Is your Podcast Brand Absolutely Safe and Ready for Advertisers?

Get off the marketing roller coaster and get on the automated fast track to digitally market your brand everywhere. Now join podcast producer Tom Hazard and Inc. Columnist Tracy Hazard as they share easy content building formulas and smart cut secrets proven to fuel hundreds of blogs, podcasts and brands with bingeable original content. Join the conversation on how to get your message out to the world. Be original, be heard, promote with power and purpose. Feed your brand.

Welcome back to Feed you'd Brand. This is Tom and Tracy and we're going to cover a topic today about preparing your podcast from the get go to be ready for advertisers. And we're not just talking about technical aspects, we're really talking about kind of a bigger picture issue regarding your brand and how it's perceived and how it will be perceived by advertisers.

Yeah. So those that have advertising budgets like marketing and advertising firms that advise big advertisers, whether your advertisers Pepsi or Coca Cola or any kind of those big brand names. Right. It doesn't matter at any level right now there's this big awareness of what they call brand safety. So in other words, they don't want to be associated with influencers, for instance, who are going to stream suicide or something like that. And that's how this came about. Right? And really this conversation going on about a YouTuber who did that and there were advertisers who immediately were so upset that they were streamed alongside that video.

You know, and we see this happen as examples of this actually in television media all the time where you have so many of these talk show hosts or pundits and they make a controversial statement and then advertisers pull their advertising from the show. Right. I mean, that's sort of the extreme case. We're not talking about pulling something that's established, but we are. There are similar issues here regarding thinking about your brand and your show and preparing it to be friendly for advertisers to want to advertise on it.

Right. And this is something I've written like four or five articles just in this last year and just in the beginning of this year alone about sort of the responsibility between the influencer and the potential advertiser or the association, the brand association with the influencer. And so if you're going into podcasting, you're going into podcasting because you intend to be an influencer of some kind. Now, whether or not your intent is to take actual advertisement from major brands or brands that are out there in other companies, or if you're going to Be an advertising platform for your own joint venture partners, which is possible as well. You want to be a good partner in that. You want to be a responsible influencer to your listeners. And so with that comes a lot of consideration from the beginning. And so that's what we wanted to really talk about today, is the idea of how to prepare. There's a little bit of consideration of how you approach your show and kind of how you tag it and some other things. Those are a little more on the technical side of things to be considering, but you want to consider it from the beginning.

Well, let's talk about one of the biggest issues and one of the most basic issues that every podcast needs to make a decision on from the get go, because it's pretty hard to change it midstream. Or if you do, that can be risky. And that is, is your show going to need to be, or do you even want to be classifying it as an explicit podcast or as what they call a clean or safe podcast?

Right. And I think that is a decision based on your brand, based on the type of advertisers you want to attract, your type of your joint venture partners, the type of listeners you have is.

Most important, or the type of content that you're going to be talking about. You have some podcasts, depending on the content, the subject matter, you're not going to have a choice. You're going to have to mark it explicit if you're going to have any meaningful discussions about the subject matter. Right, right. But there are others that most of the podcasts that we work with are in some way subject matter expert or business related. And really the subjects that they're talking about, again, for the most part, don't require using any explicit language.

Right. And this is the thing, we made a decision early on that we were hoping that our show, like our 3D print show, it was educational. There might be, there might be teachers on there. We wanted to make sure that you could play this in the car with your kids in there. And that's because we have kids at home. And that was a consideration for us. This is something you want to learn while you're, you know, you might be driving carpool. And so we thought about that and we said, okay, we're going to have a clean show from the beginning. We will. Yeah. Occasionally someone's going to drop an F bomb. It's going to happen. We'll just edit it out.

That's the thing. We can take that out. And no one would ever know that that language was used in our actual interview. And actually, I think even that the guest on our show probably wouldn't even remember when they listened to the episode that, hey, they took out the swear that I said there. I don't think they'd even really remember because I think sort of the way things have changed culturally in America, I mean, a lot more explicit language is used in common speech that's, I would say unnecessary, but just happens to be the way people talk. And you can take that out.

Right. And so we chose to do that even though our title is wtff, which sounds like it's going to be a swear. And I always joke that that's what my mom thought it was because she didn't listen to the first 25 episodes.

Oh, my gosh, it was like months into the show and she thought we were swearing with everyone. But, you know, it was a play on acronyms. Want to be accurate? It didn't have anything to do with that.

We were really clear to describe it in the description, and people learned it immediately from our introduction. So they certainly felt comfortable that we were truly keeping it clean from the beginning. But it's a choice that we made because we also knew that we would one day perhaps be taking advertisers, that it was a plan of ours to be able to have filament companies and printer companies and those kinds of things. And they're going to be selling into education and they're going to be selling into. Into families. And we wanted to make sure that they felt comfortable with who we were as people and what kind of influence we were having, and that their brand wasn't going to be associated with anything they didn't want. And so that was a consideration. We did that from the very beginning.

Well, and let's talk just briefly on this same subject about the consequences of not listing your podcast or your episode. You can do it on an episode by episode basis. So there's some differing opinions as to how effective that is. But let's talk about the consequences. If you put a podcast out there that has some explicit language in it and you do not mark it as explicit. So the consequences, let's say, oh, the majority of my episodes are completely clean, but you recorded one episode and somebody does swear just once in one episode or once or twice, and you're like, well, I'm not going to worry about that. I mean, most of my episodes are fine. I'm just going to put it out there. Well, the problem is, especially if I were a parent and I'm in the car Listening to a podcast and my kid hears this word and like, daddy, what does that mean? Well, what happens is that parent may contact itunes or stitcher, whoever.

An episode, right. You can report it right on your app. In some apps, yeah.

There are a number of ways you can reach out and report a podcast that has listed itself as clean and has explicit language in it. And it doesn't have to be every episode. It could just be a single episode. But if you haven't properly classified your episode, itunes can just shut your feed down and delist your show. And I'll tell you, it is very hard to get it relisted once you do that. Even if you then edit that episode out and get back in there, it's a big headache and a lot of work. You don't want to put yourself in that position. I do not recommend you do that. So make a decision from the get go. Is it going to be clean or are you going to allow language and make it explicit? I don't actually think the majority of listeners are turned off to listen to a show that's marked as explicit. I don't think it.

No, I don't think it changes their.

Mind and reduces the number of listeners you would ultimately have. So I think best practice and recommendation is just to make a decision, be upfront about it and stick with it.

And make sure it's relevant. So if it's not necessary, as Tom was pointing out, if it's not relevant to because it's a mature topic or because of the types of audiences you're looking to attract, then don't do it. It's just not worth it.

Every subject is probably legitimate in some way, shape or form. But if it's a mature subject and there's strong language going to be used, you don't have a choice. You got to do it right.

And so anyway, thinking about that in terms of brand safety, that some brands don't want to be their family, wholesome brands, they don't want to be advertising on anything that's marked explicit anyway. It just doesn't matter. That's their policy. So it can limit your advertisers. And so that's something to consider from the get go. If it's unnecessary, if it's necessary, it's going to make sense. And the right type of advertisers will be there for you because they want to connect with that audience. An example of that is drugs. Heavy amounts of drug content and discussions about drugs. Those are shows that should be marked explicit. And there are certain policies within the language about how you do that. But it's also likely to come up that, that certain brands want to be associated with that because they want to help you recover if they're in recovery or whatever that might be.

You know, and another good example of a podcast actually that came to us recently for counsel. I forget the name of it, honestly right now, but the podcast subject matter is actually about sex. And so obviously they're going to be marked explicit. I'll tell you what though, there are tons of advertisers lining up to want to advertise on those podcasts because of whatever products they sell that would just the right fit. It's a right fit between the advertiser and the listening audience. So the fact that it's explicit isn't going to reduce their monetization options at all.

But just make sure it's relevant for you and for your subject matter and the topics that you plan to cover. So thinking about that, because sometimes that's a brand safety, like, you know, X mark. In other words, if you tread on this, the brand won't advertise with you. It's just not a no go. The next one that I think is really, really important is to make sure that you have a certain, I'm going to call it reverential tone, like you care so much about the subject that you're going to take great care with how you address it, with who you bring on to associate with that, what topics you're covering and all of that. It's not just about chasing dollars or chasing clickbait, that it's really about being of best service to your listeners. And when you have that kind of reverential treatment of your listeners, then the brands are going to meet, likely feel that you're going to take great care and. Or if you made a mistake and it happens, don't get me wrong, you made a mistake, you had an episode, you had a guest, and it wasn't a great idea. On our system, it's great because you just block ads from that particular guest, from that particular interview and you're done with that and you don't have to ever worry about it again. But not every system is like that because a lot of systems stream ads on there. And so if you've got one that was just a mistake, take it down, just remove it, admit it was a mistake, re record it, do something different about it. It happens to everyone. But if all in all, you're doing your very very best to try to do the subject right, be the expert that you are and service your community well, then you're going to be aligned with anyone else who might want to advertise to those people and be in line with that. That being said, on the brand side of advertising, they ought to really listen to your show. They ought to know who you are.

Absolutely. Sure. Yeah.

And so that's kind of my.

Too many of them don't.

They don't. And that's really what I was going to say back is that my thing about it is, like, sometimes when we get somebody asking to advertise, I'll say, have you actually listened to the show? Do you know who we are and do you know what we're about and why do you want to advertise? And so I know that sounds like a little picky and it is. But the thing is, is that my audience is really valuable to us. I really care about you guys. I really care about whether or not you're getting the best information out there. And I want to make sure that someone isn't just coming on because they're tapping into some influencer document that showed that we showed up at the top of the influence list. We had the highest clout score or whatever that might be. I don't want it to be just because of that, or we had the right number of followers. It's not a sign of good influence and it's not a sign of a good fit. And sometimes those advertisers can hurt you. We find that happen a lot with JV partners and alliances, that sometimes when we email out, they're not a good fit for us. They don't serve us well. And if we didn't take the time to check them out, we have a high unsubscribe rate on our email list, so we care about that in our podcast advertising as well. So making sure that you're vetting your advertisers is just important for your brand as it is for theirs.

That's a really good point and suggestion, Tracy. I think that the more you can align those interests, the more likely your listening audience is going to actually be a good fit for the advertiser and is going to respond to calls to actions and actually convert, which at the end of the day is what you want because you want your advertiser to be happy and either want to come back to advertise again in the future or to be a good reference for other advertisers, too.

Yeah. And then the last thing that I want to leave everyone with is just thinking about this is that if you're planning from the get go to take advertisers or to have this kind of joint venture relationship in which you're providing mixing of their offers with your offers or their offers on your podcast, like cross promote. Cross promotions. Right. If you're making that, if you're going to be setting that out, then you better get your stats from the get go. You better go on, you better not be cheap about that. Go in and make sure that your podcast host has the best stats out there and those stats are accurate because there's lots of them that aren't inaccurate.

And I would also say this goes beyond your podcast stats. You need your website stats as well.

Yeah. Because. And that's what we do. We actually mix between our website. So we do advertisements on our website as well as on our podcast because we have a lot more traffic that goes to our site than to our podcast at all times or people who listen to our podcast on the site. So being served ads is a really useful place in both areas.

Yeah. And not just audio ads even, but actually cost per click.

Visual ads, but our own. Yeah, but our own version of that. So that makes a big, big difference. So making sure that you're tracking those stats from the very beginning of your podcast because that way you have good historical data, you know, your growth rate month over month. So even if you don't have a high amount of downloads, this is how we sold our very first ad. We sold our very first ad when we only had 25,000 listeners a month. And we sold that because we also knew that our growth rate was 40% month over month. They felt that there was a good trajectory and so it made it a lot easier for us to close that advertiser.

Yeah, you're right, Tracy. I think that a lot of times people might get discouraged from some of these different platforms where you have to apply to be on them and to be able to have them place advertisers on your show. You have to have a minimum of 20,000 downloads per episode and all this sort of thing. And those are programs that I think are not going to really have a good match necessarily between your sponsor and the listening audience. Audience. And it doesn't take into account some of these other very real and tangible benefits for the sponsor. So they won't look at the trajectory of a podcast, but others that really understand the medium and understand the value will say, yeah, you know what, there's a really good trend month over month here of growth. I want to be a part of this Podcast now, because I know this is going to get a lot of listens in the future too.

Yeah. The other thing is that from our perspective, the back catalog, right, what you call your old episodes, your starter episodes, your beginning episodes, are very, very, very valuable to binge listeners, to people who are new to your show. And those are some of the best to advertise on. And so they have the highest value. So if you don't have an ability to put ads across your entire platform, if you can only do it and bake it into your new episodes or stream it on the ends of things, then you're not really doing a great service to your advertiser. And so that has to do with hosting and who you place ads with and who you work with.

Well, you're to your advertiser or to your listeners because they would not be listening to some of the best episodes with a current ad.

Yeah. So anyway, these are the considerations. We want you guys to just have some background information on what we look for and what really brand safety means. And so because you're going to be hearing more and more that terminology as you go out there and brands are getting a little bit more specific about who they're advertising with and where they're advertising. And podcasts are some of the best and most influential. And higher click through rates, if you want to call it that, for the website portions of it. But higher conversion rates from Calls to Action have the highest out of all the media today in everything that we've done in all the different ones, that has the highest conversion for Call to Action. And so you have a lot of power and you can build that power in from the beginning. So we definitely want you to take advantage of that.

Absolutely. All right, well, hey, hope you enjoyed that episode. If you have any questions or comments on it, please you can go to the blog post at FeedYourBrand Co or comment anywhere on social media, especially Facebook. Eadyourbrand.

So thanks again for listening. This has been Tracy and Tom on.

The feed you'd brand podcast.

Sam.