Podcast Marketing Micro-Lessons For Scrappy Solopreneurs & Creators

1,163 WORDS | READ TIME: 4.4 MIN Hi friends, Good songs are built around a clear, memorable hook. Great songs are built around several. And then there are songs by Taylor Swift. The master of hook writing who brings the craft to another level. Take We Are Never Getting Back Together. In the first 62 seconds, Taylor drops distinct 6 hooks. By my count, the song as a whole has 12, many of them repeating throughout. For Taylor, this was just a warm-up, however. In Shake It Off, she crams 10...

Hi friends, Tonight, my hometown team, the Edmonton Oilers, kick off the final challenge in their quest to claim the Stanley Cup—the NHL championship trophy—for the first time since 1990. The Stanley Cup is generally agreed to be the most difficult trophy to win in North American professional sports. To get this far, the Oilers have slogged through an 82-game regular season, then ground their way through three bruising best-of-seven series against some of the best teams in the league. Almost...

Hi friends, The odds are stacked against you. You don’t have to look far to find stats to prove it. Here are a few when it comes to podcasting: 75% of podcasts don’t make it to episode 10… and half of the ones that do don’t make it to episode 20 The median podcast gets 30 dl/ep… and even a top 1% show only gets ~2,000 dl/ep Rough estimates suggest that perhaps just 1–3% of indie shows even break even on their production costs, let alone make significant income The stats in other creative...

Hi friends, When I first got into podcasting in 2015, growth was easy. Or at least it felt that way. I know dozens of podcasters who launched shows in that era who quickly built up significant audiences around their shows that were—at least by today’s standards—wholly generic and uninteresting. Of course, starting a podcast then was much more difficult than today, but if you could get one up and running, you were off to the races. Around 2018, however, things started to shift. New clients for...

Hi friends, Quick note before we get into today's issue: If you'd like my take on how to design the optimal podcast marketing strategy for your business, I'm looking for a couple of brave volunteers for tomorrow's Podcast Growth Engine Masterclass. If you're a coach, consultant, online educator, author, or service provider and you'd like my help designing your strategy, hit reply and send me the following info: A sentence or two on who your audience is and how you help them Links to your...

Hi friends, At some point, you’ve probably heard some version of the following advice: ✨ “Just listen to your audience and they’ll tell you exactly what to create.” ✨ On the surface, the advice seems sound. And like most widely shared advice, there’s some truth to it. But... like most widely shared advice, there’s a layer of nuance and discernment that's been lost in transmission. And it's precisely that nuance and discernment that makes the advice work. See, because while your audience...

Hi friends, One of the most important concepts to understand about marketing is this: People make decisions based on the information they have available to them. When it comes to sales, the job of our marketing, then, is to supply enough of the right information to our audience for them to see that our offer is right for them. With a captive, engaged audience, we have the runway to deliver large amounts of information over a long (perhaps infinite) timespan. There may be no better delivery...

Hi friends, Why do people listen to podcasts? And more importantly, why do people listen to (and seek out) podcasts like yours? When it comes to marketing our shows, it can often feel like our job is to make or convince people to pay attention and listen to our shows. But look (and listen) closer, and you’ll find that there's something deeper at work beneath your listener's consumption habits. Specifically, that your listeners have a series of needs, desires, and jobs they need done in their...

Hi friends, Picture this: You've been producing your show for a couple years, posting about it regularly on social media, guesting on other podcasts, and running regular collaborations & cross-promos with other shows. In short: You’re doing all the right things. And yet… You’re stuck. While your organic marketing got you a base of listeners, it's no longer having the impact it used to. Faced with this frustrating reality, it's only a matter of time before the question pops into your mind: “I...