode

⭐️ Get a free podcast marketing audit with personalized recommendations to help you grow: https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit ⭐️

Resources

Famous & Gravy
Podcast Allies
Answer The Public
PodRoll

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Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2023 Report

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Connect with Jeremy on Twitter | LinkedIn
Connect with Justin on Twitter | LinkedIn

✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback  

Episode Transcript

Jeremy (00:02):
I was talking with somebody who works in marketing
at one of the big podcastnetworks, and they told me they
basically canceled all ad spendon listener acquisition.

Justin (00:10):
Oh, wow.

Jeremy (00:10):
And the reason was that it just didn't work. To me, this
is always the first thing I sayis like, hey, you're like trying
to worry about paid advertisingand all the stuff. We have all
this attention in yourecosystem. This is the low
hanging fruit here. Welcome toPodcast Marketing Trends
Explained.
I'm Jeremy Enns from PodcastMarketing Academy.

Justin (00:28):
And I'm Justin Jackson from transistor.afem. And
together, we're digging into thedata behind the podcast
marketing trends 2023 report tohelp you understand what it
means for you and your show.

Jeremy (00:41):
Our goal is to help you make better informed decisions
about the way you create andmarket your show so you can
spend more time on what actuallymatters for growth and
accelerate your results.

Justin (00:51):
Let's get into it.

Jeremy (00:54):
So Justin, I was, doing some snooping around your
Twitter profile the day, and Icame across this tweet from,
let's see here, August 6, 2021.And I wanna run it by you and
see how well it has aged. Doesthat sound good?

Justin (01:10):
Sure. Sounds great. I'm scared, but, yeah. Roast my
feet. Let's go.

Jeremy (01:14):
People keep talking about podcasting's, quote,
discoverability problem. But thepeople I know who listen to
podcasts regularly seem to haveno problems in finding new shows
to listen to. Thinky emoji. Ifanything, they have the opposite
problem. Too many good shows tolisten to.
So this is a a topic thatpodcasting's discoverability
problem which has been, debatedto death. And here, you're kind

(01:37):
of calling it out and saying,no. This isn't actually a
problem. How do you feel? Do youstand by this statement back
from August 6, 2021?

Justin (01:45):
Yeah. I think so. I mean, there there is more nuance
to it than that, but I think,overall, the discoverability
problem in podcasting isoverblown. Most of the people
who want more discoverabilityare venture capitalists who
wanna capitalize on podcasting.And even if you look at, for
example, Netflix is a$250,000,000,000 technology

(02:08):
company.
They have thousands of engineerson staff who have perfectly
tuned their algorithm fordiscoverability. And even they
have a hard time promoting theirnew shows to the public. Like,
they've got one of the biggestsearch engines in the world and
lots and lots of traffic, Andeven they have a hard time

(02:31):
getting the word out. And eventhen, you'll still even with
this perfect discoverabilityplatform, you'll still see
people on social media askingfor recommendations for what
Netflix show they should theyshould watch next. And you see
this with everything, you know,Audible, another amazing audio
search engine.
And on social media, people arelike, hey, I need some more

(02:53):
audio audiobooks to listen to.On one hand, sure. I think we
would like more people to beable to discover our podcasts,
and we'd like more marketingchannels that work for that.
This is not just a problemthat's unique to podcasting.
Everyone is having a hard timewith marketing channels and
finding marketing channels thatwork and, you know, getting the

(03:16):
word out about their show,getting more people to try it
out.

Jeremy (03:19):
Yeah. I think about this a lot, and it makes me think,
you know, there have beenbusinesses for 1000 of years and
it's only really been in thelast 10, 15. I think when most
people think aboutdiscoverability, they're
thinking about algorithmicdiscoverability. And this is
such a new invention that peoplehave been creating art and
content and products andservices and businesses for 1000

(03:40):
of years without any automateddiscoverability. And they have
still found a way to get that infront of the people who care
about it.
And so I think a lot of timeswhen we think like, oh, there's
no discoverability inpodcasting. It's like, yeah,
that's actually normal. It's ananomaly that recently there have
been a few platforms that haveactually facilitated that. And
to some extent, yeah, that wouldbe nice for us as creators to

(04:02):
have that. But I think that whathistory shows us is that people
have always found a way to gettheir work in front of people
and that we can certainly do thesame.
And so that's really what we'regonna be digging into in this
week's episode here of lookingat, you know, what are some of
the ways that you can get yourshow out in front of people.
And, I know we last week wetalked about social media

(04:22):
in-depth, so we're not gonna gotoo much into depth there, but
we also hinted that you don'tactually need to be on social
media and that there are plentyof other, kind of
discoverability, discoverychannels out there that we can
implement and leverage ascreators.

Justin (04:36):
Yeah. I'm excited to talk about other ways people can
promote the show. I think we'vegot some good, ideas that a lot
of people don't consider.They're not all the easiest
ideas to implement, but we'vegot some good ones. 1st, though,
I'm curious.
What did the survey show interms of what works and doesn't
for podcast growth?

Jeremy (04:56):
Yeah. So there were some trends that I'll talk through in
a second related to high growthshows, which were those that
grew by a 100% or more per year.So obviously, those are the ones
that we we think like, okay. Wewanna be like those shows. There
was mid growth shows which wereabove the average.
So they were above 21% growth ayear. And then there was low
growth shows which were beneath21% a year and there were
negative growth shows thatactually lost space. So there's

(05:18):
some trends for each of thosewhich I'll discuss in a second.
But the one that made me kindachuckle was one of the questions
that I asked was, you know, whatis has been most effective for
you over the past year? And itwas kind of a multiple choice
list of marketing channels andwhat has been least effective.
And the fascinating thing, boththe highest rated, most
effective, and least effectivewas social media. And so there

(05:38):
was plenty of people who saidsocial media was the most
effective thing I did, and therewas plenty of people who said
social media was the leasteffective thing I did. Classic.
And what you see is, like, everysingle category, of every
channel, there were people whosaid this was the least
effective thing I did and peoplesaid it was the most. And so I
think to me, what this suggestis that any channel can work.
There was people who foranything that I listed in the

(05:58):
survey, somebody said this wasthe single most effective thing
that I did and there wassomebody else Yeah. Sometimes
more, sometimes less who saidthat this was actually the least
effective thing. And so that tome, I think kind of speaks again
to this thing that we talkedabout in, one of the previous
episodes about how there therereally is no silver bullet and
that a lot of times it's doingthe thing well that will work.

(06:20):
And so it's like pickingsomething that you can be good
at. You can learn the ropes ofand then doing that well and
that will work for you.
And if you just wanna go for theshortcut, you can, you know, do
the work on that, you know,quote unquote, that channel, and
it's not gonna have any result.

Justin (06:34):
Yeah. I love this question just because you'd
realize that it's all over themap. You know? For some people,
collaborations are working. Forothers, it's not.
Some people, YouTube's working.Others, it's not. So Yeah. And
what were some of these othertrends? Like, high growth shows,
are they doing anythingdifferent than negative growth
shows?

Jeremy (06:52):
So one of the things we saw here with high growth shows,
they were significantly morelikely to utilize pitching
podcast apps, which I thoughtthat was actually interesting.
And Okay. To me, that it itseems to align with my anecdotal
experience where I would saythat a lot of the people who are
pitching podcast apps aregenerally, I don't wanna say
this in a kind of, like,pejorative way, but they're

(07:13):
savvier. Like, I think they'vebeen in podcasting longer
longer. They understand theecosystem.
They might have a relationshipswith people, those platforms,
and they kinda get how the gameis played. And so I think a lot
of times, those people, like,they may be high growth for a
number of reasons, and it'stheir savviness of how
podcasting works that they canfind these opportunities to get
their show featured. They knowhow to do an effective pitch.

Justin (07:34):
Okay. And just to pause there, you when you say submit
to podcasting apps, you mean,like, Apple, Spotify podcasts.
Okay. Yep. And each of theseplatforms generally has, like,
an editorial review process.
There's a form you fill out. Ifyou Google submit to Apple
Podcasts Featured, it will leadyou to a form where you can then

(07:57):
submit your show forconsideration.

Jeremy (07:59):
Yeah. And there are other apps as well. Apple and
Spotify are the big 2, butpeople have listed other apps. I
think Pocket Cast might do thisnow as well. There's a few
others.
So there are directories whereyou can do that, and they
actually invite submissions. Andreally what they're looking for
is shows either shows as a wholeor episodes that have some kind
of significant relevance in andof the moment. So in your pitch,
you wanna kinda tie it intosomething that's happening now

(08:20):
in the world that you can say,Hey, I actually have a show on
this. And you know, this person,a lot of times, if like a
celebrity passes away and you'reable to say, actually, we just
did this great in-depth kind ofbio on them 2 weeks ago or
something like that. And itfeels really relevant.
That would be a like an exampleof a good, kind of pitch to one
of these apps.

Justin (08:37):
Oh, that's a good tip. I like that.

Jeremy (08:38):
So a couple of the other things here. High growth shows
were also more likely toimplement paid advertising. This
could be Okay. Because they aremore successful, have more of a
budget, something like that. Wewe don't really know.
There is some, correlation,might not be causation. We're
gonna talk more about paidadvertising in-depth in this
episode. And they weremoderately more likely than
other shows to be, writingnewsletters, beyond YouTube and

(09:00):
also blogging. And so I thoughtthis was really interesting. The
writing component here, cameinto play.
Yeah. And I have some suspicionsabout this, but it's it's hard
to ascertain, you know, was thissomething that led to growth? Or
a lot of times, I feel likepeople who are writers okay. I
here's my bias is showing. I'm awriter.
So, and identifies that firstand foremost. But I am a huge

(09:21):
believer in writing's power tohelp you think through ideas in
a well structured way. And soone of the things that I have
noticed, not for all successfulshows, but for a lot of shows,
especially narrative drivenshows or even in interviews
where there's a clear structureto it, a lot of times those
people have a background inwriting that serves them Mhmm.
In the podcast as well. So thosewere some of the trends that

(09:42):
stuck out from the the highestgrowth shows.

Justin (09:44):
And was there anything else in there that was
significant from the othercategories? I would say that

Jeremy (09:49):
the other interesting thing, the mid growth show, so
still pretty solid growth morethan average. They were also
more likely to writenewsletters, which I thought was
interesting. And also, SEOcontent creation. So again, on
this kind of, like, writing sideof things, the mid and high
growth shows seem to spend moretime doing that. And so, you
could probably make some someguesses as to why that might be.
What was interesting to me isthat the highest growth shows

(10:11):
are more likely to be usingYouTube and the mid growth shows
were less likely to be usingYouTube, also less likely to be
using PR and pitching podcastapps. And so there seems to be
some distinctions there. Sothose were some of the the
trends from the mid and highgrowth shows. The low growth
trends, this is also funny whereyou you see that there is some
correlation. Sometimes it's notcausation.
The low growth shows were alsomoderately more likely than the

(10:32):
average to be on YouTube muchlike the high growth shows. So
clearly, YouTube is not thecommonality here that a lot of
people seem to think, oh,YouTube's the the way of the
future. And sure, there'sthere's probably opportunities
but it's not like thatuniversally is going to mean
growth. They were significantlyless likely to write
newsletters, blog, do SEO,pitching podcast apps. And then
there was the negative growthshows that, that reduced their

(10:54):
listenership.
They were more likely to,utilize podcast guesting and PR
and significantly less likely tobe on YouTube. So, there's
there's a lot to unpack there. Iwould recommend going and
checking out the report and kindof looking through these. But, I
think the big trend for me thatstood out is podcast app
pitching for the high growthshows as well as this kind of
focus on the medium to highgrowth shows on right written

(11:16):
content as well is is somewhatinteresting.

Justin (11:18):
When I look at this data, to me, it just seems like
any channel can work. Yep. Andit just depends on your context,
your audience, where you havenatural strengths and built in
advantages, where you mightalready have a network. There's
there's lots of reasons aparticular channel might work
for a particular show. And sowhat I would wanna dive into is

(11:43):
let's think about how people canactually maybe figure out which
channel's best for them, whichthings they can try outside of,
you know, I'm gonna grow anInstagram account to 3,000,000
or whatever.
Sure. Maybe that would help, buta lot of the people listening
don't have big social mediafollowings. So what can they do

(12:04):
to grow their show?

Jeremy (12:05):
Yeah. So I always think about it. This is not a, unique
kind of idea to us. This is avery kind of common, marketing
framework here is that there'sessentially 3 ways to acquire
new customers or in our case,listeners, users, on an app or
something like that. So this iskind of the the 3 listener
acquisition channels that we'regoing to call them, which is
owned, earned, and paid.

(12:28):
And so, you wanna run us throughsome examples of each of those
categories?

Justin (12:33):
Sure. So under owned, that would be, like, traffic to
your podcast website. That'speople searching on Google maybe
and finding you, for differenttopics. There's also, your own
newsletter and email list.Right?
If you've got a email list, thenyou own that list and you can
talk about your podcast and sendout new episodes and you might

(12:56):
get more listeners from that.And also, if you have a big
social media following like wetalked about last week, of
course, that would be owned.You, you know, have a bunch of
followers and you can leveragethat to get more listeners.

Jeremy (13:08):
And, essentially, like, when we're talking about owned,
this is, like, you have builtthe audience and have some kind
of access to them elsewhere.It's not like you were needing
to go out and get in front ofnew people. And so this is
probably your warmest audience alot of times, on a platform that
you own. Social media is alittle bit funny in this
category because it's they maythrottle back your reach and
things like that, but I stilllump it into the owned category

(13:28):
typically.

Justin (13:29):
Totally. I I think earned is really interesting.
Earned is where you kind of,like, earn the right to access
that channel. So, for example,collaborations and cross
promotions. These are all thingsyou have to work at.
You know? You have to build somerelationships. There's PR, so
traditional PR, and then alsodoing PR in newsletters, and

(13:50):
then podcast app pitching, likewe were talking about before. So
these are all like you have tonetwork, you have to put in some
work. This is probably a longerterm play.
It's not gonna it's notsomething you can just do
overnight. It's like you gottago to events and make the
relationships. You gotta pitchthose podcast apps. You gotta
reach out to guests over timeand earn the right to, you know,

(14:13):
have them on the show, and theneven earn the right for them to
reciprocate and maybe link tothat episode that you just did.
So I really like these though,the earned category, because I
think a lot of people aren'twilling to put in the work.

Jeremy (14:27):
Yep.

Justin (14:27):
So one way you can differentiate yourself is if
most people are lazy and you'rewilling to work harder and work
over a longer period of time,this is really a category where
you can outcompete other showsin your niche.

Jeremy (14:42):
Yeah. And we're gonna talk more about some of the
specifics related to earned andsome of those, tactics that you
can use within that category.But before we do that, let's
just kinda quickly summarizepaid acquisition. We're gonna
talk more about this, but whatare some examples of ways that
people could use their budget toget their show in front of more
people potentially?

Justin (15:00):
Yeah. This would be in app ads and podcast listening
apps. This would be advertisingon other shows. This would be
paid social, advertising orintegrations or partnerships.
This could also include, youknow, doing paid ads on
Facebook.
Mhmm. This could include doingpaid ads on Google. So any time
you're paying to get somelistener interest or a

(15:24):
subscriber.

Jeremy (15:25):
Yeah. And, I know that you have a kinda case study here
about, the benefits and or,trials and tribulations of paid
advertising. We're gonna savethat, come back to that when we
we talk about paid advertisingin more depth. But the first one
that I wanna just circle backon, we're gonna go through these
in a little bit more depth nowthat we kinda define them. But I
think that owned media is areally interesting listener

(15:47):
acquisition channel that peopleoften forget about.
And so, again, this is thingsthat platforms that you already
own. And one of the things thatlike, not everybody has a ton of
website traffic. Not everybodyhas a huge email list. But there
are plenty of people. I havetalked to a significant number
of people who have maybe theyget 25 or 50,000 homepage views
of their website a month or theyhave an email list of 25,000

(16:09):
people and yet they're getting a100 or 50 downloads an episode.
Yeah. And to me, this is alwaysthe first thing I say is, like,
hey. You're, like, we're tryingto worry about, like, paid
advertising and all the stuff.Like, we have all this attention
in your ecosystem that we candesign this experience here.
Like, this is the this is thelow hanging fruit here, and
maybe redesigning that websitesite homepage, maybe thinking a

(16:29):
little bit more strategicallyabout your maybe newsletter
welcome sequence and what you'resending on a week to week basis,
like there's a lot of growthhere.
If you've got tens of 1,000 oreven just several 1,000 people
already engaging with you insome way, they've indicated,
hey. I like your content in someother medium. And that's not to
say everybody's going to, youknow, want to become a podcast
listener at some point. But itseems unlikely to me that that

(16:52):
many people would explicitly notwant to listen to the podcast.
That if you're only capturing,like, 2% of that audience is
converting into podcastlisteners, it feels like, okay.
I think there's more that we cando here.

Justin (17:02):
I love this because it it goes along with what podcasts
are good at. We've talked aboutthis in previous episodes.
Podcasts are really good atdeepening a connection with your
audience. A. I know thishappened, for example, with
Firefox and Mozilla.
They had a podcast. People arealready visiting the Firefox
homepage, and I believe it wasDan Meisner that told me this.

(17:25):
He said the first thing herecommended is he said, you you
have all these fans that arealready visiting the Firefox
homepage or the Mozillahomepage. Put your podcast
there. These are people thatalready like you, and then the
podcast can do the work thatit's already good at, which is
deepening that connection withthat audience.

(17:46):
Yeah. I think this isunderrated, especially for
branded podcasts, especially forfolks who have been blogging for
years. You can do this todayMhmm. And get a bunch more
listeners. And this is one ofthose things that's like a slow
burn.
Yeah. You do it, and then itgradually starts to build up,
and you'll get more and morelisteners from just your own

(18:08):
owned places on the web, yourhomepage, your email newsletter,
whatever it is, your your pinnedtweet. Yep. You know, there's
all these spots in your existingecosystem. You can put the
podcast there, and the peoplewho love you are gonna seek that
out, and you'll be able todeepen that connection with
them.

Jeremy (18:26):
Yeah. And I think the the thing to think about in this
instance we've talked before inprevious episodes, maybe in
every episode about talking toyour audience. And I think that
one of the things that is thekinda crux of the issue here
when you have an audience thatisn't listening to the podcast,
you need to try a bunch ofangles. And it like, that's the
the challenge here is findingthe angle in which to present
the podcast that gets thisexisting audience who already

(18:47):
cares about your topic but isn'tlistening to the show. Is it
that they think they're justalready getting the same thing
through your newsletter, let'ssay, or your blog on your
website?
And they're like, well, whywould I listen to the podcast?
Like, I already get this here.Here. And there are certainly
shows where I have thatperspective. I'm like, I love
the newsletter.
Never gonna listen to podcastbecause they're basically the
same thing, and I can read thenewsletter in 3 minutes versus

(19:07):
listen to a 20 minute podcast.Yeah. But that might not
actually be the case. Maybe thepodcast is very different from
the experience that they getelsewhere and that means that
your job is to actuallyhighlight here's how we do this
differently. Like, we you getone experience in the
newsletter, but we do this wholeother thing on the podcast that
really complements this andbeing able to over time find
that angle and the way that'sgonna get people to to migrate
from one platform to the other.

Justin (19:29):
Yeah. And I can give you an example of, another kinda
owned channel, which is, searchtraffic. People are searching
things on Google, especially,but now increasingly YouTube.
And even on Spotify and Apple,people are putting topics,
topical searches in those searchbars. And, maybe I'll shout out,

(19:50):
Famous and Gravy.
That's, Michael and Amit, Ibelieve. Yep. And I'm gonna show
them out partly because theyshared our podcast on, on
threads, actually. Oh. Big bigpodcast community on threads
right now.
And I think their show has justtons of opportunity for search
traffic. Yeah. So Famous andGravy is a podcast about life

(20:12):
lessons from dead celebrities.Okay? So instantly, they've got
some important keywords.
If I scroll through theirepisodes here, we've got, you
know, Bob Saget, Carrie Fisher,Betty White, Olivia Newton John.
There are lots of searches aboutthese folks right now. And when
I put their website into an SEOtool like Ahrefs, I can see, for

(20:37):
example, they one of the numberone keywords to their website
right now is, Burt Reynoldsmustache. Right? And they
they're getting those searchresults right now just because
the episode title is, I thinkit's, like, beyond a mustache or
something like that.
But on that landing page forthat episode, on the episode

(20:59):
page, they could highlight otherparts of the episode, and in
they could do in a questionanswer format. You know,
whatever happened to BurtReynolds? Is Burt Reynolds
alive? What was so great aboutBurt Reynolds mustache? And they
could take out little highlightsfrom the show, either from their
transcript or even little audiosnippets.

(21:20):
And they're going to rank higherfor those kind of keywords. If
someone is interested in thelife and then death of Burt
Reynolds, they could find thispodcast and become a listener.
So I think there's lots ofopportunity for folks to with
their podcast website, to startattracting some of these search

(21:41):
terms. And, Famous and Gravy issuch a great example of it,
because they've got all of thesecelebrity names they could be
targeting.

Jeremy (21:48):
Yeah. What really makes it work for them is that they're
not just like another celebritygossip type show or anything
like that. Like, they have areally unique angle to it. They
take a look at the celebrity'swhole life and impact, and they
have these kind of segments, ofthe show that they use to
evaluate the celebrity's life.And kind of the ultimate
philosophical question thatthey're trying to get to is, you
know, what I have wanted to livethis person's life.
If I really look at it, the goodand the bad and the impact and

(22:11):
everything that they wentthrough, was this a life worth
living? And I think that, like,that's such a refreshing way to
look at somebody that wealready, you know, think we know
in the in the public sphere. Andso I think somebody comes to
their website. It's not justthat they're gonna read that
that blog post or whatever it isand then be gone. They're like,
oh, this is actually a reallyrefreshing take.
And so I was interested in BurtReynolds and maybe his mustache,

(22:32):
but, actually, there's a wholelot more here that I didn't even
know I was looking for, but it'sit feels rich and, like, a lot
of people will want to immersethemselves in that.

Justin (22:40):
Yeah. And if folks are looking for a good tool and then
just a way to get started,here's a tip. Go to answer the
public.com and put in a keywordthat you think applies to your
show. So in this case, I putBurt Reynolds. And it will show
you all of the search terms andrank them related to Burt
Reynolds.
And, I mean, the biggest one isis Burt Reynolds still alive?

(23:04):
That's a massive search term.And they're right now, I think
they're kinda missing out onthat. Yeah. Just posing that
question in text form in thedescription on that page every
time, is Betty White alive?
You know, you could go throughthat and, answer the question.
But whoever is asking thatquestion also wants to know

(23:25):
more, and that's your chance tohook them and get them as a
listener. So yeah. Check outanswer the public.com, and you
could put anything related toyour podcast, any topic, any
guest into their little, systemthere. And it's gonna give you
all of these great opportunitiesto answer those questions either

(23:45):
in your transcript or on yourpodcast episode page.

Jeremy (23:48):
Yeah. So owned media, I think that there is a lot of big
opportunity there for a lot ofpeople. Usually, the people who
have those opportunities havebeen creating either a business
or some kind of content maybeoutside their podcast for a
while that they've accrued thisaudience elsewhere. And so this
is not gonna be applicable oravailable to everyone at least
at the start. Hopefully, it doesand and for almost everybody, it

(24:10):
will become a more importantpart of your strategy over time.
But let's move on to the kind ofearned side of things. And,
specifically, let's talk aboutcollaborations. And this is
something that I know has beenkind of in the water over the
past couple of years and forgood reason. Like,
collaborations, I kindamentioned before people have
been doing things to get theirproducts and and services

(24:31):
discovered for 1000 of years.And I think collaborations are
probably one of those things.
I I don't have any, data tocite, what cavemen, the vendor
of, like, the the big stoneclubs, what they were doing back
then. But, you see this actuallyeverywhere in every kind of
business. And one of theexamples that comes to mind for
me is there is a Vancouver icecream shop called Ernest Ice
Cream, and it started out asthis, like

Justin (24:51):
Okay.

Jeremy (24:51):
Craft ice cream shop and grew into multiple locations.
And when you go into one oftheir shops, they also sell,
like, pints, as as many icecream shops do. I for anybody
who doesn't know this, I used tohave a podcast. My first podcast
was actually about ice cream inVancouver. So you're you're kind
of we're we're hearing from theauthority on Vancouver ice
cream, although it's it's been afew years at this point.
But Ernest Ice Cream, one of thethings that they did is they did

(25:12):
collaborations with coffee shopsand craft breweries and all
these other Mhmm. Kind of likecraft food places to use those
ingredients in their ice creamand stock, you know, that coffee
shops coffee in the Ernestlocation as well and vice versa.
And so this is something thatyou see this in every kinda
business, every kinda content.And the reason is that, you
know, when you find somethingthat you like, probably, that's

(25:34):
an indication of a certain typeof taste. And so that's an
opportunity for anotherbusiness, another content
creator who has, you know,create something with that
appeals to a similar taste tocapture some of that attention.
And so this is Yeah. Iscertainly something that works
in podcasting and, a lot ofpeople are are getting on the
bandwagon recently, but I don'tknow that they're always kind of
taking the best approach.

Justin (25:55):
Yeah. I think the the challenge with this category is
people hear about it. They'relike, oh, like, collaborations
or, guesting on other podcasts.And they're like, okay. I need
to hire an agency that's goingto, you know, cold email pitch
me to thousands of podcasts.

(26:16):
And I think the approach thatyou wanna take here is more
networking friendships. Everyniche has its own, like, group,
you know, its own tribe. I'mthinking of Jack Reissider at
Darknet Diaries. So, you know,he's in the cybersecurity
hacking kinda niche, but he alsoappears on his friend's podcast,

(26:37):
which are also talking abouthacking and cybersecurity. You
start to form relationships overtime.
And this is where you get kindof these I don't know what we
want to call them, like friendmafias or Yeah. You know, collab
friendship groups. Sometimes inTikTok and, Vine days, there was
like houses where they wouldhave a bunch of influencers in

(26:59):
one place. Yeah. And they're allguesting on each other's stuff.
And they're all, like, doingcollabs all the time. They've
realized there's there's reachhere and it works a lot better
if you're friends with thesepeople. You know, if you can
just jump on their podcast and,you know, talk for an hour about
the topic and you love hangingout. And then at the end, your
friend can say, by the way, yougotta go check out my friend

(27:21):
Jack's podcast. It's amazing.
That's the kind of collaborationI think more people should be
cultivating.

Jeremy (27:29):
Yeah. And I think to to illustrate the approach that a
lot of people take, this is anextreme example. It's a friend
of mine and, he he, admitswillingly that this was probably
not the best approach to take.So, he has a podcast in the real
estate space. And at some pointabout 2 years ago, he guested on
something like 70 shows.
He had an assistant who did allthe cold email outreach. And,

(27:51):
you know, he actually got bookedon 70 shows. So he must have
must have pitched way way moreand thinking about all the
research. He got booked on 70shows, guest on 70 shows. You
think, okay, the average showmaybe 30 to 60 minutes.
We're looking at, what, 35 to 70hours probably that he spent on
that plus the wages he paid theperson. And he said, basically,
had it had zero impact. He said,one show moved the needle that

(28:13):
brought in new listeners to hisshow and everything else was a
total waste of time. And I askedhim like, oh, like, really? How
did that work?
He's like, yeah. Well, you know,I I kinda basically just guessed
on any show that would have meand took a kinda spray and pray
approach and, you know, one anddone, and and that was it. He's
like, yeah. I should have knownthat that wouldn't have worked,
but, you know, I thought it wasworth a shot. And Yeah.
To me, I just think about that,and I think, okay. Let's imagine

(28:35):
let's just say 70 hours. Like,you can do so much with 70
hours. Like, this is 2 full workweeks, basically. And I think if
I was to allocate that time intosomething related to
collaborations, personally, ifI'm focusing on guesting, I
would really research.
I'm not gonna, like, break thisdown to specific hours, but
let's just say, like, 5 to 10shows. And I'm gonna say, okay.

(28:57):
Like, any one of these wouldreally move the needle for me. I
don't need to get on all ofthem. But just if I could get on
one that's a big show, that'sgonna be much more effective.
And so I'm gonna listen through5 episodes and I'm gonna find
out, like, what is my uniqueangle to this show? Like, why am
I a good fit for the show?Because if I'm not, like,
there's no way I can't make apitch that's gonna get me on
there. And even if I do, if Idon't have a unique angle,

(29:17):
people aren't gonna follow meback to my show. And so that is
part of the research.
It's not just the pitch, butactually the discernment of,
like, where do you havesomething unique and refreshing
to offer to this audience? Andthis is true for guesting. It's
also true for collaborations.And so I think one of the things
that you wanna look for withcollaborations is it can be with
people who you might think of ascompetitors in your space. But

(29:40):
if you can find a way toposition your own content in a
way that is complimentary ratherthan competing directly with
them.
And part of this, like, justhelps you as a whole. If you can
find a way to complementeverything else in your space
and differentiate yourself thatway, like, people who listen to
podcasts, listen to manypodcasts on a topic. And that
actually almost guarantees thatthey're gonna listen to yours

(30:00):
and your friends and that otherperson and that other person.
And so a lot of times when Italk to people who are scared
about collaboration, they feellike, well, what if I feature
that other person and all myaudience just leaves for them?
And I've heard this a lot oftimes and you know, I used to
feel this way as well.
And what really shifted was whenI feel like, you know, several
years into creating content, Ifelt like, oh, I'm actually on

(30:22):
my own track. And because it'sso grounded in who I am, like,
nobody can copy this and I don'treally have any competition.
Because, you know, my audiencegets something different from me
that they're gonna get fromthem. And so I think this is
something to, like, cultivateboth for yourself and find your

(30:44):
own little way to to moldyourself into a niche in your
space, but also to to view otherpeople and think, like, you
know, what can my audience getfrom these people that I just
don't wanna create? And, like,they do way better than I'm ever
going to.

Justin (30:55):
Totally. And this is where being a fan of the type of
content that you're making Mhmm.Really helps. You can kind of
stair step your way into some ofthis as well. You know, when the
host of another show that youlike asks for feedback, hit them
up with some feedback.
When they say, here's our voicemail, leave a voice message.

(31:17):
When they say, hey, everybodywho replies to this tweet, we're
gonna try to highlight you inthe next episode. Reply to that
tweet, And, eventually, thehosts start to discover who the
super fans Mhmm. Of their showare. And, eventually, I've had
that lead to you you know, Istarted out as a fan Yep.
And then got mentioned on theshow. Mhmm. And, I mean, that's

(31:39):
huge. Right? Mentioning somebodyon the show.
And then eventually eventuallygot up to being a guest on the
show. This is a long path. Ittakes some time, but you can
stair step your way up there. Aa mini guesting spot is replying
to a show, giving them somefeedback, giving them a nice
review, and eventually they'regoing to be like, woah, like

(32:00):
this Tina person really lovesour show. And then if I emailed
the show and said, hey, I'd loveto be a guest sometime to talk
about this, this, and this.
Much more likely to happen.Right? Because you've built a
relationship kind of over time.So you can start with some baby
steps here. Just, like, be a fanof the people you wanna

(32:20):
collaborate with, and theneventually, something might
happen.

Jeremy (32:23):
Yeah. And I would say 2 things on that note. It actually
often happens way faster thanyou think. This is less likely
if they're, like, they they'vegot millions of followers or
something like that, and theyreally need to screen all of
that. But people who are alittle bit of ahead of you in
your space and are are veryclosely aligned, often if you
comment on their posts on, let'sjust say, social media or
respond to, you know, 3 of theirnewsletters in a row or

(32:44):
something like that, that'soften enough for them to be
like, oh, this person, like, isreally interested in what I'm
doing.
And, like, think about that foryourself. If somebody was to
respond to an email you sent outor every, you know, single
episode for 3 weeks in a row,leave a comment on social media
saying, like, man, this episodewas so good. Like, you would
notice that. And I think what wedon't realize is that even the

(33:04):
people who we perceive to be wayahead of us, they suffer from
the same lack of engagement thatmost of us do. And so they don't
get as much engagement as wethink they might.
And a lot of times, I know whenI've held back from making that
move, it's like, well, I don'twanna bother them because
they're probably too busy. Andso, you know, I I'm doing the
the nice thing by actually notadding to their inbox. Whereas,
it's actually usually not thecase. And I've had so many

(33:28):
examples of sending athoughtful, heartfelt message DM
to somebody where, the one timeI did this to a startup founder
to their support chat. And itwas like a bootstrap indie
startup.
It was kind of a time trackingfreelancer type thing. And they
had all these Seinfeldreferences where all their,
like, email, like, blank statefields and things like that. And
I just, like, said, man, I lovethis app, and I love all the

(33:49):
Seinfeld references. Like, keepdoing what you're doing. And he
responded to me and he was like,dude, you have no idea how much
I needed to hear that today.
It's been a really rough go and,like, we don't really know where
the future of the app is going.And, like, he kinda said like
this this has been so meaningfulto me. And I almost didn't send
that. And it took me, you know,5 minutes to write. And that was
years years ago and it's alwaysstuck with me what one simple DM

(34:11):
message the impact it can haveon someone and the relationship
that it conform from that.
And I think, you know, we we allhave that potential every single
day to do that. And so it's notlike you need to go out there
and do that to a 100 people aday. Like, do it to 1 person a
week, and amazing things willhappen over the next year.

Justin (34:26):
Again, most people aren't willing to put in the
work here.

Jeremy (34:30):
Mhmm.

Justin (34:30):
You know, ask not what Tim Ferris can do for you. Ask
what you can do for Tim Ferris.The other day, I was listening
to a show, and there's this onesegment. I'm like, oh, that
would be an awesome thing toshare on social media for them.
So I got home, downloaded theYouTube video off the Internet,
clipped the show, posted it onTwitter and threads and other

(34:53):
places, And the host messaged meand said, thank you so much for
doing that for us.
You just did all of this workfor us, and I appreciate it so
much. That's how you buildrelationships. You don't say,
oh, how can this podcast helpgrow my show? The first stage is
saying, how can I be helpful?Yeah.
How can I be helpful? Mhmm. Andeventually, you're going to grow

(35:16):
a relationship. And theneventually, you're gonna have
this little tribe of people thatare collaborating with each
other, helping each other out,promoting each other's shows,
being each other's cheerleader.That is a flywheel that once you
get it going, it just works.
It's like you can rely on thatgroup of people forever.

Jeremy (35:35):
Yeah.

Justin (35:36):
Right? You're always gonna be cheering each other on,
helping each other out.

Jeremy (35:39):
Yeah. And we're gonna get some additional flywheels at
the end of the episode here. ButI think the the thing to kind of
close out this conversationmaybe on collaborations is that
you get much more out of aimingsmall and building a kind of
repeat group of collaborators.And And you get to this point
where let's say, like, you inyour niche, your industry,
however you wanna define thespace. If you think like, okay,
I'm gonna be active here overthe next, you know, 2, 3, 5, 10

(36:02):
years.
Like, maybe there's no end insight that I've for the,
indefinite future. Like, I justI'm gonna be here. And okay. So
you're gonna start networkingwith people and making friends.
And, you know, over the years,you end up with a group of maybe
30 people who because you becomefriends and sometimes it's gonna
be a kind of transactionalcollaboration where it's like,
okay, I'll shout you out on liveshow and you show me out on
yours.
We'll do, an ad swap orsomething like that. But the the

(36:25):
really beautiful thing thathappens when you commit to
building relationships is nowyou grow this group of, you
know, 30 or 50 people who startshouting you out regardless of
any transactional value. They'rejust like, oh, my friend Justin
posted this thing. I thought itwas really cool. My audience
should know about it as well.
And you start to get this thiscompounding effect where now you
just have this group of friendswho you're all just sharing each

(36:45):
other stuff because it'sbeneficial and you think it's
cool. And I think, like, that'sMhmm. The point when
collaborations really ramp up invalue, but it's not like a quick
fix. But if you stick with itYeah. Like, it will be
transformative for yourmarketing and your show.

Justin (37:00):
Totally.

Jeremy (37:01):
Alright. So let's, let's move on to the the final kind
of, deep dive of one of the themarketing channels here that I
know is on a lot of people'sminds. A lot of people think,
you know, if there's anythingthat is the silver bullet, it is
paid acquisition. Paidadvertising on podcast apps, on
other shows, on Facebook orGoogle or wherever else. I hear

(37:22):
so many people, and this wasactually in the report, in the
survey.
One of the things that I askedwas like, you know, what is the
biggest frustration that youhave when it comes to marketing?
And so many people said, I don'thave the budget to spend on ads.
And I thought, oh, I don't knowthat, that advertising is really
the cure all that you think itis going to be. Have you Yeah.

(37:42):
Have have you had any experienceadvertising with transistor or
your own projects in the past,or or what has that been like?

Justin (37:47):
Yeah. I mean, on transistor side, it's actually
cracking paid acquisition isdifficult. Yeah. It's hard. And
we haven't really found a goodpaid acquisition channel that
works well all the time.
And we've also seen thisreflected with our customers and
the customer research we'vedone. I pulled this anecdote
from Reddit. They did, anOvercast ad, which is one of

(38:10):
those places where you can, youknow, pay to have an ad appear
in Overcast. So people arelistening to shows, in that
category, and then there's an adwhere people can instantly
listen and subscribe. So theysay they did it for 30 days.
They got about 240,000 peoplesaw the ad. Quite a bit. Yeah.
You think, wow. Pretty good.
We're killing it here. Onlyabout 1800 people clicked on the

(38:34):
ad. Guess how many newsubscribers they got?

Jeremy (38:37):
1800 people clicked out of 240,000 impressions. That's
right? Okay. 240,000, 1800. I'mgonna guess something like maybe
they got 200 new subscribers.

Justin (38:50):
72 people subscribed to the show. Guess how much that
cost them? $6 per subscriber. Soin order to get 72 new people
subscribed to the show and wehave no idea. Did they stick
around?
Right. Did we don't know any ofthat. $6 is a lot of money to be

(39:10):
paying to acquire 1 subscriber.I I would say that's not
scalable. That's not repeatable.
I would not do that experimentagain if it was costing me that
much. Right?

Jeremy (39:21):
Yeah. So I wanna bring in some context here. And so
this is a very broadly generictype of, calculation we're doing
here. But at a $20 CPM rate,which is, you know, roughly
kinda similar, a good benchmarkfor advertising that a lot of
shows run on and a lot of peoplewanna get sponsors for their
show, get paid a CPM rate. So$20 per 1,000 impressions.

(39:44):
Each impression is worth 2¢. Soyou you can start to do the math
and you can think, okay. Well,how many impressions do I need
to get to pay off that $6 that Ipaid to acquire that listener?
So essentially doing the mathhere, in order to pay back that
$6 that you spent to acquirethat listener, you need to

(40:05):
deliver 300 ad impressions tothem. And so if you think, okay,
if you do, you know, 3 ads anepisode, if you can even fill
that for your show, get 3sponsors paying at that $20 CPM,
you need to do a 100 episodes topay off that listener.
And as we've kinda seen fromsome of the churn data in
ChartiBral and elsewhere, it isnot likely that most listeners

(40:27):
actually stick around that long.Then you have to factor this in.
Your actual cost per engagedlong term subscriber is probably
way, way higher. It's probably,you know, 30, 40, $50 per
subscriber and, it it could evenbe more. And I've seen a lot of
data around, podcast advertisingthat consistently brings back,
like, cost per subscriberacquisition at anywhere from,
you know, $10 up to multiple 100of dollars.

(40:49):
And so this is something that Ithink people think if I could
just pay to get my show in frontof people, I'd have this instant
flood of listeners. Andsometimes I think the problem is
that there are advertisingservices that I would never
recommend and I won't name anyof them, but they are basically
not the highest qualitylisteners if they are even

(41:10):
actual listeners. They'reessentially boosting the
downloads and the purpose ofthese products is essentially
for big studios and networks whohave promised advertisers a
certain number of impressionsand are coming up short to be
able to, like, do a last minutead buy to be able to boost those
impressions. It's not actuallygetting real subscribers to the
show who are going to stickaround.

Justin (41:30):
I can tell you this has happened over and over and over
again with our customers. Theypay one of these platforms to
do, like, a podcast advertisingcampaign. And almost all the
time, we have to come back tothem and say, listen. We we
noticed what's going on here.We're getting all sorts of bot
traffic to this particularepisode.
We're getting all sorts ofduplicate downloads, all sorts

(41:52):
of basically, not realengagement, not real downloads.
They are wasting their money.

Jeremy (41:58):
Mhmm.

Justin (41:58):
And, almost every single time somebody has paid to, you
know, get more engagement or,you know, for downloads or
whatever, it's been a scam. So Iwould avoid those, providers if
you can.

Jeremy (42:14):
And the the one thing I do wanna clarify. Like, there is
a broad spectrum of podcastadvertising services, and some
of them are pure scams. I thinkthese are the people who are
pitching you on LinkedInconstantly. Just avoid those at
all costs. And then there areothers that are more legitimate.
And, I've chatted with some ofthese people, and there's a lot
of they like, a lot of these arenewer in the space, so they're
not necessarily proven yet, butthey have some interesting kind

(42:36):
of ideas. And so I think, like,one of these that actually is
really interesting to me isthis, company called Podroll, I
think. And they do kind of feeddrop automated feed drops and
there's some some tools likethat that I'm like, okay. This
is actually interesting becauseyou're getting an actual audio
experience in a podcast episodethat a listener is listening to.
And if the targeting is good,that makes sense to me that that

(42:57):
could work.
There is a spectrum here. And soas with so many things, like, if
it seems too good to be true, itprobably is. If you're even
thinking about consideringadvertising, usually, I would
not recommend it unless you havea way to both recoup your cost
that is proven and you can trackthat and attribute that. And you
can say, okay. I know for a factthat for every 100 listeners

(43:18):
that I get back to the show, I'dmake back at least my money, if
not more.
And if you don't have that,which is very difficult in
podcasting, I think it is likelythat you are are throwing a lot
of money away.

Justin (43:28):
And I think if we look outside of podcasting, we can
also see this happen. Like, youknow, Apple TV and Netflix are
spending money on ads. They'respending a lot of money on ads.
But you gotta think about whatthose ads are accomplishing with
them and how much volume they'regetting. Really, they are trying
to remind you that a show existsbecause maybe Jeremy recommended

(43:48):
that show to me in a coffeeshop, and then I'm browsing
Twitter later and it's like, oh,that's the show that Jeremy
recommended me.
You know? So they have a muchmore broad funnel. And even for
them, it's hard. Yeah. And theyhave bigger budgets, more
sophistication.
I think for most podcasters,you're just not gonna be able to
get to the scale that you need.And also, the way your

(44:11):
podcasting funnel works doesn'tbenefit from the same kinds of
things that, you know, Netflixmight benefit from when they're
doing advertising campaigns.You're just not gonna get that
same result. You know?

Jeremy (44:23):
Yeah. I think, usually, when advertising works well in a
for a lot of smaller businessesand creators, it's like you have
a high ticket product that youonly need to sell 1 to every
1,000 people. And so you knowit's gonna pay off. And if you
have a proven conversion system,you know your podcast converts
people into customers. That iswhen I would start to maybe
think about it.
But even then, I would be muchmore inclined to actually

(44:45):
advertise to get people onto myemail list because typically,
you can get email subscribersfor, you know, $2 or less. And
now they're on your email listand now you can actually promote
the podcast to them from theemail like in the welcome
sequence in your ongoing emailcommunications. You already want
them on your email list to beable to sell them on your
product or service. And so youkinda need to get them there
anyway, and it's cheaper, lowerfriction to do so. Yeah.

(45:05):
So that if if you're gonna payto advertise, that is probably
what I would do instead. Andit's actually interesting. I was
talking with a, somebody whoworks in marketing at one of the
big podcast networks, just acouple of weeks ago. And they
told me that across the wholenetwork, they basically canceled
all ad spend on, listeneracquisition.

Justin (45:23):
Oh, wow.

Jeremy (45:24):
The reason was not financial. Like, they have no
problems on the finance side ofthings. It was that it just
didn't work, and it was notworth the the spend that they
were doing. And they they kindasaid, like, we're just doubling
down on cross promotions betweenour shows and also doing cross
promotions with shows outsidethe network. And so they were
going for that, you know, usingthe leverage they have as a big
well known network to be able toline up cross promotions,

(45:44):
collaborations, guesting, allthat kind of stuff elsewhere.

Justin (45:47):
There you go. There you go. It's it's back to things
that don't scale. Do things thatdon't scale. There's no silver
bullet, and spending money onads is probably not going to
solve your growth problem.

Jeremy (46:00):
Yeah. So I think we've talked a lot about some of the
channels to acquire newlisteners. And I think one of
the things that we both reallybelieve strongly about
podcasting, we've talked aboutthis in previous episodes is
still the biggest way that showsgrow is word-of-mouth. And the
reason we did this episode isbecause to kick start
word-of-mouth growth, you needto get some people in there
initially. And not every singleperson who who who becomes a

(46:22):
listener is going to become anadvocate for the show.
So you probably need a base of,you know, 500 to 1000 people
before you really start to seeany kind of word-of-mouth
growth. The show also has to benoteworthy and remarkable enough
to talk about. But one of thethings that we wanna end on here
is think about okay. Once youstart getting to this point
where you are attracting peopleinto the show, you have a kind

(46:43):
of base. How do you then kind ofconvert that audience into
advocates and get them to startdoing more of that talking about
the show, promoting it for you.
I know that you have a a bunchof ideas on this, so I'd love to
hear, kinda, what comes to mindfor you.

Justin (46:56):
One thing we talked about before is rewarding the
behavior you wanna see more of.So if people are shouting you
out on Twitter or LinkedIn,mention them on the show. Say,
hey, thanks so much to PodcastAllies for shouting out our
show. They they had a reallynice write up in their

(47:16):
newsletter, and we appreciateit. Yeah.
Do things like that. Haveregular shout outs for people
that are helping to spread theshow. Reward the behavior you
want to see more of. This couldalso be highlighting reviews,
tweets, blog posts. Blog postlinks are especially underrated.
So if somebody, for example,wrote about you, Tina

(47:40):
highlighted her 10 favorite realestate podcasts that, you know,
you should listen to in 2024.Those lists are amazing. And, if
somebody does that for you,thank them. Say thanks so much
for for writing that post aboutus. And that will encourage
other people who are your fansto do that for you too.

Jeremy (47:59):
Yeah. That phrase, reward the behavior you wanna
see more of, was kind of a alight bulb moment for me when I
heard it years ago. And it wassomething that in my old
newsletter, Creative Wayfinding,when it was small, I one of the
things that I very intentionallydid was at the top of every
newsletter. So right beneath themasthead, every single issue I
would go through and I would,link to everybody who had kind

(48:22):
of commented with a nice commentor shared something on Twitter.
That could be just a Twitterpost that they retweeted or
something about the newsletter.
And I shouted out. I made sureeverybody could see it. First
thing up top that like, hey,here's all the people who are
supporting me in some way, and Iwanna give you some backlinks as
well. And it was reallyinteresting that a lot of people
commented on that over time. Andlike part of it was strategic.

(48:43):
I was like, I do wanna encouragemore of this, but part of it
was, like, this was a newsletterfor creatives and creators. And
so everybody was working on coolstuff who was a part of my
newsletter. And I was like, I dogenuinely also want more people
to know about all these otherawesome people. And it was
something that, like, the more Idid it, the more I got. And,
like, there were some weekswhere there was lulls and there
wasn't that much to to shoutout.
But for the most part, there wasdozens of things that I could

(49:04):
promote other people for eachand every week. And the thing
that I really did is I went outof my way to find stuff. I was
like, I wanna reward the tiniestlittle action of somebody some
supporting me. It doesn't needto be a huge thing. But if, you
know, I would guess it on shows,I would I would put that out
there.
Or if somebody just like wrote anice little comment on Twitter
that wasn't even like sharingsomething but I thought was
nice, I would like reward thatas well. And so this is

(49:24):
something that it does work andit becomes a spy wheel that the
more you do it, the more youget. And, that can really seed
some of the buzz around yourshow. Create more conversation
around it out in public, whichultimately attracts more people
to it.

Justin (49:36):
Totally. You can get really creative with these. For
example, introduce some listenerchallenges or games. What I
thought of was, hey folks, takea selfie of yourself listening
to the podcast, post it with theepisode you're listening to, and
tag us on Instagram or Facebookor whatever. And just like
create a movement or a challengethat people are like, okay, I'm

(50:00):
gonna this is one small way Ican, participate.
You could also make it, not achallenge, but just a prompt.
Hey, folks. We would love to seeyou listening to the show. Where
are you right now? Are you atthe dishwasher?
Are you outside walking yourdog? Are you in the car? If you
have a moment and it's safe todo so, take out your phone, take

(50:21):
a selfie, post it to socialmedia, and tag us. We would love
to see these, and we are goingto highlight them in future
episodes. It's an experimentworth trying.
And one, it gets listenersinvolved. But on the other hand,
all of a sudden, you get allthese people posting about your
show and saying, I'm listeningto the show right now. Check it
out. You know?

Jeremy (50:40):
Yeah. I think one of the the best it's it's a little bit
unattainable for most people,but My First Million did this
where they did a kinda clipcontest where they made the
video for their podcast freelyavailable and encourage their
listeners to chop it up intoengaging TikTok clips. And they
offered I think it was, like, a$10,000 reward. Like, every
month, they gave away a $10,000prize to, like, the best one,
the one that got the most views,I think it was. They were

(51:02):
essentially incentivizing peopleto create viral content for
them, and the one that got wentthe most viral won the prize.
And so people are are, ofcourse, trying to to win that.
And so, again, this isn'tsomething that everybody can do
but astute listeners might,recognize that we have something
similar going on with this showwhere, you know, we we both
genuinely do like roasting,podcasts and and helping other
people out in that sense. Butalso, you know, it is a way to

(51:24):
for us to get people to leaveratings and reviews for the
show, which helps us, and peoplecan submit their shows that way.
And we've just got some amazingratings and and reviews so far,
both that are just, like, reallynice things that people said and
also then submitting theirshows. And so it it really feels
like a a win win for everybody.
And there is this kind offeedback loop where, like, hey.
We get to create more contentthat not only helps that person
but also helps everybody whowatches that roast and could

(51:46):
say, oh, that actually appliesto my show as well. And, also,
you know, our show now benefitsfrom more ratings and reviews as
well. So there's a kindaflywheel, that we've kinda built
in somewhat intentionally,somewhat accidentally out of a,
hey. This would be cool if wedid that.
How do we get people to submitit? Oh, what if they left a
review to do it?

Justin (52:03):
Yeah. This can be one of the fun things about podcasting
is to just creatively think whatcould we make a part of the show
that's a recurring bit that wejust keep bringing back, and
it's something that people lookforward to. It could be as
simple as having a listenervoice mail section and then
highlighting a listener voicemail and then tagging them on

(52:26):
social media so they mightretweet it. Like, there's all
sorts of ways you can do this,and a lot of it will come up
organically. As you're in theshow, recording the show, think
about, oh, what's a recurringbit that would be kind of fun
for us and the listeners that wecould that might create this
flywheel effect that we'retalking about?

Jeremy (52:46):
Yeah. So I think we've, pretty exhaustively covered a
lot of the listener acquisitionchannels here. What are some of
your kinda key takeaways fromthis conversation? What would
you kind of, like, leave peoplewith, when it comes to thinking
about where they are going outand, kind of building their own
discovery engines for theirshows?

Justin (53:04):
To me, the the opportunity is in cultivating
community, cultivatingrelationships, cultivating a
network. I think people don'timmediately think about that
when it comes to marketing, butthat's actually one of the
highest leverage activities youcan do Mhmm. Is build
relationships with other people,form a little Telegram back

(53:25):
channel, you know, chat groupwhere you're talking to each
other all the time. You'recommenting, oh, great episode,
whatever. And then, hey.
Do you wanna come and guest onmy show, about this topic? Or,
hey. I think I could go on yourshow and really, like, drive
this home, bring my audience inbecause I've been chatting about
it. So yeah. I would cultivatecommunity network connections.

Jeremy (53:50):
Yeah. I think, this has maybe been your advice on every
episode so far, the closingadvice. So I think we can just
maybe just splice this intoevery future episode. Justin's
advice, focus on communityrelationships, and you're gonna
be fine. And I I, you know, Ithink that I actually it's
probably worth drilling that ineach and every episode because I
think it's just true.

(54:10):
And I think you and I have bothbenefited from that in our
careers and our content has beenso community driven and network
driven. It not in the sense of,like, a podcast network, but our
personal networks where we havejust made friends with people
whose work we admired. And thisis actually, like, we're a great
example of this because I thinkwe each read each other's
newsletters and didn't reallyknow that there was the

(54:31):
reciprocity, and we both reallyrespected each other. We
actually had similar writing andsimilar ideas. And then our
mutual friend, Jay Klaus, who,again, there's, like, another
layer of of networking andrelationship building,
introduced us at PodcastMovement a couple years later.
Again, going back to the thelong term nature of this, we
kinda started talking about,hey. Maybe we should do
something together at thatpodcast movement in, I wanna

(54:51):
say, 2022. And, you know Yeah.Nothing really happened. We
kinda talked a little bit hereand there for about a year, and
then it kinda was like we wereboth in a place where it's like,
okay.
We got the time. We got thebandwidth. We got the idea. Now
let's start thinking about thismore seriously. And this has
just been, like, how every greatcollaboration for me has ever
happened is that I meet someoneand I'm like, man, they're cool

(55:11):
and I really want to dosomething with them and I have
no idea on what it is.
And then, you know, 6 months ora year or 2 years or 3 years go
by and the perfect thing comesinto place at the right moment.
And you're like, I'm so glad Imet that person 3 years ago and
actually, like, took the time tonurture that relationship.

Justin (55:27):
Absolutely. And these relationships also amplify all
of these other channels wetalked about. Yeah. So it helps
once you have a relationshipwith someone, they're more
likely to share your stuff onsocial media. Mhmm.
Once you have a relationshipwith someone, it's more likely
you could do a blog posttogether. Once you have a
relationship with someone, youcould do a live stream together.

(55:48):
These amplify all the otherchannels that are possible, so
that's why they're worth doing.It's an accelerant to have these
relationships.

Jeremy (55:56):
So I think if there's one thing that I would leave
people with after this episodeon the topic of relationships,
we've talked about a bunch ofdifferent, listener acquisition
channels. So I would say, youknow, if there's one that stands
out to you that, like,especially if you, you know, you
have a ton of website traffic oremail list that you haven't
converted into podcastlisteners, like, focus on that.
But on the topic ofrelationships, what I would
really recommend that people dohere is you probably got

(56:17):
somebody in your mind that youwould love to collaborate with
someday in the future. Maybe youwould love to collaborate with
them tomorrow, but that's, youknow, probably not the most
likely thing. But what I wouldrecommend you do right now is
like pause this episode as soonas I finish talking you to you
and giving you your instructionsand go to whatever social
platform that you are connectedwith that person on or you
follow them on and send them amessage and just it's pure

(56:38):
appreciation.
There is no ask. There isnothing that you are hoping that
they will give you. It's justyou sending them a message
saying, hey. I've never messagedyou before but I've always
really admired your work and Ijust, you know, want you to know
how much I appreciate the workthat you do. Send that message
today and who knows?
Like, maybe a conversation comesout of this and you have a
little back and forth and maybethat dies out after that. That's

(57:00):
fine and that's you kinda haveto be okay with expecting that,
you know, most of these thingsare going to go that way. But in
my experience, so often it'sthat that seed is planted early
on that then they start torecognize you more when you
comment on their stuff insocial. And over time, over a
few months perhaps, you start toactually develop more of a
relationship and and maybe itdoesn't. Not everyone will but a
few of those will.
And I think it always startswith just like sending a

(57:22):
message, letting people knowthat you appreciate your work
and really incredible things cancan come out of that tiny act.

Justin (57:28):
Agreed. And if you end up doing any of that, if you end
up trying any of that, let usknow. We'd love to hear how
you're exploring some of thismaterial, how you're
experimenting with your ownshow. That wraps it up for this
episode. If you wanna check outthe full report that we've been
talking about, go to podcastmarketing trends.com/2023.