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...

1,056 WORDS | READ TIME: 4.0 MIN Happy Monday friends, Last week, I published the 2024 Podcast Marketing Trends Report. The report breaks down the differences in how high-growth and low-growth shows approach creating and marketing their shows. Following up on the report, I've asked some smart podcasting friends to submit short writeups breaking down what stood out to them from the report... And what it means for all of us as podcasters. This first write-up comes from Elissa Craig, Head of...

460 WORDS | READ TIME: 1.7 MIN Happy Friday friends, Of all the many formats you can design a podcast around, none is more popular than the interview. It’s no wonder why. Interview shows (can) require less prep than scripted solo shows and certainly less time & money than narrative shows. And unlike co-hosted shows, if you have an on-air falling out with a guest, you never have to talk to them again! Interviews also allow you as a host to explore diverse ideas and perspectives beyond your own...

611 WORDS | READ TIME: 2.3 MIN Hi friends, I’ll be honest, when I first discovered the median monthly growth rates in last year’s Podcast Marketing Trends Report, I didn’t believe them. In fact, I thought there must surely be a problem with my spreadsheet formula. Or that I was referencing the wrong data. Or that I'd made some kind of stupid mental error that led to this depressingly small number. That number, you may (but almost definitely don’t) recall was 1.62% month-over-month (MOM)...

752 WORDS | READ TIME: 2.8 MIN Hi friends, One year ago (to the day, weirdly), I published the first-ever Podcast Marketing Trends Report. The report was the result of a small, nagging question gone wildly and wonderfully wrong. See, for years, I'd measured the growth of my own and my client's shows, email lists, and businesses in terms of month-over-month growth rate. ie. 3,000 downloads in January → 3,300 in February = 10% Monthly growth rate. The only problem was that I had no idea if the...

404 WORDS | READ TIME: 1.5 MIN Happy Friday friends, Sometimes, one word is all it takes to make or break your podcast. The right word, in the right place—the title, perhaps—can capture and bottle your show's essence, perfectly framing who and what it's for, and what makes it interesting. The wrong word, on the other hand... The wrong word can instantly plant doubt, confusion, and disinterest in your potential listener's mind, causing them to pass over your show in search of something that...

440 WORDS | READ TIME: 1.7 MIN Hi friends, What's the most frustrating aspect of marketing your podcast? Every year, I pose this question to the hundreds of podcasters who complete the annual Podcast Marketing Trends survey. And while there are many frustrations respondents cite, there's one response that wins by a landslide: "Knowing what to focus on that will actually move the needle." With so many growth strategies, tactics, and hacks being hawked around the internet, it's no wonder. The...

243 WORDS | READ TIME: 0.9 MIN Hi friends, Over the past month, Spotify has been rolling out a new and improved “Discovery” dashboard. In addition to the number of impressions your show has received in the past 30 days, the dashboard now also shows you how many of those impressions led to clicks and streams. I don't know about you, but this new data has me incredibly excited. Here's why. With accurate conversion rate data, we can now diagnose issues with our shows' packaging and listener...

251 WORDS | READ TIME: 0.9 MIN Happy Friday friends, There's only one reason anyone listens to a podcast. If you've been around this scrappy neck of the woods long, you already know what that reason is: The show does some "Job" for them. In other words, in exchange for spending their time with the show, a listener is getting some kind of tangible benefit in return. That return might be anything from teaching them a skill to making them smarter, making them laugh to shifting their mood,...