Eric Siu and Neil Patel are restructuring their seven-year-old Marketing School podcast in 2024: five episodes a week at roughly 15 minutes each, organized into five sections covering experiments, trends, AI, and observations. They're treating it as a reversible test, not a permanent bet.
All right, so we're going to talk about why it's worth thinking about changing the format of whatever it is that you're creating. Specifically, we're going to share the example of how we are planning to change the format of this podcast for 2024. But Neil, I think it would be helpful if we give people a sense of the evolution of this podcast because I think we're 7 and a half years in or so, and it's— we'll tell you how it was, how we've done it for a while, and why we're thinking about changing it and the format that it will actually be. So, the way we started this podcast actually was when Neil and I were walking maybe like a 10-15 minute drive away from where we live right now in Hollywood. And, I think we were getting juice or something. And then, I was telling Neil the benefits of podcasting because I've been doing podcasting for 10 years now. I was like, oh, I've been meeting some amazing people, interesting conversations. I'm learning so much, blah, blah, blah. And then, Neil looks at me, he's like, yeah, let's do it. And then, I was like, wait, what?
Yeah.
And he's like, yeah, let's do the podcast. And then so that's how Marketing School was born. First, he wanted to call it B-School. I was like, well, Marie Forleo has B-School, so let's not call it B-School. In hindsight, we probably should have just called it Business School because ironically, or maybe not ironically, we do a lot more business, I would say now. We still do a lot of marketing. That's the core of our business as well. But the way we started the podcast was we decided to do it on a daily format.
Yeah.
And it was basically, it was 10 minutes a day when we first started and it was daily. And we're just giving all of our marketing knowledge for the first year or 2. And then we started changing it up a little bit. But Neil, I'll let you continue the story.
Yeah. And when we started Marketing School, it was short episodes, 7-ish minutes, and we would just crank them out. And Eric and I would record in batches like 7 at a time. Eventually some of the episodes got shorter and we started getting to 5 minutes. Then we tested also getting longer, like 8, 9, 10 minutes again. And we've even tested long-form episodes that were 30 to 60 minutes.
45, yeah, to 60.
Somewhere in that range. But just like anything else, people adapt, people's needs change. And what we decided to do is start creating longer-form episodes on an almost daily basis. So we'll start shifting towards maybe like 15-minute episodes versus 5-minute episodes or 7-minute, whatever you want to end up calling it.
You know, Neil, I didn't tell you this, but I was hanging out with Mark Moss the other day. So he's a YouTube creator and he has videographers with him. His name's Preston. And he says he listens to Marketing School all the time. And he's like, dude, if you guys made it 15 minutes, like that would be a game changer. And so you have people that are like, supporting it already. And so, we think it's a nice happy medium because we're already doing daily right now. So, to switch it to 5 days a week but longer episodes, that's not too much of a drastic change versus just doing 1 per week. So, we think that's going to be more helpful.
Yeah. So, the big thing for anyone listening is we really appreciate you guys listening and supporting us for the last 7-ish years. And, we're going to try to improve the podcast, make it even better, give more insights that are actionable. And this change will start happening when? In like a week or so?
Yeah. I mean, basically the next time we start recording. So basically towards the end of December, you're going to start to see this new format. And the way Neil and I are going to work on this, it's going to require both of us to work a little— it's going to require both of us to be more creative is where I'm coming from. So basically what I'm going to do, and you all can steal this format, but I'm going to share a template with Neil every single week. It's going to be a brand new Word document and there's going to be 5 sections. One on experiments that we're running right now, 2 on trends, 3 on things such as AI, 4 on other things we're seeing. And sometimes we'll bring on guests as well just to shoot the shit with them. And they'll also bring their ideas to what's working for them in terms of business and marketing. We'll ask them about their business. We'll try to keep those a little brief and then they'll hop off and we'll continue the episode. But we're going to change the format just because we want to continue to bring value to you. And both Neil and I have very strong networks. So we think it's going to help you grow your business even faster. And then it's going to also help you grow your careers even faster because we know there's a lot of people that are still, you know, looking to get a marketing job or in the marketing field.
Yep. And look, whether you're doing a podcast yourself or you're cranking out videos or social content or doing SEO, keep in mind, if, you know, you're not happy with the results, you can always change things up. Listen to the market, try to figure out where you need to adapt. Things change and constantly try to improve.
Yep. And the final thing I'll say is in addition to that, because I talked about having guests come on, so the collabs go a long way as well, especially if these people have audiences on podcasts or they have audiences on YouTube as well. They're usually going to reshare it to their audiences. And I see a lot of people doing that now. They'll appear on podcasts and they'll take the raw episode and just share it on their channels. I do that. Neil does the same thing as well. And so, think about how you can cross-pollinate because at the end of the day, podcasting in general is one of the hardest things to grow.
Yeah.
But, it's also one of the most rewarding things you can do. So, that's what it is. And, to Neil's point, the last thing we can say here is there are type 1 and type 2 decisions. This comes from Jeff Bezos. And, a type 1 decision is largely irreversible. So, if you decide to, let's say, have a child, which is a great thing, but that's not really reversible, right? But, if you decide to run a new test, for example, usually you can reverse the test and this is what we are doing with testing in the format. Yeah. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. Check out this next video over here if you want to get better at marketing, and we'll see you tomorrow.
