Jeremy: 00:00

We hear all these best practices. This is how you should market your show. But that actually might be out of sync with how listeners actually discover or choose shows.

Justin: 00:10

The problem with these surveys, there's a big gulf between what people say they'll do and what they'll actually do. And you feel like you're validating the idea because people are giving you good feedback and responding well to it.

Jeremy: 00:23

One of the kinda core questions to get around it is so one of the most common pieces of advice for any creator is to go ask your audience what they want and then make that thing. And I'm curious if you have ever had this experience before where maybe with a piece of content, maybe with a product or a business where you found some potential customers or audience members, you said, hey. Would you buy this thing? And if so, how did that turn out for you?

Justin: 00:53

Yeah. This happens all the time when you're building software. I actually when I was in my early twenties, I had this idea to build software for nonprofits that would help them track donors and funds raised and all this stuff. I went around to different people and asked them what they wanted. You know?

Justin: 01:13

And they would tell me all this stuff, and I would show them screens, and they would say, oh, we want this feature here and this feature there. And the idea was I was like, okay. Well, if I build this, will you buy it? Will you use it? And they're all like, yeah.

Justin: 01:24

Yeah. For sure. So I talked to probably dozens of people, all these different directors of nonprofits. And then this is back when you had to distribute software really on CD ROMs. So I remember I built this thing, and it took me forever.

Justin: 01:40

Just, like, lots of evenings and weekends and incorporated all their feedback. Like, everything they'd asked for, I put in there. I had it all in this one panel, and it was beautiful. And, then I pressed, I think, a hundred CDs

Jeremy: 01:55

Yes.

Justin: 01:55

With the software on it, and then went to the trade show and set up a table. I sold one. And I saw the people that I had talked to, and I was like, hey, like, I built what you wanted, I had a little demo. And they're like, oh, cool. And I was like, what's going on here?

Justin: 02:14

And the truth is they had their own systems that the pull of the current system and what they actually used and, I guess, actually wanted was they didn't wanna switch to a new system. They wanted the thing that they were already using. And I just remember being so disappointed. Sold one. And it would like, the one I sold was like a pity sale.

Justin: 02:35

So, yeah, it's yeah. I've definitely experienced that. What what about you?

Jeremy: 02:39

Yeah. I've experienced this. One of the first products that I created was actually a, calendar based on my landscape photography. I did not ask anybody if they wanted this. And, I and I laid this calendar out.

Jeremy: 02:50

I did everything in, like, Photoshop, which is the stupidest way to create a calendar. There's software that can do that, and I was cheap, and so I did it all myself. I probably printed, like, 250 of these to meet the minimum printing requirement, spent hundreds of dollars, maybe even, a thousand dollars on it. And, yeah, I I sold to my mom, I think my grandparents, my aunts, and I think there's a pity purchase from my cousins maybe Mhmm. And nobody beyond that.

Jeremy: 03:11

So that was my actual first product. The other one that I actually did attempt to do some of this validation was the first podcast product I created was called the cut the bullshit podcast gear guide. And so I had a Facebook group called the cut the bullshit podcast community, and I created this gear guide that was basically my logic was there's so much content online about which microphones to buy and all of this. And so I was like, I'm gonna synthesize all this into, like, just the one guide that you need for this. And so I pitched this to a bunch of people, and people were like, oh, wow.

Jeremy: 03:39

This is so needed. Like, I can't figure out what gear to buy and whatever. And then, you know, I spent all this time putting this thing together. I hired my now wife, who I was not my wife at the time, was not my girlfriend, was just somebody I knew to do all the layout and design and actually the copywriting editing of the book. So there's something good that came out of this.

Jeremy: 03:58

Man, this

Justin: 03:58

sounds like a good endeavor. I think I think you still came out a winner on this one.

Jeremy: 04:02

Yeah. I think I did come out a winner, but not on the sales front. That, that product cost probably a lot of money. That was a one of my products that is is in the negative for sure to this day. Sold maybe a a few copies, and all these people who I went to who had been really excited about it before I made it, crickets.

Jeremy: 04:18

And it was kind of, again, like, yeah, but we can find it all online already. So, you know, this isn't worth the $17 to me or whatever I was charging for it. So, yes. I've certainly been there as well.

Justin: 04:30

I think the danger in this, whether it's a product or a podcast, is when you go up to somebody and you say, would you buy this or would you listen to this podcast, is people don't wanna be rude. And so they often will validate your idea because they wanna feel encouraging. You know? This is probably more true in North America than maybe other places. You know, this idea that, oh, yeah.

Justin: 04:53

I I would totally listen to that show. Oh, yeah. You should you should do that. You should really make that show. And you feel like you're validating the idea because people are giving you good feedback and responding well to it.

Justin: 05:04

But as many of us have seen, sometimes there's a a big gulf between what people say they'll do and what they'll actually do.

Jeremy: 05:15

And I think that this actually applies both on the show creation level. We can very often go out and do research and say, hey. I'm thinking about doing a show like this. Would that be interesting to you? And then there's also the how do people actually use and discover podcasts.

Jeremy: 05:26

And so a lot of times, we hear all these best practices for, oh, this is how you should market your show, but that actually might be out of sync with how listeners actually discover shows or choose shows. And so we can end up doing things that don't work for our listeners or don't work for listeners in general. And this is, like, such a ubiquitous problem that somebody has, in fact, written a book about this and actually the way to get around it. His name is Rob Fitzpatrick. I know he's big in the indie hacker community and also the kind of creator community.

Jeremy: 05:56

He's written several fantastic books now as well. But he wrote a book called the mom test a number of years ago. Have you read this book, and can you kind of articulate the premise of it?

Justin: 06:05

Yeah. The the idea is that well, he called it the mom test because if you present an idea to your mom, she'll almost always lie. Like, she'll say she'll be like, hey, mom. I'm thinking about doing this.

Sam Mullins: 06:15

She'll be like, yeah. You should do that.

Justin: 06:17

And then again, she'll be the one person to pity, buy, or listen to your podcast. The the premise of the book is that people will lie to you. And it's not like they're being malicious, but if you ask them their opinion on something, they wanna be nice. And often, they might even feel like it's the truth. Like, oh, yeah.

Justin: 06:35

I would totally listen to a podcast like that. But there's a big discrepancy between what they'll say they'll do and what people actually do. It's kind of like, anything. It's like you could ask somebody, in 2025, do you think you'll buy some new furniture? And people will be like, yeah.

Justin: 06:52

I'll buy some furniture in 2025. But then when you actually see their year, they don't follow through on it. Whereas they there could be some things he say, you know, I would never listen to a podcast like this. And then lo and behold, all their friends start listening to that podcast, and now they're listening to that podcast. So the premise of the book is that what people say and what they actually do, there's a big difference between those two things.

Justin: 07:17

There's ways of figuring out what people will actually do as opposed to what just they'll say they'll do.

Jeremy: 07:24

You know, I've read the book as well, and it's a phenomenal read for anybody who is making anything that you are trying to build an audience around. And, really, his answer to this problem is just look at the behavior. It's like you're a anthropologist with a clipboard observing consumers, and you're like, what actions are they taking without my interference? One of the kinda core questions that he'll ask is like, okay. The last time you experienced this problem, what did you do?

Jeremy: 07:47

And they can very clearly tell you what the actions that they took rather than saying, what would you do if you were looking to solve this problem in the future? There's been a bunch of research. You know, we often have different kind of marketing strategies and ideas around what we should do to make our podcast more discoverable. And there's actually been a bunch of reports and surveys designed to get at the core of this problem and ask listeners, how do you actually find podcasts? How do you actually choose what to listen to?

Jeremy: 08:11

And I think that if we can better understand, you know, what listeners at least self report they do, how they find new podcasts, we can align with that a little bit better.

Justin: 08:20

Mhmm. Yeah. I like this. Let's look at some of this data.

Jeremy: 08:24

Okay. So the first thing that I just wanna lay out there for some context here is it struck me I was piecing through a bunch of the data here. And so we've got reports from Sounds Profitable. The podcast host put one together, Westwood One and Cumulus Podcast Network, Signal One Insights, and then Riverside actually did a big composite of a bunch of this data. So people can kinda go look up those resources.

Jeremy: 08:44

We'll include those links in the show notes as well. But it it kinda became clear to me that there were two different methodologies to some of these surveys that addressed people in different places. And so what is kind of clear is that podcast discovery happens in two important ways. And the first, which most of these surveys address, is, like, active podcast discovery. And so it's like people are seeking out a show on a topic.

Jeremy: 09:10

And so here you see a lot of responses of, like, they go to search in their podcast app where they ask friends. But there's also this other kind of podcast discovery, which is this passive where it's just like you hear your friends talking about it over months. You don't even know where you first heard about it, but you eventually sign up and listen and become a subscriber. And so before we get into the data, a for a typical show that you listen to, which of these is more likely to be the way that you came across that show?

Justin: 09:36

The most likely is that it's just in the ether. Like, my the people I hang out with online are talking about the show, and it keeps coming up. It might get reinforced with clips I've seen. It might get reinforced with people referencing it in conversation. And then eventually, I'll be like, okay.

Justin: 09:55

I'm gonna check this out. Sometimes it's like existing shows I listen to will mention it. I'll be like, oh, that sounds good. I think that's how it manifests mostly for me.

Jeremy: 10:06

Yeah. I would say that earlier in my listening career listening career as if this is my full time job. Earlier in my listening career, I was very much more an seeker out of podcasts, and I think that was actually when I didn't have an existing base of shows that I already knew and liked. And so I had space to fill, and so I was looking for stuff to fill it. And oftentimes that was aligned with wanting to learn some specific skills.

Jeremy: 10:29

So I would go into an app and search for, okay, podcasts on online business, and I would come up with a list, and I'd pick one out of that. Now it feels like my space has been taken up, and I don't tend to listen to serial podcasts or seasonal podcasts. And so just all the shows I listen to are perpetual, and so there's only so much space for it. And we've kinda talked about this in a previous episode. So now I feel like it really has to be this overwhelming kind of amount of Yeah.

Jeremy: 10:53

Presence of the show in my life where it becomes unignorable for the point where I'm like, okay. I'll reluctantly give it a try. And so I think there's so many different types of listeners, and it's hard to say whether you and I are representative. I think the casual podcast listener may be more, like, series driven. Like, I think a true crime listener, you've finished a series and you're looking for the next one.

Jeremy: 11:11

You're always seeking out something new. But there's another type of listener who might be more like us, where it's like you've got your stable of shows, and, like, something has to be kind of unignorable to force its way in.

Justin: 11:21

I love that you brought up how this is very phase driven. Like, I think for those of you out there listening right now, you can remember the time when you first got your iPhone, and everybody was talking about, like, what new apps are you trying out. You might have even browsed the App Store. Like, when's the last time you actually browsed the App Store? I think most of us are like, we've got enough apps.

Justin: 11:44

We don't need anymore. We're good. But clearly, there are still people out there browsing for new apps. You know? They are in that phase of their phone life.

Justin: 11:55

And I think podcasting was the same. You know? When I started podcasting, I was looking at the top charts in Apple Mhmm. Downloading some of those shows, trying them out, and then getting recommendations. Often, a network would be able to recommend me multiple shows, and I would, like, listen to all the shows in that network.

Justin: 12:12

That's not happening anymore. Now I'm very much like you. I've gotten my stable set of shows, and those are the ones I listen to. And maybe every once in while, I'll try out something new. But you have to earn your spot, and there's not very much room in my, list.

Jeremy: 12:28

So let's go into some of the data here. There's one question from the podcast host's listener survey. And I will, off the bat, say that there are some interesting things about the respondents to these various surveys. And so podcast hosts, their respondents tended to be podcast creators that they were asking about their listening preferences. And so this is a skewed audience that is not necessarily representative of just pure listeners who are not also creators.

Jeremy: 12:52

But they asked the question, you want to find a new podcast. What do you do first? And the clear kind of winner here, 50% of respondents said, I open up my preferred podcasting app. And so they go to the app and they search for something. And this is true to me.

Jeremy: 13:05

Like, if I'm searching for a new podcast, I am basically a % of the time. I don't go to Google. I don't ask people. I, like, don't want opinions. I wanna go see for myself.

Jeremy: 13:13

I open up the app and look through there. And then the next responses were all kind of similar in this, like, 10 to 13%. And so we got listened to listen out for recommendations on the podcast I already enjoy. Directly ask someone I know who likes the same stuff. Use a search engine such as Google or Bing.

Jeremy: 13:28

Ask on social media or in an online community. And then 1%, this is very surprising to me, was search on YouTube. But, I mean, the way that that makes sense to me is, like, I would never go to YouTube to search for a podcast. And this being a respondent base of podcast creators, I would assume them to be similar where they actually would not go to they're so podcast savvy. They would go to a podcast app rather than YouTube.

Justin: 13:50

This is where what people say and what people actually do, I think, gets muddy. Yeah. Because I think the most podcast discovery on YouTube is just people opening up YouTube, and suddenly, they're listening to a podcast. Yes. So you really have to watch people.

Justin: 14:10

And I think Yes. If you get anything out of this, I think surveys are good. I want people to think about like, you're at a friend's house. Just, like, ask them to open up their YouTube app on their TV and just see what's getting recommended. And that's generally the kind of content they've been engaging with.

Justin: 14:29

And I think that's where a lot of discovery is actually happening. So yeah. Active discovery. Sure. I'll open up the app, and I'll look for it.

Justin: 14:36

There's passive discovery, which I think we're gonna talk about. And, yeah, I think that's a whole other ballgame.

Jeremy: 14:42

Yeah. And this is where it actually gets interesting when we look at passive discovery, and we see a lot of contradictory advice to that. Know, if we look at this active discovery, we see only 1% of people search on YouTube. But then we see a report from Signal Hill and Cumulus. They show that for weekly podcast consumers who listen to podcasts regularly and who listen to a new show in the past six months, YouTube was actually the top place that they first encountered that show, and that was 31% of people there.

Jeremy: 15:08

Spotify was second with 24, and then Apple Podcast was, third with 12. Clearly, this question is around platform. And so it's like, what's the first platform you engage with the show? It's not necessarily where did you hear about the show. So it's possible that other factors like Google search could lead to YouTube, word-of-mouth could lead to YouTube.

Jeremy: 15:25

There's all these other places that could lead somebody to YouTube or Spotify or Apple, but people first engaged on YouTube. So that's kind of interesting. And then we have the other report from sounds profitable, and they asked, aside from personal recommendations, which of the following are the ways that you find podcasts? YouTube was far and away the the winner here, the leader here with 52%, and then the next two were 27% each for searching the Internet and Facebook and then a bunch of other kind of places people discover podcasts. So these reports seem to suggest that YouTube is the first place that more passively people are first engaging with or encountering podcasts.

Justin: 16:00

One thought that just came up is I can you can already see the problem with these surveys, and let me explain why. This assumes that all podcast discovery is kind of the same. It's like everybody is just like waking up every day, and there's a a equal probability, equal likelihood, equal context that will lead someone to find a new show. But we all know that humans don't behave in that way. Let me give you an example.

Justin: 16:32

And this is why actually interviewing people about their real behavior is important. So I'm gonna go through a a fake interview with you. Hey. What podcast did you just listen to? Well, oh, I I I checked out this series that I'd heard about before.

Justin: 16:52

And okay. Well, what preceded that? Like, why were you looking for a podcast in the first place? Oh, well, I've got a twenty hour road trip coming up, and I decided to find, you know, twenty hours worth of material I could listen to while I'm on this road trip. Okay.

Justin: 17:07

So now, this gives you way better information than what you would have gotten from this survey. So this survey is saying YouTube, browsing podcast apps or directories, asking for friends' recommendations. But what's more interesting to me is what's the context for all this? Yeah. And you don't get context from these kind of general survey responses.

Justin: 17:32

The context is important because if it's true that a sizable number of people, the time that they actually seek out new shows is when they're about to go on a road trip, then as a marketer, that's actually helpful information. Because then you can target that time, that point in their life, and say, best podcast to download before you go on a road trip. That's just very clear to me as I'm looking at all this stuff. For the listener, how useful is this information really gonna be? I I don't know.

Justin: 18:06

Like, what are you gonna do? Become more visible in your in the podcasting apps? Sure. You should do that. But I think what's gonna be more effective is targeting this very specific sequence of events or this very specific trigger that happens in someone's life that causes them to seek out a new show.

Jeremy: 18:24

Now there are a couple of rebuttals that I'll offer to that. I agree with you entirely on that point, but I think it is also worthwhile to look at some of these things and say, okay. These are the ways that listeners report finding new podcasts. And I think that there are some questions that are actually framed quite well. And so I actually like this one from the podcast host.

Jeremy: 18:44

They ask, think about the last podcast you listened to. How did you discover it? And Mhmm. Again, it could be and it likely is for many shows that there are a bunch of factors where, you know, you might not be able to trace it back to one person because five different people are telling you about it. You see it on social media.

Jeremy: 18:57

You see the clips. It's like, it's just everywhere. It's just in the ether. But I think we can look at some of these lists and say, have I done everything I can to optimize to the degree that I'm able to for each of these things? And especially if there are things that I can do once, and then I don't need to think about it again.

Jeremy: 19:13

And so we can see from some of these things that people do report finding podcasts by search in both Google and in podcast apps. And so then we can ask ourselves, okay. Is there a keyword? Like, maybe I should ask my audience because I can assume that a significant percentage of them will search for podcasts like mine, and I can start to do some interviewing and say, you know, when you discovered my podcast, like, what kind of keyword search terms did you put in? And we can say, oh, my show doesn't come up for any of those because I don't have it in my title.

Jeremy: 19:42

I don't have it in my description. I don't use it in my episode titles. Listeners are telling us this is how we're doing it, and then we can say, okay. Well, am I doing everything I can to be discoverable by them?

Justin: 19:52

I'll push back just a little bit. Alright. And say, like, browsing a podcast app directory or chart. Yeah. That information is useless unless you understand what was the underlying motivation and trigger, Because it's gonna be highly dependent on what's going on in their life.

Justin: 20:11

If you dig a little bit deeper and you find out, oh, most of my listeners, new listeners that come around, they've just had a baby. Well, that's the context. And then what do they do next? Oh, then they search podcast apps for these keywords. Okay.

Justin: 20:29

Then that's helpful information because we've got the initial context or trigger, and then we got what they did about it. But your audience, for example, might not follow any of these. So there's always this propensity for people to look at survey results and go, okay. Browse podcast app, direct your chart. That I gotta that's the number one thing I gotta do.

Justin: 20:50

And it's like, well, no. No. No. No. You gotta figure out how this works for your audience.

Justin: 20:56

Here's another one. Like I said, the context was I was about to go on a road trip. What did you do next? Well, they might say, I also browsed a podcast app or whatever. But instead of searching for a keyword, I was just looking for playlists on Spotify Mhmm.

Justin: 21:13

Where I was just browsing the top 10. You know? So context, and then what was their specific behavior, in this case, in the podcast app directory or whatever. That's the nuance I think I'd like to add on here. I think it's just so easy in marketing.

Justin: 21:30

What I see people you know, we'll have a discussion like this, and then people will immediately go, okay. Well, my number one thing is I've gotta post all my stuff on social media because social media post by the podcast creator is number two. You gotta know more. You gotta know more about what actually works for your audience. And the only way you're gonna do that is by observing, by interviewing, and getting more of that context.

Jeremy: 21:54

Social media was actually 71% in the headliner, report that they put together.

Justin: 21:59

That's right. So we've

Jeremy: 22:01

also got some variants.

Justin: 22:02

Data too. So

Jeremy: 22:04

Yeah. And I think that that's an interesting point here that, you know, all of these platforms, they're they're pulling from survey pools of different people that we don't really know who these people are. I would put a lot of stock in that sounds profitable just because they have, you know, this history of methodology of doing research with Tom Webster and everything that he's done at Edison. And so, like, I trust their data quite a bit. And they also have, I think, from what I saw, the largest survey pool of people, that they did in their survey, which actually leads into this other, you know, interesting point here around this data is that a lot of times these discovery channels get chunked out in interesting ways that I think actually could be consolidated.

Jeremy: 22:42

And so in sounds profitables, they mentioned here in the question, aside from personal recommendations, which of the following are the ways you find podcasts? And so YouTube was number one at 52%, but I couldn't find it in this report. But Riverside's, I believe they mentioned and sounds profitable, and there's elsewhere mentions that YouTube was number two to word-of-mouth and recommendations. And this actually does seem to be a consistent theme with all of these reports is if you start to add up recommendations from people online, recommendations from people offline, family, friends, colleagues, social media posts from whose people who aren't the creator. It consistently is that people talking about the show is the most common way that people report discovering shows.

Jeremy: 23:23

And this to me feels very true. Like, it's in the ether. People are talking about it, and eventually it breaks through.

Justin: 23:29

Yeah. I think general survey results are just going to be predisposed to certain things. So if this is just a general audience and YouTube is the number one search thing, it's like, well, what are they searching for? Like, there's just a specific like, are they searching for celebrities? It's like, oh, I I love Tim Ferriss.

Justin: 23:52

I'm gonna see if Tim Ferriss has a podcast. And they search Tim Ferriss, it comes up. It's like, okay, well, that's useful information for Tim Ferriss. Is that information for Joe or Jane podcaster that has their own branded show? Maybe not.

Justin: 24:07

We're getting very generalized results here that just Mhmm. Had applied to your specific situation. Any kind of mainstream survey, mainstream response is going to be directionally correct. But I I just I would love to see way more data. Like, if I could actually talk to these respondents and say, okay, YouTube, talk to me about that.

Justin: 24:29

What does that mean? And to hear the actual story of Mhmm. What they were doing and what influenced it, that's the meaty that's the meat. You know? That's what we want.

Justin: 24:41

That's the whole point of the book. The mom test is we need to get into those details.

Jeremy: 24:48

Yeah. You know, there's an interesting tie in here talking about word-of-mouth. So Rob Fitzpatrick, author of the mom test, he has another book called write useful books. And the whole premise of the book is basically that the only way that books grow is that people talk about them. And I think that podcasting is exactly the same way, and so it doesn't surprise me at all.

Jeremy: 25:06

And so he shares graphs of, like, New York Times bestsellers, usually books that are published with a big publisher. They get a big you know, they game the system. They'll sell a bunch of books, and then the charts all drop off a cliff, and they basically never sell any books again. And the only books that sell on an ongoing basis are those that people talk about. And so you need to get it out to your seed audience, that first, like, 500 people.

Jeremy: 25:25

And then if the show is recommendable, people will talk about it. And so I think that this is something where we've talked about this a lot on this show is, like, there are all these marketing tactics and strategies, but they have to be paired with this show that is distinctive and unique and memorable and something that people can't easily substitute for something else. Like, this is the foundation of a show that is going to do well with all of these discovery platforms.

Justin: 25:50

And this is hard to do. Like, I I've gotten sent early access copies of books. And I think the only one that I recommend frequently is, like, Atomic Habits by James Clear and Life Profitability by Addie Pinaar. And the other books I got, like, they were perfectly well written, whatever, but they weren't memorable. I just they're not getting discussed.

Justin: 26:17

So this is not easy No. What we're suggesting here. The reason I'm kind of fired up right now is I think getting some of this information will actually give you the clues to Yes. Not only marketing the show properly, but producing the kind of show that gets talked about.

Jeremy: 26:34

So so far, we've kind of talked about some of the data on how listeners say they discover shows. A lot of these surveys actually also ask listeners about why do you stop listening to shows. And I think that this is also again, everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but it is interesting. We don't often get to talk to our listeners. And, you know, we actually did a survey in season one.

Jeremy: 26:52

We asked our listeners, like, why don't you listen? Why did you stop listening? And we got some interesting stuff there. So you can go back and listen to that episode if you're curious. But we don't typically, as creators, get to talk to the people who opt out, who churn, and understand why that might be.

Jeremy: 27:05

And so the first one is from the podcast host, and they have this question, when listening to a new show, how long do you give it to hook you in before you give up on it? And, again, for context, this is podcast creators that they're serving, and so I imagine this to be actually overly generous compared to a traditional listener who may not know how much work goes into creating a show. And so what's interesting here is that 57% of people give a show fifteen minutes or less to win them over and decide. And so 40% of people said up to fifteen minutes, and 17% of people said five minutes or less. The next, kinda closest was one full episode, 29%.

Jeremy: 27:43

Is this accurate to your experience with the show? How often how long do you give a show before you're like, nah. This isn't doing it for me.

Justin: 27:50

I mean, if I subscribe to a show, usually what happens then it starts showing up in my Pocket Cast. I'll filter by new episodes. That's kinda like my cue. And so I'll see the show a few times. Honestly, sometimes it's just like, I'll see, like, five to 10 episodes roll by.

Justin: 28:09

And every once in a while, like, okay. I'm gonna give this a go. And they'll listen to, no, no, no, no, archive. And then I'll give it a shot the next time they have an episode. So it's there.

Justin: 28:21

You know, it's on the front doorstep. But whether I'm gonna actually, you know, open up the door and let it in is another question.

Jeremy: 28:29

I think I'm a harsh listener. I think I listen to so many shows and have such a broad exposure to podcasting in general that I think I am very quick. Like, I recognize the signs of a show that's not gonna be worth my time. I know that there's so much good stuff out there that, like, the first five or ten minutes don't feel like it's gonna get me there if I don't feel confident that this is going to pay off. And so I think about this all the time.

Jeremy: 28:53

Jerry Seinfeld has this analogy where as a comedian, the audience has to believe that, like, essentially, you're the pilot of the plane. The audience is on the plane. They have to have confidence that you're gonna have the ability to land the plane, that you're going to be able to make this experience pay off for them. Mhmm. And so that I think is is super important to podcasters as well.

Jeremy: 29:10

And this was something that I was doing the audit of a client show last year, and it kinda jumped out at me before I actually heard the Jerry Seinfeld analogy. But I kind of coined it as, like, the audience needs to feel like they're in good hands. And I I thought of it as, like, you're a passenger and you're driving with somebody. And there's we've all had that experience where you're driving with somebody who just feels kinda reckless or just unsafe. Maybe they're, like, on their phone.

Jeremy: 29:30

Maybe they're talking to you. Yeah. And you're just, like, gripping the handle in the car and just like, okay. Like, I hope this is gonna turn out alright. And I feel that a lot of time with podcasts where I don't feel like the host knows where this is going.

Jeremy: 29:41

I don't feel like it's gonna pay off. Whereas there's other shows from the minute you click play, you're just like, oh, this is gonna be good. And you can kinda just, like, sit back and enjoy the ride because Mhmm. The host has given you all these cues that, like, oh, they're setting this up in a way that, you know, I know this is gonna lead to some kind of payoff in the end.

Justin: 29:58

I think the listening mode obviously matters a lot here. Like, if you're just sitting around your house and you're about to wash the dishes, you've got a little bit more time to be like, okay. What show do I wanna listen to? And you're like, try this one. No.

Justin: 30:12

But there's a big difference between that and getting in your car in the morning. You've gotta get to work by 08:30. And you're just like, okay. What am I gonna listen to? I gotta make a quick decision, and then I'm locked in.

Justin: 30:23

So it's like, click. And then this show now has my attention for thirty minutes because

Jeremy: 30:28

Yeah.

Justin: 30:28

That's it. You know? So it is interesting to know which mode your listeners are in or which modes they are in most often because, that'll give you a better chance. And then that's where things like the charts might actually matter. So I get in my car.

Justin: 30:45

What am I gonna listen to? Whatever gets recommended to me by the Spotify algorithm, whatever's top of charts in Apple Podcasts, I trust it because the popularity has indicated it's trustworthy. Now I'll click play. Right? So, yeah, different modes lead to different kind of how much time you'll give a show.

Jeremy: 31:02

So the next kind of piece of data here that is actually really interesting from Sounds Profitable. So they asked basically two versions or two similar questions, which the first is think of a podcast that used to be a part of your regular listening routine, but you stopped listening to. Why did you stop listening? And then the second question was why haven't you listened to podcasts in general recently? And so this is actually a kind of interesting thing where I think if you are a podcast creator and probably consumer, if you have an identity around that, I cannot think of a scenario in which I would stop listening to podcasts.

Jeremy: 31:32

So I assume everybody's like that. But, actually, there are two factors at play here. People will stop listening to one show, and people will stop listening to podcasts in favor of probably other media. So maybe they're watching more YouTube videos. Maybe they're watching more Netflix.

Jeremy: 31:45

Maybe they're getting away from digital stuff and going to books. And so on the show side of things, the number one reason was they lost interest in the show, and the number two thing was that they lost interest in the topic. So 25% of people lost interest in the show. 22% of people lost interest in the topic. And we've talked about this idea of churn before, and it's not always that the show is bad.

Jeremy: 32:06

It's that people are naturally and if this data is indicative, it's like 25% of people are just going to lose interest in your show regardless of what you do. And what's more, twenty two percent of people will lose interest in your topic entirely. And I think that this is such an interesting kind of data point just to keep in the back of our minds. Like, there is nothing we can do to keep everybody engaged. And so we do constantly need to be getting in front of new people because Mhmm.

Jeremy: 32:30

There's always gonna be that kinda leaky bucket.

Justin: 32:32

And I think this goes back to something else we've said, which is every show doesn't have to last forever. Every show doesn't have to be every week. I think doing seasons is underrated. I think doing limited run series is underrated. I think also if you've been doing a podcast for three or four years, it's fine to retire.

Justin: 32:47

You know? It's okay. And it's nothing personal. Like, it's just Yeah. You know?

Justin: 32:53

Just think about your own consumption habits. Like, many books have you started and not finished? How many TV shows have you started and not finished? How many people watch Breaking Bad but didn't watch Better Call Saul? Like, it's nothing against you.

Justin: 33:05

It's just, of course, you want that attention, but that attention is limited. It's like one of the most finite resources on the planet.

Jeremy: 33:15

Yeah. And I think the other thing here, people who cited, that they stopped listening to shows entirely, 41% of people said not enough free time. And this was something that we heard in our listener survey when we asked people why they stopped listening. Time was the ultimate. It was the the big one here, and we can see that is at play here as well for podcasting as a medium as well.

Jeremy: 33:33

And so there's kind of all these forces that, like, no matter what we do as creators, I think it's worth trying to make a show that is unmissable, unignorable. Like, I think if you can create a show like that, like, you're gonna get more people in, and you're going to get more word-of-mouth, and you're gonna get more people sticking around. Mhmm. But even with that, there's gonna be people who are churning, and there are a few more successful shows than This American Life. I probably listened to hundreds of episodes early on, and then now I've gone almost ten years.

Jeremy: 33:59

I listened to my first episode in seven years, last week, and I was like, god. This is a great show. But it's still just I'm not in that phase of life anymore, and maybe I'll come back to it five years from now. But, you know, for right now, it just isn't the thing that I'm reaching for on a regular basis.

Justin: 34:13

Yeah. Like, you know where I go back to those classic shows like Radio Lab and This American Life is when we're on a family road trip because they don't wanna listen to the podcast that I listen to regularly. They wanna listen to it's gotta be a little bit more open, more storytelling. And so, you know, that's a mode. There's a job to be done there.

Justin: 34:32

Like, what are the series that we should bring in for this drive that everyone will enjoy?

Jeremy: 34:39

So we started off the episode talking about, you know, product ideas that we had kinda come up with and, you know, maybe influenced the public opinion and then built those things to, unfortunate results.

Justin: 34:50

Mhmm.

Jeremy: 34:51

On the podcast side of things as well, we kind of hinted that that you can create a show that is basically, like, asking people like, hey. It seems like there's an interest in this. Like, would you do would you listen to a show if I create it this way? And it could be creating a new show or it could be making changes with your existing show. And I think that this brings up this tension in doing creative work where one of the most common piece of advice is ask your audience, and, like, they'll tell you what to create.

Jeremy: 35:14

Mhmm. But there's this other side that is your vision and your intuition as the creator.

Justin: 35:19

You know, it's funny. Like, bands and artists often will say, like, we don't ask our fans for what they want. And also, like, we don't, like, try to think about what our fans would like. I don't know if that's always true. I think, like, especially bands that have made it, they know through experience what kinds of songs get people fired up.

Justin: 35:38

They can see it. They perform it live. It's like, wow. That one just really took off. That's what a hit is.

Justin: 35:45

And you develop this intuitive sense for making hits. You know? Making hits that your fans will like. And that's kind of how I think about it. Like, you have to know your audience.

Justin: 35:59

You have to observe them. You have to be, I think, also tapped in. While we are not normal podcast listeners, like none of the people listening to the show are a normal podcast listener.

Jeremy: 36:12

Yeah.

Justin: 36:13

At the same time, I think we can be introspective about our own modes when it comes to listening. And for example, I think that that observation that, oh, my family listens to podcasts before a long road trip. And I've just observed that online, like people saying, hey, I'm about to drive from DC to wherever. I need podcast recommendations. So I think, you know, making a show around road trips, like, having that as your kind of basis, I think is actually a good kind of idea.

Justin: 36:49

And Mhmm. You might be able to execute on that and actually match up with that demand of like, oh, hey, you're doing a road trip? Well, we have, like, great long form stories that are two hours long, perfect for road trips, good for the whole family. Why don't you give it a try? You know?

Justin: 37:05

I think that's kind of how I'd be thinking about all this stuff.

Jeremy: 37:09

To your point about, like, bands, you just soak in the space long enough, and you get enough feedback on what works and what doesn't. And I think part of this is understanding, like, creating your own things and getting feedback on that, but then being a super consumer of other content in general and in your space, this always is a huge red flag for me. I've had so many clients throughout the years who they'll come to me. They'll wanna start a podcast and say, well, I don't listen to podcasts. And they'll they'll always say it, like, a little bit like they know, like, that's probably not the right thing.

Jeremy: 37:39

Yeah. And it is so hard to make a show worth listening to if you don't know what makes the medium work. And I think that this is just one of those things where the people who have success in a genre or in a medium, they are super consumers of that thing. And it might not be that they are currently super consumers of that thing. I've heard of certain musicians who basically, they consume the whole canon of work in their chosen genre.

Jeremy: 38:04

And then once they started creating it, they started listening to other stuff. Because they're like, I've already listened to it already. I know this in my bones, and I'm gonna start creating stuff. And now I wanna bring in outside influences. And so they've done the work beforehand to, like, know what works, know the dynamics that are at play, know all the genre conventions.

Jeremy: 38:20

And so I think for myself, I do not create content that people are asking for because I want it to be, like, fresh and original. And if somebody's asking for something, you know that there are tons of other creators who are, like, looking up on Google, like, okay. What's trending in Google right now? I'm gonna create content around that. You end up with these SEO optimized posts that are just boring and bland and all the same.

Jeremy: 38:40

And so I wanna see what comes bubbling up for me, but I can only do that because I've spent almost a decade spending all of my time in the podcasting world. And so, like, anything that I find interesting is probably gonna be interesting to other people. Because if it's interesting to me after ten years and, like, consuming everything, like, oh, this must be a somewhat original, I hope, idea. And so I think, like, that is the work that needs to be done really early on is just, like, being in your space, being an active participant of the community, consuming your competitor shows, consuming other shows from other niches and genres, and then, like, letting that bubble up through you and, like, letting yourself act as the filter to create something original.

Justin: 39:14

Yeah. I do think listener responses and listener requests can be helpful because they are your listeners. So they are already in motion. And so if they're saying, oh, man. I I listened to the last episode, and they're all, like, wondering the same things, like, they have the same follow-up questions, I think those can be great to act on.

Justin: 39:34

But it all has to be through your exactly what you said, your filter. You have to be the expert. You have to be the one that can kinda put their finger up in the air and get the weather. You know? It's like, oh, yeah.

Justin: 39:46

The wind's blowing this way. That's your job as the host.

Jeremy: 39:49

We've talked about some of the shortcomings of, you know, these big broad surveys where we don't know what the audience is. And we've also mentioned, you know, several times throughout, these two seasons of the show, the value of talking with your listeners, serving your own listeners. What would you recommend as somebody who is, like, wanting to understand you maybe articulated this a little bit already. But for somebody who's, curious about this data, curious about knowing more about how maybe their listeners discover shows, what are the next steps for them?

Justin: 40:13

I mean, I would if you're hanging out online with people, you can observe you know? So if you're in a subreddit and people they might not be talking about podcasts, but they might just be talking about questions they're interested in, things that they're pursuing, things that they're seeking out. If you're at a conference talking to people, if you're at an event or a meetup, just saying, hey, like, even asking people, like, if they're in your audience, hey, do you listen to podcasts? Oh, can you tell me, like, what's the last podcast you started listening to? Oh, interesting.

Justin: 40:45

How'd you find out about that? Oh, cool. Well, what kind of preceded that? Was there anything that was happening at the same time that triggered this? Or what what was going on there?

Justin: 40:54

And once you've done this enough times, you really do start to develop a sense. Like you said, you're kind of soaking in it. And as you soak in it, you finally you get these insights that come bubbling to the top and go, oh, you know what? I think people like this want a show like this. People like this do things like this.

Justin: 41:15

And you can use those insights to, like I said, produce and structure a show that has kind of the right elements and the right hooks. And then you can use that same insight to market the show. And this is a skill that takes some time to develop. You have to learn how to do this. Because most people just kind of passively you know, it's like most people don't read all the other YouTube comments on a video.

Justin: 41:43

Read all the comments. You know? Yeah. Get it really soak in, like, what's the sentiment here? You know?

Jeremy: 41:50

Yeah. I think the thing that I would add to that is just have as many calls or in person conversations with listeners as possible. The value is not usually in what any one person says. It's the feelings and intuitions and hunches that you get after talking with 25 or 50 people. And these can be existing members of your audience, or they can be existing members of your target audience.

Jeremy: 42:12

And so for anybody, like, this is actually a even better type of person to go after and talk to is think about, like, okay. This person is not a listener to my show, but they should be. Like, I'm creating a show that they should be interested in. I just wanna get to know more about them. And I'm not gonna be pitching my show here.

Jeremy: 42:27

I'm just trying to understand what content do they listen to? How do they decide on podcast versus YouTube versus anything else? What do they get out of these different mediums? And, like, what shows do they listen to or what shows do they watch? And you start to piece together these things as you just, like, have these conversations, and you're trying to find some insights.

Jeremy: 42:43

But over time, you just knowledge just kinds of becomes a part of you where you're just like, oh, I can actually see the thread now looking back over the previous six months. So there are all these conversations. It's just clear to me where the space is going and what people are wanting, and they can't even put their finger on what they want. They just know that this thing, I wish there was something like this. And then you start to understand, I see where I fit into this.

Jeremy: 43:04

But the only way to get there is actually having the conversations and then allowing that to kind of stew.

Justin: 43:09

The way you could do this in your show is just say, hey, friends. I want I'm trying to talk to five of my listeners this month. There is a link to book a call with me in the show notes. We'll do a quick Zoom call. It will be so valuable for me.

Justin: 43:25

I'm excited to meet some of you. You know, lot of you have been listening to me for a long time. Like, invite them that way, and that call to action might be enough to get three or four people to book a call with you, and then you can have these great conversations. I've also seen people do this where they have a separate feed that's just conversations with their fans. Conan O'Brien did this kind of famously in their own feed.

Justin: 43:49

Like, he he would get his fans to call in. And so that's like customer research or listener research, but it's also content. So, yeah, two ideas on how I think you could actually implement that.

Jeremy: 44:00

Alright. So if you are curious in digging into more of the data that we cited and based this episode around, you can find all the links to the various reports in the show notes. And if you would like to go through the full 2024 podcast marketing trends report, you can find that at podcastmarketingtrends.com. And other than that, we will see you next time.