How to Grow Your Podcast: A Podcast Marketing Master Class with Jeff Umbro of The Podglomerate

Podcast Bestie, the Podcast

Episode 11 Show Notes

Guest: Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of The Podglomerate

Host: Courtney Kocak, Podcast Bestie founder

Hello Besties! We’re all here because we want to know how to grow our podcasts and today’s episode is a banger in that department. We’re getting a podcast marketing master class from Jeff Umbro of The Podglomerate. He’s going to teach us all about their five tiers of audience development and some case studies for how to apply them. And guess what, Besties? Before Jeff was spending millions on podcast marketing, he got his start as a podcast listening addict and indie podcaster like so many of us.  

Watch the video version of Jeff’s interview on YouTube.

If you missed the last episode, check out Podcast Like a Motherf*cker with Emily McElwreath (& Cheryl Strayed!).

Thanks to Michael Castañeda for mixing and mastering this episode. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @plasticaudio.

And thank you to Matt Gilhooly for fine-tuning the video and creating the social media assets for this episode. Follow him on Twitter @theliftshiftpod.

A big thanks to our BFFs for sponsoring this episode:

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I’ve also got a FREE promo opportunity for the Besties: Leave a five-star rating with a review on Apple Podcasts, email me a screenshot with your name and the name of your podcast, and you’ll get a free shout-out on the next episode.

Thank you to the following Besties for their reviews:

  • Ashley Hamer Pritchard of Taboo Science - Every episode dives into a different societal taboo to understand the science that makes it tick, the reasons we don't talk about it, and the impact that has on society at large.

  • Taylor Faust of Sisters Assembled - Two sisters discussing the latest and greatest in Marvel!

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TRANSCRIPT (This is a rough AI-generated transcript for immediate accessibility, please excuse any mistakes.)

[00:00:03] Speaker 1: Hi. My name's Jeff Umbro. I'm the founder and CEO of the Podglomerate. [00:00:06]

[00:00:07] Speaker 2: Hey podcast, Besties. Welcome back to the show dedicated to making your podcast the Best it can be. I'm Courtney Hoh. Zach, your belief in helping you grow and monetize your show. And listen, we are all here because we want to know how to grow our podcast, right? Well, this episode is a banger in that department because today we are getting a podcast marketing masterclass from Jeff Rowe of the Pod Agglomerate. We are going to learn all about their five tiers of audience development plus some interesting case studies for how to apply them. And guess what? Investors? Before Jeff was spending millions on podcast marketing, he got his start as a podcast listening addict and indie podcaster. Like so many of us. [00:00:56][48.2]

[00:00:57] Speaker 1: I got started in a weird way. I was a book publicist back in 2014 ish, and I was obsessed with podcasts. I'd been listening to shows like This American Life since I was in high school, and I actually started a show with a friend called Writers Who Don't Write where we would interview authors about their lives or careers and the one story that they could never tell. [00:01:18][21.4]

[00:01:19] Speaker 2: Like, what year is this? [00:01:20][0.8]

[00:01:20] Speaker 1: This is like, I believe, 2014 through 2016, give or take. I might be a little. [00:01:25][4.1]

[00:01:25] Speaker 2: Off, but still early podcasting. [00:01:26][1.1]

[00:01:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, it was around the time cereal came out. Like I remember I had red hot pot for the first time in doing the research to create the show. And, and it's so funny, like back in the day it was a very different newsletter than it is now. But yeah, it was super fun. I loved it. I had an excuse to like meet a lot of my literary idols and it was a good excuse to spend more time with the friend that I was recording it with and just fun. And then I realized through the process of this that like there was a million ways that I could actually make money on it, you know, like meeting these authors and bringing them into the PR firm that I worked at or, you know, in some ways were selling ads, even though it was a pretty small show at the time. And yeah, that that was the first time that I really experimented with podcasting and I fell in love with it and that was all she wrote. [00:02:12][44.9]

[00:02:12] Speaker 2: And then so in that process of trying to sell your own ads, you started what became pop glamor, right? [00:02:20][7.7]

[00:02:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, in a roundabout way, yes. [00:02:22][1.8]

[00:02:23] Speaker 2: And explain and give us a CliffsNotes on how that went down. [00:02:26][3.1]

[00:02:27] Speaker 1: Basically, I couldn't get a job making podcasts for anyone else, and I determined that I was ready for a career change, that I wanted it to be podcasting. So I went and I did a couple of job interviews and everybody was basically they saw me as a hobbyist, which I was, and I really did not have any like deep knowledge of the industry, although I had been, you know, annoying all of my friends by obsessing over the industry. So long story short, I couldn't get a job, so I just decided to start my own thing. I was really lucky. I had, in hindsight, a very tiny savings account that let me quit my job and spend like six months doing this. If I could go back in time, I, I don't think I would have trusted myself to do it. But I got lucky. I got a couple of great clients early on, and my idea initially was let's bundle a bunch of shows together that are all a little bit small, try and package them together to sell to advertisers. And it worked to an extent, but I realized why places like advertise casts like are so technology heavy just makes things a little bit easier to actually manage. So we moved into the production side of things and then the audience growth side of things. And fast forward to today and the company has nine employees full time. We're working with some of the biggest podcasts on the planet. We love what we do. It's super fun and it is a far cry from in my writers who don't write days, but I still miss it. [00:03:51][84.2]

[00:03:51] Speaker 2: So though so many people started with our little indie show that led them into the industry. So today, how do you work? You work with clients in different ways, So explain some of those ways that you work with people. [00:04:03][11.2]

[00:04:03] Speaker 1: Sure. So the three major things that we do today are production, audience growth and monetization. So on the production front, we are a work for hire production firm that works with folks like A&E, Lifetime, the History Channel. We also produce our own content. We just published our first owned and operated like truly Original narrative series back in August called Missing Pages. We also sell ads on behalf of third parties, including folks like PBS, the World Surf League Radio, and, you know, a handful of our own shows. In that context. We represent about 70 different podcasts, you know, direct sales, agency sales, programmatic sales. And then really like our meat and potatoes of the business is our audience growth initiatives. And we focus on publicity marketing, cross promotion, pitching the podcasting apps, paid acquisition. So we do that on behalf of 20 or 30 different partners, some really smart. Publishers, some really large ones. And our entire mandate is how do we grow these audiences in a really smart, efficient and affordable manner. [00:05:11][68.1]

[00:05:12] Speaker 2: So like on the monetization side, you know, people are always wondering how many downloads do I need to join a network or whatever? What are your kind of minimums? I know you're looking at different things in terms of fit, but what can people kind of expect? [00:05:27][15.3]

[00:05:28] Speaker 1: There are just so many variables that like really factor into everything. If I twist my arm and I'm forced to give an answer, 40,000 monthly total downloads is really where it becomes worth doing based on like the the revenue that will receive from it. But it really so much depends on like what genre are you publishing, How frequently are you publishing? Is it like a three minute daily show versus a ten minute, you know, weekly show versus an hour long interview show that publishes a couple of days a week? Like, are you doing dynamically inserted ads versus back then, what kind of CPM are you looking for? But really, where it makes sense is at the 40,000 download a month number. And even that, like there's a lot of factors that are involved there. So like we have our formula and it's not a difficult one to come up with. Everybody has their own version, but on average you're going to see like a 25 to $35 CPM for an ad spot based on the genre or the advertiser that you're working with. You can just plug that in in say like how many ads do I have? How many downloads a month do I have? What's the overall consumption rate of an episode? Because if you have 50,000 downloads a month, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to serve 50,000 metros a month. [00:06:40][72.6]

[00:06:41] Speaker 2: Totally. [00:06:41][0.0]

[00:06:42] Speaker 1: So it's it's a pretty simple math problem. But yeah, 40,000 is a number if you're going to twist my arm on it. [00:06:48][5.6]

[00:06:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, that lines up with what a lot of people say about like 10,000 an episode as a minimum or something like that. Private Parts Unknown is part of the Pleasure Podcast Network, and we just had a little meet up. And I wanted to ask you about is there some economic uncertainty that's having an effect on ad buys right now? And yeah, someone just threw out like $20 CPMs or the new $25 CPMs. And I was like, What? [00:07:14][26.0]

[00:07:16] Speaker 1: The short answer is yes. And I don't know when anyone is going to be listening to this versus when this is released. And, you know, we're recording at the end of April in 2023. Right now, the ad market has been soft over the last few months. Basically, like towards the end of Q4, it started to really become apparent. A lot of that has to do with some macroeconomic issues. You know, the economy is depending on who you ask, doing great or not so great. But ultimately, the numbers are a little soft right now. And if you want to, like go for like a bigger buy, your often going to have to lower your CPMs because you're competing with a lot of people who are also doing that. But the the longer version of that answer, which I'll keep very short, is it really depends on what your show is like, what your past relationship to advertisers consists of. Like has your show historically been able to perform and convert to new buyers and agencies? Pay attention to that. They have their own math problems that they're working out on their end. So there are a lot of shows that are able to kind of keep their CPMs where they are. There are quite a few shows that are having to lower them, hopefully for a temporary basis. So I don't know that I would say that it's the new like average CPM, but for some shows it is the new average CPM for right now. [00:08:33][77.8]

[00:08:34] Speaker 2: For right now, yes, let's definitely add that caveat. So I think the perfect marriage between, you know, advertisers love baked in ads. Right. And, you know, it's better for shows usually, Ted do dynamic insertion over the long term. So I think what would be the perfect marriage would be having a sponsored by shout out for especially for chat style shows at the beginning and end of the show. And you buy that along with a mid dynamically inserted mid role. But the middle expires like that is going away after 90 days or whatever your contract says. But the shout out lives forever, but you pay like a much higher premium for that. What do you think? [00:09:24][50.4]

[00:09:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't think that there's a wrong way to do this. I think there's a lot of people who have done experiments on this over the years. There's a show called The Adventure Zone, which is from the Macro Brothers and the Maximum Fund Network. And I'll be honest, I haven't listened to the adventures on in a few years, but historically they did this thing. I think they called it the Jumbotron, and it was a big like fan show with a cult following. So I would call in and email them or pay a hundred bucks or whatever, and they would do a shout out on the Jumbotron for my brother's birthday or whatever it was. And that's like a baked in ad. That was super relevant to the audience of that show. I'm sure you could do something very similar with like a more formal or traditional advertiser, and they would keep that in there forever. You know, it was all baked into the episode. I think that there is a world where you can do any number of things here. You can, you know, reserve the poster, only the pre-roll for baked and spy. You can use one or more of the medals for dynamic. I personally don't do that for our shows only because it becomes like an administrative nightmare. If you're doing different styles for each of the shows, but then to your point, there's also the idea of a fake to an ad where you basically run a dynamically inserted ad. But rather than looking at like an impression threshold, you timestamp that so it'll expire after 90 days or whatever you want to do could be a year. And then eventually it opens up the back catalog for more dynamic insertion. That's another way that you can kind of like. [00:11:00][94.6]

[00:11:01] Speaker 2: Split the base sorta. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I think especially for smaller shows, those kind of like, you know, offering a baked in and whatever because you're doing more bespoke things with your advertising anyway. [00:11:14][13.8]

[00:11:16] Speaker 1: Like. [00:11:16][0.0]

[00:11:17] Speaker 2: Hey, besties, I want to tell you about our season one sponsor. It is Mo Pod and they have been such an excellent partner. It has exceeded my wildest expectations trying out some of their products on the back end and it's helped me reach a ton of new listeners. I have over 40 k downloads. That is quadruple my season one goal and has helped me monetize the show. And guess what? You can do it too, because they have a self-serve product. So here's the deal Boebert is an effective, targeted way to promote your show. It's already trusted by industry giants like Condé Nast, Iheartmedia and the HubSpot Podcast Network. And that's because it works. But nobody isn't just for the big guys. Mobile Boost is perfect for indie podcasters like us. And it's actually been my favorite paid advertising experiment to date. I've used it on all my shows and you can try it for just $100 plus, If you are a bestie, you get 10% off with the link in the description. I love hearing from you guys when you try it out, so give it a try and let me know what you think. So let's talk about your five tiers of audience development. You want to break those down for the besties? [00:12:34][76.2]

[00:12:35] Speaker 1: Sure. I love the name, by the way. Oh. [00:12:37][2.4]

[00:12:38] Speaker 2: But. But. Yeah. [00:12:39][1.6]

[00:12:40] Speaker 1: Yeah. So I come from book publicity and it always struck me as kind of funny that the publicity team at that publishing firm that I worked at sat apart from the marketing team because so many of the things that they were doing overlapped and were so complementary to one another. And I get it like it's just the way it developed over the years and it makes a lot of sense to kind of silo off those teams. But what happened as a result? I haven't worked in publishing for a decade, so I don't know if this is still the case, but in my experience, like there is a little bit of a separation of doing one of these initiatives which would in theory help to improve another. But the different folks at the company weren't really talking to each other. So there's a lot of gaps in that. So one of the things that I came to podcasting trying to do was to figure out a way to bridge that gap for the people that we work with. So we developed what is called the five tiers of audience development. It's not unique. I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with this, but it is publicity marketing, cross-promotion, pitching, the podcasting apps and paid acquisition to break each of those down for just a second. Publicity is the idea of trying to place reviews, interviews, features a list of shows surrounding a certain topic in a different media property, whether that's a website, a newspaper, a magazine, a TV show, a blog, whatever. And we do that by drafting a bunch of press materials and coming up with a targeted list and who we're trying to reach, which is we call it a media pipeline. Everybody is a little different. They're the marketing initiatives as we see them involve, like how do we command your owned and operated properties and how do we track the attribution on these things. So website, newsletter, social media, if you have an app or a live event or something like that, and you can even extend this to like a Reddit AMA or core session or guesting on someone's newsletter or something like how do you take these things that you're already engaging a piece of your audience and convert those to listeners of your podcast? And then how do you track if this is effective and how can you continue to iterate on that to make it more effective or stop doing the things that are working? So we have a bunch of strategies that we've developed over the years to help with each of these things, and most of the attribution is done with things like charitable or pod sites, smart links, smart promos, etc. But we also have a little bit of of knowledge when it comes to like Google Analytics and that kind of thing. The third tier is what we call cross-promotion. Most of your listeners are probably very familiar with this because of some of your past episodes, but there is the idea of interviews on other shows that are similar in nature Fee Drops. So publishing an episode of your show on another show and audio across promos. So I will read an ad for your show. You read not for my show. We'll figure out what kind of swap make sense. The fourth tier app pitching or retailer merchandizing it's the same idea is like you walk into a bookstore and you see a table in the front of the room with a bunch of books on it. That's actually oftentimes paid in a bookstore. Most really? Yeah, it's called a co-op. And the publishers are spending like 100 grand or whatever to put. Stephen King's book is like one of the displays on the airport bookshelves. So that's not always the case. Like, there's plenty of these things that are curated by like real people, but oftentimes it's paid. So when it comes to like Apple podcasts, Spotify, pocket casts, tune in, a lot of that occasionally is paid, but most of it not on Apple or Spotify or anything. But for the most part, that stuff is curated by real people and you can build up relationships and pitch them to try and get your show featured. New Noteworthy Carousel, you know, a collection of certain topics. And there's also the idea of like the algorithmic selections. So in Apple, if I go on, you know, podcast Bestie, it might show me James Cridland podcast or if I start typing in podcast on Spotify, you may be one of the first results. So there is a lot of different ways in which you can kind of I don't want to say this in a nefarious way, but like manipulate those algorithms in different ways that you can pitch your show to be featured in like really smart ways. Like if you have a show on climate change or the outdoors, you can pitch it for like an Earth Day feature or something, and then the fifth tier would be paid out. [00:17:07][266.5]

[00:17:07] Speaker 2: On one second. What's give us one example of a way you could manipulate the algorithm for the good? Yeah. [00:17:15][7.6]

[00:17:15] Speaker 1: Oh, I'm happy to. So as I understand it, one of the ways in which Spotify shows the results of a search function is they're actually going to. Prioritize the shows that are being searched the most frequently on their app. So if you if they see that like 10,000 people have typed in CONAN O'Brien, oh, then they're going to like prioritize that when people are searching like the letters C or C, O or whatever. So there's a lot of different ways that you can get smart about that. This doesn't so much work anymore, but historically. [00:17:50][35.2]

[00:17:51] Speaker 2: Is you better tell you, I guess, Spotify right now. Okay, go on. [00:17:57][5.7]

[00:17:57] Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's a great thing to do, honestly, Like start your next newsletter with that. But I think that this one doesn't work so much anymore. But like years ago, we had a show that was it was a technology show, and they did an episode about Elon Musk and they named it Fly Me to the Moon. So. [00:18:13][15.5]

[00:18:13] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah. [00:18:15][1.4]

[00:18:15] Speaker 1: We got tons of Spotify downloads for people that were mistaking it for the Frank Sinatra song. So I haven't really seen that recently. But I guess the idea is basically like you can echo or optimize your show for these kinds of searches. And then the fifth bucket would be paid acquisition, which I know your listeners and followers are very familiar with, but we break that down into five buckets as well. [00:18:39][24.2]

[00:18:40] Speaker 2: Ooh, yeah. [00:18:40][0.3]

[00:18:41] Speaker 1: So there's the idea of in-app purchases, which you're doing already with Castro and Overcast and some others. There's the idea of audio promos. So you're basically buying like advertising on existing podcasts to feature your show, like. [00:18:57][16.2]

[00:18:57] Speaker 2: Directly or through Buzz Sprout or something like that. [00:19:00][2.7]

[00:19:00] Speaker 1: For the audio ads, there's a bunch of different ways to do it. There's like marketplaces that you can go to such as Gumball or advertise cast or something where you can actually carry and select the shows that you want to purchase and add on. There's also like programmatic marketplaces where you can do demographic targeting. Candidly, I don't love doing that because I find that it's not as efficient or effective, though I have seen it work well. And then you can also go directly to the publishers and purchase the spots through insertion orders and that kind of thing. And we do quite a bit of that. There's also social media advertising which has its uses, but I generally don't think it's very valuable for promoting a podcast. There is the idea of buying spots in email newsletters, which is really valuable. And then there's a bucket that we call miscellaneous, which I would put something like Mo Pod in because it kind of merging a few different like techniques there and pod roll or swap stack, which are some newer platforms that are popping up. And like a Google display ad I would probably put in that bucket. So those are the five buckets of audience growth or distribution that the AGGLOMERATE uses, and we incorporate some version of all of those into each of our campaigns. [00:20:17][77.2]

[00:20:20] Speaker 2: Hey, besties. Just a quick word from one of our classifieds sponsors, the Label Free podcast. To live your best life, live label Free joined DNA on her journey, welcoming dynamic guests on her show who embody living label free. She connects with entrepreneurs, authors, artists, coaches, and all wearing tremendous value to her audience. Listen to the Label Free podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. And you can also watch the show on YouTube. Diana looks like she is crushing it over there and you can buy a sponsorship to podcast bestie podcast BuzzFeed.com, slash advertise. Okay, now back to the show. You mentioned Missing pages, which was an original show for you guys, and it sounds like you got to experiment with a lot of stuff and stuff you wouldn't normally do, you know, with your clients if you didn't know how it worked. So can you give us a couple examples from that of things that you tried that you didn't know if they were going to work and they wound up working? [00:21:22][61.7]

[00:21:23] Speaker 1: So we missing pages of the show about a literary underworld, if you want to put it that way. But it's basically a true crime show for the publishing community. We we take all of these things that have happened historically in the industry and kind of revisit them through the lens of what we look at today as opposed to, you know, some of these stories are ten, 20, 30, 40 years old. So it's not I always hesitate to call it a true crime because it's an easy way to explain it, but it's not totally accurate. But our community of listeners that we wanted to reach were like readers, people in the publishing industry, people super into like audio docs and narrative style shows and that kind of thing. So so we definitely targeted a lot of the shows that we found overlap and some of the things that we did that I thought were a little bit unique that we don't always get to do with some of our clients shows would include we did a partnership with Ebro FM, which is an audio book distributor where we had our hosts, Beth and Patrick, recommend a bunch of audiobooks and. Liberal FM published a blog about that, and then they sent that out to this big massive email list that they had of librarians of some of their customers, of people who work in the publishing industry. We bought a bunch of ads from tech talkers who are big on book talk. [00:22:44][81.1]

[00:22:44] Speaker 2: Oh, really? That's smart. Yeah. [00:22:46][1.9]

[00:22:47] Speaker 1: Yeah, it was super fun and interesting. But the one quirk of like the influencer marketing campaigns are that it's super time consuming for all of the reasons that you might expect. There are agencies that will do it for you, but the cost is usually pretty prohibitive. So we don't usually spend tons of time there. But in this instance, like the host of the show and many of the subjects of the show had such large social media followings that we really wanted to hammer in on that and make sure we took advantage. And it worked really well. Like we got a lot of engagement and traction and with the right kinds of people, I think that we got a bunch of like influential listeners because of stuff like that, because we did a really good job of targeting who we were reaching out to, and. [00:23:35][48.7]

[00:23:36] Speaker 2: Then they do the marketing for you, right? [00:23:37][1.5]

[00:23:37] Speaker 1: That's that's the dream. [00:23:38][0.7]

[00:23:39] Speaker 2: Yeah. [00:23:39][0.0]

[00:23:40] Speaker 1: And then one other thing that we did, we did many things. We're actually working on a case study that will publish at some point and send it your way. But one of the other things that we did was that we partnered with Apple Books, so we actually had Bethan, who in her own right, is a super well-known and renowned book reviewer for folks like the L.A. Times, The Washington Post and NPR. She curated a list of her book recommendations that were associated with each episode of the show. So we went to Apple and said, Hey, do you guys want to do a list of this in your storefront? And you can promote, like the audiobook versions of each of these books or something? So there was actually like a big carousel in the Apple Books banner space that was promoting Pear fans book choices, and that was driving a lot of traffic back to the podcast. [00:24:30][49.4]

[00:24:31] Speaker 2: Oh, I bet they loved that. So I just talked to Lauren Purcell about co-marketing, you know, and how to approach that with these apps. So that's a really smart way because you're helping them. That was, I'm sure, part of the strategy with it, right? You're helping drive traffic to them, too. [00:24:49][18.3]

[00:24:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the goal. Lauren's amazing, by the way. Everybody should subscribe to her newsletter and follow her on social and whatever. But I think that it really depends on like, what your goals are and who you're talking to and what you're trying to do. Like somebody like Apple Books, like they're doing a thousand things at once. And anything that we're going to do to help them out is not really going to move the needle. Don't be wrong. Like we still did a lot like we had a dedicated episode in the feed. We did some social media driving traffic back to Apple Books. We had a big email newsletter blast. We did a PR push. But ultimately, like this was part of a bigger collaboration where Apple, I think, was interested in like building a bigger ecosystem between all of their different properties. So this one was pretty unique when it comes to like how you can offer value back to these different platforms. I think that oftentimes the way you should be thinking about it is like, what are the listeners going to be interested in and how can you make the curators at these different platforms jobs easier by like kind of forecasting that idea and sending it their way? So if you have a basketball podcast like the NBA playoffs are happening right now, so you can pitch a collection on like sports podcasts or basketball podcasts to tune in or Apple podcasts or whatever. And you can start to see trends in this too. If you open like every Monday religiously, I'll open every different podcasting app and I'll just see what they're promoting. And you'll notice all the time that or at least over time you'll notice that there's a lot of collections that they recycle year over year and just update with new shows. So then you can start to have like a calendar in your own head as to like, okay, next year they're going to do something for like a month or they're going to do something for World Book Day. And you can start to anticipate that and should have a know early and often and that kind of thing. [00:26:45][114.4]

[00:26:45] Speaker 2: That is definitely a bucket I need to improve on. I just never want to submit. I submit every so often and I feel so defeated about it that I do. I just don't want to resubmit. So that's like definitely an area for improvement. [00:26:59][13.9]

[00:26:59] Speaker 1: Or the one thing I'll say there is that, you know, depending on which numbers you're looking at, there's anywhere from like 280000 to 5 million podcasts out there. Many of them are also submitting and Apple's storefront, you know, if I'm being optimistic, they're going to feature like 3000 shows the entire year. So like, you're already kind of starting off with they're only ever going to. Feature like 1% of the shows that are being pitched. So it's tough. And I say that basically just to say, like, you know. [00:27:33][33.3]

[00:27:33] Speaker 2: If anyone feels bad, Yeah, but. [00:27:36][2.1]

[00:27:37] Speaker 1: For you and your listeners, you know, it's like not everyone's going to be able to get that. And and it's not going to be because of the quality of the show. It might just be because of a thousand other variables that you have no idea like are happening behind the scenes. [00:27:48][11.7]

[00:27:49] Speaker 2: Totally. But I think you can have some strategies to like make sure you're new and noteworthy and like, you know, optimizing for the places that you can get featured. [00:27:57][8.2]

[00:27:58] Speaker 1: And that is correct. Yes. [00:27:59][0.9]

[00:27:59] Speaker 2: So let's talk about paid a little bit. You know, I've done some experiments with Mo Pod and Castro and Overcast, and I'm doing more, more in progress now. So give us the lay of the land as far as options that you like. [00:28:13][13.9]

[00:28:14] Speaker 1: Sure. I think that some of the some of the platforms that we've seen a lot of success with would be like podcast addict or podcast Republic. Honestly, the interesting thing with a lot of these different promotions are some of these apps are really small and that's reflected in the cost of like what these promotions are. But it's kind of funny to look at because you might spend 100 bucks on podcast Republic or 500 bucks on podcast Addict or whatever. They all have a range of pricing and genres that you can target and different like promotions that they'll do and styles of promotion. And that's a good thing because it allows for people to be flexible and use like a sliding scale of costs and budget. But I think one of the things that a lot of people do or should do is pay attention to like the overall genetic makeup of these apps. And what I mean by that is Overcast is traditionally an app that, like a lot of techies are using, and that has to do with like who founded the company and a lot of their policies on like privacy and like how long it's existed in that kind of. [00:29:23][68.4]

[00:29:23] Speaker 2: Thing, just the way that he serves the ads. Yeah. [00:29:25][2.7]

[00:29:27] Speaker 1: Exactly. And that's the thing. It's like, you know, an everyday hobbyist podcaster might not know that. So a lot of that comes with trial and error. But I find historically that like some of the tech or business oriented podcasts will perform better over there. [00:29:41][14.0]

[00:29:41] Speaker 2: Oh, that makes sense. [00:29:42][0.5]

[00:29:42] Speaker 1: Yeah. And Podcast Addict is an interesting one because and I might be wrong here, so forgive me if I am, but like that's not an app that exists on, on iOS. So it's only Android users that are using that app. So like, I'm sure that there's something that you can do or figure out based on your show that will help you like curate what that promotion will be. Something also that I saw that I was like fascinated by with Overcast is what I call contextual advertising. And it's the idea of like when you drive down the road and you see a billboard that's advertising McDonald's, it's not going to just say like, Hey, McDonald's is a mile away. It might say like, Are you hungry yet? [00:30:22][40.1]

[00:30:23] Speaker 2: Uh huh. [00:30:23][0.2]

[00:30:24] Speaker 1: So like, I've seen people on Overcast will be promoting like some serialized fiction show or something, and the ad itself isn't talking about the show at all. It's saying like, are you bored on your road trip? Give us a try or something. And that's a silly example. That's not what it said exactly. But you get the idea. [00:30:43][19.0]

[00:30:44] Speaker 2: It's not just like this is a relationships podcast. Tune in on Tuesdays or whatever. Yeah. [00:30:49][4.8]

[00:30:49] Speaker 1: Instead it might say like Valentine's Day is coming up. Find out how to make your spouse happy. [00:30:54][5.0]

[00:30:54] Speaker 2: Yes. [00:30:54][0.0]

[00:30:55] Speaker 1: So there's a lot of interesting ways that people are running these kinds of promotions that I think are like pushing the threshold a little bit. And it's it's been fascinating to watch. But I think to your initial question is to like, what platforms should people be paying attention to? I, I don't know if you're already running these tests. Forgive me if you are. [00:31:15][20.0]

[00:31:15] Speaker 2: But no, please. [00:31:16][0.5]

[00:31:16] Speaker 1: Podcast addict is a good one. Pocket casts is great. And there's a new one that we're experimenting with now that I think is kind of great. I don't have any data to report on it because we're still in the middle of our testing, but it's called swap stack, so. Oh yeah, swap stacks. [00:31:32][15.1]

[00:31:33] Speaker 2: I don't know. [00:31:33][0.2]

[00:31:33] Speaker 1: It it's basically a marketplace for newsletter advertising. [00:31:36][3.3]

[00:31:37] Speaker 2: Oh, I should be in there. [00:31:38][1.3]

[00:31:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, you should absolutely be in there. And, and it's not just podcast like newsletters, it's it's all kinds of newsletters. So if you have a show about venture capital or skateboarding or something, then you can go to swap stack and you can find a bunch of shows that have like correlating like editorial principles to whatever you're trying to promote and you can actually choose to do cost per impression or cost per click model. So you can say, I'll pay a dollar per click and it will allow you to cap it out. So you can say something like, I only have 100 bucks to spend, I'll pay a dollar per click. But like if a newsletter gets me more than 100 clicks, I'm not going to pay anything. And it's an auction system. So you propose that. And then the newsletter gets to say yes or no. So yeah, it's super fun. And like what we're seeing so far has been it's it's performing well. I can't speak like in specifics just because I don't have that info yet. [00:32:38][59.3]

[00:32:38] Speaker 2: But also with a market like that where it's an auction, it's kind of hard to nail down. [00:32:42][3.9]

[00:32:43] Speaker 1: Exactly. So but it's it's very promising and I'm excited to play with it. [00:32:47][4.6]

[00:32:48] Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. That sounds like a really good potential experiment. I keep hearing Castbox, which it's just a little bit of an investment. So I'm like, But everybody says it works. What's your thought? [00:33:01][12.7]

[00:33:01] Speaker 1: Castbox is is excellent. So taking one quick step back, one of the things that I always look at is just like the quality and retention of the listeners that you're going to get from these different campaigns. They're all a little bit different. And you know, what I'll say is like an overcast ad might be a little more expensive. And we have, you know, over the years we've bought a lot of different ads. I think at last count, we spent a little over $2 million in the last four years on advertising. And we have all of the data from every campaign that we've ever run. [00:33:33][31.9]

[00:33:34] Speaker 2: So amazing. [00:33:34][0.5]

[00:33:35] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great. We have like a literal spreadsheet with a bunch of filters in it. And so I can actually say like, you know, when you and these are not real numbers, but like pretending like Overcast has for a tech show has like an average of a $7 cost per subscriber, whereas podcast addict has a $4 cost per subscriber or something. And there's a million variables like the art, the copy, you know, the timing, the cadence, all of those things really do matter here. So you have to look at everything with a big grain of salt. So what I'll say about Castbox is that it is consistently the best performing platform to drive total traffic to a podcast by a long shot. [00:34:15][39.7]

[00:34:16] Speaker 2: Do they stick around? [00:34:16][0.6]

[00:34:17] Speaker 1: Most of them don't, but a lot of them do. So like even despite that, you know, you might get 10 to 30% of your audience that actually is is retentive like three months later. But despite that, like they're driving so much traffic to you that you are oftentimes still doing really well there and better than some other platforms. So, yes, it's expensive. Like these campaigns typically start around $3,000 and they can go up to three or four times that in cost. But I think it's it's really valuable both for driving total traffic and also for allowing you to do other things. You know, let's pretend that your show is getting, I don't know, $10,000 a month. It's a weekly show. You're on a castbox campaign. That number goes up to 15,000 downloads a month or $20,000 a month of fake numbers, just like for the point of the example, then all of a sudden you have an extra 50% or 100% of inventory that you can use on cross promotions and that kind of thing. So then you're also using that inventory that you just got from the paid campaign to help grow the show with organic traffic. So there's a lot of different ways that you can like unspool this and think about it, and they're all really cool and exciting. But like at the end of the day, with everything that you do, you just have to like really take a step back at regular intervals and just say like, What am I trying to do here? How am I doing it? Is it working? Should I reassess? [00:35:43][85.5]

[00:35:43] Speaker 2: So I guess, like if, you know, this shows geared towards indie podcasters and if an indie podcaster just had like $500 to spend on their first ad buy, how would you tell them to spend that money? [00:35:56][12.5]

[00:35:57] Speaker 1: Sure, there's a few directions that you can go there. I actually would say try a swap stack because at the very least you're going to get a great experience and understand like more demographic info about your show and how you're positioning it and how it's going to perform. If you want something that's a little bit more certain about getting you some traffic, then I would suggest either like an overcast or a podcast addict, both of which have targeting for like a big broad swath of their listeners and targeting for a very particular category. So like you can choose like comedy or tech or education, so you can like really hammer in on that and both of them are going to give you actually. So either overcast, start at FM slash ads or podcast addict slash ads, and both of them are going to give you a forecast of like what you're going to get for your money. And they're usually pretty accurate. So you can you can literally say, like, if this is telling me that it's going to cost me $300 to get 50 subscribers, then that's a $6 cost per subscription. And then you can say like, is that worth it or is it not? [00:37:04][67.3]

[00:37:05] Speaker 2: I do you find that overcast listeners from I can't run sex ads on there anymore but from my previous experiments they stick around. [00:37:12][7.6]

[00:37:13] Speaker 1: They do. Yeah. We've seen a lot of that over the years and overcast is funny because they I didn't know about the sex ads but I we've tried to buy ads. [00:37:21][8.5]

[00:37:21] Speaker 2: That's a new thing in the last couple of years. It's like. Yeah, I think crypto now sex shows there are a few different categories like cannabis that you just can't advertise. [00:37:31][9.8]

[00:37:33] Speaker 1: Weirdly, I've found that a couple of platforms, to my knowledge, not overcast, but historically there are a few platforms that won't allow like religious podcasts to advertise. Which makes sense given the context, but it like is kind of kind of a funny like line to draw. So but I think that there's a lot of different avenues to do this and the listeners will stick around. You'd have to ask yourself like, is this $500 that I'm going to spend worth what I would get out of this? Or I don't know, could you spend that money on like a production consultation or a new microphone or a new podcast or something? Like? There's a lot of different ways that you guys can look at trying to grow that audience. [00:38:13][40.1]

[00:38:13] Speaker 2: As far as free tactics, you know, collaboration and owned media especially, what are the best ways to spend your time, which is also a limited resource? [00:38:24][10.7]

[00:38:25] Speaker 1: Jodie Deutsch on my team. She's our VP of Marketing and Audience Development. She's brilliant. Has this line that she published for the I think it's the Nieman Lab like future of journalism predictions. I'm probably butchering that, but I it was it was essentially that like all audience growth is relationship building and I've been for a decade now. I have a rule where I will send a minimum of three emails a week or I'm just introducing myself to somebody and yeah, and it's not always because I want something. Often it is, but it's usually just to be blunt. [00:39:04][39.1]

[00:39:06] Speaker 2: Yeah. [00:39:06][0.0]

[00:39:08] Speaker 1: But even so, like so much of this business is just about building community and fostering relationships. And I might send an email to someone and just say like, Hey, the episode that you did last week was awesome, or Congrats on that award, or I love the new art, or even just say like, Hey, how are you? [00:39:25][17.2]

[00:39:26] Speaker 2: Uh huh. [00:39:26][0.1]

[00:39:27] Speaker 1: But I think the key here is that you should build these relationships because hopefully they're genuine and you actually like want to and you want to learn more about these people that you're listening to or reading or whatever. And then when you do have like a big episode that you want to promote or a new show that you're going to launch, you can send it to these folks and it's not going to be so transactional. You're going to be like really genuinely showing them like this new thing that you're working on that you're really proud of, that you want to help bring to a bigger audience. And oftentimes people are going to really respond in a in a good way to that. So I guess one free tactic is just send your three emails, introduce yourself, get to know people, build meaningful relationships, whether you're going to use that like in the future to pitch something or not. [00:40:12][46.0]

[00:40:13] Speaker 2: So I love that. That's great. Okay, so I have a recurring question for season one. I have been asking everyone to audit me. I have three podcasts right now. Too many private parts. Unknown is about love and sexuality around the world. The bleeders about book writing and publishing and business podcast Bestie. So let me know what you think. So what should I be doing? [00:40:38][25.3]

[00:40:39] Speaker 1: My and this is mostly a joke, but I'll say it anyway is, you know, do one instead of three and then you can spend more time on the one. But again, mostly a joke. [00:40:48][9.6]

[00:40:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, I wish I was that. [00:40:51][1.9]

[00:40:53] Speaker 1: I mean, I'm in this. I'm in the same boat. I have 100 projects at any given moment, but, well, first of all, for the Bleeders, email me and we can figure out something to do with missing pages. [00:41:02][8.4]

[00:41:02] Speaker 2: Oh, cool. [00:41:03][0.2]

[00:41:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure there's something fun we can figure out. But again, I don't know which of these platforms that you're already experimenting with, but I would test out swap stock. I think one of the things that and you kind of touched on this in your your last episode about cross platform promotions and I'm totally blanking on her name. She was brilliant. So I'm sorry. [00:41:24][21.2]

[00:41:25] Speaker 2: Anna Van Valen. Yes, Yes. It's about cross media promotions. [00:41:28][2.8]

[00:41:29] Speaker 1: Yes. Sorry, Anna. I love the episode, but I think that we often will do a lot of like cross-platform promotion. So like we mentioned before, we talked about like the Apple books promotion and Libra fam and everything. But even simpler than that, like will often email somebody who has like a similar newsletter or podcast and will offer them a like ad spot on the audio side on our end and ask on their end that they like plug us in their newsletter or something. And if you have the right audience fit in like demographic targeting or whatever, it's often going to be really, really effective. We've done this a few times with Morning Brew, for example, and I mean, you get thousands of people who click through that newsletter and and come back to whatever you're promoting. So so my recommendation for you is to start thinking about newsletters that overlap with yours. And I know. You've done a lot of this already. I've seen them. But like the Laurens, the Earls, the James's of the world, I'm sure that there's something that you can do where you give them a shout out in your newsletter or your audio spot, and in exchange they'll do the same for you And I. Have you already done that? [00:42:39][70.8]

[00:42:40] Speaker 2: A little bit. But you're I know you're totally right. I need to like, leverage my because I have, you know, multiple email lists and I have these different podcasts, like I have audiences to leverage for cross promotions. But I mean, that's why people hire you to do it, right? It's a lot of work. [00:42:56][16.3]

[00:42:57] Speaker 1: That's exactly why. Yeah, it it's so funny. It's we're actually working on like a platform right now that it's going to be like a hybrid podcast newsletter and website that's going to basically like share a lot of these learnings that we've had over the years. And I say we're working on because I've become a perfectionist with this and like don't want to release it until it's ready. And, and now I'm just, you know, convincing myself is never going to be ready. [00:43:23][26.5]

[00:43:24] Speaker 2: But that Beach Boys album, they were like, we can't. [00:43:26][2.3]

[00:43:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I mean, I wish it would be as good as that. But we're that's going to be a way that we basically we're going to try and synthesize a lot of the things that we do and boil it down to something that anybody can do at home. And the ultimate goal is basically to like, bridge the gap between like the guy in his parents basement recording his first podcast at 16 years old and like the CMO of a Fortune 500 company. And who knows if we can do it. But but that's. [00:43:55][28.0]

[00:43:57] Speaker 2: Cool. Anything else in the audit space? More collaborations, more collaborations. [00:44:02][4.8]

[00:44:03] Speaker 1: I would try out swap stack and podcast addict and pocket casts and castbox if you have. And I think with your show I listened to a couple of episodes and I really enjoyed it. I think this is something I'm actually struggling with myself because we're developing a podcast about the podcast space for this platform, but I think it's really tough to figure out how to speak to your peers in this industry because so many people have their own like ideas and agendas about like what they want to know and what they want to share and that kind of thing. And I actually commend you because I think you're doing a really great job of it. But I think the key that you have to solve and that I have to solve and that everybody in the space has to solve is like, how can you make this show applicable to a bigger audience? Because there are only so many people that are podcast nerds like us that want to listen to this stuff. [00:44:55][51.9]

[00:44:56] Speaker 2: Oh, Beyond podcasters podcast bestie. I am finding though there are a lot of people that want to start a podcast, like that's why we have millions of podcasts. There is actually a larger audience of these. [00:45:09][13.6]

[00:45:10] Speaker 1: Oh and their. [00:45:11][0.8]

[00:45:11] Speaker 2: Podcast. [00:45:11][0.0]

[00:45:13] Speaker 1: And they're all amazing people and it's a great audience. And especially because like, you know how to do this so well, like everything you're offering is so valuable and thus the platform becomes a lot more valuable. I don't know. I just think that like at a certain point and again, I am having the same problem here, so I'm just thinking this one through myself. [00:45:31][18.7]

[00:45:32] Speaker 2: But do you think it's offering higher level information or low? Like what are you. [00:45:37][4.8]

[00:45:37] Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't solved this one yet. Like, half of me is like, I want to throw the podcast idea out the window and make it like a media show. But I think that's just a different show. [00:45:45][8.4]

[00:45:46] Speaker 2: You probably could do that though. [00:45:47][1.3]

[00:45:48] Speaker 1: One day. But in terms of. Yeah, in terms of an audit idea, yeah, I think you should really like lean into the idea of like showing your show and think through like the idea of like how people are searching for these topics and like, what questions are asking both Google and Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And there's all kinds of fun quirks. James Cridland of Pod News wrote up an article about a year ago that was pretty fascinating, basically mapped out what each of the different podcasting apps showed in their search results and. [00:46:23][34.6]

[00:46:23] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. [00:46:23][0.3]

[00:46:24] Speaker 1: Yeah. So the only thing that appears in the vast majority of search results for every podcast player is going to be the show title, the episode title and the author tag. So like the show description stuff still incredibly important, especially depending on which platform you're looking at and like your website and everything. But really all of this is going to come down to the title, like how you're framing that and do you put your guest name in the title? Do you pull like a quote or something for what they talked about that's trying to answer a question that somebody might be searching for? Like, what do you do? Who knows? And that's that's your answer to figure out. [00:47:02][37.6]

[00:47:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, I've tried to get a lot savvier and longer really with my episode titles because you got to keyword stuff a little bit. [00:47:09][6.2]

[00:47:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm learning the same thing. [00:47:11][2.0]

[00:47:12] Speaker 2: So my last question for you is a selfish question. Another selfish to selfish questions. So I'm about to try to sell a book and I'm trying to leverage. Thank you. Well, I mean, there's nothing. I got an agent, a very good agent who is well versed in six figure deals. But this is my dream. But what's your advice? Any advice from your book publishing days? I have two proposals. I'm trying to leverage my podcast audience for both because they're both so MI6 related, but one of them is like directly inspired by that podcast. [00:47:46][34.6]

[00:47:48] Speaker 1: I think the publishing world that I was a part of is different than like selling the book. And I honestly, like, I'm. [00:47:55][7.3]

[00:47:58] Speaker 2: In the promotion side. [00:47:59][1.0]

[00:47:59] Speaker 1: Yes, I do have a bird's eye view into that. I was friends with a lot of agents, but the key there is being able to sell yourself. So like the topic of the book matters just as much as like the promotional platform that you've felt for yourself. And I think for something that is so specific on topic, they're like, You have a perfect audience for it. So that's a good thing. So I would grow that audience as much as you can. And so much of like what the promotional vehicle is is about. Like how do you frame it? So for example, like if you got a Webby award, your show is all of a sudden like an award winning podcast. If Lauren Parcells says Podcast Bestie or the sex show is great and like puts it in her Lifehacker article, then all of a sudden you're critically acclaimed. So there's like a funny way of going about it. And and it's all Fugazi for the most part, but it works and people pay attention to it. And from what I can gather, you're already very savvy with all of that stuff. So I'm sure you're doing the right things. [00:48:59][59.5]

[00:48:59] Speaker 2: Perfect. Okay, let's manifest it. Any final words you'd like to leave the masses with? [00:49:06][6.7]

[00:49:07] Speaker 1: Keep doing the stuff that you all love. I think so many people get into podcasting because they think they're going to get rich and famous. And that's great if you. [00:49:15][8.8]

[00:49:15] Speaker 2: Carry a long game, if you ever get that. [00:49:18][2.2]

[00:49:19] Speaker 1: I mean, hey, if you can do it, that's awesome. It's a lot of fun. But I think that the key is really to like, take a step back and look at why you're doing it and like, is this helping you to figure something out or to meet people or to make a small amount of money or, you know, increased business endeavors elsewhere, or because you just enjoy doing it? You know, the answer to that question before you make a show is really like the advice that I would give. [00:49:46][26.3]

[00:49:47] Speaker 2: Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you so much to Jeff, bro. He offered so many juicy examples and sent me off with a lot to think about. And thank you for tuning in to podcast Bestie, bestie and sticking with me until the end. Make sure you check out the last episode with Emily McIlrath about going for it with guest booking. And guess what? Podcast Bestie is now on YouTube, so head over to youtube.com slash at podcast Bestie. To subscribe, you will be joining 25 subscribers as of right now. And you can watch this interview with Jeff again. And there is a previous interview with James Craig live that is up now as well. If you want to brush up on your website and SEO game and podcast, Bestie has been getting some awesome reviews from the podcasting community on Apple Podcasts. There is one from Ashley of the Taboo Science Podcast and Taylor of Sisters assembled both excellent podcasts and I'm putting their links in the show notes, so make sure to look them up. And I got a brand new review. It is from the Friendly podcast Guide. A great way to learn the podcast trade. I love this show. It helps you learn tangible ways for you to grow and perfect your podcast. I highly recommend. Thank you so much to Andy Smiley from the Friendly Podcast Guide for that podcast Bestie Review. And I want to collaborate with you and hear from you, bestie. So if you leave me a five star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts and email it to me, I will give you a free shout out on the show right here next episode. Plus, there is another easy way to get featured on the show. You can just buy a sponsorship at podcast bestie dot com slash advertise that is podcast bestie dot com slash advertise. I have super affordable packages starting at just $30 and check out my other podcast for more of my audio creations. I have private parts unknown, which is about love and sexuality around the world and the bleeders about book writing and publishing. And you can follow me between episodes at Courtney Kozak, that is. K okay. K on Instagram and Twitter, and I send out lots of newsletter exclusives to my besties as well. Podcast Bestie actually started as a newsletter, so make sure you are signed up for Podcast Bestie on Substack. Until next time. Happy podcasting by Bestie. [00:49:47]

TranscriptCourtney KocakTranscript, podcasting, Courtney Kocak, Podcast Bestie, podcast marketing, networking, audience growth