Growth spurts and booster rockets 🚀

Five lessons in building audience from Podcast Movement 2018

Often, podcast audiences grow steadily over time. They’re built through consistency, habit, and loyalty:

But sometimes lightning strikes, and a podcaster sees a big jump in a short amount of time:

What happened here?

This past week at Podcast Movement in Philadelphia, I asked a number of podcasters the exact same question:

Where do those big jumps come from? What caused your biggest spikes? What moved the needle?

Here’s what a few of my favorite podcasters told me, and a few lessons to take away from their experiences:

Appear on other (bigger) shows

“The needle-mover for me has been being on other shows,” says Shannon Cason, host of Homemade Stories. “I’m a storyteller. So pitching my stories to other shows has given me my biggest jumps.”

Shannon told me that early on, Homemade Stories would get a few thousand downloads per month.

Then Shannon started to pitch his stories to shows like Snap Judgement and The Moth Radio Hour. Over time, he got traction.

“Snap Judgement ran Homemade Stories as a full episode of their show. And the following month I was at 100,000 downloads”

What’s the key to making sure his guest appearances are effective in growing his own fanbase? “I’m adamant,” he told me. If you air a Shannon Cason story on your podcast, “You have to mention Homemade Stories.”

The lesson: When you’re a small fish in a big pond, try hanging out with the big fish. Make friends with the big fish. Be helpful to the big fish. You might just end up growing.

Rent other shows’ RSS feeds

Rob Peterson from Audioboom told me about a tactic he uses to launch new shows: renting other podcasts’ RSS feeds.

“This puts the show we’re promoting into feeds that have dedicated fanbases and thousands of subscribers,” he explains, “meaning thousands of people voluntarily listened to a clip of our show.”

For example, when Rob helped launch Covert in May 2018, he arranged to simultaneously drop the first episode into the RSS feed of another popular show: Mafia.

Over the past year, I’ve noticed more and more podcast networks using this tactic as part of their launch strategies. For instance, I first heard Change Agent and Caliphate when I was introduced to them through The Daily.

Renting another show’s podcast feed can be an effective way to strap a booster rocket to a new show launch. But be careful. Rob recommends caution with this tactic, and he says show alignment and transparency are key.

“The last thing you want to do is anger another show’s fanbase,” he say. “Making those listeners angry will not only hurt your show’s credibility, but also the show whose RSS feed you’re renting.”

“Giving those shows directions and copy to use, informing their fans that they’re dropping new content into their RSS feed is paramount to the success of the campaign.”

The lesson: If you have an opportunity to rent another show’s feed, do it… but only if you can do it tastefully and with respect for your audience’s time and attention.

Make a show that deserves a spot on the front page

“The biggest thing for us was getting featured in Pocket Casts,” says Kristofor Lawson, host of Moonshot, a show that explores “crazy ideas that might change the world.”

When Moonshot launched in March 2017, Kristofor told me it was getting “hundreds of downloads.” A few months later, Pocket Casts featured it in their app. Kristofor estimates the placement led directly to 60,000 downloads, and the corresponding rise in subscribers has had a long-lasting effect.

The boost from Pocket Casts meant Kristofor could sell ads on his show “at a rate where I could genuinely start thinking about doing this full time,” he says. “It directly changed the success of the show.”

Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there, but there are just a small handful of featured spots in popular podcast apps. While there’s a certain amount of luck and timing involved, Kristofor told me he focused on the element that was most within his control: the quality of his episodes:

“Getting to that point of getting featured was all about making really high quality content, making sure we were focusing on the style and genre of the show, making sure that we were serving our audience in the best way that we could. The biggest thing is the content.”

The lesson: Lots of podcasts would love to be featured by a popular podcast app. Is your show truly exceptional? Are you a contender, quality-wise?

Sponsor a similar show

Chelsea Cox hosts Deliberations, an improvised courtroom audio drama. “There aren’t a lot of other crime drama podcasts out there,” she told me. But there are a lot of extremely popular true crime podcasts.

Chelsea had a hunch that true crime fans would also enjoy her fiction series, “So what I tried doing was identifying the shows with like content — people who are into crime in general, into murder stories, and into legal stories — and then selecting those shows and reaching out to their networks to sponsor them.”

Chelsea ran paid podcast sponsorship for Deliberations inside true crime hits like Undisclosed. Because the subject matter was such a good fit, the host-read sponsorships were authentic and genuine.

“When you get that personal recommendation from a podcaster that people trust, they’re way more inclined to check out my show.”

Chelsea told me she regularly hears from listeners who might never have discovered her show without her sponsorship messages. “People tell me, ‘I heard your ad on Undisclosed.’”

“I tried PR, and I tried cost-per-click, and those didn’t move the needle at all. They did nothing for me,” she says. “Going back, I wish I could have put all my effort and time and money into just podcast podcast sponsorship or doing ad swaps.”

The lesson: Chelsea’s success with paid promo shows the value of identifying allies and adjacent audiences. What podcasts are your next fans already listening to?

Work with name-brand talent

At Pacific Content, we’re lucky to work with amazing hosts — people like Walter Isaacson, Veronica Belmont, Saron Yitbarek, and Dan Heath. Not only are these hosts highly credible in their own industries, but they also have the power to introduce podcasts to their existing non-podcast followers.

Of course, Pacific Content isn’t the only shop that believes in the power of working with talented, well-known hosts.

“Investing in high-quality, credible talent can do wonders for your podcast,” says Corey Layton, Content & Marketing Director at Whooshkaa.

As an example, Corey’s team worked with Mercedes-Benz in Australia to create a show called Tough Conversations. It’s about the changing idea of what it means to be “tough,” and it’s designed to appeal to tradies (Australian slang for tradespeople) who are in the market for a new ute (Australian slang for pickup truck).

“To that group, Henry Rollins is a god, and they would do anything to hang out with the guy. He’s bang-on target for an Australian tradie wanting to buy a ute. He’s the perfect person.”

The lesson: If you’re casting a show, ask yourself: who is the ideal person to host it? Who can connect in a credible way with the audience you want to reach?

Don’t forget about the 74%

I should point out that four of these five tactics moved the needle by preaching to the converted. But remember: it’s important to preach to the converted, and grow the denominator.