Episode Summary
Podcasts have become incredibly popular in the past few years. And they are a fantastic medium to connect with your audience, strengthen your brand, and be your true authentic self.
But simply putting your podcast out there can only get you so far. If you want to take your podcast to another level, you need to take extra steps to find your target audience.
In this episode of the Recorded Content, our host Tristan Pelligrino welcomes Trent Anderson, the Head of Revenue Operations at Podchaser. They chat about why community-embedded growth is the future of B2B podcasting, audience discovery, and the benefits of being a podcast guest.
Featured Guest
- Name: Trent Anderson
- What he does: He's the Head of Revenue Operations at Podchaser.
- Company: Podchaser
- Noteworthy: Podchaser provides the world's most comprehensive podcast database. The company powers podcast discovery for listeners, creators, and brands.
Key Insights
- Community-embedded growth is the next wave of B2B podcasting. The key to a successful podcast is putting your audience's interests first. Focus on their needs instead of yours. Trent talks about community-embedded growth, "I think a lot of podcasts would do infinitely better if marketers, brands, et cetera, started building an audience and then community, and ultimately, if the content is resonant, you're going to find your tribe. And that's where I think this community-embedded growth comes in because it is just word of mouth."
- How do listeners discover podcasts? Just because your podcast is on Spotify, it doesn't mean your target audience will find you that easily. You have to put in some extra work to discover your target listenership. Trent talks about audience discovery. "How do you get discovered on Spotify? Somebody puts in your name and then puts in ‘podcast.’ So, okay, how are they going to hear about your name, to begin with? Well, we could talk about social distribution there, or we can talk about maybe a guest appearance on another podcast that they had heard, and that's how they found you."
- Being a podcast guest has numerous benefits. There are tremendous benefits of being a podcast guest from increasing your brand's exposure to amplifying your content. Trent explains, "It's such a compound positive tactic. So you appear on a podcast like I'm doing right now. I know that you've got amazing production value. You're going to distribute this across social. You're going to distribute it across your own podcasts. It's probably going to live on five or six different channels. [...] And now this is allowing me to tap into your known audience, and I can probably extract five to ten videos out of this so I can cut them up. I can use those videos to distribute across my social channels. I can use the transcript to write social copy, newsletter copy, and blog copy. So one appearance, one 30-minute conversation turns into 20, 30, maybe even 50 pieces of content, depending on how micro you want to get with it."
“We pull in data Twitter Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook. We aggregate it across the graph and start to see audience makeup based on followership.”
Trent Anderson
Head of Revenue Operations
Podchaser
Episode Highlights
Your listenership is more critical than your downloads
“Listenership is so much more important, and returning listeners are so much more important. And then getting the high intensity signals through the distribution channels is infinitely more important than a pure download number. And what I always like to say is I have Spotify on my phone. I have Apple on my phone, and I have SoundCloud. I use Spotify almost exclusively, but I have 50 shows on Apple that are automatically downloaded. Now, I never listen to them.”
How do you find good podcast guest opportunities
“A lot of people will stick with what they know. So if you’re selling a CRM, what people usually do is, ‘Let’s find shows that talk about CRMs.’ That’s great. There are probably dozens, if not up to a thousand shows that are purely focused on CRMs. That’s the first layer, and you have so many more opportunities outside of that. And this is what I’m trying to evangelize to all of our customers and to our prospects as well. Who uses a CRM system? Salespeople.”
Podchaser can help you discover good podcast opportunities
“A huge question is always, ‘Well, just because someone follows you on Twitter, does that mean they’re going to be a listener of your podcast?’ By itself, in a vacuum, maybe, maybe not, but when you aggregate it across the entire audience pool, across all of the shows, or all the channels, that is where we are more directionally accurate about that. What’s really cool to see is that when you zoom out from a macro lens, you can start to see things like what shows are popular with fans of the Tesla brand, who are aged 25 to 34, who have a household income of 70 grand or above and who live in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. […] If that’s important to you, you can surface those insights to Podchaser, and that’s going to give you a much better sense of whether this is a good show for me to be a part of, or for me to get my point of view across.”
The power score metric should be your North Star
“We talked a lot about how I’m fighting the fight against downloads being the North Star metric for the industry. Well, what am I replacing it with? I’m replacing it with the power score metric, which is our proprietary piece of data that comprises 30 different data points. It’s taking into account popularity and listenership, of course, ’cause that’s really important, but it’s also taking into account engagement. It’s taking into account reviews; it’s taking into account the social elements that we talked about as being super important for a distribution. So the power score number really should serve as the North Star.”
