Jeremy: 00:02

So, Justin, a few weeks ago on the podcast, we did a bit of an experiment here where we released 2 versions of the same episode. 1 was about 60 minutes and the other was a condensed version that was something like 37 minutes. And my question to you is which of those episodes do you think did better and why? Welcome Welcome to podcast marketing trends explained. I'm Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy.

Justin: 00:30

And I'm Justin Jackson from transistor.fm. And together, we're digging into the data behind the podcast marketing trends 2023 report to help you understand what it means for you and your show.

Jeremy: 00:43

Our goal is to help you make better informed decisions about the way you create and market your show so you can spend more time on what actually matters for growth and accelerate your

Justin: 00:52

results. Let's get into it.

Jeremy: 00:56

Some of the most common questions that a lot of podcasters have related to things like how long should my episodes be? How often should I publish new episodes? Should I have a co host? Should I do interview shows? Should I do solo shows?

Jeremy: 01:08

A lot of these structural decisions actually have a big impact on how listeners engage with your show and and whether listeners are likely to engage with your show. So So I'm assuming that you encounter these questions pretty regularly as well, and I would be curious to know from your perspective, how much do these structural decisions matter?

Justin: 01:27

It really depends. The the answer is, like, it matters a lot, and then also it matters less than you think it does because, ultimately, what really matters is the product, the podcast. And if it's good and if it's good for that particular audience. So in products, we talk about product market fit. There's this other element that we talk about in startup land, which is founder market fit and founder product fit.

Jeremy: 01:57

Yeah.

Justin: 01:57

And in podcast terms, that would be host market fit and then host podcast fit. So there's lots of dynamics at play here, and it's hard to give a generalized answer.

Jeremy: 02:10

Everybody's favorite response, it depends. So, I think let's work our way through some of these. And we'll look at some of the data from the report about the most successful shows, what some of these structural decisions they were making here. And let's start by digging into episode length and kind of close the loop here on the question that I posed to you to open up the episode. We ran this experiment a couple of weeks ago, 2 episodes based on the exact same content.

Jeremy: 02:35

1 was 60 minutes, 1 was roughly 40 minutes. So 2 thirds the length. How do you think this played out, both on a downloads and a kind of retention basis? And and what is your reasoning behind your response?

Justin: 02:47

Okay. My guess is the shorter episode got more downloads, had better consumption, so people went through more of the episode. The reason is that I think when you're looking for episodes to listen to or you're looking at your cue or someone recommends a podcast to you, asking for an hour of someone's time is a bigger ask than asking for 37 minutes of their time. And so it's a better entry point. It matches up more with, like, the length of a commute or, in my case, the length of a walk down to the office.

Justin: 03:22

So that's kinda what I'm thinking is that the shorter episode performed better probably in all metrics.

Jeremy: 03:29

Okay. So we don't have a ton of data under our belt yet when it comes to this, experiment. And for a little bit of context on how I set this up, I released both episodes basically 1 minute apart. So released them at about 5 AM Eastern. So most people, they woke up to these 2 episodes and I recorded a dynamically inserted ad at the start of the intro.

Jeremy: 03:50

It was about 30 seconds long that basically said, hey, we're doing an experiment this week and we've released 2 versions. 1 is 60 minutes, 1 is 40 minutes. Listen to whichever one you like and let us know what you think. So I was really curious to see how this would play out because I think we all suspect that maybe if I did a longer episode, that would do better. Maybe if I did shorter episodes, those would do better, but you kind of have to commit to them.

Jeremy: 04:10

And I thought, okay. Well, we're already editing down a shorter version for YouTube anyway. Might as well export that as an audio version and just test this and see what happens. And so we've got, about just over a week of data here, so there's not a ton of data yet, but the early results are fascinating to me And so much like you said that you would expect within the episode release window, we actually did see that the condensed version of the episode, the shorter episode, got more downloads within the first day or couple of days here. And so we're hosted on Transistor.

Jeremy: 04:42

And so the way that, you guys basically calculate this release window is the first 2 days, the first kind of 48 hours of an episode being out. And so the release window, 199 downloads for the condensed episode, 188 for the full length episode. And so this was kind of like immediately. I was like, wow, this is way closer than I thought. I kind of was hoping that there'd be some definitive answer.

Jeremy: 05:06

Like either just one does way better and be like, okay, I guess we should do the long episode or I guess we should do the short episode. But this was very surprising that it was, like, pretty even. And I will say that there is some nuance here where people had to choose one to start with and so I'm assuming there's a lot of overlap here where somebody listened to that short episode first and they were like, oh, there's a long listen to that or they listened to the long one first and they're like, oh, there's a short one. I'm going to listen to that. And so Yeah.

Jeremy: 05:32

The way that we can kind of actually look at this was then in the chartable retention data, we can actually see that the full length episode was the first one that I published and so we can then see how many people listened to that episode and then the subsequent episode, which was the shorter episode. And so Interesting. We can't we can't see vice versa, unfortunately. We can only see that one direction. But what we see here is that this is by far our highest retention, next episode where in chartable, of all the people who listen to the long episode, 76% of those at least clicked play on the next episode.

Jeremy: 06:08

So Interesting. To me, I'm kinda thinking like, okay. That seems to suggest that a large percentage of people listen to the long episode, the first bit at least, and then they went to the next one. They were like, oh, actually, I prefer the shorter one. And so I'm gonna go over there.

Jeremy: 06:23

Now Mhmm. There's lots more nuance here. We don't know if there's auto downloads going on that people didn't actually listen, but they downloaded both of them. Some of the early first impressions there were a little bit mixed. I don't know what your kind of thoughts are on on that data so far.

Justin: 06:36

Yeah. I mean, I love that you were doing this experiment, and it's really difficult to do these kinds of experiments in podcasting. It's cool that you tried it out and just to see. But even just introducing that choice, you're gonna play with people's minds. Like, some people might be like, well, I can't listen to the short version.

Justin: 06:55

I might miss out on something important. Or so you're you know, there's some mental gymnastics that the listener would have to go through as opposed to what I think would be interesting is walking around a conference and just saying, based on these episodes, which one would you click on first and why? And I think you'll see people will start to mention, well, this one's only 30 minutes long, so I'll check that one out first. So I think there's other ways you could try this experiment. And I think the point is it's good to do these kinds of things if you can.

Justin: 07:26

Like, just in whether it's in person or doing it the way you did it. Yeah. It's it's interesting to me.

Jeremy: 07:33

Now there is also a further twist. And so what we saw here in the data in the first release window here was that there seemed to be a slight preference towards the shorter episode.

Justin: 07:44

Okay.

Jeremy: 07:45

But with each day outside the release window, so from day 3 onwards, the longer episode has actually had more people click through on it.

Justin: 07:53

Oh, wow.

Jeremy: 07:54

And so there seems to be a longer tail on the longer episode, which is interesting to me. So part of this could be maybe people listen to the short episode on the release window. And they're like, actually, I do wanna listen now. I've got some more time later in the week. I actually do wanna listen to full episode.

Jeremy: 08:10

Yeah. That could be one potential explanation. And so at at this point, the longer episode actually has more downloads overall and seems to be gaining more kind of momentum than the the short episode is. So that's interesting. And then the other kind of fascinating thing here is that I looked further into the chartable data and what we can see is that there's actually a preference for newer listeners, people who have not listened to as many episodes.

Jeremy: 08:33

They prefer the shorter episode whereas long time listeners actually preferred the longer episode, which this makes total sense to me, but it's fascinating to see it in the data.

Justin: 08:42

That's it. That is the insight right there. And this is the tension is that who are you serving? It's like, are you serving long time listeners? Are you serving new listeners?

Justin: 08:54

This is why it's actually nice to have a member's only podcast or a, you know, listener supported feed where it's like, if you're a fan and you want the long version, subscribe here. If you're a brand new, here's the short 20 minute version. That's the public version, but there's always, like, a pushing people to who are fans to consume the longer version.

Jeremy: 09:19

Yeah.

Justin: 09:19

That's fascinating.

Jeremy: 09:20

And I also heard some anecdotal evidence from people who were familiar with me in the past. I already had a relationship with them. They had consumed my content maybe for years and all of them say, no, I want the full. I want as much as you'll give me. And I thought, oh, that is really interesting.

Jeremy: 09:33

And what's also interesting is even the 60 minute version was edited down from 80 minutes or something like that. It was like an hour 20 minutes. And so that was already cut down quite a bit from our original raw recording. And so even that was a somewhat condensed version. And then the 40 minute was even more condensed.

Jeremy: 09:48

And the final kind of piece that I'll throw in here relates to retention, which I thought for sure the longer episode is going to have a lower retention rate. And it does not. We actually see that, currently, as of right now, it has a 67% consumption rate in Apple Podcasts, and the short version has a 64% consumption rate. So, interesting. Just fascinating insights all around here, but this is a very, kind of quirky, unique experiment that we've run here.

Jeremy: 10:16

But thinking about more broadly, when you were talking with somebody about episode length, when you get this question, how do you begin to approach that topic from a, this is probably the best fit for you in your situation?

Justin: 10:30

The truth is almost always people's episodes should be shorter. Almost always because they they need to be editing them down. There's too much in them. And this also has to do with pacing. This has to do with keeping things compelling, keeping things, you know, entertaining and interesting the whole time.

Justin: 10:51

And the truth is it takes a lot more effort to produce something that's nice and succinct. And most people don't put in that effort. Most people, it's like, you know, 3 funny guys on a couch recording a 3 hour podcast, and they pub they just publish it. And, in most cases, that's just not interesting enough. Generally, I tell people you should probably edit this down and then probably edit it down again.

Justin: 11:19

Jason Fried is this business guy and writer I know, and he has this task where he says, I wanna you to write a full page version. I want you to write a 1 paragraph version, and I want you to write a tweet sized version. And the point of the exercise is that you can get more and more succinct and cut away all the things that are unnecessary, and it generally gets better as you get kind of down to the essence. Yeah. What about yourself?

Justin: 11:47

What do you normally tell folks? What are your your thoughts there?

Jeremy: 11:50

I think it's only been more recently that I've really thought a lot more. And this is interesting because I've been an audio engineer and editor for a long time. But a lot of that editing was not content editing so much. So for clients, it was more like cleaning it up from a technical perspective, umms and ahs and that kind of thing, removing obvious mistakes and all that. But recently I've just kind of become obsessed with a little bit like the, the craft of editing to highlight and bring focus to certain ideas.

Jeremy: 12:14

And a lot of that is by removing stuff that does not serve the main theme of the episode. And so that's what I've been doing a lot with this show is our editor, Chris, will do a pass at the episode that cleans up a lot of the technical stuff. And then I'll go through mainly for the video version and say, I if it's gonna be on YouTube, it can't be an hour and 20 minutes. Like, that's not gonna fly on YouTube. So for me, part of the creative challenge has been like, what can I cut out of this and still retain the essence?

Jeremy: 12:37

And I think of this idea as value density. And so in a given, let's just say 60 minute episode, how many moments are there where I'm thinking as a listener like, oh, that was that was really interesting. I never thought about it that way. And on a high value density episode, you might have 5 or 6 of those moments where it's like every 10 minutes, there's something new that you're like, oh, wow. Like that was a real interesting idea.

Jeremy: 12:57

Whereas a low value density episode, you maybe have one. And I've listened to plenty of shows that there's nothing that gets my ears to perk up in a whole episode. And so it's it's extremely low kind of peaks of whatever the the show's kind of job is, whether it's insight or humor or entertainment, whatever the listener is coming to receive, I think we want to condense that and compress that to a point where they have all the relevant, like, context that they need for it to make sense. We're not just like cutting to, you know, the punch lines. Those need to be set up, but we're removing some of the stuff that isn't necessary to serve that.

Jeremy: 13:28

And so this is something that, like, I've just kind of become a little bit obsessed about, and I know a lot of people who work and have worked on really large shows that people are familiar with that might be 2, 3 hour long episodes, things like that. And a lot of times what people don't realize is they actually recorded for 6 or 8 hours, and it actually got cut down to 2 hours. And so what you're hearing is a quarter of the total recording. It's not that just that they went out there, press record for 2 hours, and then that was it. And I think that, you know, that's part of the value of good editing is you don't realize that as a listener.

Jeremy: 13:58

We've talked about, David Perell before on the show, and so he has a podcast called How I Write, but he so he's very writing focused and he has a blog post. I think it's called Hide Your Work. And he basically talks about how, you know, your creative work is done when the audience feels like they could have done it themselves, but it's something that you have slaved over for hours. And so it feels so simple that you look at and you're like, oh, I could do that. How hard could it be when really the work is hiding how much work has gone into it?

Jeremy: 14:24

And I think that by nature of that, the really great shows, they do that. And we as an audience don't really understand. And so we think I could do that. And then we go in and we think we're doing the same process when really we're we're not quite at that level yet.

Justin: 14:37

Yeah. I I love that idea of value density, thinking about how many takeaways are in this moment, how many shareable moments are in this episode, how many if you're doing a humor episode, like, how many chuckles are there? Like, you you wanna create the density of the the kind of thing you're going after. Like, if you're an education podcast, it's like, how many notes do people take per episode? Thinking about it in that way, like, figuring out what your value metric is for your show and then looking at each section of the podcast and going, okay.

Justin: 15:11

How can we increase that value metric? Whether it's chuckles, shareable moments, insights, notes, whatever it is, increase those for every section of the show. Yeah.

Jeremy: 15:24

And I think that part of the job here is in editing and part of it is in structuring your episode in preproduction and thinking, like, what are the themes that we're gonna talk about here and what are the moments that we know are going to be interesting that we wanna spend more time on and what are the moments that we wanna spend less time on? And so I think you can fix some of this in editing, but you need to have the material there, the raw material from the start. And so that's going to come from the the prep and the planning beforehand. Now, before we move on from episode length, I do want to bring in the data from the report here, which was a little bit interesting. And so what we see here is that the largest shows, the shows with over 10,000 downloads an episode, they were actually the longest.

Jeremy: 15:58

And so they were an average of 43 minutes per episode, which is is still kind of on hold somewhat on the shorter end than I might have thought. The middle tier shows, so the shows from a 1000 to 10000 downloads an episode, they were 37 minutes, and the shows on average, with less than a 1000 downloads were 35 minutes. And so the overall average was 37 minutes right in the middle. And so this was kinda actually interesting to me where the maybe up and coming shows, the shows that were lower down in in terms of total number of downloads were shorter. And I think you almost look at this and you might be like, oh, I need to do longer episodes to grow like successful shows are longer.

Jeremy: 16:35

But I think that this is kind of hinting at what we just talked about here, where perhaps these shows actually record way longer and edit it down to this point where, like, it is a dense value packed episode of 43 minutes that happens to be longer than some of these shorter episodes. I don't know if that's any other takeaways that you would have from that.

Justin: 16:54

Asking how long should my episodes be and that being the only variable is, like, asking a chef how long should I boil the water with no other information. It, like, it just depends on what you're cooking, the ingredients, everything else. And so people ask these questions, and I can understand why they're asking. But it it depends on what you're cooking up. It depends on your skill level.

Justin: 17:21

It depends on who this is for. It depends on so many things. And so for some audiences and some show concepts, your episodes should be 3 hours long. And for some shows, your episodes should be 15. In general, if I had to generalize it, I I just always say, you probably should be editing more and cutting things down more.

Jeremy: 17:43

What I like about that idea of the value density is that you can have a 10 minute episode that has one great takeaway or a 5 minute episode. And if if it does that, that's a extremely dense 5 minutes. And if you do that every single episode for 5 minutes and give people one takeaway and they can rely on that, that is an insanely valuable show versus a show that's 60 minutes and also contains one similar takeaway. Like, that is just kind of objectively a worse use of a listener's time to some extent. And so I think that that is like, how much value can you deliver in a given amount of time?

Jeremy: 18:13

And it's just like, however long I'm going to pick my episode length that I just need to make sure that I am keeping people engaged and delivering value regularly. And so I think that that's a really good metric to, like, think about as you're going through this. And even if you can convince some some listeners to give you some feedback on that, I would actually present this question of just, like, how many moments got you leaning in in the episode? And just, like, ask for brutal feedback from somebody who you know is at least in your target audience and say like okay I want you to listen to the show give me honest feedback and just I want you to make note of these things. When did you feel like it was dragging or you were zoning out?

Jeremy: 18:46

When did you find your attention wandering? When were there moments where you were like turning up the volume to like or replaying it or listening in, where you wanted to do a bookmark? Those are the things that will then they can give you a list of notes with timestamps and you can be like, oh, interesting. Now I have an objective view now of the kind of quality of my episode that I can take this and make improvements on.

Justin: 19:05

Yeah. I like that.

Jeremy: 19:07

Alright. So the next structural decision that people have to make about their show is the format that they're going to go with. And so, you know, the interview format is probably the most popular in podcasting historically. That's kind of how a lot of podcasting got its start. We've also got solo episodes.

Jeremy: 19:21

We've got people who do mixes of formats. We've got co hosted like the show we're doing, and that can be either co hosted with guests or just a pair of co hosts who they're the same ones on every episode. And then we've got some other formats like, you know, fiction, narrative, maybe round table, things like that. I'm curious how you think about these kind of decisions and when you're deciding, to create a new show, what informs your decision about, like, how I want to structure this? Does it stem from the concept?

Jeremy: 19:48

Or do you are you like, I want somebody to discuss this with. I wanna interview people. What's the thought process there?

Justin: 19:54

When I did my first podcast, it was an interview podcast, and we also got advertisers. And I remember eventually not liking the pressure of having to find a good guest every week so that I could serve more downloads and then please the advertisers. I loved it when I could talk to somebody I really wanted to speak with, and, you know, I just had all these questions. I've generally been, like, reading all their work. So loved that.

Justin: 20:24

But my favorite shows in terms of podcaster podcast fit, so, like, a podcast that fit me and kind of my life, are shows like this, where it's the same cohost every week. We schedule it. We can show up. We eventually build up a rapport, and it's just so much easier. There's no scheduling guests.

Justin: 20:45

There's no having a guest show up, and they don't have the right equipment. It's, like, all of the variables are more reliable.

Jeremy: 20:52

Mhmm.

Justin: 20:53

And I've found that more enjoyable. Yeah. So there's a lot of questions to ask here in terms of what you wanna get out of it. I'm glad I did that interview show. I think interview shows are incredibly powerful.

Justin: 21:08

I've also done solo shows that were quite fun as well. Actually, more work, though, required way more editing. But solo shows, can be great fun as well, especially if you really wanna get in. And, you know, often in solo shows, I'd pull in a lot of clips and, you know, I'd be editing a lot. So it depends.

Justin: 21:29

It really depends on what you want out of it. The only other factor I'll say is that interview shows are generally easier to, in my experience, to build an audience with. Because if you're getting guests that have a following and people are looking for, you know, interviews with that guest, they're curious about what's going on in their lives and stuff. The biggest episodes I've ever done are guest driven shows.

Jeremy: 21:57

To me, interview often feels like the default choice, and I think people should look a lot more closely at other formats. Yeah. I think a lot of us who have been in the the podcast industry or coming in the past few years, we kind of, you know, grew up, so to speak, with shows that tended to be interview based. We learned a lot from them. Certainly, I did.

Jeremy: 22:14

And so it's like, that's the natural type of show you're going to create because that's the example that you've seen. But I think that interviews are much harder to do well than other types of shows. I think the average person is not a good interviewer and there's no reason any of us should be unless you have prior experience and training in that regard. So in the report here, interview was by far the most common format of episodes. So 40% of all shows, basically, or close to 40% were interview shows.

Jeremy: 22:43

The next best was around 20% at solo. Around 20% as well were also had multiple formats that they engage with, and then co hosted with guests a little bit less than 10%, maybe around 8%. Co hosted without guests was a similar size, maybe 6 or 7%, and then we've got fiction narrative round table, which were were smaller number numbers there. So more than a third of all shows are interview. And if you think about, like, am I a good enough interviewer to stand out in the most crowded type of show format?

Jeremy: 23:11

I I don't think most people are. And I think, you know, there's no way to get to that level other than getting in your reps and and practicing. And so if that's like, if there's a compelling reason for you to do an interview show that you want to grow your network with other people, great reason to start an interview show. And that's a a super valuable outcome that is non download growth related. And so Yeah.

Jeremy: 23:30

That is a good reason to do that. And that's a big part of why a lot of people start shows. But I think if you're thinking about, like, what can I do to set the show up for the most success as a show itself? I don't know that interview is the best format. And I think if it is, you should take the craft of interviewing seriously.

Jeremy: 23:47

But otherwise, I think it's it's really interesting to me, like, looking at some of the the trends here, the show's over 10000 downloads an episode. They were significantly more likely to be co hosted, specifically co hosted without guests. And so that was a clear kind of takeaway away to me. And I think if you look through any of the charts, it's kind of you see that regularly that there are a lot of co hosted shows right now. And I think this is the first co hosted show that I've done.

Jeremy: 24:12

And it's it's fun. There's challenges to creating it certainly, but when you have somebody you're comfortable with and you're both on the same page and you can you know how the other person thinks, you can throw stuff at them and you can kind of know a little bit where they might take it, but you also know that there's gonna be some randomness that gets thrown into it. Whereas with, like, a scripted solo episode, you're really reliant on how good your script is. And with an interview episode, the interviewee needs to be good. You need to be good as an interviewer, which is is hit or miss.

Jeremy: 24:36

And so I think it's easier to make a high quality value dense episode with a repeat partner, whether that's a roundtable or a co host. And I think more people should be experimenting with those types of shows.

Justin: 24:47

I agree. I mean, think about doing a a great narrative show. It's just a lot of work to do that well. I think more people should be doing that too because I love those shows. But having just someone that you just show up with week after week, you just get in this nice habit.

Justin: 25:03

You get a nice rapport going. And I I think the audience starts to build around your relationship a little bit. You start following these two people and their interactions. You might identify with more with 1 or the other. Mhmm.

Justin: 25:17

Sometimes rules develop like, oh, this is the good cop. This is the bad cop. Yep. And that's fun as well. So, yeah, I think more people should be investigating it.

Jeremy: 25:26

So one more question that I'll ask you on this. Let's just say, interview shows, solo shows, co hosted shows, the kind of 3 most common formats here. I think there are compelling reasons to do all of them. And so I would be curious to hear your thoughts on, like, what makes for a great interview show, what makes for a great solo show, and what makes for a great co hosted show.

Justin: 25:47

So I'm gonna have a little bit of a spicy take on interview shows. I actually think a lot of the popular interview shows out there, the host is not a good interviewer. Mhmm. What they are is they're able to attract popular guests or guests that are interesting. So a good example is Fly on the Wall, Dana Carvey and David Spade.

Justin: 26:08

They have guests on the show. They're not good interviewers. They're just terrible. But the interactions between them and their guests are interesting and compelling enough that you wanna stick around and listen to the stories. I think this also worked for Tim Ferris early on.

Justin: 26:26

He was not a great interviewer early on, but he was able to attract really high quality guests. So that's one thing. Now you could flip that and be the opposite where you just focus on being a great interviewer and build a reputation as a great interviewer. And I've seen this work as well Mhmm. Where someone will get interviewed by somebody that's, you know, not very well known, but they'll say, wow.

Justin: 26:46

Like, Rachel just asked unbelievable questions. You've gotta go check out this episode. And so you can build up a reputation as an interviewer as well.

Jeremy: 26:56

The thing that I would add on to that, I think the easiest way to actually do better interviews is just just to scope them way narrower. And so most of us, we have somebody coming on and so we know we're gonna be talking about this topic. And so we kinda wanna give the definitive interview on that topic. And so we scope it really broad and it covers both that person's life. And it also covers everything to need to know about, you know, whatever the topic is.

Jeremy: 27:18

I think most times people should zoom down at least 1, if not 2 layers, and I find this so often. I do a lot of podcast audits and in almost every single one, I'll listen to a 60 minute episode. Let's say that's an interview show and there'll be one question near the back half of the the interview. It'll be like right before the end and I'm like, this should have been the whole episode. We just spent 3 minutes on this thing.

Jeremy: 27:39

We could have spent 2 episodes on that one topic and a lot of times you could build a whole show on that. And so one example, since we're talking podcasting here, I get asked to do a lot of interviews about podcast marketing and I've given 50 interviews that are all very similar questions. And that makes it hard for me to promote to my audience because I'm like, they've already listened to 49 others that are all the same questions here. And so I'll share them, but I I don't know what original thing I can say that, like, they're gonna get from this show that they haven't got elsewhere. And so sometimes what I, as people do, they go into my ears framework that I sometimes talk about with, with podcast marketing.

Jeremy: 28:13

And so that's about exposure, attraction, retention, and sales. And sometimes I'm like, oh, okay. This would actually be interesting if somebody picked just one of these. Let's say they picked the retention category. So about how do you once you get people to listen, what keeps them coming back?

Jeremy: 28:27

That would be a more interesting interview than just talking about the broad thing of podcast marketing. But we could still go even deeper into that. Somebody who's maybe read some of my blog posts, you could say, okay, within the retention category, Jeremy, I've heard you talk about how important the first 3 to 5 minutes of an episode are. Let's do a whole episode on that. And now we're getting into the definitive interview that I've given and maybe that anybody has done the topic around how do you nail your first 3 to 5 minutes of an episode and that now becomes a really really valuable resource that nobody else has done And I would even take this a step further.

Jeremy: 29:00

I think you can do a whole show. This is actually a show that I kind of wanna create, but also want somebody else to create where every single episode, we just examine the first three minutes of another podcast and say what makes it work. I would listen to hundreds of episodes of that show because everyone is going to be unique. And, like, that could be a whole show in a question that somebody else might spend 1 question, 3 minutes on out of a whole episode. And so I think for most people, zooming in, scoping your interviews much more narrow is a much better hook than trying to go broad and encompass everything about that guest and their topic.

Justin: 29:30

That's a great tip is if you wanna get a great guest is just if they're writing, read everything they've written and then say, oh, I wanna talk to you about this essay or I wanna talk to you about this chapter of your book and just allow them to go deep on that topic. That's a great pitch for a guest as well.

Jeremy: 29:49

Yeah. Okay. So what about, solo episodes? What makes for a great solo episode in your book?

Justin: 29:53

The way I've done them, they've always been, like, following my journey.

Jeremy: 29:56

So So

Justin: 29:57

I had a podcast called Build and Launch where I was building and launching a new project, I think, every couple months or something. And so it was just, like, me in the podcast recording booth saying, okay. This week, I'm gonna do this. Last week, this happened. And it had lots of, clips, so I would be recording kind of people with my iPhone throughout the week and then putting all the clips into the episode.

Justin: 30:20

So I think when there's kind of a journey you're following, those are interesting. Sometimes monologue shows are interesting. I actually would listen to a version of Marc Maron's podcast that was just the monologue. I think he should do that, actually. Just forget the guest.

Justin: 30:36

To me, his monologue is more interesting than the guest. Mhmm. But I've seen, like, the Journey podcast does really well with solo episodes. And then you have to figure out a way to make it interesting. And I've done that with clips and editing, and I've even done, like, little skits at the end, like, little, like, SNL's type skits near the end.

Justin: 30:57

So you have these recurring bits that make it interesting. That worked for me. Is there anything you've seen for solo episodes that works well?

Jeremy: 31:05

I think that often, they are much more appealing to somebody who already knows the host to some extent. And I think that they are great. So this goes back to the idea of not what is the job that the show is doing for your audience, but what is the job that the show is doing for your business too? I mean, we got both angles here, but I think a lot of times, like, you might be building an audience on Twitter or your email list or something, and you might want to deepen the relationship with that audience. We've talked about this theme again and again, and I think that a lot of people, they get into the scenario with interview shows where I've heard this countless times where they'll do an interview with a guest and really they're doing the show for their business but people will go buy the guest products because the guests had a great pitch and they were really engaging and nobody ever becomes customers or clients of the person hosting the show.

Jeremy: 31:44

And a lot of times that's because podcast hosts who do interview shows tend to remove themselves. And I think we get a lot of programming from how we think about journalism. A lot of us, we don't really understand. We think, oh, I'm supposed to be neutral. I'm not supposed to put my point of view in here.

Jeremy: 31:57

And so they tend to like push all the attention to the guest. And so I think solo episodes are a great tool for this where if you're like, okay, I have ideas and thoughts about my topic that I want to share with my audience in longer form than Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram or wherever. I think a solo show is a great way to do that, but you kind of have to adjust your expectation that like, okay, this is more going to be for people who are already in my inner circle, or I need to find a very specific topic that I can approach that somebody will see this. And it's so specific that they're like, oh, that sounds really interesting and oh, it happens to be a solo show and I'm still gonna to listen to that. So that would be my my one take on that.

Jeremy: 32:34

And then I think the other thing that goes a little bit hand in hand with this is that I don't know how to quantify this, but I think solo episodes need a host who has a great and unique perspective and a compelling point of view. And I think about like my all time favorite solo show is Seth Godin's akimbo podcast, which he is a singular thinker who every single episode you have some kind of, like, moment where you just think to yourself, wow. How did he take us on this journey from this abstract story or concept that he opens the episode with you? Like, where is this gonna go? And then he ends with something that you're, like, wow.

Jeremy: 33:08

That, like, really landed with me. And I it's it's both actionable but also philosophical to some extent. And so Mhmm. He's earned, you know, the trust of his audience over 30 or 40 years or something like that of creating content to be able to pull that show off. But I think that those are my favorite solo episodes.

Jeremy: 33:24

There's somebody who I like the way they think and I there is no easy replacement for them. And I just want to hear their perspective on the world or the topic or whatever it is. And so I think that's a a really important part of solo episodes. Alright. So last one here.

Jeremy: 33:37

What are the the hallmark traits of a great cohost show or pairing?

Justin: 33:42

So I I've seen shows where people are on a journey, and they just keep sharing their journey. So I know there's a business show called Bootstrap Web where they've been doing the show forever. They just get together every week, and they say, here's what happened to my business this past week. Here's Here's what I'm doing about it. Here's what I'm frustrated.

Justin: 33:59

And it's very much about their individual journeys and also the relationship between the the two of them. And I like the shows where it feels like there's 2 co hosts, and I'm showing up. And I'm, like, on the couch with them. And I'm just part of the conversation. And that's what keeps me coming back.

Justin: 34:17

It's like, okay. I gotta have my weekly chat with, you know, Jordan and Brian. So that's what I like in a co hosted show. I think a show like we're doing, it works as well where we're both experts on a topic, and we're diving deep every time. And we're pulling from each other's experience and insights and accumulated knowledge on a topic.

Justin: 34:38

I think that can be really compelling as well. Is there anything you can think of that's different, that you've enjoyed or you've seen work?

Jeremy: 34:47

There has to be some distinction in character or viewpoint. And I mean, I like I think we're very aligned on all of our marketing ideas, but I think we have different backgrounds. Like, you come from building the SaaS company, but also podcasting. And I come from more of the production side of podcasting and having worked behind the scenes on many shows, things like that. And so I think that each cohost brings something different and either has to be this kind of, like, chemistry between the hosts.

Jeremy: 35:12

And so I know so many people who have had shows that were co hosted where eventually somebody leaves and the show just you bring somebody in, and it's like, it just it lost the magic. And I had never I've listened to a little bit of the show you're wrong about. And so my partner, Kelly, she was obsessed with this show. And I can't remember Michael Hobbs is the one cohost, and it's been one of the most popular shows in the world for a long time and Kelly has told to me, like, yeah, after Michael left, he was just kinda done with the show for whatever reason. Sarah's tried to, like, find a replacement cohost and gone through different formats and it's just, like, it's still a good show, but some of the magic is lost.

Jeremy: 35:47

And I think that maybe there's some risk to that with a cohost show, but also there's this intangible thing that is like 1 +1 equals 4. You have these 2 cohosts, but it's greater than the sum of their parts. And I think finding that is the hard part. And so I think great co hosted shows, there has to be something that is hard to manufacture in the relationship with the co hosts. And I would say you find your way to that too, but there has to be some foundation for it from the beginning.

Justin: 36:12

I like the idea of chemistry and then also tension. There's chemistry between the two people, but there's also, like I said, that good cop, bad cop feel some sort of difference between them where there's a little bit of, like, okay. Let's battle this out. Let's see. And, you know, people like these shows.

Justin: 36:31

I I don't personally like the show, but All In is a show where they they have, like, you know, a very conservative host and then a very liberal and then people in between. And the contrast of those points of view is part of what makes the show compelling because it's like they're all in the same room, but they're friends.

Jeremy: 36:49

Mhmm.

Justin: 36:49

So we're gonna get a debate and something interesting here.

Jeremy: 36:53

Okay. So to close this one out, I'm gonna put, you to the test. We can kind of talk through this together and give our our unique, takes on this, but I'm gonna pose a scenario to you and I would be really curious to hear how you would think through this. And so my challenge to you is to design a show here on the spot that has the potential to become a, let's say like 50,000 download an episode show. So we're going for the top of all the shows that were in our podcast marketing trends report.

Jeremy: 37:18

If you were to develop a show that you were intentionally designing to have the potential to get to that number of downloads, where would you start in terms of your thought process around some of these structural decisions around topic, episode length, show format, all of these things? What are the pieces that you would start to assemble to give yourself the best shot at reaching that?

Justin: 37:38

It would be topic and audience would be the first thing I would think about. Especially if I'm producing the show. What am I uniquely positioned to go after in terms of a topic that might be interesting? And what has resonance in the culture. What you know, in the zeitgeist of what's going on, what has some pull to it?

Justin: 38:00

Where what are people already either seeking or there's latent demand where I know if I just uncapped it, people would go after it.

Jeremy: 38:10

What comes to mind? What are some topics here that you would think are broadly that that have that potential in today's current climate?

Justin: 38:18

Nostalgia is always big. And so, like, one idea I have is I grew up playing all these old PC games.

Jeremy: 38:24

Mhmm.

Justin: 38:25

Sierra online or Sierra Adventures was this gaming company. And I don't think anyone's really done a great job of kinda doing the definitive history of Sierra or even just that adventure game category. So Monkey Island and King's Quest and all these games that bring up nostalgia. So I think that could be a compelling show because nostalgia, there's all these people in their thirties, forties, and fifties who played those games and might be interested in, like, the history of those companies or those games. So it feels like something like that has legs, and I'm uniquely positioned because I grew up playing those games.

Justin: 39:04

So I at least have some context there that I think I could bring to the show. I I just think nostalgia is a powerful force. And so if I had to think of anything off the top of my head, I instantly go there. Things from your childhood, the nineties are big right now. So something in that vein, I think.

Jeremy: 39:21

Okay. So we've got this this kind of topic of nostalgia, maybe video games. What's your next step? You're like, okay. I'm gonna play in this arena here.

Jeremy: 39:28

How do you start to think about show structure, maybe even more specific topics, episode length, all those types of things?

Justin: 39:34

Yeah. I think it'd be, it would be a narrative, maybe interview show, maybe both, maybe interviews where I'm crafting them together into a narrative arc.

Jeremy: 39:43

Mhmm.

Justin: 39:43

It's gonna be a series, which I like. I think we don't talk enough about series, but I would do a series. A lot of it would depend. And once I started editing it, what feels compelling? And if there is an arc, like, where am I so if it's the history of Sierra, the gaming company okay.

Justin: 40:00

Well, we're gonna have a history. So when did it start? What was the next chapter? Next chapter. Next chapter.

Justin: 40:05

Next chapter. How long does each of those chapters need to be? Depends on the edit. Depends on what I what material I have. Depends on how interesting I can make each episode.

Justin: 40:15

I always shoot for 30 minutes. I wish, like, 30 minutes to me is just the perfect episode length in terms of, like, being able to get people onboarded easily.

Jeremy: 40:25

Mhmm. I guess my follow-up to that then is you're talking about a series here. Is there a specific reason with the objective of making the most palatable show to the largest number of people? Is there a specific reason you're choosing series over ongoing or that's just where your interest in the topic you think might end?

Justin: 40:40

Oh, I mean, I think more podcasts should end. I I mean, even you mentioned akimbo. I I loved akimbo for the first 100 episodes or whatever. And then, eventually, it was like, I just stopped listening. Increasingly, I like the idea of a beginning and an end.

Justin: 40:59

Yeah. Unless there's an ongoing journey that I'm still, you know, interested in. But in the case of this topic, like, focusing on this old PC gaming company, that no longer exists. Well, it has a start and an end. The the arc is there.

Justin: 41:14

It's not gonna go on forever. And I think those shows are evergreen in a way that people often don't consider. Like, you can go back to that history over and over and over again. People can recommend those episodes over and over and over again. And so the long tail, I think, of downloads would be quite strong.

Jeremy: 41:33

Yeah.

Justin: 41:33

And, yeah, I think if I was going after 50,000 downloads per episode, sure, I want my release window to be, you know, have a significant amount, but what I really want for something like that is a nice long tail of people discovering the show, people hearing about the show. And, again, with a serial show where you're going through episodes in order, there's a natural entry point and a natural natural exit point. Yeah. And I think that also helps for downloads. People can just see, oh, here's where I'm going.

Justin: 42:02

And it's like, okay. I'm gonna start at episode 1, and I'm just gonna keep going through it. I might do the show. I'm excited about it.

Jeremy: 42:08

Yeah. Okay. We got the the seeds planted here. So, alright. Maybe we've got some listeners who have some experience be your first interview subjects here.

Jeremy: 42:14

So Yeah.

Justin: 42:15

If you played King's Quest or, Monkey Island or, Day of the Tentacle, Those aren't all Sierra games, but that was the that was the the era.

Jeremy: 42:25

So what I like about your thought process here and is the same way that I would approach this is really starting with something that, you know, there is high and evergreen demand for. And so there's there's essentially there's 2 ways you could think about this. There's things that people have always been interested in and will always be interested in. So like a relationship show, people are always going to be looking for information on relationships. And so there's always potential for that.

Jeremy: 42:46

I think politics too. We look at self development business to some extent. These are big categories where there's always going to be interest and there already is a lot of interest. The other way to look at it would be an upcoming wave, which is difficult to time, but if you are in position already and you have the experience and you can see the wave coming, that is a good kind of opportunity to capitalize on that as well, where there's rising interest and you can kind of ride that. And a lot of shows do this even within the larger categories where I think about the show, Pod Save America.

Jeremy: 43:16

I think, like, the the cohosts and founders of, I think it's Crooked Media as their larger podcast company. They were ex Obama staffers and so they had this credibility, but I think that if the 2016 election was not happening or was a different kind of environment, I don't think their show ever would have taken off. I think they rode the specific wave within politics and were the right people to capitalize on it at the right time. And they had the the right experience. So there was a lot of luck here, but they were in position and they were like, hey, we can create a show about this that is uniquely positioned to talk about these things based on our experience.

Jeremy: 43:50

And so they rode that kind of sub wave within the political genre. So I think that's it's something that's hard to get right, But I think the longer you kind of play the game, the more opportunities you're going to have to catch different waves. But I think the the challenge here, there's so much advice about going niche. And I think that there it's much easier to gain traction by going niche. And so a lot of shows that you look at like many big apps too.

Jeremy: 44:15

You look at, like, Facebook and Tinder both started as apps that were, specific to one college campus and they became Mhmm. Global behemoths, both of them now, but they started as tools for 1 college campus. And so hyper niche grew into massive companies. And I think a lot of shows start this way too. But I think if you're looking to, like, okay, we need to hit the ground running and within a year we want to grow a big audience, I think you do want to actually start in a big category but then the challenge is to bring a really refreshing and unique angle to the topic that people haven't come across before.

Jeremy: 44:46

And it can't just be something that you think is refreshing and unique. Like other people need to see it and be like, well, how did this show never exist? Like, it should almost feel obvious that this show needed to exist, but it didn't. And I think that this is where the big creative challenge comes in of, like, how do you create that thing? And that's the art of it.

Jeremy: 45:03

But you have to kinda set yourself up in a place where there's interest and then come in with some refreshing angle at the right time and that I think is, I mean, the work matters and the marketing matters but it's hard to make up for a lack of existing audience interest elsewhere, which is frustrating. And also something that you can say, like, okay, if my goal is to build a 50,000 download show, maybe I need to switch categories, and I need to approach this from a different angle. And if that's my goal, then I'm gonna give myself the best chance to succeed.

Justin: 45:30

Oh, yeah. I I I say this all the time in business that your success in business is almost entirely dependent on the market you choose. So people think it's the idea. I think people think it's your execution. All that does matter, but the market so the target of the show or the product is what matters the most.

Justin: 45:52

And when I say market, that means how many people are in motion or could be in motion right away on this topic. So how many people are looking for something like this or want something like this, but haven't been able to express that want yet? What momentum is there already that exists? And you wanna capture existing momentum. What you don't wanna do is come up with a concept that you're constantly pushing on people.

Justin: 46:22

Like, please care about this. What you want is people that already care about it, that are already seeking it, that are already moving, and they'll come to you because they're looking for a show like that or they're looking for information on that topic or whatever it is.

Jeremy: 46:36

Yeah. And I think there's a great example actually within the podcasting space. And, so people might know, Tanner Campbell. He used to have a show called Podcasting Sucks. And, it was a I think a daily show for a long time.

Jeremy: 46:47

He wrote a daily newsletter as well. Very active in the podcasting space, and he produced the show for a while. I don't know how many downloads it ever got. I would assume a few hundred or maybe a couple thousand, but he has a long history in podcasting. He's done a lot of different types of work behind the scenes.

Jeremy: 47:03

He I think still owns a podcasting studio. He started up this kind of, like, side hustle stoicism podcast Mhmm. Maybe a year ago, 2 years ago. And it was almost immediate that it was getting tens of thousands of downloads an episode. I look today, it's a top 0.5 percent podcast in the world.

Jeremy: 47:18

And it was just like, this guy had all the skills and he was playing in a field where, like, our show, we we are never going to get 10000 downloads an episode on this show. Like, the audience does not exist. We might get 1 or 2,000 or or 3,000 maybe if we I mean, we need to keep doing a lot of new episodes, which this is a seasonal show. So probably doesn't even have the potential there. So, like, we have a cap on this, which is fine for our purposes.

Jeremy: 47:40

But you kind of have to realize that and say sometimes, like, okay, Tanner. He was producing a show in podcasting, a really good show that had a solid fan base, but that was a space that didn't have the potential to create a top 0.5% podcast. And he switched to stoicism, another thing that he knew a lot about that he could bring a fresh perspective to, he had all the podcasting and storytelling skills and all these things. And it was like immediately within a couple months that show took off. And so, you know, here, we're kind of talking about structural decisions about your your show, thinking about episode length and publish frequency and all these types of things.

Jeremy: 48:10

But I think choosing that pool that you wanna play in is probably the ultimate structural decision that will have the biggest impact on your potential for success, going forward.

Justin: 48:19

Mhmm. Absolutely. Yeah. The structural things matter, but only in as much as, like, if you're a surfer, the wave matters way more than the surf shorts you were that day or the surfboard. Everything else matters, but not as much as the wave itself.

Jeremy: 48:48

But