# Podcast Strategy For Brands and Media Business ## Does Podcasting Work? 1. Core Podcast Demographics 2. When Can Ads, Sponsorship, and Appearances Work Instead? 3. When Do Podcasts Work Really Well? 4. Minimum Investment For Podcast Success ## Podcasting As A Channel In my opinion. Podcasting is first and foremost, a middle of the funnel content marketing channel. Now, when I say it's middle of the funnel, I choose that from a few key factors 1. Podcast listeners are hard to come by. And so as a top of the funnel piece of content, it's not necessarily the best. 1. Podcast subscribers stick around and they want to go in depth on the topic that you're podcasting about. So they're normally a little more closely aligned. 1. Podcasting can lead directly to leads. And I don't feel that most top of the funnel content can do that. Especially in B2B. So for marketing it's middle of the funnel content. I consider it a secondary content channel. But as we'll see. If you're running any sort of real content marketing operation. Your. Going to want to achieve a level of content. Production and throughput that makes podcasting a core part of a three or four channel strategy. Encompassing text, audio, video. And likely a second. Text or social channel as well. Now podcasting is a communication channel is mostly one to many. But the relationships that you build with guests, you bring on a show that has guests. Are one-to-one. And both are important, but the one to many is the real key. And that's where we see internal podcasts, town hall shows. And. Shows for large distributed workforces, really coming out as a key communication channel within larger distributed corporate structures. I'm not going to talk about that very much. Corporate communications is not my specialty. I'm going to focus on the content production and content marketing strategy. ## Audio First Content Marketing ![[Audio First Content Marketing]] ## Monetization ![[Podcast Monetization.webm | Rough Draft Monetization Recording]] I don't really know, the answer to the question is this marketing or profit generator for you. But I can tell you this, if you want to make money podcasting, be ready to spend some money or have a big audience. Now, if you're trying to make money from podcasting as part of a marketing channel, well, then we've talked a little bit about audio first, content marketing, we're going to be talking a lot more about it throughout these documents. And I think you'll find that the core principles apply at every end of the budget scale. So all in podcasts can make money. But you have to know if you are trying to invest in this to get a profit or if you're trying to invest in it, for brand power, and for leads and for audience. When it comes to tracking leads, and tracking attribution of podcasts, this is something that is slow to change because there are many podcasts powers that do not want it to. And that being said, I'm a big fan of paid sites for attribution. And they even do a little bit of retargeting Hint, Hint, wink, wink. It's awesome. But at the end of the day, as you'll see when we get into the content strategy, and the marketing strategy around podcasting, email is fantastic. email and text are still better than a podcast subscription. And so we generally focus on converting our audiences into newsletter subscribers, where we then let them know about podcast episodes, and give them the option to subscribe there after they've subscribed to email. Email subscribers also have a lot more demographic information. And that makes sponsorship way easier. So the best time to sell sponsorship first show is before it launches, because after it launches, there are numbers associated with it download numbers that we've all got to talk about. And a launch sponsor can really help you put an ad budget behind your show and allow it to grow exponentially faster. Title sponsors really only work if your shows already got maybe a couple 1000 downloads a month, or per episode, ideally. And once you get into that top 10 20% of all podcasts, a title sponsor for the low five figures range should be in your reach. And there's two things we look at when we're selling sponsorship packages, in terms of pricing them. One is what are the sponsors used to paying? And then to is back to that original question is this marketing or profit generator. If our goal is marketing with the current cash flows from the show, then we're gonna sell what's called a grow with the sponsor package. And in that model, you guarantee a sponsor certain number of views and a certain amount of reach with their sponsoring of their show with the show and you sell a package that allows you to take about 30 or 40% of that sponsorship dollars, and funnel it into ads into growth channels for your podcast. Those packages can allow you to continuously increase the amount of spend that you have for your show, while always showing increased size and returns an audience to your sponsors, which will help you keep them longer. When I talk about selling sponsorships, I don't expect the show to have more than two or three sponsors at the very most, at a time, most shows would just have one. And I think what is quickly becoming the popular method, especially among sophisticated networks is selling ads. And when I sell talk about selling ads, we talk about selling on a CPM basis normally, guaranteeing impressions every time and building a book of businesses who are coming Back to you, again and again to buy. ad sales is a relationships game. It's about knowing media buyers, it's about getting to know and have them know like and trust you and have them know like and trust the brands that you're selling ads for. It's about building a lot of relationships. Because your game is now scale. Where sponsor ships is very much more of a spear fishing, or white whale hunting exercise. ad sales is much more about building a rotating book that you can go back to a little black book of businesses. Popcorn and advertise cast can probably sell most of your volume, but they're going to take a big chunk of the spend as a result. I still like them, but they're definitely not the only way to go about things. And I talk a lot more about different monetization channels in the monetization playbook, which is currently at call for content Comm. podcast score is the valuation calculator we've been working on. Were just getting ready to launch the next version of it, which I'm really excited about. But in the meantime, it is designed to value podcasts and then give them a podcast score, which is should be a more accurate representation of a podcasts path to growth over time. 1. Is this Marketing or a Profit Generator? 1. Profit Generators Require Capital Investment or Budget Operations 2. Marketing Can Be Profitable at the low and high end 2. Lead Tracking 1. Attribution/Retargeting 2. Email Is Fantastic 3. Sponsorship 3. Launch Sponsors 4. Title Sponsors 5. Selling Sponsorships 1. Grow with Sponsor Packages 4. Ad Sales 6. Building A Book Of Businesses 7. PodCorn 8. Advertisecast 5. Monetization Playbook 6. PodcastScore For Valuation ## Show Format ![[Show Formatting.webm | Rough Draft of Show Formatting]] When it comes to show formatting, this is one where I like to keep it simple, stupid kiss. If you've not heard that before, every show needs an intro. And most of them need some sort of outro, too, I recommend you have a steady show format so that you can maintain consistency over time and so that it is easier to plan your episodes. Now, when I say format, that doesn't necessarily mean it is the same as the outline. Your outline could just be the topics that you're talking about on the show, or it might be the questions that you're asking on the show. Your outline, May and should include all of those things inside of your shows format. Because when we talk about show format, we're not only talking about is anyone interviewing anyone, if so, who. And we'll get into the production types of solo shows, interview shows, groups of hosts, and all the others a little bit later on. But we're also wondering how the show is planned within an episode. And that means blocking a show in two segments. I've put in a few different common kinds of segments here. And structuring them is generally specific to the show. But overrated underrated is a pretty simple concept. You list off topics or ideas and they respond overrated or underrated. It's a form of a lightning round where people have fast responses to fast questions. Will Commedia recommendations are great to close out shows. And their first steps are journey to now is a great way to open. Lightning rounds are good to break up different topical segments. Or to separate something like a how to from the primary part of the episode. starting from scratch, is a question or idea that says, hey, you're awesome. You've done a lot. What if you didn't have some of that stuff? For those of our audience who aren't quite as far down the path is you? What would you recommend to them? and answer a specific question is asking every guest pretty much the same question. So when we get into outlining an episode, we take the format. And oftentimes, we might have some extra segments that we swap out in between episodes. Maybe every time we start with the first steps journey to now and every time we end with a book media recommendation. But then in the middle, we have a few different specific questions and a few different lightning round options that we swap in. And we use those to mix up middle segment that is either a case study how to or topical segment based on the specific guest and so that allows us to quickly outline the episodes according to the guests and according to the needs of our content strategy. If your show is not growing in listenership and it's kind of remain stagnant for a while, try mixing up the format see what happens 1. Intro/Outro 2. Format For Consistency 3. Format Vs Outline 4. Blocking A Show Into Segments 5. Common Segments 1. Lightning Round 1. Overrated Underrated (Conversations With Tyler) 2. First Steps/JOurney to now 3. Book/Media Recommendation 4. Specific Topical Segment 5. Case Study 6. How To 7. Starting From Scratch 8. Answer A Specific Question 6. Outlining An Episode ## Podcast Production See Also: - [[Sample Production Workflows]] - [[Podcast Checklists]] - [[AAA1 Podcasting in Clickup]] - [[Show Notes Samples & SOP]] ### Variety Keeps Consistency Leave some flexibility in your show format to adjust the individual episode productions. Consider mixing up the show format by using a different type of production once in a while. ![[Podcast Production.webm]] So the way I see it, you really want to use a variety of different show types in order to keep the show consistent. Because I haven't met a single podcast host that doesn't get bored doing the same thing every episode, unless the thing they're doing allows for enough enough creative freedom, that they have options. And that's why I really like interview shows because they lend themselves to group roundtable discussions very easily. And the host doing an occasional solo in an interview show also makes sense. You can bring in CO hosts and other things and that's what we're going to talk about here. 1. Solo Show 1. Topic Calendar 2. Outline 3. (Optional) Script 4. Descript 5. Push ![[Solo Shows.webm]] Now, as I'm first walking through this draft, I've only just posted my very first solo show for myself. And I've only run about four for clients. So I don't have a lot of data on this yet. But I think solo shows are pretty easy to run from what I've seen, you just get a topic calendar. Each day, you sketch out an outline for the show, maybe somebody writes a script for you. Depends how fancy you want to get with it. And then you drop the whole thing into the script, you give it a quick cleanup and you push it right out. And I've done about six episodes now. And it has been that simple. And I look forward to doing more. I think that solo shows up potentially the greatest SEO boon that those of us who are experts are good at talking in hate writing or bad at writing. I'm both and I think it's just fantastic for that. 2. Interview 6. Guest List 7. Inviting Guests ![[Inviting Guests.mp3]] So inviting guests onto your podcast isn't very difficult once you get going. To put it in perspective, I've only had one person say no to my invitation to be on my podcast, if I was asking them verbally, so in this case, it was on the phone, and they didn't want to be on. I've had people shoot me down on email plenty of times. But generally, they come around time permitting, or they're just not the right fit. You want to go in understanding that you have something to offer. Being on a podcast, being featured in any sort of media is a boon to most people. And by most people, I mean, all but the most authoritative, are going or the most popular, the most well known, are going to be willing to take that boost that you give them as a result. So the benefits of being on a podcast are pretty clear. People get to hear who you are, you get a great piece of content to share with your audience that shows people respect you as an authority. And and then you as a host, on the other side, get a, get a nice piece of content and get a nice conversation as well. So putting together your outreach plan, you're going to want to follow up a few times, I recommend anywhere from four to seven emails, in your email outreach. And you know, maybe you reach out on LinkedIn on social networks. First, Nicky, look in the amp, I have an outreach breakdown in there that I think will work well for this, it's got a little plan of when you reach out, just adapted for inviting somebody on a podcast, you should be good to go there. So what should the goal be for contact? In the case of inviting people on your podcast, the goal should be to invite them on your podcast. So reach out inviting them on your podcast, you're gonna want to do a little research first, include a reason why you think they're a good fit for your show, maybe several. But just go out and do it. If people have a lot of content out there about them selves, they'll probably be interested, if they have no content out there about themselves, they'll probably still be interested because they don't have content out there for a reason normally unrelated to a lack of desire. Normally, it's I don't have time not I don't want to have content, you interviewing them, featuring them and your show gives them an opportunity to create that content without any extra work. So we're going to include a template here, arm if you're intimidated about this, just remember that you're doing them a favor by inviting them on arm, you are doing the nice thing for them. At the very least they get nothing more but a backlink from it. And that backlink is still worth something. SEOs get paid 1000s of dollars a month just to build backlinks. So that's value right there. That's your pro tip. If you get a yes, thank them many times for coming on. Be sure to keep them updated on when you're putting out the episode when you're posting it when you're promoting it all that stuff. And if you get a note, that's okay. Now, if you get a no because it's not big enough for them right now. Put them in a folder for when you reach that size. If you get to know that they're just not interested, then let them go. There's plenty more efficient to see. do ask why they said no, though. It's always good to find out. They may just not know what a podcast is. They may not know what entails being on it, they may think it takes a lot of time. It doesn't it's 30 minutes an hour at most. You're gonna feel a little awkward if you don't work in a profession. Oh, this is me switching over to truthful things about being a podcast host Nicky. First off, you're going to feel a little awkward if you're not used to interviewing people. If you're not used to questioning them and owning the conversation. It's going to feel a little weird to do so. Especially if you're interviewing people that you normally think of as untouchable, I interview a lot of CEOs, a lot of owners and founders of companies. And the first couple of times, they were all big guys to me. But after that, they were just people, people on the other side of the mic. And I got better over time, I'm still working on getting better at recording it being a host at being a podcast producer. It's a road. But after your first couple episodes, you'll get into the groove and you'll just keep going, you'll have a lot of fun, in all likelihood, I don't listen to my own show, very often. I really don't want I just don't like the sound of my own voice very much. And too, I already had that conversation and remember it pretty well. So I probably don't want to listen to it again. If you want to get better as a host, I highly recommend you listen through your shows, or send them to a friend to listen to and ask for notes on how you could improve. A lot of times you might be cutting somebody off before they're done with a thought or something like that. It's the little things that make the difference. Cutting out filler words is also going to be important. Keeping your questions broad, keeping them keeping them easy, is a is the way to go. Overall, when you start your podcast, the first time I sent out my invites, I emailed 50 people in just a mass email, and I got back a number of guests. The next time I did another 100 and I got back a bunch of guests. It's just a matter of going through the process and going through the numbers. I don't recommend you spamming people like I did. That was not the best move. But it worked. And I got a number of people on 1. Guest Management 1. Outlining Conversation 2. Interviewing 3. Guest After Interview 4. Push ![[Interview Show.webm]] Interview shows on my favorite for content strategy, as I mentioned above, they really give you a lot of variety. When it comes to flexibility and how you can make shifts to the production. You can bring on different people, you can change the interview format. There's just so much you can do with an interview show. I love it. You can learn more about what actually goes into running an interview show in some of the podcast checklists and the sample production workflows. 3. Regular Group Of Hosts 13. Topic Calendar 14. Outline 15. Recording 16. Push ![[Group of Hosts.webm]] I'm actually not a big fan of the regular show. I think that many of them get very boring very quickly. And I'd say that if you're going to do a regular group of hosts, make sure you bring on guests as well. But otherwise, it's pretty much just like it's just something in between a solo show and interview show, except it's the same guest every time. I guess that's really my opinion on that sort of show. 4. Post Production 17. Edit (If Needed) 18. Master 19. Transcribe 20. Social Posts 21. Scheduled 22. Promotion Contact 23. Podcast360 Plug ![[PS Post Production.webm]] So, post production on the podcast, you probably are going to want to edit it, you're gonna want somebody to master it, then you're gonna want to transcribe it. You're gonna want to turn it into social posts, I recommend both video as well as images and just plain gross. And then I would also make some detailed show notes, maybe a few blog posts from it from it. I even want to get it scheduled. And then you're going to contact people to promote the episode let them know about it. And you know, we do we do the editing shownotes and social posts at podcast 360. And, this post production is once again something we go into more detail about in other sections. ## Podcast Distribution & Promotion 1. The 3 Big Levers 1. Guests 3. Partnerships 4. Paid Media 5. #0 - Other Podcasts, Influencers, & Newsletters 2. Partnerships 1. Contests 2. Feed Swaps 3. Guest Appearances 4. Content Partnerships 3. Syndication 4. Partnered Media Specials 1. Columns/Series 2. Contests 3. Summits 4. Conferences 5. SEO 1. Question Based 2. Big Fancy Stuff I Don't Really Understand 3. My Dumb Version 1. Drafting Topics + Questions Based 3. Bigger and Better - Or Simpler 4. Lots of Links 6. Repurposing 5. YouTube 6. Books & Long Form 7. Social 7. Live Episodes 6. For Engagement 7. For The Pings 8. Social 8. Twitter 9. Facebook 10. Instagram 11. LinkedIn 9. Paid 12. Other Podcasts 13. Facebook 14. Specialist Firms 15. Newsletters 16. SEM