So What? Launching a podcast – podcasting overview

So What? Marketing Analytics and Insights Live

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In this week’s episode of So What? we focus give a full podcasting overview. We walk through a comprehensive podcasting overview, how to build on your podcast idea and how to get started with a podcast. Catch the replay here:

 

In this episode you’ll learn: 

• a comprehensive podcasting overview
• how to build on your podcast idea
• getting starting with a podcast

Upcoming Episodes:

• Podcast marketing strategy – 6/15/2023
• Podcast marketing tactics – 6/22/2023
• Podcast marketing measurement – 6/29/2023

Have a question or topic you’d like to see us cover? Reach out here: https://www.trustinsights.ai/resources/so-what-the-marketing-analytics-and-insights-show/

AI-Generated Transcript:

Katie Robbert 0:26
Well, well, well. Happy Thursday, everyone. Welcome to so with the marketing analytics and insights live show I’m Katie as always joined by Chris and John. Howdy, fellows.

Christopher Penn 0:38
Howdy.

John Wall 0:40
Hello, I’m coming to you from 164 air quality, which is only slightly improved from 170 this morning, so I don’t have the gas mask on because I’m in the house.

Katie Robbert 0:50
That’s probably okay. Man, what an intro. All right, this week, we are talking about launching a podcast. This is gonna be a four part series. So we’re gonna do launching a podcast, podcast strategy, podcast tactics, and podcast measurement. And so this week, we’re gonna do an overview of launching a podcast. And so this is not a new topic, people launch podcasts every day. But not everyone does it well. And so our goal is to help you get a comprehensive podcasting overview, think about how to build on your podcast idea, and then eventually getting started with it. And this is timely, because Chris and John are a wealth of endless knowledge. They’ve been there done that, and they run a very successful podcast have run a very successful podcast for the past 15 years, and have other side project podcast. But this one podcast has stood the test of time through all the ups and downs of, you know, the podcast fads. And that podcast is marketing over coffee.

John Wall 2:10
Number one, on the charts.

Katie Robbert 2:14
So, I mean, in terms of expertise, like I am the least experienced with podcasts, you know, I co host In-Ear Insights. We do this live stream I do punch out with Kerry Gurgaon. But you two are the experts. So where would you like to start with the podcasting overview?

Christopher Penn 2:34
Let’s start with the podcast landscape, because it has changed a lot over the years. And I think it’s a good time to walk down memory lane, sort of from two different organizations, Edison Research and sounds profitable to take a look at podcast landscape. As little as five years ago, something around you know, only half of people had ever listened to a podcast in America. So apologies for our international listeners and viewers. The data we have is for the USA. But as of this year 64%. So just shy of two thirds of Americans have ever listened to a podcast, marketing over coffee started in oh seven, right? So we are at this 13% of people who ever listen to a podcast back then. And it’s been obviously a steady ride up. What’s very interesting is that during the pandemic, he saw a little bit of a flattening in 21. That’s because a lot of people listen to podcasts in places like their car. And without a commute, don’t really listen too much. But has rebounded in the time since since that’s of people who’ve ever listened. People listen to, to audio on their devices. In cars now more than half the time. So this is the source of online listing for the majority of people now, which is very, very interesting. In terms of behaviors. And then for the podcast listening audience 42% Now just a little south of half have listened to a podcast in the last month. So again, this is a a big huge change from where podcasting was, you know, 10 years ago, even five years ago, this is is almost double that.

John Wall 4:28
Yeah, it’s funny to notice how, you know, things have did drop off a little bit during the pandemic, but really, it’s just been ongoing organic growth the whole entire time. Like it’s still you know, nowhere near plateauing.

Christopher Penn 4:41
Exactly. And so, this is this puts it on par with some social networks, but obviously it’s a very different format. But to the question of, does anyone listen to podcasts? The answer nowadays is very clearly yes. A lot of people listen to podcasts. And what’s very interesting is it’s certain People listen to a lot of podcasts. And this is going to inform our, our discussion about your overall strategy, specifically, and I thought this was fascinating. This was from sounds profitable. podcasting now reaches almost as many people in the 18 to 34 bracket as am FM radio. And as television obviously, you know, as generations, you look generationally, that’s, that’s very different. But if your brand, if your marketing cares about the 18 to 34 segment, and you’re burning a whole bunch of money on on am FM radio, you might want to think about reallocating your ad spend.

John Wall 5:38
That number just kills me there. I picture all these people sitting around listening to am radio, just.

Christopher Penn 5:45
But and yeah, and watching TV. But, you know, from a marketing perspective, again, for a company like ours, you know, we obviously try to serve AOA, and basically anybody who wants our help, but certainly the people that we would get long term brand loyalty from are going to be in, you know, in each bracket, but certain that middle bracket, and there’s decent penetration of podcasting in there. So again, does it align with our marketing strategy as a company? Yes. Does this align with the kinds of people we want to reach? Yes. Now again, if you’re, if you’re a brand, where you’re like, hey, we’ve, we’ve figured out 55 Plus, we know how to get our audience there, you know, we do direct mail, whatever. But you’re like scratching your head going, how do we get to 18 to 34? Well, gosh, here’s a great way to reach that audience.

Katie Robbert 6:36
Anecdotally, what I, what I have seen, is that a lot of now, former child stars that, you know, might resonate with the 18 to 34 year old or the 35 to 54 year olds, have started their own podcasts in lieu of, you know, restarting their acting career. And what they’re doing is they’re rewatching, their old sitcoms and TV shows and movies and commenting on it. And this seems to be at least, you know, this is just one specific industry one specific segment. But this seems to be the trend of Former child actors, to go back and rewatch and tell stories. And that’s very appealing, and very nostalgic, especially for the 35 to 54 year olds who grew up with these people. And now they want to listen to you. So I can definitely see where in certain segments and certain industries podcasting is now the expected, like, let me do a rewatch of the office. Let me do a rewatch of a Nickelodeon show that I started on until all the stories of what it was like, as a kid, from my adult point of view, like those are just as compelling. As you know, these documentaries and behind the scenes stories, like people are hungry for that kind of content. So I’m interested to know if you have a break down specifically for the marketing segment.

Christopher Penn 8:06
We don’t we don’t have that, however, for a reassuringly expensive price. I’m sure we can commission that from from our friends over at sounds. The next thing that we want to talk about is Okay, so we’ve established there’s an audience that, how does this How does podcasting align with the customer journey and there’s a very, very interesting stats again, from the sounds profit folks, but where podcasting fits in particularly on the buyers journey, awareness, consideration, and evaluation and purchase. So let’s go through those. On the awareness side, podcast, ads, advertising podcasts hold consumers attention better than am FM radio, or TV ads, 36% of people always or often pay attention to ads using this media. Now part of that is because podcasts typically are not stuffed with ads, like when you’re watching TV or listening to radio, there’s like 2020 shoe ads in a row, you’re like, when does the show come back on. And podcasts typically don’t have that. But it’s very interesting from an awareness perspective. The medium as a whole holds people’s attention. And if you think about it’s a very, it is a very intimate medium, right? You’re literally taking your listeners putting you in their ears physically ill a lot of the time.

Katie Robbert 9:22
I mean, when you put it that way. But no, in terms of the podcast as hold a customer’s attention. It makes sense in terms of the content. So you know, growing up, how often you know, were you watching a TV show and a commercial came on? And that was when you would get up and go get a snack so you weren’t paying attention to the commercial or if you’re just flipping through the channels you know, oh, commercials on let me flip to the other show that I’ve seen a million times. But at least I can avoid the commercials. The same thing is true as radio when I used to commute a couple hours a day and I was listening to FM radio. The second the commercial would come on I would switch to a different that station where there weren’t commercials with a podcast, you are seeking out that content, and you will sit through the ad in order to get to the rest of the content. So this completely makes sense. I’m surprised it’s not higher.

Christopher Penn 10:13
It is really compelling. And it’s not in this study, but there was a companion study done by the South sounds profitable folks saying that host read ads, where we you know, that we, as the host, read out the advertiser are the ones that would head and shoulders perform much, much better than any other form of advertising, because people are just used to hearing that. Which reminds me, you would like to have some marketing analytics and AI consulting, you can go to trust insights.ai/contact. We don’t have a discount code for that.

Katie Robbert 10:48
You do all you read all the ads for marketing over coffee, right?

John Wall 10:53
Yeah, I do the hosted. And this is actually I mean, if you’re an ad nerd, this is a pretty interesting area right now, because a lot of the podcasts networks and the more established advertising, agencies and bureaucracy want these automated ad spots to drop, because there are systems now where, you know, you upload a 32nd spot of your, you know, 154, giant, or whatever. And it just immediately goes into 500 different podcasts at the time Mark. But networks like twit this week in tech, which is longer running, even in marketing over coffee, has done a bunch of studying over the years, and they have clearly said that these host read host read ads are the way to go, you know, because people trust these hosts. And if the host says, Hey, we use this thing, and we like it. That’s just a whole different category of AD and endorsement. And there is more to that, you know, if you sign up for a network or something, whatever plays plays, whereas Chris and I do filter, everything that goes through, like, we would never put anything on the show that we hate or we know is deceptive, or, you know, not on the mark. I mean, there’s are some products were like, Yeah, whatever, they’ve got money, that’s good enough. But, you know, there’s also a whole realm of products where, you know, we wholeheartedly endorse this stuff, and would never tell anybody not to do it. So it’s a great fit for the audience.

Christopher Penn 12:12
Exactly. So that’s on the awareness that I’m a consideration side, this would fascinate me, consumers are more willing to consider products and services, after they’ve heard about them on a podcast than any other medium period. So from a consideration side, this is this is huge. So podcasts, more than two thirds of people versus YouTube social media, live and recorded TV and am FM radio. And I find that interesting, because if you think about it, the the method by which people listen, like the modality between podcasts and am FM radio is not substantially different, right? You’re just listening to stuff a lot of the time. And yet, because of the nature of how podcasts work, and the type of people who listen to them, you get a very different behavior.

Katie Robbert 12:57
Well, I think that goes to what John was just saying about the host read ads, and in terms of the endorsement and so you know, I know like YouTube social Recorded TV and AMFM commercials are, can be a blend of host read and then the ones that you plug in, I mean, podcasts you for that matter. But the majority, at least the ones that I’ve listened to of the ads are read by the host, like Conan O’Brien Conan O’Brien needs a friend’s great podcast, by the way, if you’ve never listened, it’s fantastic. But he reads all the ads, and it becomes this, like 10 minute bit, where he’s talking about the brand, because he just kind of goes off script, but he’s still doing the ad and to host read, and it sticks in your head more. And I think the same is true, what John was just saying is, you know, from marketing over coffee, you don’t bring on advertisers, where you don’t at least believe in the product. Even if it’s not for you right now. It’s not something you would you wouldn’t, you know, not feel comfortable recommending to a friend so that again, it totally makes sense that like, if John Wall from marketing over coffee is talking about a certain kind of technology, I’m going to trust that it’s going to stick in my head of like, well, if John Wall uses it, it must be good. So let me go check it out. Because I’m also looking for something similar. You know, I don’t find this surprising. Oh, again, sort of back to the last one. I’m surprised it’s not higher.

Christopher Penn 14:26
Yep. And then finally, at the end of the cut, the buyers journey purchase 43% of podcast listeners agree with the ads on this media maybe more likely to purchase the product or service. Now, the lot of these slides are ad focused, but this also sinks nicely into why you should be thinking about running a podcast as a part of your marketing because obviously if you get listeners you get an audience. The same facts will apply probably more so because you’re listening to that company’s show, right? If you’re listening to In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast you are are, by default, listening to what is essentially, in some ways, a 25 minute ad out what’s not good at selling hard selling stuff, but it is from us about us. And so if you’re thinking about a podcast for your, your company, the these stats apply even more. So

Katie Robbert 15:16
I think the flipside is also true if you are looking to purchase ads somewhere, purchase it, you know, on a podcast, you know, maybe sponsor In-Ear Insights, maybe sponsor marketing over coffee, we’re always open. You know, but I think that, you know, in terms of reaching your desired audience, podcasts tend to be more focused in terms of their content, so you have a better sense of who the audience is likely to be. And therefore, if I was looking to purchase ads, I would say, let me start with a podcast. Because, you know, I’m not likely to get people who aren’t interested in marketing and analytics, listening to In-Ear Insights. It’s a very specific type of show. So if I have some sort of a marketing, you know, technology that I want to be promoting, sponsoring, In-Ear Insights is probably a good move. For me, it’s probably a good use of my ad dollars. Same is true for marketing over coffee, if I have, you know, a marketing service or some sort of, you know, piece of tech that I want people to know about. Marketing over coffee is probably a really great place to put my ad.

Christopher Penn 16:31
Exactly. Yeah. The shows, the shows to find the audiences if you buy a slot on Edward, SaaS, Ian’s show where he just blows things up with with heavy firearms, you can pretty much guess who listens to that show. People like me going let’s blow things.

John Wall 16:48
So if you sell things that blow up, you need to be in front of that audience.

Christopher Penn 16:53
Exactly. So that brings us to launching a podcast, right? The first thing you have to tackle is, what’s this going to be about? Right? If you’ve decided, based on what you’ve heard so far, that it makes sense, you need to have a couple of couple of big decisions upfront. What is the unique selling proposition? What is the reason someone should be listening to this? And what channels are you going to have it on? Because that’s going to dictate very much the format. So let’s start unique selling proposition first. Back in the day, there were like three marketing podcasts, which you know, those two are still around, right. John Johnson Show and marketing over coffee. So there wasn’t a huge selection to begin with. Now, if you go into the apple podcasts or Stitcher or Spotify, there’s a gazillion and a half Marketing podcast. And the the general rule of thumb that we learned from our friend and former boss, Todd different over when he was running the agency was, there’s three things that really helped set aside anything that’s first best only are you the first to do something like the best at it, or you’re the only person to do it. And when you’re thinking about your podcast strategy, obviously marketing over coffee was one of the first right In-Ear Insights can’t be the first right. We’re not the first podcast by a consulting company. So you’d have to be the best or the only at some some aspect of your market.

Katie Robbert 18:22
I want to take a step back, though, because I want to go just a little bit as we’re talking about launching a podcast a little bit into the origin story of marketing over coffee, because I don’t actually don’t know that I’ve heard this. And so, you know, we don’t even we don’t have to get into the details of like how you guys met unless it’s, you know, part of the story. But what made the both of you want to start a podcast? Like, what was the nugget of an idea that made you go, you know what, let’s podcast about this. Let’s, let’s put this on air.

John Wall 18:55
So Chris had just finished saving the space shuttle, and I just come down off my first Nobel Prize, and we decided, hey, we really need to do so. Basically, we were both we had already messed around with podcasting around 2005. We were, we were already producing shows, Chris had for the financial aid network had the financial aid podcast, which was first only and best he had all three, completely locked down for that. And then I had decided for some insane reason to go up against, you know, the world’s greatest radio DJs like Howard Stern and Don Imus, and I was going to produce my own morning Zoo. And, and it worked. Well, you know, I did 10 minutes of news talk and entertainment and tech slant network. But I quickly realized that if I was ever going to make any headway in this space, I needed to go over into marketing and tech, something that I could talk about uniquely that nobody else could cover. And that was the impetus for it. And Chris had been doing the show and I was like, Oh my God, this guy sounds like shadow Stevens. He’s amazing. And he’s doing In financial aid, which nobody cares about, so we need to get him somewhere else. And so I was like, Hey, let’s do a podcast together. And he said, No. And then I was like, well, let’s do a podcast together about marketing and tech. He’s like, Yeah, that’s kind of interesting, but I still can’t do it. And I was like, well, let’s do it at seven in the morning and Dunkin Donuts, and he’s like now. And I said, Well, let’s do it at six in the morning at Dunkin Donuts. And he said now, and I said, Well, let’s do it at five in the morning and Dunkin Donuts. And he said, okay, yeah, I can do that. And that’s really how it stayed. Yeah, we were insane. We were like driving to Dunkin Donuts almost in the middle of the night. Because we both had full time other gigs, you know, we would record and it was a Dunkin Donuts right by the Mass Pike. And so we would both jump on the pike and go to work after we recorded and then I would bring it home. And yeah, it’s just insane. Like, none of the technology for online stuff existed that like we had to record in front of microphones at the docks, because we couldn’t just hop on the Zoom or stream or whatever. So yeah, that’s like the that’s basically where the thing came from. Because, and it’s just been amazing. Because we have marketing tech stories at a time when like, nobody was telling these stories. You know, we had all these people that were just like, Oh my God, nobody wants to hear from me at Thanksgiving. Like I can actually talk to you guys about this stuff. And you understand it. And it’s funny. And you know, we that’s how the community started and where it got going. And yeah, and since then, you know, instantly famous Amir 16 years later.

Katie Robbert 21:25
What I love is how you show your true sales colors. Okay, how about seven? No. Okay, how about six? No, and that persistence to make it work? The other thing to probably mention is, you know, math, not my strong suit. John is our chief statistician. You guys probably also had families and little kids at home at the same time as well.

John Wall 21:46
Yep. Let me think. Yeah, that was the first because I had the first kid as I wrapped up the show and started marketing over coffee. So yeah, we both had kids coming up very little ones. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was this was still like old school where daddy would just vanish for weeks on end. And like, you were expected to be in the office for 80 hours a week, travel, you know, two weeks a month. So yeah, that was, in fact, there was an ongoing joke thread about Christmas, like, who would be the first to get called Uncle John or Uncle Chris, like that was?

Katie Robbert 22:20
I love this story so much, so much unpack. But we, you know, we’re only a 40 minute show. So, alright. So in terms of the origin, you had those unique value propositions, because there were no other marketing and technology podcasts out there. So you were first, and only and I would argue best, definitely,

Christopher Penn 22:42
number one. And we proceeded marketing tech, the existence of the marketing technology profession. Prior to its its nomenclature, but again, if you are trying to launch a podcast today, you have to figure out first best only you can be first in something if it’s something completely net new. So for example, if you were in 2017, one of the first people to understand the attention model of a large language model and how transformers architectures work, you could have started a podcast then on this and just now you’d be getting popular, probably. But you can, you could do that. So a part of what you have to look at is, is there an aspect of your brand, your marketing center that would allow you to be first and if there’s not, then look at the rest of the space and see, well, what could I be best at? Or what can I only do that no one else could do. And that’s the angle that I think a lot of people could take, but it requires an enormous amount of effort to do it. There is the there’s a meme floating around that was first on Tumblr related to fanfiction, but it applies to podcasts and just as well, of a creator saying, Oh, well, somebody else has already done this thing. Where there’s no room for me to do this. And the flip side, the artists perspective is, oh my god, there’s now more I can have more of this thing because there’s now more creators in this thing. Which is it is true. The challenge with podcasting is because it is essentially in real time for the listener if you record 25 minutes of a show, that’s 25 minutes of someone’s time. And so you have to figure out you know, how long is your show and whether or not your show will fit into someone else’s day. And the third major consideration for the concept is format. We used to say podcasting was just you know, it was primarily audio these days if you want your show to be discovered you must do video as well you must there’s there’s no alternative to this because platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok and stuff are the discovery mechanisms by which people find out about show so if you are audio only, and you and you’re thinking audio only and you’re just getting started, there really isn’t. A there isn’t a good reason to do that from a discovery and marketing perspective for your shell?

Katie Robbert 25:05
Does marketing over coffee publish video?

John Wall 25:09
Occasionally? Horrible Java, because the big thing is, yeah, we can throw the whole thing up there. And we’ve done that a bunch of times. But basically, I guess in a perfect world, I would take the best clips and do clips, and there, we really shouldn’t be doing more on that front as far as taking, you know, the hot items. And yeah, I just haven’t made the effort to get the workflow to make that go. You know, we’ve been getting enough from promoting posts and from, you know, doing some ad spend, I guess it’s just a classic example of, I am totally at that point where, yeah, if I took the time to set up the Organic Program, right, it would have better long term results and easier, but instead, I just throw a handful of money at it every quarter. And, you know, and so I’m stuck doing that. Now I’m addicted to the drug. And

Katie Robbert 25:57
so, let me ask you this question. Because I was thinking about this in terms of, you know, video versus audio only versus both. You know, a lot of podcasts launch on YouTube, only to start but it’s video. So if it’s video and only on YouTube, is it then still considered a podcast? Or is it just some sort of a show, you know, is the term podcast hasn’t lost meaning because of all of the different multimedia types that this thing can be now?

Christopher Penn 26:33
The I would say the defining line is where it’s available. Right? So for example, they Oh, if you listen to Joe Rogan, it’s only on Spotify. Right? There’s there’s no other place to get that. Is that still a podcast? Maybe? It comes down to whether it’s it’s a show that that comes in on the podcasting systems, right. So there are apps like Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, etc. And if your show doesn’t show up there, regardless of format, it probably it would not be considered a podcast, because it’s not available in where people go when they look for a podcast. That doesn’t mean it’s not a show, right? It absolutely means it is a show. It’s just not a typical podcast. Now there used to be definitions, the old days, like I had to have an RSS feed with enclosures and stuff. And that is no one cares. Like no one. No one. No, the audience cares the the audience cares about, can I get this show and the place that I want it. So you have the URL here, if you go to trust insights.ai/ti podcast, you can find it, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, music, et cetera. You know, we do the same thing that we do for marketing over coffee, we try to make it as available as possible. Everywhere we are on YouTube. We are on the Libsyn platform of things. Is that a podcast? Yeah, it is. Would it be considered a podcast if we weren’t on all the channels? Probably not. But is it a show? Yes. Even if it’s only in one place? It’s a show. And we want people to listen to the show wherever it’s most convenient for them.

Katie Robbert 28:06
Got it. Okay, that makes sense. I mean, because it was something I was wondering, because I mean, what I’ve again, sort of what I’ve noticed is newer, meaning within the past couple of years, podcasts, always have accompanying video, and then they show up as clips on Instagram, or they show up on YouTube channels. And so in my very simplistic brain, I was like, but is that even still a podcast? Or is that just a show? Or you watching an interview?

Christopher Penn 28:34
Right? Yeah, I mean, there’s there are plenty of shows out there, like the shuttle pod, which is a Star Trek show that they do, they do multiple versions of it. So there’s the like the long form YouTube version, then there’s cut down audio versions, that base will out. And then if you want to go to the whole version there, there’s other places where people now use things like Patreon and only fans. And so they will have like 20 minutes of the show on YouTube and then say, to watch the full episode, you go to the paid version over here. They so there’s, there’s even that, which is a nice segue to sort of establishing the goals for what you want your podcast to do. And again, we have the three buckets of the buyers journey, because we’re assuming you’re doing this in some way. for marketing purposes, there’s awareness, consideration and purchase. And within those categories, there’s kind of a different set of splits. So on the awareness side, you could be doing the show for branded leadership. And we’ll talk about measurement and goal setting and things in future episodes. But there’s your brand about leadership. There’s just getting awareness of your audience, you know, can you get an audience to pay attention to you? The consideration side, there’s lead generation and trying to get new leads for your business or lead nurturing? podcasting, if you’re doing a show about your topic, it’d be a great thing to be to have a catalogue of content that you can send to people in your sales pipeline to say, hey, we just did a show about this topic that showcases our knowledge. Here’s the episode if you want to listen to it. And of course, there’s the revenue side The purchase side you can do, there’s two ways to do that sell other people’s stuff means buy ads and sponsorships, and sell your stuff directly selling products or services. Or as we just talked about monetization through subscriptions and patrons for this whole category, the big thing that you have to do is figure out what goal you want to achieve. And then you’ll you’ll set your podcast strategy based on that goal, and you can have more than one. But generally speaking, you want to have one that is the goal to start.

Katie Robbert 30:30
So aside from sending you to an early grave, John, what is the goal of marketing over coffee?

John Wall 30:37
$1 billion? Yeah, no, I? That’s a great question, really, because we have not been as clear on the goals as we haven’t. I think the big thing was it to be a platform for both of us to build our own brands, like I’ve never seen it as its own brand. Even it was really just, this is where John and Chris do their thing. And if you need John and Chris to do stuff, then talk to them. You know, that’s kind of always where it’s been. And yeah, and now that you talked about, like, martec becoming a whole thing, I’m like, Damn, we should really be much richer, like, we really screwed this up. 10 years ago, if we had done a martec show, like, you know, maybe I’d be coming to you from the deck of my yacht now. But,

Katie Robbert 31:19
but I do think that, you know, in terms of, you know, the long standing Enos of marketing over coffee, and given the content, if, you know, so what are they just released the martech 11,038. If you’re not getting 11,038, Mar tech systems reaching out to you to sponsor marketing over coffee, then they’re the ones that are doing it wrong, because marketing over coffee has such a long standing loyal audience who looks to you. And you know, I just keep going back to thinking about, if I’m not on the podcast side, but I’m trying to reach that audience. Why wouldn’t I look to marketing over coffee? You know, for example, to bring my product, you know, to like, to awareness to have the hosts endorse my thing?

John Wall 32:10
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it is, it’s insane. That strikes me because we have so many sponsors that are just like, Oh, my God, we got X number of leads, like, why would you as your own company, start a podcast, and then start marketing your podcast of the same people, you’re already spamming every week with email about your products, you know, it’s just you’re not going to get anybody net new at all out of that. Whereas for 1/5 of the price, it would cost you to make one episode, you know, you can run 10 shows just to see how the hell it works. And if your audience hangs out in this neighborhood, like it’s, yeah, you’d think it was a no brainer, but people want to make their own show, they want to impress the boss with their podcast, you know, that’s like the so the graveyard of dead corporate podcast is overflowing. And we can publish 1000 a month with just about what those sets. Yeah, that’s the way things go.

Katie Robbert 33:02
Well, that was gonna be one of my follow up questions for both of you is, Does every brand need a podcast? Should that be part of their marketing strategy?

Christopher Penn 33:12
No. Yeah, absolutely.

John Wall 33:15
Well, one thing that I always say to and people always get, believe it when I sit when I tell them this is, first of all, you should be blogging, like, you know, getting your text about who you are, and what you are up on the web and having a website like that’s number one. And unfortunately, too is video. If you have great content that you can show on video. YouTube is a massive search engine and a massive search source of organic. So unless you’re already doing a good job with blogging and video, like you shouldn’t even be considering podcasting. Like podcasting needs to be third on the list. Don’t even think of it. The exception to that is if you’re sure microphones like yeah, you absolutely need to have a podcast, you know, you need to have a podcast about here’s what our stuff sounds like, Gibson guitars needs to have a podcast, you know, if you have something that plays well to the music or audio vertical, then yeah, absolutely. But for everybody else. There’s there’s better ways to spend your money than making podcast.

Christopher Penn 34:06
Yeah, unless it’s something that you want to do that you enjoy doing. And that’s a big part of it, too, is especially on the hobbyist and solo creator side, if that’s if that’s a form of artistic expression for you. Go for it, you know that it may not have the business outcome that more resourced enterprise would, but there are plenty of shows out there that are just people having having fun.

John Wall 34:31
Right? See, that’s a trademark, Christopher Penn grappling hook, you know, you go to your boss, and you’re like, Hey, I just want to try this on the side. And we’re gonna mark it to all your customers. And when I leave, I’m going to take them with me, but you’re going to be okay with that. Because we made a great podcast here. Right? Yeah. If everybody wins, nobody loses. So it’s not a bad thing. But yeah, so if you’re in a company, you think they’d never create a podcast but you feel like hey, I want to start messing around with audio gear like yeah, definitely do it. talk somebody into it.

Katie Robbert 35:00
So when, when you both started marketing over coffee, and I know that you’re gonna get deeper into the weeds next week when we talk about podcast strategy, but I just want to give like little teasers for people who are looking for part two. Did you talk through, like a business plan? Did you talk through, you know, we want to eventually reach this many people or be on this many channels or, you know, do it at this frequency did the frequency change over the years, like, you know, I don’t think there’s not a lot of history published about how marketing over coffee came to be, and sort of what the lessons you’ve both learned have been?

John Wall 35:43
Yeah, we’ve been making like dial soap, you know, like, nothing has changed in about 175 years. Which the cool thing was like, when we started, we both had done our own shows for over a year for a couple of years. So we had it, and it just, it seemed like a no brainer, it was like 25 minutes, that needs to be the average commute time, we’re not going to do one of these three hour, there used to be more of these, where some talking head would just sit there and blab for literally hour, two or three hours. And you can only squeeze one of those in a week. So there was that there was educate and entertain. And then it was covered marketing tech and be the best and then get advertisers and get free stuff that was really one of the bigger motivations at the start was just like, we just want to get free stuff. And I was like, and I’ve said, like if I if I just get to talk to Seth Godin, I’ll consider the podcast I 100%. Success. And have you? Oh, yeah, within? I don’t know, within two years or so. Like, actually, yeah. And then then I realized, it’s like, anytime anybody has a book, they’re willing to talk to any homeless bum, you know, so that was we were able to get in there. You just need, you’ll learn when’s the time? When do you approach and get it? Uh, yeah. And that’s like, the most amazing thing is now we have, you know, followers all over the globe. And we’ve talked to tons of cool authors and, and, yeah, to be able to have, you know, get feedback from listeners and other countries that I’ve never even been to is just amazing. It still blows my mind that there’s people in other parts of the world that are listening to us ramble on about the foolishness. We continue to record some. Yeah, it’s all the wind. Yeah, I don’t know. But I’d be interested in Chris, like, if you ever it, was there ever any point where you’re like, oh, yeah, I know, the business model needs to change or we need some quarterly goals or any of that stuff.

Christopher Penn 37:25
No, because we’ve never really treated it that way. It’s always just been just this thing that we do. We’ve done we’ve set down goals, for example, for In-Ear Insights, in terms of you know, Katie has the number of subscribers and things to be looking at number of lists and stuff, but for marketing over coffee, because it started as essentially a hobbyist thing that was just fun. It never really developed past that from a formalized process, even seeing like the revenue collected from sponsors and stuff, we the that’s, that’s just kind of happens. There’s no formal plan, saying it should generate this amount of income, or this is what the pricing structure looks like. Because it was never intended to be a business.

Katie Robbert 38:07
So in that sense, so Chris, when we started in your insights, you know, what, what were our goals? What do you think the purpose of our podcast is?

Christopher Penn 38:18
awareness, awareness and retention of our audience. Partly because podcasting is a format that a lot of people in the B2B space are well aware of, partly because we get a halo effect from shows like marketing over coffee, people who enjoy hearing, hearing us speak there also, enjoy hearing us speak in your insights, and this live stream, there’s me taking advantage of that halo effect. And it is a reinforcement mechanism is reinforcement mechanism. Because these days, attention and mind share are the most important things you can possibly have as a marketer. Everyone and everything is competing for your for your audience’s attention. And if you do a monthly email newsletter, and that’s your outreach to your audience, you get one at bat, right to reach your audience. If you have a weekly newsletter, you get four at bats a month, right? To stay in front of people if you do a weekly newsletter and a monthly podcast and that’s five at bats if you do a weekly newsletter and a weekly podcast now. That’s eight. Now you had a weekly live stream now that’s 12. So you have 12 at bats every month to try to get him to stay in front your eyes to stay present with your audits now, do I expect everyone who’s listening to to religiously follow all three? No. But there’s enough content out there that someone who wants one particular thing if it’s if it’s a live stream, if it is video, if it is audio, if it’s a podcast, it’s a newsletter. There’s something for everybody. It’s one of the reasons why for example, when I do my own show, the chat basically is just the daily video as I do on my personal website, it’s a podcast. It has a podcast feed, it has videos on YouTube, it has a blog as well, because I need more at bats. It’s why we blog daily on the Trust Insights website, because we need more at bats to stay in front of people, because that’s how you retain an audience. So we’re, that’s one of the reasons why In-Ear Insights is a weekly show. It’s why the inbox insights newsletter is a weekly newsletter, because more time than a week in between contacts with somebody, and they forget about you, right? But if you have that weekly cadence, because people in our industry and in general, are used to a weekly cadence of content, right? New episodes of and or new episode of the flesh, right? New episode of Seinfeld, whatever the case is, people are used to that weekly cadence, and that’s where their brains are. So that’s where we try to align ourselves as well.

Katie Robbert 40:52
I think that completely makes sense. And, you know, we, and we can talk about more of this next week when we get into more of the strategy. But we decided it was going to be an informal conversation between the two of us about, you know, whatever’s going on in marketing and analytics and data science that week. And we’ve stuck to that format. And, you know, one of the things that people enjoy about the show is our banter back and forth. It’s completely natural, we don’t plan the show ahead of time. Some shows are better than others, for sure. But, you know, we generally have a loose idea of a topic. And then we just sort of see where that goes over the course of 25 to 30 minutes, whereas shows like marketing over coffee and other better produced shows, put more thought into how each episode is going to go. And so, you know, I know you guys, we’ll get into the differences between those in the next couple weeks when we talk about strategy and tactics.

John Wall 41:58
revealing all the secrets.

Katie Robbert 42:01
But you know, knowing that, you know, it’s I like to, you know, remind people that, you know, you are both, you know, celebrities in your own right, a lot of times the contact that we that comes into the website is oh, I’m a big fan of John, I’ve been listening to marketing over coffee forever. Oh, I’m a big fan of Chris, I’ve been listening to marketing over coffee forever. And so, to your point, Chris, those at bats, keep, you know, the names, the topics, the ideas that that leadership present. And so, you know, it’s it’s been a really good awareness tool for Trust Insights, to have marketing over coffee as part of the Trust Insights, ecosystem and family, and hopefully vice versa, where people can see John, in action, as the chief statistician talking about things he knows and like, oh, you know what, I want to sponsor marketing over coffee for that reason, because he’s going to, you know, do justice to my thing.

John Wall 43:02
Yes, we will put your brand top and center, just like our friends over at LinkedIn marketing solutions, who have been delivering quality content for years at marketing over coffee, we’d love to see over there.

Christopher Penn 43:14
That’s fantastic. On that note,

Katie Robbert 43:18
on that note, if you want to sponsor in your insights, or marketing over coffee, reach out to trust insights.ai/contact. And you can reach specific, dedicated loyal audiences in your face.

Christopher Penn 43:31
Yep. So next week, we’ll be talking about understanding your audience, the audience persona, the audience strategy, your content strategy, as well as part of your overall podcast. So stay tuned for that. Any final parting words?

Katie Robbert 43:47
Not everyone needs the podcast.

John Wall 43:50
Don’t do pipe to get the hell off my lawn, no podcast.

Christopher Penn 43:56
All right. We’ll see you all next time. Thanks for watching today. Be sure to subscribe to our show wherever you’re watching it. For more resources. And to learn more, check out the Trust Insights podcast at trust insights.ai/t I podcast and a weekly email newsletter at trust insights.ai/newsletter Got questions about what you saw on today’s episode. Join our free analytics for marketers slack group at trust insights.ai/analytics for marketers, see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Trust Insights (trustinsights.ai) is one of the world's leading management consulting firms in artificial intelligence/AI, especially in the use of generative AI and AI in marketing. Trust Insights provides custom AI consultation, training, education, implementation, and deployment of classical regression AI, classification AI, and generative AI, especially large language models such as ChatGPT's GPT-4-omni, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude. Trust Insights provides analytics consulting, data science consulting, and AI consulting.