The Hard Truth About Growing A Podcast In 2024 (& How You Can Beat the Odds)
This is kind of the classic phenomenon: The winners get richer, and everybody else is really struggling to get above that average mark. The top 10% of our respondents were getting consistently around 10,000 downloads an episode or more, whereas the bottom 90% of episodes are getting less than 10,000.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the media coverage focuses on the top 10%; you know, the Joe Rogans and all that. And the truth is there's so much you can do in the bottom 90% of this distribution that's still worth doing.
Jeremy:Welcome to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained. I'm Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy.
Justin: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 is for you and your show.
Jeremy: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 results.
Justin:Let's get into it.
Jeremy:So Justin, to kick off this series in episode 1, we want to zoom out and take a look at the kind of large lay of the land when it comes to the shows that submitted data for this report. And, you know, downloads are the thing that's on everybody's mind. And to do this, we're gonna look at, an idea called the Power Law Curve, which, I'm not sure. Is this is this something that you've come across before that you have any idea what it is?
Justin:Okay. I'm gonna give you an example that I have in my mind that I think represents this. If I search for something on Google, my guess is that the top results on that page get most of the clicks. So if people are searching for "cabanas in Mexico," my guess is whatever the top three results are on that page, my guess is they get most of the website visitors. Is it kinda like that?
Jeremy:It is actually exactly like that. Okay. Wouldn't you know it? And so I've actually got the data here from found in Google itself from the Google search results. We're getting super meta here. So from this blog post from Backlinko, they mentioned a few data points here that kind of demonstrate how the Power Law Curve works. And so they say that the number one result in Google's organic search results tend to have an average click through rate of 27.6%. So the top one page and if you think about this for a second, you search in for whatever your "cabanas in Mexico," whatever your search phrase is, and you notice that little, like, that little of all those gazillions of search results, the top one gets over a quarter of all the clicks. So that is kind of the classic example of the power law curve where in any kind of, like, dataset, all especially online. This is a very... (it probably happens out in the the wild too), but it's a very prevalent phenomenon online.
Jeremy:The top few results, or in our case top shows, tend to get most of the benefits, in this case, listeners and downloads.
Justin:Got it. And so for podcasters, maybe thankfully, there's only maybe 3 or 4 million podcasts out there, so not as much competition. What does this mean for podcasters? What does the data say? What's the Power Law Curve for podcasters?
Jeremy:So okay. This is the one of the first charts that we have here in the podcast marketing trends report. And what we found, this is kind of, reflective of some of the other data that's come out in podcasting. I think this dataset in particular is more kind of established podcasters who are actively creating, it's not counting a bunch of dead shows like some of the the larger ecosystem, research, sometimes has. And so what we see here is that the top 10% of our respondents, these were the shows that were getting consistently around 10,000 downloads an episode or more, whereas the bottom 90% of episodes, so almost all the shows, we're getting less than 10,000 downloads an episode, and it kinda drops off pretty, precipitously after that.
Jeremy:And so our top entry here was just shy of 60,000 downloads an episode. And the next one after that is around, you know, 47,000 , and then we go down to 30,000. And pretty quickly, we get down to, you know, most of the shows are less than 10,000 downloads an episode, and and really the majority of them are less than a 1000 downloads an episode. And so, this is kind of the the classic phenomenon when we're thinking about the power law curve is that the winners get richer, and, they keep on winning, and the rest of everybody else is kind of, like, really struggling to get above that average mark.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. And folks can check out this report themselves by going to podcastmarketingtrends.com/2023 . And you really see, at the top end of this curve, there's just a few people, and then as it goes down; it goes down really fast. And then the long distribution of folks are in that that lower range.
Justin:What what was the median, by the way? What's the median show getting in terms of downloads?
Jeremy:Yeah. So the median show or what we can think of as the kind of the typical show here was getting around 421 downloads an episode, which, is a little bit better than some of the other industry data that's come up before, which I think it says, like, it's it's around 200 and something, but, again, that's counting a lot of shows that aren't actually active or might have only had 3 or 4 episodes.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. And I think you said the average was around 550 downloads?
Jeremy:Something like that.
Justin:So we're looking at a you know, the average show gets about 500 downloads per episode. And one thing I think about when I'm looking at this this chart here: each of the respondents on this graph has a story. It's easy to just look at this as general data, but each of the respondents have a whole history of things they've done. Some are famous. Some are not famous. Some are in this niche. Others are in this niche. Some are trying to get advertisers. Others are just really happy to have 50 people listening to their show. And so there is just an abundance of human beings and stories and expectations behind these numbers that we don't see. Right?
Jeremy:Yeah.
Justin:And the truth is that each of the folks listening right now, they have their own story. They're trying to accomplish something in their lives too with their podcast. And so, yeah, it'll be interesting to contextualize this for them and give the folks listening some real actionable takeaways from this data.
Jeremy:Yeah. And to that point, I would imagine that many of the people listening to this show actually filled out the survey, and their show is one of these data points. And I I imagine that it's no surprise that, you know, given the fact that we kind of teamed up to create this report and promoted it, that we're also gonna be promoting this podcast based on the same thing. And so what would you say to somebody who their data point is actually on that graph right now? What do they look at this chart and and how do they make sense better?
Jeremy:How would you approached that in terms of : "What do I do with this as a creator?"
Justin:You and I talk a lot about expectations. When you're making something, what are your expectations for it? It's interesting to think about podcasting in relation to other mediums. Like, you've been in bands. And if you show up at a bar, how many people does there have to be in the audience to make you happy? Is it 20... 30?
Jeremy:Yeah. I remember shows I would say probably the typical show had 30 to 50 people, so I played in, like, hardcore, like, punk and metal bands, in and after high school and like yeah. I lived in a small city in Saskatoon, Canada. It's about a 200,000 person city. That's not a huge scene there.
Jeremy:And so showing up and fortunately, it was a small space a lot of times. So I'd like it felt, you know, pretty lively, pretty packed. And, yeah, you're just happy to, like, play your music and have people there who were enjoying it. And so a lot of times, like, yeah, I've done plenty of creative pursuits where 30 people was a great day out.
Justin:Yeah. And I mean, even just think, like, if you put up a bunch of posters and said, hey. I'm gonna be giving a 1 hour monologue at the library on Tuesday at 6 PM. If 10 people showed up, I think you would be ecstatic. So contextualizing these numbers, having an audience that's interested in anything you have to say is already a win. If more than two people show up, that's already pretty incredible if you think about it.
Justin:But A lot of this will depend on what job is this podcasting doing for you in your life. Is this podcast to help you get more business? Is this podcast to help you grow an audience? Is this podcast to help you quickly make a bunch of money?
Justin:You know, if your expectations are going to podcasting and you've got that perfect idea for a show that's gonna instantly get you All sorts of advertising dollars. Maybe the lesson is that your expectations need to be realigned.
Jeremy:Yeah. So I love this conversation about expectations, and this is something that, really from when I I first started my podcast production agency, I initially made the mistake early on of not setting expectations with clients. And then as podcasting got harder and harder, it became this necessary thing where I didn't wanna be, like, kind of doing a bait and switch where, like, they thought they would start their show and they'd have, you know, 50,000 downloads an episode within 3 months.
Jeremy:And so I would say to them, like, okay. If you're gonna do this, I can help you produce a great show. No matter how great a show we create, likely, you're gonna have to stick at this for 3, 5 years before this really starts to pay off. And, you you know, you're gonna see some growth over that span, but it's not gonna be, like, right out of the gate, you're getting these amazing results.
Jeremy:And actually, like, on that note, I remember one of my early clients, this was probably in the 1st year I was editing and producing podcast. There's a guest on one of his shows, and he had this quote that has stuck with me for for years. I think about it on a weekly basis, basically, at this point.
Jeremy:And there was something along the lines of: "The root of all unhappiness is misaligned expectations." And I heard this quote in the moment. It's just this, like, thunderbolt moment. And I started thinking about, like, all the things that I might have been unhappy about at some point in my life. And I was like, yeah, that was a 100%. Like, I expected something else to happen than what I got, and I was unhappy about it.
Jeremy:And I just think it's such a profound thought: that we all as creators, I think we need to accept it. And we are given plenty of opportunities to be forced to accept that along the way to to growth and success.
Justin:Yeah. And and maybe that initial energy and inspiration, like, when you get struck with an idea for a show and like, "I'm gonna make this podcast. This is gonna be amazing. It's gonna be so good." To keep that energy because you need it to get started. Otherwise, you'd never make anything.
Justin:But then to moderate it with a conversation, maybe with yourself and your cohost or whoever is making the show about expectations: "Okay. Let's be realistic here. This is about people who do..." Wait, what do you call it when you go to Comic Con and you dress up?
Jeremy:Cosplay.
Justin:This podcast is for people who do cosplay but with their pets. You know, it's like a very small niche. What is are a realistic expectation for the show. And often, you won't know until you've released 1 episode and then 2 episodes and then 10, and then maybe a 100 episodes. And the truth about podcasting and really any creative endeavor is it can take time.
Justin:But to modify your expectations, keep that inspiration so that you actually do the show, but modify your expectations. Be realistic about what you're making and what you can expect in terms of downloads.
Jeremy:Yeah. So I wanna bring in another data point here that we we asked people who went through the survey, like, what is the primary goal for your show? Like, why are you doing this in the first place? And Oh, that's interesting. People told us was only 16% of people from this audience in particular might not be representative of all of podcasting.
Jeremy:16% of people were doing this as a strictly as a hobby. And there were some other types of reasoning in there, but I would say most of the other reasons in there, other there's 1, 6% was to educate people, and it seemed like that was separate from a business. So we could maybe say that, like, 22% of people were doing their shows not for any business purpose, but the remaining, you know, 4 5ths of the audience, almost 80%, was had some kind of business intention around it. And so it could be to build an audience, which I assume people wanna do because they wanna monetize it in some way, it could be to grow their personal brand and authority. Those 2 were were number 1.
Jeremy:Actually, they were tied for number 1. And then there's a bunch of other stuff in terms of converting clients, growing their network, increasing brand affinity, increasing brand awareness. And so it seems like this set of podcasters is very much thinking about, like, okay. I want my show to serve my business in some way, which ultimately, if we take that all the way to the end, it's probably like there's some kind of monetization or revenue at some point. So when we're thinking about it in that context where most of the people here do want to monetize, what do they do with this data here where, like, okay, the vast majority of people are less than a 1000 downloads an episode.
Jeremy:Is that realistic? How should they set their expectations around that?
Justin:Yeah. It really depends, doesn't it? It depends on what they so, for example, if we could give an example of a top 10% show. One show on Transistor that I know is a top 10% show is this show called the mindset mile. And I love the the premise of the show.
Justin:It's we'll help you build better habits by making a small mindset shift and walking or running a mile a day for 30 days. So the premise is, hey. Do you wanna get out and get some exercise every day? Yes. Do you need some inspiration?
Justin:Do you want to improve your mindset? Yes. Well, we are using the podcast as a delivery mechanism to get you outside every day, improve your mindset, And that promise is so compelling and so unique. You can see, oh, I could see a lot of people wanting that show. She released it right around New Year's when people are, you know, have New Year's resolutions.
Justin:And so that show has done very well with that premise. And she monetizes it different ways, advertising, her own courses, things like that. An example of a show at the bottom 90% where the folks are still really happy to be doing the show is we have a number of real estate businesses on Transistor, and, you know, they get a 150 downloads per episode, and they'll email me and they'll say, this show is killing it. It's getting us so many leads. It's like the best business decision we made.
Justin:We're so happy we're doing it. And, you know, for some people, a 150 downloads would be a huge disappointment, but for them, it's perfect because it's achieving what they want the show to do for them. So that's 2 things I think of is contextualizing it going, oh, yeah. Okay. This is what a 90 a top 10% show looks like.
Justin:This is what an bottom 90% show looks like.
Jeremy:Yeah. So I love that point. And I think the other thing that this makes me think of is that assuming the majority of people listening to this and certainly, the majority of people who completed the survey, they wanted their show to serve their business in some way or to create a business around their show. What that essentially means is you need to understand what is the business model that I am pursuing here. Mhmm.
Jeremy:And that is going to dictate to some extent how you should construct your show. And so if you are pursuing what would be thought of as a publishing business model, which is essentially, like, I'm going to create an asset that has a lot of eyeballs or ear holes on it, and people will want to advertise on that platform that I have built. So the job that I'm doing for other people is building a collection of people that these advertisers wanna reach. This is there's even some nuance here whereas if you're saying like, okay. I want to get sponsors like HelloFresh okay.
Jeremy:Well, they wanna work with shows that have a large audience already. They're trying to go for mass appeal. It's a generic kind of product. And so they just want as many people as possible to hear it. And so if that's the goal that you want, which you may have your reasons for wanting that, that's totally fine.
Jeremy:And there are are, I will say, compelling reasons to pursue other business models as well and other varieties of the publishing business model. But let's just say that's year dream is to get HelloFresh advertising on your podcast and MeUndies and Casper mattresses and all of the, you know, the ones that we're all sick of hearing about so far. Although we love them as sponsors, of course, you have a a certain kind of job set up for yourself where it's like, okay, I need to get tens of thousands of people listening to the show. And so now I know, okay, if I need to get tens of thousands of people listen to a show, what type of show do tens of thousands of people listen to? And it's not every show.
Jeremy:There are certain formats that are more likely to to have higher listenership. We're gonna look into some of those things on future episodes. There are certain topics, and so you brought up the the idea of the the Mindset Mile Show. And this is a show that has very broad appeal. It is not niche, one one makes it successful is that it has a really unique format that sure somebody could copy it, but because she's already done it, it's kind of this like intellectual property where it's like, as soon as somebody else copies it, it's like, yeah.
Jeremy:I mean, she did it first. And so unless you've done it way better or added some additional wrinkle on, probably, you're gonna have a tough time kind of knocking her off her her perch or or replicating her results. Yeah. And so I think that, like, when you're aiming, your your business model will dictate the show you need to create, and then you can say, like, okay. Do I wanna create a show like that?
Jeremy:And if you say no, then you can say, like, okay. Well, are there other business models that might better align with what I wanna create, and that's where you get into, you know, real estate and things like that, where maybe you have a a high ticket, product or service or something like that. I've had clients who are coaches. I had one client. She had, a show.
Jeremy:I think she had, like, 250 downloads an episode, 300 downloads an episode, email list of, like, 300 people or something like that. And she had a $300,000 launch based on this tiny little audience. And it's like, she had a high ticket product. Her people loved her, and they, like, bought up everything that she had to sell every single time. And so this is, I think, one of these ideas where it's like, okay.
Jeremy:What do I wanna get out of the show? And and maybe what do I need the show to do for me from a kind of sustenance perspective in terms of finances? And then how do I kind of play with both of those to kind of align them somewhere in the middle.
Justin:And you know what else this makes me think of is it would be like if I said, hey, Jeremy. I wanna play basketball. And you're like, oh, that sounds great. Like, some pickup games, and I go, no. No.
Justin:No. No. I wanna play in the NBA. And I think your response would be, Okay. Well, Justin, first of all, do you realize how competitive it is to get into the NBA?
Justin:And second of all, you know, you're 5 foot 8. For me to get into NBA, if I wanted to do that, I would need to compete at that level. And the same is true in podcasting. When you look at this chart, There's not much space in the top 10%. The reason there's less shows is that not everybody can be in the top 10%.
Justin:There's only so many podcast listeners. Those podcast listeners only have so much time. And be realistic. Look at your own podcast queue. There are tons and tons of unlistened episodes in there.
Justin:You don't have enough time to get to all the episodes. So if you're gonna compete in that sphere, you gotta be ready. You gotta be ready to compete against the big players, and that means you're gonna have to maybe take some of their audience. How are you gonna do that? Like, if that's where you wanna compete, then be ready.
Justin:That's where you're going. Right? Whereas you can look at the bottom 90%. It could okay. Well, what opportunities are there here.
Justin:You know? We did a show when we were starting Transistor, which was just the story of us building the product. Every day, we've just every week, sorry, we would just have a new report on our struggles and the things we'd accomplished and what was difficult. And There were a group of people who were interested in that journey, and they came with us and we got, you know, an average of maybe 3,000 downloads per episode. And that was perfect for us.
Justin:That accomplished what we needed. We had all these fans that were willing to help us. We had people supporting the show on Patreon, And then many of those people became customers and then also recommended us to others because they were invested in our story. So there's lots and lots of opportunity in the bottom 90%. A lot of the media coverage focuses on the top 10%, you know, the Joe Rogans and all that.
Justin:And the truth is is there's so much you can do in the bottom 90% of this distribution that's still worth doing.
Jeremy:Yeah. I I would say that if you were to look at, not based on percentages, but just, like, total absolute number of shows that were attached to 6 or 7 or 8 figure businesses, the vast majority of them wouldn't have crazy download numbers. No. You you get talking with a lot of people and it's like they have small shows. They're kind of like, you know, less than 10000 downloads an episode, maybe 1 to 5 somewhere, who are just doing incredible things with their businesses.
Jeremy:And I think what that speaks to for me is that they know role that their show plays in their business, and they focus on that, and they don't try to ask their show to do all these other things. It's not trying to be the top of their funnel and the middle of their funnel and the bottom of their funnel and trying to, like, both get attention and also, like, convert people into clients and customers. The this client that I mentioned before, her show, she basically created it entirely to serve her existing customers at her lower tier products and to just, like, spend more time with them. And that was the the result. She had kind of a membership community at the time.
Jeremy:And she just made this podcast for her membership community almost as, like, an add on. And, like, people could find it, you know, publicly and people did. But, really, she was like, I'm just gonna use this to create bonus extra content, answer questions that are coming up in my community. And as a result, like, they just grew closer and closer and closer to her. And so when she came up with this much higher ticket offer, they're already a 100% sold on it based on these previous months or, you know, year or something like that of time that they spent with her.
Justin:Yeah. I think we also need to have realistic expectations about the medium of podcasting itself. I love this idea. There's 2 types of platforms or channels, there are discovery platforms, and there are relationship platforms.
Jeremy:So that are to a friend friend of the show, Jay Klaus here, perhaps?
Justin:Jay yes. Jay Clouse, I believe is the first person I heard talking about this. You know, YouTube, TikTok, Google. Those are discovery platforms. People all day are discovering new content, new creators, new businesses.
Justin:But podcasting, email newsletters, blog posts, these are formats that deepen a relationship with an audience. And so if you're starting with no audience, maybe podcasting isn't the right medium for you. It might still be worth trying it out, and there are opportunities we're gonna talk about further in the series, but be realistic about what podcasting is gonna get for you. If you're used to seeing other creators on TikTok get 3,000,000 views per TikTok well, you're not gonna get that in podcasting. It's different.
Justin:You know, we have these are long format pieces of content, And it's a relationship building platform primarily, not a discovery platform.
Jeremy:Yeah. And I think the the add on to that to think about that isn't always obvious early on. The more time you spend on these various platforms, the more you realize, like, every platform has a bias towards something. Like, it is designed to get people to take a certain action on that platform, and sometimes these are accidental. I don't know that people when Adam Curry developed podcasting and all of this, like, I don't think he said, like, I want this to be really hard for people to be able to, like, find new shows and all these things.
Jeremy:That wasn't, like, intentionally built in, but there are some limitations of the platform that make it difficult for people to find new shows, to sample new shows. I think about this all the time, like, all the friction that if you're posting about your show on social media, for somebody to actually get through an episode, and and I mean, we can even, like, go way before that. Just listened to the first two minutes of an episode. Then they're in, like, 30 second mode. I mean, not even 30 second mode.
Jeremy:You look at some people scrolling through Instagram, and it's just, like, half a second per post, people are not in a, like, I'm gonna consider spending the next 45 minutes potentially listening to the show right now. They're like, onto the next thing, onto the next thing. And so you have to get people. You have to be so compelling to break that cycle, that mode that Instagram has kind of instilled in them, and get them to pause. Be interesting enough to get them to click through to the show away from the platform.
Jeremy:Yeah. And then they gotta, like, look through your episode titles and see, like, is there anything here that interests me that really grabs my attention? And then, you know, click play on an episode and listen through. Like, this there's a lot of friction in getting a new podcast listener, and I think that that's not something people really think about. And there's there's things you can do to get around that and mitigate that, but it helps to know, like, what are we up against as podcasters and what can we expect of this this medium.
Justin:Totally. The other thing that made me think of is when I look at this chart, there's just a big group of people that are in the sub a 1000 downloads group. Yep. The average podcaster is getting 400 to 500 downloads, at least in this survey set. Yep.
Justin:The other thing it makes me think of is, okay. Well, how could I be above average? Yeah. If most shows are average And there's all this kinda noise and competition. What are some things that I could do to be better than just okay?
Justin:There's just a lot of shows that are just like, that's okay. Would you listen again? Probably not. It's like, okay. Well, what can you do?
Justin:That's the opportunity. What can you do to be so compelling from the very beginning, like, from the moment they first hear about the podcast to then going and checking it out on Spotify, what can you do in your packaging? What can you do in your description, your title, your trailer? What can you do in the little video clips you're posting? What can you do in terms of the structure of the show, how interesting it is, microphone technique?
Justin:You know, there's so many dynamics that you could leverage to make your show above average. And that's the part that kind of gets me fired up. It's like, okay. Wow. Look at the crowd. The crowd is right here. What could I do to rise above the noise? What can I do to be the standout show in my niche, in my genre, in my format, and there's a lot of opportunity there because I think most shows are just okay? Yeah.
Jeremy:And I think, like, that's something that I think a lot of people in podcasting wouldn't really say out loud, but I think we could also probably universally agree that if you were to just get a randomly generated podcast of the several million that exist right now, and you just click play on that, there is a better than likely chance that you probably would not stick through listening with that show very long, even if you were maybe interested in that topic or open to it. And so I really like that that idea, I think that in in everything, like, yeah, it's it's one thing to say, like, this is what the average show is doing, but it's also another thing to say, like, okay, if the average show is doing this, that's my, like, bottom, baseline of where I wanna be. And so I need to look at, like, what are these other shows here, and how can I be a little bit better than that?
Jeremy:And I think the the thing that you mentioned there about, you know, being the standout show in your niche or in your industry, I think that's a much more reasonable goal to have, I think if you look at, like, okay, I'm looking at this whole dataset.
Jeremy:There's 500 shows here and this the top one has, you know, 60,000 downloads an episode. And here, I'm at a 120 downloads an episode. Like, I don't even know how I get from here to there. But if you say, okay, there's 10 shows in my niche. Maybe only like 5 of those are actively producing episodes right now.
Jeremy:I feel like most shows, if they set the goal for themselves within 6 months to a year, could probably objectively create the best show in their space. And I think that's, like, a really great goal to have because you can, like it's a small enough dataset that you can actually listen to the other shows. You can say, like, oh, this is kind of interesting about that show, but, you know, it doesn't do this, which I really wish it did or, you know, they're focused more on this side of things. I don't like the tone of this one, whatever. And you can kinda say like, okay.
Jeremy:I see where I can be better than some of these other shows and where I can be different in a compelling way than the other shows. It's not always about just being the absolute best because that's gonna be subjective to your listeners. But a lot of times, like, picking the small pool, doing a a bit of research, and saying, like, okay. Like, what can I do a little bit better than all these other shows that would make my show somebody in this space is like their absolute favorite show?
Justin:That's right. And that point of view is so important. If if you're just starting a comedy podcast because you think you're funny and that's it, that's not enough. You gotta go out and listen to 10 comedy podcasts and see what you're up against. And if while you're listening to those shows, You're listening with a critical ear and it's firing you up.
Justin:You're like, you know what? I'm funnier than these people. I really am. I I know what I could do to make my show more compelling. These folks are their intro is too long.
Justin:There's too many ads, and their microphone technique is off. I I can't hear it. It's like you've got a list now that should fire you up about the things you're gonna do to stand out from the crowd, the things you're gonna do to be above average.
Jeremy:And the you know, the I think there's a lot of opportunities there. I think what I've seen a lot, from a lot of shows that I've worked with and as well as newer shows that are coming into spaces and and they're competing with these bigger shows that have been around a while is that a lot of times, some of the big shows, they built big audiences based on being early to the game. And Mhmm. Not because their show is particularly good. And so I think there is a ton of opportunity.
Jeremy:We see this in every, you know, industry. There's this natural cycle where, you know, tech companies or shows or whatever it is, like, anything that grows big, it accumulates all this kind of, like, we would say in software, tech debt I say we even though I'm not even in software, but I just spend so much time, like, in that world. Yeah. But there's all these things that actually end up holding you back where it's like Yeah. You built something into your framework that was built around a certain era or where listener expectations were different, and now that's changed and it's really hard for you to adapt.
Jeremy:And so newer shows often have a much easier time by kind of tapping into what people are doing now and what listeners are wanting right now, what's popular and being able to kind of really shoot past a lot of those other shows.
Justin:Yeah. Totally. So as we're closing out this episode, what are some actionable takeaways we can give the listener who's listening right now. They're doing the dishes or walking the dog or whatever. And they're like, okay.
Justin:This is great. I they're they're but give me something to do. What are some things people can go away from this episode and do to help grow their show? So I
Jeremy:think the first thing for me is on that idea of aligning expectations and just having a look at okay. Regardless of where my show is right now, if I'm getting 10,000 downloads an episode or I'm getting a 100 downloads an episode, like, what do I expect for my show? What do I need it to do for it to be for me to consider it a success? And that's gonna be different for everyone that might be growing to a astronomical amount of downloads or that might be, you know, creating one of these real estate shows where they got a 150 downloads an episode, and it just brings in clients. And it's like, hey.
Jeremy:This is the best thing we've ever done with our marketing. And so I think getting to understand what you want to get out of this show, and then I would say, do some research. And can you find examples of other shows that are similar to yours? They don't need to be identical to the show that you're doing. Hopefully, they're not.
Jeremy:But, like, can you find examples of other shows that have done what you wanna do. And so I often think about this in in how I work with people as demand validation. And so it's looking out and saying, like, is there audience demand and interest in my topic that I can objectively kind of see, like, okay, there are other shows that have got this many downloads or they build their audiences on Instagram or email list whatever it might be, YouTube channels that have grown to the level that I want for my show. And if so, that's great. You can say, like, okay, there's clearly audience interest in my topic.
Jeremy:I can find a way to tap into that. And if you can't find that, then and you do a bunch of research, that might be a sign that, like, okay, my expectations might be misaligned here. And if you find that out, then you kind of have a choice to make. You're like, okay, do I just like creating this show enough that I'm gonna say, like, okay. I thought I could get this many downloads, but actually, maybe this is more realistic.
Jeremy:So am I okay with that? Yes. Great. I'm gonna keep doing the show because I love doing Yeah. Or there's a lot of people and I'm in this camp too, where I might say, like, actually, I've got, like, 37 podcast ideas and this was just one of them.
Jeremy:And I actually have some other ideas that I think have a higher ceiling on them that are going to give me a better shot at hitting that goal in particular.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jeremy:And so maybe I would be better moving on from this show and starting up something that has a bit more potential that I can see, you know, there is an a path forward for me to reach that goal that I have. So Yeah. That would be my kind of, like, takeaway of, like, as you're looking at the numbers, thinking about where you're at, what one of the next steps might be, and just to see where you stack up.
Justin:Yeah. What about on your side? What's some some actionable steps that people can take?
Justin:You know what that just made me think of is people can run this experiment themselves. It would be a little bit of work, but I think it would be fascinating. Is On on Transistor, you can start multiple shows on one payment plan. And what I would do is if I have multiple ideas, I would record a trailer episode for each one. So I've got 5 ideas, trailer episode for each one, submit it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the players, all the discovery mechanisms, and just see what happens.
Justin:Because maybe there's enough search intent there. Maybe there's enough interest that people would just find your show based on the keywords, or the topic. Or maybe, you know, post the link in one forum that you're interested in, a group of people that you're like, oh, I know they're into the show. See what the response is. And you could even be honest.
Justin:Like, hey. I'm considering multiple show formats. Here's one I'm excited about that I thought you might be excited about. I'm just posting in this Facebook group to see what you guys think. Would you listen to a show like this?
Justin:And just see what kind of response you get. Put something out there, actually do the work, release something, and then see what happens. And maybe what comes back is, oh, wow. This feels So much of this is based on feel. This feels like the kind of show that if I worked at it might get a 1,000 downloads or 2,000 downloads.
Justin:So that'd be an interesting experiment, I think, to run is just to and you could do this in a smaller way. You could just record a bunch of audio files and just send it to friends And just get their responses like, hey. I know you're super into soccer. I just recorded this trailer. Would you listen to this podcast?
Justin:Hey. Here's a idea for a real estate show for the company. Send it to your boss and say, what do you think about this this idea? And just see what their response is. I think it's it's really helpful to actually do something, put it out into the wild, And see how people respond before fully committing to, I'm gonna do this show every week for the rest of my life.
Justin:This is like, okay. Slow down. Just why don't you try recording a trailer episode first, putting that out and see how it feels?
Jeremy:I love that. And, if you I think we actually had a previous discussion another time about if you were a little bit more, marketing savvy, you can also do this with a pretty small budget on Facebook ads. You can do, like, a $5 ad spend, and you could split test cover art, landing pages, trailers, things like that, which, if you wanna go down into the the marketing weeds, that's, certainly an option that's available to you
Justin:as well. Well, you know, another thing is Just do it as a TikTok series or a real series to say, hey. My name's Justin, and I'm considering 5 topics for podcasts. Here's one of them. And then you just do the trailer.
Justin:And, you know, those algorithms, because their discovery platforms, are really good at picking up what people are interested in. And so you could do 5 TikToks or 5 reels or 5 YouTube shorts and just see what people pick up on. You've been really intentional that you wanna make it a podcast, And then you're gonna get all sorts of comments and, you know, views, real life examples of whether people are compelled to Listen. Right?
Jeremy:I love that. So, I got the sense that that was not actually gonna be your original takeaway. That is a fantastic and super actionable takeaway. But did you have something else in mind for looking at this this idea of the power law and the distribution of shows? What should people do with that?
Justin:One thing's been that's been really helpful for me is to find some podcasting buddies. Get a group of people, a cohort, a gang of people that are also trying to make shows. And in the back channels, you can compare numbers. And just having other people who are doing something similar to me, show me how many downloads they're getting and then being able to interact with them, like, what worked, what didn't work, how did you do this, has been so helpful. And I think you can find these people all over.
Justin:You can go to meetup groups. If a meetup group doesn't exist in your town, you can start one either for podcasters or for podcasters in your niche, go to conferences, start a Slack group, start a Discord group, start a Telegram group, reach out to people on Facebook or Twitter or whatever and say, hey. It looks like you and I are trying to do something similar. I'm starting a little group. We're gonna meet once a week And just talk about how we can improve our show.
Justin:Having just a group of people that you can share that experience with makes such a difference. And to me, actually, there's so so many numbers that people won't talk about in public, but they will in a small group, find some podcasting friends.
Jeremy:Yeah. I love that. So I think that is wrapping up our first episode here, but I feel like before we we close things out, I would love to get some kind of, like, listener interaction engagement going on. And the ideas on what we might be able to do to, to be able to help some people out in a more kind of, personal way.
Justin:I mean, one thing that we've done in the past that I think would be really cool here is give people the opportunity to submit their show that we could then review on air and just go, okay. Here's a show, and we'll just give practical tips on how we would grow that show. I think that'd be a good idea. And maybe people could submit it in a review. They could just leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and just say, hey.
Justin:Love the podcast. Please review my show and then just give us the name of your show. And then maybe let's also put a link in the show notes. We'll create a form that says, submit your show, click on that, and, we'll pick those up there too. And maybe we'll just focus on 1 per episode.
Jeremy:I love that. And, you know, part of the whole reason for this report to exist and this podcast to exist is actually, you know, helping people understand how to market their shows better, how to grow them better. And so this feels, you know, super in line with that that kind of goal that we've, stated as coming into this.
Justin:Yeah. You know what else? I'm also gonna put a feedback link in our show notes because so often when I'm listening to a show, I just wanna say something. And I think it'd be cool if we had a little voice mailbox or something like that
Jeremy:Mhmm.
Justin:Where people could just leave their thoughts, written video, audio, whatever, because we wanna improve the show. We wanna make it more helpful for people. We wanna know you're thinking, we want this to be a two way conversation. So submit your show. We may choose to review it on there.
Justin:And if you have feedback, thoughts, click the link in the description, and we'll pick those up too.
Jeremy:Perfect. Would love to hear from you as a listener of the show, and we will see you in the next episode. And in the meantime, you can check out the full report, which this episode and all the others are based on at podcastmarketingtrends.com/ 2023. Justin, this has been a blast as always. Looking forward to chatting with you again in the next episode.
Justin:Yeah. We'll see you then.
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