You’ve decided to start a podcast to promote your brand or service. Don’t just record episodes and throw them into the Internet void though. Use these podcast marketing tips to scale quickly.

Episode Transcript

Rogelio Rodriguez (00:00):

You've decided to start a podcast to promote your brand or service. Don't just record episodes and throw them into the internet void. Use these podcast marketing tips to help scale quickly.

Rogelio Rodriguez (00:21):

Hello and welcome to Inbound Academy, brought to you by Rizen. I'm your once a month host, Rogelio Rodriguez. Jeff is on the other side of the microphone for this episode because we're talking podcasts. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff Lambert (00:38):

Thank you. It's great to be here, I guess. I mean, at least on the other side of the microphone, so this is a nice switch. We've only done this twice I think, right?

Rogelio Rodriguez (00:50):

I'm not sure. I'm getting used to it, so maybe more than twice.

Jeff Lambert (00:54):

Yeah, we got to do this more often. I like you on the other side asking the questions.

Rogelio Rodriguez (00:57):

I like asking questions. With that, I have the first question ready for you.

Jeff Lambert (01:03):

All right.

Rogelio Rodriguez (01:03):

Tell us about your background in podcasting. How well do you know the industry?

Jeff Lambert (01:07):

Yeah. I've been podcasting full-time, doing my own shows, at least under my own trademark, for two and a half years now. I started with podcasting about seven years ago, actually. We got into it really early on. I was a high school teacher and I taught video production and journalism, and we got into podcasting really early because we thought it was a cool medium.

Jeff Lambert (01:29):

Not only in journalism did we play around with podcasting, I used to offer the option to students who wanted to do their projects using audio as a medium instead of video because not everybody likes to be in front of a camera. This is a nice option. It was a nice option, I should say, for kids who wanted to do things that way.

Jeff Lambert (01:47):

I ended up transferring to a different industry now and I'm in this world, I guess you could say. I started ... When we moved down from a different state, we just hit the reset button on life, and moved across the country. I started a podcast on baseball history, taking my profession plus a strong interest area, turned it into a podcast. Now, I have a full-time podcast called Rounders: A History of Baseball in America. If we have any baseball fans listening, check it out.

Rogelio Rodriguez (02:18):

Nice.

Jeff Lambert (02:18):

And that's doing really well. It's something I still put out on a weekly basis. And then, of course, we have Inbound Academy here, which we do as well, that I've been heading up for Rizen. And then, I have five different podcasts that I've helped start for friends, coworkers, contacts in some type of networking sphere. It's become a medium that I really like. Mom always said I had a face for radio, so I guess it worked out that way.

Rogelio Rodriguez (02:47):

That's funny. I mean, it sounds like a great and broad experience. I think for us, it really applies to marketing, but I want to hear it from your words. Why should brands consider starting a podcast?

Jeff Lambert (03:06):

Yeah. At first glance, I think a lot of people they're still learning about podcast. What is this medium? I have the radio in my car. Why do I need podcasts? Isn't that same thing? It's not. Podcasting is just growing, just at an exponential rate. I think businesses need to look at that and say, "This is another way that we can reach audience members," because it's a very consumer-friendly medium.

Jeff Lambert (03:28):

If you think about it, it's on demand. You don't have to tune in when somebody puts something out. It's there for you when you're ready for it. All you have to do is go find it, subscribe to it, and there it is. We're not making people tune in at 8:00 AM to listen to this episode, and if you miss it, it's gone. If they subscribe to the channel, it's going to be sitting there waiting to listen to whenever they want. They can do five minutes in the morning, they can listen on the commute, they can stop and do it in the afternoon. It's very friendly in that way.

Jeff Lambert (03:57):

Just to give you some stats Rod, that I think backs up why businesses should look into starting a podcast. Nielsen did a study in 2018. 60 million homes regularly listened to podcasts. According to their results, 60 million homes on a regular basis. Now, if you go back to 2010, that's just a decade ago, only 10% of the population said that they listened to podcasts. It's growing, on average, about five percent a year, that people are becoming regular podcast listeners.

Jeff Lambert (04:27):

I mean, just in terms of growth and use rate, that's really encouraging to see those numbers. I don't see it stopping anytime soon either because everyone is getting involved with podcasts now. That shouldn't prevent you from getting interested in it either. It's just it's a platform that people are really taking to, I think.

Jeff Lambert (04:43):

Yeah. Another stat I'd point out to you, people that listen to podcasts, I think are people that businesses want to speak to because they are people that have money to spend, they tend to be willing to share, I guess you could say, about their experiences.

Jeff Lambert (05:02):

Just to give you some stats on that again, the same Nielsen study found that over 75% of regular podcast listeners, those are people that listen to a podcast on a daily basis, once a day, they're college educated for the most part, they tend to have incomes over $75,000 a year.

Rogelio Rodriguez (05:19):

Wow.

Jeff Lambert (05:19):

And there's a solid demographic mix there too. You're not just speaking to white males over 50 or something like that. It's pretty diverse. 44% of podcast listeners, in terms of daily podcast listeners are female, and 36% of that mix are non-white.

Rogelio Rodriguez (05:39):

Wow.

Jeff Lambert (05:39):

Yeah. We have a very diverse group of people.

Rogelio Rodriguez (05:43):

Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say, it sounds like a diverse group. I'm wary of new things, just because sometimes they don't stick around. I know podcast has been around over a decade, but I guess this is when it's starting to really take off.

Jeff Lambert (06:01):

Yeah.

Rogelio Rodriguez (06:03):

In terms of stickiness, what do you think? Is it here to stay?

Jeff Lambert (06:09):

Oh, yeah. I think so. I mean, every major brand is putting out a podcast now. If you have a personality that you follow, they're starting a podcast. There's so much room for growth too because just like we talk about influencers and people following influencers, they want to talk and listen to things that they're interested in. And you could be Conan O'Brien starting a podcast, and that's great, and people can follow him in a new format, again that's on their time, and that's great.

Jeff Lambert (06:38):

If you are into woodcarving ducks or something like that, there's probably a podcast for you and there may only be 500 of you that tune in, but that one person who started the podcast on woodworking ducks is getting that audience. They are talking about the needs that they have and they've created a community around it. That's going to help that person, whether they own a business, or they want to sell products, or become an influencer in that industry.

Jeff Lambert (07:06):

Try not to think about skill. It's about the medium. The medium you can use to be able to capture an audience and speak to them specifically, no matter how large or small your industry is.

Rogelio Rodriguez (07:19):

And from what you're saying, to me it sounds like they stick around. You have a loyal 500 for those woodworking ducks.

Jeff Lambert (07:30):

Yeah, no, absolutely. That's a good point. Again, going back to another study by Infinite Dial, just looking at this here. 80% of subscribers to a podcast will listen to all or most of every episode you release once they subscribe. Eight out of 10 people are going to listen to everything that you put out after they decide to become a fan or a subscriber of your show. You show me metrics that return rate, whether it's email or video, it doesn't exist.

Rogelio Rodriguez (08:00):

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that's hard. Absolutely. I mean, that's a high percentage. Absolutely.

Jeff Lambert (08:05):

Yep. All in all, it's a good medium to get into, Rod. We can talk about this in another episode because I know we're talking about marketing today, but overall even the cost to start a podcast is not a lot of money to do. I mean, it's not like you're doing a video shoot for a commercial. Getting into podcasting is a relatively inexpensive thing that you can do that can really grow your business or establish yourself in the industry that you are a part of.

Rogelio Rodriguez (08:31):

Sure. Absolutely. No, I understand that. I mean, what's one tip? Just if you want to start a successful podcast, what's one thing that you would give us or one tip?

Jeff Lambert (08:43):

I think the best place to start, you obviously want to put in the time figuring out the technical aspects of starting a podcast. And again, I think that's a topic that we'll cover at a future date.

Jeff Lambert (08:54):

When we're talking about making sure your podcast is successful listener-wise, the best place to start, you have to start off with figuring out who your specific audience is. Who are you going to target? There's a fine art to this because I think a lot of podcasts, they make the mistake of trying to speak to too broad of an audience, and that's going to dilute your message. I think that's important to realize.

Jeff Lambert (09:17):

You want an audience that's going to genuinely care about what you're sharing. And if you're speaking to too broad of a group, you're not going to be able to really key in on what their needs are, what their wants are, what their pain points are. You want to build that passion and loyalty, and you can't do that if it's too broad of a base.

Rogelio Rodriguez (09:35):

Right.

Jeff Lambert (09:36):

I guess just to give you an example of that, just a rough one. If you are a snowboarding brand, let's say you manufacture snowboards. If you make a podcast about snowboard culture, snowboard life, that's something you can speak to authoritatively. Your audience is probably going to be people that snowboard.

Jeff Lambert (09:56):

Now, if a snowboard company decided to create a podcast about winter sports, that's in my opinion, that's too broad of an audience to try and catch because there's other people in winter sports that are not going to care about snowboard culture. You're going to speaking too broadly about topics too, where you're going to lose your snowboard base, and be like, "Why am I going to listen to this podcast? They're talking about the luge. I don't care about the luge."

Rogelio Rodriguez (10:20):

Right.

Jeff Lambert (10:21):

And you go back to snowboarding. I think that you have to really key in on who your audience is and speak to them.

Rogelio Rodriguez (10:29):

Okay. No, that's great. Great advice. I think starting from a very targeted point. What tips do you have for targeting an audience? What would you do?

Jeff Lambert (10:40):

Yeah, it's a good question. If you're getting down to specifics, and we've talked about this before on the podcast, for people in the marketing world, we talk about buyer personas a lot. I think that's a great place to start. You want to be very, very intentional about making sure that you look at the research and find out this is the audience that I am overseeing, this is the audience that I'm connecting to.

Jeff Lambert (11:04):

Do your research, create buyer personas, make sure you have a stat driven picture of who you're going after. And then, find out more about that customer as much as you can, and speak to their interests and their needs. Go in with a plan, basically. Do your research. Find out what you can. I think buyer personas is the best way to do that.

Rogelio Rodriguez (11:24):

Really. I'm looking for another tip for launching as a custom podcast. Anything else?

Jeff Lambert (11:29):

Yep. We talked about specializing your audience, narrowing it down to a group. Another really good one is get guests on your show, Rod. That's so important. I know we try and do that. We're trying to do that more with Inbound Academy, but if you're just starting out and it's just you every episode, unless you're already very popular and you have a following, you need to create authority around what you're talking about, and you need to give people a reason to tune in.

Jeff Lambert (11:59):

By bringing guests on your show, essentially what you're doing is you are saying, "Look, my audience is going to hear from somebody besides me who has a reason or authority in the industry that I'm talking about." And in turn, that person that you had on your show is going to share the episode with their followers and their fans, and those people are going to tune into your podcast. They might like what you're doing and subscribe themselves. It's a double whammy that you're getting. You're including your followers and you're getting new followers by featuring someone on the show.

Jeff Lambert (12:36):

Just circling back, by bringing guests on the show, again, you're doubling your audience count, but you're also creating that authority a persona that you want. "I'm talking about snowboarding and I'm going to bring snowboarders on the show who can talk about their experience." I think that's powerful. Have people on your show. Bring in the guests.

Rogelio Rodriguez (12:56):

Great point. I think that's a natural lead to my next question which is really, how do you make the most out of an interview? What does it look like to do it successfully?

Jeff Lambert (13:07):

Yeah, there's an art to it, definitely. There's nothing worse than a horrible interview on a podcast. There's things you can do to just make it go more smoothly. The most obvious thing is just give the questions upfront to the person that's going to be on the show and make sure they know what's coming. I mean, you don't have to give them a line by line breakdown, but just giving them some general questions. "Look, we're going to talk to you about your background in the industry. We're going to talk to you about what your experience was. We're going to talk to you about current projects that you're working on."

Jeff Lambert (13:38):

Give them an outline. Give them a chance to really prepare for the interview. I think that helps them make sure that they're hitting the points that they want to hit and it eliminates that awkward points in the podcast where you have dead silence, or they're like, "I don't know what to say." Or they give you a one word answer. It just helps the flow of your podcast and to make sure that you're actually giving valuable content to the listener. You're not leaving it up to chance.

Jeff Lambert (14:04):

I guess to dovetail on that, Rod. You do, in addition to the questions, you want to give some best practices tips to your interviewers. Not everybody has done an episode, an audio recording before in this way, so they may not understand. Make sure you're in a small enclosed space when you're doing it, so there's not a lot of sound echo. Make sure that you try and clear the house of other people, so you don't have any distractions while you're recording. Make sure that you use a certain type of microphone, whether it's the one on your phone or whether you have an external one. You want to really make sure that you're minimizing the chances of things going wrong in the interview. Like now.

Rogelio Rodriguez (14:48):

Sure. No, I totally understand.

Jeff Lambert (14:51):

This is my son. He just came in to say hi. This is the perfect example. But yeah, we're doing the best we can with the quarantine lockdown, right?

Rogelio Rodriguez (14:59):

No, that's fantastic. I think real-life example that everybody can good realize, "Hey look, it happens."

Jeff Lambert (15:07):

Yeah. There's my wife too. Say hi. You're live.

Speaker 3 (15:11):

I know.

Rogelio Rodriguez (15:13):

You are, on Facebook.

Speaker 3 (15:14):

Have you seen my license, Jeff? My license?

Jeff Lambert (15:17):

What?

Speaker 3 (15:18):

Sorry, Rod.

Rogelio Rodriguez (15:21):

It's okay. This is excellent. I mean, if she signed the release, then we can definitely leave her on.

Speaker 3 (15:27):

Daddy has to work.

Jeff Lambert (15:29):

Okay. Let's keep going.

Speaker 3 (15:32):

Sorry.

Rogelio Rodriguez (15:33):

Yeah.

Jeff Lambert (15:33):

Yeah. I guess talking to that, now that we've gone through a real life example. We planned that out completely, right, Rod?

Rogelio Rodriguez (15:40):

Yes.

Jeff Lambert (15:42):

Overall, yeah, you want it to be authentic. You don't want it to be like you're talking to a robot, so that's important. But at the same time, you don't want it to be just chaos without any organized information. Providing questions up front and giving them best practices, that just helps make it go more smoothly. That's my point.

Rogelio Rodriguez (15:59):

Got it. Sure. No, that makes total sense. That makes total sense. And then really, I think what I'd like to get to next, I mean, I alluded to it. I know that we were talking briefly about it. Myself as a owner of a business, I may be concerned some legal issues that may come up. What do you think about having them sign a release before they come on the podcast?

Jeff Lambert (16:32):

Yeah. I didn't do that when I started my first podcast and I've never had a situation where I got into any legal issues. But the more I've read on the topic, I think it's just a good idea. Do it for right from the start so people know what to expect if they work with you on your podcast. I mean, there's solid reasoning why you should have them sign a release. A release, basically, it ensures that you have all the rights you need to do what you want with the content that you're recording.

Jeff Lambert (17:02):

Just to give I guess a really loose example of that, if you have someone on the show, and they give you some great content, and you publish the content, and let's say they pass away a couple of years from now, there's the chance that their estate might come and say, "Look, we don't want you using their name, or their likeness, or have them record it on your show. We want to own the rights to all of their media appearances."

Rogelio Rodriguez (17:26):

Sure.

Jeff Lambert (17:26):

Now, if you have a release for that, you can say, "Look, I have a signed release. They agreed that we own the content to the show," and that gives you legal backing. But if you don't have that, then you're going to lose that episode. You're going to lose that nugget that you may have gotten.

Rogelio Rodriguez (17:40):

Sure.

Jeff Lambert (17:40):

Will it happen every time? No. But could it happen? Yeah. You want to plan for those unexpected things that will occur.

Rogelio Rodriguez (17:49):

Sure.

Jeff Lambert (17:50):

Have a form, have them sign it. I mean, send them a PDF beforehand. Have them write it if they come to the studio in person, have them sign it before you start. It's just such a simple thing to do. And we actually have a template on Rizen's website that I'll put up, that we could offer our listeners. You can just go and download the template, change the company name, and a few of the details, and boom, you've got a press release right there.

Rogelio Rodriguez (18:13):

Nice. Awesome. That's fantastic. All right. What's the last tip. I mean, anything else that's important? Any marketing tips?

Jeff Lambert (18:26):

Yeah, I guess we should talk about the podcast in general. We talked about how to prepare for it. We talked about focusing on the audience. You really should think about your podcasts in terms of length. I think it's a really good tip right off the bat, don't be too long winded with your podcast episodes. The shorter, the better in a lot of ways. I mean, it's a good thing if your episode is a bite-sized piece of information.

Jeff Lambert (18:54):

I mean, if you look at Joe Rogan or ... Oh, I can't remember his name now. He does some great interviews out of his garage. Anyways, you have these big hitters in the podcast industry. They'll go 90 minutes or two hours, but they had to earn that over a long period of time. Their base wants to hear in depth information from them.

Jeff Lambert (19:15):

For most other people, when you're first starting, they're just getting to know you, they're looking for actionable information, and that's it. They don't want to hear you talk about what your dog did last weekend for 20 minutes, right?

Rogelio Rodriguez (19:26):

Sure.

Jeff Lambert (19:27):

Keep it short, keep it sweet. I think that's really important. You want it to be able to be actionable content for your listeners. And if your listeners want to hear more from you, eventually they're going to tell you. You could make that decision six months down the road, "Hey, maybe we will go from 20 minutes to 30 minutes and add this feature because this is what our audience wants."

Rogelio Rodriguez (19:45):

Sure. Very similar to what we did. I mean, we started with a daily podcast. I think the intensity of producing that was high, but also I think a lot of information and at least the feedback that I received, was that, "Hey, I would like you to go a little deeper into this subject." That's the only way to do that, is by going a little bit longer, what we're doing now.

Jeff Lambert (20:09):

Yeah. And we've made our target 15 to 30 minutes, depending on what the topic is. We're never going to run completely overboard with the topics and I think that's good.

Rogelio Rodriguez (20:22):

Yep, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Jeff for joining us today. Thank you everybody for listening and joining in. You can expect a new episode every week, always filled with advice that will help you grow your business. And remember, if you're looking for an experience friendly results driven team to help you, check us out by going to gorizen.com. Or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and TikTok by searching the user name RizenInbound, all one word. And remember, you could also help us reach new people by leaving a review on the podcast app of your choice. Thank you always for your support and we'll see you on the next episode.