Successful podcasting from the audience’s perspective with Tom Webster

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run. Traditional digital media buying, web dev, PR brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Bill to Better Agency podcast, presented by a white label like you, will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant.

Please welcome your host, drew McClellan.

Hey, everybody. Drew McClellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Thanks for being with us. Got a great conversation. for you today. I’m excited about it. you know, I, I hope it shows. but we spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about you that the audience for the podcast, what matters to you, the guests that we can bring on the show that will be most insightful for you.

The solo casts that you know, I think long and hard about what I think you need to be thinking about or hear. But at the end of the day, it really is. Producing a show like this is all about the audience and understanding who they are, who’s listening, what they care about, what they need, what they don’t need, what they don’t care about.

And I hope it shows that we spend a lot of time thinking about that and listening to you. I love meeting you at the summit and other places, and having you talk to me about the episodes that really mattered to you, that made a difference, that he was helpful. so I hope that shows, and today’s topic is all about audience and how we show enough respect, for the audience, honestly, and how we show it, at least for me anyway.

We show enough affection for the audience that we actually care about them. and we are invested in their success. And so I’ve got the perfect guests to talk to us about that, about podcasting. But in general, just thinking about your businesses audience, every business has one might be small, might be large, may be well-defined, might be a little fuzzy.

But we all have an audience for our business. And so that’s really where we’re going to focus today. So my guest is, a repeat guest for the podcast, Tom Webster. Many of you know Tom from when he worked with Edison Research, and he produced the Infinite Dial Study, which is actually the longest running study of consumer media habits since 1998.

and then he also produced, share of ear and some podcast metrics studies before he went out on his own and with a partner, started the company called Sounds Profitable, which is really all about thinking about audio and marketing from audio and how to create an audience to. Tom has written a brand new book, which is just brilliant, and it’s called The Audience Is Listening.

And while the audience is listening, the examples in a lot of times focus in the book is about podcasting and the podcast audience. Do not, fast forward through this. If you don’t have a podcast, because I think what you’re going to find is after reading the book, I found that I was thinking about the audience in a much broader context than just you guys, the podcast audience.

It was really thinking about just the am-i audience and how we all, as agencies, need to be thinking about our audience and how we connect with them, listen to them. And so that’s really where Tom and I are going to dig in today. Is is really a how to think about the people who who listen, who lean in, who pay attention to what your business is doing and how to how to sort of tailor your communication, whether it’s content of any kind, whatever that is to those folks.

So I think you’re going to find it super insightful. And, again, I would say, although we’re going to use the word podcast several times, in this episode, I suspect, please do not be fooled that that’s all we’re talking about. All right. So without further ado, let’s welcome Tom to the show. Tom, welcome back to the podcast.

It’s great to have you back. Thanks. it’s an honor to be invited back this year. Any time you’re invited back to a home twice. Have you? Means you didn’t stink up the place. That’s right. You were a good guest. So we’ve talked about a lot of different topics over the years. But what I want to talk about today is your brand new book.

So the audience’s listening just came out. If people are listening to the podcast in real time. So talk a little bit about what prompted the book. And then I want to dig in because I have a million questions based on reading the book, which is fantastic, by the way. I knew it would be, but it’s it’s it’s awesome.

Thank you. So I’ve got this weird background, but, you know, basically 30 years and audience research and you know, people today certainly associate with me. But podcasting my company sounds profitable is really the the trade organization for that industry now. But I’ve learned a lot about audience research. And I realized with all the questions I get from people who are coming into podcasting, maybe they didn’t come from a media background.

They certainly didn’t come from an audio background. And they not only don’t, they know a lot of the things I’ve picked up along the way, there’s no place to learn them. You know, it’s it’s an arcane science. And so I, I honestly wrote this book to be a place where people could go to get this kind of information, because I don’t know where else they would get it.

And I’ve had the best teachers. Well, and somebody has been podcasting for a long time now. You know, I started mine as a lark, you know, and ten years ago at the technology to to the point in your book that technology keeps changing. But the core reason why we podcast is pretty evergreen, which is we have we have information or stories or entertainment to share, and we kind of need an audience to share it with.

And so I’m hoping, with your permission, that we can really focus on the audience, the whole concept of the audience and who they are and how how we earn them and how we keep them, in our conversation today, because I think, I think it’s so easy to get caught up in the technology, and especially with AI today of podcasting, we sort of forget about the human part of it.

Yeah, I think that’s the one of the biggest problems in podcasting right now. And I see it with, you know, honestly, 99%, especially of the independent podcasters I talk to, is that when they ask for marketing advice, what they’re really asking for is promotion advice, right? Me marketing is a capital M theory of the firm, and it starts with understanding a customer or understanding an audience and, you know, and crafting a product around that and not I’m going to make this thing, how do I promote it?

And that’s I mean, that’s the central problem of almost every podcast I listen to. Yeah. And yeah. So, so so let’s talk a little bit about sort of from your perspective, what’s let’s start with one of the one of the lines in the book that I highlighted was, you know, we don’t have we don’t have the right to have an audience.

We have to earn that audience. And so I’m always so conscious of how busy people are. And that time really is everybody’s most scarce currency, that if somebody spends 45 minutes a week with me, that’s that’s a huge investment on their part. And, and I think sometimes we forget what we’re asking someone to give up, to listen to our show.

And those people that spend 45 minutes with you now, they’re already demonstrating this incredible commitment to you and you know it. It probably wouldn’t make them upset if you asked them some questions back and really tried to focus in on, you know, not just what are their problems, because I think podcasts aren’t just utilitarian. I mean, we can, you know, we can do a search engine search for how to solve our problems.

But ultimately, if people are giving you 45 minutes, that’s 45 minutes. They’re not giving something else, right? It could have been Young Sheldon, or it could have been a bunch of YouTube videos, but they’re giving it to you, right? So. Right. And and you don’t have a right to an audience. And the hard truth is, whenever people ask me for marketing advice about their podcast and I have the time to listen to their show, my advice to them is it’s not a very good show and let me tell you why, because ultimately I just keep coming back to the, you know, the number one or number two way that people discover podcasts every single year.

And I’ve asked it for 19 years. Is this recommendations. Right. Absolutely right. Word of mouth. And so if you don’t have a podcast that someone would tell a friend about, and that’s kind of a tall order. I don’t know what else I can tell you. Yeah. So, so when you listen to podcasts and you’re like, that could be better, are there 2 or 3 things that habitually people get wrong?

Yeah, there’s a few. I had a whole chapter in the book about editing. I called it editing and very few people edit at all, and I understand that. And here’s the thing. I’m not judgy about that. I understand that, but I offer it to somebody when they ask me, how do I get more listeners? I tell them, you should edit your podcast, right?

It’s fine if you can’t do that, but you don’t have a right to an audience, as you say, if you don’t do that thing. And I guess the number one piece of advice that I would give there is, I think to a lot of podcasters, editing means cutting out mistakes, erasing the fixing some tapes or what it could be is understanding a narrative arc to the conversation that you had with somebody and rearranging that show to suit that arc better.

So then everything you’re saying is the answer to the question. That was the next question in the listener’s mind. And that’s what some of the best public radio shows do. they construct the, you know, the interviews are not simply broadcast in in question order, right? There’s a there’s a narrative arc of discovery so that, you know, as the listener goes, oh, I wonder why that is.

That’s the next thing you hear. Right. So that’s so editing is one. Here’s one that I’m really kind of stuck on. There’s a podcast that, I’ve listened to a few times, and I listen to it because I’m a real I’m a real board game dork. And there, you know, there’s some board game podcasts that I listen to, and there’s one I listen to that has five people on it, and I don’t know why they’re there.

They I mean, it’s like it’s like a panel of people going, I agree, I agree, I agree. Why are you all there? What are the jobs. Yeah. How are you adding value? Right. Yeah. And you you have to remember that you’re not just a name people are talking to. You’re a character. And that doesn’t mean you’re not authentic.

But it does mean you should have a role on the show. Otherwise, why make it four people? Make it three people until you lack something? Because I just hear a lot about redundancy. Yeah. That’s interesting. I don’t know that I’ve ever listened to a podcast that had that many regular sort of hosts all together before. That sounds confusing.

It is. It is confusing. And I think it it can work. And I’ll give you a great example of this. I spent many years consulting doing talent research for the Elvis Duran Show, which is a nationally syndicated radio show. When I started working with them, it was Elvis and Elliot on C 100, and now it’s Elvis Duran all over the country.

And you know, that show has like seven people on it regularly, but they are so narrowly defined. You know, there’s the guy who goes out and does stupid stunts in the street and that is all that he does on the show. And that’s not all who he is as a human, but. Right. But he is there to plug a certain point in the show.

We need this to happen. Right? And it’s, you know, it’s not they’re not creating audio fiction, but it is a performance, right? Yeah. Interesting. So so all right. So we have editing number one. Number two, if you have multiple people, everybody’s got to have a role. And as a host, even if you’re a solo host kind of understanding what your role is and the persona that you bring to the show, to your point, the character or the role that you play.

Well, one more, one more that you’re like, oh gosh, I have lots of podcasters need to know this. And I really want to get into how how we tap into our audience. Yeah, I think well, and I think this 1st May be the biggest one of all, and it’s and it’s a nice segue into that conversation and that’s know who you are for.

And I you know, I, I kind of irritated one of our partners a while back because I was, you know, they were they were working with us on, on how to, you know, expand their audience like everybody else does. And was a kind of an investment podcast for a network doing investment podcasts. And I asked him who they were for, and they said influencers.

I said, well, well, what do you mean? And they got like angry at me because I kept kind of going deeper like, you know what? Describe some influencers. And they they gave me, you know, two wildly different examples. And I was like, okay, what do they have in common? Right. And how can you make a show that pleases both of them?

Because ultimately, you know, if your show ends up being like some kind of, you know, Amazon collaborative filtering, if you like this, you like that, you just end up getting Celine Dion recommended to you. And it doesn’t it’s not for anybody specific. And so I like for people to be specific to the person level. I want them to name I human, you know, and if it’s not a real human, I want them to name a, you know, a fictional human that they can dress in pretty specific clothing.

And the more you can do that and just talk to that person, the more of that type of person and they are legion will gravitate to the show. And that’s how you build an audience. Yeah. Yeah, I that’s actually one of the hallmarks, I think for us with this show is we know exactly who’s listening to the show.

And, and, you know, we get guest pitches every day like everybody does. And, you know, I’m always astonished at what why would I want someone who. It was the former governor of Hawaii on my show. I’m sure it’d be a fascinating conversation, but not for my audience. Right? I mean, so knowing who you’re for, I think is absolutely critical to guest curation, the conversations you have, all of that for sure.

But and I make this point in the book to, you know, who knowing exactly who you’re for lead, you know exactly who you’re not for. And you draw your line very, very firmly. And I think, you know, as many people who find somebody like Joe Rogan either, you know, offensive or questionable or not, not their cup of tea, there is a certain, you know, disaffected male youth in this country who resists authority because they don’t feel like anybody’s listening to them.

And Joe is speaking to them very clearly. And so if you don’t like Joe Rogan because he’s not for you, and then because he’s so clearly for somebody, that’s why he’s still the number one podcast, like it or not. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, that goes into all of marketing and niching and all of that. But that’s a that’s a different show for a different time.

So let’s let’s talk about audience. So let’s, let’s assume somebody has a podcast and they’ve had they they’ve gone past the what is it seven episodes. Most people don’t get past. Right. They’ve gone past the seven episodes. So they’re committed to doing this. What aren’t they doing that they should be doing to connect with and grow their audience?

I think one of the first things you should do, and you might be surprised to hear this because, you know, I’m a media researcher and everything looks like a hammer. Everything’s a nail. Whatever we’ll take. We can talk about audience research in a minute, but I think one of the first things you should do is take what you think is your best show.

Get it transcribed by a human in the deepest detail possible. Right? You know, spend some money on this. It won’t cost much. You know, it might be 30, 50 bucks. I don’t know and have it transcribed to like book length and go through it and ask yourself, did should I put that there was this necessary? Could I have gotten into this quicker?

Why did I start the podcast with five minutes of this? I take it apart because ultimately, what I always try to do with people is take it apart, like to the atomic level, and then start putting it together with an audience in mind. And, you know, any time I talk to people about, you know, again, getting a larger audience are like, my content is good, but and I’m like, are you sure about that?

Let’s break it apart. Do you listen to your own show or do you fast forward to hear your voice gifted? Do you really listen to your own show? So I mean, that’s I think that’s I kind of podcasting 101 is to take it apart at that subatomic level and be really critical. Just. And if you’ve ever done like Toastmasters or something like that.

Yeah. You know, one of the first things you do in Toastmasters before you get your green belt to beige belt or whatever the system is there is, you know, you’ll give a speech in front of people and you’ll think you nailed it. And then there’ll be a panel of people going, you said 52 times or whatever, and that will be like, you were holding a baby.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that will beat that out of you. Right. So but people in podcasting need to do that to okay. So one of it is show structure for sure. And and thinking about that again, that concept of editing better and editing more finite with the story arc in mind, what else should we be thinking about in terms of before we even get into talking to the audience, in terms of content like the best podcasts do what around their content in mind of their audience?

I think the best content. And I’m going to give you a podcaster example here. Someone is, I think, amazing at this is Alex Bloomberg. Alex Bloomberg was one of the founders of gimlet. He was with Planet Money for a while and had startup, and he’s one of the best interviewers in the business. And the reason he is, is because before he talks to somebody, he thoroughly understands not only the subject, the person that they’re talking to, but also the questions that an audience might have.

And then he plays really dumb. And I think that’s completely fearless of him, because he sounds like he doesn’t know anything, but because he’ll say something in a very relatable, approachable way when he’s talking to somebody about a complex topic, he’s like, well, well, what is cap and trade anyway? And is it cap and trade or cap and trade?

Alex Bloomberg knows what that is, right? Right. Yeah. And so he makes the the guest appear smart, which draws them out, which makes them more verbose and more sharing and makes the audience really the focus here, because he’s going from one question to the next that the audience would have about this, and he’s not afraid to not afraid to appear like he doesn’t know it.

And so he never talks down to the audience. He’s always rate, they’re at their level. And yet he’s a complete master of what he does right in structuring the show. Yeah. So if I’m hearing you, what you’re saying is he is, in essence, channeling them and their knowledge level and asking questions exactly the way they would ask them, regardless if he really knows the answer.

That’s right. Yeah. I think, you know, too many podcasts sound like they’re an inside joke, or you had to be there, or you’ve had to listen to 20 shows to get it or whatever. Yeah. And that, you know, it’s fine to sprinkle those things in there. They’re fun little Easter eggs for a long term audience, but you you know, every show is your first show.

And I think if you’ve if you can channel that audience like, what would my audience really ask here? And I’ll give you a better example. And I put this in the book. This is one of my favorite examples in all of in all of audio media. And that’s car talk. And, you know, I work with NPR for many, many years of my career before I was in the podcasting part of it and the thing about Car Talk was that it gave smart people a safe place to be stupid.

And you got you have, you know, really smart. They’re public media listeners, they’re educated, they’re affluent. And the calling, the Click and Clack brothers, you know, very, very erudite and, you know, Boston to the core and these are people that are, you know, probably in their day job much, much more articulate. But when they call up, you know, they call it the brothers.

It’s, you know, my car is making a noise or something like that. It’s all you need. It’s like a wheel, you know, and it’s a safe place to be stupid because they never talk down. They always talk at the level of the audience, and they know exactly who they are. They know that they are smart people who don’t want to feel stupid about something that a lot of people feel stupid about, right?

That’s knowing who you for. Yeah. And and not just knowing, but being empathetic. Like it not it’s not intellectual understanding alone. It’s also emotional understand. Yeah. I mean that’s a that’s a huge part of it. And I think that’s true of, of car talk and of Alex Bloomberg’s work is that he people don’t like to feel stupid. You know, my my wife Tamsin who I know you have spoken to, you know likes to likes to say that people are you know, people like to think that they’re smart, capable and good.

And if you always have that in the, you know, in the back of your mind as you’re going through things, you know, you’ll you’ll treat them better. Yeah. For sure. I know that’s a core tenet in the book that she has coming up. Stay the same. Yeah. And and you know, as you’re talking, I’m thinking we as agency owners and leaders, we understand that when we’re talking to clients that we have to coach them in a way that doesn’t make them feel stupid.

And so we can bring that same sensitivity to our podcast work as well. I think. So, yeah. And I think, you know, with the show like yours, true, you you really know your audience because you have thought the battles that they’re fighting. Right? And you know, and you know what? You know how hard it is to grow an agency.

You know, the challenges and things like that. So, you know, but you’re also articulate and a and a good questioner about it as well. So it’s, it’s, you know, it can’t just be an information service because there are a lot faster ways to get this information. I could I could scan a transcript of this and in a few seconds.

You always have to remember that it’s a very inefficient means of information transfer. So you better do something else. So let’s let’s pull on that thread for a minute. So, you know, most podcasters share the transcript of their show. What what is it about the show itself that makes someone give us the 45 minutes, rather than just reading the transcript or watching the two minute highlight video or whatever it is?

What what elements should we have in our show that makes them go, you know what, I, I want to I want to consume that information as you said, in that very inefficient way. You know, I have some core content principles, and I think this is true of any kind of content. But certainly in podcasting, I think ideally a podcast should do three things.

And ultimately that rolls up into a fourth thing. And I think the three things are it should be content that challenges. It should be content that entertains, and hopefully content that comes from a genuine authority on the topic, whether that’s the guest or the host. Right. So that yeah, and honestly, I didn’t invent that. Aristotle did. That’s ethos, pathos and logos.

And if you have only three, then, then you got something else, right? And that something else worth owning. Don’t put anything out you’re not proud of. Right. And I, you know, this is a piece of advice that I hate because it comes from a tech pros who put out 60 versions of a software as a service product and and iterating, iterating and all that stuff and, and fail fast in public and all that.

You can’t do that with podcast, right? If you’ve got if you’ve because you can’t get that audience back. Right. If there’s, you know, if there’s something in there you’re not proud of or, you know, if you’ve done a few interviews, my advice to starting podcasters who are really interested is like, do do your first 4 or 5 and put them under the bed.

Do not publish them. If you’re like, you know that, well, that’s a lot of content. Well, maybe you don’t have enough for a show then if that just stressed you out, but just put them under the bed for a while, come back to them and listen to them critically. Give it a give it, give it some time. Don’t rush into it.

Just a good thing in the entertainment industry that gets rushed into right? And just, you know, be really, really critical about it. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting that I think for most podcasters, it’s not their day job, it’s part of their day job. And so, you know, when you do an interview or you do a show, yes, you’re trying to produce good content, but you’re also checking a box.

I have to get that done. And and I’m listening to you and I’m thinking of a couple of times it took me a while to have the courage as the host to go. I can’t air that show like I like. I hung up from the conversation and I was like, there just wasn’t an I couldn’t get out of the guest.

It was my fault. I didn’t get out of the guest what my audience needed from them, and or I misread what I thought the guest was going to bring to the show. And I couldn’t bring us to a and and having to say to the editing team, you know what? Don’t don’t bother. And we’re not airing that one.

That’s tough. It’s really tough. And I think, you know, podcasters in some ways have an unreasonable expectation that they can just go on and do the show for it ever and ever and ever. Right now, you’re probably not cheers. And you’re probably not mash and you’re probably not Seinfeld. So don’t don’t you know if it peters out, it peters out.

I don’t find any any stigma behind that. But but yeah if it’s not if it’s not something you’re proud of I always, you know, put it under the bed. And people often talk in, you know, content marketing especially, you know, blogs and articles and things like that. You know, about the the constant tension between quality and quantity to me, in podcasting, there is only quality.

And if you can’t maintain quality at the quantity you’re doing, slow your pace. There’s only quality. And and if you can’t, if you’re not doing that, that’s fine. I understand you got a day job, but don’t expect to grow an audience, right? Right, right. All right, let’s let’s take a quick break. And then when we come back, let’s let’s shift into actually how do we engage with our audience, get their input, get a read on what they want, like, don’t like and, and all of that.

So let’s take a quick break and we’ll be right back. Hey, everybody. Just want to remind you, before we get back to the show that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the Amish community. And to find it, if you’re not a member. Head over to facebook.com, slash groups, slash b a b a podcast.

So again, facebook.com, slash Group’s Slash Baby podcast, all you have to do is answer a few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency on our leader, and we will let you write in. And you can join over 1700 other agency owners and leaders. I’m telling you, there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are going to be a value to you.

So come join us. All right. We are back with Tom Webster, and we’re talking about his brand new book. The audience is Listening with the subtitle, A Little Guide to Building a Big Podcast. I, I read a lot of books and and I’ll tell you, I just posted noted the crap out of this book. And I’ve been podcasting for a long time, and so I, I’m telling you that whether you’ve been doing it for a decade or a day, this book has, you’re going to change the way you podcast.

If you read this book, I promise you that, and it’s going to get better. So, Tom, before the break, I said that I want to sort of dig into how do we how do we engage better with our audience and how do we get input and feedback from them? What do you recommend we go about that? Well, it always starts with conversations and it starts with talking with your existing listeners or, you know, maybe even who you’d like your listeners to be.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But, you know, I do a lot of audience survey work. Some podcasts don’t have enough audience yet. and it might be premature to do that, but I always think you can talk to people about your podcasts and even the people you know and love who are going to listen to your podcast because you’re related.

They’re better because it’s your they’re your mom, your mom. Right? You can still ask them better questions. And I have a I have some of those questions in the book, but I’ll share with you two of my favorites. And the first is, you know, I’ve done probably, I don’t know, 5 or 600 focus groups in my career. It’s not exaggerate, I don’t know, might be a thousand and my favorite question whether I’m talking about audio or, you know, consumer goods or toilet paper or whatever is imagine that tomorrow, this thing that you tell me you use, you like you would give whatever.

Imagine that it that it died and you know, you had to give it eulogy. It just went away, you know, nobody liked it anymore. And, you know, it went off the air. It was taken off the shelves or whatever. I’ll ask two questions about. The first is what one thing will you miss when it’s gone? And to me, I call that the eulogy question.

Well, what would you what would you miss if it were gone? and that question is a brutal one for some people, because the answer might well be nothing. Yeah. And that just means you’re not quite there yet. Right. But but the real gem, I think, is when it’s something you didn’t expect. And the reason why I like this question is because if you ask people typically what they like, they don’t have very precise vocabulary.

This is just like a qualitative research thing from from all that training. They’ll say, oh, I like it. It’s interesting. It’s funny right. That’s that doesn’t help you that much. Right. But if you ask them what they didn’t like, they’ll get real specific real quick. So yeah, you just try to change people’s frame, right? So, what would you miss?

But then I also like to ask, what do you think killed it? Oh, that’s a great question. And and that’s, you know, even if somebody is really, really positive about something that can lead them into another line of conversation, right? They can say, I guess maybe it just wasn’t popular. And, you know, then, you know, okay, well, I know you like it.

Why do you think other people wouldn’t like it? You start to get into a framing, right? And that framing teaches you who your audience is. And because this person is telling you who they’re not, that’s allowing you to frame a little bit better who they are, right. You know, I love the eulogy question quite a bit. It’s just a better question than that, you know.

Oh, what do you like about the show? It’s not going to give you very good results, you know. Yeah, yeah. The other thing I really like is what else do you listen to. And, you know, on a surface level, if you’re trying to promote your podcast, that gives you some places maybe to mark to cross market cross-promote like, okay, great, but I want to know everything that they listen to, not just the other agency podcast.

So the other car podcasts and that helps me shape like who they are when they’re at home. Yeah. If you can know a little bit who they are when they’re at home, then and this is an example from the book. It’s one of my favorite examples of all. And it’s from a ostensibly a sports podcast, The Ryan Ressler Show, which is on The Ringer Network, owned by Spotify.

And Ryan is a long time sportscaster, used to be at ESPN. And the bulk of the show is sports content. And then what he realized, though, from just getting emails from people, was that his audience really had something in common. Like a lot of them were young males recently out of college who kind of looked up to Ryan because Ryan in his life story had kind of figure things out after some you know, rougher dates.

Right? And like, some of these guys just needed an older brother. Right. So at the end of the Ryan Show, every, every week, they do this segment called Life Advice, just called Life advice. And Ryan and his producer, and sometimes a second producer who had very distinct roles in this take, listener email about, you know, my girlfriend’s father wants me to ex what do you think about this?

And Brian will give and Ryan will give the older brother advice and so on. And I could talk about this segment for an hour. It’s not sports, right? It’s it is what I would miss if it went away. And it’s also who those listeners are when they’re at home. And that’s what sets it above. And just to go back to Aristotle, that fits a core sort of rhetorical concept.

And that is that the no new concept I used to teach rhetoric at Penn State. You start with something they know and then you give them something new. You do it in that order, and they’ll be more receptive to it. So we’ll start with some sports talk. Hey, maybe you’ll stick around for this other thing because the sports interview was good and it’s the new that keeps people coming back.

If it’s not, if it’s all old, people get bored of it. If it’s all new, people don’t have a handle to grab on to. But I just think that’s a wonderful way to think of your show. So two questions. One, I was just going to ask you the placement of that is interesting. Is that the right place to put that?

Because a it keeps somebody up with you all the way to the end of the show and b what you just said, which is give them something more familiar to warm them up, in essence, reconnect with them and then give them something new. So if you were the producer of that show, is that where that segment should be, do you think?

Absolutely, because the funnel into that show is the Bill Simmons Show and it’s other sports podcasts. Right. And so that is the funnel into the show. That is the known part of it. Right? Okay. It’s a sports podcast. So I know I’m not on Mars. I’m probably going to like it. I’ll see who he’s interviewing. But then you know, as people got used to this new segment, that’s what really made the show stand out.

And this is a lesson from I used to do a lot of music radio. I research a music radio consulting in the 90s especially, and a successful radio station does the same thing if they have a brand new song. Right. And this is kind of why streaming music’s a little screwed up right now, but that’s another show. if you have a brand new song, if you if you first play it, people don’t like it.

They don’t like it cause they don’t know it. So it needs to be protected. And so the way you do it in radio is, you know, if you’re going to play a brand new song by the Foo Fighters and no one’s ever heard of the Foo Fighters, you’re going to start with, you know, I’ve got a brand new song coming out from the Foo Fighters.

you know, the lead singer and guitarist came out of Nirvana, but first, you know, here’s here’s Black Dog by LED Zeppelin and then. Right. Yeah. Or, you know, or do I do it the other way around? I’ve got, you know, I’ve got, you know, this great Pearl jam song coming up, but for this new band out of Seattle.

Right. So you bracket things, you anchor and bookend and bracket and bookend and it’s all to keep people going in the show, because ultimately you don’t keep people going in the show. They’re not getting the Mid-Roll one, they’re not getting two Mid-Roll two, and potentially the post roll and those ad impressions and that’s not only important for ad supported shows, it’s important for anybody.

It’s important for how they remember the quality of the show when they look back on it. Yeah yeah yeah yeah I that it’s really interesting. So I think a lot of podcasters don’t think about the structure of their show that way, like the whole idea of bracketing and all of that. So that’s a whole another that’s a whole nother topic for probably for a different show.

But so the questions that we were talking about, how do you suggest. So I love those questions. And I know you have lots of others and there’s several examples in the book. How do you suggest we ask those questions? Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite places to to ask those questions is, something that is woefully neglected in the podcast world.

And that is the real world, you know, and another just another question. If you wanted in the real world to find a bunch of your listeners or a bunch of your potential listeners, where would you go to do that? and if the answer was, I don’t know, all over, I don’t know everywhere. And you don’t have an audience yet.

I bet you could come up with a very specific place where you’re where you’d like for them to come from. But but I like talking to people. And you can talk to people. You can start a conversation in social media, continue it on email, continue with it on zoom. Right. But it doesn’t have to be a formal focus group.

It can just be, you know, you start to hear similar answers from people and you start to think, maybe I have a hypothesis here, you know, and later you can, you know, test that hypothesis in different ways. But first you need to to get some good questions out there. And, and you know, I just I like talking to people and, you know, social media is not the best place for those conversations, but it’s a good place to at least get them started.

And then, you know, there’s nothing wrong with saying, hey, could I do a just say it in your show? Hey, I would love to do some zoom calls with some of you. you know, you’ll get a copy of my, Final Fantasy football draft picks if you if you do this, check out the website. Here’s a calendar link or whatever.

Right. You start some conversations. You don’t have to do formal research here because you’re really getting theories, not answers. Right? Right. Yeah. It’s funny, as I’m listening, I’m thinking, good lord, it’s never occurred to like we have a conference filled with podcast listeners every year, and it has never occurred to me to I mean, I talk to all of them, but I don’t specifically talk to them about the podcast.

What a moron. I mean, I could hold a 45 minute session and just say over lunch, if you want to talk about what you’d like to hear in the podcast, it’s next year. Come have lunch with me and let’s do that. There’s never occurred to me to take advantage of the fact that we are literally all in the same freaking hotel at the same time, so I’m going to give you an excellent structure for that.

And I bet many of your listeners will have a similar way to do it. And this is, again from just years of of being a qualitative researcher. You know, sometimes people like to perform when they’re in group settings, and some other people don’t like to talk in group settings. So, you know, it just a really quick and easy thing is ask people in a room, you know, can’t be a lot of people or it gets unmanageable, but just ask them to take out a sheet of paper.

Write down one thing that they love about the show, and one thing that they would fix if they ran it, and then go around and make people read what they wrote. Because what what will happen is somebody will say something, and then you’ll go to somebody else, and they don’t really want to read what they wrote, or they’ll, they’ll, they’ll say, yeah, I agree with with that.

I’m like, no, read what you wrote, right? Read what you wrote and just make people do that. And then the conversation can can spin from there. And you know, that can easily fill, you know, half hour, an hour if you just for those two questions and then of course, collect the papers. Yeah. And that’s, that is all you need to do.

stupid stupid stupid that I’ve missed that opportunity. Not next. You. No, not it’s not stupid. It’s just honestly, it’s one of the reasons why I wrote the book. True. Is that, like, I don’t know what’s happening to market research, but I have all of this weird training in my background, and, you know, it’s got to go somewhere.

And a lot of people just don’t have it. And they. Yeah, some of it’s just thinking about things, framing them a little bit differently. But I always want to get people in their own language, in their own setting. It natural as I can. And, you know, those are some of the best stories in, in, you know, all of product history, I think is when you catch that.

Yeah. Okay. So what about a more formal survey study something like that at at what point is my show not my show, but the listener show. At what point is a show ready for that kind of investment in both time and probably some money. Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t have to take money necessarily, you know, and you have to sort of judge for yourself.

you know, like, I’m not going to give you a statistical numbers here because this kind of research is not, you know, probabilistic. It’s not scientifically valid. It’s self-selected. So so let’s dispense with all that. But, you know, if you’ve got a few hundred listeners, it’s worth taking a flier on this. And, you know, if you get if you got a few hundred listeners, you get 20 or 30 responses, I would look, I’m happy with that.

That’s pretty good. That’s a great response rate, right. Direct mail doesn’t get that. So that’s a good way to go. And at that level I think you could just put up a Google form. and there are other tools you can use this, you know, SurveyMonkey that is fairly accessible. But and I have a sample survey in the book, which gives you a good structure.

And, you know, the key with that is don’t waste, don’t waste people’s time with questions that aren’t actionable for you. Right. If you were not selling ads, for instance, why are you asking people about their household income? Right? This is right. Just ask like, does this need to be there? Yeah, I mean, there’s two main purposes for a questionnaire like this.

One is to provide salable data on your audience. Advertisers want is to make your show better. They don’t necessarily sit in the same document. So if I go about doing that, whether I do it on social, whether I whether I ask the eulogy questions, whether I go to something more formal, like a survey, once I have some input, how do I how would you recommend I process that input, and how do I share what I learned with the audience so that they know that we were actually listening?

Yeah. I mean, you know, this is so this is sort of the scientific method. And try not to change too much at once, you know, I mean, essentially what you’re doing in this order is you want to have conversations with people that’s qualitative. And then when you get to the point where you can do a survey that’s quantitative, and what you’re really doing with the quantitative part is starting to put some a skeleton together of who these people are, right.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you know, and more qualitative can help you put some more clothing on that. But you know you may get some things that are really, really clear that come out of it. Like, you know what people really hate when they do this. And and treat it all as theories and hypotheses. But let’s say you try not doing that.

Let the audience in on that decision. Right. Tell them it was because you told me. And, you know, one of two things will happen. A whole bunch of people will write in and say, well, that was my favorite thing. And then you’re like, oh, why did you take my damn survey? but I don’t think you’ll get that right.

I think you’ll get some people now that will say thank you or I didn’t mind it, but but it will also make people feel like it was worth their time to take the survey. Right? Right. It’s closing the loop on that. And very few people do that. Yeah. You know, we do a lot of client satisfaction surveys for agencies and that’s one of our mandates is whatever we learn, we have to send it back out to your clients and say, hey, whether you participate in the survey or not, here’s what we learned and here’s what we’re going to do about it.

Otherwise, when you ask them again, they’re like, why am I going to bother? They didn’t respond the first time that what I said. So yeah, that’s great advice. Yeah. Make it as you know, make it as short as possible. Make it as much about specific aspects of the content that you can. I’m not great. I don’t love hypotheticals of any kind.

Like, what if we did this? But people are bad at answering those kinds of things, right? But you know, I, you know, why not take some segments and you know, that people might be familiar with, say, all right, here are five recent shows that we did. maybe you heard some of them. Maybe you didn’t. What was your favorite and why?

Or, you know, which of these would be at the bottom and why and, and, you know, try to give people something to grab on to when they answer these questions. They’re already you already know that they’re listeners. So you’re not necessarily leading the room on this. but you can start to, to give them the tools with which they can be more specific.

How specific can we tap into our audience to find out what they would like to hear more of, or who they would like to hear from, or what topics do they wish we dealt with that we haven’t dealt with? How do we how do we probe into that? Like for future show prep and looking for guests or prepping your own content?

If you don’t have guests, how do we how do we tap into what we haven’t answered yet for them? Yeah. So these are good questions to ask before you get specific about your show. And I wouldn’t frame them as what could we do on the show because you’re likely to get a lot of them, I don’t know. And this again is ask be in their shoes.

Right, right. And you have been in their shoes. So just ask them like, you know, what have you been what have you googled lately that you couldn’t find an answer to? yeah. You know, the last so much better than the what keeps you up at night question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The last client you lost, why’d you. Why did that happen?

And are you worried about that? And, you know it. Just take them out of your show, right? That’s your problem. Then. You know, you don’t ask them to fix your show, but just, again, who they are when they’re at home and when they’re out of the context of, like, how do we make my show better? And they start to think about what’s what is the, you know, what happened at work that I thought was really cool or something like that.

You start to get just a deeper insight. Yeah, this been fascinating. So thinking about the book for a minute, Tom, what haven’t I asked you that you want to make sure the listeners know before we wrap up? What have I missed? Well, boy, that is a really I know I’ve missed a lot because it’s a it’s a book with lots of stuff, but what’s the one thing you want to make sure they know before we before we say goodbye?

I have been a content marketer for most of my career in impact, not a I, you know, a conscious one necessarily. It just sort of worked out that way. And I think a lot of content marketers and marketers in general lumped podcasting in as a marketing channel. And they say it’s important that I do this and that’s fine.

but it’s not it. I don’t please don’t lump it in with white papers dealt, lump it in with blog post, don’t lumped in with explainer videos. It is a very lean forward activity where, you know, you and I both have earbuds in. We’re not watching or listening to anything else. Right. And it is a very different thing.

And it is ultimately an entertainment. Right. Because I could be listening to you. I, you know, I could be watching I could be binging White Lotus instead of watching instead of listening to your podcast and not take that really, really seriously and give it to care and craft, because it all comes back down to that very first thing that we talked about at the start of the podcast is that you don’t deserve an audience.

You don’t have a right to them, to an audience. And I’ll close with it. Maybe the most unkind thing I say at conferences, but I do say it to be kind, is I will talk about all of this work to make your podcast better, and someone inevitably will come up to me and say, well, no one’s going to do all it, and I will tell them, you’re right.

Only the very best podcasts do. And that’s that’s ultimately your decision, right? Do you want to be one of the best podcasts? Yeah. Because, you know, getting quick hits in and advertisements, social shares, whatever they that doesn’t build sustainable downloads. The only thing that build sustainable downloads is maintaining a quality show. Now, I think there’s an intimacy to podcasting that is very different than other, as you say, marketing channels.

I like you’re talking to someone and they’re listening, and they’re probably talking back to you in their car or on the treadmill or whatever. And it just feels like a like an intimate relationship thing. It’s not transactional. Yeah. And I don’t know, people get hung up on, on, you know, two videos getting the world and people get hung up on images and, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Well, a thousand words is worth a million pictures because those pictures happen in the minds of the audience and they happen differently. And if you can engage them, that way, the fastest path to the brain is through the years and not the eyes. That’s a that’s a little science for you. I mean, it’s not that much faster. Let’s, you know, last that overstated that.

But it comes from the campfire tradition that comes from oral history and oral storytelling. And, you know, long before we had TikTok. So, yeah, it’s not going anywhere. Yeah. This has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and helping us all get a little better. I know people are going to want to find the book.

I know people are going to want to track you down and follow your thinking and teaching. So what’s the best way for them to do all of that? Sure. The best way to find out more about the book is it audience is listening, book second, audience is listening. Booking.com. There are links there also to our company. Sounds profitable.

I mentioned where the trade and organization for the podcast industry and if you are, you know, series about podcasting, you know where we’re at, the main events I’m quoting podcast movement on August 21st, I think with with some brand new research and a few other panels. So definitely reach out to us there. And, and, you know, ultimately I did this because I want people to make better shows, because I want podcasting to stick around and it’s not going to stick around if all we do is make crap.

So that’s that’s really my desire here. Yeah. Well, and I know the research you do, which you do pretty regularly, is super helpful too. So that’s that’s a place where people can sign up to be notified when you have new research information and stuff like that too. Yes, yes. Okay. All available sounds profitable.com. We have a daily newsletter, a weekly longer article from me and all the research is available.

There for free. Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing, sharing your passion. It’s not even your wisdom, really. It’s it. You know, one of the things that I love about talking with you is you care about this stuff. This stuff is important to you because you take a lot of pride in it and in your work and helping people get better.

So I’m grateful for that. Thank you. I think we have that in common. So thanks for thanks for asking me back. You bet. All right, guys, so this wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. So I’m telling you, whether you have a podcast, whether you’re helping clients with podcasting, this is a great book. But I will also tell you this.

So, you know, you know that we are big proponents of niching down and being an authority and all of that. This book is not actually just about podcasting. Sometimes examples are about podcasting and all of that. But all of us to sell and to grow, our agencies have to have an audience. And that’s really what this book is about.

It’s all I mean, there’s there’s a lot of podcasts, specific information, which is super helpful, but you can read between the lines of all of those specific examples. And it really is about understanding, respecting, building and nurturing an audience which every one of you needs to do. I don’t care what marketing channel you have, so whether you have a podcast or not, I’m telling you, this book is a worthy read and you should check it out.

I would love to hear some of your big takeaways and more importantly, what you’re going to do different. and so I’m going to I’m working on, like I said, I highlighted the bejesus out of this book. I’ll be coming back to you and and you’re going to see some of the things that I took away from this book in future episodes of the show.

And I promise that at some point in time, we’ll have a conversation about kind of what I’m thinking and what I’m doing, so I get some feedback from you. But I’m telling you, I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it. There is great nuggets in this book and so you should check it out. All right. So go grab the book and make your audience better stronger bigger.

Because that’s going to serve your business regardless, again of how you talk to them and what you talk to them about. I also want to of course, say thank you to our friends at White Label IQ. As you know, I’ve been telling you this for years. They are the presenting sponsor. They keep coming back. We’re so grateful for them.

So they are born out of an agency. They do white label design, dev and PPC. They understand how to work with agencies, how to price so that agencies also have some margin. When they’re doing that, work with them. Check them out at White Label iq.com/emi because they have a special deal there just for you as a podcast listener.

And if you didn’t hear it all throughout this episode, let me just underscore the fact that I am super grateful that you keep coming back and that we get to keep having these kind of conversations. And I give you my word that I am going to take some of the lessons from this book and make the show even better, and I’m going to be even more receptive to your thoughts and ideas and how we can serve you better, because that’s why we do it.

So I’m grateful. I hope you come back next week. I promise I will do all right. Thanks for listening. I’m back next week for another episode designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages and other professional development opportunities at Agency Management institute.com.