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Everyone loves to talk about podcasting's so-called "Discoverability Problem". But does it actually exist?
And if not, what are the marketing channels you as a creator can tap into to get your show in front of more of your ideal listeners?
In this episode, we break down three types of listener acquisition channels and how you can leverage them to grow your show... without social media and without a discovery algorithm.
📊 What did you think of this episode? Click to cast your vote:
🤩 Nailed It!
🙂 Solid
🥱 Meh
😒 Do better
Topics Covered
And if not, what are the marketing channels you as a creator can tap into to get your show in front of more of your ideal listeners?
In this episode, we break down three types of listener acquisition channels and how you can leverage them to grow your show... without social media and without a discovery algorithm.
📊 What did you think of this episode? Click to cast your vote:
🤩 Nailed It!
🙂 Solid
🥱 Meh
😒 Do better
Topics Covered
00:54 Does the Podcast Discoverability Problem actually exist?
04:49 What the data shows about the effectiveness of various marketing channels
08:37 Writing is often a strong indicator of success in podcasting
11:18 How to pick the right marketing channel for you
12:06 The three types of marketing channels at your disposal
15:36 Owned media: The low-hanging fruit for many creators
24:14 What most podcasters get wrong about growth through collaborations
37:01 When is the right time to start paid listener acquisition?
46:34 How to kickstart word-of-mouth growth?
52:47 Your homework for this episode
⭐️ Get a free podcast marketing audit with personalized recommendations to help you grow: https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit ⭐️
Resources
Try Transistor.fm for free for 14 days
Connect with Jeremy on Twitter | LinkedIn
Connect with Justin on Twitter | LinkedIn
✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback
Connect with Jeremy on Twitter | LinkedIn
Connect with Justin on Twitter | LinkedIn
✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback
Creators & Guests
What is Podcast Marketing Trends Explained: Data-Driven Podcast Growth Strategies?
It's easier than ever to launch and produce a podcast. But it's never been harder to grow one.
On this show, we break down and explore what the data says about what it takes to market and grow a podcast in 2024 to help you make smarter decisions about your show, grow faster, and earn more.
Together, cohosts—and longtime podcasters, creators, and marketers—Jeremy Enns (Podcast Marketing Academy) and Justin Jackson (Transistor.fm) explore topics like:
How do you define success for your podcast?
What are the most effective marketing strategies, tactics, and growth channels for podcasts?
What does the data say about how to structure your show and episodes?
Which social media channels should you focus on as a podcaster?
How do you stack up to other shows?
Using the data uncovered by the Podcast Marketing Trends 2023 Report our goal is to make sense of the numbers and turn them into actionable insights that you can use to create a better show and market it more effectively.
You can find the full report at podcastmarketingtrends.com/2023.
I was talking with somebody who works in marketing at one of the big podcast networks, and they told me they basically canceled all ad spend on listener acquisition.
Justin:Oh, wow.
Jeremy:And the reason was that it just didn't work. To me, this is always the first thing I say is like, hey, you're like trying to worry about paid advertising and all the stuff. We have all this attention in your ecosystem. This is the low hanging fruit here. Welcome to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained.
Jeremy:I'm Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy.
Justin:And I'm Justin Jackson from transistor.afem. And together, we're digging into the data behind the podcast marketing trends 2023 report to help you understand what it means for you and your show.
Jeremy:Our goal is to help you make better informed decisions about the way you create and market your show so you can spend more time on what actually matters for growth and accelerate your results.
Justin:Let's get into it.
Jeremy:So Justin, I was, doing some snooping around your Twitter profile the day, and I came across this tweet from, let's see here, August 6, 2021. And I wanna run it by you and see how well it has aged. Does that sound good?
Justin:Sure. Sounds great. I'm scared, but, yeah. Roast my feet. Let's go.
Jeremy:People keep talking about podcasting's, quote, discoverability problem. But the people I know who listen to podcasts regularly seem to have no problems in finding new shows to listen to. Thinky emoji. If anything, they have the opposite problem. Too many good shows to listen to.
Jeremy:So this is a a topic that podcasting's discoverability problem which has been, debated to death. And here, you're kind of calling it out and saying, no. This isn't actually a problem. How do you feel? Do you stand by this statement back from August 6, 2021?
Justin:Yeah. I think so. I mean, there there is more nuance to it than that, but I think, overall, the discoverability problem in podcasting is overblown. Most of the people who want more discoverability are venture capitalists who wanna capitalize on podcasting. And even if you look at, for example, Netflix is a $250,000,000,000 technology company.
Justin:They have thousands of engineers on staff who have perfectly tuned their algorithm for discoverability. And even they have a hard time promoting their new shows to the public. Like, they've got one of the biggest search engines in the world and lots and lots of traffic, And even they have a hard time getting the word out. And even then, you'll still even with this perfect discoverability platform, you'll still see people on social media asking for recommendations for what Netflix show they should they should watch next. And you see this with everything, you know, Audible, another amazing audio search engine.
Justin:And on social media, people are like, hey, I need some more audio audiobooks to listen to. On one hand, sure. I think we would like more people to be able to discover our podcasts, and we'd like more marketing channels that work for that. This is not just a problem that's unique to podcasting. Everyone is having a hard time with marketing channels and finding marketing channels that work and, you know, getting the word out about their show, getting more people to try it out.
Jeremy:Yeah. I think about this a lot, and it makes me think, you know, there have been businesses for 1000 of years and it's only really been in the last 10, 15. I think when most people think about discoverability, they're thinking about algorithmic discoverability. And this is such a new invention that people have been creating art and content and products and services and businesses for 1000 of years without any automated discoverability. And they have still found a way to get that in front of the people who care about it.
Jeremy:And so I think a lot of times when we think like, oh, there's no discoverability in podcasting. It's like, yeah, that's actually normal. It's an anomaly that recently there have been a few platforms that have actually facilitated that. And to some extent, yeah, that would be nice for us as creators to have that. But I think that what history shows us is that people have always found a way to get their work in front of people and that we can certainly do the same.
Jeremy:And so that's really what we're gonna be digging into in this week's episode here of looking at, you know, what are some of the ways that you can get your show out in front of people. And, I know we last week we talked about social media in-depth, so we're not gonna go too much into depth there, but we also hinted that you don't actually need to be on social media and that there are plenty of other, kind of discoverability, discovery channels out there that we can implement and leverage as creators.
Justin:Yeah. I'm excited to talk about other ways people can promote the show. I think we've got some good, ideas that a lot of people don't consider. They're not all the easiest ideas to implement, but we've got some good ones. 1st, though, I'm curious.
Justin:What did the survey show in terms of what works and doesn't for podcast growth?
Jeremy:Yeah. So there were some trends that I'll talk through in a second related to high growth shows, which were those that grew by a 100% or more per year. So obviously, those are the ones that we we think like, okay. We wanna be like those shows. There was mid growth shows which were above the average.
Jeremy:So they were above 21% growth a year. And then there was low growth shows which were beneath 21% a year and there were negative growth shows that actually lost space. So there's some trends for each of those which I'll discuss in a second. But the one that made me kinda chuckle was one of the questions that I asked was, you know, what is has been most effective for you over the past year? And it was kind of a multiple choice list of marketing channels and what has been least effective.
Jeremy:And the fascinating thing, both the highest rated, most effective, and least effective was social media. And so there was plenty of people who said social media was the most effective thing I did, and there was plenty of people who said social media was the least effective thing I did. Classic. And what you see is, like, every single category, of every channel, there were people who said this was the least effective thing I did and people said it was the most. And so I think to me, what this suggest is that any channel can work.
Jeremy:There was people who for anything that I listed in the survey, somebody said this was the single most effective thing that I did and there was somebody else Yeah. Sometimes more, sometimes less who said that this was actually the least effective thing. And so that to me, I think kind of speaks again to this thing that we talked about in, one of the previous episodes about how there there really is no silver bullet and that a lot of times it's doing the thing well that will work. And so it's like picking something that you can be good at. You can learn the ropes of and then doing that well and that will work for you.
Jeremy:And if you just wanna go for the shortcut, you can, you know, do the work on that, you know, quote unquote, that channel, and it's not gonna have any result.
Justin:Yeah. I love this question just because you'd realize that it's all over the map. You know? For some people, collaborations are working. For others, it's not.
Justin:Some people, YouTube's working. Others, it's not. So Yeah. And what were some of these other trends? Like, high growth shows, are they doing anything different than negative growth shows?
Jeremy:So one of the things we saw here with high growth shows, they were significantly more likely to utilize pitching podcast apps, which I thought that was actually interesting. And Okay. To me, that it it seems to align with my anecdotal experience where I would say that a lot of the people who are pitching podcast apps are generally, I don't wanna say this in a kind of, like, pejorative way, but they're savvier. Like, I think they've been in podcasting longer longer. They understand the ecosystem.
Jeremy:They might have a relationships with people, those platforms, and they kinda get how the game is played. And so I think a lot of times, those people, like, they may be high growth for a number of reasons, and it's their savviness of how podcasting works that they can find these opportunities to get their show featured. They know how to do an effective pitch.
Justin:Okay. And just to pause there, you when you say submit to podcasting apps, you mean, like, Apple, Spotify podcasts. Okay. Yep. And each of these platforms generally has, like, an editorial review process.
Justin:There's a form you fill out. If you Google submit to Apple Podcasts Featured, it will lead you to a form where you can then submit your show for consideration.
Jeremy:Yeah. And there are other apps as well. Apple and Spotify are the big 2, but people have listed other apps. I think Pocket Cast might do this now as well. There's a few others.
Jeremy:So there are directories where you can do that, and they actually invite submissions. And really what they're looking for is shows either shows as a whole or episodes that have some kind of significant relevance in and of the moment. So in your pitch, you wanna kinda tie it into something that's happening now in the world that you can say, Hey, I actually have a show on this. And you know, this person, a lot of times, if like a celebrity passes away and you're able to say, actually, we just did this great in-depth kind of bio on them 2 weeks ago or something like that. And it feels really relevant.
Jeremy:That would be a like an example of a good, kind of pitch to one of these apps.
Justin:Oh, that's a good tip. I like that.
Jeremy:So a couple of the other things here. High growth shows were also more likely to implement paid advertising. This could be Okay. Because they are more successful, have more of a budget, something like that. We we don't really know.
Jeremy:There is some, correlation, might not be causation. We're gonna talk more about paid advertising in-depth in this episode. And they were moderately more likely than other shows to be, writing newsletters, beyond YouTube and also blogging. And so I thought this was really interesting. The writing component here, came into play.
Jeremy:Yeah. And I have some suspicions about this, but it's it's hard to ascertain, you know, was this something that led to growth? Or a lot of times, I feel like people who are writers okay. I here's my bias is showing. I'm a writer.
Jeremy:So, and identifies that first and foremost. But I am a huge believer in writing's power to help you think through ideas in a well structured way. And so one of the things that I have noticed, not for all successful shows, but for a lot of shows, especially narrative driven shows or even in interviews where there's a clear structure to it, a lot of times those people have a background in writing that serves them Mhmm. In the podcast as well. So those were some of the trends that stuck out from the the highest growth shows.
Justin:And was there anything else in there that was significant from the other categories? I would say that
Jeremy:the other interesting thing, the mid growth show, so still pretty solid growth more than average. They were also more likely to write newsletters, which I thought was interesting. And also, SEO content creation. So again, on this kind of, like, writing side of things, the mid and high growth shows seem to spend more time doing that. And so, you could probably make some some guesses as to why that might be.
Jeremy:What was interesting to me is that the highest growth shows are more likely to be using YouTube and the mid growth shows were less likely to be using YouTube, also less likely to be using PR and pitching podcast apps. And so there seems to be some distinctions there. So those were some of the the trends from the mid and high growth shows. The low growth trends, this is also funny where you you see that there is some correlation. Sometimes it's not causation.
Jeremy:The low growth shows were also moderately more likely than the average to be on YouTube much like the high growth shows. So clearly, YouTube is not the commonality here that a lot of people seem to think, oh, YouTube's the the way of the future. And sure, there's there's probably opportunities but it's not like that universally is going to mean growth. They were significantly less likely to write newsletters, blog, do SEO, pitching podcast apps. And then there was the negative growth shows that, that reduced their listenership.
Jeremy:They were more likely to, utilize podcast guesting and PR and significantly less likely to be on YouTube. So, there's there's a lot to unpack there. I would recommend going and checking out the report and kind of looking through these. But, I think the big trend for me that stood out is podcast app pitching for the high growth shows as well as this kind of focus on the medium to high growth shows on right written content as well is is somewhat interesting.
Justin:When I look at this data, to me, it just seems like any channel can work. Yep. And it just depends on your context, your audience, where you have natural strengths and built in advantages, where you might already have a network. There's there's lots of reasons a particular channel might work for a particular show. And so what I would wanna dive into is let's think about how people can actually maybe figure out which channel's best for them, which things they can try outside of, you know, I'm gonna grow an Instagram account to 3,000,000 or whatever.
Justin:Sure. Maybe that would help, but a lot of the people listening don't have big social media followings. So what can they do to grow their show?
Jeremy:Yeah. So I always think about it. This is not a, unique kind of idea to us. This is a very kind of common, marketing framework here is that there's essentially 3 ways to acquire new customers or in our case, listeners, users, on an app or something like that. So this is kind of the the 3 listener acquisition channels that we're going to call them, which is owned, earned, and paid.
Jeremy:And so, you wanna run us through some examples of each of those categories?
Justin:Sure. So under owned, that would be, like, traffic to your podcast website. That's people searching on Google maybe and finding you, for different topics. There's also, your own newsletter and email list. Right?
Justin:If you've got a email list, then you own that list and you can talk about your podcast and send out new episodes and you might get more listeners from that. And also, if you have a big social media following like we talked about last week, of course, that would be owned. You, you know, have a bunch of followers and you can leverage that to get more listeners.
Jeremy:And, essentially, like, when we're talking about owned, this is, like, you have built the audience and have some kind of access to them elsewhere. It's not like you were needing to go out and get in front of new people. And so this is probably your warmest audience a lot of times, on a platform that you own. Social media is a little bit funny in this category because it's they may throttle back your reach and things like that, but I still lump it into the owned category typically.
Justin:Totally. I I think earned is really interesting. Earned is where you kind of, like, earn the right to access that channel. So, for example, collaborations and cross promotions. These are all things you have to work at.
Justin:You know? You have to build some relationships. There's PR, so traditional PR, and then also doing PR in newsletters, and then podcast app pitching, like we were talking about before. So these are all like you have to network, you have to put in some work. This is probably a longer term play.
Justin:It's not gonna it's not something you can just do overnight. It's like you gotta go to events and make the relationships. You gotta pitch those podcast apps. You gotta reach out to guests over time and earn the right to, you know, have them on the show, and then even earn the right for them to reciprocate and maybe link to that episode that you just did. So I really like these though, the earned category, because I think a lot of people aren't willing to put in the work.
Jeremy:Yep.
Justin:So one way you can differentiate yourself is if most people are lazy and you're willing to work harder and work over a longer period of time, this is really a category where you can outcompete other shows in your niche.
Jeremy:Yeah. And we're gonna talk more about some of the specifics related to earned and some of those, tactics that you can use within that category. But before we do that, let's just kinda quickly summarize paid acquisition. We're gonna talk more about this, but what are some examples of ways that people could use their budget to get their show in front of more people potentially?
Justin:Yeah. This would be in app ads and podcast listening apps. This would be advertising on other shows. This would be paid social, advertising or integrations or partnerships. This could also include, you know, doing paid ads on Facebook.
Justin:Mhmm. This could include doing paid ads on Google. So any time you're paying to get some listener interest or a subscriber.
Jeremy:Yeah. And, I know that you have a kinda case study here about, the benefits and or, trials and tribulations of paid advertising. We're gonna save that, come back to that when we we talk about paid advertising in more depth. But the first one that I wanna just circle back on, we're gonna go through these in a little bit more depth now that we kinda define them. But I think that owned media is a really interesting listener acquisition channel that people often forget about.
Jeremy:And so, again, this is things that platforms that you already own. And one of the things that like, not everybody has a ton of website traffic. Not everybody has a huge email list. But there are plenty of people. I have talked to a significant number of people who have maybe they get 25 or 50,000 homepage views of their website a month or they have an email list of 25,000 people and yet they're getting a 100 or 50 downloads an episode.
Jeremy:Yeah. And to me, this is always the first thing I say is, like, hey. You're, like, we're trying to worry about, like, paid advertising and all the stuff. Like, we have all this attention in your ecosystem that we can design this experience here. Like, this is the this is the low hanging fruit here, and maybe redesigning that website site homepage, maybe thinking a little bit more strategically about your maybe newsletter welcome sequence and what you're sending on a week to week basis, like there's a lot of growth here.
Jeremy:If you've got tens of 1,000 or even just several 1,000 people already engaging with you in some way, they've indicated, hey. I like your content in some other medium. And that's not to say everybody's going to, you know, want to become a podcast listener at some point. But it seems unlikely to me that that many people would explicitly not want to listen to the podcast. That if you're only capturing, like, 2% of that audience is converting into podcast listeners, it feels like, okay.
Jeremy:I think there's more that we can do here.
Justin:I love this because it it goes along with what podcasts are good at. We've talked about this in previous episodes. Podcasts are really good at deepening a connection with your audience. A. I know this happened, for example, with Firefox and Mozilla.
Justin:They had a podcast. People are already visiting the Firefox homepage, and I believe it was Dan Meisner that told me this. He said the first thing he recommended is he said, you you have all these fans that are already visiting the Firefox homepage or the Mozilla homepage. Put your podcast there. These are people that already like you, and then the podcast can do the work that it's already good at, which is deepening that connection with that audience.
Justin:Yeah. I think this is underrated, especially for branded podcasts, especially for folks who have been blogging for years. You can do this today Mhmm. And get a bunch more listeners. And this is one of those things that's like a slow burn.
Justin:Yeah. You do it, and then it gradually starts to build up, and you'll get more and more listeners from just your own owned places on the web, your homepage, your email newsletter, whatever it is, your your pinned tweet. Yep. You know, there's all these spots in your existing ecosystem. You can put the podcast there, and the people who love you are gonna seek that out, and you'll be able to deepen that connection with them.
Jeremy:Yeah. And I think the the thing to think about in this instance we've talked before in previous episodes, maybe in every episode about talking to your audience. And I think that one of the things that is the kinda crux of the issue here when you have an audience that isn't listening to the podcast, you need to try a bunch of angles. And it like, that's the the challenge here is finding the angle in which to present the podcast that gets this existing audience who already cares about your topic but isn't listening to the show. Is it that they think they're just already getting the same thing through your newsletter, let's say, or your blog on your website?
Jeremy:And they're like, well, why would I listen to the podcast? Like, I already get this here. Here. And there are certainly shows where I have that perspective. I'm like, I love the newsletter.
Jeremy:Never gonna listen to podcast because they're basically the same thing, and I can read the newsletter in 3 minutes versus listen to a 20 minute podcast. Yeah. But that might not actually be the case. Maybe the podcast is very different from the experience that they get elsewhere and that means that your job is to actually highlight here's how we do this differently. Like, we you get one experience in the newsletter, but we do this whole other thing on the podcast that really complements this and being able to over time find that angle and the way that's gonna get people to to migrate from one platform to the other.
Justin:Yeah. And I can give you an example of, another kinda owned channel, which is, search traffic. People are searching things on Google, especially, but now increasingly YouTube. And even on Spotify and Apple, people are putting topics, topical searches in those search bars. And, maybe I'll shout out, Famous and Gravy.
Justin:That's, Michael and Amit, I believe. Yep. And I'm gonna show them out partly because they shared our podcast on, on threads, actually. Oh. Big big podcast community on threads right now.
Justin:And I think their show has just tons of opportunity for search traffic. Yeah. So Famous and Gravy is a podcast about life lessons from dead celebrities. Okay? So instantly, they've got some important keywords.
Justin:If I scroll through their episodes here, we've got, you know, Bob Saget, Carrie Fisher, Betty White, Olivia Newton John. There are lots of searches about these folks right now. And when I put their website into an SEO tool like Ahrefs, I can see, for example, they one of the number one keywords to their website right now is, Burt Reynolds mustache. Right? And they they're getting those search results right now just because the episode title is, I think it's, like, beyond a mustache or something like that.
Justin:But on that landing page for that episode, on the episode page, they could highlight other parts of the episode, and in they could do in a question answer format. You know, whatever happened to Burt Reynolds? Is Burt Reynolds alive? What was so great about Burt Reynolds mustache? And they could take out little highlights from the show, either from their transcript or even little audio snippets.
Justin:And they're going to rank higher for those kind of keywords. If someone is interested in the life and then death of Burt Reynolds, they could find this podcast and become a listener. So I think there's lots of opportunity for folks to with their podcast website, to start attracting some of these search terms. And, Famous and Gravy is such a great example of it, because they've got all of these celebrity names they could be targeting.
Jeremy:Yeah. What really makes it work for them is that they're not just like another celebrity gossip type show or anything like that. Like, they have a really unique angle to it. They take a look at the celebrity's whole life and impact, and they have these kind of segments, of the show that they use to evaluate the celebrity's life. And kind of the ultimate philosophical question that they're trying to get to is, you know, what I have wanted to live this person's life.
Jeremy:If I really look at it, the good and the bad and the impact and everything that they went through, was this a life worth living? And I think that, like, that's such a refreshing way to look at somebody that we already, you know, think we know in the in the public sphere. And so I think somebody comes to their website. It's not just that they're gonna read that that blog post or whatever it is and then be gone. They're like, oh, this is actually a really refreshing take.
Jeremy:And so I was interested in Burt Reynolds and maybe his mustache, but, actually, there's a whole lot more here that I didn't even know I was looking for, but it's it feels rich and, like, a lot of people will want to immerse themselves in that.
Justin:Yeah. And if folks are looking for a good tool and then just a way to get started, here's a tip. Go to answer the public.com and put in a keyword that you think applies to your show. So in this case, I put Burt Reynolds. And it will show you all of the search terms and rank them related to Burt Reynolds.
Justin:And, I mean, the biggest one is is Burt Reynolds still alive? That's a massive search term. And they're right now, I think they're kinda missing out on that. Yeah. Just posing that question in text form in the description on that page every time, is Betty White alive?
Justin:You know, you could go through that and, answer the question. But whoever is asking that question also wants to know more, and that's your chance to hook them and get them as a listener. So yeah. Check out answer the public.com, and you could put anything related to your podcast, any topic, any guest into their little, system there. And it's gonna give you all of these great opportunities to answer those questions either in your transcript or on your podcast episode page.
Jeremy:Yeah. So owned media, I think that there is a lot of big opportunity there for a lot of people. Usually, the people who have those opportunities have been creating either a business or some kind of content maybe outside their podcast for a while that they've accrued this audience elsewhere. And so this is not gonna be applicable or available to everyone at least at the start. Hopefully, it does and and for almost everybody, it will become a more important part of your strategy over time.
Jeremy:But let's move on to the kind of earned side of things. And, specifically, let's talk about collaborations. And this is something that I know has been kind of in the water over the past couple of years and for good reason. Like, collaborations, I kinda mentioned before people have been doing things to get their products and and services discovered for 1000 of years. And I think collaborations are probably one of those things.
Jeremy:I I don't have any, data to cite, what cavemen, the vendor of, like, the the big stone clubs, what they were doing back then. But, you see this actually everywhere in every kind of business. And one of the examples that comes to mind for me is there is a Vancouver ice cream shop called Ernest Ice Cream, and it started out as this, like
Justin:Okay.
Jeremy:Craft ice cream shop and grew into multiple locations. And when you go into one of their shops, they also sell, like, pints, as as many ice cream shops do. I for anybody who doesn't know this, I used to have a podcast. My first podcast was actually about ice cream in Vancouver. So you're you're kind of we're we're hearing from the authority on Vancouver ice cream, although it's it's been a few years at this point.
Jeremy:But Ernest Ice Cream, one of the things that they did is they did collaborations with coffee shops and craft breweries and all these other Mhmm. Kind of like craft food places to use those ingredients in their ice cream and stock, you know, that coffee shops coffee in the Ernest location as well and vice versa. And so this is something that you see this in every kinda business, every kinda content. And the reason is that, you know, when you find something that you like, probably, that's an indication of a certain type of taste. And so that's an opportunity for another business, another content creator who has, you know, create something with that appeals to a similar taste to capture some of that attention.
Jeremy:And so this is Yeah. Is certainly something that works in podcasting and, a lot of people are are getting on the bandwagon recently, but I don't know that they're always kind of taking the best approach.
Justin:Yeah. I think the the challenge with this category is people hear about it. They're like, oh, like, collaborations or, guesting on other podcasts. And they're like, okay. I need to hire an agency that's going to, you know, cold email pitch me to thousands of podcasts.
Justin:And I think the approach that you wanna take here is more networking friendships. Every niche has its own, like, group, you know, its own tribe. I'm thinking of Jack Reissider at Darknet Diaries. So, you know, he's in the cybersecurity hacking kinda niche, but he also appears on his friend's podcast, which are also talking about hacking and cybersecurity. You start to form relationships over time.
Justin:And this is where you get kind of these I don't know what we want to call them, like friend mafias or Yeah. You know, collab friendship groups. Sometimes in TikTok and, Vine days, there was like houses where they would have a bunch of influencers in one place. Yeah. And they're all guesting on each other's stuff.
Justin:And they're all, like, doing collabs all the time. They've realized there's there's reach here and it works a lot better if you're friends with these people. You know, if you can just jump on their podcast and, you know, talk for an hour about the topic and you love hanging out. And then at the end, your friend can say, by the way, you gotta go check out my friend Jack's podcast. It's amazing.
Justin:That's the kind of collaboration I think more people should be cultivating.
Jeremy:Yeah. And I think to to illustrate the approach that a lot of people take, this is an extreme example. It's a friend of mine and, he he, admits willingly that this was probably not the best approach to take. So, he has a podcast in the real estate space. And at some point about 2 years ago, he guested on something like 70 shows.
Jeremy:He had an assistant who did all the cold email outreach. And, you know, he actually got booked on 70 shows. So he must have must have pitched way way more and thinking about all the research. He got booked on 70 shows, guest on 70 shows. You think, okay, the average show maybe 30 to 60 minutes.
Jeremy:We're looking at, what, 35 to 70 hours probably that he spent on that plus the wages he paid the person. And he said, basically, had it had zero impact. He said, one show moved the needle that brought in new listeners to his show and everything else was a total waste of time. And I asked him like, oh, like, really? How did that work?
Jeremy:He's like, yeah. Well, you know, I I kinda basically just guessed on any show that would have me and took a kinda spray and pray approach and, you know, one and done, and and that was it. He's like, yeah. I should have known that that wouldn't have worked, but, you know, I thought it was worth a shot. And Yeah.
Jeremy:To me, I just think about that, and I think, okay. Let's imagine let's just say 70 hours. Like, you can do so much with 70 hours. Like, this is 2 full work weeks, basically. And I think if I was to allocate that time into something related to collaborations, personally, if I'm focusing on guesting, I would really research.
Jeremy:I'm not gonna, like, break this down to specific hours, but let's just say, like, 5 to 10 shows. And I'm gonna say, okay. Like, any one of these would really move the needle for me. I don't need to get on all of them. But just if I could get on one that's a big show, that's gonna be much more effective.
Jeremy:And so I'm gonna listen through 5 episodes and I'm gonna find out, like, what is my unique angle to this show? Like, why am I a good fit for the show? Because if I'm not, like, there's no way I can't make a pitch that's gonna get me on there. And even if I do, if I don't have a unique angle, people aren't gonna follow me back to my show. And so that is part of the research.
Jeremy:It's not just the pitch, but actually the discernment of, like, where do you have something unique and refreshing to offer to this audience? And this is true for guesting. It's also true for collaborations. And so I think one of the things that you wanna look for with collaborations is it can be with people who you might think of as competitors in your space. But if you can find a way to position your own content in a way that is complimentary rather than competing directly with them.
Jeremy:And part of this, like, just helps you as a whole. If you can find a way to complement everything else in your space and differentiate yourself that way, like, people who listen to podcasts, listen to many podcasts on a topic. And that actually almost guarantees that they're gonna listen to yours and your friends and that other person and that other person. And so a lot of times when I talk to people who are scared about collaboration, they feel like, well, what if I feature that other person and all my audience just leaves for them? And I've heard this a lot of times and you know, I used to feel this way as well.
Jeremy:And what really shifted was when I feel like, you know, several years into creating content, I felt like, oh, I'm actually on my own track. And because it's so grounded in who I am, like, nobody can copy this and I don't really have any competition. Because, you know, my audience gets something different from me that they're gonna get from them. And so I think this is something to, like, cultivate both for yourself and find your own little way to to mold yourself into a niche in your space, but also to to view other people and think, like, you know, what can my audience get from these people that I just don't wanna create? And, like, they do way better than I'm ever going to.
Justin:Totally. And this is where being a fan of the type of content that you're making Mhmm. Really helps. You can kind of stair step your way into some of this as well. You know, when the host of another show that you like asks for feedback, hit them up with some feedback.
Justin:When they say, here's our voice mail, leave a voice message. When they say, hey, everybody who replies to this tweet, we're gonna try to highlight you in the next episode. Reply to that tweet, And, eventually, the hosts start to discover who the super fans Mhmm. Of their show are. And, eventually, I've had that lead to you you know, I started out as a fan Yep.
Justin:And then got mentioned on the show. Mhmm. And, I mean, that's huge. Right? Mentioning somebody on the show.
Justin:And then eventually eventually got up to being a guest on the show. This is a long path. It takes some time, but you can stair step your way up there. A a mini guesting spot is replying to a show, giving them some feedback, giving them a nice review, and eventually they're going to be like, woah, like this Tina person really loves our show. And then if I emailed the show and said, hey, I'd love to be a guest sometime to talk about this, this, and this.
Justin:Much more likely to happen. Right? Because you've built a relationship kind of over time. So you can start with some baby steps here. Just, like, be a fan of the people you wanna collaborate with, and then eventually, something might happen.
Jeremy:Yeah. And I would say 2 things on that note. It actually often happens way faster than you think. This is less likely if they're, like, they they've got millions of followers or something like that, and they really need to screen all of that. But people who are a little bit of ahead of you in your space and are are very closely aligned, often if you comment on their posts on, let's just say, social media or respond to, you know, 3 of their newsletters in a row or something like that, that's often enough for them to be like, oh, this person, like, is really interested in what I'm doing.
Jeremy:And, like, think about that for yourself. If somebody was to respond to an email you sent out or every, you know, single episode for 3 weeks in a row, leave a comment on social media saying, like, man, this episode was so good. Like, you would notice that. And I think what we don't realize is that even the people who we perceive to be way ahead of us, they suffer from the same lack of engagement that most of us do. And so they don't get as much engagement as we think they might.
Jeremy:And a lot of times, I know when I've held back from making that move, it's like, well, I don't wanna bother them because they're probably too busy. And so, you know, I I'm doing the the nice thing by actually not adding to their inbox. Whereas, it's actually usually not the case. And I've had so many examples of sending a thoughtful, heartfelt message DM to somebody where, the one time I did this to a startup founder to their support chat. And it was like a bootstrap indie startup.
Jeremy:It was kind of a time tracking freelancer type thing. And they had all these Seinfeld references where all their, like, email, like, blank state fields and things like that. And I just, like, said, man, I love this app, and I love all the Seinfeld references. Like, keep doing what you're doing. And he responded to me and he was like, dude, you have no idea how much I needed to hear that today.
Jeremy:It's been a really rough go and, like, we don't really know where the future of the app is going. And, like, he kinda said like this this has been so meaningful to me. And I almost didn't send that. And it took me, you know, 5 minutes to write. And that was years years ago and it's always stuck with me what one simple DM message the impact it can have on someone and the relationship that it conform from that.
Jeremy:And I think, you know, we we all have that potential every single day to do that. And so it's not like you need to go out there and do that to a 100 people a day. Like, do it to 1 person a week, and amazing things will happen over the next year.
Justin:Again, most people aren't willing to put in the work here.
Jeremy:Mhmm.
Justin:You know, ask not what Tim Ferris can do for you. Ask what you can do for Tim Ferris. The other day, I was listening to a show, and there's this one segment. I'm like, oh, that would be an awesome thing to share on social media for them. So I got home, downloaded the YouTube video off the Internet, clipped the show, posted it on Twitter and threads and other places, And the host messaged me and said, thank you so much for doing that for us.
Justin:You just did all of this work for us, and I appreciate it so much. That's how you build relationships. You don't say, oh, how can this podcast help grow my show? The first stage is saying, how can I be helpful? Yeah.
Justin:How can I be helpful? Mhmm. And eventually, you're going to grow a relationship. And then eventually, you're gonna have this little tribe of people that are collaborating with each other, helping each other out, promoting each other's shows, being each other's cheerleader. That is a flywheel that once you get it going, it just works.
Justin:It's like you can rely on that group of people forever.
Jeremy:Yeah.
Justin:Right? You're always gonna be cheering each other on, helping each other out.
Jeremy:Yeah. And we're gonna get some additional flywheels at the end of the episode here. But I think the the thing to kind of close out this conversation maybe on collaborations is that you get much more out of aiming small and building a kind of repeat group of collaborators. And And you get to this point where let's say, like, you in your niche, your industry, however you wanna define the space. If you think like, okay, I'm gonna be active here over the next, you know, 2, 3, 5, 10 years.
Jeremy:Like, maybe there's no end in sight that I've for the, indefinite future. Like, I just I'm gonna be here. And okay. So you're gonna start networking with people and making friends. And, you know, over the years, you end up with a group of maybe 30 people who because you become friends and sometimes it's gonna be a kind of transactional collaboration where it's like, okay, I'll shout you out on live show and you show me out on yours.
Jeremy:We'll do, an ad swap or something like that. But the the really beautiful thing that happens when you commit to building relationships is now you grow this group of, you know, 30 or 50 people who start shouting you out regardless of any transactional value. They're just like, oh, my friend Justin posted this thing. I thought it was really cool. My audience should know about it as well.
Jeremy:And you start to get this this compounding effect where now you just have this group of friends who you're all just sharing each other stuff because it's beneficial and you think it's cool. And I think, like, that's Mhmm. The point when collaborations really ramp up in value, but it's not like a quick fix. But if you stick with it Yeah. Like, it will be transformative for your marketing and your show.
Justin:Totally.
Jeremy:Alright. So let's, let's move on to the the final kind of, deep dive of one of the the marketing channels here that I know is on a lot of people's minds. A lot of people think, you know, if there's anything that is the silver bullet, it is paid acquisition. Paid advertising on podcast apps, on other shows, on Facebook or Google or wherever else. I hear so many people, and this was actually in the report, in the survey.
Jeremy:One of the things that I asked was like, you know, what is the biggest frustration that you have when it comes to marketing? And so many people said, I don't have the budget to spend on ads. And I thought, oh, I don't know that, that advertising is really the cure all that you think it is going to be. Have you Yeah. Have have you had any experience advertising with transistor or your own projects in the past, or or what has that been like?
Justin:Yeah. I mean, on transistor side, it's actually cracking paid acquisition is difficult. Yeah. It's hard. And we haven't really found a good paid acquisition channel that works well all the time.
Justin:And we've also seen this reflected with our customers and the customer research we've done. I pulled this anecdote from Reddit. They did, an Overcast ad, which is one of those places where you can, you know, pay to have an ad appear in Overcast. So people are listening to shows, in that category, and then there's an ad where people can instantly listen and subscribe. So they say they did it for 30 days.
Justin:They got about 240,000 people saw the ad. Quite a bit. Yeah. You think, wow. Pretty good.
Justin:We're killing it here. Only about 1800 people clicked on the ad. Guess how many new subscribers they got?
Jeremy:1800 people clicked out of 240,000 impressions. That's right? Okay. 240,000, 1800. I'm gonna guess something like maybe they got 200 new subscribers.
Justin:72 people subscribed to the show. Guess how much that cost them? $6 per subscriber. So in order to get 72 new people subscribed to the show and we have no idea. Did they stick around?
Justin:Right. Did we don't know any of that. $6 is a lot of money to be paying to acquire 1 subscriber. I I would say that's not scalable. That's not repeatable.
Justin:I would not do that experiment again if it was costing me that much. Right?
Jeremy:Yeah. So I wanna bring in some context here. And so this is a very broadly generic type of, calculation we're doing here. But at a $20 CPM rate, which is, you know, roughly kinda similar, a good benchmark for advertising that a lot of shows run on and a lot of people wanna get sponsors for their show, get paid a CPM rate. So $20 per 1,000 impressions.
Jeremy:Each impression is worth 2¢. So you you can start to do the math and you can think, okay. Well, how many impressions do I need to get to pay off that $6 that I paid to acquire that listener? So essentially doing the math here, in order to pay back that $6 that you spent to acquire that listener, you need to deliver 300 ad impressions to them. And so if you think, okay, if you do, you know, 3 ads an episode, if you can even fill that for your show, get 3 sponsors paying at that $20 CPM, you need to do a 100 episodes to pay off that listener.
Jeremy:And as we've kinda seen from some of the churn data in ChartiBral and elsewhere, it is not likely that most listeners actually stick around that long. Then you have to factor this in. Your actual cost per engaged long term subscriber is probably way, way higher. It's probably, you know, 30, 40, $50 per subscriber and, it it could even be more. And I've seen a lot of data around, podcast advertising that consistently brings back, like, cost per subscriber acquisition at anywhere from, you know, $10 up to multiple 100 of dollars.
Jeremy:And so this is something that I think people think if I could just pay to get my show in front of people, I'd have this instant flood of listeners. And sometimes I think the problem is that there are advertising services that I would never recommend and I won't name any of them, but they are basically not the highest quality listeners if they are even actual listeners. They're essentially boosting the downloads and the purpose of these products is essentially for big studios and networks who have promised advertisers a certain number of impressions and are coming up short to be able to, like, do a last minute ad buy to be able to boost those impressions. It's not actually getting real subscribers to the show who are going to stick around.
Justin:I can tell you this has happened over and over and over again with our customers. They pay one of these platforms to do, like, a podcast advertising campaign. And almost all the time, we have to come back to them and say, listen. We we noticed what's going on here. We're getting all sorts of bot traffic to this particular episode.
Justin:We're getting all sorts of duplicate downloads, all sorts of basically, not real engagement, not real downloads. They are wasting their money.
Jeremy:Mhmm.
Justin:And, almost every single time somebody has paid to, you know, get more engagement or, you know, for downloads or whatever, it's been a scam. So I would avoid those, providers if you can.
Jeremy:And the the one thing I do wanna clarify. Like, there is a broad spectrum of podcast advertising services, and some of them are pure scams. I think these are the people who are pitching you on LinkedIn constantly. Just avoid those at all costs. And then there are others that are more legitimate.
Jeremy:And, I've chatted with some of these people, and there's a lot of they like, a lot of these are newer in the space, so they're not necessarily proven yet, but they have some interesting kind of ideas. And so I think, like, one of these that actually is really interesting to me is this, company called Podroll, I think. And they do kind of feed drop automated feed drops and there's some some tools like that that I'm like, okay. This is actually interesting because you're getting an actual audio experience in a podcast episode that a listener is listening to. And if the targeting is good, that makes sense to me that that could work.
Jeremy:There is a spectrum here. And so as with so many things, like, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. If you're even thinking about considering advertising, usually, I would not recommend it unless you have a way to both recoup your cost that is proven and you can track that and attribute that. And you can say, okay. I know for a fact that for every 100 listeners that I get back to the show, I'd make back at least my money, if not more.
Jeremy:And if you don't have that, which is very difficult in podcasting, I think it is likely that you are are throwing a lot of money away.
Justin:And I think if we look outside of podcasting, we can also see this happen. Like, you know, Apple TV and Netflix are spending money on ads. They're spending a lot of money on ads. But you gotta think about what those ads are accomplishing with them and how much volume they're getting. Really, they are trying to remind you that a show exists because maybe Jeremy recommended that show to me in a coffee shop, and then I'm browsing Twitter later and it's like, oh, that's the show that Jeremy recommended me.
Justin:You know? So they have a much more broad funnel. And even for them, it's hard. Yeah. And they have bigger budgets, more sophistication.
Justin:I think for most podcasters, you're just not gonna be able to get to the scale that you need. And also, the way your podcasting funnel works doesn't benefit from the same kinds of things that, you know, Netflix might benefit from when they're doing advertising campaigns. You're just not gonna get that same result. You know?
Jeremy:Yeah. I think, usually, when advertising works well in a for a lot of smaller businesses and creators, it's like you have a high ticket product that you only need to sell 1 to every 1,000 people. And so you know it's gonna pay off. And if you have a proven conversion system, you know your podcast converts people into customers. That is when I would start to maybe think about it.
Jeremy:But even then, I would be much more inclined to actually advertise to get people onto my email list because typically, you can get email subscribers for, you know, $2 or less. And now they're on your email list and now you can actually promote the podcast to them from the email like in the welcome sequence in your ongoing email communications. You already want them on your email list to be able to sell them on your product or service. And so you kinda need to get them there anyway, and it's cheaper, lower friction to do so. Yeah.
Jeremy:So that if if you're gonna pay to advertise, that is probably what I would do instead. And it's actually interesting. I was talking with a, somebody who works in marketing at one of the big podcast networks, just a couple of weeks ago. And they told me that across the whole network, they basically canceled all ad spend on, listener acquisition.
Justin:Oh, wow.
Jeremy:The reason was not financial. Like, they have no problems on the finance side of things. It was that it just didn't work, and it was not worth the the spend that they were doing. And they they kinda said, like, we're just doubling down on cross promotions between our shows and also doing cross promotions with shows outside the network. And so they were going for that, you know, using the leverage they have as a big well known network to be able to line up cross promotions, collaborations, guesting, all that kind of stuff elsewhere.
Justin:There you go. There you go. It's it's back to things that don't scale. Do things that don't scale. There's no silver bullet, and spending money on ads is probably not going to solve your growth problem.
Jeremy:Yeah. So I think we've talked a lot about some of the channels to acquire new listeners. And I think one of the things that we both really believe strongly about podcasting, we've talked about this in previous episodes is still the biggest way that shows grow is word-of-mouth. And the reason we did this episode is because to kick start word-of-mouth growth, you need to get some people in there initially. And not every single person who who who becomes a listener is going to become an advocate for the show.
Jeremy:So you probably need a base of, you know, 500 to 1000 people before you really start to see any kind of word-of-mouth growth. The show also has to be noteworthy and remarkable enough to talk about. But one of the things that we wanna end on here is think about okay. Once you start getting to this point where you are attracting people into the show, you have a kind of base. How do you then kind of convert that audience into advocates and get them to start doing more of that talking about the show, promoting it for you.
Jeremy:I know that you have a a bunch of ideas on this, so I'd love to hear, kinda, what comes to mind for you.
Justin:One thing we talked about before is rewarding the behavior you wanna see more of. So if people are shouting you out on Twitter or LinkedIn, mention them on the show. Say, hey, thanks so much to Podcast Allies for shouting out our show. They they had a really nice write up in their newsletter, and we appreciate it. Yeah.
Justin:Do things like that. Have regular shout outs for people that are helping to spread the show. Reward the behavior you want to see more of. This could also be highlighting reviews, tweets, blog posts. Blog post links are especially underrated.
Justin:So if somebody, for example, wrote about you, Tina highlighted her 10 favorite real estate podcasts that, you know, you should listen to in 2024. Those lists are amazing. And, if somebody does that for you, thank them. Say thanks so much for for writing that post about us. And that will encourage other people who are your fans to do that for you too.
Jeremy:Yeah. That phrase, reward the behavior you wanna see more of, was kind of a a light bulb moment for me when I heard it years ago. And it was something that in my old newsletter, Creative Wayfinding, when it was small, I one of the things that I very intentionally did was at the top of every newsletter. So right beneath the masthead, every single issue I would go through and I would, link to everybody who had kind of commented with a nice comment or shared something on Twitter. That could be just a Twitter post that they retweeted or something about the newsletter.
Jeremy:And I shouted out. I made sure everybody could see it. First thing up top that like, hey, here's all the people who are supporting me in some way, and I wanna give you some backlinks as well. And it was really interesting that a lot of people commented on that over time. And like part of it was strategic.
Jeremy:I was like, I do wanna encourage more of this, but part of it was, like, this was a newsletter for creatives and creators. And so everybody was working on cool stuff who was a part of my newsletter. And I was like, I do genuinely also want more people to know about all these other awesome people. And it was something that, like, the more I did it, the more I got. And, like, there were some weeks where there was lulls and there wasn't that much to to shout out.
Jeremy:But for the most part, there was dozens of things that I could promote other people for each and every week. And the thing that I really did is I went out of my way to find stuff. I was like, I wanna reward the tiniest little action of somebody some supporting me. It doesn't need to be a huge thing. But if, you know, I would guess it on shows, I would I would put that out there.
Jeremy:Or if somebody just like wrote a nice little comment on Twitter that wasn't even like sharing something but I thought was nice, I would like reward that as well. And so this is something that it does work and it becomes a spy wheel that the more you do it, the more you get. And, that can really seed some of the buzz around your show. Create more conversation around it out in public, which ultimately attracts more people to it.
Justin:Totally. You can get really creative with these. For example, introduce some listener challenges or games. What I thought of was, hey folks, take a selfie of yourself listening to the podcast, post it with the episode you're listening to, and tag us on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. And just like create a movement or a challenge that people are like, okay, I'm gonna this is one small way I can, participate.
Justin:You could also make it, not a challenge, but just a prompt. Hey, folks. We would love to see you listening to the show. Where are you right now? Are you at the dishwasher?
Justin:Are you outside walking your dog? Are you in the car? If you have a moment and it's safe to do so, take out your phone, take a selfie, post it to social media, and tag us. We would love to see these, and we are going to highlight them in future episodes. It's an experiment worth trying.
Justin:And one, it gets listeners involved. But on the other hand, all of a sudden, you get all these people posting about your show and saying, I'm listening to the show right now. Check it out. You know?
Jeremy:Yeah. I think one of the the best it's it's a little bit unattainable for most people, but My First Million did this where they did a kinda clip contest where they made the video for their podcast freely available and encourage their listeners to chop it up into engaging TikTok clips. And they offered I think it was, like, a $10,000 reward. Like, every month, they gave away a $10,000 prize to, like, the best one, the one that got the most views, I think it was. They were essentially incentivizing people to create viral content for them, and the one that got went the most viral won the prize.
Jeremy:And so people are are, of course, trying to to win that. And so, again, this isn't something that everybody can do but astute listeners might, recognize that we have something similar going on with this show where, you know, we we both genuinely do like roasting, podcasts and and helping other people out in that sense. But also, you know, it is a way to for us to get people to leave ratings and reviews for the show, which helps us, and people can submit their shows that way. And we've just got some amazing ratings and and reviews so far, both that are just, like, really nice things that people said and also then submitting their shows. And so it it really feels like a a win win for everybody.
Jeremy:And there is this kind of feedback loop where, like, hey. We get to create more content that not only helps that person but also helps everybody who watches that roast and could say, oh, that actually applies to my show as well. And, also, you know, our show now benefits from more ratings and reviews as well. So there's a kinda flywheel, that we've kinda built in somewhat intentionally, somewhat accidentally out of a, hey. This would be cool if we did that.
Jeremy:How do we get people to submit it? Oh, what if they left a review to do it?
Justin:Yeah. This can be one of the fun things about podcasting is to just creatively think what could we make a part of the show that's a recurring bit that we just keep bringing back, and it's something that people look forward to. It could be as simple as having a listener voice mail section and then highlighting a listener voice mail and then tagging them on social media so they might retweet it. Like, there's all sorts of ways you can do this, and a lot of it will come up organically. As you're in the show, recording the show, think about, oh, what's a recurring bit that would be kind of fun for us and the listeners that we could that might create this flywheel effect that we're talking about?
Jeremy:Yeah. So I think we've, pretty exhaustively covered a lot of the listener acquisition channels here. What are some of your kinda key takeaways from this conversation? What would you kind of, like, leave people with, when it comes to thinking about where they are going out and, kind of building their own discovery engines for their shows?
Justin:To me, the the opportunity is in cultivating community, cultivating relationships, cultivating a network. I think people don't immediately think about that when it comes to marketing, but that's actually one of the highest leverage activities you can do Mhmm. Is build relationships with other people, form a little Telegram back channel, you know, chat group where you're talking to each other all the time. You're commenting, oh, great episode, whatever. And then, hey.
Justin:Do you wanna come and guest on my show, about this topic? Or, hey. I think I could go on your show and really, like, drive this home, bring my audience in because I've been chatting about it. So yeah. I would cultivate community network connections.
Jeremy:Yeah. I think, this has maybe been your advice on every episode so far, the closing advice. So I think we can just maybe just splice this into every future episode. Justin's advice, focus on community relationships, and you're gonna be fine. And I I, you know, I think that I actually it's probably worth drilling that in each and every episode because I think it's just true.
Jeremy:And I think you and I have both benefited from that in our careers and our content has been so community driven and network driven. It not in the sense of, like, a podcast network, but our personal networks where we have just made friends with people whose work we admired. And this is actually, like, we're a great example of this because I think we each read each other's newsletters and didn't really know that there was the reciprocity, and we both really respected each other. We actually had similar writing and similar ideas. And then our mutual friend, Jay Klaus, who, again, there's, like, another layer of of networking and relationship building, introduced us at Podcast Movement a couple years later.
Jeremy:Again, going back to the the long term nature of this, we kinda started talking about, hey. Maybe we should do something together at that podcast movement in, I wanna say, 2022. And, you know Yeah. Nothing really happened. We kinda talked a little bit here and there for about a year, and then it kinda was like we were both in a place where it's like, okay.
Jeremy:We got the time. We got the bandwidth. We got the idea. Now let's start thinking about this more seriously. And this has just been, like, how every great collaboration for me has ever happened is that I meet someone and I'm like, man, they're cool and I really want to do something with them and I have no idea on what it is.
Jeremy:And then, you know, 6 months or a year or 2 years or 3 years go by and the perfect thing comes into place at the right moment. And you're like, I'm so glad I met that person 3 years ago and actually, like, took the time to nurture that relationship.
Justin:Absolutely. And these relationships also amplify all of these other channels we talked about. Yeah. So it helps once you have a relationship with someone, they're more likely to share your stuff on social media. Mhmm.
Justin:Once you have a relationship with someone, it's more likely you could do a blog post together. Once you have a relationship with someone, you could do a live stream together. These amplify all the other channels that are possible, so that's why they're worth doing. It's an accelerant to have these relationships.
Jeremy:So I think if there's one thing that I would leave people with after this episode on the topic of relationships, we've talked about a bunch of different, listener acquisition channels. So I would say, you know, if there's one that stands out to you that, like, especially if you, you know, you have a ton of website traffic or email list that you haven't converted into podcast listeners, like, focus on that. But on the topic of relationships, what I would really recommend that people do here is you probably got somebody in your mind that you would love to collaborate with someday in the future. Maybe you would love to collaborate with them tomorrow, but that's, you know, probably not the most likely thing. But what I would recommend you do right now is like pause this episode as soon as I finish talking you to you and giving you your instructions and go to whatever social platform that you are connected with that person on or you follow them on and send them a message and just it's pure appreciation.
Jeremy:There is no ask. There is nothing that you are hoping that they will give you. It's just you sending them a message saying, hey. I've never messaged you before but I've always really admired your work and I just, you know, want you to know how much I appreciate the work that you do. Send that message today and who knows?
Jeremy:Like, maybe a conversation comes out of this and you have a little back and forth and maybe that dies out after that. That's fine and that's you kinda have to be okay with expecting that, you know, most of these things are going to go that way. But in my experience, so often it's that that seed is planted early on that then they start to recognize you more when you comment on their stuff in social. And over time, over a few months perhaps, you start to actually develop more of a relationship and and maybe it doesn't. Not everyone will but a few of those will.
Jeremy:And I think it always starts with just like sending a message, letting people know that you appreciate your work and really incredible things can can come out of that tiny act.
Justin:Agreed. And if you end up doing any of that, if you end up trying any of that, let us know. We'd love to hear how you're exploring some of this material, how you're experimenting with your own show. That wraps it up for this episode. If you wanna check out the full report that we've been talking about, go to podcast marketing trends.com/2023.