So What? Launching a podcast – podcasting overview

Well, well, well. Happy Thursday, everyone. Welcome to So What the Marketing Analytics and Insights Live Show. I am Katie, as always joined by Chris and John. Howdy, fellas.

Howdy. Hello, I'm coming to you from 164 Air Quality, which is only slightly improved from 170 this morning. So I don't have the gas mask on because I'm in the house. That's probably okay. Um, what an intro.

All right. This week we are talking about launching a podcast. This is gonna be a four-part series. So we're gonna do launching a podcast, podcast strategy, podcast tactics, and podcast measurements. And so this week we're gonna do an overview of launching a podcast.

And so this is not a new topic. People launch podcasts every day, but not everyone does it well. And so our goal is to help you uh get a comprehensive podcasting overview, think about how to build on your podcast idea, and then eventually getting started with it. And this is timely because Chris and John are a wealth of endless knowledge. They've been there, done that, and they run a very successful podcast, have run a very successful podcast for the past 15 years, and have other side project podcasts, but this one podcast has stood the test of time through all the ups and downs of you know the podcast fads.

Uh and that podcast is marketing over coffee. Number one on the charts. So I mean, in terms of expertise, like I am the least experienced uh with podcasts. You know, I co-host in Ear Insights, we do this live stream, I do punch out with Kerry Gorgone. But you two are the experts.

So where would you like to start with the podcasting overview? Let's start with um the podcast landscape because it has changed a lot over the years, and I think it's uh it's a good time to walk down memory lane, sort of. Um from two different organizations, uh Edison Research and Sounds Profitable. I'm gonna take a look at the podcast landscape. As little as five years ago, something around, you know, only half of people had ever listened to a podcast in America.

So apologies for our international listeners and what and viewers. Um the data we have is for the USA. But as of this year, uh 64%, so just shy of two-thirds of Americans have ever listened to a podcast. Marketing over coffee started in 07, right? So we we are at this 13% of people who would ever listen to a podcast back then, and it's been obviously a steady ride up.

What's very interesting is that during the pandemic, you saw a little bit of a uh uh a flattening in in 21. That's because a lot of people um listen to podcasts in places like their car and without a commute, don't really listen to all that much, but it has rebounded in the time since then. So that's of people who've ever listened. People listen to to audio on their devices um in cars now more than half the time. So this is the source of online listening for the majority of people now, which is uh very, very interesting uh in terms of behaviors, and then for the podcast listening audience, 42% now, just a little south of uh half, have listened to a podcast uh in the last month.

So again, this is a a big huge change from where podcasting was, you know, 10 years ago, even five years ago, this is almost double that. Yeah, it's funny to notice how you know things have did drop off a little bit during the pandemic, but really it's just been ongoing organic growth the whole entire time. Like it's still you know nowhere near plateauing. Exactly. And so this is this puts it on par with some social networks, but obviously it's a very different format.

But to the question of, you know, does anyone listen to podcasts? The answer nowadays is very clearly yes, a lot of people listen to podcasts. And what's very interesting is that certain people listen to a lot of podcasts. And this is gonna we're gonna inform our dis our discussion about your overall strategy. Specifically, and I thought this was fascinating.

This was from Sounds Profitable. Podcasting now reaches almost as many people in the 18 to 34 bracket as AMF and radio and as television. Obviously, you know, as generations, uh, you look at generationally, that's that's very different. But if your brand, if your marketing cares about the 18 to 34 segment, and you're burning a whole bunch of money on on AMF and radio, you might want to think about reallocating your ad spend. That 55 plus number just kills me there.

I just picture all these people sitting around listening to AM radio. It's just uh and and yeah, and watching TV. But, you know, from a a marketing perspective, again, for a company like ours, um, you know, we obviously try to serve any and basically anybody who wants our help, but certainly the people that we would get long-term brand loyalty from are going to be in, you know, uh in each bracket, but certainly at middle bracket, and there's a decent penetration of podcasting in there. So again, does it align with our marketing strategy as a company? Um, yes.

Does this align with uh the kinds of people we want to reach? Yes. Now, again, if you're if you were a brand where you're like, hey, we've we figured out 55 plus, we know how to get our audience there, you know, we we do direct mail, whatever, but you're like scratching your head going, how do we get to 18 to 34? Well, gosh, it's a great way to reach that audience. Anecdotally, what I uh what I have seen is that a lot of now former child stars that you know might resonate with the 18 to 34 year old or the 35 to 54 year olds have started their own podcasts in lieu of you know restarting their acting career.

And what they're doing is they're re-watching their old sitcoms and TV shows and movies and commenting on it. And this seems to be at least, you know, this is just one specific industry, one specific segment, but this seems to be the trend of former child actors to go back and re-watch and tell stories. And that's very appealing and very nostalgic, especially for the 35 to 54 year olds who grew up with these people and now they want to listen to you. So I can definitely see where in certain segments in certain industries, podcasting is now the expected. Like, let me do a rewatch of the office, let me do a rewatch of a Nickelodeon show that I start on and tell all the stories of what it was like as a kid from my adult point of view.

Like those are just as compelling as you know these documentaries and behind the scenes stories. Like people are hungry for that kind of content. So I'm interested to know if you have a breakdown specifically for the marketing segment. We don't. We don't have that.

Um, however, for a reassuringly expensive price, I'm sure we could commission that uh from our friends over at Sounds Profitable. Um the next thing that we want to talk about is okay. So we've established there's an audience. The how does this how does podcasting align with the customer journey? And there's some very, very interesting uh stats again from the Sounds Profitable folks about where podcasting fits in, though, particularly on the buyer's journey, awareness, consideration, evaluation, and purchase.

Um let's go through those on the awareness side. Podcast ads, the advertising podcasts hold consumers' attention better than AMF and radio uh or TV ads. So 36% of people uh always or often pay attention to ads using this media. Now, part of that is because podcasts typically are not stuffed with ads, like when you're watching TV or you're listening to radio, there's like 22 ads in a row, you're like, um, when does the show come back on? And podcasts typically don't have that.

But it's a very interesting from an awareness perspective. Um the medium as a whole holds people's attention. And if you think about it, it's a very it is a very intimate medium, right? You're literally taking, you know, so a listener is putting you in their ears physically a lot of the time. I mean, when you put it that way.

But no, in terms of the podcast ads hold a customer's attention, it makes sense in terms of the content. So, you know, growing up, how often, you know, were you watching a TV show and a commercial came on, and that was when you would get up and go get a snack. So you weren't paying attention to the commercial. Or if you're just flipping through the channels, you know, oh, commercials on, let me flip to the other show that I've seen a million times, but at least I can avoid the commercials. The same thing is true as radio.

When I used to commute uh a couple hours a day, and I was listening to FM radio, the second the commercial would come on, I would switch to a different station where there weren't commercials. With a podcast, you are seeking out that content and you will sit through the ad in order to get to the rest of the content. So this completely makes sense. I'm surprised it's not higher. It is really compelling, and it's not in this study, but there was a companion study done by the Sounds Profitable folks saying that host read ads, where we, you know, the we as the hosts read out the advertisers, or the ones that head and shoulders perform uh much, much better than any other form of advertising because people are uh just used to to hearing that.

Um which reminds me uh you would like to have uh some marketing analytics and could and AI consulting. You can go to trust insights.ai slash contact um we don't have a discount code for that john you do all you read all the ads for marketing over coffee right yeah I do the host rate and this is actually I mean if you're an ad nerd this is a pretty interesting area right now because a lot of the podcast networks and the more established advertising um agencies and bureaucracy want these automated ad spots to drop because there are systems now where you know you upload a 30 second spot of your you know 1854 giant or whatever and it just immediately goes into 500 different podcasts at you know the time mark but networks like Twit this week in tech which is longer running even than marketing over coffee has done a bunch of studying over the years and they have clearly said that these host red host red ads are the way to go you know because people trust these hosts and if the host says hey we use this thing and we like it um that's just a whole different category of ad and endorsement. And there is more to that you know if you sign on for a network or something whatever plays plays whereas Chris and I do filter everything that goes through like we would never put anything on the show that we hate or we know is deceptive or you know not on the market. I mean there's there are some products where like yeah whatever they've got money that's good enough but you know there's also a whole realm of products where you know we wholeheartedly endorse the stuff and would never tell anybody not to do it. So it's a great fit for the audience.

Exactly. So that's on the awareness side on the consideration side this would fascinate me. Consumers are more willing to consider products and services after they've heard about them on a podcast than any other medium, period. So from a consideration side, uh, this is this is huge. So podcasts, more than two-thirds of people versus YouTube, social media, live and recorded TV, and AMF and radio.

And I find that interesting because if you think about it, the method by which people listen, like the modality between podcasts and AMF and radio is not substantially different, right? You're just listening to stuff a lot of the time. And yet, because of the nature of how podcasts work and the type of people who listen to them, you get a very different behavior. Well, I think that goes to what John was just saying about the host red ads and in terms of the endorsement. And so, you know, uh, I know like YouTube, social, recorded TV, and AMFM commercials are can be a blend of host red and then the ones that you plug in.

I mean, podcast too for that matter. But the majority, at least the ones that I've listened to, of the ads are read by the host, like Conan O'Brien, Conan O'Brien needs a friend. Great podcast, by the way. If you've never listened, it's fantastic. But he reads all the ads, and it becomes this like 10-minute bit where he's talking about the brand because he just kind of goes off script, but he's still doing the ad and to host red, and it sticks in your head more.

And I think the same is true. What John's just saying is, you know, for marketing over coffee, you don't bring on advertisers where you don't at least believe in the product, even if it's not for you right now, it's not something you would you wouldn't, you know, not feel comfortable recommending to a friend. So that again, it totally makes sense that like if John Wall from Marketing Over Coffee is talking about a certain kind of technology, I'm gonna trust that, and it's gonna stick in my head of like, well, if John Wall uses it, it must be good. So let me go check it out because I'm also looking for something similar. Um, you know, I I don't find this surprising at all.

Again, sort of back to the last one, I'm surprised it's not higher. Yep. And then finally, at the end of the the buyer's journey purchase. Umty three percent of podcast listeners agree that the ads on this media may be more likely to purchase the product and service. Now, with a lot of these slides are ad focused, but this also sinks nicely into why you should be thinking about uh running a podcast as a part of your marketing.

Because obviously, if you get listeners, you get an audience, these same facts will apply, probably more so because you're listening to that company's show, right? If you're listening to In Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, you are by default listening to uh what is essentially uh in some ways a 25 minute ad. Now, if it's not you're not selling, you know, hard selling stuff, but it is from us about us. And so if you're thinking about a podcast for your your company, the these stats apply even more so. But I think the flip side is also true.

If you are looking to purchase ads somewhere, purchase it, you know, on a podcast, you know, maybe sponsor in air insights, maybe sponsor marketing over coffee. We're always open. Uh, you know, but I think that, you know, in terms of reaching your desired audience, podcasts tend to be more focused in terms of their content. So you have a better sense of who the audience is likely to be. And therefore, if I was looking to purchase ads, I would say, let me start with a podcast, because you know, I'm not likely to get people who aren't interested in marketing and analytics listening to Int Your Insights.

Uh, it's a very specific type of show. So if I have some sort of a marketing, you know, technology that I want to be promoting, sponsoring Int Ear Insights is probably a good move for me. It's probably a good use of my ad dollars. Same is true for marketing over coffee. If I have, you know, a marketing service or some sort of you know piece of tech that I want people to know about, marketing over coffee is probably a really great place to put my ad.

Exactly. Yeah, the shows, the shows define the audiences. If you buy a slot on Edward Sark uh Sarcassian's uh show where he just blows things up with with heavy firearms, you can pretty much guess who listens to that show. Um people like me going, Oh, let's blow things up. So if you sell things that blow up, you need to be in front of that audience.

Exactly. So that brings us to launching a podcast, right? Uh the first thing you have to tackle is what's this gonna be about, right? Um if you've decided based on what you've heard so far that you that it makes sense, you need to have a couple you make a couple of big decisions up front. Um, what is the unique selling proposition?

What is the reason someone should be listening to this? Um, and what channels are you going to have it on? Because that's going to dictate very much the format. So let's start unique selling proposition first. Back in the day, there were like three marketing podcasts, which I you know the the two are still around, right?

Uh uh John Jance's show and marketing over coffee. So there wasn't a huge selection to begin with. Now, if you go into uh the Apple Podcasts or Stitcher or Spotify, there's a gazillion and a half marketing podcast. And the the general rule of thumb that um we learned from our our friend and former uh boss uh Todd Defferin over uh when he was running the agency was there's three things that really help set apart aside anything. It's first, best only.

Are you the first to do something? Are you the best at it, or are you the only person to do it? And when you're thinking about your podcast strategy, obviously marketing over coffee was one of the first, right? In ear insights, um can't be the first, right? We're we're not the first uh podcast by a a consultant company.

So we either have to be the best or the only at some some aspect of your market. I want to take a step back though, because I want to go just a little bit as we're talking about launching a podcast, a little bit into the origin story of marketing over coffee. Because I actually don't know that I've heard this. And so, you know, we don't even we don't have to get into the details of like how you guys met unless it's you know part of the story. But what made the both of you want to start a podcast?

Like, what was the nugget of an idea that made you go, you know what? Let's podcast about this. Let's let's put this on air. So Chris had just finished saving the space shuttle, and I had uh just come down off my first Nobel Prize, and we decided, hey, we really need to do something. Um basically we were both we had already messed around with podcasting around 2005.

We were we were already producing shows. Chris had for the financial aid network had the financial aid podcast, which was first only and best. He had all three completely locked down for that. Um, and then I had decided for some insane reason to go up against, you know, the world's greatest radio DJs like Howard Stern and um Don Imus. And I was gonna produce my own morning zoo.

And uh and it worked well, you know. I did 10 minutes of news talk and entertainment and had tech slant and it worked, but I quickly realized that if I was ever gonna make any headway in this space, I needed to go over into marketing and tech, something that I could talk about uniquely that nobody else could cover. And that was the impetus for it. And Chris had been doing the show, and I was like, my god, this guy sounds like Shadow Stevens, he's amazing, and he's doing financial aid, which nobody cares about. So we need to get him somewhere else.

And so I was like, hey, let's do a podcast together. And he said, No. And then I was like, well, let's do a podcast together uh about marketing and tech. He's like, Yeah, that's kind of interesting, but I still can't do it. And I was like, Well, let's do it at seven in the morning at Dunkin' Donuts.

And he was like, No. And I said, Well, let's do it at six in the morning at Dunkin' Donuts. And he said, No. And I said, Well, let's do it at five in the morning at Dunkin' Donuts. And he said, Okay, yeah, I can do that.

And that's really how it stood. Yeah, we were insane. We were like driving to Dunkin' Donuts almost in the middle of the night because we both had full-time other gigs. You know, we would record and it was a a Dunkin' Donuts right by the mass pike. And so we would both jump on the pike and go to work after we recorded, and then I would bring it home.

And yeah, it's just insane. Like none of the technology for online stuff existed then. Like we had to record in front of microphones at the docks because we couldn't just hop on to Zoom or stream yard or whatever. So yeah, I don't know. That's like the that's basically where the thing came from because and it's just been amazing because we have marketing tech stories at a time when like nobody was telling these stories, you know.

You know, we had all these people that were just like, oh my god, nobody wants to hear from me at Thanksgiving. Like, I can actually talk to you guys about this stuff and you understand it, and it's funny. And you know, we that's how the community started it, where it got going. And yeah, and since then, you know, instantly famous a mere 16 odd years later. What I love is how you show your true sales colors.

Okay, how about seven? No. Okay, how about six? No. And that persistence to make it work.

The other thing to probably mention is, you know, math, not my strong suit. John is our chief statistician. Uh, you guys probably also had families and little kids at home at the same time as well. Yep. God, let me think.

Yeah, that was the first uh because I had the first kid as I had wrapped up the M show and started marketing over coffee. So yeah, we both had kids um coming up along with very little ones, yeah, yeah. Well, it would this was still like old school where daddy would just vanish for weeks on end, and you know, like you were expected to be in the office for 80 hours a week and travel, you know, two weeks a month. So yeah, that would in fact there was an ongoing joke thread about Chris and us, like who would be the first to get called Uncle John or Uncle Chris? Like that was part of the I love this story so much, so much to unpack.

But we, you know, we're only a 40 minute show. So all right, so in terms of the origin, you had those unique value propositions because there were no other marketing and technology podcasts out there, so you were first and only, and I would argue best. Definitely number one. Yeah, and we preceded marketing tech the existence of the marketing technology profession, you know, uh prior to its it's a it's nomenclature. Uh but again, if you are trying to launch a podcast today, you have to figure out first best only.

You can be first in something if it's something like completely net new. So for example, if you were in 2017 one of the first people to understand the attention model of a large language model and how Transformers architectures work, you could have started a podcast then on this, and just now you'd be getting uh popular probably. Um, but you can you you could do that. So a part of what you have to look at is is there an aspect of your brand, your marketing etc that would allow you to be first? And if there's not, then look at the rest of the space and see well, what could I be best at, or what can I only do that no one else could do?

And that's the angle that um I think a lot of people could take, but it requires an enormous amount of effort to do it. Um there is the um there's a meme floating around that was first on Tumblr related to fanfiction, but it applies to podcasting just as well. Of uh a pr a creator saying, Oh, well, somebody else has already done this thing, you know, you know, uh where there's no room for me to do this. And the flip side, the audience perspective is, oh my god, there's now more. I can have more of this thing because there's now more creators in this thing.

Um, which is i it is true. The challenge with podcasting is because it is in essentially in real time for the listener. If you record 25 minutes of a show, that's 25 minutes of someone's time. And so you have to figure out, you know, how long is your show and whether or not your show will fit into someone else's day. And the third major consideration for the concept is format.

We used to say podcasting was just, you know, it was primarily audio. These days, if you want your show to be discovered, you must do video as well. You must. There's there's no uh alternative to this because platforms like YouTube and TikTok and stuff are the discovery mechanisms by which people find out about shows. So if you are audio only and you and or you're thinking audio only and you're just getting started, there really isn't uh there really isn't a good reason to do that from a discovery and marketing perspective for your show.

Does marketing over coffee publish video? Occasionally we do a horrible job of it. Because the big thing is yeah we can throw the whole thing up there and we've done that a bunch of times but basically I guess in a perfect world I would take the best clips and do clips and then we really should be doing more on that front as far as taking you know the hot items um and yeah I just haven't made the effort to get the workflow to make that go. You know we've been getting enough uh from promoting posts and from you know doing some ad spend I guess it's just a classic example of I am totally at that point where yeah if I took the time to set up the organic program right it would have better long term results and be easier but instead I just throw a handful of money at it every corner and uh you know and so I'm stuck doing that now. I'm addicted to the drug and I can't leave.

Um so let me ask you this question because I was thinking about this in terms of you know video versus audio only versus both uh you know a lot of podcasts launch on YouTube only to start but it's video so if it's video and only on YouTube, is it then still considered a podcast? Or is it just some sort of a show? You know, is the term podcast, has it lost meaning because of all of the different multimedia types that this thing can be now? The I I would say the defining line is where it's available, right? So for example, the you know, if you listen to Joe Rogan, it's only on Spotify, right?

There's there's no other place to get that. Um is that still a podcast? Maybe. Um it comes down to whether it's it's a show that that comes in on the podcasting systems, right? So there are apps like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, et cetera.

And if your show doesn't show up there, regardless of format, it probably would not be considered a podcast because it's not available in where people go when they look for a podcast. That doesn't mean it's not a show, right? It absolutely means it is a show, it's just not a typical podcast. Now there used to be definitions in the old days, like I had to have an RSS feed with enclosures and stuff, and that is no one cares. Like no one, no one, none of the audience cares.

The the audience cares about can I get this show in the place that I want it? So you have the URL here. If you go to trust insights.ai slash TI podcast, you can find it. Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, et cetera. You know, we do the same thing that we do for marketing or coffee, trying to make it as available as possible everywhere.

We're on YouTube. Um we are on the the Libsyn platform and things. Is that a podcast? Um yeah, it is. Um, would it be considered a podcast if we weren't on all the channels?

Probably not. But is it a show? Yes. Even if it's only in one place, it's a show, and we want people to listen to the show wherever it's most convenient for them. Got it.

Okay, that makes sense. I mean, because it was something I was wondering, because I mean, what I've, again, sort of what I've noticed is newer, meaning within the past couple of years, podcasts always have accompanying video and then they show up as clips on Instagram or they show up on YouTube channels. And so in my very simplistic brain, I was like, but is that even still a podcast? Or is that just a show or you watching an interview? Right.

Yeah. I mean, there's there are plenty of uh shows out there like the Shuttle Pod, which is a Star Trek um uh show that they do they do multiple versions of it. So there's the like the long form YouTube uh version, then there's uh cut down audio versions that they swallow out and you if you want to go uh to the the whole version there's other places where people now use things like Patreon and only fans and so they will have uh like 20 minutes of the show on YouTube and then say to watch the full episode go to the paid version over here um thing so there's there's even that which is a nice segue to sort of establishing the goals for what you want your podcast to do. And again we have the three buckets of the buyer's journey because we're assuming you're doing this in some way for marketing purposes. There's awareness, consideration and purchase.

And within those categories there's kind of a a different set of splits. So on the awareness side you could be doing the show for branded leadership. And we'll talk about measurement and goal setting and things in future episodes but there's you know brand leadership there's just getting awareness of your audience. You know can you get an audience to pay attention to you on the consideration side there's lead generation and trying to get new leads for your business or lead nurturing podcasting if you're doing a show about your topic can be a great thing to be to have a catalog of content that you can send to people in your sales pipeline and say, hey, we just did a show about this topic that showcases our knowledge. Here's the episode if you want to listen to it.

And of course, there's the revenue side, the purchase side. You can do there's two ways to do that. Sell other people's stuff, means by ads and sponsorships, and sell your stuff directly selling products or services, or as we just talked about, monetization through subscriptions and patrons. For this whole category, the big thing that you have to do is figure out what goal you want to achieve, and then you'll you'll set your podcast strategy based on that goal. And you can have more than one, but generally speaking, you want to have one that is the goal to start.

So aside from sending you to an early grave, John, what is the goal of marketing over coffee? One billion dollars. Yeah, no, I that's a great question, really, because it we have not been as clear on the goals as we have been. I think the big thing was it to be a platform for both of us to build our own brands. Like I've never seen it as its own brand, even.

It was really just this is where John and Chris do their thing. And if you need John and Chris to do stuff, then talk to them. You know, that that's kind of always where it's been. And yeah, and now that you talk about like Martech becoming a whole thing, I'm like, damn, we should really be much richer. Like we've really screwed this up.

You know, like 10 years ago, if we had done a Mart Tech show, like, you know, maybe I'd be coming to you from the deck of my yacht now. But um But I do think that, you know, in terms of you know, the longstandingness of marketing over coffee and given the content, if you know, so what do they just release? The Martech 11,038. If you're not getting 11,038 Martex systems reaching out to you to sponsor marketing over coffee, then they're the ones that are doing it wrong because marketing over coffee has such a longstanding loyal audience who looks to you. And you know, I just keep going back to thinking about if I'm not on the podcast side, but I'm trying to reach that audience.

Why wouldn't I look to marketing over coffee? You know, for example, to bring my product, you know, to light to awareness to have the host endorse my thing. Yeah, absolutely. And it is, it's insane. It strikes me because we have so many sponsors that are just like, oh my God, we got X number of leads.

Like, why would you, as your own company, start a podcast and then start marketing your podcast to the same people you're already spamming every week with email about your products? You know, it's just you're not gonna get anybody net new at all out of that. Whereas for one fifth of the price it would cost you to make one episode, you know, you can run 10 shows just to see how the hell it works and if your audience hangs out in this neighborhood, like it's yeah, you'd think it was a no-brainer, but people want to make their own show, they want to impress the boss with their podcast, you know. That's like the so with the the graveyard of dead corporate podcasts is overflowing, and uh we we can you know publish a thousand a month just about with those said, yeah, that's the way things go. Well, that was gonna be one of my follow-up questions for both of you is does every brand need a podcast?

Should that be part of their marketing strategy? No, yeah, no, I was like, well, not absolutely not. Well, one thing that I always say too, and people always can't believe it when I sit when I tell them this is first of all, you should be blogging. Like, like you know, getting your text about who you are and what you are up on the web and having a website, like that's number one. And unfortunately, two is video.

If you have great content that you can show on video, YouTube is a massive search engine and a massive sort source of organic. So unless you're already doing a good job with blogging and video, like you shouldn't even be considering podcasting. Like podcasting that needs to be third on the list. Don't even think about it. The exception to that is if you're um sure microphones.

Like, yeah, you absolutely need to have a podcast. You know, you need to have a podcast about here's what our stuff sounds like. Gibson guitars needs to have a podcast, you know. If you have something that plays well to the music or audio um vertical, then yeah, absolutely. But for everybody else, yeah, there's there's better ways to spend your money than making podcasts.

Yeah, unless something that you want to do that you enjoy doing. Um that's a big part of it too, is uh especially on the hobbyist um and solo creator side. If that's if that's a form of ex artistic expression for you, go for it. You know, that it may not have uh the business outcome that uh a more resourced uh enterprise would, but it there are plenty of shows up there that are just people having having fun. Right.

See, that's a trademark, Christopher Penn grappling hook. You know, you go to your boss and you're like, hey, I just want to try this on the side, and we're gonna market to all your customers, and when I leave, I'm gonna take them with me. But you're gonna be okay with that because we made a great podcast here. That sounds about right. Yeah, it and everybody wins.

Nobody loses, so it's not a bad thing. But yeah, so if you're at a company you think they'd never create a podcast, but you feel like, hey, I want to start messing around with audio gear, like, yeah, definitely do it. Talk somebody into it. So when you both started marketing over coffee, and I know that you're gonna get deeper into the weeds next week when we talk about podcast strategy, uh, but I just wanna give like a little teasers for people who are looking for part two. Um, did you talk through like a business plan?

Did you talk through, you know, we want to eventually reach this many people or be on this many channels, or you know, do it at this frequency. Did the frequency change over the years? Like, you know, I don't think there's not a lot of history published about how marketing over coffee came to be, um, and sort of what the lessons you've both learned have been. Yeah, it we've been making like dial soap, you know, like nothing has changed in about 175 years. Um, which the cool thing was like when we started, we both had done our own shows for over a year for a couple of years.

So we had it. And it just it seemed like a no brainer. It was like 25 minutes, it needs to be the average commute time. We're not gonna do one of these three hour there used to be more of these where some talking head would just sit there and blab for literally hour, two hours, three hours. And you know, you can only squeeze one of those in a week.

So there was that. There was educate and entertain, and then it was cover marketing tech and be the best, and then get advertisers and get free stuff. That was really one of the bigger motivations at the start, was just like we just want to get free stuff. And I was like, yeah, and I've said, like if I j if I just get to talk to Seth Godin, I'll consider the podcast a 100% success. And have you?

Oh yeah, within I don't know, within two years or so, like actually and then I realized it's like anytime anybody has a book, they're willing to talk to any homeless bum, you know. So that was we were able to get in there. You know, you just need it, you learn when's the time, when do you approach and uh and get it. But yeah, and that's like the most amazing thing is now we have you know, followers all over the globe, and we've talked to tons of cool authors, and um and yeah, to be able to have you know get feedback from listeners in other countries that I've never even been to is just amazing. It still blows my mind that there's people in other parts of the world that are listening to us ramble on about the foolishness we continue to record.

So yeah, it's all the win for us. But yeah, I don't know. But I'd be interested, Chris. Like have you ever was there ever any point where you're like, oh yeah, no, the business model needs to change or we need some quarterly goals or any of that stuff? No, because we've never really treated it that way.

It's always just been the just this thing that we do. Um we've done, we've set down goals, for example, for in your insights in terms of you know, Katie has the number of subscribers and things to be looking at, the number of of listens and stuff. But for for marketing over coffee, because it started as essentially a hobbyist thing that was just fun. Um, it never really developed past that from a formalized process, even saying you know, like um the revenue collected from sponsors and stuff. You know, we yeah, that's that's just kind of happens.

Um, there's no formal plan saying it should you know generate this amount of income or this is what the pricing structure looks like because it was never intended to be a business. So, in that sense, so Chris, when we started in your insights, you know, what were our goals? What do you think the purpose of our podcast is? Awareness, uh awareness and retention of our audience. Um partly because podcasting is a format that a lot of people in the B2B space are well aware of, um, partly because we get a halo effect from shows like marketing over coffee, people you know who enjoy hearing um hearing us speak there, also like enjoy hearing us speak on uh in your insights and and this live stream, there's taking advantage of that halo effect and it is a reinforcement mechanism this is a reinforcement mechanism because these days attention and mind share are the most important things that you can possibly have as a marketer um everyone and everything is competing for your for your audience's attention and if you do you know a monthly email newsletter and that's your outreach to your audience you get one at bat right to to to reach your audience if you have a weekly newsletter then you get four at bats a month right to to stay in in front of people if you do a weekly newsletter and a monthly podcast so now that's five at bats if you do a weekly newsletter and a weekly podcast now that's eight now you add a weekly live stream now that's 12.

So you have 12 at bats every month to try to get in to stay in front of your audience to stay present with your audience. Now do I expect everyone who's listening to to religiously follow all three no but there's enough content out there that someone who wants one particular thing if it's if it's a live stream if it is video if it is audio if it's a podcast if it's a newsletter there's something for everybody. It has a podcast feed it has videos on YouTube it has a blog as well because I need more at bats. It's why we blog daily on the Trust Insights website because we need more at bats to stay in front of people because that's how you attain an audience. So with that's one of the reasons why in your insights is a weekly show.

It's why the inbox insights newsletter is a weekly newsletter because more time than a week in between contacts with somebody and they forget about you. Right. But if you have that weekly cadence because people in our industry and in general are used to a weekly cadence of content, right? New episode of Andor, new episode of The Flash, right? New episode of Seinfeld, whatever the case is, people are used to that weekly cadence and that's where their brains are.

So that's where we try to align ourselves as well. I think that completely makes sense. And you know we and we can talk about more of this next week when we get into more of the strategy, but we decided it was going to be an informal conversation between the two of us about you know whatever's going on in marketing and analytics and data science that week. And we've stuck to that format. And you know one of the things that people enjoy about the show is our banter back and forth.

It's completely natural. We don't plan the show ahead of time. Some shows are better than others for sure but um you know we generally have a loose idea of a topic and then we just sort of see where that goes over the course of 25 to 30 minutes. Where shows like Marketing over coffee and other better produced shows put more thought into how each episode is going to go. And so you know I know you guys will get into the differences uh between those uh in the next couple of weeks when we talk about strategy and tactics revealing all the secrets of the illusion.

But you know, knowing that, you know, it's I like to, you know, remind people that you know you're both, you know, celebrities in your own right. A lot of times the contact that we that comes into the website is, oh, I'm a big fan of John. I've been listening to Marketing Over Coffee forever. Oh, I'm a big fan of Chris. I've been listening to Marketing Over Coffee forever.

And so to your point, Chris, those at bats keep, you know, the names, the topics, the ideas, the thought leadership present. And so, you know, it's it's been a really good awareness tool for Trust Insights to have marketing over coffee as part of the Trust Insights ecosystem and family, and hopefully vice versa, where people can see John in action as the chief statistician talking about things he knows, and like, oh, you know what? I want to sponsor marketing over coffee for that reason because he's gonna, you know, do justice to my thing. Yes, we will put your brand top and center, just like our friends over at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions who have been delivering quality content for years at Marketing Over Coffee. We'd love to see over there.

That is fantastic. Uh on that note. On that note, if you want to sponsor in your insights or marketing over coffee, reach out to TrustInsights.ai slash contact, and you can reach specific dedicated loyal audiences in your space. Yep. So next week we'll be talking about uh understanding your audience, the audience persona, audience strategy, your content strategy as well as part of your overall podcast.

So stay tuned for that. Uh any final parting words. Not everyone needs a podcast. Don't do podcast. Get the hell off my lawn.

No podcast. All right. Um we'll see you all next time. Thanks for watching today. Be sure to subscribe to our show wherever you're watching it.

For more resources and to learn more, check out the Trust Insights Podcast at Trustinsights.ai slash TI podcast. And a weekly email newsletter at TrustInsights.ai slash newsletter. Got questions about what you saw in today's episode? Join our free Analytics for Marketers Slack group at TrustInsights.ai slash analytics for marketers. See you next time.