From Ghost To Powerhouse: Proven Strategies For Podcast Promotion

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works Today. Get ready to feed. Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard and along with my co host Tom Hazard, we are going to talk about podcast promotion and the much needed opportunity you need to take to make sure that your podcast is not a ghost, that it becomes a podcast powerhouse. Podcast promotion, if you build it, they will not necessarily come and you need to go out there and tell everyone you have a podcast. If you think that the podcast players that the apps are going to do the work for you, you are going to be sadly mistaken. It's why we have such a giant pod fade rate in the podcasting industry. Right, Tom?

Absolutely. And you know what, Tracy? I think just as sort of public service message to podcasters, I think one of the things I want to mention about this, especially for those of you do it yourself podcasters out there that don't have someone doing it for you, that the reality is your podcast host, just because you have one and you've uploaded your episodes and you're publishing them, please understand it doesn't mean that it's getting out to all the listening app. I've encountered a few people recently that have done this themselves or had someone else helping them that said they knew what they were doing and they're publishing their podcast to their podcast host. But it's not out on any of the listening apps because there are some things that just weren't done right. So you really do need to make sure you're observing your own show and go yourself as a podcast host, as someone who's creating this content, go look at it in all the apps that you think it's in and make sure it's there, please. Because I've just seen so many where you think it's out there and it's not. So that's a very, very.

Well, that's a whole nother episode that we already did, so refer to that one. But this is today we're talking about. Let's assume that you're actually everywhere on all the apps, but the apps aren't doing any of the work. They are not going to promote your show, there is nothing that you do there that is worthwhile. You can participate in the charts, try everything to get on the top of the charts. You can do new and noteworthy on Apple, like do everything that people tell you to get there, and it won't make a difference. We know companies and businesses and individual podcasters who never made a chart at all, and their podcast is killing it. And we know people who got to the top of the charts and don't even have a hundred listeners. So it means nothing, nothing to your actual goal of getting people to listen all the way through to your show. Buying everything that you have to sell, joining your groups, joining your community, joining your mission, whatever your purpose for your podcast is. None of those things are going to matter if no one's listening. And our job here today is to really talk about the things that are working. So let's talk about, first off, some of the things that everyone else will tell you to do. And let's talk about whether they work. So everyone else will tell you to just post on social media.

Posting on social media is a good thing to do. It definitely is a good thing to do. You have some reach there. But what we've learned over many years for ourselves and with many of our customers is even if you have a very large social reach, it doesn't mean that those people that are interested in liking whatever it is you post, that image, that clip, that quote, that they're actually going to go and listen to your podcast, they're on social media because that's where they like to be. They like that quick hit. And they're not necessarily interested in leaving that social media platform and going to listen to your podcast. So I've heard of people say all the time, oh, I've got this great guest and they have 250,000 followers on Instagram. Isn't that great? And it is great. Wonderful. I hope they share your show and I hope a lot of new people find it. But I've seen a lot of disappointment when they either think that guests didn't share it or they know they did share it and their downloads didn't go up. Really? That's because converting people from a social media person who likes it to a podcast listener is a pretty big leap.

So I'm going to tell you what I did.

What'd you do?

So you all know that I went, I do all the social media, and I have done it from the very first podcast Tom and I started. I have always posted on social media, even though I'm not a Participant in all the platforms. Like, I don't ever go on Facebook, but I post to Facebook. So I've done that. I've set the strategy. I put our team in place. We have a process in place. We lost the employee that was working on the social media while I was in the middle of jury duty. So I didn't have time to train somebody new. So I decided that it would be a great opportunity for us to rethink our strategies on social and let somebody new come in and start that. However, I've been so picky and so busy that I haven't hired someone to replace them yet. So for a little while there during jury duty, I was just posting and doing some minimal sharing because, I mean, I look, I know how to do it. I've been doing the one who trained everybody, so I know how to do it. So I did that for a little while through the month of May, but once we hit June. So for the last month and a half, I have not posted anything on social. And you know what? I didn't see a single dip in growth in our podcast.

No dip in growth and no dip in listenership. Actually, I've been looking at our numbers on feed your brand too, and they've been increasing lately. So, yeah, need social.

It didn't need social. Social was not making an incremental difference for the amount of effort and cost because of the team that had in place for that to do it. It doesn't make a difference now.

That doesn't mean we're anti social media folks. I want to be clear about that.

It just means that I need to make this as simple and streamlined as possible because I do want to alert people, especially my followers and the people who are out there, that we have an episode and it's about this topic. And it's useful because the one person that comes there, I want to have an impact for them and I want to be there for the people who've chosen to follow me. But if I think that it's going to grow it beyond what I already have, that's where the mistake comes. It's not pushing out enough to new people. And remember, I have guests on my show, the binge Factor, so I have guests pushing it out. They were still doing that. Even if I wasn't doing a great job on my end, they were still doing that. So I'm still having that incremental amount, if that was occurring at all. But I will get back to it. Don't get me wrong, we'll come back in August and September and we'll be strong. But it's not make enough of a difference for me to worry about it to the point that that's such a strategic choice for promoting my podcast. It is keeping my community alive. It has a different purpose for me. So we don't look at social media as podcast promotion, right? Guest promotion, totally different. We rely on that. That's why we do things that we call ecobait here, which is the graphics that we help so we can get our guests to boost and share because that brings us somebody new. That's what our purpose of promotion is, is to bringing us somebody new who's not already going to get the app alert that says a new episode downloaded, right? Or new episodes available. They're going to get that if they subscribe. It's to help us get new subscribers. That's the point of promotion. So let's talk about the second thing that's not working as well anymore, and that's ads. And I don't mean ads in the podcast show. I mean ads on Google, ads on social media. Ads are not working at the same conversion rate that they used to. They are significantly down. So if you were getting good results from ads, I guarantee you you're getting less results now. And what I'm hearing is they're about cut in half from where they used to be.

What I am hearing from a lot of podcasters, and it's interesting because I was speaking with a aspiring podcaster is about to launch a show even earlier today from when we are recording this, and that is that they were wondering, do I need to put any marketing dollars into advertising the podcast when it launches? And I said, there are very few things that I would ever have you do. I mean, they were wondering about the total budget. I'm like, there's. I've seen so many people waste so much money actually like doing social media advertising for their podcast because again, you're reaching people in a different place where they're not thinking about or the activities are engaged in are not really long form. Content absorption and taking a deep dive there in a venue in social media where it's a quick hit. It's not even an appetizer. Forget the full meal. It's like a really small snack. I mean, right?

And here's the thing. Tom and I have spent over $50,000 experimenting in this area and we couldn't get to was what would work to get a subscriber. Now, the one area that I do recommend, if you want to spend a small amount of money, do not overspend is doing Google Ads to drive to the YouTube. So you could drive to a YouTube video and help boost your YouTube up a little bit. But doing too much of that also hurts the growth of your YouTube because then one video might outdo the others because you really need to be very specific about the content. You can't just send them to your channel. It doesn't really work as well as it does to send them to very specific video. And so if you have like some kind of I, hey, I got the best practices for creating a podcast. Great, send them there. That's going to do it for us in terms of getting the people who are typing into Google. How do I do this? They go from a Google Ad to the YouTube video and then they go, oh, wow, I can subscribe to the channel. So we did see a little boost there, but that's the only way. And it still wasn't worth it for us to continue to spend. So it was okay. And it did bring a bit of visibility and it certainly got us up to a thousand subscribers, which is one of the things we wanted. But once we hit that, we just turned it off. It just wasn't worth the spend and the effort to try to create that for us. But it might be for you. It might be in your industry, it might be worthwhile. You might have a lot more people Googling things and that's worth it to you. But that's the only place that we found we could get them to actually link through and do what we wanted to. We couldn't get them to link from that and subscribe on Apple. We couldn't get them to link from that. An ad and subscribe on Spotify. Couldn't get them to go anywhere to do anything outside of the social channel.

Absolutely. And I think it makes sense when you think about it, what people are doing on that social channel is different and you're kind of pattern interrupting them to try to get them to do something else. Now, again, I still would and we still do and will, as you're saying, Tracy, because we had some change in staff for that engage in social media and we recommend it. I definitely recommend motivating your guest to share it in any way you can because again, their audience isn't your audience. Your audience knows you. Right.

So social's down, ads are down. General ads are down, email's down. We all know that email open rate is really down. Conversion rate is really down. Yeah, that's all happening because of the security changes and the Privacy changes and all of that is happening. So just accept that that's the case there. So if you were doing it, I'd still recommend you absolutely email it out. Do not skip that. Especially if you're launching a new show, do not skip emailing it. We use our email newsletter. We let them know what the topic they're missing. We try to make them feel like they're missing out by not listening to it. We do see click through and conversion rate on that. It's just very. So if you expect it to grow your subscriber base, it's highly unlikely to do that, but it may grow the listener base and get them more engaged in listening through the episodes so that you can do and do a fairly good job of. So it's worth it for that. The podcast guesting side, like Tom said, getting your guests to share extremely important. But the next area that I see working most to promote my show is when I guest on other people's podcasts and I do a podcast swap. So I see a higher exchange rate and a much better conversion rate from a swap than I do from any other type of podcast guesting. Just me going out and being a guest on a show where I didn't feel comfortable inviting them back on my show says that it's not a right fit. And that's where when we have a right fit, we do it better. So be thinking about it. Those valuable swaps, I try to do one a month and that has had a significant boost over time. And more importantly, when I do a podcast swap because of what we do, I tend to see people come back to me with purchasing, so they're buying in, they join our program. I get reached out from someone who heard me on somebody else's show and says, hey, I not only listened, I loved your show, I subscribed to your show. I've now become a client. And so I see a very direct path to them engaging with the content and then deciding to become a client. So if you're selling a coaching program, got a community membership group, this is a great way to do it. I still think that really works. And in fact I see it because I see it in decline. Podcast guesting in decline in general because people having guests on their show is slightly in decline this year. So. But I see the swap when I do that, I see that boosting even more now than it used to.

We definitely hear from podcast hosts that they're more interested in and having a guest on their show that is a podcaster themselves. And you can Do a swap. But I still see it in a huge amount of activity. Tracy, among some of the companies we know that people pay to get them to be guests on shows like it's a service. We'll get you on top podcasts. Right. And actually, I was just meeting with another PR firm this morning who is doing this to what they believe is great success. But when I talk to them about what does it take to really get good PR for your podcast? Get it out there through a PR agency. It's incredibly expensive compared to the cost of podcasting, even if you're paying to have your production done for you. So I've always been interested in other ways that we can promote less costly. Right.

We did a whole episode in the last six months. I can't remember exactly when it was. It was probably late last year, but we did a whole episode on publicity. And that is when we talked about things like getting in local papers, getting in lists, getting in some unusual places. One of the biggest boosts that I ever saw to a podcast happened because it was a podcast targeted at those sort of becoming seniors. And I mean that. And not seniors in high school. So, but becoming seniors. And they got. He got picked up in the AARP magazine and a top list there. And his podcast went off the chart with listenership because of it. So doing some unusual things like that are worth the effort, but it's hard to find and it has to be a really good fit for it to work. The next part is going and getting. I'm going to call it a cross podcast promotion, where a podcaster will pick up a clip of your show and share it. We see that happening a lot in networks. We see that happening. I hear it all the time on some of the sports networks where they'll pick up somebody else's show and give a little boost. Because if you love football, you're going to love baseball. And because it's baseball season right now. Right. And so there's a kind of good cross promo going and it's great. And they drop a clip into the show feed. And so you get dropped into the feed and then that continues on. And so you've got that little promo piece. It goes to every single subscriber. That's the key. Every single subscribers gets that when it's dropped in like that. So that's a really good way to do it. But not everybody offers it and not everybody wants to participate in it. And they're always really like, we tried really hard to get our podcasters, but they want to Be so picky about whose podcast you go on and whose feed gets picked up and whose episode and they want to be really picky about it. So I suggest you be very concerted about it. Go out there and ask the right fit offer to put them on your feed, have them put them, put you on their feed and be really specific about the cross value to each other. That's the best way to do it, is be very, very specific about it.

I think it's also more effective if you, the podcast host, are willing to put a little context on the very front end of this thing you're dropping into your feed and let your own listeners know the good reason why you're sharing it with them instead of just this other show and clip appearing in your feed with no context, it can lead someone to think, did I push the button for the right show here? Did I hit the wrong thing you want to have? I think a little context goes a long way.

Yeah, absolutely. And so then the next one we see a blogs, like the blogs are still killing it after all this time. Like I can't even tell you how much traffic comes from our blogs. And we can very clearly see it because it's linking, right? It's coming from the website, it's coming through to the listenership. We can see that that's happening. Our own website does a lot of the heavy lifting for us. And so if you are not putting blogs in for your podcast episodes, you are missing the organic and search engine traffic that is extremely valuable to somebody finding something. And I say this to not the entertainment shows out there. This is especially critically important for the shows that are related to how tos, how to do something, how to grow yourself, how to expand, how to be successful, coaching programs, any of those kinds of things. Having these blog posts for your show are so extremely important. Not just the show, but the episodes within it. Because it's getting people come in to subscribe through a topic that's really important to them.

That's so true, Tracy. It's especially important. Any podcast, I would say that is meant to be a resource in some way for the listeners. Okay. And it could be a how to or, or it could be other educational or business related topics. If you're wanting to be a resource, be an authority on this subject. The blogs are going to get you there. It's not the sprint, it is more the marathon. But boy does it pay off. And you know, Tracy, I just experienced something and I'm going to do this real, real quick because I don't know if I talked about this in a recent episode, but we did tell me about it recently.

Maybe that's what you remember.

Yeah, I am. And so I'm not sure if we talked about the podcast, but if you're a regular listener to feed your brand I had interview with Melanie Gorman a couple times this year who's an SEO expert, and I had her do a test and go search on a keyword phrase term worst podcast websites. And it was bringing up a blog from feed your brand from April or May of 2018 six years ago on the first organic search result on the first page of Google search. And it also ranks on other keyword terms on the first page. But this is one that's like the top result. Well then we actually moved the blogs from podotest.com to podcasters united.org we donated to the nonprofit.

So that's what we did.

We but we changed the location and for a couple months there I was getting nervous because for like six weeks it wasn't showing up in the search results for that keyword anymore. I'm like, oh, we really lost all that value. That's too bad. I had this record going of six years. Well, guess what? Searched on it just this past week again. And if your listeners want to do it now, go to Google and search on worst podcast websites. You're going to find the blog for that same episode from the podcast six years ago that is now on podcasters united.org so Google got the memo, which they're supposed to if you do it right. And now they've indexed where the blog is now and that they're seeing as more relevant and it's still the top search result for that blog. So that's just one example and it's an easy one, but shows you the power of the blog so not to.

Go off on that long term residual value.

So it's valuable.

We were talking about the advertising's not working in terms of the conversion value. So the amount of money you pay the social media postings a lot of effort and I'm not getting the conversion rate there. But here the blog post was worth every penny spent and every minute spent doing it. It was absolutely worth it. Cause six years later I'm still getting value from it. So that shows you that that's worth it. Now the other ones that I have on my list here, Tom, is just two more the call to actions in the description, which is a whole new feature on potatoes and we're not going to go selling you on potitize and like all of those things. But we put these in because we were experimenting with changing out the description calls to action, and it was really like cumbersome. So Tom and I invented something else that we added into our system where you can swap out along with the ad that you're putting in place with Productize. So if you put an ad in and you put it in an ad spot, you would have a very specific call to action that's tied to that, that would now auto insert. So we have this new system and we did it because swapping out and keeping relevant calls to action was one of the most important things we found.

Yeah, that's right, Tracy. I'm actually really proud of this feature, which is patent pending, by the way. And because it's unique, no one's ever done it before when every ad insertion system, and there are lots of platforms that have them, was only about putting in an audio ad file or a promotion, a call to action, whatever you want to call it, but only audio, inserting it into your episode. Any episodes you want, you can have multiple per episode, doesn't matter. But then being able to take them out without re editing anything, now that was real important. For those of you that do audio editing, you would never re edit your audio every month and republish them all just to put an ad in past episodes. But you do want to put an ad in those past episodes because they are listened to. More than half of your monthly plays and immature podcasts are coming from past episodes. So you want to use those to promote whatever you're going to promote. But this written call to action, I mean, think about it. Listen to all the ads you hear in a podcast and they're all saying, go to this website, dot com FORWARD slash this. And you've got to remember that. You got to hope that listeners are going to remember it and write it down and then, you know, spell it correctly. And all this stuff when now with this system, so the audio goes in and the the actual text and HTML text with link goes into your episode description. So now with that, all you have to say is to take advantage of this offer. Click the link in the description. That's all you've got to say. Because no matter where anybody's listening, there's a description right there, whether it's on a website or in your app. So.

Right, So I want to cycle this back, Tom, because we were talking, that's promoting within your own show, right? Your own stuff within your own show. But what if you used it this way Instead, what if I found a really relevant other show that happens to be on the Poditize platform, Right? Because I want to use this system and I asked them to put an ad in for my podcast and I put it in the post roll position because you and I know and we've done a whole podcast episode on this. Anything happening in that last 15% of the show has a higher conversion rate than something that's a call to action at the beginning. So if I have this 15 second, let's not waste anyone's time, let's keep it really short and sweet. And we. And the ad says, hey, here's my friend Tom and Tracy. They've got this great podcast feed your brand and if you are an aspiring podcaster, you're going to want to check it out. Go to the podcast description for this episode and click on the link. That's it. That's all you have to do. And now I can trade out and not even. And put different links in there with the different ads that they place. I can ask them to try a link where it goes to a specific episode and not just the show in general. Where it goes to Spotify, where it goes to Apple. I can play with the link there as I play with the different types of ads that they put in. So they can even have the same audio ad, but call it version one, version two, version three, and it has a different call to action in all the different places. So this is something that you can play with. But of course you gotta go find a poditized podcaster to ask them and pay them to put the ads on. It's not gonna be. You and I both know that podcasters do not command a super high value. So for a very low budget, maybe 500 bucks, you could get some great circulation and promotion for your show and be able to very clearly see what's working and what's not. And a B, test that and switch it out quickly. And if your Spotify link is working but your Apple link isn't, okay, that's working for you. Go try this out. I think this is a great way to do it and we are seeing some very good results from people playing with that call to action link. And that's Tom, tell the story.

Yeah, yeah. So how to Buy a Home podcast by David Sidoni. You can check it out. This is a show that is targeting first time homebuyers, in particular the millennial market of hometown first time homebuyers to really convince them that they can get out of paying rent and buy their own home, pay less than what they in a mortgage, than what they were paying in rent, and start building equity and being financially more healthy. That's sort of his mission. And by the way, his podcast didn't start out this way, but it's become his entire revenue generation for his business. He was a real estate agent in Southern California. Now he doesn't even do listings anymore because he's making plenty of money off of referrals of people to buy homes anywhere all over the country. He's got a whole network of agents that will help them and want to help first time home buyers. Anyway, he had a specific call to action and promotion within using the ad system in his episodes with that HTML text and link CTA in the description. And they were tracking the links, which all of us can do. And I do it, I use a referral link and I can tell how many people clicked on that exact link from that episode. Well, so they had somebody because of that ad, within two weeks of it being out in that episode, became a customer and became a big win for them as a company. That was direct revenue. I mean, it was a financial win from that call to action. So it's a real good, I guess, example of.

Right. And how hard is it working? How hard is it for a listener to just click the link from an episode description?

It's the easiest thing to do rather than, again, I hear I was actually listening to somebody else's podcast episode last night on a platform that's doing programmatic ads. And there were two that were very large national brands. I forget what they are. But even those programmatic ads, if you listen to them, they were reciting some like crazy long web address they wanted people to go to. I'm like, how is this ever going to convert? No one's going to remember that, especially if they're driving or like I'm exercising when I'm listening, I'm not stopping and writing down something. And I'm not. And by the way, if I go back and replay that episode later, it may have a different programmatic on the front of it. Right. Because that's the way that system works.

Can't get back to it. Yeah, exactly. And it's not going to be in the show notes because it was added after the fact. So that's where this is really. This kind of model is very valuable and can be very useful to growing your show. Everything that we talked about, the problem with podcast promotion in general is that it's a heavy lift for the listener to have to do something or for a person to subscribe, they have to go out, they have to go somewhere, they have to click in, they have to subscribe. Like it just takes too much effort and the algorithms in the whole system to counter that. Right. They don't want you to click out of emails in the same way. Right. Like there's restrictions to how many links you can have and there's all this stuff for anti spam and anti risk and all of these things. So it's very hard to get somebody to click it and go do something. But when you're already a listener and there aren't a lot of links that are competing with your attention there, and there's this one, it's a whole lot easier to get them to take action and do something. And so if that simply is go and subscribe to my show, like, how hard is that? That's like super easy. It's a one click click onto your show, find your landing page, click on it like it's right there. So that's been. We've seen a lot of success with that. And especially if you go and find the right fit show who's willing to make an announcement about your show, you should do a reciprocal, do a shout out back to them. Like, this is really great for your cross listening growth. It's actually better than guesting. Right. It's like not as much work. I don't have to do an interview. How easy is that? The promo program is the other thing. So Tom and I have tried. We thought, okay, well stuff's not working on social, stuff's not working in email. Like all of these things aren't working. What is working? Well, the click through is working from the call to action. And it's within a mobile app. Maybe mobile apps are working. So over a year ago, we started experimenting with mobile apps and seeing if we could do podcast promotions from mobile apps. And we spent six months in a beta program really testing out to really make sure that what we were seeing was consistent and sustainable across industries, across podcast types, that it wasn't just an anomaly. Because we did see it starting to work almost immediately. But we were like, is this an anomaly? And so we started to test more and more shows into it. And now today I think we have over a hundred shows in the program, right?

Well, over, yes, definitely do. And it is working. And there are to varying degrees and there is a certain amount of period of time over the first few months of dialing it in and making some adjustments. But what we realized is first of all, advertising your podcast on the device. Where most people are listening to podcasts, their MO phone is the right place to do it. So. And not in podcast listening apps. I want to make this clear. We're not advertising and listening apps, all sorts of other apps. There's literally an ecosystem of thousands of mobile apps that we're doing.

Hundreds of thousands of mobile apps.

Well, there are hundreds of thousand mobile apps, but for this program we've got a few thousand mobile apps that we're doing this in right now. And it is very effective. And so we're taking sound bites of our podcasters episodes, good sound bites. And then there is a visual component which we've been using. A lot of podcasters are using the COVID art of their show, which, which.

Is good brand recognition. Right. That's what we're trying to do is plant that image, especially if it's impactful. It's planting the show name in people's minds. And the most important thing is that they have to watch the ad. Like they can't skip it. And it is only 15 seconds long, so it's not very long, but they can't skip it. So they're looking at that image for.

15 seconds and listening to the sound bite. And like you said, it's not like YouTube where it can have three seconds and then you can skip it. No, it doesn't work that way. If they're going to keep using the app, they have to watch it. But when they click it, that takes them to wherever we want to send them and wherever the host wants them to go. Now we recommend that you have a website for your podcast and there's a podcast page where there's a player and all your episodes are there. And to send them there because to send them to your territory in your environment, they can listen to an episode immediately with no other friction. And then you immediately listen to either the latest episode or scroll through the list of episodes so the least resistance possible to go from hearing that sound bite to listen to a whole episode. Now if you don't have a website, then like Tracy was saying about one of the other applications, for calls to action, you could send them to your podcast on Apple or Spotify or whatever app you want. I would recommend a cross platform app like Spotify because you know, it's available on Android, it's available on iPhones too. But you know, you could send them wherever you want to, but somewhere that they can listen immediately. And if they're on their mobile phone and they click a link, it's either going to pull up the browser and a webpage on your website or it's going to pull up that app within for your show right there. You could send it also to a specific episode that matches that clip if you want to. The clip is kind of out of context, so I don't know if that's unnecessary. But the point is you get people to listen and look, it takes a lot of ad plays, it takes a lot of impressions. Like think about an old term, really does, really does. And on promo cast we're doing that. I mean every podcast is getting a million of a half a million impressions every month of these ads and then getting some meaningful clicks every single day from those ads to their podcast.

So this is what I want you to be aware of. There are these programs out there where you can go and you can spend money to promote yourself, your business on mobile ads, they require quite a high ticket. And what we've done is fractionalize it so that it's affordable so that you can still get a half a million views and listens of your, of your clip and pass through. But you're not having to place the big amount of mobile ad requirement, which are somewhere between six and $10,000 a month on average for the minimums that you would have to spend to go do that for yourself. And so what we found is also if you've ever had mobile ads, there's a lot of annoyance factor that kicks in if you've watched mobile ads. So when somebody spends that six to $10,000 and it's the same ad every single time, it annoys the heck out of you to the point that you won't take action as mobile listener. But by us mixing you in with everybody else, it's really creating this sort of like oh, podcasts, like it's creating a sort of sense of podcast. And then you're being seen and repeated enough that you're getting click through because of that. And so that's what we're seeing. And we're seeing about 5 to 600 click throughs a month on average. And that's kind of average, right? There's a lot of people who are higher and some that are lower, but usually they're just getting started. And then we also see about a minimum, I think we've seen is 15% boost, but usually we see 50% plus.

It's depending on the period of time. I mean really you get into this program, you need to be in it for several months to get the lift of listenership. And there is some ramping up of it, for sure.

And that's why I don't recommend for someone who is going to go out there and say, okay, what do I have to do? How much should I, you know, can I spend $10,000 and promote my show as a boost? It doesn't work like that. It's not like, oh, I just sold a ton of books and I did this program and I sold mine and I made the bestseller list. Right. It's really hard to do that in any of these programs, even this one. So even if you were to spend the $10,000, get the whole entire program to yourself, you really can't get the results in an immediate way. That changes the outcome of the launch of your show. It will still be a slower burn over 90 days.

I don't want you to scare people, Tracy. And I not wanting this to be a sales pitch. This is one thing I'm talking about. But you mentioned 6 to $10,000 for doing this kind of advertising. Just so that if you were doing.

It alone and had to contract with all of the apps and do that program, that's what.

That is expensive. But the way we're doing this, you can participate in the fraction where you get half a million impressions. It's very inexpensive. It's just a couple hundred dollars a month. It is not very expensive. So I don't want you to think this is like in the stratosphere and no one can afford it, so don't worry about that. But it is still very meaningful. I mean, you get half a million impressions and drive meaningful clicks to your show every single day of real people that want to listen. I mean, what else is going to do that? I'm not sure.

Yeah. And so here's what. Here's why when I dropped social, it made no impactful difference to our shows. And that is because we had the promo program working, the promo cast program working for us during that whole time period that I have dropped the social media posting, it has been picking that up. So we're getting the mobile ad images, we're getting the mobile ad on all of that. And that's what's really working for us.

Absolutely. Yeah. So we'll have a link to it in the blog post this episode, but it's called promo cast, and if you just go to the hosting page on potatoes, you can learn more about it.

Yeah. I mean, Tom, you run a webinar every single week on this. You got some case studies. What are some good industry case studies that show that it's making a difference for them.

Well, so a very mature show. There are, I have more case studies for mature shows, shows that have just launched using the program. We are still gathering data for that and to see how much it accelerates the launch or adds to the listenership of a brand new show.

Yeah, but it's really hard because usually launches aren't apples to apples, right? Like, everybody's launch is different. Everybody's show is different.

We're going to be coming back with more data on that by the end of the year when we really have gathered enough. But what I can share with you is for mature shows, shows that have been around for a few years already and have been publishing a weekly episode for years and have remained consistent during the time their show is being promoted in this mobile app ecosystem. Those are a couple real important caveats because I think people get interested in a clip, they click, they go and they see, hey, you haven't published an episode in a few months. They're probably less likely to click and listen to more. So I want you to understand there are some. I'm giving you some numbers and this case studies are the criteria is the podcasters were podcasting already for at least a couple of years, publishing a weekly episode minimum, and continued to publish weekly during the case study time period. So understanding that we had a show getting over 6,300 downloads a month that after 90 days rose to over 10,000 downloads a month, and the next month after that was over 12,500 downloads for that month. And I don't have any new data beyond that now.

So you're starting to see like 25% boost, things like that happening going forward.

That was a really good case study because 6,300 to 10,000 is actually over a 70% lift in listenership. We don't always see that much. We do see from a show like that maybe 50% boost in listenership, which would mean for a 6300 you get like over 3000 more in the next whatever that next time period is you're measuring. That'd be half of what you had, a 50% lift. Right. And then others we certainly see, yes, tracy, like a 25% lift. How to buy a home podcast that I was mentioning earlier is another one. It's been consistently publishing for years and also in the program and also seeing a list in listenership this year. Though I will admit it's been a tough year to measure lifts in listenership. And I know a lot of podcasters probably listening to this episode are thinking, wow, I've had a decline in downloads this year. Believe me, a lot of shows have because of the iOS 17 update last I think it was October, where they stopped doing all the same level of automatic downloads. If people hadn't been listening to your show in a few weeks, they stop automatically downloading it to their device. So I've been tracking this on a lot of shows and seeing shows that used to get like 65% of their plays were on Apple over the course of the months of this year going into like, April, reduced to like 25% of their listens were Apple. But I've also seen it start to rise again, especially on some of these shows using promo casts because they're raising awareness. And now we're seeing the listenership actually exceed what it was early in the year and getting to 70% Apple.

Right. Because I would think that what it's also doing is that it's making people aware who have already subscribed to you. Right. Because they're probably. Look, if you're in the finance industry and you're doing a finance podcast and this is a stock watcher app that maybe multiple people are using, or if you're in crypto and it's a crypto app. And so you're seeing that because you're already in the industry, you're already in theirs, and there's a mix of interests there. So then they're already seeing and they're like, oh, I already subscribed to that show. Let me go back and listen. I haven't listened to it in a while. And so it's helping to reengage your listeners as well. So that's probably why we're starting to see that lift back up in the Apple side of things.

Yeah. And I think they're clearly what Apple was trying to do worked where they were trying to weed out downloads from people that weren't actually listening to the show was their intention. And we're, we're seeing a lot of shows were really disheartened early in the year, you know, the beginning of the year. And now they're starting to see improvement and progress again, which is great. And that was gonna happen. That was really important.

So this is what we have to keep remembering. Promotion for our podcast means that we're reaching people who haven't listened before and engaging the subscribers. We have to actually listen. Right. It's combination of the two things. And so all the things we talked about today, it's like, yes, I want to do all of them, but That's a lot of work. And so what Tom and I are encouraging you to do is to put your efforts in the things that are actually working today, not working yesterday. That some gurus like telling you is the. The gold. It might have been the gold five years ago, but it is not the gold today. So let's talk about what's working today and what really is attainable for you, what you can do, what is cost effective for you, what is of value for you, what is converting for you. And we really want to focus on those things because we know you're spread thin as podcasters. And let's focus on the things that really work today so that we can get those new listeners and get the listeners we have to listen even more.

I couldn't say to anybody to Tracy, why don't we leave it there? Hey, everyone, thanks for listening today. We'll be back next time with another great episode. This is Tom and Tracy Hazard signing off for feed.

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