Creating Your Own Podcast As A Marketing Strategy For Agency With Harry Morton

In the third of this three part series, talking everything about podcasting, Today we are exploring how to start your own podcast. Now this episode was driven because I've had a few of my clients asking me what I thought about the idea of them starting a podcast as a marketing strategy, as a way of building awareness and that important know like and trust with their target audience. And whilst I think it's a great idea, there are a number of pitfalls that you need to be careful of. So today we are exploring everything to do with how to start a podcast. What research research you need to do, how to stand out from the competition, some of the do's and don'ts, and a lot of those frequently asked questions such as how often should I release a podcast? So another really action packed episode and another episode where I learned a lot. So I know you will. So let's get on with the Show. I'm Rob DaCosta and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels during the ups and the downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. Welcome to today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. Today we are in the third part of a three part series of exploring all aspects aspects of podcasting. And today specifically we're going to be talking about why you should consider starting your own podcast and how exactly to go about doing it. And to discuss this I am joined by Harry Morton, the CEO and founder of Lower Street, a podcast production company that works with NIST agencies to launch podcasts that actually make money and build their brands. Now I know more and more agencies are considering podcast as a marketing channel, but. But according to Harry, it's not enough just to sit in front of your microphone for 30 minutes and talk. If you want to stand out from the growing competition, so much more goes into building and running a listening worthy and ROI positive podcast. So welcome Harry and let's just start off with a broad question about why should a marketing agency consider starting a podcast as a core part of their marketing strategy?

Yeah, absolutely Rob, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. So we are an agency that focuses on helping agency owners have conversations with best fit clients by using podcasting and I think that is a really big piece of it. One of the ways that we've seen agency owners specifically get a lot of success from podcasting is when they use it as a platform to reach out to accounts that they really want to be working with but don't yet have a relationship with. And starting to build that relationship through an interview on a podcast. It's a really non salesy way of introducing yourself to, to a company that you want to be doing business with, offering them a platform, stroking their ego, all these wonderful things. The benefit of doing so, of course is that we then build this amazing piece of content which is an asset in its own right. It's building an audience on the back end. But yeah, there's lots of different ways that many different brands and companies or kinds of organizations use podcasting. But I think for AGENC specifically, if we can think about how do we include would be our prospects and our would be client in the podcast as guests, that really makes that ROI cycle happen a lot, lot faster. We've seen in the past people launch a show, put the content out and go, why aren't people listening? How am I going to, you know, why isn't this not providing leads into my funnel here? And what we've discovered over you know, a long time of kind of working on this is that we close that loop much, much faster is if we're having those conversations right there on the show.

And what. That's a really great idea. I actually never thought of doing that. So that is a really interesting idea. But let me ask you, how do you square that up with like that's serving your need as the agency owner, but how do you square that up with actually providing value to the listening audience?

Absolutely. So I mean, it's really important that we think about the overall strategy of our podcast in general to think, who is this podcast for? Who are we seeking to serve? Who do we want an audience of? And hopefully if we're sort of approaching things the right way, then our guests and our audience are the same sort of demographic. So we want to make sure that we are asking the right questions, talking about the right subjects and sort of, you know, creating the right content that will be interesting to our listeners as well as provide a valuable conversation to you in the moment. So what we would certainly encourage is not for that to be a salesy conversation. We don't want to talk about what you do as an organization, as an agency. You know, let's say you're a PPC agency or you're a graphic design agency. We don't want to just chat to them about PPC and graphic design. That would be a really bad idea. Instead, what we want to talk to them about is their business and the challenges that they're going through, how they have grown over the last 12 months, which might be related to. It might be because of their, you know, they've got such incredible design, or their PPC strategy is so incredible, and you can ask them about that, but not frame it in the way of, you know, what you do as a company. And therefore, that information that they're sharing, the stories that they come out with, will certainly be interesting to other people like them.

Yeah. Yeah, that's such an interesting idea. So let's just take a few steps back, because there's one really crucial thing you said in that I think we need to dig into deeper. Like, so I'm an agency thinking about starting a podcast, because I know that it's a very popular sort of platform for reaching my audience. Where do I even start? How do I make sure that I don't just create a podcast that sounds like everybody else's, but actually provides something of value?

Absolutely. This is a stumbling block that we see many, many companies kind of run into, and I think a lot of it stems from podcasting is fun and it's. And it's an exciting thing to start. It's much more interesting to many people than, you know, writing a white paper, Although, you know, I love a good white paper, don't get me wrong. So. But that means we can sort of launch into that with lots of creative ideas. And I really want to create this thing because that sounds like a really great idea. That's a wonderful concept. I think people will like it. And then you sort of go out into the world and say, all right, who's going to come and listen to this? And you're in a position where you're trying to find listeners to come and listen to your thing instead. What we want to really focus on is starting with the question, who do we want to listen to this in the first place? Who are they? What do they care about? We can then look into what are they already listening to. We can ask them, you know, what podcast you already listen to. We can search for relevant key terms. Again, if we're a graphic design agency, we might be looking at design podcasts or whatever, and we can understand what is the competitive landscape, both in the eyes of your listener and just in general. And then we can start to, firstly, I guess, steal some of the best ideas from some of the best shows, but also think of ways that the market is not yet served. You know, what is the unique angle that Only you can provide. Or what is an unmet need and an unsort of. Yeah, an unmet demand in terms of the types of topics and the way that they're bridged and approach it from that angle. And then what we are, we're doing, we're creating a show that we know there is an audience for and that we know, or at least we can. The best guess we can give is that, you know, this is something that doesn't yet exist or at least not in this, this way, in this form. And that might not necessarily, by the way, mean we're going to talk about some subject that's never been covered before, but it might be just the way in which you deliver that through the, you know, instead of it being a one on one interview, it might be a news bulletin every day or it might be a quiz show or something funky like that. There's lots of different ways to sort of approach the same.

Yeah. And so the message there is the same message I would give any kind of agency that you really need to have a clear niche because if you try to appeal to everybody, and in this context we're talking about podcast, then you'll end up appealing to nobody because you'll end up with a very wishy washy content. That one minute is talking about, you know, running a business, the next minute is talking about a hobby or, you know, whatever. So you have to start with a clear niche. And of course, as you say, that starts with understanding exactly who your ideal target customer is that you are trying to, to reach with your podcast. So let's imagine that I've, I've figured that out. Just talking me through some of the, like, some of the gritty details like the, the technology. What, what do I need if I want to start a podcast? What do I need to invest in? Because I think a lot of people put lots of barriers in their way. So just talk us through, like getting started.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think, and again, this is another thing, the tech is another fun thing. Like I've got this, you know, fancy big microphone and a nice camera and all this sort of stuff. That's a lot of fun stuff. And definitely these are really core things and I'll get to those. But I think so much of the effort, it's very easy to put the cart before the horse. And we really want to focus on the content, the strategy. Why should this thing exist? So I think some of the next steps, once we've got our, we've established what the audience is, we've We've got the idea, we know how we're going to differentiate. We then need to think about, okay, what does that mean in terms of the. The thing that we're trying to make so that we understand what we need to get out of the conversations that we're recording? So how long are episodes going to be? What are the sort of standard questions that we ask? What, you know, if there's, you know, what is the format basically of this podcast? We then need to get to the branding of it. So it very simply has to stand out from the crowd of all these other shows. So we need to think really clearly about how we're packaging the podcast. And that's both in terms of search and SEO. And I mean that in terms of the Apple Podcast SEO and Spotify SEO and just the way that the show looks and sounds. But then you look. Surely we do need to get into microphone. So we need to make sure that we've got a good microphone, that we're recording in a decent space. It's a classic example of do as I say, not what I do, because right now I'm standing in a red brick exposed room which is very reverberant and not particularly ideal for sound recording. So we want to make sure that we're in a nice quiet space. Not a busy sales floor in your office, but perhaps your spare bedroom at home with lots of soft furnishings around. But yes, we want to pick up a microphone, which doesn't need to be expensive, can be less than £100 for something that is really adequate. A pair of headphones is always very good. And then we need to record the thing. And you and I are speaking on a platform called Riverside. Zencaster is another really great option. There are lots of places to record these interviews. I think it's very tempting to jump onto a zoom call to record your podcast. And while that does work, we don't get a particularly high quality audio recording or video recording. So we'd really encourage people to look into sort of the specific platforms that are built for that purpose. And I could go on and on, I suppose. I don't want to sort of.

No, that's good.

I mean, get too deep into it. But hopefully those are some next steps.

Yeah, it's a good grounding because like I said, I think a lot of people put a lot of barriers in their way to say, well, I can't do it until I've got this, that and the other. But like you say, you just need a decent mic that doesn't need to Cost you much money. And use a platform like you say Riverside or Zencaster, because you're going to get better quality audio because it records it. If you've got a guest like this, it records it locally rather than into the cloud. So you're going to get.

Absolutely. And again, having that really clear concept that when you sit down with the guest, you're not just asking questions for the sake of having a conversation, you have a really clear vision of what you're trying, the value you're trying to extract from that interview to provide something to the listener.

Yeah.

You know, I think having some really clear purpose is so important.

Yeah. And I always imagine that I, because I'm quite clear about who the ideal target listener is for this podcast. And if I'm recording a solo episode, I almost, I always imagine that I'm literally sitting opposite them having a chat. And that way it keeps you focused on what do they care about and what do they want to know about.

That's a piece of advice we give all the time. That's.

Yes. So you talked about. This is probably putting you on the spot because the answer is probably how long a piece of string. But you talked about frequency and length of a podcast. What is the ideal frequency and what is the. Of releasing a podcast and what's the ideal length?

Yeah, really, really common question and very important one. So I think the short answer on how long should an episode be is it should be as long as it needs to be and not a minute longer. And I suppose what I mean by that is we don't want to drag conversations on for the sake of it. And really what we want to try and do is communicate what we want to communicate. Communicate as, as sort of efficiently, I suppose, as we can. And that is the general rule. Of course, there are outliers. Joe Rogan will waffle on for two and a half hours and that's just great for him. He's clearly seen great success with that. But I think for most businesses podcasting, you know, if we're getting into an hour long conversation, we've probably brought it, dragged it on a little bit too long and we should think about what we could do to be a bit more concise. There is no one right answer, but I think, yeah, brevity is, is best. And in terms of frequency, that's a really, really important one. Because consistency in podcasting is so critical if we're going to grow an audience over time, we really need to commit to a frequency that we can feel confident recording on a regular Basis. So what the. Often I'm told by brands that we don't have much time. Our CEO is going to be the host of this, of this show and they are too busy to do this on a weekly basis. We're going to do it monthly. My response to that is that's, that's fine, but it's very, very difficult to grow an audience on a monthly podcast because frankly, people forget that it exists between episodes. So instead, if that's so the ideal, the ideal is that you do it every week, every two weeks also works really well. But if that's not feasible, then what we say instead is let's take the 12 episodes that you would do over the course of this year and put that into a series and so build up to it, record lots of content in advance and then release that over a three month period. It will give you much, much more engagement over the, over the period of that three months, give you a really great PR story to tell, reasons to reach out to influencers in your industry and publications and all that kind of good stuff and just allow you to get a lot more out of it.

Yeah, for sure. Really, really great advice and I'm glad I stumbled along to follow all of that advice in my journey. I remember when I started this podcast and we're in, this is episode 112, I think two and a half years ago I'd read that the average length of a podcast before they give up is seven episodes. And I thought to myself, well, if I'm going to do this, I can't, I can't give up at seven because that's just a waste of time. So I had to think of a way of how do I make this work for my business and my life? And so I started off by releasing an episode every two weeks. And then when I got into the rhythm and I got more efficient editing and releasing them, I moved it to weekly. And the other thing that I really concur with is like some of my podcast episodes, like I just recorded an episode about living in the present and it was about 10 minutes long because that's how long it needed to be. I didn't really have anything else to say after that. Whereas my guest episodes like these tend to be sort of half an hour. So it really does vary, doesn't it, depending on what you want to say. So let's say, right, okay, I've got all of that, I've got the kit, I've figured out who my audience is, I've got a lot of topics I want to talk about. I've recorded my first episodes, now I'm going to launch it to the world. How do I get people to listen to it? What, some of the marketing ideas or strategies that you would advise people to actually implement.

Yeah. So firstly, you need somewhere to put the content. So you need a podcasting podcast hosting platform. We partner with Transistor, but there's lots of great ones out there and that's somewhere where you upload these audio files when you're finished and they will then get distributed out to Apple and Spotify and all that sort of stuff. So that's the basics covered. That's what has to happen when it comes to sort of growing your audience and building awareness of the podcast. I suppose the real sort of golden nugget I can, I can give you is that it's very, very. Podcasting is not a viral medium. It grows very much led by word of mouth people. The most common way people discover a new show is because a friend or a colleague or a family member tells them, hey, you should listen to this, this really great podcast. That means it's slow to grow. The people that you do get are very loyal and engaged. So it's really powerful. But it just takes long time to build that up. What that means though is that if you're promoting your podcast on social media, for example, someone's scrolling through their Instagram feedback, then what they're looking for is something to just sort of look at, tap, tap the like button and kind of move on, maybe share it and move on. It's very hard to make someone make the jump from that mentality into, okay, I'm going to spend the next 30 minutes listening to a really kind of detailed piece of content. So while social media is really important and podcasting is a great medium to repurpose for bite sized stuff that we can put onto social and engage with our community and all that kind of stuff. It's not the place that we're going to drive a lot of acquisition of new listeners. So instead what we want to do is focus on where are podcast listeners already hanging out. The answer, of course, is listening to other podcasts. So what we want to do is think about the ways in which we can get in front of other podcast listeners. And so the first one is in the platforms themselves. So Apple and Spotify, all of these places have editorial teams that control the content that makes it onto their home screens. Now this is notoriously difficult for branded content because Apple want to feature on their home screen. You know, Harry and Meghan talking, not necessarily, you know, how to grow your brand with LinkedIn marketing or whatever your show might be about. So, you know, we've got to be careful and how we position it and pick only our best content to put forward and that sort of thing. But, you know, that sort of traditional PR route is really important. There are other apps that allow you to, to do a paid advert in front of them. So Apple and Spotify won't allow that, but some of the smaller podcasting apps do. So that's another great one. But I think one of the key ways that we, we want to focus on growing podcast audiences is with relationships with other podcasters. So if you can establish which we've done at the beginning in all of our strategy work, who are the other podcasters in our space? What are we competing with? We want to reach out to them and understand, can we partner with them and do like a cross promotion? We'll talk about your show on our podcast and vice versa. Can we just buy access to their audience? Can we sponsor them or something along those lines? Effectively, what we want is the hosts of other podcasts that have shared audiences or shared topics to say on their show, hey, if you like this one, you're going to love going to listen to Rob's podcast. You can find it over here. So in a nutshell, that's sort of a lot of the advice we have.

Really good advice. And I, you know, I again concur with everything you say. I do promote my podcast on social media, but I don't think it has a huge impact because the behavior of the social media person is very different to, like you say, someone who's going to invest half an hour. So, and that brings me on to another question which I found personally notoriously difficult. How do you measure the impact and effectiveness of your podcast? Because there's so many different platforms, there isn't a Google Analytics of the podcasting world, as far as I understand. It's not like sending out an email where I can measure open rates and click through rates and all that stuff. So how, how do you measure how, whether you're having any impact or not so, so important.

And I think there's, there's a few answers to that. The first, well, I mean, we're sort of undergoing some studies at the moment to do some sort of brand lift reports from podcasting. So exposing audiences that haven't yet heard your podcast to five or ten minute segments of it to see what effect does this have on the brand and what we're seeing the early stages, we don't have it finished, and I can't sort of give you any results. But we're seeing that there is, you know, spoiler alert, a positive correlation between listening to the podcast and sort of the opinion of the brand. So I think what we can say is that there is, yeah, definite positive correlations there. And so those kind of studies is one way, the sort of cheaper way to do that sort of, that sort of work is of course, a listener survey. So I think that's a really important thing that, that everyone should be doing. It's notoriously difficult to get people to fill out surveys, so it is challenging, but we really want to understand, hey, why are you listening? You know, what is it about this show that you think is worth your time? What other podcasts are you listening to? You know, do you, have you recommended it to other people in the past just to get a health check of, you know, what does our audience think of this, of this show? And by the way, the, the response rate to that survey is in itself a bit of a health check. You know, if you, if you can, you know, say, fill out the survey and you'll be entered in for a chance to win a 50 quid Amazon voucher, then, you know, there's a decent enough incentive and hopefully you'd get a small portion of your audience to fill that out. But in terms of just the raw data and the metrics, you're right, it's a bit of a black box. Right. So we have in our, in our podcasting platforms access to how many people have downloaded that, our podcast from what locations, using what apps. But it's pretty basic. So, and oftentimes, and understandably so, the focus is always on how many people have downloaded, you know, what are our numbers. Basically, what I try to steer the conversation more towards is actually instead of the raw number of people listening of the people that are, how engaged are they? And we can get some of this data if we look into podcast podcasters or the Apple Podcast Connect platform. These are the two places we can log in and understand the behavior of our listeners when they're using those platforms. It's not an entire picture, but it's a good segment given the fact that these are the two biggest apps out there. Anyway, it's a, it's a decent chunk of our audience. What they provide is a sort of average consumption percentage of each of our episodes and in fact a graph over time. So you can see at the beginning, at 0 minutes and 0 seconds you've got 100% of listeners listening and then you sort of, you see a level of attrition and a timeline for that. So the raw number overall, what is the average consumption is a really indicative figure of how, you know, is your, do people care? Are people resonating with this? Are they sticking through to the end? And what we see is sort of 85% plus of being the real benchmark of this is a really quality show. So we want to be shooting that. It's very common to be at the 50% mark. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just means, you know, what work has to be be done. So we want to look at that. But then also we can look at the, that, that graph over time and understand, okay, we know we're losing listeners, but where and when and why? And so we can sort of start to compare that graph against what's happening in the, in those minutes of the show. And why, why are we losing listeners? I think what we very commonly see is that the first five minutes is a very steep drop off. People click the play button, they go, ah, nah, sorry, I'm off. And so we really need to work very hard to grab attention and make someone sure, hey, the next 30 minutes is well worth your, worth your while. And beyond that, there's lots of sort of digging to do. So those are the things that we.

Tend to sort of shift the focus, I guess. I mean, I've been studying quite a lot about YouTube recently because I've been trying to build my YouTube channel. And so much of what you just said is exactly what you would learn about YouTube as well. Looking at that attrition and also making sure that the beginning of your podcast is enticing enough to make someone to want to stick around and especially if they just stumbled across it in the gym and they're scrolling through podcasts like I do to find one that they want to listen to. So let me just ask you sort of my last question in this sort of journey of starting and releasing a marketing podcast. I know you talk about helping people monetize it, and I think most people will think of a podcast as a marketing strategy rather than a money making strategy. But what are some of the ways someone can monetize a podcast?

Yeah, so I think for most of the listeners of this podcast, as an agency owner, you're probably most interested in driving business for your company. So certainly that is the route that we choose to recommend. We go. It's definitely the best ROI that you will see that Said some of our clients use it for their own marketing, but then also have it sponsored. So it's sort of a marketing platform that, you know, at least washes it face, which is kind of, kind of an interesting idea. So sponsorships is the number one way of monetizing a podcast. So are there sort of partners, brands that you can partner with in your industry, or rather not in your industry, but is interested in the same audience that will sort of underwrite, I suppose the podcasting production costs is one approach and then the second is audience supported. So, you know, we're seeing the rise of platforms like Patreon and all this sort of stuff where we can have a small percentage of our listenership pay us a subscription fee to, to get bonus content and advanced listenings of their episodes and so on. So those are both really, really great ways to, to monetize. But I would encourage most brands probably to, to really just think about it as a piece of marketing and how is it going to be generating business for us rather than.

Sure, yeah. And I think the problem is that you hear about how much money some of the big podcasts make and you get seduced by that sort of sexy idea. And this podcast has been sponsored a number of times, which has been great and they've reached out to me for it. But it's just as you say, that has never been my intent to make money off of this. It's much more about another channel for me to add value to my audience, which ultimately means that, you know, they want to come and work with me. All the people that I guessed with I have guests on. So that's kind of why. But I just felt like I needed to ask you that question as well. So is there any other final, before we wrap this up, is there other final pieces of advice you've got about anybody who's thinking about starting a podcast?

No, I think I would just encourage you to be brave with podcasting. I think a lot of people come with the preconception that an interview based show is, is what podcasting is. And certainly that's the tried and true method. That's really great. And I listen to many of them myself and think they're really valuable. But I think what we're learning over the last few years is that there's just so much un explored territory in podcasting. You know, I briefly mentioned earlier the idea of a daily news podcast. You know, could you be the daily news source for your industry and have a five minute update on just all of the headlines in your space, or is there something. You know, we're working with some brands to create fiction content. So instead of interviewing industry experts on the topics, they're having this fictional character kind of learn about these things through a story. And. And we're using those same experts, but we're sort of getting that information from them in a different way. So I would just encourage brands to just sort of think creatively around what podcasting is, because it is a bit of a. I'm going to throw cliches out here, but it's a bit of a wild west. There. There are no rules, and it's growing all the time, and listenership is growing. And so I think don't come into it with too many preconceptions.

I've got to say. I've got to say, though, Harry, the fact that it is still a wild west is one of the reasons why I got into it, you know, three years ago, because everything else is so oversaturated and things come and go, but obviously podcasting is here to stay. But it's still, you know, it's still in its early days compared to other platforms like email marketing or YouTube or social media or, you know, blogging. So I think, you know, it's. And I've got to say that I find. I find producing a podcast both enjoyable and quick compared to, like, if I. If. Imagine if you and I were going to write this, what we've just talked about as a blog, how long it would take us to do that. And you've obviously got to be a certain type of person that really enjoys writing to be able to do that. And obviously, listening to this is a much easier way of digesting this information, I think, than it is reading it.

But, yeah.

So let me ask you the final question that I ask all of my guests, which is if you. Now, I know that you're not that old, so it might not be that hard to do this, but if you could go back in time and give your younger self just starting out in business one piece of advice, what would it be?

I think I would say that nobody knows what they're doing. We're all figuring it out. And, you know, I'm six years into this, this journey of owning a business. I'm 36. I've been doing it since. Yeah, since I was 30. And definitely there's a heavy dose of imposter syndrome. And what I've learned over the six years, although I've still got a long way to go, is that I'm just as. I'm six years into it, but I'm every bit as ignorant as I was when I started, and everyone around me seems to be the same. So I would just encourage everyone to not be afraid and just go for it.

What a good bit of advice. And it's really interesting that I recorded a podcast episode on imposter syndrome, and it's one of my most popular episodes because it's good to know that we all suffer from imposter syndrome. It's more about that relationship we have with this voice that's telling us we're a fraud and we're going to be found out and we don't know what we're doing and all that stuff. So, yeah, very, very good advice. Listen, Harry, I really appreciate you joining us today. If people want to find out more about you and your business, where should they go?

Absolutely. You can. You can check out Lower Street Co for all the information around what we do. That's Lower street dot co. And I hang out on Twitter a lot. I'm Odcast Harry, so you can find me there if you want to.

Okay, Perfect.

Slide into my DMs, as they say.

Perfect. Well, we will put links to both of those in the show notes. And I just want to say a big thank you again for joining us today. I know our listeners will find this aspect of podcasting really, really interesting, and you shared some great gems with us as well.

Thanks, Rob. It's been really.