✊ Podcasting used to be a growth channel. It's now something more valuable
|
Hi friends, Podcasting (along with the rest of the world) is in the midst of a rapid shift. A shift in what listeners want from podcasts, how we define podcasts, and how podcasts can best grow your business. This week—the 6-year anniversary of Podcast Marketing Academy—I'm reflecting back on three major shifts in my thinking around and approach to podcast marketing over the past 6 years (and more broadly, the 10+ years I've been working in podcasting). If you missed Part 1, where I broke down the increasing importance of optimizing your show for the Decision Point—when a potential listener discovers a show and decides whether or not to listen—you can find it here. Now, onto shift #2. There was a time—back in the old days, pre-2020—when podcasting was a genuinely effective way to grow an audience. But even then, podcasting has always been a better nurture channel than a growth channel. The simple reason is that when people find a show they love, they spend a lot of time with it... We can think of this as Consumption Concentration, where the total amount of time a typical podcast consumer spends listening to podcasts is distributed among a small number of shows. When it comes to content mediums, there's no question that podcasting has the highest level of Consumption Concentration, which has two consequences for us as Founders and creators. The first is that once we earn a new subscriber, they're more likely than other platforms to spend a lot of time with it, rapidly developing a strong sense of affinity and trust in the process. The second is that because subscribers concentrate their available time on so few shows—shows for which they have a high level of affinity and trust—they have limited bandwidth or desire to sample new shows. More than a lack of discoverability, this lack of available "shelf space" is what makes podcast growth so hard. In fact, studies have shown that the typical podcast listener consumes just three regular shows. Compare that to TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, where the typical user consumes content from dozens if not hundreds of different creators every single day. As a podcaster, this means that to win a new listener, your show has to displace an existing show they already know, like, and trust. This dynamic is one of the frustrating realities of podcasting. But it’s also podcasting's biggest superpower, especially as a business owner. Because if you can secure one of those slots in a listener’s feed, they're more likely than not to go down the rabbit hole and rack up a whole lot of Time on Platform with you and your ideas. And when it comes to converting clients—especially high-ticket coaching or advisory clients—Time on Platform is the metric you want to optimize for. Because $5k, $50k, and $500k purchases aren't made lightly. The result is that a well-designed show can cut the Average Time to Conversion from 12-19 months (very typical for coaches, consultants, and advisors) down to a matter of weeks. Over the past two years, my three podcasts have reduced my Average Time to Conversion from 18 months down to 8. More clients, faster, in other words, with fewer missed opportunities with perfect-fit leads. As I've observed this change with myself and my clients, my default approach to podcasting has shifted to wholeheartedly embrace this role as a Conversion Accelerator. This shift has been driven by seeing the typical approach—ie. build a big audience and then convert them into clients—fail time and time again. What I've seen succeed, for myself and my clients, is the opposite. Build a highly profitable business with a tiny audience, and then use that cash to accelerate growth and blow up your audience. With the right show and the right offer, the typical coach can build a mid-six-figure business with a show that gets just a few hundred plays per episode. And there's no better medium than podcasting to unlock it. You just need to work with its platform dynamics rather than fight them.
|