March 19, 2025 • 52 mins
Its easy to imagine that if you just had a budget to put toward paid podcast advertising, all your marketing problems would be solved. But is that really true? Anyone who’s ever done any advertising will quickly tell you its one of the most gruelling, creatively challenging marketing practices on the planet—one where you have to be ok with burning a large amount of cash up front to figure out what (if anything works). That said if you approach it with a bit of savvy… paid advertising can be a sneaky smart way to grow.
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Topics Covered
00:00 Does advertising actually work?
01:39 Our personal experience with advertising
08:35 Understanding advertising metrics
11:24 Podcast advertising platforms & methods
22:22 Real vs fake listeners
25:00 Advertising pitfalls to watch out for
25:39 Best practices for podcast ads
25:56 Crafting effective ads
29:16 Retargeting strategies
32:33 Multi-touchpoint ad campaings
34:37 Advanced advertising techniques
44:21 How we’d allocate a $10k budget
⭐️ Take our 2-minute podcast marketing audit to instantly identify the marketing problems keeping you from growth: https://go.podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit-pmte-sn ⭐️
Resources Mentioned
Jay Clouse's The Lab
Corey Haines and SwipeFiles
Kattie Laur and Pod the North
Terry O'Reilly and the podcast "Under the Influence"
Additional Resources
Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2024 Report
Subscribe to the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter
Try Transistor.fm for free for 14 days
✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback
About Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Podcast Marketing Trends Explained is a podcast about data-driven podcast marketing, growth, and monetization. In every episode, we take a peek under the hood of one data point from the Podcast Marketing Trends Report and dig into what it can tell us about how to market our shows better, and grow them faster.
On the show, we'll explore podcast marketing strategies, growth tactics, podcast listener psychology, how to create a better podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeremy (00:01):
If you think of all the people and all the businesses
that advertise on Meta, I wouldguess 95% lose money on it.
Justin (00:08):
It's tough when you have a very clear business funnel.
And Yeah. With podcastlisteners, it's just a much more
difficult sell.
Jeremy (00:18):
There are ways to advertise to get real listeners.
So here's the idea. So one ofthe final questions that I ask
everybody in the annual podcastmarketing trends report, it's
near the end of the survey, andthey just submitted a bunch of
information about their show andtheir experience marketing. And
I follow-up with this question.If you could wave a magic wand
and have your number onemarketing wish be granted, what
(00:40):
would that be?
And there's a bunch of thingsthat people respond with, and
they'll say things like, youknow, I wish I had more
BudgetTire team. I wish therewas better tools for this. I
wish there was education on thistopic. But always, every year,
it's either the number one orthe number two kind of cluster
of responses. I wish I had abudget for paid advertising.
(01:01):
And it's a little bitinteresting because within the
same report, I also ask aquestion. What have been the
most and least effective thingsyou've done in the past year?
And consistently, everybody whodoes advertising ranks it only
second to social media as theleast effective thing that they
have done. And so it's clearthat there's a big disconnect
here between the people who havenot advertised, who see it as
(01:24):
this thing that will justimmediately save their show and
get it out in front of people.And then there's the people who
have advertised who kind of saythis is it doesn't actually work
for growing a podcast.
So I think it's actually a goodidea for us today to dig into
maybe some of the realities ofadvertising both within
podcasting as well as beyondpodcasting, what makes it work,
when to use it, and ultimately,if this is something that people
(01:44):
should actually be focusing on.So Yeah. To kick things off, I'm
curious about your personalexperience with advertising
either for Transistor or forpast projects, creative
projects, podcasts, things likethat?
Justin (01:56):
With Transistor, it's been limited. We've really not
done a lot of paid acquisition.In other jobs, for other
startups, I've used GoogleAdWords, promoted videos on
YouTube, some YouTube ads, somepodcast ads, both for products
and for shows, newslettersponsorship, event sponsorship,
(02:19):
and some experience with otherad networks, like Carbon ads and
things like that. So I've I'vedone a fair amount. What about
yourself?
Jeremy (02:29):
Yeah. I would say over the past several years, I've
probably spent something like 20to 30 k on advertising. So a
decent amount, it's not actuallythat much in the big scheme of
advertising. That's a tiny dropin the bucket. And you start to
look at people who actually haveadvertising running, and they're
talking about spending, youknow, 50 k a month or a hundred
k a month.
And that's usually because theads are profitable and you're
(02:50):
earning more than that so youcan spend almost infinite amount
and which is some one of thedynamics we're gonna get into
here. So over several years, 20to 30 k, I've experimented quite
a bit. Most of that has goneinto two buckets of Meta or
Facebook and newslettersponsorships. Those have been
the two I've done quite a bit ofnewsletter advertising of my
newsletter, of other leadmagnets, of a Ben Sideburn,
things like that, and then also,Facebook and Instagram ads. And
(03:13):
then I've done a couple otherthings.
Sparkloop is a platform that wasacquired by ConvertKit, now Kit,
that is a kind of newsletteradvertising marketplace. And so
people can you can set a costper acquisition for each
subscriber. And so I've said,you know, two per subscriber,
who meets these criteria. And sousually that's they stay
subscribed after a certainamount of time. And then anybody
(03:34):
can basically say, yep.
I'll promote that newsletter forthat amount. And you kind of
don't know how much you're gonnaend up spending at the end of
the month. You can put a cap,but whoever wants to promote it
does. And then I've done alittle bit of YouTube promotion
as well. This was actually basedon your recommendation, which,
has some interesting sideeffects.
I don't know that I would say itwas a success or that it was
(03:54):
worth it, but it was aninteresting experiment. So Mhmm.
That's that's my kind ofexperience. And actually, the
one update here on my experienceis I did in early twenty twenty
four, I did a bunch of meta ads.I probably did $7,000 worth or
something like that.
And I did it directly to myscrappy podcasting newsletter
and actually got a pretty goodcost per acquisition, CPA as
(04:16):
we're gonna be referring to it,here. And I never knew, though,
like, is this worth it? I run abusiness. I'm advertising my
newsletter to get people into mybusiness to get customers. And
for a long time, it just lookedlike I threw $7,000 away.
And then somebody in anothercommunity that I'm in, actually
in Jay Claus', The Lab, asked aquestion about Facebook ads
(04:38):
running them to a newsletter.And I was like, actually, I
should check-in on that. How didthat go? And recently, I went
back. I looked at all mycustomer data, and I realized
that actually my ads had brokeneven eighteen months after I had
started running them.
And so this is another dynamicthat's interesting to look into.
But for me, this was the big winthat I'd always sought of, like,
ads that actually broke even,which if nothing else means you
(05:00):
get those free emailsubscribers. And so this is my
experience. I'm curious, like,when you think about, like, ads
as a marketing practice, whatare your kind of thoughts in
general about paid acquisition?Do you have impressions of it?
Justin (05:12):
Your experience, I think, mirrors a lot of people's
experience, which is if you'relucky and you have some sort of
paid product, in a lot of cases,podcasts subscribers don't fit
in this whole model. But a lotof businesses that advertise on
Facebook and Google, etcetera,they will eventually recoup
(05:36):
their investment, but break evenis the most common answer. And
this can work with some businessmodels, like if you're selling
software as a service orsubscriptions, then paying back
your investment within a year ispretty good if you can keep that
subscriber paying you goingforward. But it's hard. The most
(06:01):
common thing I hear is justlike, the people who are good at
it spend a lot of money tuningtheir ads, and so you have to
spend a lot of money just tolearn.
And then after you've learned,it might take you three to six
months just to learn what youneed to learn, and that might
cost you thousands of dollars.And then you can start actively
(06:24):
leveraging those ads or thosetechniques that work to acquire
customers, etcetera. So, it'stough when you have a very clear
kind of business funnel. Andwith podcast listeners, there's
just always been this questionin my head of like, man, that's
just a much more difficult sell.It's not like this, you know,
(06:48):
snap your fingers purchase.
A podcast is a biggerinvestment. So
Jeremy (06:52):
And, you know, I see that you shared this state of
SaaS marketing report. This wasfrom Corey Haines from Swipe
Files. And in the report, itmentioned so one of the
questions was which channel hadthe biggest impact on growing
revenue. So this is very similarto the podcast marketing trends
report. Only 7% of peopleresponded ads.
And this is kind of interestingbecause I feel like ads are the
sexiest thing in almost anyfield, I think. Because I think
(07:15):
people just think, oh, if I onlyhad the budget, then I just push
the button and it would roll in.And I think it's kind of easy to
think like, well, you know, Idon't have that. And so that's
part of the reason why maybe Imight be stuck, which, you know,
their budget certainly helps.But it's interesting that in
SaaS in particular, where Ithink that feels like a medium
or a platform or a businessmodel that is just entirely
(07:35):
like, oh, yeah.
If you can just spend money atit, like, you'll grow. It's just
not true there either. And so Ithink that this is one of those
things that the more experienceyou have with advertising you
know, you mentioned the typicalresult result being breakeven. I
Justin (07:47):
think Yeah.
Jeremy (07:47):
Breakeven is actually a hugely ambitious result for
advertising. If you think of allthe people and all the
businesses that advertise onMeta, I would guess 95% or even
more lose money on it. I thinkit is almost guaranteed for
somebody who does not haveextreme understanding of the
platform and how the kind ofpayback time and everything
works to actually even breakeven, let alone, you know, be
(08:11):
profitable with it. So I think,it is a tall mountain to climb.
And that said, I do know peoplewho have figured out a way to
use ads effectively.
I hope to be one of those peopleone day, because I think there
are a lot of opportunities inadvertising if you know how to
leverage them. And I think thatthere's some interesting stuff
that we could talk about, inrelation to podcasting. And I've
(08:32):
actually had some ideas recentlythat maybe, we can talk through
about how podcasting might playa role in advertising, even if
you're not advertising directlyto the podcast.
Justin (08:41):
Love it.
Jeremy (08:42):
Let's, kick things off here just with a little bit of
context about some of theterminology here and the ways
that advertising works. And so Ithink, like, the all important
number for advertising is returnon ad spend. You'll see this,
abbreviated as ROAS. Andessentially, this is, you know,
you spend a dollar, how much doyou get out of that? Like we've
mentioned, most people areprobably gonna be in the
negative.
But if you're in the positive,that's a good thing. But if you
(09:04):
can get, you know, two times orthree times or four times, then
you're looking really good. Butthat's, you know, one of the the
hard things to get to. There's abillion acronyms in advertising.
What are some of the othercommon or most important ones to
be considering here if we'rethinking about this?
Justin (09:17):
I mean, generally, it there's cost per acquisition. So
how much does it cost you to geta paying customer? How much does
it cost you to get a subscriber?And then how long does it take
you to recoup that investment?So the payback period.
You can see why this works withe commerce. So it's like, okay,
it costs us $10 to acquire thecustomer. And then they bought a
(09:41):
pair of shoes, and so we brokeeven on that. But often the
payback period also includesthis idea of, when are we gonna
make profit from this customer?And that might not be, in the
case of e commerce, until thesecond, or third, or fourth
purchase, right?
So those are the two big ones,cost per acquisition and payback
(10:03):
period.
Jeremy (10:03):
Yeah. The other one that then actually plays off that
payback period is the lifetimevalue or the LTV. And so I think
that that's another thing thatwhen you start to get into
advertising, like these arenumbers you you should basically
know your lifetime value of aeither customer or a lead. And
so I've done a lot ofadvertising to not paid
products, but to my email listbecause I always assume, well,
(10:25):
they're gonna, you know,probably read the newsletter for
six months to a year before theybuy something. But if I can get
people in, like, eventually, Iknow my newsletter does convert
clients.
I get people out of that. And soI have a calculation in the back
of my mind that I've roughlydone, you know, in various ways
over the years where I have atsome point, I think the the
number I haven't done thisrecently, was around, like, $50
per newsletter subscriber wasthe typical, like, lifetime
(10:48):
value of a subscriber. And sothis is accounting for 99% of
people or more will never buyanything from me, and then
there's 1% of people who mightspend a lot of money with me,
and that gets averaged outacross everybody. And so now I
know as an advertiser, well, ifI can get somebody in, they are
worth $50 to me. So I can spendup to $50 for my advertising to
be effective.
(11:08):
It just might take me four yearsor five years to reach that
level. These kind of benchmarksare worth having in mind,
understanding about youraudience. And I think that this
is one of the things withpodcasting. Most people are not
very clear on what theirbusiness model is or how their
podcast relates to it. And sothat's why I get a little bit
hesitant whenever I hearsomebody talking about, like,
running ads.
(11:29):
And so let's maybe dig into someof the specifics. These these
kind of numbers that we'vetalked about are general across
all advertising, but let's diginto the specifics of podcast
advertising. And let's start offwith, like, what are some of the
ways that you could advertise apodcast? You could pay to get
your show out in front of morepeople.
Justin (11:45):
Yeah. I mean, you could advertise it on Google using
Google AdWords. You could alsoadvertise it on YouTube, and
they have a variety of productsthere. So you can get a
suggested video in the sidebar,that's one product. You can have
an ad play before a video,that's another product.
You can have a promoted video.So, lots of products in there.
(12:07):
There's, of course, socialmedia, so you can advertise to
have something play on anInstagram story. You can have,
an ad in the feed, an ad in thesidebar. That's a really common
one that's
Charles Duhigg (12:20):
been around for a long time, kind
Justin (12:21):
of those banner ads. What are some of the other ones
you're thinking of?
Jeremy (12:24):
Yeah. I mean, some of the podcast specific ones are
you can advertise on otherpodcasts, And so you can pay
another show. You can eitherapproach them directly or maybe
they have, some kind ofadvertising agency that they're
working with. And so that'ssomething that is, I think,
pretty interesting, but not alot of people actually take
advantage of. There's also thepodcast apps.
This is something that a lot ofpeople, might have experimented
with or at least are aware of.There's, you know, Castbox. I
(12:47):
think Overcast does pocketcasts. I don't know if
Justin (12:50):
they do advertising. Yeah. Pocket casts.
Jeremy (12:52):
So there's several there. Spotify, actually, you
can advertise on Spotify aswell. And then there's a couple
other podcast specific ones. Sothere's some kind of these,
like, almost tool y techsolution type things. IntroCast
is one.
Podroll is another. There's afew others. And then there's,
like, podcast promoters, whichthere's, like, spammy LinkedIn
podcast promoters who arepeople. And then there's other
(13:13):
companies that they're notreally a tech solution per se. I
mean, they kind of are on theback end, but they feel a bit
more like an agency almost.
And so that's another way that,you know, you can pay money to
get impressions of your show andprobably listeners as well. The
quality and accuracy of thoselisteners, may be dubious in
some of these cases, and maybewe'll dig in, a little bit more,
(13:34):
to that. And then, yeah, the thelast one, you know, that I'm
just thinking about here isgoing way back to, like,
original web advertising isthere could be a website that is
in your niche on your topic. Youcould pay that website to get
banner ads directly on theirsite, which actually, I think
that could be pretty interestingfor some shows.
Justin (13:52):
I think this is gonna be a theme throughout the whole
episode is your approach to thisreally depends on the topic of
your show, who you're trying toreach, where that audience hangs
out, and then the dynamics ofthat ad marketplace. So,
crafting an ad for Reddit isgoing to feel very different
than crafting an ad forInstagram stories. Then one more
(14:17):
layer underneath that is, that'sa whole skill unto itself. And
so, you could hear someone say,Well, I tried Reddit ads, it
didn't work. First of all, waslike, Well, was their product
market fit?
Was that the best place for youto put your ad? And then, what
was the ad? How skilled are youat creating a compelling ad? And
(14:40):
this is why it's so hard. Yougot to find fit in all these
places.
And then you have to craft areally good ad, which is like an
art and a science unto itself.
Jeremy (14:51):
And this is why they made the show Mad Men because
advertising is creative andsexy. And Yes. I think
advertising as an industry getsa bad rap for many good reasons.
But it's also interesting thatthere are you look at, like, the
types of people who are inadvertising. These are some of
the most highly talentedcreative people in the world who
their job is to come up with aninfinite amount of ideas that
(15:11):
are hopefully interesting waysto get in front of people and
create something that'scompelling to get people to take
some action or remember a brand.
We, as creators, are also someof the most creative people in
the world, hopefully, but it'slike you're competing with a
really high tier of quality,and, your ad might be showing up
next to Ford's or Disney's orApple's or whoever else in like,
(15:32):
this is what viewers arecomparing this to because Apple
can spend, you know, money toshow up in somebody's Facebook
feed, and so can you. People areinundated with all the same
stuff in their feed, and so thethe bar for standing out and
getting attention is quite high.It's not just, you know,
boosting a post and having thatimmediately people clicking into
it just because there's morevisibility.
Justin (15:51):
And I think if you're interested in that art and
science, the show recommendationwould be under the influence
with Terry O'Reilly, who's aCanadian broadcaster. The show
is fantastic. If you just wantto dig into what makes a great
ad, and you want to learn thecraft, that's one
recommendation. But justrealize, you're signing up to
(16:12):
become good at a craft. Is notsomething that you can kind of
do haphazardly on the side.
This is something you have toreally commit to getting better
at. And just know that that'swhat it's probably gonna take to
actually have an effectivecampaign.
Jeremy (16:28):
So we talk about a bunch of different places you can
advertise. And there is thisarticle that I came across. I
think it was back in 2023. Itwas from Katie Lohr. Shout out
to the Canadian podcastecosystem.
She runs the newsletter Pod theNorth. And, she had this
interview with Tobin Dalrymple,who is a the founder and b to b
content marketing expert at thepodcasting studio Pilgrim
(16:49):
Content. And so he ran a bunchof different advertising
experiments specifically forpodcasting, and he then reported
back in this article in Pod theNorth on some of the numbers.
And, the numbers are franklykind of hilarious. And this is a
guy who's a smart marketer hereand who has experience with
advertising.
And so he basically advertisedon four platforms. So it was the
Acast Network, on Overcast, onPodcast Addict, and on Spotify.
(17:14):
And he spent on each platform onAcast spent $1,400, Overcast
$1,600, Podcast Addict $1,580,and then Spotify six hundred
dollars. And basically, if welook at how many new subscribers
he got here, on ACast he got a43 for his $1,418. On Overcast,
(17:36):
he got 65 for his $1,600.
Podcast Addict, he got 87 forhis $1,580. And then on Spotify,
for $600, he got foursubscribers. And so we look at
some of these, like, averagecost per result here. And this
is a little bit interestingbecause the platforms measure
different things like a followversus a listen or whatever. But
(17:56):
I think the average here wassomething like $211 per new
subscriber, which is just kindof hilarious.
Justin (18:03):
This is something else we didn't mention when we're
talking about the the acronymsor metrics you might track.
Another thing, that you're gonnatrack is those metrics within a
cohort. And so my immediatethought when I look at this is
like, you got 143 newsubscribers or downloads. In
(18:25):
that cohort, how long does thesubscribers stick around? How
many episodes do they actuallylisten My feeling is that these
are very generally trend towardslower quality subscribers.
You're paying a lot of money fora cohort, a group, that may not
(18:45):
stick around, that may notactually eventually buy
something from you. And this issomething else you kind of want
to track is of that group thatwe paid to acquire, what
happened to them as compared toour average of organic
listeners. I think these numbersare sobering. If you're thinking
(19:09):
about spending money to acquirea podcast listener, subscriber,
or download, look at these andjust know what you're getting
into. The other thing that'scome up in the news a lot is a
lot of these advertisingnetworks will deliver downloads
to you, and they will deliversubscribers to you.
We see this all the time onTransistor. Someone will hire an
(19:33):
agency to boost their downloadnumbers, and they'll run ads.
And these ads almost alwaysdeliver bot listens or not
legitimate listens. So onTransistor, we're filtering out
duplicate listens, and filteringout listens from bots, and
people go, what happened? I paidall this money.
They told me I got 20,000downloads, but you guys said I
(19:55):
only got 1,500. And we said,well, we're deduping everything
that was a repeat lesson. We'reremoving anything that was a
bot. And what you have left overis kind of what we can say is an
actual download. And what we'reseeing is people just being very
upset.
You know, they spent all thismoney, and really, they got
(20:16):
downloads, but they weren't realdownloads. They got subscribers,
but they weren't realsubscribers.
Jeremy (20:22):
This is something that I've seen a lot with my clients
too where I was just doing anaudit of a client's stats, the
other week, and he had done alot of different advertising
experiments, which, you know,I'm all for the experimenting
mindset, and I've certainlyexperimented with advertising.
And so it's one of those thingswhere you don't really know. You
want to test it for yourself andsee if it works. And the problem
(20:44):
that became very, like,frustrating in hindsight was
basically his his entire showdata was unreliable now because
he had this huge amount ofdownloads that was still coming
from Castbox even though he'spretty sure he's like, those are
not real listeners anymore. Ithink those are auto downloads.
And he was pretty certain that,like, this was not a a real
thing. And so we could subtractthe Castbox downloads. But he'd
(21:05):
also done an advertisingexperiment with Apple Podcasts
where he was getting ApplePodcast followers. And so now it
looks like he's got a bunch morefollowers on Apple Podcasts, but
that's not really accurateanymore either because the
campaign was designed to getfollowers. He paid for those
followers, and that's what hegot.
But they're not real listeners.And so then what happened is now
he has basically all of hisconsumption data at the episode
(21:28):
level just tanked and is superlow. And so now he's getting,
like, 50% or below on manyepisodes, which that doesn't
seem accurate based on some ofthe feedback he gets from
listeners. And so now there isall this data that could be
useful to us to diagnose some ofthe potential opportunities or
problems with the show, but allthat advertising kinda messed it
all up, and now we can't reallymake any sense of that. And so
(21:49):
Mhmm.
It's it can be frustratingbeyond just, like, spending the
money to not get the listeners,and it can actually hurt you in
the long run too if, you know,you're advertising on some
places that I think are I don'tknow that I wanna say even less
reputable, but it's like they'regonna deliver what they promise.
But it's it's almost like justtoo good to be true.
Justin (22:08):
And some of these are not reputable. Yes.
Jeremy (22:11):
It's like Some of them well reported,
Justin (22:13):
like, these networks were making, you know, mobile
game players listen to anepisode order to get to the next
level. It's like, okay, sure,that's a real download according
to the IAB, but that's not whatyou want as a podcaster. You
don't want people listening toyour episode in an interstitial
so that they can get to the nextlevel of a game, that's
(22:36):
pointless. Right? And so, whatthis really shows me is, A, how
hard it is to get a podcastlistener.
But B, how valuable a genuinepodcast listener really is.
There's such a big threshold toget them over, but once you have
a podcast listener, if they'resubscribed to your show, you're
(22:58):
gonna show up in their queue,theoretically. And so, yes, it's
hard getting a new subscriber.Expensive if you're advertising
for it. But once you get them,this is can be a very high value
relationship to build withsomebody.
And if a podcast listener doesbecome a customer, there could
(23:19):
be a lot of value theredepending on how your business
works.
Jeremy (23:22):
And I think that a lot of these advertising platforms,
are willfully not owning up tothis because this would be bad
for other parts of the podcastecosystem. But a lot of these
platforms essentially exist tohelp big shows that have sponsor
impression guarantees hit thosemarks when they're falling
short. And so Mhmm. Let's saythat you have Airbnb on as a
(23:42):
sponsor, and they have,contracted you for a million
impressions of the show. Andyou're coming up to the end of
your period, and you've onlyreached 800,000.
And so now you either need tobump a sponsor in the future in
order to keep running yourAirbnb ads so you can reach your
million downloads or impressionsthat you've guaranteed them. Or
you go to one of these servicesand you say, I mean, I don't
(24:03):
care if they're bots. Like, aslong as I can send the report to
Airbnb, they're not gonnascrutinize this. They don't know
what podcast data is. So I'vehit my million.
We're good. They're gonna renew.And so this is something that,
like, a large part of theseservices exist to serve that
part of the market. And, youknow, advertisers either
willingly turn a blind eye oryou just can't get a sense of
it. And so, like, that justexists there, but it's not
(24:23):
really, like, what most creatorswant.
Whether you're a small businessowner or a pure creator who
wants to grow your podcast, youactually want real listeners.
And so a lot of times, there areways to advertise to get real
listeners, but it's typicallynot you know, you pay this
amount to be guaranteed thisamount of of listeners. Like,
that is never anybody who offersguarantees, I would say that it
(24:44):
it is impossible that those arelegitimate real listeners who
are going to be subscribing toyour show and along with you for
the long run.
Justin (24:51):
Mhmm. Yeah. I've just seen people waste so much money,
and not a lot of people in thepodcast industry talk about it.
So, yeah, I think this isimportant for people to
understand. There areopportunities, but have your
eyes wide open.
There's a lot more to this. It'smore than just putting money in
and getting a bunch oflisteners.
Jeremy (25:11):
Okay. So we've kind of maybe laid out some of the,
pitfalls and things to look outfor with advertising and kind of
come out and said, you know,generally, with advertising a
podcast to get in front of morepeople, I think both of us are
heavily skeptical. But I knowthat people are still gonna do
it, and I encourage people toexperiment. And, actually, I
would shout out, CourtneyKosack. She has a newsletter
(25:32):
called podcast bestie.
She has a free version and apaid, Substack version. And in
her paid version, she actuallydoes a bunch of advertising
experiments and shares theresults. So, that's another
resource if you're curious aboutthis and to see more data on
what's working and what's not.But if somebody's like, okay. I
wanna at least dip my toe in thewater, experiment with some
advertising, putting some moneybehind my show.
(25:52):
Let's maybe look at some of thebest practices or how we would
actually go about approachingthat in a thoughtful way that's
gonna give us the best chancesat, success. What What are some
of the the first things thatcome to mind for you?
Justin (26:03):
I think one thing I'd like to highlight is that an ad
that will work is to pick up onsomething that's already kind of
working organically. So let megive you an example. You noticed
that your podcast keeps gettingmentioned in a certain
subreddit. Okay. So that's thehint that something's going on
(26:25):
here.
How could you maybe craft an adthat felt appropriate for Reddit
that might take advantage ofthat existing momentum? Another
thought I had is, would I justbook an ad on any podcast and
get them to talk about my show?No. What are some things that
(26:45):
would make it more likely thatad would work? Well, if the host
organically mentioned that theylistened to the show, then I can
reach out and say, Hey, I knowyou're already a listener.
I will pay you to specificallypromote the show on your show.
So, I'm going to recommend thatapproach to see where there's
(27:07):
already organic momentum andthen follow it up with some sort
of paid advertising.
Jeremy (27:14):
I would build on that and take that to even the show
level and say that I would notadvertise something that does
not already have existingorganic growth. I think if you
do not have organic growth, thatis a sign that advertising is
not gonna help it. There's thisold quote from the advertising
industry that is nothing kills abad product faster than good
advertising. And so this is, ofcourse, assuming that you have
(27:35):
good advertising, but there'sthere's kinda two sides to this.
So there's, like, you can get ashow in front of a bunch of
people if you are able to craftgood ads that actually work and
get people to click into it.
And if the show is not great, ifit doesn't meet their
expectations, this is somethingI'm so wary of that I wish more
people understood. There'sactually a lot of science on
this, and usually it's in termsof, how many, like, positive
(27:57):
comments it takes to offset onenegative one. And so if your
boss comes to you and iscritical of you in some way, I
think it's something that ittakes, like, eight or nine or 10
positive comments just to getback to neutral. And I think
this is a % true for our podcastwhere if somebody comes across
our show and has a less thanideal first experience, it
doesn't need to be outrighthorrible. It just doesn't meet
(28:17):
their expectations.
What I think happens, because Iobserved this in myself, is they
immediately write that show offforever until they have an
overwhelming amount of positiveexperiences with the show,
probably from other peopletelling them they need to
listen, that they're okay. Iguess I'll give it another
chance because their experiencehas already told them that it's
not worth their time. And soMhmm. This is something where I
(28:38):
think if your show's not growingorganically, that might be a
sign that the show is not readyto get in front of more people.
And what we really wanna do iswhen the show does get in front
of people, we want to wow themand it'd be an incredible first
experience.
And, you know, you you mentionedbefore about how hard it is to
get a podcast listener, and thatthat just made me think, it is
hard to get a podcast listener.Like, I will have a show that is
(28:59):
in my feed that I've heard 10different friends all talk
about. And I'm like, I reallyshould listen. And still, I'm
not listening. And so if it'sthat hard to get somebody to
listen to a show with all ofthose other touch points, how
hard is it to get somebody whenthe first exposure that they
have to the show is through anad entirely cold?
And so Yes. Yeah. Looking forthat organic momentum first
before you're adding fuel to thefire with advertising is, I
(29:20):
think, a, kind of universalprinciple there.
Justin (29:23):
Yeah. And even thinking about how are you deploying this
ad, meaning at what point of theacquisition funnel are you
deploying this ad for? What'sits job? And so, in your case,
maybe you've subscribed to theshow, but the creator might
deploy a few ads to remind youto That's the job of the ad, is
(29:47):
it's like, we know we got peoplein the funnel. Know people have
followed the But now, what we'retrying to get them to do is
engage or activate as a regularlistener.
And so, that could be the job ofthe ad. And getting crystal
clear about this. Yeah. Is thejob of this ad? The job of this
ad is to be someone's firstimpression of this show, and
(30:13):
then get them to convert to alistener, that is not going to
happen.
Going to be so rare. Ads thatare working for podcasts, you
see this already, like the bignetworks, what are they doing?
They're putting ads up inside ofbuses, and they're putting some
billboards up even, dynamic adsinside of other podcasts, doing
(30:35):
cross promos. They're justtrying to keep the show top of
mind, so you build up awareness,and get to the point where it's
like, now I got to listen. Andthere's going to be some event
in that sequence thatadvertising is supporting, that
will eventually get them toconvert.
This is probably more true forpodcasting than almost anything
(30:57):
else, is it's going to be asequence of events. And the ad's
job is really to come alongsidein that sequence of events and
support everything else that'shappening.
Jeremy (31:09):
Yeah. You know, I really I I what you mentioned there
about potentially a not top offunnel show discovery, but more
somebody's had exposure to, theshow already. And there's ways
you can do this with some of thetrackable link platforms, things
like that, like Linkfire. Youused to be able to do this with
Chartable where you can actuallyinsert a pixel, either your
Google Tag Manager into thoselanding pages. And so then, you
(31:31):
know, somebody has clicked intoyour show listing, and now you
can retarget them, and you couldshow them Google Display ads.
That's the the point here isjust to remind them of the show
existing. It's not to get themto click the ad even. It's like
they might have already theyknow where to find the show, and
it's just to keep it top ofmind. And that is actually, I
think, of the most sophisticatedmethods of using advertising to
grow a show is retargetingpeople who've already kind of
(31:52):
are aware of it and showninterest and just need to be
given those repeat nudges. Andone of the reasons is that a lot
of times, like, Google displayads are super cheap, especially
when you're not really trying toget a customer.
You're just trying to remindpeople. It's just to show up in
the sidebar of websites. Andkind of those, like, spammy ad
slots that are often there, and,like, maybe you don't want your
show associated with that. But,like, I think if your creative
(32:13):
is good, then I think that's awin. And this is something that
I am actually gonna do someexperiments with.
I think on this season of theshow, I'm gonna try this and see
how how much it costs and whatthe impacts of that are. I think
one of the things that will betricky with it is that the
clicks might be meaningless.Because like I said, the point
is not necessarily to get peopleto click the ad and go listen.
(32:33):
It's just to remind them. And soit might have a low click rate,
but maybe listeners will go upanyway.
So that's something that we canmaybe report back on in the
future.
Justin (32:40):
Along all these lines that we're talking about, maybe
one tangible example is the MelRobbins show is just recently
become number one in ApplePodcasts. And that's quite an
achievement. And my guess isthey are employing some of this
amplification and multi touchpoint strategy, which is they
(33:01):
release clips from the show. Soyou've probably seen them on
Instagram, and TikTok, andFacebook, and YouTube Shorts.
And once a clip takes off, onceit has organic momentum, you can
then boost that to otherplatforms.
So you could run that same clipthat went viral on YouTube. You
(33:23):
could run it on Instagram,because you already know that it
works, with a specific call toaction, like check out the show,
here's how to find it, all thosekinds of things on a different
platform. And I think thatrecognizing when there's
existing momentum, and thendeploying that in various ways,
my guess is that's one way theywere able to get up into that
(33:45):
number one spot, is saying,Okay, this already has traction
here, let's just put that overhere, and maybe help give it a
boost so that it actually takesoff there as well. And then
we've seen how the TikTok viralmoment led to new subscribers on
our podcast. Now maybe we can dothat over here on Instagram.
I mean, that's a big showalready that has a lot of
(34:07):
exposure. But I think there'ssomething in there that, for
example, if you notice thatsomething you talked about on
the podcast, you turned it intoa LinkedIn post, and that just
took off, maybe you can targeteverybody that engaged with that
post, now LinkedIn has video,with a reel or a short that
(34:29):
promotes your podcast to thosepeople on LinkedIn. That would
be the kind of thing I'd beexperimenting with. And this
whole, like, multistep processthat makes me think about,
that's how I think I would startincorporating some of this
stuff.
Jeremy (34:43):
Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting. I'm not an
advertising expert. I'm purely ahobbyist experimenting. But my
friend Andrew, he is I've beenin a mastermind with him for
several years, and he used torun a Facebook ads agency, and
he had a Facebook ads course.
And I, you know, got him toweigh in on some of the things I
was doing. And you hear him talkthrough how he would this is,
(35:03):
like, just basic bread andbutter for somebody who's doing
Facebook advertising, but theywill have multiple campaigns
where some campaigns are justdesigned to get traffic. Then
you have your retargetingcampaign, and then maybe even
you have a tertiary retargetingcampaign for a subset of those
initial groups. And so forsomebody who's actually doing
Facebook ads at a high level,that's the most basic starting
point. And whereas you look atsomebody like you and me, we're
(35:25):
just doing one campaign tryingto like, okay.
What's my image gonna be? What'smy copy gonna be? But then you
get into, like, the people whoare actually running these
really profitably have thesemulti touch point, and they're
like, okay. First, we need toget people here with this
creative. Then we need tofollow-up with people who took
this action in this way and thenthis thing over here.
And that might even followpeople around different
platforms on the Internet. Andso Mhmm. I think this is just
(35:47):
one more example of you have tobe dedicated to advertising.
Like, it is however hard it isto learn podcasting, advertising
is just as much a craft orhowever much it is to, like,
learn the cello. It is not athing that you just learn in a
weekend.
You can certainly get started.But I think when I hear people
talking about boosting posts andthinking like, oh, well, that
(36:07):
will grow the show. It will getyou exposure to that post. It
will is almost guaranteed not toget you any listeners. In my
opinion, post boosting isessentially Meta's way of
milking unwitting users.
Like, it is basically downrightkinda predatory because it is
doing nothing, and yet it iskinda preying on people who
(36:28):
don't really understand howadvertising works. And Meta's
just like, great. We'll takeyour money. And I'm guessing
that yeah. Again, 99% of peoplewho pay to advertise on Meta, I
don't think they make theirmoney back.
And so I think it's something tobe cautious about unless you're
willing to really, like, studycopywriting, study graphic
design and creative inadvertising, and thinking about,
like, how do all these thingswork together? What is the
(36:50):
landing page that people aregoing to? Which specific episode
and why am I sending people to?There's so many different touch
points that gets a very complex,skill that needs to be, like,
really yeah. I think you have tolove it, or you have to have a
budget to hire it out.
Justin (37:04):
Yeah. And I a counterpoint to your point about
boosting is I have experiencedwhere, you have a piece of
content that already has organicmovement. So, maybe I wrote a
blog post about this topic, andit went viral on Hacker News.
So, know that the topic has somelegs. I have found sometimes
(37:28):
that you can boost an unrelatedpiece of content, like maybe I
made a YouTube video on it, or apodcast episode, boosting it,
and just getting it over thethreshold of noise is enough for
it to pick up organic momentumon its own, and then carry it
up.
But you have to be verystrategic about that kind of
(37:51):
content. Right? So you're gonnaspend a little bit of money to
get it above the noise, and thenit has to be able to take off on
its own. And I have had thathappen with YouTube videos where
I'm just boosting it a littlebit, and then it gets its own
organic momentum that I know isreal because I'm getting real
comments, real engagements, realshares on the video. It picks up
(38:12):
its own life of its own afterthe promotion has ended.
Jeremy (38:16):
I think for me, a couple other things that I would throw
in here in terms of, like, whento use advertising and how to do
it well. Ideally, you have aproduct, and the higher ticket
the product, the better. And soif you have a $5,000 coaching
program or $10,000, you aresomebody who can probably do
quite well with advertising. Ifyou have a solid sales system on
the back end and you know a wayto get people in upfront, you're
(38:37):
not advertising that program,but you know I can get somebody
to my lead magnet or low ticketproduct. And within three to six
months, I have a way ofconverting a certain percentage
of people into that program.
Ads will work wonderfully foryou. And I think that there's
actually really interesting waysthat you can integrate the
podcast into that where you getsomebody into the funnel, and
let's say you have a lead magnetfocused on one specific topic.
(38:58):
And then in the welcomesequence, you might put together
a series of emails that links tosome of your episodes that are
related to that thing. And theycan kinda go down the rabbit
hole, accrue a bunch of timespent with you, and that's gonna
kind of accelerate their time toconversion. That's where
podcasting becomes veryinteresting with advertising.
Less so driving people directlyto the podcast, but you actually
(39:18):
get the same result out of it.It's going to something else,
and then you introduce thepodcast to them on the back end.
So having that product makesthings way easier. And I think
the other thing is really havinga sufficient budget to be able
to test. And so you hear peopletalk a lot about optimizing ads,
and usually that's like over athree or more month period where
you're just running a bunch oftests and it's not gonna be
(39:39):
profitable.
You're not gonna break even.You're gonna lose a bunch of
money. You're just trying tofind out which ad combinations
are gonna work. So you're gonnahave, you know, five or six
different graphics for each ad,five or six different pieces of
copy, five or six differentheadlines. Maybe they're even
going to different landingpages.
And you're just trying to figureout kind of pruning which of
these ad combinations is gonnawork best. And I I think you
also just have to have in mindthat this might just not work.
(40:01):
So you have to be willing tolose the entire budget too,
which is kind of the the scarypart of advertising.
Justin (40:06):
That's a good framework. I I agree with all of that. I
think there are some peoplelistening who are like, no. I
just wanna get more listenersfor my podcast. And Yep.
I do think you could run ads forthat, but you're just gonna be
very creative, very careful. Onthe flip side, if you do have a
product that you're, like yousaid, that you're driving all
(40:26):
this to, I would incorporatethen in your post purchase
survey and other things, startasking the question, how did you
hear about us? How did you hearabout the product? What made you
change your mind? And see ifpodcasting shows up.
And if it does, excellent. I askevery new customer, how did you
(40:48):
hear about us? What brought youhere today? And I know over the
long tail of this company thatpeople do sign up because they
built a relationship with usover the podcast because they
mention it. Sometimes it takesyears for a podcast listener to
convert to a customer.
But you have to ask thequestion, and then you have to
have this steady drip ofresponses. People that are
(41:10):
actually saying, oh, yeah. Dude,I've been listening to your
podcast for years. Boss asked meabout this, and I recommended
you, and so here we are today.You know, that's the kind of
response you're looking for.
If it's not working, noresponses? No, like, you don't
have any evidence that this ishelping you at all as a
business? Well, unless thepodcast is serving another
(41:33):
purpose in your business, maybeit's time to take a different
strategy.
Jeremy (41:38):
Now, the last thing I wanna touch on here is we've
kind of focused a lot of thisconversation on how to do
advertising well, more on maybethe social and digital
advertising online, which Ithink it's more trackable.
There's a lot more customizationyou can do. The platforms are
quite complex. That's anotherthing too. There's a steep
learning curve there.
And so it's not the mostapproachable, but I think if you
(41:59):
know what you're doing and youhave an experimental mindset,
there's actually quite a lot youcan get into. And, again, I
would not advertise the podcastitself unless it's more of a
retargeting campaign. Butthere's this whole other side,
and and maybe we we didn't talkabout this because we kind of, I
don't wanna say debunked it, butthere is podcast specific
advertising. So there are thedifferent listening apps that,
(42:20):
you know, can be worthexperimenting with. And in the
episode that we, played fromCreator Science with Chris
Hutchins last year on our feed,we did the feed drop.
Mhmm. Chris talks about doing anad experiment, I think, on
Overcast explicitly to test hiscover art and title and
combination where he was like,basically, here's the benchmark.
If your ad outperforms this, youknow you have a good show. And I
(42:41):
would say a good show packagingand a good show premise. And so
Mhmm.
That is another use foradvertising is just assessing,
is my show good enough to getout in front of more people? And
so you can use advertising forthat. And I think that that's
actually a really ingenious wayof of thinking about it. And
then the other thing that wehaven't really talked about is
advertising on podcasts. Andthis is actually the thing if I
was going to be promoting mypodcast, I would be advertising
(43:04):
on other podcasts.
Because I think that that'swhere you're already reaching
podcast listeners in a mediumwhere they're receptive to this
thing. And I think Mhmm. Part ofthe problem with online digital
advertising is it runs into thesame challenge as promoting your
podcast on social media does,where you're reaching people on
a platform where they're justnot in podcast listening mode.
And so they might see the showand be like, oh, that's
interesting. But they'reprobably not gonna go click
(43:25):
through and listen through.
Maybe they're on the computerand they're not on their phone.
You know, it might happen thatyou get a few people, but I
think reaching podcast listenerswhere they're already listening
to podcasts and especially ifyou can get a host read ad, that
is something that I think wouldbe if I had to spend to promote
the podcast, that's where Iwould be doing it. But
otherwise, I wouldn't even bedoing that.
Justin (43:44):
I think that's where I would deploy my capital. I'm I'm
thinking about this right now,especially in terms of this new
show I just started andthinking, okay. Where would I
actually spend my money? Itwould be harnessing existing
organic momentum on podcasts.So, I listen to a host, and they
mention the show, or I listen toa host, and they mention a topic
(44:06):
we covered, and doing the samewith newsletters and blogs, and
YouTube channels.
I think I would be just findingwhere is there existing kind of
momentum, and just following upwith that, and trying to ride
that wave, and first trying tosee if I can just do it for free
organically, And then Yeah. Ifnot, then paying for that
(44:26):
privilege.
Jeremy (44:26):
Let me just put the question to you more explicitly.
Let's revisit one of our,episodes from last year where we
did if you had $500 a month,$2,500 a month, and $10,000 a
month podcast budget, what wouldyou do with that? I seem to
remember one of your answers wasjust all of it put all of it
into TikTok ads. And so I'mcurious now. This is not a
monthly budget, but you have a$10,000 lump sum right now.
(44:49):
You have to spend only on paidadvertising to grow your new
show. Specifically, where areyou allocating that?
Justin (44:55):
Yeah. So this new show I started, it's so helpful to have
an actual show in mind. So it'sfor software entrepreneurs,
bootstrappers, people doingstartups. And I think I would
deploy it using this idea ofretargeting, but in a different
So, for example, it just gotmentioned organically in this
(45:18):
newsletter. So, it's beenmentioned once, but now what I
could do is I could follow thatmention up with a paid series of
ads in that newsletter to say,because people are already aware
of it, they've had oneimpression.
So, now maybe I can pay for moreimpressions from, you know,
they've already done me aservice. They've given me one
impression for free. Now I'mgonna follow that up with a
(45:40):
bunch of paid ads. And probablydoing that everywhere. So every
time the show gets mentioned ona YouTube channel, on another
podcast, whatever, taking noteof that.
First, seeing if I can do anorganic follow-up like, hey. You
guys mentioned the show, and wetalked about this exact thing
you're talking about on ourshow. Here's the clip. See if I
(46:02):
can get a free mention in there,and then following that up with
an ad. And you can see from ahost read ad how effective that
would be.
Hey, folks. Yeah. You heard ustalk about this last week.
Justin reached out and actuallydecided to sponsor the show. So,
we're gonna mention his showagain.
I've been listening to it. It'sgreat. You should check it out.
If you like the show, can seehow that would work. Right?
(46:24):
So, yeah, I think that I'd bedeploying the capital in that
way. If people are talking aboutit on LinkedIn, then maybe I
would see if I can follow thatorganic energy, that organic
momentum with paid ads on thatplatform and seeing if I can
continue on with that momentumand see if it delivers Yeah.
(46:45):
Results.
Jeremy (46:46):
So I'm thinking about this myself. I think we've
actually covered some of thestuff that I would do. I think
the retargeting ads for websitevisitors, that's the one I'm
most interested in and I thinkis potentially the best kind of
use of funds. And, you know, ifwe're getting a little bit more
complex here, I might actuallysay let's say we're growing this
show. And so I might go to theother shows that are on
podcasting.
I would run ads on a bunch ofthem at this exact same time
(47:09):
period back to a specificlanding page or a series of
landing pages for those shows.And, of course, some people are
just gonna go in their app andclick through to the show there,
but I would probably run it to alanding page that I had
retargeting pixel on and thenrunning retargeting ads to those
people. So we've got podcastspointing to either a landing
page for the show or people canfind it just immediately, in
(47:30):
their apps, and then gettingmore retargeting ads for the
people who've already had anexposure to the show from a
HostRed ad. That would be onething I would look at. And then
the other thing, you know, wetalked about this too is that
the really the thing that Iwould do as somebody who has a
business that's related to theshow, I would be running ads to
a lead magnet.
I think I would probably do my,ears audit where you can kind of
get an assessment of your whyyour marketing is or isn't
(47:52):
working and where some of thegaps are. I would run ads to
that. And then after that, Iwould curate episodes that fit
into and you can get even reallyfancy with this is I can see,
okay, you scored this in youraudit, that means you have a gap
here. So you probably wannalearn more about this. Then I
would be serving those peopleepisodes related to that topic,
whereas other people who maybethey're struggling on the sales
side of things, then I'm gonnafeature episodes or blog posts
(48:13):
and things like that there andtry to get people into both the
show and my other content thatway on the back end.
I do actually have one kind ofidea that I think I told people
in my community last week, but Iwanna share it here too because
I think there's something reallyinteresting with using kind of
micro funnels and podcastingtogether that I've never seen
anybody do. So here's the idea.You run an ad to some kind of,
(48:39):
like, low friction, easilyaccessible thing. Let's call it
a lead magnet. Then on the backend, you've got a welcome
sequence, but you don't actuallyshare episodes from your main
podcast, but you actually createyour own mini podcast that leads
to a product that is alignedwith both that show, a six
episode miniseries.
It has a lead magnet that leadsdirectly into the miniseries
(49:00):
that's going in parallel with awelcome sequence because not
everybody's gonna go to thepodcast. You're hoping that they
do, but you've got the welcomesequence everybody's gonna get
pointing to these, you know,mini podcast episodes. I would
do them short, like seven oreight minutes, and so that
there's low friction to getpeople in. And then there's some
kind of product offer on theback end of that. Nothing too
expensive.
Maybe it's like a hundred, 2hundred dollars, something like
(49:21):
that. And I think that thatlittle micro funnel,
everything's in alignment interms of the theme, could be
really interesting in terms ofgetting conversions off of paid
advertising. So it's not anexisting show, but it's creating
a new show as a part of a kindof advertising funnel for a
first step offer in a business.But let me know if you test this
out, and I'd love to hear theresults.
Justin (49:42):
I can also we don't typically talk about this form
of monetization, but if you hada paid podcast, that funnel also
would be interesting there,where you have a mini series
that leads into the paidpodcast. And that would be
interesting to see if you canget paid subscribers out of that
(50:03):
mini sequence. So, yeah, that'sit. I like that idea.
Jeremy (50:07):
Like I said, if you test that out, let me know, and I
would love to shout out theresults, good or bad. Bashame
you or praise you publicly. Andas always, to, get the full
Podcast Marketing Trends report,you can find that at
podcastmarketingtrends.com tosee all the data on well, we
don't have that much data onadvertising other than that
that's what people want, fortheir shows, and also that's
(50:28):
what people, say does not work.So if we haven't convinced you
here, maybe the data will.Again, that's
PodcastMarketingTrends.com.
If you think of all the people and all the businesses
that advertise on Meta, I wouldguess 95% lose money on it.
Justin (00:08):
It's tough when you have a very clear business funnel.
And Yeah. With podcastlisteners, it's just a much more
difficult sell.
Jeremy (00:18):
There are ways to advertise to get real listeners.
So here's the idea. So one ofthe final questions that I ask
everybody in the annual podcastmarketing trends report, it's
near the end of the survey, andthey just submitted a bunch of
information about their show andtheir experience marketing. And
I follow-up with this question.If you could wave a magic wand
and have your number onemarketing wish be granted, what
(00:40):
would that be?
And there's a bunch of thingsthat people respond with, and
they'll say things like, youknow, I wish I had more
BudgetTire team. I wish therewas better tools for this. I
wish there was education on thistopic. But always, every year,
it's either the number one orthe number two kind of cluster
of responses. I wish I had abudget for paid advertising.
(01:01):
And it's a little bitinteresting because within the
same report, I also ask aquestion. What have been the
most and least effective thingsyou've done in the past year?
And consistently, everybody whodoes advertising ranks it only
second to social media as theleast effective thing that they
have done. And so it's clearthat there's a big disconnect
here between the people who havenot advertised, who see it as
(01:24):
this thing that will justimmediately save their show and
get it out in front of people.And then there's the people who
have advertised who kind of saythis is it doesn't actually work
for growing a podcast.
So I think it's actually a goodidea for us today to dig into
maybe some of the realities ofadvertising both within
podcasting as well as beyondpodcasting, what makes it work,
when to use it, and ultimately,if this is something that people
(01:44):
should actually be focusing on.So Yeah. To kick things off, I'm
curious about your personalexperience with advertising
either for Transistor or forpast projects, creative
projects, podcasts, things likethat?
Justin (01:56):
With Transistor, it's been limited. We've really not
done a lot of paid acquisition.In other jobs, for other
startups, I've used GoogleAdWords, promoted videos on
YouTube, some YouTube ads, somepodcast ads, both for products
and for shows, newslettersponsorship, event sponsorship,
(02:19):
and some experience with otherad networks, like Carbon ads and
things like that. So I've I'vedone a fair amount. What about
yourself?
Jeremy (02:29):
Yeah. I would say over the past several years, I've
probably spent something like 20to 30 k on advertising. So a
decent amount, it's not actuallythat much in the big scheme of
advertising. That's a tiny dropin the bucket. And you start to
look at people who actually haveadvertising running, and they're
talking about spending, youknow, 50 k a month or a hundred
k a month.
And that's usually because theads are profitable and you're
(02:50):
earning more than that so youcan spend almost infinite amount
and which is some one of thedynamics we're gonna get into
here. So over several years, 20to 30 k, I've experimented quite
a bit. Most of that has goneinto two buckets of Meta or
Facebook and newslettersponsorships. Those have been
the two I've done quite a bit ofnewsletter advertising of my
newsletter, of other leadmagnets, of a Ben Sideburn,
things like that, and then also,Facebook and Instagram ads. And
(03:13):
then I've done a couple otherthings.
Sparkloop is a platform that wasacquired by ConvertKit, now Kit,
that is a kind of newsletteradvertising marketplace. And so
people can you can set a costper acquisition for each
subscriber. And so I've said,you know, two per subscriber,
who meets these criteria. And sousually that's they stay
subscribed after a certainamount of time. And then anybody
(03:34):
can basically say, yep.
I'll promote that newsletter forthat amount. And you kind of
don't know how much you're gonnaend up spending at the end of
the month. You can put a cap,but whoever wants to promote it
does. And then I've done alittle bit of YouTube promotion
as well. This was actually basedon your recommendation, which,
has some interesting sideeffects.
I don't know that I would say itwas a success or that it was
(03:54):
worth it, but it was aninteresting experiment. So Mhmm.
That's that's my kind ofexperience. And actually, the
one update here on my experienceis I did in early twenty twenty
four, I did a bunch of meta ads.I probably did $7,000 worth or
something like that.
And I did it directly to myscrappy podcasting newsletter
and actually got a pretty goodcost per acquisition, CPA as
(04:16):
we're gonna be referring to it,here. And I never knew, though,
like, is this worth it? I run abusiness. I'm advertising my
newsletter to get people into mybusiness to get customers. And
for a long time, it just lookedlike I threw $7,000 away.
And then somebody in anothercommunity that I'm in, actually
in Jay Claus', The Lab, asked aquestion about Facebook ads
(04:38):
running them to a newsletter.And I was like, actually, I
should check-in on that. How didthat go? And recently, I went
back. I looked at all mycustomer data, and I realized
that actually my ads had brokeneven eighteen months after I had
started running them.
And so this is another dynamicthat's interesting to look into.
But for me, this was the big winthat I'd always sought of, like,
ads that actually broke even,which if nothing else means you
(05:00):
get those free emailsubscribers. And so this is my
experience. I'm curious, like,when you think about, like, ads
as a marketing practice, whatare your kind of thoughts in
general about paid acquisition?Do you have impressions of it?
Justin (05:12):
Your experience, I think, mirrors a lot of people's
experience, which is if you'relucky and you have some sort of
paid product, in a lot of cases,podcasts subscribers don't fit
in this whole model. But a lotof businesses that advertise on
Facebook and Google, etcetera,they will eventually recoup
(05:36):
their investment, but break evenis the most common answer. And
this can work with some businessmodels, like if you're selling
software as a service orsubscriptions, then paying back
your investment within a year ispretty good if you can keep that
subscriber paying you goingforward. But it's hard. The most
(06:01):
common thing I hear is justlike, the people who are good at
it spend a lot of money tuningtheir ads, and so you have to
spend a lot of money just tolearn.
And then after you've learned,it might take you three to six
months just to learn what youneed to learn, and that might
cost you thousands of dollars.And then you can start actively
(06:24):
leveraging those ads or thosetechniques that work to acquire
customers, etcetera. So, it'stough when you have a very clear
kind of business funnel. Andwith podcast listeners, there's
just always been this questionin my head of like, man, that's
just a much more difficult sell.It's not like this, you know,
(06:48):
snap your fingers purchase.
A podcast is a biggerinvestment. So
Jeremy (06:52):
And, you know, I see that you shared this state of
SaaS marketing report. This wasfrom Corey Haines from Swipe
Files. And in the report, itmentioned so one of the
questions was which channel hadthe biggest impact on growing
revenue. So this is very similarto the podcast marketing trends
report. Only 7% of peopleresponded ads.
And this is kind of interestingbecause I feel like ads are the
sexiest thing in almost anyfield, I think. Because I think
(07:15):
people just think, oh, if I onlyhad the budget, then I just push
the button and it would roll in.And I think it's kind of easy to
think like, well, you know, Idon't have that. And so that's
part of the reason why maybe Imight be stuck, which, you know,
their budget certainly helps.But it's interesting that in
SaaS in particular, where Ithink that feels like a medium
or a platform or a businessmodel that is just entirely
(07:35):
like, oh, yeah.
If you can just spend money atit, like, you'll grow. It's just
not true there either. And so Ithink that this is one of those
things that the more experienceyou have with advertising you
know, you mentioned the typicalresult result being breakeven. I
Justin (07:47):
think Yeah.
Jeremy (07:47):
Breakeven is actually a hugely ambitious result for
advertising. If you think of allthe people and all the
businesses that advertise onMeta, I would guess 95% or even
more lose money on it. I thinkit is almost guaranteed for
somebody who does not haveextreme understanding of the
platform and how the kind ofpayback time and everything
works to actually even breakeven, let alone, you know, be
(08:11):
profitable with it. So I think,it is a tall mountain to climb.
And that said, I do know peoplewho have figured out a way to
use ads effectively.
I hope to be one of those peopleone day, because I think there
are a lot of opportunities inadvertising if you know how to
leverage them. And I think thatthere's some interesting stuff
that we could talk about, inrelation to podcasting. And I've
(08:32):
actually had some ideas recentlythat maybe, we can talk through
about how podcasting might playa role in advertising, even if
you're not advertising directlyto the podcast.
Justin (08:41):
Love it.
Jeremy (08:42):
Let's, kick things off here just with a little bit of
context about some of theterminology here and the ways
that advertising works. And so Ithink, like, the all important
number for advertising is returnon ad spend. You'll see this,
abbreviated as ROAS. Andessentially, this is, you know,
you spend a dollar, how much doyou get out of that? Like we've
mentioned, most people areprobably gonna be in the
negative.
But if you're in the positive,that's a good thing. But if you
(09:04):
can get, you know, two times orthree times or four times, then
you're looking really good. Butthat's, you know, one of the the
hard things to get to. There's abillion acronyms in advertising.
What are some of the othercommon or most important ones to
be considering here if we'rethinking about this?
Justin (09:17):
I mean, generally, it there's cost per acquisition. So
how much does it cost you to geta paying customer? How much does
it cost you to get a subscriber?And then how long does it take
you to recoup that investment?So the payback period.
You can see why this works withe commerce. So it's like, okay,
it costs us $10 to acquire thecustomer. And then they bought a
(09:41):
pair of shoes, and so we brokeeven on that. But often the
payback period also includesthis idea of, when are we gonna
make profit from this customer?And that might not be, in the
case of e commerce, until thesecond, or third, or fourth
purchase, right?
So those are the two big ones,cost per acquisition and payback
(10:03):
period.
Jeremy (10:03):
Yeah. The other one that then actually plays off that
payback period is the lifetimevalue or the LTV. And so I think
that that's another thing thatwhen you start to get into
advertising, like these arenumbers you you should basically
know your lifetime value of aeither customer or a lead. And
so I've done a lot ofadvertising to not paid
products, but to my email listbecause I always assume, well,
(10:25):
they're gonna, you know,probably read the newsletter for
six months to a year before theybuy something. But if I can get
people in, like, eventually, Iknow my newsletter does convert
clients.
I get people out of that. And soI have a calculation in the back
of my mind that I've roughlydone, you know, in various ways
over the years where I have atsome point, I think the the
number I haven't done thisrecently, was around, like, $50
per newsletter subscriber wasthe typical, like, lifetime
(10:48):
value of a subscriber. And sothis is accounting for 99% of
people or more will never buyanything from me, and then
there's 1% of people who mightspend a lot of money with me,
and that gets averaged outacross everybody. And so now I
know as an advertiser, well, ifI can get somebody in, they are
worth $50 to me. So I can spendup to $50 for my advertising to
be effective.
(11:08):
It just might take me four yearsor five years to reach that
level. These kind of benchmarksare worth having in mind,
understanding about youraudience. And I think that this
is one of the things withpodcasting. Most people are not
very clear on what theirbusiness model is or how their
podcast relates to it. And sothat's why I get a little bit
hesitant whenever I hearsomebody talking about, like,
running ads.
(11:29):
And so let's maybe dig into someof the specifics. These these
kind of numbers that we'vetalked about are general across
all advertising, but let's diginto the specifics of podcast
advertising. And let's start offwith, like, what are some of the
ways that you could advertise apodcast? You could pay to get
your show out in front of morepeople.
Justin (11:45):
Yeah. I mean, you could advertise it on Google using
Google AdWords. You could alsoadvertise it on YouTube, and
they have a variety of productsthere. So you can get a
suggested video in the sidebar,that's one product. You can have
an ad play before a video,that's another product.
You can have a promoted video.So, lots of products in there.
(12:07):
There's, of course, socialmedia, so you can advertise to
have something play on anInstagram story. You can have,
an ad in the feed, an ad in thesidebar. That's a really common
one that's
Charles Duhigg (12:20):
been around for a long time, kind
Justin (12:21):
of those banner ads. What are some of the other ones
you're thinking of?
Jeremy (12:24):
Yeah. I mean, some of the podcast specific ones are
you can advertise on otherpodcasts, And so you can pay
another show. You can eitherapproach them directly or maybe
they have, some kind ofadvertising agency that they're
working with. And so that'ssomething that is, I think,
pretty interesting, but not alot of people actually take
advantage of. There's also thepodcast apps.
This is something that a lot ofpeople, might have experimented
with or at least are aware of.There's, you know, Castbox. I
(12:47):
think Overcast does pocketcasts. I don't know if
Justin (12:50):
they do advertising. Yeah. Pocket casts.
Jeremy (12:52):
So there's several there. Spotify, actually, you
can advertise on Spotify aswell. And then there's a couple
other podcast specific ones. Sothere's some kind of these,
like, almost tool y techsolution type things. IntroCast
is one.
Podroll is another. There's afew others. And then there's,
like, podcast promoters, whichthere's, like, spammy LinkedIn
podcast promoters who arepeople. And then there's other
(13:13):
companies that they're notreally a tech solution per se. I
mean, they kind of are on theback end, but they feel a bit
more like an agency almost.
And so that's another way that,you know, you can pay money to
get impressions of your show andprobably listeners as well. The
quality and accuracy of thoselisteners, may be dubious in
some of these cases, and maybewe'll dig in, a little bit more,
(13:34):
to that. And then, yeah, the thelast one, you know, that I'm
just thinking about here isgoing way back to, like,
original web advertising isthere could be a website that is
in your niche on your topic. Youcould pay that website to get
banner ads directly on theirsite, which actually, I think
that could be pretty interestingfor some shows.
Justin (13:52):
I think this is gonna be a theme throughout the whole
episode is your approach to thisreally depends on the topic of
your show, who you're trying toreach, where that audience hangs
out, and then the dynamics ofthat ad marketplace. So,
crafting an ad for Reddit isgoing to feel very different
than crafting an ad forInstagram stories. Then one more
(14:17):
layer underneath that is, that'sa whole skill unto itself. And
so, you could hear someone say,Well, I tried Reddit ads, it
didn't work. First of all, waslike, Well, was their product
market fit?
Was that the best place for youto put your ad? And then, what
was the ad? How skilled are youat creating a compelling ad? And
(14:40):
this is why it's so hard. Yougot to find fit in all these
places.
And then you have to craft areally good ad, which is like an
art and a science unto itself.
Jeremy (14:51):
And this is why they made the show Mad Men because
advertising is creative andsexy. And Yes. I think
advertising as an industry getsa bad rap for many good reasons.
But it's also interesting thatthere are you look at, like, the
types of people who are inadvertising. These are some of
the most highly talentedcreative people in the world who
their job is to come up with aninfinite amount of ideas that
(15:11):
are hopefully interesting waysto get in front of people and
create something that'scompelling to get people to take
some action or remember a brand.
We, as creators, are also someof the most creative people in
the world, hopefully, but it'slike you're competing with a
really high tier of quality,and, your ad might be showing up
next to Ford's or Disney's orApple's or whoever else in like,
(15:32):
this is what viewers arecomparing this to because Apple
can spend, you know, money toshow up in somebody's Facebook
feed, and so can you. People areinundated with all the same
stuff in their feed, and so thethe bar for standing out and
getting attention is quite high.It's not just, you know,
boosting a post and having thatimmediately people clicking into
it just because there's morevisibility.
Justin (15:51):
And I think if you're interested in that art and
science, the show recommendationwould be under the influence
with Terry O'Reilly, who's aCanadian broadcaster. The show
is fantastic. If you just wantto dig into what makes a great
ad, and you want to learn thecraft, that's one
recommendation. But justrealize, you're signing up to
(16:12):
become good at a craft. Is notsomething that you can kind of
do haphazardly on the side.
This is something you have toreally commit to getting better
at. And just know that that'swhat it's probably gonna take to
actually have an effectivecampaign.
Jeremy (16:28):
So we talk about a bunch of different places you can
advertise. And there is thisarticle that I came across. I
think it was back in 2023. Itwas from Katie Lohr. Shout out
to the Canadian podcastecosystem.
She runs the newsletter Pod theNorth. And, she had this
interview with Tobin Dalrymple,who is a the founder and b to b
content marketing expert at thepodcasting studio Pilgrim
(16:49):
Content. And so he ran a bunchof different advertising
experiments specifically forpodcasting, and he then reported
back in this article in Pod theNorth on some of the numbers.
And, the numbers are franklykind of hilarious. And this is a
guy who's a smart marketer hereand who has experience with
advertising.
And so he basically advertisedon four platforms. So it was the
Acast Network, on Overcast, onPodcast Addict, and on Spotify.
(17:14):
And he spent on each platform onAcast spent $1,400, Overcast
$1,600, Podcast Addict $1,580,and then Spotify six hundred
dollars. And basically, if welook at how many new subscribers
he got here, on ACast he got a43 for his $1,418. On Overcast,
(17:36):
he got 65 for his $1,600.
Podcast Addict, he got 87 forhis $1,580. And then on Spotify,
for $600, he got foursubscribers. And so we look at
some of these, like, averagecost per result here. And this
is a little bit interestingbecause the platforms measure
different things like a followversus a listen or whatever. But
(17:56):
I think the average here wassomething like $211 per new
subscriber, which is just kindof hilarious.
Justin (18:03):
This is something else we didn't mention when we're
talking about the the acronymsor metrics you might track.
Another thing, that you're gonnatrack is those metrics within a
cohort. And so my immediatethought when I look at this is
like, you got 143 newsubscribers or downloads. In
(18:25):
that cohort, how long does thesubscribers stick around? How
many episodes do they actuallylisten My feeling is that these
are very generally trend towardslower quality subscribers.
You're paying a lot of money fora cohort, a group, that may not
(18:45):
stick around, that may notactually eventually buy
something from you. And this issomething else you kind of want
to track is of that group thatwe paid to acquire, what
happened to them as compared toour average of organic
listeners. I think these numbersare sobering. If you're thinking
(19:09):
about spending money to acquirea podcast listener, subscriber,
or download, look at these andjust know what you're getting
into. The other thing that'scome up in the news a lot is a
lot of these advertisingnetworks will deliver downloads
to you, and they will deliversubscribers to you.
We see this all the time onTransistor. Someone will hire an
(19:33):
agency to boost their downloadnumbers, and they'll run ads.
And these ads almost alwaysdeliver bot listens or not
legitimate listens. So onTransistor, we're filtering out
duplicate listens, and filteringout listens from bots, and
people go, what happened? I paidall this money.
They told me I got 20,000downloads, but you guys said I
(19:55):
only got 1,500. And we said,well, we're deduping everything
that was a repeat lesson. We'reremoving anything that was a
bot. And what you have left overis kind of what we can say is an
actual download. And what we'reseeing is people just being very
upset.
You know, they spent all thismoney, and really, they got
(20:16):
downloads, but they weren't realdownloads. They got subscribers,
but they weren't realsubscribers.
Jeremy (20:22):
This is something that I've seen a lot with my clients
too where I was just doing anaudit of a client's stats, the
other week, and he had done alot of different advertising
experiments, which, you know,I'm all for the experimenting
mindset, and I've certainlyexperimented with advertising.
And so it's one of those thingswhere you don't really know. You
want to test it for yourself andsee if it works. And the problem
(20:44):
that became very, like,frustrating in hindsight was
basically his his entire showdata was unreliable now because
he had this huge amount ofdownloads that was still coming
from Castbox even though he'spretty sure he's like, those are
not real listeners anymore. Ithink those are auto downloads.
And he was pretty certain that,like, this was not a a real
thing. And so we could subtractthe Castbox downloads. But he'd
(21:05):
also done an advertisingexperiment with Apple Podcasts
where he was getting ApplePodcast followers. And so now it
looks like he's got a bunch morefollowers on Apple Podcasts, but
that's not really accurateanymore either because the
campaign was designed to getfollowers. He paid for those
followers, and that's what hegot.
But they're not real listeners.And so then what happened is now
he has basically all of hisconsumption data at the episode
(21:28):
level just tanked and is superlow. And so now he's getting,
like, 50% or below on manyepisodes, which that doesn't
seem accurate based on some ofthe feedback he gets from
listeners. And so now there isall this data that could be
useful to us to diagnose some ofthe potential opportunities or
problems with the show, but allthat advertising kinda messed it
all up, and now we can't reallymake any sense of that. And so
(21:49):
Mhmm.
It's it can be frustratingbeyond just, like, spending the
money to not get the listeners,and it can actually hurt you in
the long run too if, you know,you're advertising on some
places that I think are I don'tknow that I wanna say even less
reputable, but it's like they'regonna deliver what they promise.
But it's it's almost like justtoo good to be true.
Justin (22:08):
And some of these are not reputable. Yes.
Jeremy (22:11):
It's like Some of them well reported,
Justin (22:13):
like, these networks were making, you know, mobile
game players listen to anepisode order to get to the next
level. It's like, okay, sure,that's a real download according
to the IAB, but that's not whatyou want as a podcaster. You
don't want people listening toyour episode in an interstitial
so that they can get to the nextlevel of a game, that's
(22:36):
pointless. Right? And so, whatthis really shows me is, A, how
hard it is to get a podcastlistener.
But B, how valuable a genuinepodcast listener really is.
There's such a big threshold toget them over, but once you have
a podcast listener, if they'resubscribed to your show, you're
(22:58):
gonna show up in their queue,theoretically. And so, yes, it's
hard getting a new subscriber.Expensive if you're advertising
for it. But once you get them,this is can be a very high value
relationship to build withsomebody.
And if a podcast listener doesbecome a customer, there could
(23:19):
be a lot of value theredepending on how your business
works.
Jeremy (23:22):
And I think that a lot of these advertising platforms,
are willfully not owning up tothis because this would be bad
for other parts of the podcastecosystem. But a lot of these
platforms essentially exist tohelp big shows that have sponsor
impression guarantees hit thosemarks when they're falling
short. And so Mhmm. Let's saythat you have Airbnb on as a
(23:42):
sponsor, and they have,contracted you for a million
impressions of the show. Andyou're coming up to the end of
your period, and you've onlyreached 800,000.
And so now you either need tobump a sponsor in the future in
order to keep running yourAirbnb ads so you can reach your
million downloads or impressionsthat you've guaranteed them. Or
you go to one of these servicesand you say, I mean, I don't
(24:03):
care if they're bots. Like, aslong as I can send the report to
Airbnb, they're not gonnascrutinize this. They don't know
what podcast data is. So I'vehit my million.
We're good. They're gonna renew.And so this is something that,
like, a large part of theseservices exist to serve that
part of the market. And, youknow, advertisers either
willingly turn a blind eye oryou just can't get a sense of
it. And so, like, that justexists there, but it's not
(24:23):
really, like, what most creatorswant.
Whether you're a small businessowner or a pure creator who
wants to grow your podcast, youactually want real listeners.
And so a lot of times, there areways to advertise to get real
listeners, but it's typicallynot you know, you pay this
amount to be guaranteed thisamount of of listeners. Like,
that is never anybody who offersguarantees, I would say that it
(24:44):
it is impossible that those arelegitimate real listeners who
are going to be subscribing toyour show and along with you for
the long run.
Justin (24:51):
Mhmm. Yeah. I've just seen people waste so much money,
and not a lot of people in thepodcast industry talk about it.
So, yeah, I think this isimportant for people to
understand. There areopportunities, but have your
eyes wide open.
There's a lot more to this. It'smore than just putting money in
and getting a bunch oflisteners.
Jeremy (25:11):
Okay. So we've kind of maybe laid out some of the,
pitfalls and things to look outfor with advertising and kind of
come out and said, you know,generally, with advertising a
podcast to get in front of morepeople, I think both of us are
heavily skeptical. But I knowthat people are still gonna do
it, and I encourage people toexperiment. And, actually, I
would shout out, CourtneyKosack. She has a newsletter
(25:32):
called podcast bestie.
She has a free version and apaid, Substack version. And in
her paid version, she actuallydoes a bunch of advertising
experiments and shares theresults. So, that's another
resource if you're curious aboutthis and to see more data on
what's working and what's not.But if somebody's like, okay. I
wanna at least dip my toe in thewater, experiment with some
advertising, putting some moneybehind my show.
(25:52):
Let's maybe look at some of thebest practices or how we would
actually go about approachingthat in a thoughtful way that's
gonna give us the best chancesat, success. What What are some
of the the first things thatcome to mind for you?
Justin (26:03):
I think one thing I'd like to highlight is that an ad
that will work is to pick up onsomething that's already kind of
working organically. So let megive you an example. You noticed
that your podcast keeps gettingmentioned in a certain
subreddit. Okay. So that's thehint that something's going on
(26:25):
here.
How could you maybe craft an adthat felt appropriate for Reddit
that might take advantage ofthat existing momentum? Another
thought I had is, would I justbook an ad on any podcast and
get them to talk about my show?No. What are some things that
(26:45):
would make it more likely thatad would work? Well, if the host
organically mentioned that theylistened to the show, then I can
reach out and say, Hey, I knowyou're already a listener.
I will pay you to specificallypromote the show on your show.
So, I'm going to recommend thatapproach to see where there's
(27:07):
already organic momentum andthen follow it up with some sort
of paid advertising.
Jeremy (27:14):
I would build on that and take that to even the show
level and say that I would notadvertise something that does
not already have existingorganic growth. I think if you
do not have organic growth, thatis a sign that advertising is
not gonna help it. There's thisold quote from the advertising
industry that is nothing kills abad product faster than good
advertising. And so this is, ofcourse, assuming that you have
(27:35):
good advertising, but there'sthere's kinda two sides to this.
So there's, like, you can get ashow in front of a bunch of
people if you are able to craftgood ads that actually work and
get people to click into it.
And if the show is not great, ifit doesn't meet their
expectations, this is somethingI'm so wary of that I wish more
people understood. There'sactually a lot of science on
this, and usually it's in termsof, how many, like, positive
(27:57):
comments it takes to offset onenegative one. And so if your
boss comes to you and iscritical of you in some way, I
think it's something that ittakes, like, eight or nine or 10
positive comments just to getback to neutral. And I think
this is a % true for our podcastwhere if somebody comes across
our show and has a less thanideal first experience, it
doesn't need to be outrighthorrible. It just doesn't meet
(28:17):
their expectations.
What I think happens, because Iobserved this in myself, is they
immediately write that show offforever until they have an
overwhelming amount of positiveexperiences with the show,
probably from other peopletelling them they need to
listen, that they're okay. Iguess I'll give it another
chance because their experiencehas already told them that it's
not worth their time. And soMhmm. This is something where I
(28:38):
think if your show's not growingorganically, that might be a
sign that the show is not readyto get in front of more people.
And what we really wanna do iswhen the show does get in front
of people, we want to wow themand it'd be an incredible first
experience.
And, you know, you you mentionedbefore about how hard it is to
get a podcast listener, and thatthat just made me think, it is
hard to get a podcast listener.Like, I will have a show that is
(28:59):
in my feed that I've heard 10different friends all talk
about. And I'm like, I reallyshould listen. And still, I'm
not listening. And so if it'sthat hard to get somebody to
listen to a show with all ofthose other touch points, how
hard is it to get somebody whenthe first exposure that they
have to the show is through anad entirely cold?
And so Yes. Yeah. Looking forthat organic momentum first
before you're adding fuel to thefire with advertising is, I
(29:20):
think, a, kind of universalprinciple there.
Justin (29:23):
Yeah. And even thinking about how are you deploying this
ad, meaning at what point of theacquisition funnel are you
deploying this ad for? What'sits job? And so, in your case,
maybe you've subscribed to theshow, but the creator might
deploy a few ads to remind youto That's the job of the ad, is
(29:47):
it's like, we know we got peoplein the funnel. Know people have
followed the But now, what we'retrying to get them to do is
engage or activate as a regularlistener.
And so, that could be the job ofthe ad. And getting crystal
clear about this. Yeah. Is thejob of this ad? The job of this
ad is to be someone's firstimpression of this show, and
(30:13):
then get them to convert to alistener, that is not going to
happen.
Going to be so rare. Ads thatare working for podcasts, you
see this already, like the bignetworks, what are they doing?
They're putting ads up inside ofbuses, and they're putting some
billboards up even, dynamic adsinside of other podcasts, doing
(30:35):
cross promos. They're justtrying to keep the show top of
mind, so you build up awareness,and get to the point where it's
like, now I got to listen. Andthere's going to be some event
in that sequence thatadvertising is supporting, that
will eventually get them toconvert.
This is probably more true forpodcasting than almost anything
(30:57):
else, is it's going to be asequence of events. And the ad's
job is really to come alongsidein that sequence of events and
support everything else that'shappening.
Jeremy (31:09):
Yeah. You know, I really I I what you mentioned there
about potentially a not top offunnel show discovery, but more
somebody's had exposure to, theshow already. And there's ways
you can do this with some of thetrackable link platforms, things
like that, like Linkfire. Youused to be able to do this with
Chartable where you can actuallyinsert a pixel, either your
Google Tag Manager into thoselanding pages. And so then, you
(31:31):
know, somebody has clicked intoyour show listing, and now you
can retarget them, and you couldshow them Google Display ads.
That's the the point here isjust to remind them of the show
existing. It's not to get themto click the ad even. It's like
they might have already theyknow where to find the show, and
it's just to keep it top ofmind. And that is actually, I
think, of the most sophisticatedmethods of using advertising to
grow a show is retargetingpeople who've already kind of
(31:52):
are aware of it and showninterest and just need to be
given those repeat nudges. Andone of the reasons is that a lot
of times, like, Google displayads are super cheap, especially
when you're not really trying toget a customer.
You're just trying to remindpeople. It's just to show up in
the sidebar of websites. Andkind of those, like, spammy ad
slots that are often there, and,like, maybe you don't want your
show associated with that. But,like, I think if your creative
(32:13):
is good, then I think that's awin. And this is something that
I am actually gonna do someexperiments with.
I think on this season of theshow, I'm gonna try this and see
how how much it costs and whatthe impacts of that are. I think
one of the things that will betricky with it is that the
clicks might be meaningless.Because like I said, the point
is not necessarily to get peopleto click the ad and go listen.
(32:33):
It's just to remind them. And soit might have a low click rate,
but maybe listeners will go upanyway.
So that's something that we canmaybe report back on in the
future.
Justin (32:40):
Along all these lines that we're talking about, maybe
one tangible example is the MelRobbins show is just recently
become number one in ApplePodcasts. And that's quite an
achievement. And my guess isthey are employing some of this
amplification and multi touchpoint strategy, which is they
(33:01):
release clips from the show. Soyou've probably seen them on
Instagram, and TikTok, andFacebook, and YouTube Shorts.
And once a clip takes off, onceit has organic momentum, you can
then boost that to otherplatforms.
So you could run that same clipthat went viral on YouTube. You
(33:23):
could run it on Instagram,because you already know that it
works, with a specific call toaction, like check out the show,
here's how to find it, all thosekinds of things on a different
platform. And I think thatrecognizing when there's
existing momentum, and thendeploying that in various ways,
my guess is that's one way theywere able to get up into that
(33:45):
number one spot, is saying,Okay, this already has traction
here, let's just put that overhere, and maybe help give it a
boost so that it actually takesoff there as well. And then
we've seen how the TikTok viralmoment led to new subscribers on
our podcast. Now maybe we can dothat over here on Instagram.
I mean, that's a big showalready that has a lot of
(34:07):
exposure. But I think there'ssomething in there that, for
example, if you notice thatsomething you talked about on
the podcast, you turned it intoa LinkedIn post, and that just
took off, maybe you can targeteverybody that engaged with that
post, now LinkedIn has video,with a reel or a short that
(34:29):
promotes your podcast to thosepeople on LinkedIn. That would
be the kind of thing I'd beexperimenting with. And this
whole, like, multistep processthat makes me think about,
that's how I think I would startincorporating some of this
stuff.
Jeremy (34:43):
Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting. I'm not an
advertising expert. I'm purely ahobbyist experimenting. But my
friend Andrew, he is I've beenin a mastermind with him for
several years, and he used torun a Facebook ads agency, and
he had a Facebook ads course.
And I, you know, got him toweigh in on some of the things I
was doing. And you hear him talkthrough how he would this is,
(35:03):
like, just basic bread andbutter for somebody who's doing
Facebook advertising, but theywill have multiple campaigns
where some campaigns are justdesigned to get traffic. Then
you have your retargetingcampaign, and then maybe even
you have a tertiary retargetingcampaign for a subset of those
initial groups. And so forsomebody who's actually doing
Facebook ads at a high level,that's the most basic starting
point. And whereas you look atsomebody like you and me, we're
(35:25):
just doing one campaign tryingto like, okay.
What's my image gonna be? What'smy copy gonna be? But then you
get into, like, the people whoare actually running these
really profitably have thesemulti touch point, and they're
like, okay. First, we need toget people here with this
creative. Then we need tofollow-up with people who took
this action in this way and thenthis thing over here.
And that might even followpeople around different
platforms on the Internet. Andso Mhmm. I think this is just
(35:47):
one more example of you have tobe dedicated to advertising.
Like, it is however hard it isto learn podcasting, advertising
is just as much a craft orhowever much it is to, like,
learn the cello. It is not athing that you just learn in a
weekend.
You can certainly get started.But I think when I hear people
talking about boosting posts andthinking like, oh, well, that
(36:07):
will grow the show. It will getyou exposure to that post. It
will is almost guaranteed not toget you any listeners. In my
opinion, post boosting isessentially Meta's way of
milking unwitting users.
Like, it is basically downrightkinda predatory because it is
doing nothing, and yet it iskinda preying on people who
(36:28):
don't really understand howadvertising works. And Meta's
just like, great. We'll takeyour money. And I'm guessing
that yeah. Again, 99% of peoplewho pay to advertise on Meta, I
don't think they make theirmoney back.
And so I think it's something tobe cautious about unless you're
willing to really, like, studycopywriting, study graphic
design and creative inadvertising, and thinking about,
like, how do all these thingswork together? What is the
(36:50):
landing page that people aregoing to? Which specific episode
and why am I sending people to?There's so many different touch
points that gets a very complex,skill that needs to be, like,
really yeah. I think you have tolove it, or you have to have a
budget to hire it out.
Justin (37:04):
Yeah. And I a counterpoint to your point about
boosting is I have experiencedwhere, you have a piece of
content that already has organicmovement. So, maybe I wrote a
blog post about this topic, andit went viral on Hacker News.
So, know that the topic has somelegs. I have found sometimes
(37:28):
that you can boost an unrelatedpiece of content, like maybe I
made a YouTube video on it, or apodcast episode, boosting it,
and just getting it over thethreshold of noise is enough for
it to pick up organic momentumon its own, and then carry it
up.
But you have to be verystrategic about that kind of
(37:51):
content. Right? So you're gonnaspend a little bit of money to
get it above the noise, and thenit has to be able to take off on
its own. And I have had thathappen with YouTube videos where
I'm just boosting it a littlebit, and then it gets its own
organic momentum that I know isreal because I'm getting real
comments, real engagements, realshares on the video. It picks up
(38:12):
its own life of its own afterthe promotion has ended.
Jeremy (38:16):
I think for me, a couple other things that I would throw
in here in terms of, like, whento use advertising and how to do
it well. Ideally, you have aproduct, and the higher ticket
the product, the better. And soif you have a $5,000 coaching
program or $10,000, you aresomebody who can probably do
quite well with advertising. Ifyou have a solid sales system on
the back end and you know a wayto get people in upfront, you're
(38:37):
not advertising that program,but you know I can get somebody
to my lead magnet or low ticketproduct. And within three to six
months, I have a way ofconverting a certain percentage
of people into that program.
Ads will work wonderfully foryou. And I think that there's
actually really interesting waysthat you can integrate the
podcast into that where you getsomebody into the funnel, and
let's say you have a lead magnetfocused on one specific topic.
(38:58):
And then in the welcomesequence, you might put together
a series of emails that links tosome of your episodes that are
related to that thing. And theycan kinda go down the rabbit
hole, accrue a bunch of timespent with you, and that's gonna
kind of accelerate their time toconversion. That's where
podcasting becomes veryinteresting with advertising.
Less so driving people directlyto the podcast, but you actually
(39:18):
get the same result out of it.It's going to something else,
and then you introduce thepodcast to them on the back end.
So having that product makesthings way easier. And I think
the other thing is really havinga sufficient budget to be able
to test. And so you hear peopletalk a lot about optimizing ads,
and usually that's like over athree or more month period where
you're just running a bunch oftests and it's not gonna be
(39:39):
profitable.
You're not gonna break even.You're gonna lose a bunch of
money. You're just trying tofind out which ad combinations
are gonna work. So you're gonnahave, you know, five or six
different graphics for each ad,five or six different pieces of
copy, five or six differentheadlines. Maybe they're even
going to different landingpages.
And you're just trying to figureout kind of pruning which of
these ad combinations is gonnawork best. And I I think you
also just have to have in mindthat this might just not work.
(40:01):
So you have to be willing tolose the entire budget too,
which is kind of the the scarypart of advertising.
Justin (40:06):
That's a good framework. I I agree with all of that. I
think there are some peoplelistening who are like, no. I
just wanna get more listenersfor my podcast. And Yep.
I do think you could run ads forthat, but you're just gonna be
very creative, very careful. Onthe flip side, if you do have a
product that you're, like yousaid, that you're driving all
(40:26):
this to, I would incorporatethen in your post purchase
survey and other things, startasking the question, how did you
hear about us? How did you hearabout the product? What made you
change your mind? And see ifpodcasting shows up.
And if it does, excellent. I askevery new customer, how did you
(40:48):
hear about us? What brought youhere today? And I know over the
long tail of this company thatpeople do sign up because they
built a relationship with usover the podcast because they
mention it. Sometimes it takesyears for a podcast listener to
convert to a customer.
But you have to ask thequestion, and then you have to
have this steady drip ofresponses. People that are
(41:10):
actually saying, oh, yeah. Dude,I've been listening to your
podcast for years. Boss asked meabout this, and I recommended
you, and so here we are today.You know, that's the kind of
response you're looking for.
If it's not working, noresponses? No, like, you don't
have any evidence that this ishelping you at all as a
business? Well, unless thepodcast is serving another
(41:33):
purpose in your business, maybeit's time to take a different
strategy.
Jeremy (41:38):
Now, the last thing I wanna touch on here is we've
kind of focused a lot of thisconversation on how to do
advertising well, more on maybethe social and digital
advertising online, which Ithink it's more trackable.
There's a lot more customizationyou can do. The platforms are
quite complex. That's anotherthing too. There's a steep
learning curve there.
And so it's not the mostapproachable, but I think if you
(41:59):
know what you're doing and youhave an experimental mindset,
there's actually quite a lot youcan get into. And, again, I
would not advertise the podcastitself unless it's more of a
retargeting campaign. Butthere's this whole other side,
and and maybe we we didn't talkabout this because we kind of, I
don't wanna say debunked it, butthere is podcast specific
advertising. So there are thedifferent listening apps that,
(42:20):
you know, can be worthexperimenting with. And in the
episode that we, played fromCreator Science with Chris
Hutchins last year on our feed,we did the feed drop.
Mhmm. Chris talks about doing anad experiment, I think, on
Overcast explicitly to test hiscover art and title and
combination where he was like,basically, here's the benchmark.
If your ad outperforms this, youknow you have a good show. And I
(42:41):
would say a good show packagingand a good show premise. And so
Mhmm.
That is another use foradvertising is just assessing,
is my show good enough to getout in front of more people? And
so you can use advertising forthat. And I think that that's
actually a really ingenious wayof of thinking about it. And
then the other thing that wehaven't really talked about is
advertising on podcasts. Andthis is actually the thing if I
was going to be promoting mypodcast, I would be advertising
(43:04):
on other podcasts.
Because I think that that'swhere you're already reaching
podcast listeners in a mediumwhere they're receptive to this
thing. And I think Mhmm. Part ofthe problem with online digital
advertising is it runs into thesame challenge as promoting your
podcast on social media does,where you're reaching people on
a platform where they're justnot in podcast listening mode.
And so they might see the showand be like, oh, that's
interesting. But they'reprobably not gonna go click
(43:25):
through and listen through.
Maybe they're on the computerand they're not on their phone.
You know, it might happen thatyou get a few people, but I
think reaching podcast listenerswhere they're already listening
to podcasts and especially ifyou can get a host read ad, that
is something that I think wouldbe if I had to spend to promote
the podcast, that's where Iwould be doing it. But
otherwise, I wouldn't even bedoing that.
Justin (43:44):
I think that's where I would deploy my capital. I'm I'm
thinking about this right now,especially in terms of this new
show I just started andthinking, okay. Where would I
actually spend my money? Itwould be harnessing existing
organic momentum on podcasts.So, I listen to a host, and they
mention the show, or I listen toa host, and they mention a topic
(44:06):
we covered, and doing the samewith newsletters and blogs, and
YouTube channels.
I think I would be just findingwhere is there existing kind of
momentum, and just following upwith that, and trying to ride
that wave, and first trying tosee if I can just do it for free
organically, And then Yeah. Ifnot, then paying for that
(44:26):
privilege.
Jeremy (44:26):
Let me just put the question to you more explicitly.
Let's revisit one of our,episodes from last year where we
did if you had $500 a month,$2,500 a month, and $10,000 a
month podcast budget, what wouldyou do with that? I seem to
remember one of your answers wasjust all of it put all of it
into TikTok ads. And so I'mcurious now. This is not a
monthly budget, but you have a$10,000 lump sum right now.
(44:49):
You have to spend only on paidadvertising to grow your new
show. Specifically, where areyou allocating that?
Justin (44:55):
Yeah. So this new show I started, it's so helpful to have
an actual show in mind. So it'sfor software entrepreneurs,
bootstrappers, people doingstartups. And I think I would
deploy it using this idea ofretargeting, but in a different
So, for example, it just gotmentioned organically in this
(45:18):
newsletter. So, it's beenmentioned once, but now what I
could do is I could follow thatmention up with a paid series of
ads in that newsletter to say,because people are already aware
of it, they've had oneimpression.
So, now maybe I can pay for moreimpressions from, you know,
they've already done me aservice. They've given me one
impression for free. Now I'mgonna follow that up with a
(45:40):
bunch of paid ads. And probablydoing that everywhere. So every
time the show gets mentioned ona YouTube channel, on another
podcast, whatever, taking noteof that.
First, seeing if I can do anorganic follow-up like, hey. You
guys mentioned the show, and wetalked about this exact thing
you're talking about on ourshow. Here's the clip. See if I
(46:02):
can get a free mention in there,and then following that up with
an ad. And you can see from ahost read ad how effective that
would be.
Hey, folks. Yeah. You heard ustalk about this last week.
Justin reached out and actuallydecided to sponsor the show. So,
we're gonna mention his showagain.
I've been listening to it. It'sgreat. You should check it out.
If you like the show, can seehow that would work. Right?
(46:24):
So, yeah, I think that I'd bedeploying the capital in that
way. If people are talking aboutit on LinkedIn, then maybe I
would see if I can follow thatorganic energy, that organic
momentum with paid ads on thatplatform and seeing if I can
continue on with that momentumand see if it delivers Yeah.
(46:45):
Results.
Jeremy (46:46):
So I'm thinking about this myself. I think we've
actually covered some of thestuff that I would do. I think
the retargeting ads for websitevisitors, that's the one I'm
most interested in and I thinkis potentially the best kind of
use of funds. And, you know, ifwe're getting a little bit more
complex here, I might actuallysay let's say we're growing this
show. And so I might go to theother shows that are on
podcasting.
I would run ads on a bunch ofthem at this exact same time
(47:09):
period back to a specificlanding page or a series of
landing pages for those shows.And, of course, some people are
just gonna go in their app andclick through to the show there,
but I would probably run it to alanding page that I had
retargeting pixel on and thenrunning retargeting ads to those
people. So we've got podcastspointing to either a landing
page for the show or people canfind it just immediately, in
(47:30):
their apps, and then gettingmore retargeting ads for the
people who've already had anexposure to the show from a
HostRed ad. That would be onething I would look at. And then
the other thing, you know, wetalked about this too is that
the really the thing that Iwould do as somebody who has a
business that's related to theshow, I would be running ads to
a lead magnet.
I think I would probably do my,ears audit where you can kind of
get an assessment of your whyyour marketing is or isn't
(47:52):
working and where some of thegaps are. I would run ads to
that. And then after that, Iwould curate episodes that fit
into and you can get even reallyfancy with this is I can see,
okay, you scored this in youraudit, that means you have a gap
here. So you probably wannalearn more about this. Then I
would be serving those peopleepisodes related to that topic,
whereas other people who maybethey're struggling on the sales
side of things, then I'm gonnafeature episodes or blog posts
(48:13):
and things like that there andtry to get people into both the
show and my other content thatway on the back end.
I do actually have one kind ofidea that I think I told people
in my community last week, but Iwanna share it here too because
I think there's something reallyinteresting with using kind of
micro funnels and podcastingtogether that I've never seen
anybody do. So here's the idea.You run an ad to some kind of,
(48:39):
like, low friction, easilyaccessible thing. Let's call it
a lead magnet. Then on the backend, you've got a welcome
sequence, but you don't actuallyshare episodes from your main
podcast, but you actually createyour own mini podcast that leads
to a product that is alignedwith both that show, a six
episode miniseries.
It has a lead magnet that leadsdirectly into the miniseries
(49:00):
that's going in parallel with awelcome sequence because not
everybody's gonna go to thepodcast. You're hoping that they
do, but you've got the welcomesequence everybody's gonna get
pointing to these, you know,mini podcast episodes. I would
do them short, like seven oreight minutes, and so that
there's low friction to getpeople in. And then there's some
kind of product offer on theback end of that. Nothing too
expensive.
Maybe it's like a hundred, 2hundred dollars, something like
(49:21):
that. And I think that thatlittle micro funnel,
everything's in alignment interms of the theme, could be
really interesting in terms ofgetting conversions off of paid
advertising. So it's not anexisting show, but it's creating
a new show as a part of a kindof advertising funnel for a
first step offer in a business.But let me know if you test this
out, and I'd love to hear theresults.
Justin (49:42):
I can also we don't typically talk about this form
of monetization, but if you hada paid podcast, that funnel also
would be interesting there,where you have a mini series
that leads into the paidpodcast. And that would be
interesting to see if you canget paid subscribers out of that
(50:03):
mini sequence. So, yeah, that'sit. I like that idea.
Jeremy (50:07):
Like I said, if you test that out, let me know, and I
would love to shout out theresults, good or bad. Bashame
you or praise you publicly. Andas always, to, get the full
Podcast Marketing Trends report,you can find that at
podcastmarketingtrends.com tosee all the data on well, we
don't have that much data onadvertising other than that
that's what people want, fortheir shows, and also that's
(50:28):
what people, say does not work.So if we haven't convinced you
here, maybe the data will.Again, that's
PodcastMarketingTrends.com.
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