✊ You can't beat the system
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Hi friends, Over the last couple of weeks, two friends have made announcements that they’re quitting their long-running podcasts. Both have produced ~100 episodes. Both have very successful businesses. Both are exceptional (and, in fact, professional) marketers and content creators. Both have larger-than-normal podcast audiences. And both cited the same reason for winding down their shows: “The amount of time it takes to create a great show doesn’t justify the ROI.” In both cases, the hosts referenced other projects where they felt their time would have more impact on audience growth. And personally, I wholeheartedly agree. If your goal is to grow your audience, producing a podcast is one of the single worst uses of your time. The reason is that the system of podcasting is not set up to encourage growth. Think about it. If we map out the characteristics of maximally growable content, we might include:
You don’t need to study this list too hard to realize that podcasting as a platform is systemically disadvantaged. Most podcasts, after all, are 30+ minutes, meaning consumers are limited in the number of shows they can sample, let alone consume regularly. While YouTube and Spotify are opening up new discovery features, discoverability in podcasting is still a challenge. Outside of YouTube, most podcast apps don’t optimize episode-level packaging in their UI, making it hard for creators to display Zero-Click Hook thumbnails and custom episode art that grabs new listeners' attention in a feed. On the payoff front, most shows take 20, 40, or 60 minutes to deliver the payoff of the episode… if they manage to deliver one at all. And then there’s shareability, where getting a friend to listen to a show you know they’d love takes months of nagging and personalized episode recommendations. Add it all up, and it’s no wonder that podcasts are hard to grow. Because, once again: The system of podcasting is not designed around growability. And while you can fight against the system, or even fight to change it… In the end, the system will do what it has been designed to do. Sure, there are outliers, shows that grow to tens or hundreds of thousands of listeners. But these most certainly are outliers. Aberrations. Mutant shows that have somehow overridden the source code of podcasting to defy the odds and achieve something less than 1% of shows will ever do. As such, these shows are unreplicable. Which means if you start a show as a top-of-funnel asset with the goal of growing your audience, you’re swimming upstream from the start, and you should be prepared to be disappointed. Both of my friends who are winding down their shows started them with the primary goal of growth. Which meant they were more or less doomed from the start to become the latest in a long line of victims of the system. Sad, but inevitable. Of course... There is another side to this all. Because all of podcasting’s deficits when it comes to discoverability are directly correlated with its significant advantages when it comes to nurturing and converting clients. Namely: Time on Platform — Once you win over a new subscriber, it’s easier to rack up huge amounts of consumption time than on any other platform. Attention Moat — Unlike YouTube and social channels, which are actively trying to get consumers to cycle through to whatever content will hold their attention best (think the YouTube sidebar you see when watching a video), audio podcasting is remarkably (and refreshingly) free of distractions and temptations. Affinity — When it comes to developing trust, affinity, and strong parasocial relationships, podcasting is the undisputed king. Depth — Podcasting lends itself to deeper, more nuanced explorations and discussions than other platforms. Not only does this (often) select for a savvier, higher-value audience, it also allows you to go deeper on demonstrating your thinking, process, and IP, all of which are essential for selling your expertise. Lock In — While podcasting’s high-attention-bandwidth nature makes it difficult to win over new listeners, once you win them over, podcast listeners are incredibly loyal to their regular shows to the point it becomes hard to knock their regular shows out of the space they’ve carved out in their life. Which presents us with a very different map. And makes it very clear how podcasting should be deployed in your marketing ecosystem. Not as a growth channel. But as the place you funnel everyone to to rapidly build trust, earn buy-in, demonstrate your expertise, and prime for your sales process. As a channel that churns out clients and cash with just a few hundred listeners. Because this is what podcasting is systemically designed to excel at. And unlike chasing growth, it’s an outcome that is entirely predictable. Controllable. Engineerable. Personally, I start every podcast with the assumption that zero people will discover me and my work through it. Some will, of course, but I don’t need them to for the show to be worth doing. Take Killer Concept, a show that is almost wholly undiscoverable… But has now driven more than $50k from a single episode. Hmm. Back to my friends who’ve recently quit their shows, if ROI is measured in audience growth, quitting the shows to focus on YouTube and other channels is absolutely the right decision. But if ROI was measured in actual clients and cash… I suspect there was a version of their shows that would have paid for themselves tenfold. And might have made it the obvious choice to continue the shows indefinitely. It would have taken a different approach—to their overall marketing strategy as well as their podcast strategy, show concept, and episode engineering. But bolt a small but mighty Conversion Accelerator podcast onto an external discovery platform, and you’ve got the recipe for a client-generating machine. By working with the external systems you’re plugging into. Rather than fighting a losing battle against them.
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