How We'd Spend $500/$2,500/$10,000 to Grow Our Podcast (& the Lessons You Can Apply to Any Budget)

How to get the best ROI on your podcast production and marketing budget to maximize growth… whether it’s $100 or $10,000 per month.

You’re probably pretty confident that if you had more money to spend on your podcast, you’d be able to grow it faster.

But have you ever stopped to think about how you would spend it to get the greatest ROI?

Should you buy ads? Invest in better gear? Hire an editor or assistant?

In this episode, we break down our takes on where your podcast budget is best spent in order to grow the fastest.

📊 What did you think of this episode? Click to cast your vote:

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Topics Covered

00:00 Could we grow faster if we had more budget? 
02:47 How much the average podcast spends on production & marketing 
06:41 How much high-growth shows allocate to marketing 
08:11 How we’d spend $500/month to grow 
15:23 How we’d spend $2,500/mo to grow 
27:23 How to figure out what brought people to your show 
31:00 How we’d spend $10,000/mo to grow 
38:03 Understanding your brand 
50:24 Running retargeting ads to your podcast 
52:33 How we’d grow our podcast with zero budget

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

Resources

Descript 
ConvertKit
Cast Magic
Calendly
Zapier
Chartable
Linkfire
Figma
Canva Pro

Complete the Podcast Marketing Trends 2024 Survey

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Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2023 Report

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

Episode Transcript

Justin (00:01):
So, Jeremy, I was looking at the podcast stats for
this podcast. And at this pointin time, each episode gets on
average 260 downloads in thefirst 30 days, and we're
spending about a $100 perepisode on editing. Yeah. If we
had more money for promotion, doyou think we'd be able to

(00:26):
significantly increase ourgrowth trajectory for the show?
Like, would we be able to get toa 1,000 downloads per episode
in, let's say, 3 months?
If you had budget, do you thinkyou could deploy that capital
and then in 3 months, get us upto a1000? And do you think if we
just kept doing the promotionalwork we're doing now, we'd get

(00:46):
to a 1000 downloads per month,whether we were spending money
or not.

Jeremy (00:51):
Welcome to podcast marketing trends explained. I'm
Jeremy Enns from PodcastMarketing Academy.

Justin (00:57):
And I'm Justin Jackson from transistor.fm. 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 (01:10):
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 (01:19):
Let's get into it.

Jeremy (01:24):
So I'm gonna go bold and I'm gonna say that we could do
both. I think that we could getthere faster, to that 1,000
downloads, within 3 months. Ithink that we could also, if we
set our minds to it, with 0additional budget could also get
to a 1000 downloads a month. SoI'm gonna say both are possible
and but I actually think thatthis is an interesting idea to

(01:45):
to structure this episode aroundis maybe we look at some of the
different budgets that we mighthave and say, how would we use
that to be able to grow asquickly as possible? What do you
what do you think if we're kindagonna divide this up into maybe,
like, 3 tiers of budget?
What makes sense in regards towhat the typical podcaster might
have?

Justin (02:04):
Okay. I mean, full disclosure. I don't think I've
ever spent personally more than$500 a month.

Jeremy (02:11):
Mhmm.

Justin (02:12):
So let's do 500 as one tier.

Jeremy (02:16):
Okay.

Justin (02:17):
For a second tier, maybe 25100. I'm thinking there might
be some shows that are in thatarea. And then

Jeremy (02:24):
Let's go big. Let's go big for the last one.

Justin (02:26):
Okay. Say

Jeremy (02:27):
10 10 k a month podcast budget. 10 k. So 5125110 k.
Sound

Justin (02:33):
good? Okay. Sure. That that's it feels kinda like
you're getting into thebootstrap level, and then we get
into kind of fantasy league upat the $10,000 a month. But
that'd be fun.
So $10,000 per month, 25100 permonth, or 500 per month.

Jeremy (02:46):
That's right. Now before we go into this, I'm gonna look
at the the data first and bringthis in from the report, and
let's see how these kind oftiers align with where people
were at. Okay? Sound good

Justin (02:56):
to you? Yeah. I'm curious. I'm curious to see
where, like, real podcasters arespending their money because,
again, like, from my experience,I've only spent up to 500.

Jeremy (03:06):
Yeah. So I've got the the data up here. And in this
section of the report, we werelooking at dividing the monthly
budget. And this is both foreverything kind of production,
marketing, anything related tothe show. We divided it up by
the growth rate of the shows andso we had shows that grew by
more than a 100% a year.
That was one category. Showsthat grew by 21% to 100 100

(03:27):
percent and so 21% was the themedian. So anything that
outperformed the median, they'rethe 2nd tier. The 3rd tier was 0
to 20% growth. So these onesshow still grew over the course
of the year but grew less thanthe median and then we had shows
that actually shrunk.
So these are our 4 categorieshere.

Justin (03:41):
And Okay.

Jeremy (03:42):
What we see here, the I'll start off with the the
overall average budget for thewhole dataset. The average
budget for shows that submittedhere was $730 a month. This is
in, USD. So $730 a month was thetypical show in the overall kind
of 500 plus shows that submitteddata to this report. What's your
kind of initial take on that?

(04:03):
This is already outspending youapparently.

Justin (04:06):
Yeah. I'm surprised. I'm surprised that shows are
spending this much. I I thinkthis kind of goes back to that
thing you mentioned right offthe top of the show, which is
you think you could we could getincrease our downloads on our
own without adding more budgetand with adding budget. There's
2 paths there.

(04:27):
And so for folks that are takingthe path of, you know what, I'm
not going to put my sweat equityinto this. I'm going to actually
like spend to acquire newlisteners or spend to make the
show better or whatever. Yeah.This is fascinating to me. I I
wouldn't have expected numbersthis high.

Jeremy (04:46):
Now there is a interesting caveat here. If we
look at the biggest categoryhere, the shows that grew by the
most. And so these are the showsthat grew by more than a 100% so
they doubled at least in size.The average, total budget of
this category was $11.35 amonth. And so this is, you know,
getting to be quite asignificant budget.
Although, you know, we're gonnalook at, you know, playing big

(05:06):
with a $10,000 a month budget.Still, this is far off. So many
shows were doubling in size atjust a little over $1,000 a
month. So that's that's kind ofencouraging. But what's actually
even more interesting is thatthere was one show in that
highest growth category thatthey actually had a typical
average monthly budget ofsomewhere in the range of, like,
$17,500.

(05:27):
And so Wow. There's one kind ofhuge outlier show, and I was
curious. Okay. So they're justdragging the average up across
all the shows in that categoryand the whole kind of entire
dataset. And so I was curious,you know, what happens if we
remove that show?
And it turns out that if thatshow was removed, then the
highest growth category actuallyonly had an average monthly
budget of $480 And what's evenmore interesting about this so

(05:52):
$480, the next highest growthcategory was $753 a month. The
next highest was 654 and theshows that actually shrunk were
487. And so, actually, the showsthat grew by more than a 100%,
if we remove that one outlier,they actually had the lowest
monthly budget of all the shows,which is just utterly

(06:13):
fascinating to me.

Justin (06:14):
Wow. And so this includes editing, production
costs, hosting, software,rentals, all that stuff.

Jeremy (06:23):
To the show. Yep. Their ongoing monthly production
costs, marketing costs, kind ofteam support, that kind of thing
factored into these, thesecosts.

Justin (06:31):
Fascinating. I I mean, that is counterintuitive that
the highest growth shows arespending the least. Right?

Jeremy (06:41):
Yeah. I also asked in the survey, what percentage did
people allocate to marketing?And so here we actually saw that
the group that had the highestgrowth actually did spend the
most on marketing. So theyallocated 29% of their budget to
marketing and this was actuallyvery linear here. What you would
expect, the next highest growthgroup allocated 21%.
The next highest was 12%. Here,much more what you would expect.

(07:04):
The low growth shows kind of alower amount dedicated to
marketing. And once we removethat outlier show, they actually
spent lower than the the averagein that tier. So the the number
even went up higher.
And so I think that it was 30 or31% of that high growth group
that they allocated of theirbudget towards marketing. So
that's another interesting

Justin (07:22):
kind of,

Jeremy (07:23):
takeaway there from the Yeah.

Justin (07:23):
You know what I like about that is it gives me a
benchmark to do experimentsagainst. So if I'm saying, well,
my monthly budget is a $100,maybe I could put $30 aside for
some form of promotion and juststart experimenting. I'm going

(07:44):
to invest that in some form ofpromotion, and then I'm gonna
see if there's any sort of causeand effect. You know, deploying
this capital this way, I'malways thinking, like, for
myself, I might take thatbenchmark 30% and start to think
about how I might do that for myshow. How can we implement a

(08:04):
regular marketing spend for ourpodcast?

Jeremy (08:07):
Yeah. So, maybe let's get into the the hypotheticals
here then, shall we? Okay. So,the first tier here, we're gonna
look at $500 a month. And sothis is kinda very much in line
with the typical show whosubmitted the survey.
So this seems to be where mostpeople are at. So, let's start
off with you here, and I wouldlove to hear if you had $500 a
month to allocate across yourshow. So this is not just

(08:28):
marketing. This is everythingproduction, all of the kind of,
behind the scenes costs andeverything. Where does that $500
get spent for you?

Justin (08:35):
Okay. So hosting and recording software, that's about
$50. Editing, about $85 perepisode times 4. So that's about
$340. And then I just put therest into newsletter
sponsorship.
Oh, okay. So a $120 intonewsletter sponsorship.

Jeremy (08:53):
And, walk us through your approach to newsletter
sponsorship here. I just thoughtif I was gonna experiment and I
had a

Justin (09:05):
could match up with my topic. And there's a lot of them
that are looking for sponsors.And it just felt like, well,
that's an easy one and it'strackable. I could see how many
clicks we got from thatnewsletter. If I use something
like Chartable or Linkfire, Icould even track that link all
the way to listenership.

(09:25):
So it felt like it's fairly easyto deploy, especially if you
have a specific niche. It's easyto find those newsletters and
then try it out. And, yeah, itjust felt like that would be the
first experiment I would tryover anything else. And it's you
don't have to be supersophisticated. So Right.
As soon as you get into Facebookads and Google ads, it's, like,

(09:47):
requires a certainsophistication. Mhmm. But
newsletter sponsorships areusually you reach out and say,
hey, can I sponsor for a $100?And they say yes or no or
whatever. And they're trackable.
So I just like the simplicity ofit.

Jeremy (10:03):
Yep. And so in this, scenario, you are linking
directly to the show. Is thatwhat you would, submit as your
link to the newsletter?

Justin (10:10):
Yeah. I would link to the show or probably even a
specific episode. I would Okay.I would try to say, hey. In this
latest episode, Jeremy andJustin talk about podcast
marketing budgets.
If you're interested in that,click here and listen in Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, whatever. Andthen I would see how many people
actually listen to that episode.So, yeah, I would try to pitch

(10:32):
the show on a probably on aspecific episode. Like, can I
get can I hook people intolistening based on this
episode's promise or thisepisode's topic?

Jeremy (10:42):
Yeah. And, you know, that goes to something that we
talked about in one of theprevious roasts, and this was
for the show How Fitting, wherewe talked a lot about
specificity of language. In thiscase, we were talking about the
episode titles and the showdescription. But really with any
kind of marketing andadvertising, the more specific
you can get with, like, thepromise of what people are gonna
get from this thing, especiallyif they're unfamiliar with you,
the more, like, real and visualand tangible that you can make

(11:03):
it feel that they're gonna getsome value out of this. Like,
that's what you're fightingagainst.
And so specificity is a big kindof, aid in in that.

Justin (11:11):
Yeah. Exactly. Now what about your budget? What was your
$500 budget?

Jeremy (11:16):
Okay. So I, I had kinda $250 a month on general tooling.
And so Okay. This was a lot ofthe same things that that you
had here. So we've got thehosting.
We've got your podcast editingprogram. And, you know, you you
mentioned that you might have aneditor but also a podcast
editing tool. I have hired manyeditors throughout the years and
also still find myself tweakingthings. So from my experience, I

(11:37):
know that I, as a soundengineer, like, am a tinkerer
when it comes to audio and videostuff. And So, no, I'm still
going to be doing editing andtools like Descript, which we
use for the show.
You can have kind of thiscollaborative workspace where
the editor can get it 95% of theway there. And then I can go
make some kind of content editsor something like that and and
finish things off. So I wouldhave, probably both of those
costs. Probably there's somekind of email service provider.

(11:59):
I use Convert Kit here and lovethem and, like, what's
interesting about some of thesetools is it's very dependent on
where you're at.
So Convert Kit, I know, has afree plan but then I don't know
how much I pay now. It's it's alot. It's like super expensive.
It's one of the biggest costs inmy business because my list has
grown quite a bit. And so that'sit's both nice, but it becomes
something of a almost burdendown the line where you're like
I mean, hopefully, if you have alist of, you know, 10,000, 20000

(12:21):
people, you're profiting from itand it's paying for itself.
But,

Justin (12:24):
I

Jeremy (12:25):
I certainly know lots of people with newsletters who do
not have that benefit where theybuilt big lists and haven't
found a way to monetize and nowhave this, you know, $500 a
month in paying for their emailservice provider. In this case,
we're gonna just assume thatthis is a lower amount. But
email service provider, I'mthinking a tool like Cast Magic
maybe, which I use and, to dosome of the automated show notes
stuff. At this point, I'm notgonna hire someone to do show

(12:45):
notes. I probably don't wanna doa ton of it myself.
And I'm just not thatparticular. So if I can get a
pretty good version out thereand I make a few tweaks, fine.
I'm fine with that. Yeah. Othertools I'm looking at here are
probably something like Calendlyand then something like Zapier
where I think you can automate alot.
I use Zapier like crazy. This isanother one of the big costs in
my business now. ConvertKit andZapier are probably my 2 big

(13:07):
biggest tech bills, and that'ssomething that they increase in
price the more you use them. ButI I can't even think like how
much time I must save by usingZapier to automate so many
different things that it mustbe, you know, at this point,
there's so much stuff that'shappened behind the scenes
that's built up over years. Itmust be like at least 20 hours a
week, probably of stuff that Icould just not even do anymore.
So that's my kind of toolingside of things here. And so

(13:30):
that's around $250 a month.That's about half of the the
$500 a month budget. And the onething I will say on that is
like, I like like most everyonestarted cobbling together all
the free tools. And if you havethe budget to spend on it, I
just think this is such a greatuse of that budget.
Like you realize howinsufficient a lot of your tools
were and how cobbled together alot of your solutions were after

(13:51):
you actually just paid for thetool. And you're like, oh, this
actually just works and it's somuch easier. And I don't need to
do these 3 different things. SoI'm very happy to spend on
tooling for the most part.

Justin (14:00):
Yeah.

Jeremy (14:01):
So yeah that that's that's the first half of the
budget. The second half I have,everything else would go to
podcast support of some way. Sothis would, I think, for me
depend a little bit on what theshow is. And so if I had a high
production value show orsomething like that, probably I
can't hire an editor in thatrange to do what I wanna do. So
maybe I do that myself.
And so then I'm gonna be lookingat some kind of like podcast BA

(14:22):
who can help with scheduling anduploading and a lot of that type
of stuff. If it is more of akind of interview show that
doesn't need a lot of editing,probably I'm going with a
podcast editor and maybe I'llhandle some of the the back end
stuff or maybe I can afford bothdepending on the the price
there. So would depend a littlebit on what the workflow is,
what the show is. And, in ourcase, you know, a show like
ours, it's not like a super highproduction value. So I think

(14:45):
editor would be the first thingfor me.
And then a BA might be secondaryif there's anything that I can
do, even a couple hours a week,at something like, you know, $25
an hour, $30 an hour, is isdefinitely worth it for me. So
that's that's where my budget'sgoing at the $500 a month level.

Justin (14:59):
Wow. And nothing on advertising? Nothing on
advertising.

Jeremy (15:01):
Nothing on advertising. Not yet. May maybe in one of
the, the future tiers here, butI'm gonna save it. And, $500 a
month, I'm outsourcing stuffthat I don't wanna do. We'll
maybe get into this a little bitmore, but my big belief is that
the you as the host are the bestmarketer of your show.
And so I wanna free up my timeto be able to promote it myself,
and I think that's where, youknow, that time is gonna get the
best ROI.

Justin (15:22):
Okay. Do you wanna jump into $25100?

Jeremy (15:25):
Okay. Let's, I'll I'll keep going. I'll keep going with
the 25100 here. So Okay. Ampingit up quite a bit.
This is 5 x the budget. So we'regoing from 500 up to 25100. This
was more than double the highesttier, in our, podcast marketing
trends report. And that's that'sincluding that outlier show.
It's even more than that, morethan double if we remove that

(15:47):
one.
So here, I'm actually I'm stillI'm I'm not going with any
advertising yet at this point.$25100 a month. I'm amping up my
tooling. So now we're up to 750a month I've got here. So I
might be adding some potentiallysocial media kinda scheduling
and engagement type tools andthings like that.
There's some kinda cool stuff onmainly Twitter is where a lot of

(16:07):
this tooling is where you can doauto DMs and replies and things
like that where you can say,like, hey. We're doing a
giveaway. Put this emoji in thethe comment and I'll send you
this thing. And so there's a lotof great engagement stuff you
can do with tools like that ifyou have them. So I'm probably
adding on something like that atthis point and that might even
fit in the $500 a month.
I, have recently upgraded intothe paid version of Chartable

(16:30):
and am, nerding out over thedata there. I've been on the
free plan for many years butthis is something that I would
definitely invest in. And one ofthe big reasons is for the cross
promotion tracking attribution.And so for doing feed drops or
cross promos with other shows,this is something that I wanna
be serious about and being ableto track, like, how are these

(16:51):
actually working is a big deal.And you can only get that with
the paid, chartable plan, Ibelieve.
Or if you can get it on the freeplan, it's like 1 a month or
something like that, which maybeit's enough for for some people.
But, I would probably like to domore of that. And then there's
probably a bunch of othermiscellaneous tools. So I'm
thinking is I I do a lot of,like, surveying and quizzes and
stuff like that. It's probablyalso some kind of design tools,
Figma, Canva Pro.

(17:12):
I think you run into someconstraints at some point when
you're doing design, andmarketing just always kinda
requires some kind of designhappening. So that's that's kind
of the tooling side, 750 amonth.

Justin (17:22):
You know, a lot of these tools you're mentioning are
tools I pay for, but I didn'tput it in my budget. I I just
completely didn't think aboutit. But, like, Canva? I mean
Yeah. You kinda need it's almostlike you need to have a Canvas
subscription just for doingmiscellaneous graphics, for
doing episode art, for, youknow, coming you could even pay

(17:42):
a designer to set up a nicetemplate for you and then just
keep reusing it.
So your budgets, I think, aremore realistic on the on the
tooling side than mine are.You've done a good job of, like,
listing them out becauserealistically, you're probably
going to have an emailnewsletter. You're probably
going to have some automationsoftware. And so making a budget

(18:07):
for these things, I think, is agood idea.

Jeremy (18:11):
And the other thing like that I also have noticed for
myself is that, like, a lot ofthese tools, the more stuff you
do online, the more you end upusing these tools for
everything. And so if podcastingis your first creative medium or
or anything like that, it itmight be like, oh man, I'm
spending so much on my podcast.But a lot of those tools you can
use in so many different ways.And so my costs have actually

(18:32):
stayed pretty even over the past3 years, from running a podcast
agency to being a, like, bloggerand newsletter writer and in and
out of podcasting and into videostuff. Like, a lot of the tools,
it's like they just form thisbase layer where you kinda just
need all the stuff, emailmarketing, social media
scheduling, graphic design, somekind of like project management
system.
And so there's all the stuffthat you end up just making use

(18:53):
of everywhere. And I thinkkeeping that in mind for me, I'm
like, okay, I'm gonna pay forthis now, but actually I can use
this in so many different ways.And actually a great example of
this, I just started doing thisthis week, is a tool like Cast
Magic. They actually have abunch of presets specifically
for people who are educators orcoaches or consultants. And so
I've started creating sometemplates where I can just

(19:13):
upload my coaching sessions withclients to that and so then I
can kind of ask they have thislike magic chat AI feature where
you can ask like, hey.
Did we talk about this at all orwhere did we talk about this?
And so I can kinda remember,like, oh, yeah. I I this I know
I was searching for this, and Ineed to follow-up with them
about this or give them aresource or something. And so
you can get a lot of mileage outof some of these tools, if you
can kinda think a little biteven beyond podcasting.

Justin (19:34):
And and think about the tools you're using already that
may have added some of thesefeatures. Descript has an AI
chat tool as well, and I justremembered about it the other
day. I was like, oh, wait asecond. Let me try this out. So
there's some of the tools you'reusing already might have built
in some of this functionality.
And, it's worth, you know, ifyou wanna consolidate more of

(19:55):
your costs into a few just a fewtools, that might be another way
to go. Yeah. How do you spendthe rest of your budget?

Jeremy (20:02):
Yeah. 17.50 remaining here. And so in this case, I'm
actually not really adding onanything new here. But I'm
looking at this case, we got17.50. This is again going to
full on outsourcing podcastsupport.
And so I think for me, I want tofree up as much of my time as
possible and this additionalbudget allows me to do more of
that. And so at this tier,probably previously was like

(20:23):
either a VA or an audio editorat the 500 a month. Maybe I
could squeeze out a little bitout of both of those. But here,
I'm probably looking at gettinga audio slash video editor. So
somebody who can do both to aprobably an amazing degree of
both of those but a pretty soliddegree where, you know, you can
get a pretty good like a showthat looks like hours on YouTube
which I think is is pretty solidfor what we've been able to do

(20:45):
with the script.
But that's something that Iwould invest in is getting
somebody who can like reallymake it look good on video as
well. Because I think if you'regonna do YouTube and if you ex
have any expectations around it,I think it needs to look good on
video and because that's whatpeople expect on YouTube. And so
at this stage, I'm gonna startputting some fairly decent

(21:05):
budget towards that. And thenI'm thinking the other, $750 a
month towards the VA which isjust taking on more and more of
those like background tasksthat, you know, we all have
them. There's things that we getstuck doing that are just this
admin kind of mundane stuff thatneeds to get done.
There's no way around it. Wecan't automate it. And then
there's also a bunch of stuffthat we would like to do but
don't have the opportunity to doit because we just don't have

(21:27):
the time. So that I would handoff more of those things to a
VA. So that's, that's my budgetthere.
17.50 to podcast support,outsourcing, and then 7.50, for
tooling at the $25100 a month, atier.

Justin (21:39):
Fascinating. Okay.

Jeremy (21:41):
Let's hear what you got. So I I'm the grounded one here,
apparently, with all the line byline items here. Let's hear the
big dreaming, $25100 a month,budget from Justin.

Justin (21:49):
Now to put this in context, I think right now in my
journey as a marketer, I'vebecome more curious about paid
acquisition. Traditionally, Ihaven't done a lot of paid
acquisition. I've been mostlyfocused on content marketing,
search engine optimization, PR,networking, relationships, and
social media. And so I'm curiousat this point in my journey

(22:13):
about paid acquisition. To giveyou some context, let's say
that, you know, for the companyI'm with right now, we have
1,000,000 of dollars in revenue.
You're gonna think this ishilarious. Guess how much we
spent on ads last year?

Jeremy (22:28):
Okay. So I'm gonna think it's hilarious. So it's gonna be
low, but how low? I'm I'm gonnasay, k. 1,000,000 of dollars in
revenue.
I'm gonna say, $5,000.

Justin (22:39):
Just over $1200 last year in ads.

Jeremy (22:44):
I think I spent more than you on ads.

Justin (22:47):
Yeah. I I have not done very much paid acquisition. You
know, this year, I wannaincrease that budget to $5,000.
I'm curious about it, but Idon't have a lot of experience
with it. So in this fantasyworld, I'm I'm dedicating more
towards advertising.
So tools, it looks like tools isstill under a $100, $49 for

(23:07):
hosting, $29 for recordingsoftware. Paying for an editor,
still $85 per episode times 4.That's $340. This time, I'm
investing another $85 perepisode on clips, editing, and
posting. So getting someone toedit little short TikTok reels

(23:29):
and Instagram reels.
So that's another 340. And thenI split my marketing into
newsletter sponsorship, about$870, and then podcast ads. So
putting ads on other podcasts,another $870 for the same
reason. If you're in a niche andyou're looking for an audience

(23:50):
like yours, it feels likethere's all these independent
creators that have done the hardwork of building an audience.
And they can, you can kind ofget their recommendation by
advertising on their show or intheir newsletter.
And if the pitch is good, thenyou might get a bunch of their
audience to follow you and checkout your show. So that's my

(24:13):
budget just splurging big timeon ads, even though I didn't
spend this much on ads myselflast year. I'm going in on ads
because I'm curious about it. Iwanna see how it works out. And
now the tracking tools, like yousaid, have gotten better.
I should have put in my budgethere some money for

Jeremy (24:30):
You don't have access to Chartable at this point, so
you're not gonna be able totrack anything, unfortunately.

Justin (24:34):
I know. I I'll reduce my ad budget a little bit to get
Chartable or Linkfiresubscription.

Jeremy (24:40):
Yeah. So one of the things that I love about this is
that you've got 2 differentadvertising channels. And I
think that this is one of thethings that I mean, we've talked
before about the importance ofexperimentation in marketing.
But in advertising, really,experimentation is the whole
job. And I think that a lot ofpeople tend to view advertising
in a few different levels ofawareness of how it works.

(25:01):
And one is just like level 1 isjust, okay. You just put money.
You just boost the post andpeople find it. And, you know,
people will see it. Probably,they're not gonna click back
through.
Level 2 is kind of looking atlike this mystical thing, I
think, where people think like,oh, you need to get some kind
of, like, copywriting wizard.Somebody who can just, like, get
the perfect creative, the thevisuals and the copy and all of
this. Who knows all the stuffabout the back end of Facebook

(25:22):
that I just don't know and so Ican't do it. And then I think
level 3, like the master levelhere, these are very, chunky
broad levels, only 3 levels ofadvertising proficiency, but
we're running with it. Level 3is really looking at, like, when
you talk to people who arereally savvy advertisers, you
realize that they go in andthey're like, I don't know
anything.
I don't know what people aregonna click on. And the whole

(25:43):
job of advertising is justextensively testing. And so if
you talk to people who areFacebook ads experts or Google
ads experts, what you realize isthat they are testing 100 of
iterations over the course of acampaign. It will often run for
months or if it's successful,years and they're just
constantly testing differentheadlines, different copy,
different graphics. And yourealize that there are so many
permutations of this ad andultimately they come from this

(26:06):
humble place of, like, we haveno idea going in what is going
to work.
We have some general, like,suspicions, like, maybe this
will work. And the more kind of,like, listener or customer
research you've done, you'vedone, the closer you're gonna be
to that. But you're just kind oflike, we're just gonna put stuff
out there and we're gonna letpeople decide. And whatever gets
clicked on, like, okay, we'll domore of that and then we'll test
it against something else. Andto me, this is something that's

(26:26):
actually it's encouraging in oneway because it kind of dispels
the idea of these likeadvertising copywriting genius.
It's discouraging in another waybecause what that means is that
you actually need a prettysignificant budget before you
get to the point where yourealize what actually works. And
it's not to say you need1,000,000 of dollars in
advertising spend to get there,but you certainly need probably

(26:47):
several $1,000 at a minimumbefore you're like, really?
You've let this run for 3months, let's just say on
Facebook. And you're now like,okay. We've got to a pretty good
point where we've weeded out alot of the underperforming ads
and we're at something that isstarting to get pretty good.
And you realize, like, that'swhen the cost per acquisition
starts to come down, But itactually starts off really high
and you don't get to thatoptimization point till you've

(27:07):
done a lot of testing. And sothis is something with your 2
you you kind of mediums. You'relike looking at like, okay. I'm
gonna try some different placesbecause I actually don't know
what is going to work best foradvertising for my show. Maybe
newsletters do better.
Maybe podcasts do better. I'mnot actually gonna know until I
test both of those and measurethe results.

Justin (27:23):
Yeah. I have this idea that I've always wanted to do in
terms of testing. I don'texactly know how it would work
out, but I I'll share it anywaybecause I think it's
interesting, is to publish abonus episode called secret
episode or something like that.

Jeremy (27:38):
Mhmm.

Justin (27:39):
And the the bonus episode, you say, hey. It's
Justin. I'm the host of theshow. And I'm wondering what's
going on in your life thatbrought you here today? This is
a small independent show.
And knowing where people comefrom and why they were attracted
to the show is super helpful. Inyour show notes, there are

(28:00):
different links. Click the onethat applies to you and it goes
to like a Google form and thenget them to fill out a just a
short survey. Then you get someanecdotal, some qualitative data
to go with all this likequantitative data you're getting
from different tracking tools.I've only done this in email,
like in a welcome email askingpeople, hey, what's going on in

(28:22):
your life that brought you heretoday?
I would love to try this withpodcasting. And the thing with a
bonus episode is I would almostkeep changing the publish date
on it so it keeps showing up asa recent episode for a while
just to test it out while I'mrunning a campaign and seeing if
I can get some responses fromfolks on what drew them to the

(28:44):
show, where did they come from.And then I would track in the
show notes. I I would havedifferent links. Like, if you
came here via this campaign,click on this link.
So then I at least get someokay. People came from that
newsletter. They clicked on thislink. If you came from the
podcast ad I did, then click onthis link. If you came from
somewhere else, click on thislink.

(29:05):
And so then I'd have these 3different tiers, 3 different
forms, and I'd start to testthings out. And then I'd also
probably put those links inregular episodes as well. Yep.
And maybe also run my owndynamic ad insertion campaign,
getting people to say, hey.Like, there's links in the show
notes, click on them, respond.
And I would find thatfascinating to hear, okay, I

(29:28):
came from this ad, but here'swhat drew me to the show. Okay.
I I gotta double down on that.

Jeremy (29:34):
Yeah. This is something I've had a very similar thought
in the past, and it's somethingI've done in my newsletters. And
you see a decent number ofpeople do this in the
newsletters where they'llessentially have a poll at the
end. It's like, what did youthink of this issue? It's like,
great, mediocre, like, not thatgreat.
And, for anybody who listens inSpotify, I've actually started
doing this in all the Spotifypolls. And so if you're
listening to this on Spotify orif you're not, you can go check
out. You can see for thisepisode, you can see there'll be

(29:56):
a poll there that says, like,how do we do on this episode?
And you can rate there's one of4 options. And I wanted 4
options because I didn't wantthere to be an even 50.
I wanted either positive ornegative sentiment, kind of high
positive, high negative, ormedium each to see, you know,
how people think we're doing.But I thought about doing the
same idea in the show notes fora long time. Just having 3 links
or 4 links or whatever and justsay like, hey. What do you think

(30:18):
about this show? And that linkthen goes to a page on my
website where there's a form orsomething like that where I can
collect some more information.
Plus you can also so you wouldhave 4 pages for each of the
ratings And over time you couldsee, okay, I can see that
website traffic here in myanalytics. And I can see that,
okay, like the mediocre pagegets the most clicks and then we
got, like, a 1,000 clicks onthat. We only got, like, 250 on

(30:40):
the great. And so, like, okay,that you can kinda measure some
audience sentiment in a waythat's anonymous to them and
they it's also reallyfrictionless. All they need to
do is go to the show notes,click one link to vote, and I I
think more people should bedoing this.
And, like I said, I'm doingSpotify here for this show, but
I might have to add those linksto our show notes, for for all
the people listening on anyplayer as well.

Justin (31:00):
Yeah. I think it's worth testing. Should we do $10,000
budgets?

Jeremy (31:04):
Yeah. Let's ramp it up to the the dream world and okay.
So you you already were goingbig on on 25100. So, I am
fascinated to see where you takethis when you, quadruple your
budget now, and you've alreadycould have spent more than your
entire last year's annualadvertising budget with the
previous tier. I shutter tothink what you're gonna do with
it at, at 10 k a month.
So lay it on me.

Justin (31:25):
Here's what's interesting about this tier, is
this was the tier where I firststarted thinking about where
hiring an external serviceactually makes sense. And I
think you could actually do moreof this on the lower budget
tiers. So Mhmm. Hosting, Ibumped it up to $99 per month.

(31:47):
Instead of recording software, Ijust put podcast recording
studio.
And I looked up the rates forthat, and it's surprising. It's
a $120 per session.

Jeremy (31:59):
Yep. And

Justin (31:59):
so I thought, wow. That's interesting. Like, I
could pay for the softwaremyself and have to manage the
whole thing myself, or I couldjust go to someone who does this
for a living. They're paying forthe the equivalent of Riverside
or SquadCast or whatever, and Ican just record in their nice
studio for $120. And I'mguessing I'm gonna get a really

(32:21):
nice video version of thepodcast and a really nice audio
version.
So a $120 times 4, dollars 500Editing still $85 per episode,
clips editing and posting. Samething. Newsletter sponsorship, I
just bumped up to a 1000.Podcast ads, a 1000. Podcast

(32:44):
coaching.
The more I thought about thistier, I was like, if I had
somebody that just did a callwith me or a couple calls with
me every month Yeah. And if I'mat a $10,000 a month budget
Yeah. And they could help me 2 xor 3 x my efforts, that seems
worth it. Coaching can cost allsorts of things, but I just said

(33:06):
a $1,000 for that. Yep.
Podcast producer. What if I hadsomebody who was just on this
call with you and I? And aswe're talking, they're like,
hey, Justin, Jeremy, just pausefor a second. I think we need to
take this this direction becausethe arc of the show is kind of
getting lost, and their wholejob is just to improve the

(33:28):
quality of the product. Yeah.
You and I've talked about thislots. The product, the podcast
episodes that you're producingis kind of the main deal. And if
you can improve the quality, ifyou can make the show even more
compelling, then it's worth theinvestment. So $2,000 for a
podcast producer. And then therest of my budget, almost $1200

(33:51):
each for each of these nextthree buckets.

Jeremy (33:53):
Okay.

Justin (33:54):
Instagram Reels, TikTok ads, YouTube Shorts ads. Just
over $1200 for each of those admarketplaces.

Jeremy (34:06):
Okay. And what's the, rationale here behind these
three specific? You're kind ofgoing away from what you were
doing before, or is this inaddition to your previous
advertising exploits?

Justin (34:16):
I'm just curious about it. From my own browsing
history, I'm on Instagram. I'mon TikTok. I'm on YouTube. And
I'm seeing podcasts on therethat look interesting.
And I think if I postedorganically on each of these
platforms and then just paid toboost those clips

Jeremy (34:34):
Mhmm.

Justin (34:34):
I'd be curious to see this isn't like a 1 week
experiment. This would be maybeover 6 months. Do I see a
meaningful number of peopleafter, you know, maybe they've
seen my clips 5 or 6 times?Yeah. Do they then translate
into podcast listeners?
Do they open up Apple Podcastsand search for the show? So I'm

(34:55):
I'm more curious curious aboutit. I think it would be an
interesting experiment. And if Ihad the budget, I would like to
try it out to see, can Imeaningfully boost numbers by
investing in clips short formclips on these platforms?

Jeremy (35:08):
Alright. Well, I mean, it sounds like, you do have the
budget now. You got $10,000 amonth. So I look forward to,
hearing the results, when we wehear back, in a future episode.

Justin (35:17):
Okay. Yeah. So what about you? What $10,000 a month,
how do your numbers break downin this fantasy world of,
spending?

Jeremy (35:26):
Yeah. I mean, if this show takes off, not fantasy for
long, hopefully. Yeah. For now,living in living in the clouds,
it's actually interesting howsome of our spending converged
here. And so I bumped up mytooling another $250 to $1,000 a
month.
I figure stuff gets moreexpensive maybe. Hopefully,
we're we're being successful.There's probably more stuff that
I wanna add on. And potentiallywith more outsourcing, more

(35:49):
endeavors, there's other stuffthat kind of comes with it. So
I'm just adding in some extracosts there to cover the
unforeseen but inevitableincreased expenses when it comes
to tools.
The the big category here isstill going to be outsourcing
for me. We've seen the themehere throughout, these these
different tiers. The bulk of itis still going to outsourcing.
So I've got 7,000 out of the10,000 going to various

(36:10):
outsourcing.

Justin (36:11):
Wow.

Jeremy (36:12):
So we've got a $1,000 a month to a BA handling all the
kind of just ongoing behind thescenes stuff. We've got $2,000 a
month now going to aspecifically a video editor. And
so I'm thinking I wanna go for aeven more kind of video first
YouTube friendly approach, whichis likely going to, at this
point, diverge from the audioversion. And so probably this is

(36:34):
gonna be a more condensed, morestreamlined, more heavily edited
version. There's probably gonnabe more, like, one of the things
I wish we could do with thisshow is when we're talking about
something, pull in visuals andthings like that.
That. And it's just a lot ofwork to find that stuff. And
it's easy enough in some senses.Like, it's not technically hard.
I could figure it out.
But finding the stuff, doing thework, and then if you think

(36:55):
about adding in, like, funanimations and sound effects,
like, you can reach anotherlevel with a actual video
editor. And so I'm thinking$2,000 a month, You can get, I
think, a pretty good qualityvideo for that better than the
majority of podcasts that are,on, on video. And I'm thinking
here along the lines of, like,Jay Klaus, Justin Moore. They've
got what I really as aspire tomaybe from a video podcast

(37:17):
perspective.

Justin (37:18):
Yeah. I like that. I like that too because it's
investing in the product. And soif you are going to be active in
video, whether it's YouTube orInstagram, wherever, having
production quality, that's justthe next level and really
packaging the product and makingreally awesome. That would be
worth experimenting with.

(37:39):
You know, maybe it doesn't work.You have a baseline because
you've been scrappy up to thispoint and go, Hey, I wonder if
over the next 6 months, if wecould meaningfully increase the
number of viewers, but thenviewers often lead to listeners.
Can we meaningfully increasethat number just by investing
more in the quality of both,really, like, video and audio.

Jeremy (38:04):
Something that's worth talking about here is that there
is a huge personal kind ofsentiment behind this. And so,
like, I'm a, you know, purecreator. I love audio, video,
music, like photography, film,all the stuff. And so part of me
is, like, if I have more budget,where I want to put it is into
the creative. Like, that to meand even if I'm not the one
doing it, I wanna createsomething that I'm really proud

(38:26):
of.
And so part of me just has thisinclination. And I think the
other part that I haverecognized as both beneficial
and challenging to some extentis I like brands. And so when I
am creating a business and abrand, I wanna create something
that like has a feeling and likelooks great and that people look
at it and, like, wow, that thatlooks really cool. And I
personally feel like the brandthat I want to convey has a high

(38:48):
bar of quality. And so this issomething that, you know, we we
talk about in the the podcastroast with packaging and things
like that.
Like, I just really believe thatthe impressions that every touch
point of your brand give peoplehave a, over time, a significant
impact on how they interact withyour content and how memorable
it is and if it keeps themcoming back. And so for me, I
have a high level of bar ofquality that I just feel like I

(39:11):
need to meet. And so it's almostlike as I increase my
capabilities, I wanna do thateven higher. And so obviously
the downside here is that thenit makes it hard. Like I think
it's kept me from creating a lotof projects where I'm like well,
there's no way I'm gonna do itunless it's at this level And I
can't do it at that level, so Imight as well not do it at all.
And that's Yeah. Not the rightmindset to some extent. And so I
kinda kinda oscillate betweenthese two mindsets of, like,

(39:34):
just be scrappy and, like,launch it and kinda build the
plane as you're flying it. Andalso, like, yeah. But I also
know I need to get it to thislevel for me to feel like it
belongs in the, ecosystem of mybrand.
And so I think it's it's worththinking about too where are
your values and is brand anddesign valuable and content
quality? Like where does thatfactor in? And some people it's
not gonna be as much as it isfor me and other people it's

(39:55):
gonna be way more than it is forme. And I think that that
dictates a lot of times whereyou spend your budget to some
extent.

Justin (40:01):
Yeah. And if you think of shows you like and you
appreciate, there it like Ithink about Darknet Diaries,
which we've mentioned before,but the branding, the artwork,
the social media images that heshares, the animations that he
shares, it's all really highquality. The website looks
incredible. And there issomething compelling about that

(40:24):
as a potential listener. If yousaid, hey.
You gotta listen to the showDarknet Diaries. And I Google
Darknet Diaries and I land onthe website and it's like, this
is like, you know, not that welldone. Yep. But to see something
really cool with amazingbranding and amazing artwork,
it's like, oh, wow. Maybe thisis worth the investment to click

(40:47):
play and listen a little bit andsee if I like the show.

Jeremy (40:50):
Yeah. There's actually a, a psychological phenomenon
here. It's called costlysignaling, and this gets used a
lot in marketing, but it alsoshows up in the animal kingdom.
And so the classic example isthe peacock's feathers. Birdsong
is another one where, in thiscase, it's looking at, you know,
mates.
And, essentially, what it'ssignaling is that this animal is
so robust that it can, quote,unquote, waste resources on its

(41:11):
plumage for the peacock Mhmm.For spending time singing. And
this actually also shows up inmarketing where if you can
afford to dedicate time tosomething that is not
technically, like, rational, itsignals to people whether or not
they realize that that, like,wow. This must be really, like,
legitimate and they're doingwell if they can spend time on
making this fancy design thathas nothing to do with the
podcast. And so, I mean, themore you go down the the

(41:31):
marketing rabbit hole, this isthis is the curse.
It's like you realize, like,like, oh, all the small things
really matter and I can't do allof them really well but to me,
that's one of the things that Ithink about is like I do at
every touch point and want tosignal like, yes, this is worth
your time. This is legitimate,and you you're not gonna be
disappointed by engaging withthis.

Justin (41:48):
Yeah. I agree. So what about the rest of your budget?
Do you have any money left?

Jeremy (41:52):
So yeah. Oh, we we got we got lots of money left here.
Oh, good. So we're, we're stillin the outsourcing category
here. We've got a $1,000 a monthfor BA, $2,000 for video editor.
We also had that $1,000 fortooling. And so we are currently
at, $4,000 spent. So theremaining 6,000, in addition to
the video editor, I'm thinkingwe're also having a separate
audio editor at this point who'sjust handling the audio stuff.
These have kinda diverged intoseparate kinda processes. So

(42:15):
that's gonna be maybe you know,I had it at 1 k a month here.
Probably it could actually bequite bit lower if the video
editor is doing at least apreliminary edit or something
like that. Maybe they'reseparate. But, also potentially
there's more production value.So we're we'll keep it at $1,000
a month for the audio editor. Ihave $500 a month for a
thumbnail artist.
I don't know where in theballpark that fits so maybe some

(42:37):
of it comes from the audioeditor and actually is more for
the thumbnail artist. But I'mthinking if I'm taking video and
YouTube seriously, you justcan't underestimate the value of
the thumbnail and the title andso I am a decent designer, but
I'm not at that level ofdesigner. And so that's not
something that I'm gonna bedoing at this point. And then
the final outsourcing cost here,very similar to yours, is a

(42:58):
producer for the show. And so Ihave allocated here $25100 a
month.
Pretty similar to yours. I thinkyou had 2,000. I think much to
your point, it would be so greatto have somebody who is, you
know, on on the call with ushere but also goes through the
preproduction and works with usand kinda forces us into this
kind of like, okay. We've gotour ideas that we're going back
and forth and they're like,okay. Come on.

(43:18):
What's what's the arc here?Where are we going here? What is
going to make this worthpeople's time? What's the
through line in this episode?What are the story elements or
the hooks that we can put intothis and hold us accountable and
also do some of that researchand come up with some ideas
beforehand and say, like, okay.
We're talking about budgetingtoday. What about if we took
this kind of format to thisepisode? And we were like, hey.
That sounds great. We wouldn'thave thought of that.

(43:39):
And I've never worked withpersonally with a producer. I've
actually been a producer so, Ihave played that role in in some
instances But, I would love tohave somebody to be able to
outsource some of the creativeenergy that usually is solely on
the host. So that's my kind ofoutsourcing category there.

Justin (43:55):
Yeah. And the other thing with Producer is they
could also be active at everystage of the podcast's
development. So

Jeremy (44:04):
Mhmm.

Justin (44:04):
Prerecording, during the recording, after the recording,
they could be working with theeditor to say, hey, you know,
let's tighten up this part here.Let's add a little touches few
touches here. So the idea of aproducer is very compelling. And
as we've talked about this, I'vethought, you know, this is
another category where peoplecould experiment with it at

(44:26):
lower monthly budgets. Even ifyou just said, you know what?
I'm gonna do this for 2 months,hire somebody. That alone might
be enough to improve the qualityof your show. Like, they're just
reviewing your show. And then,yeah, it'd be interesting for
folks if they can allocate,maybe not like monthly forever,
but for the next 3 months, I'mgonna spend a 100, 500,

(44:50):
whatever, on a producer and seeif it improves the quality of
the show.

Jeremy (44:57):
Yeah. There have been so many instances where I've worked
with a real professional in someregard. And even though it's a
short engagement, it reallyupped my game because they were
able to explain things to me notin an abstract sense of, like,
reading a blog post or taking acourse or something like that,
but they've been in my world, inmy space and, like, looking at
what I'm doing and saying, okay.Here, what you should have done
is this or, like, here, what wecould do is this and here's how

(45:18):
we can make it work. And I thinkthat doing that for a limited
run would be reallyilluminating.
And especially on some of theareas where, you know, maybe
most of us as hosts might not beso strong. And so maybe it's
like a lot of people have,domain expertise in their topic,
but they're not the world's bestinterviewers and they shouldn't
be. Like, nobody should be agreat interviewer just because
you have conversations. That'snot the same thing as being a

(45:38):
great interviewer. And so Ithink we should all expect that
like, okay, part of it ispractice but part of it is
having somebody who actuallyunderstands giving us notes.
And like I would I wouldpersonally love to work with an
expert interviewer, kind ofcoach to be able to say okay,
I've got this interview comingup. How would you approach this?
Like what would you do in termsof research? How would you
structure the narrative of this?What's my sequencing of
questioning?

(45:58):
And I feel like I've pretty goodinstincts, but I would love
somebody who has way moreexperience than me to say, okay,
here's how we should do this andthis will make a great
interviewer. And you hire thatperson for 1 episode. You've now
leveled up significantly becauseyou know kind of how it works.
And so I think, yeah, there's alot that that could be done
there even if it's a one offkind of engagement.

Justin (46:16):
Okay. What about the rest of your budget? I'm I'm
just can't wait to see yourTikTok budget.

Jeremy (46:20):
Okay. So I've got, $2,000 a month left. And,
actually, I put $500 a monthinto community networking
coaching, very similar to you. Ithink you had $1,000 a month. I
started off at 1,000, put itdown to 500.
But this has been something thathas never not paid off for me
and I'm currently in severalpaid communities and have been
continuously for the past 5years or something like that. So

(46:40):
I'm gonna allocate $500 a monthto that. And then the final
category, not TikTok but I'vegot $1500 a month for
advertising set aside here. Sohere's finally I'm bringing
advertising in. I've actuallythe the irony here is that I've
actually done a decent amount ofadvertising over the past couple
of years for my newsletter.
But I have so little faith inadvertising for podcasts that

(47:04):
I'm reluctant to allocate ithere. So my strategy here this
depends a lot on the type ofshow you have. But what I would
be doing here is I'm gonnaassume because it's me and it's
my show that I also do write anewsletter. And so I've got a
podcast and I've got anewsletter and I'm gonna
allocate pretty much all of thatbudget to getting newsletter
subscribers. And then Oh my god.
In the newsletter welcomesequence, I'm gonna have a

(47:25):
similar thing where there'sgonna be some segmentation where
I'm gonna say, hey, You know,welcome to the newsletter.
Really glad to have you here.Which one of these describes you
best? And so there's gonna be afew options. And, depending on
what the show is, those aregonna be different.
I have something like this in mynewsletter where it's like I'm
focused on, you know, marketingand growth right now or
sponsorships or, systems andprocesses or, you know, the
mindset side of things. Anddepending on which link they

(47:46):
click, I'm gonna follow that upautomatically with a curated
podcast playlist of episodesthat are in that category. And
so now market. They're mostinterested in podcast
sponsorships. Let me send them afollow-up email.
As soon as they click that andsay, hey. Looks like you're
interested in sponsorships.Here's my 3 top episodes on
sponsorships. And the reason I'mgoing newsletter first for the
advertising is that it's justway cheaper to get newsletter

(48:08):
subscribers than it is podcast.And Mhmm.
You can advertise in ways thatare there's less friction. So a
lot of times people are seeingthis in, like, a text based
social media app or something.And so going text to text is
easy easier. And so I might lookat, you know, Twitter ads or
Facebook or Instagram ads,something like that, get them
onto the newsletter, then theyget an automated prompt in the
welcome sequence that point themto really specific shows that

(48:30):
they've already told me this iswhat I'm interested in. And
that's gonna be my strategyhere.

Justin (48:34):
I love that by the way. I love that idea. I just love
that is I'm gonna be I'm gonnause that. That's a hot tip.
Focus on getting new newslettersubscribers in the welcome
sequence.
Directing them to a customplaylist. That's brilliant
because not only do you havethem on your newsletter, but
then you're saying, Hey, I alsohave a podcast. So you may be

(48:56):
getting a podcast listener outof it, but then you're, you're
customizing their entry pointinto the show. Like you've
curated this nice little gatewayinto the show. That is so smart.
I I think that's so brilliant.And perhaps you could use that
in other formats too, like

Jeremy (49:15):
Mhmm.

Justin (49:15):
Specific ad campaigns that go to a landing page that
say, oh, you're coming fromLinkedIn. You probably care
about this, this, and this.Here's a custom playlist just
for you on my podcast. That issuper, super smart. And there,
there are some old tools thatyou can use to create custom RSS
feeds.
One's called huffduffer. We'llput a link in the show notes,

(49:37):
but that just allows you tocreate custom podcast feeds. It
can even be episodes outside ofyour feed, like here's an
interview I did, and then youcan send that individually to
each of these groups. SuchInteresting.

Jeremy (49:50):
That's such

Justin (49:50):
a great takeaway. I'm gonna I'm gonna use that for
sure.

Jeremy (49:53):
And the other thing that I like about this is that once
you get somebody on your emaillist, you essentially until they
unsubscribe, you get infiniteopportunities to present new
episodes to them. Yeah. And somy kinda game plan here is like
I ultimately want people on bothmy email list and my podcast.
And so it doesn't really matterwhich door they come in And
probably it's easier to get themon the email list. And once
they're there, then I can keepsending them emails that are are

(50:15):
gonna be valuable.
I'm not spamming them. But it'slike, you know, they well, I
know they're interested in this.They actually signed up for the
newsletter and so I'm also gonnaget the podcast out there
regularly. So that's my mystrategy there. The the one
thing that I have been reallycurious about and I do actually
wanna experiment with this thisyear is running retargeting ads
to people who visited my websiteor engaged with me in some way

(50:36):
specifically to the podcast.
And so we talked about in thesocial media episode that people
need so many touch points with ashow before they eventually
listen. I would need somedisposable budget to really do
this. But I'm I'm really curiousabout like, okay. I know
somebody's come to my website sothat says something about them,
their interest in podcasting.Maybe they've even visited and
this is one of the cool thingsabout, like, Chartable.
You can actually embed atracking pixel for Google

(50:58):
Analytics or Facebook.

Justin (50:59):
Okay.

Jeremy (50:59):
And so people who click through your link once but don't
listen, you could then say,okay. Anybody who's clicked
through my chartable link everbut hasn't listened, like show
them the ad on Instagram orTikTok or Google display ads
too. So your show could, like,follow people around the
internet. And, this is somethingthat I think is really
intriguing to me, but I have noidea how effective it would be

(51:21):
or how much budget it would taketo, you know, make it worth it.

Justin (51:24):
Yeah. And this is the thing. I mean, if you have
resources, whether it's time,energy, or money, It's worth
thinking about experiments. Whatbets could I make that might
have a meaningful impact on theshow? And you'll see in our
budgets, like, we've said, oh,well, honestly, I think the idea

(51:44):
of hiring a coach is a fairlyhigh leverage one because they
might be able to bring in allsorts of things you haven't
thought about.
But it could also be, you knowwhat? I'm curious about
retargeting ads, for example.I'm just going to allocate some
budget and time towards this.And it might take you 3 months,
6 months to see results, good orbad. Mhmm.

(52:07):
But thinking in experiments,thinking in bets, I think is the
approach here. And here, we'reallocating money, but this also
applies to your time and yourenergy. And I'm hoping that's
what we're prompting people todo here, is to think, oh,
interesting. Like, regardless ofthe resource that I'm investing,

(52:27):
I've gotta think in bets. I'vegotta think in experiments.
That's how you unlock growth.Right?

Jeremy (52:33):
Yeah. So before we sign off here, I wanna throw in one
final wrinkle here. And you openit up at the start of the
episode here with a questionabout, you know, if I had more
budget, do I think I could growthe show? And I said, you know,
I think actually I could doboth. And so I wanna close this
out by saying, let's let's go toyou first and then we'll we'll
throw it back to me here.
But if we had zero budget, let'sjust assume that our current

(52:53):
production cost so we've got oureditor and we've got our hosting
and all that. That's taken careof but no budget on top of that.
The goal of getting to a 1,000listeners an episode within 3
months. What's your game planstarting today?

Justin (53:06):
Partnerships, meaning, like, networking. I'm just
reaching out. I'm buildingrelationships in my space. I'm
being active on different socialmedia platforms. I'm, writing
good content.
I'm writing good questions,like, good prompting questions
and getting people to interactprobably on social, but also in
communities like Slack andDiscord, interacting on Reddit

(53:29):
and relevant subreddits, findingFacebook groups or LinkedIn
groups, finding local meetupgroups, finding conferences. I
think I would invest most of mytime in networking because
almost every time in my careerwhere I've unlocked more
potential or unlocked moreleverage, it's because I met

(53:53):
somebody who is key. So based onmy own experience, it's almost
all related to connecting withpeople. And when you do that,
you kind of expand your circleof advisers. All of a sudden,
you can go to 5, 10, 20 peopleand say, hey.
I'm trying to grow my show to a1,000 listeners. I'm here right

(54:17):
now. What things do you think Ishould try experiment with do to
unlock more growth for my showin this niche? And I think I
would get a lot of leverage outof that. What about you?
What are you investing your timeand energy in?

Jeremy (54:36):
Yeah. I think it would be it would be very similar to
yours where I think at the nocost level, it essentially has
to be time investment. And soreally the only other option is
tapping into where peoplealready are. And so my thinking
around this would be to find aexisting community where kinda
like the party's alreadyhappening so to speak around my
topic and my content. And mygoal over that's let's just say

(54:59):
that 3 months is to become knownby everyone to kind of like
saturate that community assomebody who has good ideas on
the topic, original ideas, andis also generous in the space.
And so at some point I'mprobably not making many asks in
the 1st month or maybe even 2.And I'm trying to like just
connect with people, makefriends, show up regularly with
a high volume of interestingideas. And so this is, you know,

(55:21):
we're taking the assumption herethat this is a space I have
interesting ideas in and havesomething refreshing and and
understand my angle, which thatthat can take years to figure
out a lot of times. But Oh, Ihope you

Justin (55:30):
do if you're gonna have a podcast about it.

Jeremy (55:32):
That's true. So, at this point, we're assuming that that
is, already, in existence, butI'm gonna show up there and I'm
just gonna be a regular,contributor to that community
and get to this point where,like, one of the things that I I
think about, and this has kindahappened to me when I think
about how I've grown mynewsletter and things like that,
is I've just picked a smallenough pool to play in that
really most people in podcastingcould know about me. There now

(55:57):
there are pockets of podcasting.And so, you know, we all kind of
pick our specific corners of itto play in. But I think
podcasting is small enough that,you know, by creating blog posts
and being on other shows,speaking at events, things like
that, I can conceivably becomegenerally known by most people
in podcasting whether or notthey know me personally but
they've like, oh yeah.
I've seen Jeremy around theinternet. And so that's what I

(56:17):
would try to build up thatbaseline awareness of people
where it's like, okay. I'm notconverting a cold audience here.
Like most people have someimpression of me. Hopefully it's
positive and because I've shownup generously and contributed
for a couple months with a lotof interesting ideas, it's hard
to sustain it forever.
But if you're doing it in asprint format like this, I think
you could almost like thinkabout Okay. I'm gonna build up
the running start and I'm gonnamap out like 30 ideas that I'm

(56:39):
gonna post like daily blog postsor tweets or something like that
then I'm just gonna wow peopleon a consistent basis and really
deliver a high volume of highquality content. And what would
happen from that is I'm gonnaget that awareness from the the
general population but also it'sgonna get the attention of other
people who might be goodcollaborators at which point,
you know, we can set up promoswaps, guesting exchanges,

(57:00):
things like that. And, I wouldbe trying to, you know, do
probably post roles or maybeeven mid roll collaborations and
promo swaps, things like that.And in every episode I'm doing
newsletter swaps, all that kindof stuff to try and just, like,
get as much, interplay, betweenthe people who've already
established audiences in thatspace as possible.

Justin (57:17):
I like it. And all of the things you mentioned are way
more potent before you'velaunched the show. So if you're
if you've done that work, thatbaseline work, before you launch
the show, and then you can goback to all of those people
you've built relationships withand said, hey, I'm about to

(57:37):
launch a show. Here's thetrailer. Here's the launch date.
If you could help me out when Ilaunch through telling people
about it, retweeting, whateverit is, I would really appreciate
it. All of that investmentyou've done, you're basically
building people that arecheering you on. Right? That
it's a community of people thatare like, alright. When Jeremy

(58:00):
finally comes to me with an ask,he's given so much up to this
point.
Now he's doing something, and heneeds something for me. Well,
he's been so generous. I'm goingto respond in kind and help him
out. I'm gonna be his number onecheerleader. I'm gonna be his
street team.
I'm gonna go out and, you know,broadcast this launch to other
people.

Jeremy (58:21):
Yeah. Alright. So, any I know we talked about a a number
of different budget tiers here.But any kinda takeaways, maybe
ways to think about budgetingthat you wanna leave people with
before we sign off here?

Justin (58:31):
Invest in TikTok ads. No, I'm joking. I mean, really
it's experiments, thinking inbats, thinking about how much
you have to allocate. I thinkyou should do these dream
budgets for yourself and thinkabout, well, actually, you know
what? I'm not at the $10,000budget, but I have a $100 extra
I could play with.

(58:52):
And maybe I could get somebodyto coach me for that amount.
Maybe I could run a few ads forthat amount. There's things that
you can experiment with even ifyour budget is small. What about
you? Any closing thoughts,things that you wanna leave
people with?

Jeremy (59:08):
Yeah. I think for me, it's actually to look beyond
advertising. And I think a lotof people do think about
outsourcing. But as we saw frommy breakdowns in every tier,
outsourcing was the bulk of it.And I think the the one kind of
through line here, the theme forme personally that maybe I
didn't articulate is that, youknow, we all have these things
that we are the sole person thatcan do for our show.
And I think that there's a lotof the creative stuff. We talked

(59:30):
about hiring a producer, thingslike that. But a lot of the
things that make a show greatcan only come from you. The best
marketer for your show is is youas the host. And the reason is
that we we've talked before,like, people connect with the
hosts of the show.
People come for the topic, but alot of times they stay for the
host. And it also actually canwork the opposite where if you
make a personal connection withsomebody first through Twitter
or any other kind of marketing,they will come for the show as

(59:53):
well. They have to still beinterested in the topic but you
can also be the the inroad therefor somebody who already has
that relationship with you. Andso I think that that's a really
hard thing to outsource, becausethere is no other version of you
and nobody else can reallymarket the show as effectively
as you can as the host. And sofor me, I wanna, like, eliminate
as much of the other stuff frommy schedule that allows me to
show up and do that on a dailybasis.

Justin (01:00:15):
I really like that idea of freeing up your time, freeing
up your mental space to focus onthe things that only you can do.

Jeremy (01:00:22):
Yeah. So I think to, leave people here, I would love
for people to get in touch withus, either through I'm gonna put
this as the Spotify question. Ifyou're listening to Spotify, you
can answer right there.Otherwise get at us on, Twitter,
both Justin and I and the linksare in the show notes and let us
know, you know, with each ofthese tiers what would your
breakdown be of how you wouldspend at 5 100, 2510,000? And, I

(01:00:45):
would love to see a thread hereof how other people would, spend
this, potentially, you know,head in the clouds type numbers
all the way down to somethingthat might be much more
attainable and realistic and,and maybe even your, your
current scenario.