Chad Franzen: 07:06
Okay. Awesome. So an issue in your industry today we’re going to talk about promoting a podcast. There are so many podcasts out there. So promotion may look different or their goals may look different depending on the podcast and the person.
Let’s talk about channels that actually move the needle early in terms of putting your podcast out there.
John Corcoran: 07:27
Yeah. So people I get this question a lot. How do I promote my podcast? And I think of it in different ways. I think of it in terms of like what you should do before you launch a podcast, what you should do once you’ve launched a podcast, different ways that you can think about positioning your podcast so that it’s, you know, set up in the right way in order to make it easier for you to promote it.
So there’s kind of a number of different pieces that I would, I would think about there before you even launch the podcast, if you’re doing this for a business, a B2B business, which is what we focus on. A lot of times people honestly overoptimize around promotion. They worry too much about it and a lot of times it’s paralysis analysis. They spend all day worrying about that thing instead of just putting one foot in front of the other and just going finding ten clients of yours and going and interviewing them, having a great conversation with them and, you know, creating a podcast around that. So I think that that is, I wouldn’t worry too much about it beforehand.
The best thing to do is to get to live, to launch your podcast. And then after you’ve done that, then you can worry about, you know, promoting it some more and some different strategies that work with that. But let’s also talk for a moment about positioning around the podcast. So oftentimes people position the podcast too narrowly. You know, Jeremy’s a classic example.
He started his podcast. He was really fascinated with productivity and thought, oh, I’m going to start a podcast about productivity. And he did ten episodes and then he was bored with it. And so fortunately, he called it Inspired Insider. He hadn’t called it, you know, the Productivity Ninja or something like that.
And he’d have to like, you know, reposition the whole show. Right. So a lot of times people, I think they are narrow, they make things too narrow. Now, if you are all about, let’s say you serve architects and engineers, that’s all you’ve ever done. That’s all you want to do.
Then it’s okay to position it in that framing. But if you are like many businesses, which is that you kind of go with the flow, you have different types of clients, then you might not want to frame it too narrowly. Because that might create problems for you if you need to reposition it at some point in the future. But if you frame it just around like that one thing that you’re focused on that one vertical, then it can help with promotion because, you know, other podcasts, other industry events, other conferences will know who you are and know that you’re clearly they are clearly for you. You are clearly for them.
It’s a good match. And so that can lead to better strategic partnerships in the future.
Chad Franzen: 10:02
A potential way to grow your podcast would be through guest-driven growth. How do you kind of choose guests strategically to accelerate distribution and not just content quality?
John Corcoran: 10:12
Well, so first of all, a lot of people think that, oh, if I just get the biggest guest possible, then that will help grow my podcast. And I haven’t found that to be the case. I’ve had lots of really big name podcast guests. And you know, it’s not like they’re going to tweet it out and then all of a sudden you’re going to get tons and tons of downloads. In fact, I haven’t found that to be the case at all, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that piece of it.
Now, what can be really good is focusing on the same medium, so going and being a guest on other podcasts can be a great one. So using your podcast to invite other podcasters whose shows you’d like to be on onto your show, then have a conversation around, hey, I’d love to come onto your show as well. I have these topics that I can talk about. I’ve noticed that you haven’t covered them in depth in a recent episode. I’d love to come on and talk about that.
So having them on to your show, then having them reciprocate has you going on their show. It’s a win-win situation all around. You’re promoting their show. They’re promoting your show. And it’s native to the technology to the same platform that people want.
Because people who listen to podcasts like to listen to podcasts, people who are on X, they want to follow other people on X, people who are on TikTok, they want to stay on TikTok. So it’s harder to get people from one platform to another platform. So, you know, you could have the world’s biggest TikTok star in the world and, you know, you could go and he could, they could have you on their TikTok channel. But that’s not necessarily going to materialize in the form of podcast listeners. So you want to stay with the same medium because people, the listeners tend to consume on the same medium.
Chad Franzen: 11:47
Okay. Good stuff. What about maybe partnerships and cross-promotion?
John Corcoran: 11:52
I love this.
Chad Franzen: 11:54
Partnership. Models. How do you approach communities? Things like that.
John Corcoran: 11:57
Yeah, I love this I love this, you know, so I try to approach it from a perspective of how I can deliver value to this community. So let’s go back to the architects and engineer model again. So if you serve architects and engineers, I’m sure you know that there are conferences, there are events, there are membership organizations, there are associations that serve that community. And so there’s a lot of ways that you can use the podcast to have some kind of strategic partnership with them. As you know, the industry association has an upcoming conference.
And so we’re going to promote that to, you know, maybe when it gets more advanced, they invite you down and you record an episode live at their show and boom, you’ve got an audience of 300, 1000 people. Whatever it is in the audience that are sitting there that are learning about your show. So look for other players in the industry that you want to be known in, that you want to focus in, that have listeners that have people that are potential clients or referral partners, and then look for ways in which you can collaborate with them.
Chad Franzen: 13:03
And then maybe people think, okay, I just need to increase my listenership. I’m just going to run ads. What do you think about that and paid promotion?
John Corcoran: 13:13
Yeah, I think sometimes people think that this is going to be an easy button solution. And there are ways that you can do that. But I would not do this early on. I would wait for a little while because it’s probably not going to be the best solution. You have to optimize for other things.
Like if you get a bunch of eyeballs, you get a bunch of listening to your show, but you don’t do a good job in the program. In the show of explaining who you are, what you do, what your website is, which a lot of people don’t. Honestly, don’t do a good job of this, but if you don’t explain those things, then you’re you’re unlikely to get those those people who may show up and listen to a portion of your episode, but you’re unlikely to get those people following through, connecting with you, or reaching out to you about, you know, your services that your company provides. So you have to make sure that you have got those pieces in place first before you go and run ads, or else it’ll just be a vanity play. You’ll get downloads, but you’ll be frustrated after a few months.
Chad Franzen: 14:08
So you are in the podcast industry. You’ve had a podcast for probably over a decade, I’m guessing during that time. How high of a priority is promotion for you personally?
John Corcoran: 14:23
You know, I don’t think that’s a great question. So it’s a priority, but I’m not actively involved in it. If I was, I wouldn’t do it because if I had to, after every episode goes live, go and like, you know, put it on Twitter and put it on Facebook or, you know, put, you know, create little video snippets, short little videos and put them upload them to LinkedIn. I’d get very frustrated very fast. In fact, the problem was that in the early days, I didn’t do any of that stuff because I didn’t like doing those things.
So now obviously we have a company that does those things, put those pieces in place for us. So I still do a lot of that promotion. If someone looks on my LinkedIn, they see all these video snippets. But I focus on this, the conversation, which is what I enjoy and do. I do enjoy doing that part.
Chad Franzen: 15:11
So what about so when you see maybe the measurables in terms of the promotions, even though you’re not an active part of it, how bothered or overjoyed are you by, you know, whether it’s highly listened to or not?
John Corcoran: 15:25
I don’t even check my download numbers. You know, I say to people all the time that I would do it even if no one was listening. Because I enjoy talking to people. I enjoy the ability to have an author of a book that I read that I admired come on my show, or a friend who wrote a book or is launching a new business, and I can help them in some way by having them on the show. So I really value those pieces of it.
And I also know that people get frustrated because, you know, no matter how many downloads you get, it’s not enough, you know? And even if you get a ton of downloads, oftentimes it’s it’s it doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to get a ton of revenue. In fact, I just talked to someone a couple of weeks ago that had somehow gotten 150,000 subscribers or something like that on YouTube, which is a phenomenal number, but it was making single-digit thousands of dollars per year on the podcast. So it was just paltry. And that’s why we were talking because he was frustrated with that.
So I don’t worry about optimizing for getting 150,000 YouTube subscribers. If at some point I do, that’s great, I’ll be happy with that. But it’s not the thing that I’m really focused on.
Chad Franzen: 16:39
Okay. Great stuff. Hey, always great to talk to you, John. Thanks so much.
John Corcoran: 16:44
Great chat. Thank you so much.
Chad Franzen: 16:45
So long, everybody. Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.