What Does an Effective Podcast Marketing Strategy Look Like? with Jeremy Enns [Organic Growth Series] [Ep. 82]

 
podcast-marketing-strategy
 

Click play to hear what an effective podcast marketing strategy looks like:

 
 

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Here’s what to expect from this episode:

Do you have a marketing strategy for your podcast? Does it end with promoting your episodes on social media?

Welcome to the 5th episode of our Organic Podcast Growth series! In today's episode, I'm talking with Jeremy Enns all about podcast marketing strategies (and why effective marketing is so much more than promotion!).

Tune in to learn how to define and measure podcast growth, what to do if your podcast isn't growing, and what an effective marketing strategy for your podcast can look like. There are so many good takeaways in this interview, and I can't wait for you to hear what Jeremy has to say!

Are you ready to feel inspired to look at your marketing in a new way?

Meet Jeremy:

Jeremy Enns is the founder of Podcast Marketing Academy, where he teaches brands and creators hit their next growth milestones with detailed step-by-step marketing playbooks.

He also writes the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter, where he shares short, actionable ideas around how underdog shows can punch above their weight.

He’s originally from the cold, barren Canadian Prairies but has been traveling full-time for the past 6 years.

Topics Covered:

  • Defining and measuring podcast growth

  • Identifying growth-oriented tasks (and how much time to spend on them)

  • The difference between marketing and promoting your podcast

  • What an effective podcast marketing strategy looks like

  • How building relationships is the core of marketing

  • The power of AI (and how Jeremy uses it)

podcast-marketing-strategy

  • Sara Whittaker 0:00

    We are in the middle of a series all about organic growth for your podcast. So far we've looked at holistic SEO visibility strategies, Pinterest, and how nurturing your current listeners can lead to more growth. Today I have Jeremy ends on the podcast for the fifth episode in this series and I am so excited for you to hear this conversation. Jeremy is the founder of podcast Marketing Academy where he teaches brands and creators to hit their next growth milestones with his detailed step by step marketing playbooks. He also writes this scrappy podcasting newsletter where he shares short actionable ideas around how underdog shows can punch above their weight. In this episode, Jeremy and I talk all about how you can define podcast growth, what the difference is between marketing and promotion, what to do if your podcast isn't growing, and what an effective marketing strategy for your podcast can look like. There are so many good takeaways in this interview. And I think a lot of what Jeremy has to say will inspire you to look at your marketing in a new way this year. Let's go ahead and get started. Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whittaker classroom teacher turned podcast manager. And I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators. All right, we are here with Jeremy. Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.

    Jeremy Enns 1:38

    Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Sara. I'm excited to be here.

    Sara Whittaker 1:41

    Me too. And I just realized before I jumped on that, as long as I'm not mistaken, I think you are the first male guest that I have had on the show. So pretty exciting.

    Jeremy Enns 1:51

    All right. I'm honored to be here and to be the first.

    Sara Whittaker 1:55

    Yes. So we're gonna be talking all about podcast growth and marketing for your podcast today, which I'm very excited about. But before we get into that, can you just give us a little overview of how you initially got into the podcast industry?

    Jeremy Enns 2:11

    Yeah, so I, I guess we're almost now we're, we're in 2023. Now, so this is more than 10 years ago, I went to audio school to be a sound engineer and record producer wanted to work in the music industry. And when I finished school, I interned at a big studio in Vancouver, Canada, where I am initially from, and kind of did that, you know, one or two days a week kind of interning for free and realized that this, the music industry is just a really hard industry to make it in. And that I knew people who the people who were like also interns who were moving up the ranks to getting some paid work, we're like, I knew one guy who like literally slept in his car, like lived in his car. And like, when, you know, he didn't have a job. He just like, lived at the studio. And I was there like, one day, a week, two days a week, something like that, and kind of how it works in. I don't know if it's still like this, but I feel like recording studios are very, like old school. And so you're kind of like even the fact that there's unpaid internships is like, I don't think is even legal. But that's just how the industry operated, and maybe still does. But you'd like you know, as the intern, you're there at 8am in the morning, and then you're just there until whenever the sessions wrap up, which might be like 4am in the morning. And so like, some people were doing that almost every single day. And I was like, Well, this is no kind of life I want to live. And so eventually, I kind of just, you know, said, Okay, well, I'll produce stuff for fun on my own. But I'm gonna go do something else. And so I took some time off, I saved up, took a year off to go travel, kind of came back and discovered podcasting, as well as having this now like travel bug. And so I started going down the rabbit hole discovered the whole online business world of podcasts that was kind of my entry to both the podcasting and the online business, I wanted to set up something online that I can travel full time. And I was working on a bunch of other stuff for about six months before I kind of put two and two together and realized, like, Oh, I'm listening to a ton of podcasts. And I really like understand the medium at this point, and also have this background in audio engineering. And so it kind of was a very natural fit at that point. So started out as a freelance editor and then built up an agency and then kind of made the transition into marketing over the past couple of years. And now that's the thing I'm most excited about.

    Sara Whittaker 4:11

    That's awesome. I always love hearing people's stories about how they initially got started. And I feel like podcasting in the travel space. I'm hearing about that a lot now. Because I think especially since COVID Just the idea of being able to kind of take your business on the road and travel and live wherever and be able to podcast and run your business from anywhere is such a cool concept. Are you still Where are you currently? Do you still kind of bounce around from place to place?

    Jeremy Enns 4:37

    Yes. So my partner nice easy. Well, we met I think two years into each of our travels but actually we met a little bit earlier than that online through actually a kind of online business community. That was started by two travel podcasters so their shows our extra pack of peanuts and zero travel. They were two of the like OG travel podcasters and they also started this whole online business community So my partner Kelly and I, we met through there. Early on, when we were both very new to our businesses I wasn't traveling yet she was and then we ended up meeting in person at some point later and started dating. And now we've been traveling together for five years at this point. So we are kind of like winding down this phase of our life. Our plan is this year to hopefully get residency in Portugal and kind of set up a home base there. But actually, today, we actually just got to Montenegro, we were in Croatia before this. And there was all kinds of like, Croatia got accepted into the EU and all this stuff. So we and we'd already used up all our a lot of days in the EU. So we like last minute had to like book a trip out of the country with like, two weeks notice or something like that to find somewhere else. So just got to Montenegro have this amazing view of the ocean and the mountains all around it and are here for a little while now.

    Sara Whittaker 5:48

    So cool, amazing to have that flexibility with where you are, and being able to just kind of pick up and leave. Alright, so let's get into the bulk of this conversation, which is podcast growth, we're in the middle of on this podcast of an organic growth series. So this conversation is just perfect timing. I know I always tell podcasters, that, you know, when you first start your show, it's gonna take some time to build up your audience, and to even just kind of like, figure out who you are as a podcaster. And get clear on your messaging and your voice and all of that good stuff. And, but then sometimes what I see is people kind of hit this wall of maybe they've, they've gotten an audience, and they've gotten this great foundation for their podcasts. But then they kind of reached this point where month to month, they're just not really seeing much growth. So I'd love first I'd love actually to ask kind of how do you even define podcast growth? Like when we're talking about growth? How do you? What are you looking at there? Like, are you do you consider that looking at downloads? Or are there other kind of factors that go into play there? And then I'd love to talk about like, if you are at this point where you're not seeing growth? What are the first things that you could look at?

    Jeremy Enns 7:03

    Yeah, so it's actually funny, I just published a Twitter thread, like 30 minutes ago, looking at I think I have seven kind of obscure, non download metrics that can supplement kind of how you think about growth. And so there's a bunch of stuff there, not all of them are necessarily growth related, but they can kind of inform, you know, your view of is my podcast, doing well? And am I can I expect growth because of some of these other things. And I think that that's one of the things that's frustrating is that there's this whole idea of like, lead time, or like lag time, essentially, of like leading metrics and lagging metrics. And so there's some things where, you know, if you put in the work, now, you're not gonna see growth, but there might be these other indicators. And if you're not looking for them, you might give up, even though all the positive signs are there, because you haven't seen an increase in downloads, when really, maybe you're getting positive messages from people. And it's like, you know, one or two a week, it's not a ton, but it's like, that's a sign that oh, you what you're doing is resonating with people, because I think, you know, we all know how much it actually takes to get us to actually send a DM or an email to some creators whose work we enjoy. Like, that is a sign of like deep resonance, and probably they've thought about it for weeks, and probably there's dozens of other people thinking about it as well. And so I think like, if you're getting any sign of that kind of traction, or resonance, like, that's a sign that maybe the downloads aren't growing, but you've got something valuable. And probably, if you stick with it, it's it's going to grow. So that's something uh, probably the first thing that I think about is like, what are you hearing from the people that you are creating your show for? Is this something that they are finding, you know, genuinely valuable? And I think the most useful metric of that is what this is one of the metrics that I referenced in this thread is unsolicited response rate is how I think about it. And I think I heard about this from a guy named Jaya Kenzo. And then also Ann Handley. Both are well, JJ is in podcasting, and and as a writer, and has a great newsletter. But both of them have similar takes on this metric where it's kind of like unprompted, people just reaching out to you and saying, like, hey, I really liked that episode, I really liked that newsletter, I really appreciate what you do. And so I think keeping track of those things, that's a sign of like, okay, I'm onto something. And if it's not growing, like maybe I'm going to need to experiment with some different strategies and tactics, but like, the actual product is good. And I think a lot of people like I think all of us we should expect our shows not to be that at the start, like, nobody starts and just creates a the best version of their show from day one. And it's interesting. I've been thinking about this recently, where I read a book called make noise. I don't know if you've read this one, by Eric Newsome. So he's, he worked with NPR, I think a lot. He worked with Amazon and audible and now he has his own kind of production agency. And he's, you know, been in the podcast industry for a long time. But his experience in the book is all about, you know, making these high production value big budget shows for, you know, huge production companies. And I think it's like a lot of times, there's this gap between integrators and shows like that. We're like a show like that comes out of the gate, and it's already great. But yeah, and so I think we think like that art should be that way as well. But the thing that they all have, you know, probably decades, if you combined the the level of experience of everybody who works on that show, first of all, there's probably dozens of people, they probably all have, like at least a decade of experience.

    Sara Whittaker 10:11

    Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then the

    Jeremy Enns 10:15

    other interesting thing about the way they produce shows like that is that they spend maybe multiple years developing the idea and the concept and have like, you know, focus groups and all this, like listening from people who know about audio. And so I think for us, like, I don't recommend doing that, as an indie creator, I think we should get our work out there and start getting feedback from listeners. But we should also expect that, yeah, it's probably going to take a year to kind of like you mentioned, to actually find your voice, like, find an audience that is, you know, just before even like talking about a lot of growth, like just looking at like, Okay, who are the people who this is going to really resonate with, and then that might take a little while. And then once we find that group, then we can go about talking about like, Okay, well, how do we find more of those people then, and kind of level up or growth from there?

    Sara Whittaker 10:57

    Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think sometimes it can be like disheartening to people if they're not getting those constant messages. But it is so common to not have, you know, five messages in your inbox every day, about your podcast. Like I always, I always kind of like to think about my own habits. And I'm sure that this has to be the case for a lot of other people listening to is like, I consider myself like a super podcast listener, I listen to a lot of podcasts. And how many of those podcasters do I actually reach out to, like, on a frequent basis, not many, I try to I try to remember to like, you know, share episodes that I really love on social media and things like that. But even for those people that I am constantly listening to, and maybe I'm even buying things from, I'm not necessarily always reaching out to them. So those messages that you get are gold and save them if you're getting them because I couldn't agree more that that's just it's such an important indicator of how your shows doing.

    Jeremy Enns 11:56

    Yeah, yeah. 100%. And yeah, that's one of the interesting things, I think, with all of marketing, like, observe your own habits and just start noticing, like, Oh, when I click play on a new show that I've never listened to before, like what? Examine your actions, it takes like 20 seconds, and you think back, like, why didn't I click on this show instead of the others? And you will learn everything you need to know about marketing just by observing how you behave in relation to podcasts, or content, or whatever it is.

    Sara Whittaker 12:20

    Yeah, absolutely. Like, is it the title? Is it the Did you see something on social media? Like what actually drew you to that show in the first place? Yes, that's perfect. Do you have anything any other you mentioned that you did the Twitter posts, I'll have to find it and link it in the show notes, too. But were there any other indicators that you wanted to mention in terms of how you measure your growth?

    Jeremy Enns 12:41

    Yeah, so I would say the the big one, my main one for really all platforms, like podcasting, newsletters, YouTube channels, whatever is month over month growth rate. And so rather than looking at, and I think this makes it, it's a lot easier to compare it to other shows, because one show, you know, it's so hard to to with different niches and everything like that, once you're getting 10,000 downloads an episode versus another getting 1000, or 200, or whatever it is, like, they might all be equally successful in their niche, because maybe that 10,000 downloads per episode show has a potential audience of you know, 100 million people, whereas the one with 200 per episode, maybe there's only 1000 people in the world, and you've captured a fifth of the total potential audience. And so I think, month over month growth rate gets that it kind of evens out when you're looking at, you know, other shows and seeing, like, oh, how much am I growing over last month. And so I think that that's a more useful kind of metric to track. And that kind of gives you a sense of like, momentum and the trend. And usually what I've seen from tracking a lot of different shows from my clients and students and my own stuff, is, it feels like between five and 10%, if you're having a five to 10%, month over month growth rate that you're kind of averaging, and it's gonna fluctuate, someone's, you'll get up like 25%, you'll get a big influx, someone's you might, you know, go down and lose people. But if you're averaging in that kind of five to 10% range over the course of several months, or a year, like that's a really healthy place to be, and it's a sign that like, okay, the show is growing. And I think it's something like if you grow at 5% month over month, you'll double your show every year, and then 10% will triple your show every year. And so it kind of is also helpful to say like, Okay, well, this is where I can expect to be if I continue doing what I'm doing. And the other thing that I use that for is if I you know, I entered this in a spreadsheet every month. And if I see that, like, you know, a couple months in a row, I have been at, you know, 8% and all of a sudden, I'm down to four, three, or 2% or something like that. I'm kind of like, oh, something's not working as well as it used to, like, it's time to start doing something differently and figuring out like, what, what isn't working? What can I drop? What can I add on? What do I need to tweak? And so that I think more than just download numbers that can inform some of your strategy because you can kind of see like, Okay, what I'm doing is working and I just need to continue, or, you know, something has changed and it's not working and I need to start looking at something else.

    Sara Whittaker 14:48

    Yes, so much good stuff there. I know people will really appreciate hearing that kind of that five to 10% metric to look at because I mean podcast stats can be so tricky to measure because every show I was so different. And like you mentioned, the size of your potential audience is another really important thing to look at. And I also think that you know, especially once you've hit that year mark, even six months, six months, a year, two years, looking at your year growth to like, if we're in January 2023, looked back at last January, where were you to kind of make up for maybe, you know, because sometimes month to month, you can kind of be up and down a little bit. Do you tend I'm always curious in terms of download trends, I know in in the education space, at least with the people that I work with, we tend to see downloads skyrocket during the summer because their audience is most of them are off of work. And they're really, they just have some more time on their hands. And then like, November and December, things really kind of start to go down. Because that's kind of a time of year where teachers are like, super burnt out and people are away for the holidays. Do you see any of those kinds of trends? Or is it just kind of so different for every niche?

    Jeremy Enns 16:01

    It does seem like it's different for every niche. I know, I've seen more commonly the actually the opposite from your, your niche that you're in, in education where the summers often slower, but I think it depends so much on the type of show because I think there's some shows, and it depends on the type of listener to like, I think if you have people who are, well maybe if you're going on a road trip with your family, you're not gonna listen to your normal shows if you're listening to something like educational for yourself, but you might listen to more entertaining style shows and binge through them while on a road trip. So like some shows, I think go up in that way when people have more time. And are you know driving or traveling or whatever it is. But yeah, it does seem like there's a few lows in the year like Thanksgivings. Always just like tanks, like for everyone is what I've seen. And I think the holidays are usually not great as well. But I think there's also something to be said for like, if if you are creating somebody's like actual favorite show, like they're gonna catch up on that whenever. So maybe you have a low but then there's like a boost after that. Of course, not everybody in your audience, your show is going to be their favorite. So a lot of those people just won't catch up. But it's also been interesting to notice this past year, it really felt like a lot of creators were anticipating that and just taking breaks themselves over the holidays and kind of recognizing like, okay, I get lower downloads anyways, I'm not gonna stress myself out, I need a break in order to like, you know, maintain my energy and excitement about this. And I think that's like a really healthy development.

    Sara Whittaker 17:23

    Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree. I mean, if you're gonna take a break, and if you need a break, take it and the holidays is a great time to do that, for sure. Or to re air some, some popular episodes or things like that. Okay, so if we are at this place where we aren't seeing much growth, what, like, what are those key things to look at? Where should we start?

    Jeremy Enns 17:45

    Yeah, I think the the first biggest thing, and this is, I think, something that hasn't always been this way in podcasting. Like, if you started your show five years ago, probably you got a lot of organic growth, because there was way less competition. If you've started in the past year, or two or three, you know, I've never had that fortune, unfortunately for you. But I think that now essentially, like what is a fantastic measure of your potential ability for growth is just how much time you're actually spending on what I think of as growth oriented tasks. And so a lot of people, I do like a post every week in my community, where I'll ask like, what are your growth oriented goals and maintenance oriented goals is how I think about them. And I always have to tell people, especially when they're like, new to the community, new to the course. And they're kind of like posting Well, I'm publishing my episode this week. And it's kind of like, no, no, no, like publishing content, creating content, creating a podcast, at least, is not a growth oriented goal, that is not something that actually will lead to growth, like that's the foundation that you need. That's the thing you're trying to grow. But just putting out episodes will in no way, get them in front of more people. And so that's one of those things where I think a lot of people, you know, and I think we're all guilty of this at the start, where we think like, well, it takes so much effort just to create a good episode and put it out there that, you know, you get to the end of that, and then you're immediately on to creating the next week's one. And there's just no actual space in there to spend any time on anything that is growth oriented. And so that, you know, that could be there many different things you mentioned SEO before is something that is, you know, part of this series that you're working on, like that's a growth oriented task where, you know, putting work into platforms or content that is intended to be discovered. And so maybe that's creating tick tock videos or you know, posting platform native content on Twitter, or Instagram or, you know, wherever your platform is, that's not like episode promotional content. It's like something that will give people value on that platform and give them a reason to kind of continue down the rabbit hole. Those are all things that are more growth oriented tasks, but they're above and beyond the actual kind of content creation side of things. So I think as one metric like that, I'd say that's the biggest thing to look at. If you're not growing. It's like, well, how much time am I actually spending on things that would potentially allow me to grow and, you know, probably if you're honest day, it might not be that much. It might be like, you know, five to 10% of the total time that goes into your podcast is growth oriented. And maybe that's, that might even be generous for some people. And I know, you know, I usually say like you, you've got to, like, try over time, it's not an immediate thing, but like, get to the point where you're, like 30 to 50% of your time is on growth. And the rest of that is on content creation. And that, again, is something that like, you just need to develop muscle memory over, you know, one to two years of life, where it just becomes second nature to actually create a good episode. And you're not dedicating that kind of both the time and the mental energy to content creation, you can free up that brainpower to put it towards growth and other things.

    Sara Whittaker 20:30

    Yeah, that's great. And I think for people who are, who are in that kind of week to week, hustle of like, you're never ahead in terms of just your content creation, even like you are week to week creating an episode, then that's where your mental energy is going. That's where your time is going. And then like you said, you don't really have that space to focus on those growth oriented tasks. So I try to tell people to be ahead, at least if it's a few weeks ahead in terms of your actual creation of your episodes. So then you do have that space, both time and mental space to be able to focus on more of the promotion in the marketing. So would you consider shownotes? On your website? Is that what you would consider a growth oriented task? Or would that be part of the original content creation?

    Jeremy Enns 21:19

    Yeah, I would think that would be more of the original content creation, depending on how you do it. Like if you're really creating SEO optimized posts that are like, you know, really good articles that somebody would, you know, seek that out, find that on Google. And actually, like, this is like, the ironic thing with so much of podcast growth is that the way most discoverable content is not actually pushing people to your podcast, it's more like endearing you to the people who just discovered you. And so probably the most valuable blog post is not one that the whole goal of it is to get people to listen to your podcasts is to give them value on the page. And this is one of these, it's like this weird paradox of like podcasts marketing, where like the things that will get you the most growth, it's more you have to extend your like timeframe around it's like not like just running to get to listen right now. It's like, How can I create something good, and give people a good impression of me right now, so that they want to come back for more, and three months from now, they listen to my podcast. And you know, that's, it's frustrating to like, feel like you're putting it off there. But once you get this pipeline of people, then you get three months in, and all of a sudden now there's a daily new stream of people who discovered you three months ago, and who are just now making the transition to the podcast. So you kind of have to like there's some delayed gratification there with social media with, you know, blog posts, SEO, all this kind of stuff that you have to kind of play the long game with podcasting, for sure.

    Sara Whittaker 22:34

    Yeah, absolutely. I started my I started this podcast in October 2021. And I've always really tried to, like do the keyword research and things like that before creating the episodes. And I'm like, just now in the past couple months, like really starting to see, you know, I get that alert from Google that tells me this many people will have been to your website and visited this page, and they found you through Google, like I'm finally starting to kind of see where that traffic is coming from. So yeah, it takes time. But it's worth it if you can get in the groove of doing all of that. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the marketing side. How first of all, can you like, is there a difference in your eyes between promoting your podcast and the actual term mark, like a marketing strategy? How do you define those things?

    Jeremy Enns 23:24

    I'm so glad you asked that question. Because yes, I think like when most in I think this is getting more nuanced in podcasting now, but because there wasn't really a need for marketing until the past couple of years. I think the podcast industry is just kind of behind the times in marketing savviness. And so I think for a long time, like marketing and promotion have just been kind of the same thing or thought of as the same thing. When really, I think of like promotion as a part of the larger, you know, under the larger umbrella of marketing. And marketing is just, there's, there's so many things that go into that. And, like, you can also think about, if you know, I mentioned most people listen to this, they have a business as well, like podcasts is marketing for your business. So there's like the side of the podcasts, marketing strategy that is conversion oriented, of getting people to buy whatever it is, we're getting them to sign up to your email list, or whatever your kind of goal next step from the podcast is. And then there's the kind of growth side of things with like getting more people into the podcast. And so I think promotion is more related to like getting, it's directly related to the podcast and getting people to like, click through to, you know, either the show itself or an individual episode. And so I think that's, you know, a part of marketing that is valuable, but it's certainly I would say it's a very small part of marketing that, to be honest, I don't think probably most people have experience with this. If you are you know, I would I would guess if you're posting your episodes on social media or your your newsletter, whatever it is, but you're not getting many click throughs there and so, I mean, I think if you have the bandwidth promotions, great, but I think there's way more effective but again, this like kind of longer tail approach to marketing that you're actually going to get more or exposure and attention by doing things like podcasts guesting or collaborations where maybe it's just getting awareness right now. But it's going to build into people who are now in your ecosystem and who are kind of like circling closer and closer to your podcast, your course your service, whatever it is that you offer. And so I think, yeah, it's helpful to think about, you know, these different kind of aspects of marketing promotion is one of those. But there's a whole lot else that's out there, too.

    Sara Whittaker 25:25

    Yeah. Oh, my gosh, definitely. Especially, I mean, most of most of the listeners, I would say, of this podcast are definitely on Instagram and very active on Instagram. And it is important to think about that, like you're doing your promotion of your newest episode on Instagram. Well, what are like, what is the percentage of people, if any, are they actually clicking on your episode and listening to it in that moment? Probably not. Because, you know, Instagram is for scrolling and, you know, filling up that white space in our days. And so I think it's important, and we obviously want to be talking about your show, but you can't rely on that as your strategy for growth. Yeah, just,

    Jeremy Enns 26:10

    I think about like social media as a whole. Essentially, there's like, there's probably more types of marketing to this. But there's these two kind of historical camps of marketing. There's direct response marketing, which is highly trackable. That's like Google ads, Facebook ads, you can see every single action anyone takes and you can see, like, oh, I spent this much money, I got this many clicks, or this many downloads, or whatever it is. So that would be more direct response marketing. And then there's brand marketing, which is like what, you know, Superbowl ads, things that you just like, put something out there. It's billboards, there's no way to possibly track radio ads, TV ads, all this kind of stuff, you have no idea, you know, a brand spends this much money, they get their message out there. And they can maybe see like, well, this many people saw they like were tuned in at that time, but they have no idea if that led to any sales. And so you're kind of just like putting out there and hoping. And I think that like, it feels like that's a worst type of marketing in some ways. Because why wouldn't you want to track if you can, but I think they actually work really well together. And like, Who can deny that Coca Cola is marketing works like just being everywhere, like, we buy Coke, because like we see them, we're aware of them. They we get reminders every single day on all these obscure places. And like, that plays a role. And then the next time we see like, when there is like a promotion at the grocery store, and they've got this product placement and just the perfect place. It's like, oh, yeah, cool, great. And you grab it, you add it to your cart. And so I think that's, that's what I think more about social media is just kind of like awareness building, we shouldn't really hope to get clicks or expect that we're going to get clicks back from our posts, which to me is a relief, because it doesn't happen anyway. So might as well might not, you know, get our hopes up for it on yourself. Yeah, it's kind of like we just want to like keep, make people aware that like, okay, the podcast exists, it's here for you when you want it, here's some of the valuable things and over a three and six month period or whatever, hopefully, if we're showing that they're reminding people that exist, the time is going to come. And maybe that's through a different channel, maybe it's through our newsletter, where now they aren't in just scrolling mode, and they're like, oh, yeah, I've been meaning to listen to the show. I'm just about to run out the door. Now I'm going to download it before I go. So it's yeah, if there's this, like, I kind of think about a lot of especially podcasts marketing, a lot of marketing as a whole, there's this kind of like faith aspect of you just need to kind of like put it out there. And like believe that like, okay, eventually this is going to pay off. I'm not going to know when it's gonna happen, but I'm just gonna keep doing the work. And people are going to find it if I'm consistent with it.

    Sara Whittaker 28:21

    Yes, yes. And that makes me think of even like, if you're, if you have a new lead magnet that you're promoting, and a podcast episode, it's so important to also be promoting that lead magnet on social media, on your email, in your email newsletter and things like that. Because very similar situation, if somebody's listening to a podcast, they're probably doing other things while they're listening to you. So maybe they are super interested in that lead magnet that you're that you're talking about. But they're gonna forget about it in two seconds. But if they see it in that newsletter that they read every week as well, oh, that's another time that they're seeing it and then maybe they're gonna click on it and download it. So just like, like you said, being in all of these different places and getting more eyes on you, it all kind of just works together. And yes, you have to have faith to the podcast gods in the market. Now, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole here. But you mentioned briefly, when you were talking about the different kinds of marketing Facebook ads. Do you see many people have success with running Facebook ads to a podcast episode like a show notes page on their website?

    Jeremy Enns 29:28

    I have rarely and I think there's an opportunity there if you you would need to like actually understand Facebook ads. And one of the things that I think is was helpful for me to understand as I started experimenting with Facebook ads, Facebook ads is not a platform where you just necessarily or if you're gonna get the most out of it, like just throw money at it and immediately get results like good Facebook ads professionals and like one of one of my friends who's in a mastermind with me, he's a Facebook ads expert and sold a Facebook ads agency. Like he says every time it's like yeah, it's about dialing it in over a period of like three to six months. is where you're able to like whittle it down and narrow it down and get your cost down. And so I think, if I were to approach Facebook ads for a podcast, maybe if there was a very timely specific episode, I might promote that, probably, I would actually promote the show as a whole and just like continually hone down that audience until you can really optimize your costs. That said, I know some people who used to have more success with Facebook and the cost of just going up. So probably it's, you know, nice dependent on Facebook as well. But it doesn't seem like it is as effective as it might have used to be. That said, if you enjoy marketing experiments, I would definitely try it. You can do $2 a day, $3 a day, something like that. And you can kind of find out and test it.

    Sara Whittaker 30:39

    Yeah, thank you. Okay, I heard you talk about some, you kind of mentioned some different other possibly more effective marketing strategies, but like, as a whole, what, what would be an example of an effective marketing strategy for your podcast?

    Jeremy Enns 30:55

    Yeah, so I, this was really over the past six months or something, I've kind of like, finally clarified this kind of framework that I realized I've been kind of doing for myself, but it wasn't really super crystallized. But essentially, I boiled it down to what I call the IRS framework, which is it's kind of cheeky, you know, as a podcasting related, but so that it's every at first I was kind of like as this is this to like, a gimmicky or something, but then people were like, Oh, it sticks. So well. And I was like, Okay, well, I guess I'll lean into it. So essentially, the outlines these four categories of marketing that make up your marketing system. And what I realized, most people struggle with, when it comes to marketing is it's just this big, amorphous blob that marketing like, what does that even mean? Like, it's so big, and we think of, you know, we think of promotion, or we think of Facebook ads, or we think of all these different things that are marketing, when actually, it's, you know, fairly kind of structured kind of idea. And so, the four categories of marketing that I've outlined are exposure, attraction, retention, and then the S is $1. Sign. And when I spell it out, it makes more sense. But for revenue, monetization, whatever, you know, however, you think about that for your business. And so essentially, we need all four of these things for a marketing strategy to work. And most people, including myself, certainly in the past, kind of really overemphasize one, or maybe two and ignore all the others. And so with podcasting, usually, with most creators, it's the retention categories, like the content creation, and so that you're creating great content that if you get people in there sticking around, they're building that trust with you, but you don't have anything else in place a lot of times, and so, especially for podcasting, there's no discoverability built in. And so usually what I find is the exposure category is the one that is severely lacking. And so that's where we need to go out and like do SEO work guest on other shows, you know, do collaborations with other creators build like platform native content that is, you know, more discoverable than just promoting our episodes. And so we need to think about, okay, well, where are we getting attention to get them back to the show. So that's the exposure category, the attraction category is all about, like, how compelling the show and the packaging actually is. And so this is something that a lot of shows need work with, as well. And so this can be, you know, the cover, the website, the title, all of these things that signal to a potential listener, that your show is going to be worth their time that it's legitimate, that you're trustworthy, that they're not going to regret spending that 30 or 60 minutes once they click on your show versus, you know, any of the other millions of shows that are out there. And so that's another thing that messaging comes into play design, all these things that the nice thing about that category is like once you do that the work is kind of done, maybe you need to update it every couple years or something as trends change. But like, a lot of times there's are some big gaps there. So that's exposure attraction, retention, we talked about as the show itself. And then there is, you know, the revenue, the monetization, whatever that is for you. And that's going to be more unique, depending on what your show structure is, if you have products, or services, or sponsorships or whatever that is, but these are kind of the four categories of marketing. And it's really like, once you get all four of these in a really good place, like good things are gonna happen. But until you have those four, like, even if you're just missing one of those, you're gonna have this gap where things just aren't quite working as well as they should. Because listeners kind of take this progression along, I almost think of it like a bridge kind of where like they start first you need to get exposure. But if you are missing that attraction piece, even if you have a great show, they're not clicking play. So they're never gonna find out how great your show is. If they you know, you get exposure and you attract them to your show, but the show isn't good, well, then they're not coming back. And so you kind of need to get all four of these these elements in place. And I actually am just developing a kind of self self serve audit, where you can answer a bunch of questions and get the your kind of results spat out and a bunch of recommendations on what you should do next. So I will have that ready by the time this goes live. And we'll include in the show notes.

    Sara Whittaker 34:41

    Yeah, that would be great. That would be a very helpful resource for people and I love how you've laid that out. It all makes so much sense and I definitely see that people focus tend to focus on one thing over the other. I'm a huge one of my favorite things. People are probably so tired of hearing music But podcasts guesting in my opinion is just one of the very best ways that you can grow your listenership and, and honestly a way that you can see a pretty quick ROI too. Because if you're paying attention if you're paying attention to, I mean, if you're on the right shows, paying attention the day that that episode goes live, okay? Are you getting more Instagram followers? Are you seeing your download increase in your downloads that day, you can almost see when it's a really good fit that direct impact on on your show and on your business, which is so cool to see. So I love that you've created that structure there. And I'll spell all of that out in the show notes too. And definitely give me the link to that audit, because that sounds like a great resource as well. Now, I know, some people are probably listening, and I've got kind of a mix. Some people in here are doing their show on their own. They are, you know, doing the whole production by themselves, the marketing the promotion by themselves. And then there are other people who have a team that helps them. So do you think that having an effective marketing strategy for your podcast? Is it possible to do this on your own?

    Jeremy Enns 36:11

    Yeah, I mean, I so when it comes to things to outsource, like I marketing would probably be the last thing I would outsource, I think especially, especially because if marketing is the first thing you're outsourcing, you're probably not spending that much money on it, it probably you know, the first thing that we're outsourcing, we're spending like $15 An hour or $20 an hour or $25 an hour to like get a BA to help us with something, you're not going to get anyone good to do do effective marketing for you at that rate. And yeah, so much about like, one of the things that especially with podcasting, maybe more than any other medium is like people are coming for you. And I think that if the marketing doesn't sound like you, like you were just such an important, there is no better person who can do marketing than you. There's this whole like, you know, I certainly came from this background where like marketing was a dirty word, as a musician and as a creator. And until recently, I kind of like reframed it and heard somebody say this, like marketing is just building relationships. And I was like, Oh, I can do that. Like, I like talking to people who like the same things I like, and that is marketing, essentially. And so I think if we're able to shift our mindset to that, it's like, oh, I actually want to do this, there are ways that I can do this, that feel good to me, that might even be fun, that are just about connecting with people that I like and who, you know, I want to talk about all these things I'm talking about on the podcast, like if you can do that, like that's marketing, and it's just finding those people starting those conversations, whether it's one to one, or it's one too many. And so I think thinking about it that way, marketing starts to feel a lot more approachable and a lot more energizing. And I think that then it's something that you when you realize that you're like, Well, I can't hire someone to build a relationship on my behalf. Like that doesn't really work that well. And so I think if you are going to outsource anything, I would look to production and shownotes and admin and all these things. There's a bunch of like tools I know there's Allah to is helps automate a lot of the production side of things. There's this other new AI enabled shownotes writing tool called cap show, there's another couple out there as well. And so like you know, I have a call with the founder next week, actually, but I have gone down I've seriously gone down the AI writing rabbit hole myself recently, just testing it out. And I was blown away by you know, it doesn't sound personal and warm like a human. But the quality of the writing is just like insane. Like it. It looks, it sounds like it was written by a human. So I actually if anybody wants to check it out, I did this like project over the holidays. It's called soloist podcast advice, the website soloist podcast advice.com. And it's, I think I've got like 75 Plus AI written articles on podcast marketing stuff. And so you can kind of see, like, cool how it sounds, and maybe it'll open up some ideas for how you might be able to use it for your own marketing and kind of creative business.

    Sara Whittaker 38:47

    I've been hearing about AI everywhere. And I don't know why. But I've always had this like, I don't know, block to it. Like I've been hesitant to try it because like, I don't know, even with D script. I don't use it. You may I don't know if you use that at all, but like the idea of a I don't know, it's just crazy to me. And I'm like, can I really do as good of a job. But I've been hearing really great things about some different AI copywriting platforms. So I'll have to check that out. Sorry, I kind of cut you off there.

    Jeremy Enns 39:14

    No, yeah, that all good. I had the exact same block. And I think partly I was like, Well, what do I use this for? Like, and so I actually needed to create a project where I was like, Oh, I'm just gonna do a project just to like, see what it can do. And once I had that focus, and I was like, Okay, well, now I can actually play with it. And yeah, it's been quite well, I don't know, I would say it's the game changer for my own content. I don't see myself really using it other than there's stupid simple things like I hate. I'll write a blog post. I hate writing the headings. I just like, I get blocked over that. And I can just like say in notion I use notion now they've rolled out their AI so I can select all the text and just say, like, create headings for this, and it'll create a bunch of headings. I'm like, Oh, good. Like, I don't have to do that anymore.

    Sara Whittaker 39:54

    It's cool. Yeah, yeah, I have to try that out. And just to kind of comment on, on what you spoke about with thinking about marketing as relationships, I am totally with you there i, for me personally, the way that I've seen the most growth in my business is it starts with a podcast interview, and then you form these relationships. And then you're invited to speak at a virtual Summit. And it's just this domino effect. And then you meet new people at this summit, and you get on their podcast, and it's just a really powerful relationships are just, I think, everything in business. And it's fun, it's fun to meet people online from all over the world, just like we're doing right now.

    Jeremy Enns 40:37

    Yeah, I think one of the things with relationships and with marketing as a whole, there's and this kind of relate, I've talked about it a few times already with is kind of like just taking your foot off the gas a little bit with all of these things and expecting results immediately. There's this blog post I came across last year by Mark Manson, I think it's called, I can't remember the title is, but it's something about like, why all the best things in life are backwards. And essentially, like all the things we value most like love and trust, and acceptance and freedom, all these things, the more you try to get them, the less you're able to actually achieve them. And so it's actually by like, letting go of them by like, you try to get someone to love you or to trust you, they're not going to do that they're gonna see through that and feels like you're trying too hard. And they actually trust you less or love you less. And so I think marketing success is the same thing where it's like, we have to kind of and building relationships, like, yeah, we want to, you know, plant the seeds connect with people, but not like immediately go for, like, how can you help me right now, it's kind of like, over the next two years, like, if we develop a rapport, and maybe we're gonna have you know, you just every six months, we're going to check in on each other. And then maybe it's like, actually, you know, every time we talk, we like really have a great time we move it up to once a month, and all of a sudden, you realize, oh, there's all these opportunities. And like, there are life changing things that can come from relationships, but they are not going to happen immediately. It might happen three years from now, or five years from now, or 10 years from now. But you're not going to get there unless you start just cultivating relationships now. And so that's something that I kind of like, I think everybody starts out a bit you feel desperate at the start when you're like, Oh, where am I going to make my this month's rent or whatever it is. And once you get to a point where you're like, Okay, I'm, I'm okay, now I can actually really start investing in the long term, that's when good things really start to happen.

    Sara Whittaker 42:10

    Yes, absolutely. I know, like, I'm a service provider. And in the beginning of starting my business, of course, I'm learning so much and connecting with other service providers who were in that same position as me, you know, that was years ago. And now here we are today, if I need somebody to make me a sales page, I now have this great contact that I met when we were both starting out. But now my business is at a point where I can pay her to do this. And I just think it's, it's so cool. So relationships are, are the place to start for sure. Now, kind of the last piece of all of this is time, which people are very limited on. So how much time do you think people should be spending marketing their show?

    Jeremy Enns 42:59

    Yeah, so I kind of talked before about percentages, I think that's a good way to think about it, like, not everybody has a ton of time to devote to it, I think when it comes to marketing. And so I mentioned before that, you know, 30 to 50% is a pretty, it is a pretty like aspirational place to get to but I think it's also doable for most people. I have heard some people, there's a guy named Joe Pulizzi. He's like the godfather of content marketing from you know, a decade ago, he's still very active. Now, I've heard him recently recommend spending 90% of your time on marketing. And I was like, That is like, I was like, I don't know if I can actually, you know, I don't do that. And I don't know how I would do that. Especially if you create really in depth content that takes many hours a week to create, like, there's just, it's impossible. So if you can do that great Oh, power to you, you're gonna grow way faster. I think 30 to 50% is much more attainable. But I think like, what I would do, and I started doing this where on my calendar, I'll just like scheduling a block every week, or throughout the week. And like this will be just growth time. And so it's like, I know what task I'm working on. Maybe that's writing SEO content, maybe that's doing outreach to potential collaborators, maybe that's reading Twitter threads, and it's just like scheduled in my calendar, where it's like, okay, this, I if I want to prioritize growing my show, I need to spend time on it. And if I don't spend time on it, I can't really complain that it's not growing. And so I think that like just thinking about it that way. And there's this, I don't know if you've ever heard of the Eisenhower matrix, it's this kind of like urgent versus important. And so there's four quadrants. And I can't remember exactly what all of them are. But there's, I guess there's the urgency on the one axis and the importance on the other. And so we of course, tend to prioritize things that are both urgent and important. Because you know, the baby's crying, there's a fire in the kitchen, whatever it is like that you need to attend to right now. But we don't tend to prioritize things that are important but not urgent. And I think of growth is one of those things where like there is never any deadline for you to grow your podcast. And when we think about that, it's like oh, yeah, that's probably like what a problem We all have good intentions, we have started the week started the year, we're like, Oh, I'm gonna do all these things to grow my podcast this year. And then we look back at the end of the year, like, those just all got crowded out by other stuff. And some of it was important. Some of it wasn't. And I think like, the dangerous one is the things that are urgent but not important. And so a lot of things that fall into that category might be just like, you know, random pick your brain calls or things like that, where it's like, yeah, yeah, we do them, they feel good, there might be some benefit to it. But it's not the ultimate most important thing for us. And so I think, for me, that was really helpful just realizing, like, Oh, I am going to be seduced into, you know, spending my time on all these things that are neglecting the things that I've said are actually more important, but aren't urgent. And then I think you can start to like, once you accept that you can start to build some guardrails around that and say, like, Okay, well, what do I need to do to keep myself honest on this, and for me, that's been calendar, blocking, things like that, and saying, like, okay, if I'm going to spend like three hours a week on growth oriented tasks, like, I'm going to put one hour a day, three times a week, or three hours in one block, whatever that is. And I think if you start just cracking that and saying, like, Okay, well, if I spend, you know, one hour a week on growth oriented tasks, what is that doing for me? Do I need more? Am I seeing results from this, maybe going up to two hours or three hours, and as more time opens up, maybe you get up to five or 10 hours, and then you're like, really going to be growing. So I think, you know, it's going to be different for every person, depending on your bandwidth. But like, start with something, start with something manageable, that you can actually do walk it off. And like commit to that I think part of that will also be like knowing what tasks are going to be in that category for you. But we've talked about a number today. So hopefully, that gives you some ideas.

    Sara Whittaker 46:30

    Yes, we love numbers. And I think that it seems so simple, but putting something on your calendar is making it a priority. And it's necessary, if you are going to actually take the time to put your time and energy towards these growth tasks and setting some goals for yourself. Like even if it's okay, my goal is to reach out to three podcasters a month with a goal of being on one podcast a month, like that's a great starting point. And that can make a big impact on your business. But kind of building those kinds of tasks into your habits and routines is what will make a difference. And it will give you the ability to see okay, I put these efforts in with the intention of growing my show, have they paid off? What do I need to change, rather than just kind of waiting for people to discover you?

    Jeremy Enns 47:21

    Yeah, well, I think the other thing is just to wrap that up is like, once you, for me, that's when marketing felt started feeling less scary and more attainable is when you actually said like, I made this goal, I put this process in place to do it, and it worked. And all of a sudden you feel some sense of control and like not mastery, but like competence over it. And that you can actually the actions that you do have a result. Whereas I think most of us, we like never experienced that. And so we're even more scared of marketing. And so I think if you can do that, and I think like you said goals, where it's like things that are 100% within your control, you can't control how many shows you're going to guest on but you can control how many shows you reach out to. And so that's a much better goal to set. And you do that enough times your pitches will improve. And you'll get accepted on more shows. And you're going to get the results.

    Sara Whittaker 48:02

    Yes, perfect. So that's a great way to kind of wrap everything up. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared with us today, Jeremy. And before we go, can you just kind of let people know where they can find you online? What kind of things you offer if they're interested in working with you?

    Jeremy Enns 48:18

    Yeah, so my main offer is called podcast Marketing Academy. And that's essentially the you know, everything I know about podcast marketing and growth I put into that there's a self paced course, we do twice a year cohort based courses that are live six week programs. And that's much those are typically for people who are less than 1000 downloads an episode this, who those are geared towards. And then there's also a community aspect of that. So a few different offerings there. And then other than that, probably the best place to follow me is my newsletter, scrappy podcasting. And so that I'm sure will be in the show notes. I know you said most people on Instagram, I'm minimally active. They're more active on Twitter and LinkedIn, but you can find me on both of those platforms as well.

    Sara Whittaker 48:57

    Perfect. Yes, we will put all of those links in the show notes. And just thank you so much. This has been great. And I know people are gonna love it. So thank you for being here.

    Jeremy Enns 49:06

    Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Sara.

    Sara Whittaker 49:08

    Before we sign off, let's check out this week's shout out. Each week I'm sharing a voice message from a fellow podcaster and they could be your next podcast guest after listening. If you'd like to collaborate with them. You can reach out using the information in the show notes from today's episode. If you're interested in being featured head to podcasting for educators.com/voice Happy collaborating

    Khristen Massic 49:35

    Hey, it's Khristen from the secondary teacher Podcast, the podcast for middle and high school teachers juggling multiple preps where we talked about getting strategies to reduce the overwhelm so they don't have to choose between being an effective teacher and prioritizing important relationships. If you are looking for a podcast guest I would love to come on and talk about getting more done during the school day specifically during your prep. and how to really figure out how to plan for different subjects and get that done e efficiently. I am a former high school engineering teacher, middle school assistant principal and teacher coach, you can reach me on IG at Khristen Massic, k h r i s t e n m a s s i c. Grab my info in Sara's show notes.

    Sara Whittaker 50:25

    Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.

More about Podcasting for Educators:

Podcasting for Educators is the podcast for TpT authors and other online educators. It's a show that will help you get your podcast in front of those who need it most - teachers, counselors, literacy specialists, SLPs, parents, and more! Each week, Sara Whittaker and her guests will share top tips and actionable strategies that you will need in order to launch, manage, and grow your podcast. You’ll learn how to leverage your show to build long-lasting relationships with your audience and promote your TpT resources, courses, and memberships, all while providing valuable and accessible content!

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