Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.
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There. There we go. Folks are rolling in. Good day everyone. Thanks for joining folks. If uh as we’re getting situated, we’re waiting for some more to enter into the Zoom call. Uh you can go ahead and use the Zoom chat. tell us who you are, where you’re from, uh what you do in podcasting, and uh we’ll get started in just a few moments. Thanks for being here today. Don’t be shy. Welcome to those that are joining us. Uh feel free to introduce yourself in the chat and we’ll get started shortly.
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>> Rody, very cool. You teach podcasting and audio storytelling at Arizona State. Dream job. feel very lucky to do it. >> Hey, Jules. >> Ted, that’s great to see that you’re based in Boston. I have uh uh at least one colleague of mine at the puglomerate who hails from that part of the country. All right. Well, Trent, I think we’ll start uh get started, but we’ll keep adding people in as they they come in through the lunch break. >> Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for for
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joining myself and Joni today. Uh I am Trent. I’m the head and grow head of growth and strategy here at Podchaser. What is Podchaser? Why are we here? Uh we’ve been working with the Podlomerate for a few years now. Um, and Potchaser you could really think of as uh like the intelligence engine for the podcast industry. What does that mean? We collect data on almost every show that’s ever been published. There’s about 6 million shows within our data set to date. And we collect some um interesting
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information and data on these podcasts, including reach on an episode level as well as a monthly uh reach level, audience insights and demographics. Um, and then also contacts. So when it comes to finding collaboration opportunities with uh fellow podcasters, a lot of production agencies, a lot of uh marketing agencies, PR agencies, etc. as well as some podcast networks are leveraging our data to find these mutually beneficial collaboration opportunities. So uh I’m very excited to be here with Joni, big fan of her work
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as well as the pod llomerate. Um so I know we are in store for a lot of learning today. Oh, thanks Trent. I appreciate it. And likewise, Podchaser has been a wonderful collaborator. We use it if not daily, perhaps even hourly here at my company, at the team. Um, we’ll talk about Pod Potchaser and also Pot Glomerates various capabilities over the course of this call. Um, quick housekeeping notes for everyone here. Thanks again for joining us. Uh you do not have to be on camera and at a certain point uh we may
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open up the microphones at the end for audience Q&A with audio but you are welcome to simply use the Zoom chat feature. So if you have questions, if you have ideas, if you want to connect with others who are obviously on the call for the same reason as yours, uh in the spirit of today’s conversation around collaborations, I would encourage you to make those relationships in Zoom chat. Um, today’s webinar is recorded video and audio. So, we will be sharing the recording with all attendees
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probably in the next day or so over email. So, if for any reason you have have to hop off this webinar, it is okay. We’ll judge you just the tiniest bit because we’d love for you to be here live. Uh, but we will be sharing the recording later. So, don’t worry. Everything will be made available to you at a later point. Um, other than that, we’ll go ahead and get started, folks. So again, very excited to be here, especially at Trent at Podchaser. Uh for those who may not be aware of what the
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Podlomerate is, um it’s an award-winning podcast services firm. We’ve been around for nearly a decade at this point. Uh we focus on production uh for podcast as well as marketing and audience growth for podcast and monetization, ad sales. and we’ve represented a wide range of shows in different genres, different sectors, nonprofit, for-profit, public media, IV league institutions, Fortune 100 companies, Microsoft, Mayo Clinic, and the like. Um, so all that to say is we have great experience knowing how to
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grow shows, whether net new launches or even pre-existing shows that have been around for quite some time. And we do that through a few different vehicles and tactics, which we’ll dive into further on this call. Because while it seems like podcast growth is, you know, just a mountain to climb in this day and age, I will tell you that they’re easy wins that you can do and easy wins where while we’d love to have your business and for you to hire my company, um you could do these ad hoc on your own with
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little to no cost. But if you want to hire us, I’ll put a link in the chat and over email and you’re very welcome to connect. Uh at the very least, we can maybe collaborate on cross promotions, a tactic we’ll talk about shortly. Uh, a little bit about me. I’m Joni Deutsch. I’m based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Uh, I’m the senior vice president for marketing and audience development at the Podlomerate. Been here for about four-ish years, but I’ve had a 15-year career at large across media from NPR to
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member stations and NPR music. uh and I’ve been able to leverage my skills uh at the combination of the intersection of editorial, audio, uh and marketing and audience development to help a wide variety of shows and outlets grow their properties in a podcast manner. So excited to share what I know with you today. And again, if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the Zoom chat. We will have time at the end of today’s webinar to answer your questions live. Um all right, but let’s
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start with the the elephant in the room, right? probably one of the reasons why you’re here today is that you’re likely finding that there is a problem with podcast marketing. Um the problem could be that you’re finding it to be too competitive because yes, there are millions of shows out there right now. Um maybe your problem is that there seems to be a cost barrier. a cost barrier whether it comes to buying ads to promote your show and external properties or even hiring a podcast marketing you know PR specialist like
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the conglomerate to promote your show on your behalf andor your problem being there’s only just so many hours in day right you’re probably producing your show or editing the show or hosting the show or guest booking show or doing any number of things and then on top of that you then have to figure out this discovery vehicle to get your show out there and to grow the audience and cultivate a community. And that’s effectively a full-time gig in and of itself. So, I don’t fault you for
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feeling like this is a problem that can’t be solved. But what I want to say is that the goal of today’s presentation is to share with you that you are not alone in feeling this way. Again, there’s so many podcasters out there. And I actually like to think of this as the counterintuitive truth that your competitors, the people you feel like are bigger in the space or having more opportunities in the space or have figured it out, they actually should be your collaborators and they would
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appreciate it being able to work with you in so many ways from editorial content and collaborating on that to cross-promotional marketing tactics where you each promote each other. um there is an overlap between their audience and your audience or their content and your content. And so that is the greatest untapped resource is instead of thinking this as a silo for yourself to grow outwards, it’s actually finding those co-cententric circles and bringing them together so that way audience grows naturally and sprouts
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from it. So you’re here to grow your podcast today. Me and Trent are here to help. We’re going to talk through a few different things. So, we’re going to talk through tactics to be able to grow your show because there are a wide variety of them. We don’t have 24 hours to talk about it on this call, but we will dive through them in a very quick manner on today’s presentation. Specifically, we’re going to talk through the different elements for your growth. So, there’s website and app,
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there’s email, newsletter, social media, and I would include YouTube in that mix for social media right now. Technically, it’s also a podcast app platform in its own right. um print, broadcast and live events, professional and personal networks, and of course, just the way that you are utilizing your podcast RSS feed. There is natural ways for you to use that and leverage it to grow your show and collaborate with others and cross-promote. So, we’re going to break down these sections of collaboration. Um the first
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is just the general note of cross-romotional strategies. So, at the conglomerate, we do a wide variety of tactics or employ a wide variety of tactics. Um, some of that is pitching to the podcast apps for those great features you see on Apple and Spotify’s like carousel banners. Um, but one of the bigger tactics we do that we see meaningful growth with is the idea of a cross promo. It’s the idea that if you have a podcast or property, um, you are leveraging that to promote an external item and in exchange that external
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property is going to use their vehicle to promote you, right? Um, so there’s a wide variety of terms for this and different techniques. Um, and I should say there is also a wide variety of platforms that you can use to promote a cross promo or help with it. Um, attribution tracking is a major component in that. Attribution tracking being that you can take a pixel um, effectively let’s say a cookie, right? like a website cookie and place that into a promo in an external feed and that will then let you see the data from
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that promotion of your show in that external feed. So in essence, if let’s say you’re Freconomics Radio and you want to promote your show and NPR’s up first, by giving up first a pixel that can run in their feed when it’s promoting Freconomics Radio, you can see the conversion rate, the number of audience, the number of devices that are listening to that spot promoting Freconomics Radio and then coming over to Freconomics Radio’s feed to see then becoming a listener essentially of
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Freconomics Radio at live um at large. Um, it costs a little bit of money to do this if you really want to get into the data of attribution tracking. But if you want to explore it further, Megaphone has that capability built in now that it’s acquired chartable. Mellin and Swap FM are also other alternatives for it. Um, I’ll share a link in the chat that has a breakdown of it further. But the point being, you can make cross promos as big and as complicated and as robust as you like with data analysis or as
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small and as laid-back and as easy to manage as possible. Um the basic tenants of cross promos or different ideas are one a simple cross promo swap. So if you’re exchanging 30 to 60 second scripts or pre-produced audio with an external entity and you each then place those respective spots in the beginning of your show around pre-roll, in the middle of your show around the midroll or the end of the show around the credits which would be post roll. There’s also something called a feed drop or a feed swap. Essentially, you
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take an episode of from your feed of your podcast and put it into an external feed. In exchange, they do the same with giving you an episode of their content to put into your feed. Um, and ideally, if you’re the host of the podcast, you would record a quick intro uh in front of this external podcast episode to say, “Hey folks, Joni here today. We have a special episode from our friends at Vox’s Today Explained. It’s a really great episode. It ties in perfectly to our recent conversation on this topic.
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We hope you enjoy it and again, check out Voxes Today Explained if you want to hear even more content like this. That sort of intros script will not only allow your audience to know that this isn’t stranger danger, that there’s not just a random thing invading their feed. Um, but it actually it creates a recommendation, an authentic one for your audience, which is the same way that they would hopefully on the other side of it experience your podcast in another feed and then come over and
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become part of your audience by proxy. There’s also the guest swap idea. So, if you’re the host of a show, how comfortable are you with bringing on the host of another podcast as a guest on your show? So, if I want to interview Ira Glass on my show, uh, and Irag Glass wanted to bring me on or have me contribute to a piece on This American Life, um, again, mileage may vary. Maybe your show is not structured to be, uh, to have guests on it. Maybe there’s an alternative way that you could do this.
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Um, and then just generally digital media swaps, right? So, I mentioned that you may have other vehicles at your disposal beyond your RSS podcast feed. Maybe you have an email newsletter. Maybe you have a popular social media feed uh on LinkedIn or IG. Um maybe you have a live event series, radio broadcast, television, whatever you have available, you could leverage that. So instead of it being um an audioto audio cross promo with RSS feeds involved, maybe you leverage your newsletter to promote an external podcast and in
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exchange they are going to promote your brand new podcast with no audience in their feed. Um again you can be as creative as you want with this idea but again the idea is that you’re leveraging what you have available to you for the benefit of growing your show and leveraging that for another show. other collaborative marketing tactics that do work and again these are based off things that we do at the paglomerate that we’ve seen great conversion rates around. I say conversion rates because
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again we are using attribution platforms and tracking to see the true growth numbers the benchmarks for success with data. Um but again if you want to use attribution tracking would just encourage you to look at the pricing for that. But just generally tactics you can employ um for joint content creation if you’re open to it. There’s a few things you could do. There’s the idea of cocreation. So you working with another organization. Maybe they’re based in your region, your state, they’re in the
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same sector as yours. Um and talking uh together as if maybe you just create a episode together or a miniseries together. Um, that way you are splitting the cost of the production. You are both going to be leveraging your respective promotional vehicles to get the word out about it and then hopefully the audience will continue to carry on with the two individual sources even after that co-production concludes. Um, you could look at doing something that’s equivalent to a crossover episode. Uh,
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for those that maybe came from cable television viewing days, you may remember those on television where you had the special crossover episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Angel uh, and it was made for like a very special time where, you know, you can enjoy both um, but then still split off to hear, read, or watch both at a different time. Same thing here. So let’s say in the case of three podcasts that I’m a fan of that focus on the media, one called channels, one called mixed signals, one
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called rebooting, they the three of them recently collaborated on a split where they recorded one long episode that had the host of all three shows on it. They then split that one collaborative episode into their respective feeds. So, part one went into rebooting’s feed, part two of that interview went into the mixed signal feed. Part three went into the channels feed. And from what they told me, I don’t represent them, but from what I heard from their respective teams, that episode, that collaborative
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episode did cause a boost in downloads for them. So, consider that instead of doing a co-created episode between two entities, maybe you do one where you split the content up. And so that way encourages the audience to go to one feed to hear one part of it and then that audience wants to listen to the second part of the third part, they have to do that with the other feeds too. You can also look at co-hosting live events. So, if you want to do a webinar recording like what we’re doing today at
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Podchaser or an Inerson recording somewhere, um, with festival season coming up, podcast festivals and live events, good idea to pitch yourself for a live taping of your podcast at them and use as an opportunity to co-host it with someone else. Um, you could also look into the idea of joining a podcast network or collaborative or collective. There’s a number of them out there. Um, some of them do have um, share structures where you can get a little bit of money out of them because of the ad sales, but Radiotopia, Maximum Fun,
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Potluck Podcast Collective, the Hub and Spoke Audio Collective are all great examples of this. If you’re able to join these networks, um, and there’s also bigger networks, right? SiriusXM, the Odysseies of the world. Uh then you’re able to hopefully in the contract utilize their remnant inventory and their uh in-house structure to promote your show as part of their larger family of shows. Uh what I’ve seen done and what we’ve encouraged to do with our clients and networks is to see about uh
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like postal inventory. So for the month of May, could all shows in that network promote one specific show related to a topic or theme for that month? So for instance, if you’re a spooky show, uh if you’re in a network, I would encourage you to ask the network, hey, I have a spooky show, Halloween is coming up in October. Could all the shows in network promote my show in their postal inventory? And you’ll probably see audience growth from that. And then otherwise, cross-linking. So beyond the
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audio feed, just being able to, you know, uh share content in other vehicles. So if you can put your podcast link within a newsletter in a mention there or in a social media shoutout, uh YouTube now has more of a collaborative community structure. So, if you want to use their um the section on YouTube Studio to be able to promote another person on YouTube or your own podcast, that’s another way you could cross link or do shoutouts to encourage activity. Uh so, let’s talk about how to optimize
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the idea of a new listener or a new fan of your show to a loyal listener, a loyal subscriber, a follower. because there is a pipeline, there is a funnel and uh you want to try to encourage that and convert that first timer into a longtime. Um so the first thing I would just say is that whenever you are looking into a cross- promotional activity, you want to make sure that it’s rooted in what is the new listener going to encounter for the very first time. It’s effectively your elevator pitch. So your first impression matters
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in how you’re positioning yourself to a new audience and what they’re going to be hearing or experiencing. that’s representative of who you are and why they should invest time to become a new listener and potentially a loyal listener to you. So, I want you to optimize what you’d consider your start here episode or even updating your podcast trailer. Basically, if someone comes to your podcast feed for the first time and looks at, you know, um the book cover of your podcast feed and what’s
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the first thing they’re going to see? Are they going to see a trailer that was from four years ago that actually isn’t representative of who you are today? are they going to see um a recent episode of yours that actually is going to be relevant to what their interests are? So, just be sure that if you need to update your podcast trailer or add a new trailer to your feed, go ahead and do that before you engage in cross promotions. Um and also just make sure that the copy that you’re using for your
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cross promotions is going to be specific to whatever vehicle it’s going to be in. So, if I’m representing a um climate podcast, then I’d want to make sure that, you know, it’s talking about the topics that are relevant for Earth Day or for whatever podcast or vehicle it’s going to be in. So, that audience will understand why is this relevant? Why are they seeing this popup in their favorite newsletter or their favorite podcast feed? Um, and if you’re doing a feed drop or a feed swap, which is again that
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idea of exchanging episodes across two feeds, you want to be strategic about timing it. um strategic in a few ways. One, when is it going to be dropping? So, is it going to be dropping um after a season concludes of a show? Uh is it going to be t uh launching around a specific holiday? Um going back to that climate example, we represent a few different climate podcasts. So, Earth Day coming up next week, we have already facilitated a few different feed drops that are going to be taking place next week aligned to
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that holiday because people are going to be very interested in the topic. they want to hear more content and stories around it, that’s when they’re going to be introduced to our podcast and our client show that’s on that topic. Um, so little things that you can think about. Um, I want you to think about how someone is going to be um, you know, basically coming over to your show. So, I want you to think through um basically if you’re going to be having someone discover you through a
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collaboration, give them acknowledgement that you recognize that they probably came over from a different source and you appreciate them and you’re welcoming them with open arms. So that could be as simple as in an episode coming up after your cross promo has occurred, do a very quick shout out in the episode audio saying, “Hey, I just want to give a special shout out to the our new listeners that are coming over that encountered us or were introduced to us from partner show, partner newsletter.
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Uh, thank you for joining us. We hope you like the show. Make sure you give us a rating review. Tell us what you’ve been enjoying.” Um, that sort of call out is really going to let the listener know that new time listener that you recognize them, you’re acknowledging them, that they’re welcome to this new community that they’re first engaging with, and you’ll likely see even more engagement from them because of it. Um, onboarding new listeners. So, in addition to updating like your podcast
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trailer to really uh encompass who you are at this stage of your podcast, think about what is the best way to let a listener know, hey, if you’re new here, we’ve created a welcome packet for you to give you a tour of your new podcast house. Uh you could do this as simply as going to your podcast app of choice. Spotify is great for this. And you can create a playlist of your favorite episodes or you can put it on your website, right? List out with links the five best episodes, the five evergreen
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episodes, or you know, welcome to the podcast episodes that are really representative what you do, why you love them, and tell your listeners and your audio, if your podcast, hey folks, if you’re new here, welcome. If you want to find out our favorite episodes or ones that you should check out to catch you up, go to our website and or go into the show links today and today’s episode and see what we have as part of our podcast playlists. Um, I want you to also consider just with crowd promot uh
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promotions and collaborations other shows that you do want to make sure that the audience is aware of this being a routine, something to put into their diet. So that way it’s not just them coming over once, it’s them coming over and making it part of their natural routine because they know you’re always releasing episodes every Tuesday afternoon or every other Wednesday or it’s a seasonal show that’s going to run for 10 episodes every Friday morning, right? So, be sure that when you have
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the welcome mat out and they’re in your house, you’re letting them know the terms of the house rules that you’re going to always release episodes on a consistent schedule because trust is built through the reliability and consistency. So, if you want your audience to keep coming back for more, then you need to make sure you let them know. And if you need to make changes to your routine, like, “Hey folks, we’re going to take a week off for our summer break, but be sure you come back to us
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starting June 20th.” and uh we’ll have new episodes coming out the feed. Then go ahead and let them know. Give them a heads up on it whether through the audio feed or in social media or email newsletter. And that way you’re not ghosting them because that’s not how you build a relationship. And anyone who’s been through dating apps knows ghosting is not the best way to do that. Um other than that, just continue to uh value engagement. So, some podcast apps, including Spotify and YouTube, really
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want to encourage podcast creators to leverage their uh tools. So, polls, Q&As’s, the comment section, those are things that you should continue to have call to actions within your podcast audio and scripts. So, letting your audience know, hey, if you enjoyed today’s episode, let us know your favorite uh topic of conversation, your favorite moment is in the chat below. Uh continue to add those in. I know it sounds a little silly and it may take a little while for your audience to actually get into the throws of
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commenting and engaging with you, but it it does add up and it actually will help the algorithm in the podcast app to let them know, oh, this podcast is one I should move up into higher priority for maybe more features in the future. All right. So, how you’re probably wondering, okay, these are all great tactics, Joni, but how do I actually do them if I don’t have the budget or I don’t have the bandwidth or I don’t have much understanding of podcast marketing. And that’s okay. It’s why I’m here.
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We’re going to talk through some things to do that are very easy tactics. So, first off, use platforms that work and that work with you and for you. I’m not expecting you to move all of your podcast workflow into something new. I would just say take very small steps and experimenting with one first and seeing if that helps you and then once you’re acclimated to it, you can try a different tactic. So for instance, I would encourage you to use a platform that works. A platform that works for us
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with our marketing efforts and sourcing out collaborators is Potchaser. Um and again, if no one here has used Podchaser, I’d highly recommend you do so at podchaser.com. Uh it basically is acting as a source where in our case of the P conglomerate when we want to find other shows that cover the same topic that have had on a similar guest that we want to figure out what their audience growth or their numbers are or an approximation of it, PodChaser provides that to provides that to us. So then we can figure out how we
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can reach out to that show and PodChaser provides us the guest information or the um the show information, the contact addresses. Uh, so it makes it very easy for us to then reach out for a contact, ask them if they want to collaborate with us, and the show says yes, and we’re off to the races. I want you to start small. Um, so with perhaps a single promo swap, one show that you want to reach out to and seeing if they’d like to do one cross promo with you within a certain period of time. I’m
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not expecting you to do a massive campaign. Figure out what’s one thing you’d start with. measure the results of it if you can. Even if that’s simply looking at your hosting platform’s audience data and seeing if you see a spike in listens or downloads around the time of a cross promo running. It can be as simple as that. And then once you see what’s successful, then increase the frequency of it. Increase the amount of outreach you do around it or broaden out the scope of it so you can test out more
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variables. If you’re a business show, then yes, business shows in your category be great, but maybe also look to other types, other subg genres, management shows, leadership shows, uh shows that are about Ivy League schools. Um I want you to set clear expectations. So the who, what, when, where, why, um it’d be great if you had some copy to use, a one-page agreement about what each is providing, what you’re providing to the collaborator, and what they’re providing to you. It doesn’t have to be
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legal. Um, and I say this as someone who’s married to a lawyer, but I just want to make sure that you protect yourself. So, at the very least, make sure that you’re on the same page as your collaborator as to what expectations are, what you each are getting out of it, the, you know, the date that each cross promo is running, the scripts that are going to be provided, um, you know, if data can be shared at all. And then that way you both have a sense of respect of what you each will be getting out of it, and
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there’s not going to be any miscommunications. Um, and also you can work hard but also work smart. So batch your productions, use templates. You don’t have to make this a peacemail thing. Um, once you’re getting into the throws of it, you can do one script template, customize that per show you’re working with for cross promos. And um, and then once you’re in the recording studio, just bang out five of those cross promo recordings all in one go. That will set you up for the next quarter. So there easy ways here
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that you could just optimize the process. Hey Joni, real quick, can I ask you a a brief question about timing of setting up these these swaps? >> Yeah. >> So, this is a very common ask that we get on the Podchaser side, but like >> this is going to be dependent on whether you’re doing a guest swap or a feed swap or a feed drop or cross promo. Otherwise, >> how far in advance should you start planning some of these collaborative opportunities? >> Oh, that’s great. I love that question.
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And and again, I encourage everyone here, continue asking questions or putting notes in the Zoom chat. We will have a lot of time at the end of this presentation where I I would love to get in the nitty-gritty of any and all this. Um, so in the case of the conglomerate, we sometimes work with shows and clients that are launching like months out or maybe they are an always on podcast. So they’re on right now and we just joined their show for the first time because we’re helping them with audience growth.
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Knowing when a show is launching is key or when the show is going to be releasing an episode or is going to be um you know aligned to a certain date on the calendar. Um that allows us to know okay that is the thing we really want to promote. So let’s start working towards that date where the episode will be live in the feed and when promotions start running on or after that date we can call out to that episode in the script. Um, so as an example, I mentioned that we represent a couple climate related
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podcasts. We’ve been working with them since February of this year. Um, we know on the calendar every year, Earth Day is going to be coming up towards the end of April. This year it’s next week, April 23rd, 4th, I believe. So, ever since February of our launch work of the show, we started working on establishing cross promos, feed drops, feed swaps, guest swaps, cross promo 30, 60-cond swaps with shows aligned to climate, sustainability, environment, even food and organic food. And we started those
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conversations in February, so that way we had plenty of time to get a lot of them set up. So, they would all launch in April and especially around Earth Day, Earth Week. So, just know that some people are quicker to respond to you than others when you’d send them a pitch of, “Hey, I’d like to do a cross promo with you.” Um, so accounting for that, I would say try to start reaching out 4 weeks in advance of the ideal date of when your promo would start running. Um, if you want to do more than that, I’d
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say four to eight weeks, but minimum I’d say give yourself at least a month because even after they say yes, you then still have to exchange all the assets on both sides and then record them and then schedule them. And that’s going to take a little bit of time, too. Yeah, great question, Tread. Um, other things that can help you make your audience growth effective. Um, I alluded to a little bit of this before, but first it’s tracking what works, right? So, again, if you do a cross promo, like
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an ad swap, a promo swap, a 30 60C swap with another entity, that’s great. And you can go into your hosting platform or even go into Apple Podcast Connect or Spotify for creators and see a little bump probably hopefully around that date of when the cross promo was running in the external feed. That’s great. But that’s not necessarily a bump entirely attributable to that one thing. You could have also had that bump from other things happening like an app feature or an interview you conducted on an
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external property or you sharing about on social media or something else. So if you really truly want to know if your crossromo specifically was the reason why you saw that bump or how much of that bump was attributable to it, then that means that you need to I would encourage you to look at attribution platforms. So again, Mellin, Podscribe, Pod Track, Swap FM. If you’re on Megaphone, this naturally is built into it. Um, and using those pixels and giving them to your external show partners. That way they can put them
00:33:01
into their feed when they run their promo in their feed that promotes your show. Um, aside from audio pixel attribution, there is also just link attribution. So you all are probably familiar with bit.ly or attribution URL links that promote um like a podcast page or a website. There are those for podcasts and some of these podcast attribution platforms including Mellin, Swap FM and the like have those capabilities and they are specific to podcasts. So, if you click on one and then you click into the podcast app of
00:33:33
your choice because of that link, that will mark it as a conversion and if I’m the show host or the creator, I will then be able to see the clicks on that link and also if you became a new listener and how many times you listened on your device or to specific episodes. So, it does get into the nitty-gritty for a podcast, which is great. And then you can tell was it an effective cross promo or was it ineffective? And if it was ineffective, then you know that maybe that specific show wasn’t the
00:34:01
right fit for you or maybe at a larger note, maybe that genre or that network wasn’t good for you to do a cross promo with and you should use your time and efforts elsewhere on different types of shows. Um, one other thing I just say around this section is that um, quality over quantity. So instead of you pulling your h hair out trying to set up a hundred different cross promos for your show, I would rather you be strategic and focus on a few even just the first one to date to know what is strategic and what’s um
00:34:33
effective for you before you engage in larger swaths. Again, if you are full-time doing marketing work, by all means feel free to focus on the quantity as well as the qual quality. Um my team can do that. But uh again, as you’re starting out, this is a routine just like you brushing your teeth every day. You want to make it part of the habit of you creating and producing and marketing a show, maybe just make it part of your deal of every month or every few weeks, you send out a few different podcast app or
00:35:01
podcast crossroma pitches and from those hopefully one will be a confirmation you move forward with. Um and also you want to make sure the timeline makes sense of both sides. So, for instance, um if you are running a promotion in your feed for two weeks amounting to 10,000 impressions or 10,000 downloads projected, then you want to make sure that’s equitable on their side as well. Um so again, reciprocity, you want to make sure that what you’re providing to them and what they’re providing to you
00:35:30
are basically around the same amount. Oh, and actually one more thing. Um, so regarding choosing comparable shows, I know I mentioned Potchaser being a great platform for this. There are a few other ones or a few other sources you could look at. They’re not going to have as much robust robust data. So that’s just the big qualification here. Potchaser really is excellent at this. Um, but you could look at the podcast app charts or even recommended if you like sections at the bottom of specific show pages. So,
00:36:00
like for right now, if you go to um how I built this the podcast on Apple podcast or on Spotify, if you scroll down to the very bottom of the show page, you’ll see there’s a little section that’s like recommended if you like with other podcasts that are comparable to how I built this. So, find a show that you think would be a great crossroma fit for you. And if you want to go down the rabbit hole of what other shows could be in that fit for you to pitch or send notes to, that’s a good
00:36:24
way to do it. You could also just do a Google search, type in um what are the best podcasts on insert topic. Here you’ll find listicles and within those listicles are probably shows that would align to exactly the topic or content that you make. And of course, you can always just survey your current audience. Ask them, hey folks, we’re doing a survey. Tell us what is your favorite show or shows you like to listen to. And then that will give you a sense of shows they like to listen to. And if they’re your audience, then you
00:36:55
reaching out to the shows they mentioned would probably be a good way to grow your audience because of how familiar they are with it. All right, so we’re getting to the end of the presentation. I want to address some common questions and fears. So one is around collaborations. Will you lose listeners to other shows if you commit to cross-promoting other shows in your feed? And what I’ll tell you is that data shows that listeners subscribe to multiple shows and listen to multiple shows at the same time.
00:37:27
Podcasting is not a monogous relationship with listeners. Uh listeners will listen to a lot of different shows. Yours and many others in the same playlist. So just because you are promoting another show does not mean that you are losing your audience to that show. Uh, if anything, it is growing their playlist of more shows like yours. So, let’s take that fear off the table. Um, second question, fear. Uh, what if my crossromotional partner has better content? Am I going to look bad by comparison? Uh, look, we’re all
00:38:02
different, right? One music show over here is going to sound different than one music show over there for various reasons. the host personality, the way they produce ando uh, you know, record the content, the type of guests they bring on, the type of music they they focus on, and that’s okay. So, even though, you know, we’re in a Crayola box of different shades of colors and they are complimentary and collaboration is going to highlight your strengths and maybe things that are different from
00:38:28
someone else’s or things that make them different from you is okay. Now, I would say that if you feel uncomfortable with promoting something in your feed, lean into that. Like, why are you feeling uncomfortable? Is it because maybe your production setup, it’s time to upgrade it? I mean, those are self-reflections I would encourage you to look at with or without a therapist. Um, but again, if you find that at the very least you’re comfortable with the content, it aligns with something related to you and your
00:38:55
audience, then by all means, try it and just see. Worst case scenario, it doesn’t work out and you don’t have to do it again. Um, another fear is just simply I don’t have time for collaboration. You’re right. You probably don’t. You have a lot of things going on. But if you just simply set a goal, a small goal of one strategic partnership per month or quarter even, that’s enough. I mean, even if you just get that one, that is more than what you did prior to that. And some of these
00:39:21
tactics are set and forget it. And they can grow and scale. So if you get a cross promo up once per quarter, but you line them up, you get them all confirmed within the same week and then you just schedule them out to take place, you don’t have to worry about that for months down the line. And then last question concern, what if someone takes advantage of me? Um, I’d say start with folks that you are going to trust and ones that maybe you already have pre-existing relationships with to some
00:39:49
degree. um a friend of a friend, if you will, and then build those relationships up and then test out other ones along the way. If for some reason, you know, you set up a cross promo with someone and things don’t work out for some reason, then at the end of the day, hopefully no money was exchanged, this was completely free, you learned from that experience, and now you can take that into the next relationship you create with a collaborator in the space. But in my experience, and I’ve coordinated
00:40:20
thousands and thousands and thousands of cross promotionals uh for my team across my clients, I think I’ve had less than 1% of issues with running cross promotions or uh like bad partners. So for me to say that, I would encourage you all to just consider you are going to be okay. It’s not the end of the world. So here’s your action plan to help you get started and then we’re going to get into the Q&A. One, I want you to identify potential partners. You can use PodChaser, you can use Apple
00:40:50
podcast uh chart rankings, you can use a good old Google search. However way you do it, find a few podcasts with complimentary content and similar audience size. And I say complimentary content in a few different ways. Um, you could look at it from the genre you’re in. Like a you’re a business podcast, you want to look at other business podcasts. You could look at it from uh, you know, maybe just generally audience. So, if they’re people that are curious, so they like learning about facts, if
00:41:19
they like learning about history, even if you don’t typically cover that on your show, you could still put those kinds of shows in the mix and test drive it and see if it’s going to be effective. Um, of course, I would encourage you just to listen to maybe one or two episodes of theirs to understand their style and values and if they align with yours because you do want to just be cognizant if you’re promoting them in your feed, then you’re effectively giving them like your thumbs
00:41:43
up that you recommend them. Um, and your audience is going to take that to heart. For the second step of this action plan, I want you to craft your outreach. So, basically, what is an email template that quickly says, “Hi, my name’s Joni. I host a podcast called X about Y topic and I’m reaching out because I think we share a similar audience and content and I’d love to see if you’d like to do a cross promo with me. That cross promo can include a 30 60C ad swap or a guest swap or a feed drop of
00:42:14
episodes that we exchange. Let me know what you think. Uh this would be perfect if we time it for May because X Y andZ reason. Something like that. And that was just off the top of my head, but a basic template. uh you just want to be specific with who you are, what you do, what the idea is, and then wait for the response. And you can follow up with them. It doesn’t have to be just one pitch. You can send the email and then a week or two later, follow up and say, “Hey, following up on this, would love
00:42:40
to move forward. Let me know what you think.” Um, third item on this list is execute that first collaboration. So get all the assets in order, the scripts or the audio, the recording time, when it’s going to publish and then get it on the calendar and let it run. And when it runs, that comes to the fourth element of this plan. Measure and then iterate. So track your new subscribers or downloads that occurred around that period of collaboration. Gather listener feedback. Um you may start seeing that
00:43:10
in your ratings and review section. And people may say, “Hey, I discovered your podcast because I heard an ad on X show or X property.” Awesome. Use those qualitative and quantitative uh notes and then plan from them as to what you should do next. If maybe that show is one you should do a larger collaboration around in the future, like a joint recording or a split recording or that’s the kind of show that you should look at for different collaborations. maybe look in their recommend if you like section
00:43:39
and see what other shows they’ve collaborated with or done things with and see if you can do something with them too. So, in closing, I just want to reiterate the goal of today’s session is to remind you that you’re not alone in this and that the rising tide lifts all podcast boats. So when discoverability has been an issue for so many in the industry, that means it’s a collective solution for us to work together to solve the problem by collaboration and uh collaborative efforts. If you build your
00:44:09
gen genuine relationships, and I say genuine in that yes, you’re coming in hoping for a goal. That goal being you want to grow your show, but you are also wanting to learn and experience other types of podcasts and authentically help others just like you want them to help you. That’s going to lead to sustainable growth. The relationships I’ve built up over the last 15 years of my career are still ones I’m in touch with today in various ways for cross promos, for editorial notes. Last week, I got a
00:44:39
client of mine on an NPR program for a guest uh interview because the producer of that show is someone I’ve known for many years. So, be kind. We’re all in this space together because we we believe in this space together. And also, just remember that your success, it doesn’t diminish someone else’s and vice versa. So, I just would encourage you to start building your collaborations, network. Today’s webinar is a great place to do that in the Zoom chat. And if you have any questions,
00:45:07
you’re always welcome to reach out. But for now, let’s go ahead and dive into audience questions. Um, so Trent, did any questions come in that we should start with first? >> Of course. Will this recording be shared? >> The answer is going to be yes. The first one, um, we will be record, we’ve already been recording this. It will be made available uh, probably in the next two to three business days. So keep an eye on your email and it will be in your inbox. That was the the most pressing one.
00:45:38
Um I did link something in the chat just for an example of a like multi- channelannel um collaboration that we saw. So we work with World Wildlife Fund. They recently did a crossover episode with Pew Charitable Trusts uh podcast called After the Fact. And what’s interesting about that is when you think about World Wildlife Fund, it’s very much talking about conservation, animal rights, so on and so forth, versus uh after the fact when you think about Pew, they’re mostly shaping discussions for policy makers,
00:46:07
right? At face value, those two circles don’t seem super concentric, especially when you start looking at some of the audience data as well as the reach data. However, as it turns out, there’s a great deal of crossover between advocacy and policy, right? So what they executed very very well was a a cross promo swap where or a feed feed swap if you will where each of them uh they recorded one episode and then they injected into one another’s feeds and they did that not just on the podcast feeds but also in
00:46:38
newsletters and social as well. Um so if you want to get any more information about that the producers and the hosts of both of those shows weighed in on it at that um link that I put in the chat as well. So, this is working uh this is working quite well for most uh podcasts and and production companies. So, I just wanted to to give a a very quick case study on on how this uh actually plays out in real in the real world. >> I love that. And actually, that was a great call out too, Trent, because you
00:47:06
just posted about it on LinkedIn in the last week or so. And um it’s these sorts of case studies which I actually just put a link in our Zoom chat with case studies and resources on this topic are are great to actually show that these are things in action that people are doing and the results of it. >> There’s a question from Demetrius Joni. If you were the US Secretary of Podcasting which I you know if there’s any worthy nominee I think it might be you. >> Sure. Um, what would be your first three
00:47:37
orders of business with respect to podcasters collaborating? >> Uh, I think a question would be would the US Secretary of Podcasting would that be reporting into the FCC chair or would that be a totally separate division had? Um so I would say that um looking at the industry at large I I’ve mentioned a few times that to really know how effective cross promotions are it is utilizing uh platforms like swap FM or Mellin that can be costly. So one thing I would do is look at opportunities to le to level
00:48:12
the playing field because some podcasters especially those that are more independent may not be at scale or have the funds to you know utilize those platforms. So how can we create platforms that are uh you know usable for whether the startup podcast to the major network? Um so you know scaling those the cost of it the infrastructure the data. Um other things I would just say are like ease of relationship building. So Potchaser is a great resource to be able to find contact information for shows to send
00:48:44
emails out to. Um but you know what is the way in which more podcasters know what resource resources are available to them because not everyone’s aware of certain platforms and uh and also being on the same page of here are great platforms for discoverability here are great platforms for production capabilities. Um otherwise I think my third thing is just simply like conduct making sure we’re all respectful. Podcasting can be sometimes a dramatic field because of uh you know squables or
00:49:13
gossip. So, um, you know, maybe just a reminder of like we’re all in this because we believe in the medium and, uh, and just making sure that everyone has like a code of conduct. So, those are three things. >> Awesome. Question from John. How should I think about writing a pitch for my podcast without sounding like a salesman? I will preempt this because we a mutual friend of both paglomerate and podchaser, Lauren Pelle, uh, with Think Media. We had her on one of our webinars and she framed outreach, a collaborative
00:49:43
outreach, as inviting them to a podcast playd date. And I thought that was so simple yet so brilliant because it takes a lot of the pressure off of both parties. I think like, hey, let’s talk, let’s collaborate, let’s see if there are any mutual um opportunities to lift each other up. Um, so I think that whole podcast playdate concept is an interesting one. But Joni, what do you think? um how do how do we not sound salesy in our collaborative outreach? >> I think one it’s not utilizing AI
00:50:12
without human input. So I’m not bashing anyone here who uses AI because I know various platforms and people do. Um it’s more that I wouldn’t entirely rely on AI. I’d want to make sure that use it as the wand the first draft come in afterwards to make sure it actually represents your tone what you would typically ask. Um so one not relying on AI completely and then two um actually making it human in the sense of what you’re asking why you’re asking and also why you appreciate the show you’re
00:50:41
reaching out to. So um be specific like if you’re reaching out to a show even if it’s above your your um like in audience growth terms like it’s in the millions and you’re in the hundreds. Shoot your shot but also be authentic and saying look I really admire your show. I’ve been listening for years. I’m making a show or I’ve I’ve been producing a show and hosting it that’s similar to yours. Um I would love to collaborate and if there’s something I I can do to amplify
00:51:09
your show and us be cooperative partners in this, I’d love to do that. Um you know, little personal touches like that, just like with job applications, it it makes a world of difference for the person who’s receiving it, reading it, and then figuring out, you know, like is this something that’s heartfelt enough that I at least want to respond to it and let them know I appreciate it. >> Awesome. Yeah. on the AI piece. So, we published a report back in February. It’s called the state of podcast guest
00:51:34
pitching. And in that report, we surveyed over 120 podcasts and received responses from host producers, executive producers, and the like. And the data was pretty stark. So, 68% of uh those that receive podcast guest pitches said that their the worst type of pitch they receive is one that is clearly AI generated or templatized. So, just to drive a a hammer into Joony’s point here, like yes, rough drafting is good, V1 is good, but if you’re only using AI to to pitch, um you’re you’re in for a
00:52:08
world of hurt. >> Yeah, I agree. Um I see a note here from Meg, which um again, this was not a paid endorsement. Um Meg is from KW uh in Seattle and not Meg, I’m sorry, we actually have two different client two different clients on the call. uh Meg from Connecticut Public and uh I just want to give a shout out for those that have worked at the Poglomerate. Um we we’ve I’ve loved representing a wide variety of clients over the years, public radio and non. Uh I’m just biased
00:52:35
because I worked in public radio for so many years and uh we love giving our resources and our trainings and our knowledge over to clients and our friends in the space. So, I did put a link in the chat if anyone here is interested and they’d like to learn more about what we do, how we can help grow shows. Um, feel free to connect with us on our website and just give us your basic details and what your goals are and we can follow up and see how we can help. >> Beautiful. Natalie has a question. What
00:53:03
kind of success have you seen with collaborations outside of audio parenthetically like events, social, newsletters, etc. that drive podcast growth? >> Oh, great. Um, I’ll give you an example. So newsletters specifically um there are some organizations and brand outlets or media outlets that do have popular newsletters and those newsletters are probably even more popular than the podcast they have as well in their network. So an example of that would be like Morning Brew. There was a few years
00:53:30
ago Morning Brew had a very popular few podcasts but their newsletter is in the millions and millions compared to the audio feed. So, we actually did a cross-promo with them where in exchange for our podcast that was aligned to marketing or to Morning Brew’s podcast promoted Morning Brew in our client show feed. Morning Brew’s email newsletter promoted our podcast and we gave Morning Brew’s newsletter team copy. It’s like two or three sentences. Um, I think we gave them podcast artwork from our
00:54:05
client show and we definitely gave them an attribution link. Again, it’s kind of like a bit.ly link but specific to podcast and we saw great conversion rates. So, people clicking on that link and then becoming a listener of our client show because of that newsletter shout out. So that’s again an example of if you can find an outlet or organization or show that also has a very popular secondary vehicle like a newsletter, an event series, a social media channel, um a Substack, whatever the case is, you can do a triangle
00:54:34
trade, which is basically instead of it being one to one where it’s you promoting their podcast in your feed, they’re promoting your podcast in their feed, you can do a triangle trade like what I mentioned for Morning Bruce newsletter podcast and our client show. >> Very cool. Ted, I think you’re gonna win the collaborative podcaster of the day award. So, kudos to you. >> Thank you. >> But Ted, do you want to uh talk through this? You’d mentioned, I think, seven
00:54:59
different >> uh they aren’t seven different podcasts, but for instance, the pro-democracy is also handinhand with civic engagement, handinhand with immigration. And uh uh I don’t mean for this to be shameless self-promotion, but since we’re talking with collab, >> that’s what the whole theme is. Yeah. >> Okay. So, I wasn’t going to do this, but I figured, God, this might be the lowest hanging fruit to collab if somebody on this stream is in these categories,
00:55:27
right? So, um one is that I went to Minnesota for six days and created 14 episodes called six days inside Minnesota >> because it was audio only. I had incredible access to immigrants hiding behind curtains for two months. And uh so it was real pro- immigration, civic engagement, pro-democracy. It’s it’s not it’s not partisan, but it’s certainly human, which these days might seem partisan. So that’s one, but you could take any of those three categories. It could be under civic engagement,
00:55:57
immigration, prodemocracy. Uh the second one is higher ed. I’ve got a client that specializes in entrepreneurship. It could be a higher ed client that you have or if you are one or it could be business leaders, entrepreneurship. Third one is health care. It’s a hospital group that really we don’t even talk about nurses and doctors. We talk about what’s shaping the future of Detroit and Michigan. And it’s a real leadership uh it’s not a leadership, it’s a CEO driven podcast, but we we
00:56:27
interviewed the head of the Mottown Museum. We interviewed the owner of a sports team. we interviewed um an author writing about um how she became a patient and she saw how the health care system was all screwed up. So, it could either be healthcare or it could be a city that’s um you know going through a resurgence. It could be Nashville. It could be Austin. It could be any city. It could be a city that hasn’t gone through a resurgence and what lessons you can learn from Detroit. So, it might
00:56:54
only be three podcasts or four podcasts I’m talking about, but I just thought I would divide them into seven categories in case any of these have a hint of what any of you anybody on this stream is is talking about. >> No, that’s great. And I think that’s a good shout out, too, that um there’s so many ways that you can segment the content and audience of your show. So, it could be based off again the audience demo of the age, the interest of the audience, but also the topic of, you
00:57:20
know, is this based around a region or a state? Is this based on a subgenre of like a larger category? Um, is there an episode or a guest that you have on and that’s that own that’s like a totally separate line of of ways that you can look into segmentation. Um, so that’s awesome. So yeah, anyone here if you’re interested, feel free to reach out to Ted. His emails in Zoom chat. Um, but folks, in the time that we have left, are there any other questions from attendees here? Things that I discussed
00:57:46
on the call about cross promotions, things that I didn’t that you want to dive into? Amazing. Well, I’m so glad we still spent the hour together. Hopefully, this was useful. As a reminder, um big thanks to Podchaser for co-hosting this with us. Um Podchaser has been a wonderful platform for us to collaborate with and use over the years for the puck’s work. So, if you want to learn more about Podchaser, be sure I believe there should be a link in the chat, Trent. Um, if not, we will be sharing um, uh, a
00:58:20
note and a link in our uh, follow-up email that will have the webinar recording. Um, and of course, reach out to the conglomerate. We’ve been able to collaborate with a wide variety of shows over the years, whether we represent them or we do cross promotions. So, if you have a show that you’d love to see, if maybe there’s a cross promo partner uh, that we’re representing that’ be a good fit, you can send me an email. I’ll put the my email in the chat, but it’s janiethepodcast.com.
00:58:46
Um, but in the meantime, um, Trent, are there any final words that you wanted to note? No. Uh, just one quick note. There are obviously so many podcast promotion services that out there out there. If you have link, uh, podcasts as part of any section of your LinkedIn profile, you’ve probably been inundated with pitches from I will get your uh, podcast promoted on Apple. >> Yeah, >> there’s a lot of noise out there, right? The pod glomer is our our go-to resource when it comes to uh podcast marketing,
00:59:15
podcast growth, etc. So, you would be in very very capable hands. So, we appreciate our partnership with you guys. Um and cannot sing your praises enough. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. And I promise we didn’t pay you for that. Um uh I feel like that’s the theme of today. I didn’t pay for that. Uh well, everyone, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and week. Uh again, we will be sharing the recording over email in the next few business days, so keep an eye out for it. And until then, um,
00:59:39
happy April. >> Cheers everyone. Thanks Joni. >> Thanks Trent. Bye everyone.
