Breaking the Silos: Smarter Podcast Growth Through Collaboration

Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.

[00:00:00] Jeff Umbro: Hey, folks. Welcome to Podcast Perspectives. My name is Jeff Umbro. This webinar was recorded with Podglomerate's SVP of Marketing and Audience Development, Joni Deutsch, as well as Podchaser's Director of Strategy and Growth, Trent Anderson. If you're not familiar with Podchaser, it's an amazing database for podcasters.

It'll give you contact info, demographic data, audience size info. It'll show you a bunch of podcasts that may be similar to what you're trying to promote. Um, really great tool. We've been using it for years. Could not recommend it more. We actually had their CEO, Bradley Davis, on the show a few years ago.

You can check that out in the Podcast Perspectives feed. Podchaser was acquired a few years ago by Acast, and they have really been driving a data-forward approach to figure out podcast marketing, research, editorial, et cetera. This webinar is called Breaking the Silos: Smarter Podcast Growth through Collaboration, and it will talk about all of the ways in which you can grow your show through collaboration with partners as opposed to competition.

You can hear how to view podcast marketing through a collaborative and not competitive lens. You can receive proven cross-promotion tactics that are easy, accessible, and free, and you can learn ways to identify potential podcast collaborators with comparable content and audience. So frequently, podcasters think that if you promote somebody's show, then you're gonna lose a listener because they're gonna listen to that show as opposed to yours.

That is simply not true. The average podcast listener is listening to seven different podcasts a month. This is a way in which you can become one of the seven in somebody's queue. Anyway, I will stop belaboring the point. Tune into this webinar with Joni and Trent. Let us know what you think, and thank you so much for your time

[00:01:45] Trent Anderson: Thanks everybody for joining myself and Joni today.

I am Trent. I'm the head of growth and strategy here at Podchaser. What is Podchaser? Why are we here? We've been working with The Podglomerate for a few years now, and Podchaser, you could really think of as like the intelligence engine for the podcast industry. What does that mean? We collect data on almost every show that's ever been published.

There's about six million shows within our data set to date, and we collect some interesting information and data on these podcasts, including reach on an episode level as well as a monthly reach level, audience insights and demographics, and then also contacts. So when it comes to finding collaboration opportunities with fellow podcasters, a lot of production agencies, a lot of marketing agencies, PR agencies, et cetera, as well as some podcast networks, are leveraging our data to find these mutually beneficial collaboration opportunities.

So I'm very excited to be here with Joni, big fan of her work, as well as The Podglomerate. Um, so I know we are in store for a lot of learning today.

[00:02:48] Joni Deutsch: Well, thanks, Trent. I appreciate it. And likewise, Podchaser has been a wonderful collaborator. We use it, if not daily, perhaps even hourly here at my company, at the team.

For those who may not be aware of what The Podglomerate is, it's an award-winning podcast services firm. We've been around for nearly a decade at this point. We focus on production for podcasts, as well as marketing and audience growth for podcasts, and monetization ad sales. And we've represented a wide range of shows in different genres, different sectors, nonprofit, for-profit, public media, Ivy League institutions, Fortune 100 companies, Microsoft, Mayo Clinic, and the like.

So all that to say is we have great experience knowing how to grow shows, whether net new launches or even preexisting shows that have been around for quite some time. And we do that through a few different vehicles and tactics, which we'll dive into further on this call because while it seems like podcast growth is a mountain to climb in this day and age- I'll tell you that they're easy wins that you can do, and easy wins where, while we'd love to have your business and for you to hire my company, um, you could do these ad hoc on your own with little to no cost.

 a little bit about me. I'm Joni Deutsch. I'm based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm the Senior Vice President for Marketing and Audience Development at The Podglomerate. Been here for about four-ish years, but I've had a 15-year career at large across media from NPR to member stations and NPR Music.

 and I've been able to leverage my skills at the combination, the intersection of editorial, audio and marketing and audience development to help a wide variety of shows and outlets grow their properties in a podcast manner. So excited to share what I know with you today. And again, if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the Zoom chat.

We will have time at the end of today's webinar to answer your questions live. But let's start with the, the elephant in the room, right? Probably one of the reasons why you're here today is that you're likely finding that there is a problem with podcast marketing. The problem could be that you're finding it to be too competitive because, yes, there are millions of shows out there right now.

Um, maybe your problem is that there seems to be a cost barrier, a cost barrier whether it comes to buying ads to promote your show in external properties or even hiring a podcast marketing, you know, PR specialist like The Podglomerate to promote your show on your behalf. And/or your problem being there's only just so many hours in a day, right?

You're probably producing your show or editing the show or hosting the show or guest booking show or doing any number of things. And then on top of that, you then have to figure out this discovery vehicle to get your show out there and to grow the audience and cultivate a community. And that's effectively a full-time gig in and of itself.

So I don't fault you for feeling like this is a problem that can't be solved. But what I want to say is that the goal of today's presentation t- is to share with you that you are not alone in feeling this way. Again, there's so many podcasters out there, and I actually like to think of this as the counterintuitive truth that your competitors, the people you feel like are bigger in the space or having more opportunities in the space or have figured it out, they actually should be your collaborators.

And they would appreciate it being able to work with you in so many ways, from editorial content and collaborating on that to cross-promotional marketing tactics where you each promote each other. There is an overlap between their audience and your audience or their content and your content. And so that is the greatest untapped resource is instead of thinking this as a silo for yourself to grow outwards, it's actually finding those concentric circles and bringing them together, so that way audience grows naturally and sprouts from it.

So you're here to grow your podcast today. Me and Trent are here to help. We're gonna talk through a few different things. We're gonna talk through tactics to be able to grow your show because there are a wide variety of them. Specifically, we're gonna talk through the different elements for your growth.

So there's website and app, there's email newsletter, there's social media, and I would include YouTube in that mix for social media right now. Technically, it's also a podcast app platform in its own right. Um, print, broadcast, and live events, professional and personal networks, and of course, just the way that you are utilizing your podcast RSS feed.

There is natural ways for you to use that and leverage it to grow your show and collaborate with others and cross-promote So we're gonna break down the sections of collaboration. Um, the first is just the general note of cross-promotional strategies. So at The Podglomerate, we do a wide variety of tactics or employ a wide variety of tactics.

Um, some of that is pitching to the podcast apps for those great features you see on Apple and Spotify's, like, carousel banners. Um, but one of the bigger tactics we do that we see meaningful growth with is the idea of a cross-promo. It's the idea that if you have a podcast or a property, um, you are leveraging that to promote an external item, and in exchange, that external property is going to use their vehicle to promote you, right?

Um, so there's a wide variety of terms for this and different techniques. Um, and I should say there is also a wide variety of platforms that you can use to promote a cross-promo or help with it. Um, attribution tracking is a major component in that. Attribution tracking being that you can take a pixel, um, effectively, let's say a cookie, right, like a website cookie, and place that into a promo in an external feed, and that will then let you see the data from that promotion of your show in that external feed.

So in essence, if, let's say, you're Freakonomics Radio and you wanna promote your show and NPR's Up First, by giving Up First a pixel that can run in their feed when it's promoting Freakonomics Radio, you can see the conversion rate, the number of audience, the number of devices that are listening to that spot promoting Freakonomics Radio and then coming over to Freakonomics Radio's feed to see then becoming a listener, es- essentially of Freakonomics Radio at live, um, at large.

Um, it costs a little bit of money to do this if you really wanna get into the data of attribution tracking. But if you wanna explore it further, Megaphone has that capability built in now that it's acquired Chartable. Magellan and Swap FM are also other alternatives for it. The point being, you can make cross-promos as big and as complicated and as robust as you'd like with data analysis or as small and as laid-back and as easy to manage as possible.

Um, the basic tenets of cross-promos or different ideas are, one, a simple cross-promo swap. So if you're exchanging thirty to sixty-second scripts or pre-produced audio with an external entity, and you each then place those respective spots in the beginning of your show around pre-roll, in the middle of your show around the mid-roll, or at the end of the show around the credits, which would be post-roll.

There's also something called a feed drop or a feed swap. Essentially, you take an episode of... from your feed of your podcast and put it into an external feed. In exchange, they do the same with giving you an episode of their content to put into your feed. Um, and ideally If you're the host of the podcast, you would record a quick intro in front of this external podcast episode to say, "Hey, folks.

Joni here today. We have a special episode from our friends at Vox's Today Explained. It's a really great episode. It ties in perfectly to our recent conversation on this topic. We hope you enjoy it. And again, check out Vox's Today Explained if you wanna hear even more content like this." That sort of intro script will not only allow your audience to know that this isn't stranger danger , that there's not just a random thing invading their feed, um, but it actually, it re- creates a recommendation, an authentic one, for your audience, which is the same way that they would, hopefully, on the other side of it, experience your podcast in another feed, and then come over and become part of your audience by proxy.

There's also the guest swap idea. So if you're the host of a show, how comfortable are you with bringing on the host of another podcast as a guest on your show? So if I wanna interview Ira Glass on my show and Ira Glass wanted to bring me on or have me contribute to a piece on This American Life. Um, again, mileage may vary.

Maybe your show is not structured to be to have guests on it. Maybe there's an alternative way that you could do this. Um, and then just generally digital media swaps, right? So I mentioned that you may have other vehicles at your disposal beyond your RSS podcast feed. Maybe you have an email newsletter.

Maybe you have a popular social media feed on LinkedIn or IG. Um, maybe you have a live event series, radio broadcast, television. Whatever you have available, you could leverage that. So instead of it being, um, an audio-to-audio cross-promo with RSS feeds involved, maybe you leverage your newsletter to promote an external podcast.

And in exchange, they are going to promote your brand-new podcast with no audience in their feed. Um, again, you can be as creative as you want with this idea. But again, the idea is that you're leveraging what you have available to you For the benefit of growing your show and leveraging that for another show.

Other collaborative marketing tactics that do work, and again, these are based off things that we do at The Podglomerate that we've seen great conversion rates around. I say conversion rates because, again, we are using attribution platforms and tracking to see the true growth numbers, the benchmarks for success with data.

Um, but again, if you wanna use attribution tracking, would just encourage you to look at the pricing for that. But just generally tactics you can employ, um, for joint content creation, if you're open to it, there's a few things you could do. There's the idea of co-creation, so you working with another organization.

Maybe they're based in your region, your state, they're in the same sector as yours. Um, and talking together as if maybe you just create a episode together or a miniseries together. Um, that way you are splitting the cost of the production. You are both going to be leveraging your respective promotional vehicles to get the word out about it.

And then hopefully the audience will continue to carry on with the two individual sources even after that co-production concludes. Um, you could look at doing something that's equivalent to a crossover episode. For those that maybe came from cable television viewing days, you may remember those on television where you had the special crossover episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Angel.

 and it was made for like a very special time where, you know, you can enjoy both but then still split off to hear, read, or watch both at a different time. Same thing here. So let's say in the case of three podcasts that I'm a fan of that focus on the media. One called Channels, one called Mixed Signals, one called Rebooting.

They-- The three of them recently collaborated on a split where they recorded one long episode that had the hosts of all three shows on it. They then split that one collaborative episode into their respective feeds. So part one went into Rebooting's feed. Part two of that interview went into the Mixed Signals feed.

Part three went into the Channels feed. And from what they told me, I don't represent them, but from what I heard from their respective teams, that episode, that collaborative episode, did cause a boost in downloads for them. So consider that. Instead of doing a co-created episode between two entities, maybe you do one where you split the content up.

And so that way encourages the audience to go to one feed to hear one part of it. And then that audience wants to listen to the second part or third part, they have to do that with the other feeds too You can also look at co-hosting live events. So if you wanna do a webinar recording like what we're doing today with Podchaser or an in-person recording somewhere.

Um, with festival season coming up, podcast festivals and live events, good idea to pitch yourself for a live taping of your podcast at them and use it as an opportunity to co-host it with someone else. Um, you could also look into the idea of joining a podcast network or collaborative or collective.

There's a number of them out there. Um, some of them do have, um, share structures where you can get a little bit of money out of them because of the ad sales. But Radiotopia, Maximum Fun, Potluck Podcast Collective, the Hub & Spoke Audio Collective are all great examples of this. If you're able to join these networks, um, and there's also bigger networks, right?

SiriusXM's, the Odysseys of the world. Then you're able to, hopefully in the contract, utilize their remnant inventory and their in-house structure to promote your show as part of their larger family of shows. What I've seen done and what we've encouraged to do with our clients and networks is to see about like, post-roll inventory.

So for the month of May, could all shows in that network promote one specific show related to a topic or theme for that month? So for instance, if you're a spooky show and if you're in a network, I would encourage you to ask the network, "Hey, I have a spooky show. Halloween is coming up in October.

Could all the shows and network promote my show in their post-roll inventory?" And you'll probably see audience growth from that. And then otherwise, cross-linking. So beyond the audio feed, just being able to, you know share content in other vehicles. So if you can put your podcast link within a newsletter in a mention there or in a social media shout-out.

 YouTube now has more of a collaborative community structure. So if you wanna use their, um, the section on YouTube Studio to be able to promote another person on YouTube or your own podcast, that's another way you could cross-link or do shout-outs to encourage activity So let's talk about how to optimize the idea of a new listener or a new fan of your show to a loyal listener, a loyal subscriber, a follower.

Because there is a pipeline, there is a funnel, and you want to try to encourage that and convert that first-timer into a long-timer. Um, so the first thing I would just say is that whenever you are looking to a cross-promotional activity, you wanna make sure that it's rooted in what is the new listener going to encounter for the very first time.

It's effectively your elevator pitch. So your first impression matters in how you're positioning yourself to a new audience and what they're going to be hearing or experiencing that's representative of who you are and why they should invest time to become a new listener and potentially a loyal listener to you.

So I want you to optimize what you'd consider your start here episode or even updating your podcast trailer. Basically, if someone comes to your podcast feed for the first time and looks at, you know, um, the book cover of your podcast feed and what's the first thing they're gonna see? Are they gonna see a trailer that was from four years ago that actually isn't representative of who you are today?

Are they going to see, um, a recent episode of yours that actually is gonna be relevant to what their interests are? So just be sure that if you need to update your podcast trailer or add a new trailer to your feed, go ahead and do that before you engage in cross-promotions. Um, and also just make sure that the copy that you're using for your cross-promotions is going to be specific to whatever vehicle it's gonna be in.

So if I'm representing a, um, climate podcast, then I'd wanna make sure that, you know, it's talking about the topics that are relevant for Earth Day or for whatever podcast or vehicle it's gonna be in, so that audience will understand why is this relevant, why are they seeing this pop up in their favorite newsletter or their favorite podcast feed.

Um, and if you're doing a feed drop or a feed swap, which is again that idea of exchanging episodes across two feeds, you wanna be strategic about timing it. Um, strategic in a few ways. One, when is it gonna be dropping? So is it gonna be dropping, um, after a season concludes of a show? Is it gonna be launching around a specific holiday?

Um, going back to that climate example, we represent a few different climate podcasts. So Earth Day coming up next week, we have already facilitated a few different feed drops that are gonna be taking place next week aligned to that holiday because people are gonna be very interested in the topic. They wanna hear more content and stories around it.

That's when they're gonna be introduced to our podcast and our client show that's on that topic. Um, so little things that you can think about. Um, I want you to think about how someone is going to be, um, you know, basically coming over to your show. So I want you to think through if you're gonna be having someone discover you through a collaboration, give them acknowledgement that you recognize that they probably came over from a different source, and you appreciate them, and you're welcoming them with open arms.

So that could be as simple as in an episode coming up after your cross-promo has occurred, do a very quick shout-out in the episode audio saying, "Hey, I just wanna give a special shout-out to the, you know, our new listeners that are coming over that encountered us or w- were introduced to us from partner show, partner newsletter.

 thank you for joining us. We hope you like the show. Make sure you give us a rating or review. Tell us what you've been enjoying." Um, that sort of call-out is really gonna let the listener know, that new time listener, that you recognize them, you're acknowledging them, that they're welcome to this new community that they're first engaging with, and you'll likely see even more engagement from them because of it.

Um, onboarding new listeners. So in addition to updating, like, your podcast trailer to really encompass who you are at this stage of your podcast, think about what is the best way to let a listener know, "Hey, if you're new here, we've created a welcome packet for you to give you a tour of your new podcast house."

 you could do this as simply as going to your podcast app of choice, Spotify is great for this, and you can create a playlist of your favorite episodes. Or you can put it on your website, right? List out with links the five best episodes, the five evergreen episodes, or, you know, welcome to the podcast episodes that are really representative of what you do, why you love them.

And tell your listeners in your audio of your podcast, "Hey, folks. If you're new here, welcome. If you wanna find out our favorite episodes or ones that you should check out to catch you up, go to our website and, or go into the show links today in today's episode and see what we have as part of our podcast playlist."

Um, I want you to also consider just with cross-promotions and collaborations with other shows that you do wanna make sure that the audience is aware of this being a routine, something to put into their diet, so that way it's not just them coming over once. It's them coming over and making it part of their natural routine because they know you're always releasing episodes every Tuesday afternoon or every other Wednesday.

Or it's a seasonal show that's gonna run for 10 episodes every Friday morning, right? So be sure that when you have the welcome mat out and they're in your house, you're letting them know the terms of the house rules, that you're gonna always release episodes on a consistent schedule because trust is built through the reliability and consistency.

So if you want your audience to keep coming back for more, then you need to make sure you let them know. And if you need to make changes to your routine, like, "Hey, folks. We're gonna take a week off for our summer break, but be sure you come back to us starting June 20th, and we'll have new episodes coming on the feed then Go ahead and let them know.

Give them a heads up on it, whether through the audio feed or in social media or email newsletter. And that way, you're not ghosting them because that's not how you build a relationship. And anyone who's been through dating apps knows ghosting is not the best way to do that. Other than that, just continue to value engagement.

So some podcast apps, including Spotify and YouTube, really want to encourage podcast creators to leverage their tools. So polls, Q&A's, the comment section, those are things that you should continue to have call to actions within your podcast audio and scripts. So letting your audience know, "Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode, let us know your favorite topic of conversation, your favorite moment in this, in the chat below."

 continue to add those in. I know it sounds a little silly, and it may take a little while for your audience to actually get into the throes of commenting and engaging with you, but it, it does add up. And it actually will help the algorithm in the podcast app to let it know, oh, this podcast is one I should move up into higher priority for maybe more features in the future All right, so how-- you're probably wondering, "Okay, these are all great tactics, Joni, but how do I actually do them if I don't have the budget or I don't have the bandwidth or I don't have much understanding of podcast marketing?"

And that's okay. That's why I'm here. We're gonna talk through some of the things to do that are very easy tactics. So first off, use platforms that work and that work with you and for you. I'm not expecting you to move all of your podcast workflow into something new. I would just say take very small steps in experimenting with one first and seeing if that helps you.

And then once you're acclimated to it, you can try a different tactic. So for instance, I would encourage you to use a platform that works. A platform that works for us with our marketing efforts and sourcing out collaborators is Podchaser. Um, and again, if no one here has used Podchaser, I'd highly recommend you do so at podchaser.com.

 it basically is acting as a source where, in our case at The Podglomerate, when we want to find other shows that cover the same topic, that have had on a similar guest, that we wanna figure out what their audience growth or their numbers are or an approximation of it, Podchaser provides that to, pr-t- provides that to us, so then we can figure out how we can reach out to that show.

And Podchaser provides us the guest information or the, um, the show information, the contact addresses. So it makes it very easy for us to then reach out for a contact, ask them if they wanna collaborate with us, and the show says yes, and we're off to the races. I want you to start small. Um, so with perhaps a single promo swap, one show that you wanna reach out to and seeing if they'd like to do one cross-promo with you within a certain period of time.

I'm not expecting you to do a massive campaign. Figure out what's one thing you'd start with. Measure the results of it if you can, even if that's simply looking at your hosting platform's audience data and seeing if you see a spike in listens or downloads around the time of a cross-promo running. It can be as simple as that.

And then once you see what's successful, then increase the frequency of it, increase the amount of outreach you do around it, or broaden out the scope of it so you can test out more variables. If you're a business show, then yes, business shows in your category would be great, but maybe also look to other types, other subgenres.

Management shows, leadership shows shows that are about Ivy League schools. I want you to set clear expectations, so the who, what, when, where, why. Um- It'd be great if you had some copy to use, a one-page agreement about what each is providing, what you're providing to the collaborator and what they're providing to you.

It doesn't have to be legal, um, and I say this as someone who's married to a lawyer. But I just want to make sure that you protect yourself. So at the very least, make sure that you're on the same page as your collaborator as to what expectations are, what you each are getting out of it, the, you know, the date that each cross-promo is running, the scripts that are gonna be provided, um, you know, if data can be shared at all.

And then that way, you both have a sense of perspective what you each will be getting out of it. And there's not gonna be any miscommunications. Um, and also, you can work hard but also work smart. So batch your productions, use templates. You don't have to make this a piecemeal thing. Um, once you're getting into the throes of it, you can do one script template, customize that per show you're working with for cross-promos.

And, um, and then once you're in the recording studio, just bang out five of those cross-promo recordings all in one go. That will set you up for the next quarter. So there are easy ways here that you can just optimize the process

[00:26:43] Trent Anderson: Hey, Joni, real quick, can I ask you a, a brief question about timing- Of

[00:26:46] Joni Deutsch: course

[00:26:47] Trent Anderson: of setting up these, these swaps?

[00:26:50] Joni Deutsch: Yeah.

[00:26:50] Trent Anderson: So this is a very common ask that we get on the Podchaser side, but, like, this is gonna be dependent on whether you're doing a guest swap or a feed swap or a feed drop or a cross-promo otherwise. How far in advance should you start planning some of these collaborative opportunities?

[00:27:05] Joni Deutsch: Oh, that's great. I love that question. And, and again, I encourage everyone here, continue asking questions or putting notes in the Zoom chat. We will have a lot of time at the end of this presentation where I, I would love to get in the nitty-gritty of any and all of this. Um, so in the case of The Podglomerate, we sometimes work with shows and clients that are launching, like, months out, or maybe they are an always-on podcast, so they're on right now and we just joined their show for the first time because we're helping them with audience growth.

Knowing when a show is launching is key, or when the show is gonna be releasing an episode or is going to be, um, you know, aligned to a certain date on the calendar, um, that allows us to know, okay, that is the thing we really wanna promote, so let's start working towards that date where the episode will be live in the feed.

And when promotions start running on or after that date, we can call out to that episode in the script. Um, so as an example, I mentioned that we represent a couple climate-related podcasts. We've been working with them since February of this year. Um, we know on the calendar every year Earth Day's gonna be coming up towards the end of April.

This year it's next week, April 23rd, 4th, I believe. So ever since February of our launch work of the show, we started working on establishing cross-promos, feed drops, feed swaps, guest swaps, cross-promo 30, 60-second swaps with shows aligned to climate, sustainability, environment, even food and organic food.

And we started those conversations in February, so that way we had plenty of time to get a lot of them set up so they would all launch in April, and especially around Earth Day, Earth Week. So just know that some people are quicker to respond to you than others when you send them a pitch of, "Hey, I'd like to do a cross-promo with you."

Um, so accounting for that, I would say try to start reaching out four weeks in advance of the ideal date of when your promo would start running. Um, if you wanna do more than that, I'd say four to eight weeks. But minimum I'd say give yourself at least a month, because even after they say yes, you then still have to exchange all the assets on both sides and then record them and then schedule them, and that's gonna take a little bit of time too.

Other things that can help you make your audience growth effective. Um, I alluded to a little bit of this before, but first it's tracking what works, right? So again, if you do a cross-promo like an ad swap, a promo swap, a 360-second swap with another entity, that's great, and you can go into your hosting platform or even go into Apple Podcasts Connect or Spotify for Creators and see a little bump probably, hopefully around that date of when the cross-promo was running in the external feed.

That's great, but that's not necessarily a bump entirely attributable to that one thing. You could have also had that bump from other things happening, like an app feature or an interview you conducted on an external property, or you sharing about in social media or something else. So if you really truly want to know if your cross-promo specifically was the reason why you saw that bump or how much of the bump was attributable to it, then that means that you need to

I would encourage you to look at attribution platforms. So again, Magellan, Podscribe, Podtrack, SwapFM. If you're on Megaphone, this naturally is built into it. Um, and using those pixels and giving them to your external show partners, that way they can put them into their feed when they run their promo in their feed that promotes your show.

Um, aside from AudioPixel attribution, there is also just link attribution. So you all are probably familiar with Bitly or attribution URL links that promote, um, like a podcast page or a website. There are those for podcasts. And some of these podcast attribution platforms, including Magellan, SwapFM, and the like, have those capabilities, and they are specific to podcasts.

So if you click on one and then you click into the podcast app of your choice because of that link- That will mark it as a conversion. And if I'm the show host or the creator, I will then be able to see the clicks on that link, and also if you became a new listener and how many times you listened on your device or to specific episodes.

So it does get into the nitty-gritty for a podcast, which is great. And then you can tell, was it an effective cross-promo, or was it ineffective? And if it was ineffective, then you know that maybe that specific show wasn't the right fit for you. Or maybe at a larger note, maybe that genre or that network wasn't good for you to do a cross-promo with, and you should use your time and efforts elsewhere on different types of shows.

Um, one other thing I'd just say around this section is that, um, quality over quantity. So instead of you pulling your hair out trying to set up 100 different cross-promos for your show, I would rather you be strategic and focus on a few, even just the first one to date, to sh- know what is strategic and what's, um, effective for you before you engage in larger swaths.

Again, if you are full-time doing marketing work, by all means, feel free to focus on the quantity as well as the qual- the quality. Um, my team can do that. But again, as you're starting out, this is a routine just like you brushing your teeth every day. You wanna make it part of the habit of you creating and producing and marketing a show.

Maybe just make it part of your deal of every month or every few weeks you send out a few different podcast app or podcast cross-promo pitches. And from those, hopefully one will be a confirmation you move forward with. Um, and also you wanna make sure the timeline makes sense on both sides. So for instance, um, if you are running a promotion in your feed for two weeks amounting to 10,000 impressions or 10,000 downloads projected, then you wanna make sure that's equitable on their side as well.

Um, so again, reciprocity, you wanna make sure that what you're providing to them and what they're providing to you are basically around the same amount Oh, and actually one more thing. Um, so regarding choosing comparable shows. I know I mentioned Podchaser being a great platform for this. There are a few other ones or a few other sources you could look at.

They're not gonna have as much robust, robust data, so that's just the big qualification here. Podchaser really is excellent at this. Um, but you could look at the podcast app charts or even recommended if you like sections at the bottom of specific show pages. So like for right now, if you go to, um, How I Built This, the podcast on Apple Podcast or on Spotify, if you scroll down to the very bottom of the show page, you'll see there's a little section that's like recommended if you like, with other podcasts that are comparable to How I Built This.

So find a show that you think would be a great cross promo fit for you, and if you want to go down the rabbit hole of what other shows could be in that fit for you to pitch or send notes to, that's a good way to do it. You could also just do a Google search. Type in, um, what are the best podcasts on insert topic here.

You'll find listicles, and within those listicles are probably shows that would align to exactly the topic or content that you make. And of course, you can always just survey your current audience. Ask them, "Hey, folks, we're doing a survey. Tell us what is your favorite show or shows you like to listen to?"

And then that will give you a sense of shows they like to listen to, and if they're your audience, then you reaching out to the shows they mentioned would probably be a good way to grow your audience because of how familiar they are with it All right, so we're getting to the end of the presentation. I wanna address some common questions and fears.

So one is around collaborations. Will you lose listeners to other shows if you commit to cross-promoting other shows in your feed? And what I'll tell you is that data shows that listeners subscribe to multiple shows and listen to multiple shows at the same time. Podcasting is not a monogamous relationship with listeners.

 listeners will listen to a lot of different shows, yours and many others in the same playlist. So just because you are promoting another show does not mean that you are losing your audience to that show. If anything, it is growing their playlist of more shows like yours. So let's take that fear off the table.

Um, second question fear what if my cross-promotional partner has better content? Am I gonna look bad by comparison? Look, we're all different, right? One music show over here is gonna sound different than one music show over there for various reasons. The host personality, the way they produce and, you know, record the content, the type of guests they bring on or type of music they, they focus on, and that's okay.

So even though, you know, we're in a Crayola box of different shades of colors and they are complementary and collaboration's gonna highlight your strengths and maybe things that are different from someone else's or things that make them different from you is okay. Now, I would say that if you feel uncomfortable with promoting something in your feed, lean into that.

Like, why are you feeling uncomfortable? Is it because maybe your production setup It's time to upgrade it. I mean, those are self-reflections that I would encourage you to look at with or without a therapist. Um, but again, if you find that at very least you're comfortable with the content, it aligns with something related to you and your audience, then by all means try it and just see.

Worst-case scenario, it doesn't work out, and you don't have to do it again. Um, another fear is just simply I don't have time for collaboration. You're right. You probably don't. You have a lot of things going on, but if you just simply set a goal, a small goal of one strategic partnership per month or quarter even, that's enough.

I mean, even if you just get that one, that is more than what you did prior to that. And some of these tactics are set and forget it, and they can grow and scale. So if you get a cross-promo up once per quarter but you line them up, you get them all confirmed within the same week, and then you just schedule them out to take place, you don't have to worry about that for months down the line.

And then last question, concern: What if someone takes advantage of me? Um, I'd say start with folks that you are going to trust and ones that maybe you already have pre-existing relationships with to some degree, um, a friend of a friend, if you will, and then build those relationships up and then test out other ones along the way.

If for some reason, you know, you set up a cross-promo with someone and things don't work out for some reason, then at the end of the day, hopefully no money was exchanged, this was completely free. You learned from that experience, and now you can take that into the next relationship you create with a collaborator in the space.

But in my experience, and I have coordinated Thousands and thousands and thousands of cross-promotionals for my team across my clients. I think I've had less than 1% of issues with running cross-promotions or like, bad partners. So for me to say that, I would encourage you all to just consider you are gonna be okay.

It's not the end of the world. So here's your action plan to get, to get started. One, I want you to identify potential partners. You can use Podchaser. You can use Apple Podcasts chart rankings. You can use a good old Google search. However way you do it, find a few podcasts with complementary content and similar audience size.

And I say complementary content be- in a few different ways. Um, you could look at it from the genre you're in. Like a b- you're a business podcast, you wanna look at other business podcasts. You could look at it from you know, maybe just generally audience. So if they're people that are curious, so they like learning about facts, if they like l- learning about history, even if you don't typically cover that on your show, you could still put those kinds of shows in the mix and test drive it and see if it's gonna be effective.

Um, of course, I would encourage you just to listen to maybe one or two episodes of theirs to understand their style and values and if they align with yours because you do wanna just be cognizant. If you're promoting them in your feed, then you're effectively giving them, like, your thumbs up that you recommend them.

Um, and your audience is gonna take that to heart. For the second step of this action plan, I want you to craft your outreach. So basically, what is an email template that quickly says, "Hi, my name's Joni. I host a podcast called X about Y topic, and I'm reaching out because I think we share a similar audience and content, and I'd love to see if you'd like to do a cross-promo with me.

That cross-promo can include a 30, 60-second ad swap or a guest swap or a feed drop of episodes that we exchange. Let me know what you think. This would be perfect if we time it for May because X, Y, and Z reason." Something like that. And that was just off the top of my head, but a basic template. You just wanna be specific with who you are, what you do, what the idea is, and then wait for the response.

And you can follow up with them. It doesn't have to be just one pitch. You can send the email and then a week or two later follow up and say, "Hey, following up on this, would love to move forward. Let me know what you think." Um, third item on this list is execute that first collaboration. So get all the assets in order, the scripts or the audio, the recording time, when it's gonna publish, and then get it on the calendar and let it run.

And when it runs, that comes to the fourth e- element of this plan, measure and then iterate. So track your new subscribers or downloads that occurred around that period of collaboration. Gather listener feedback. Um, you may start seeing that in your ratings and review section, people may say, "Hey, I discovered your podcast because I heard an ad on X show or X property."

Awesome. Use those qualitative and quantitative notes and then plan from them as to what you should do next. If maybe that show is one you should do a larger collaboration around in the future, like a joint recording or a split recording, or that's the kind of show that you should look at for different collaborations.

Maybe look in their Recommended If You Like section and see what other shows they've collaborated with or done things with and see if you can do something with them too So in closing, I just wanna reiterate, the goal of today's session is to remind you that you're not alone in this and that the rising tide lifts all podcast boats.

So when discoverability has been an issue for so many in the industry, that means it's a collective solution for us to work together to solve the problem by collaboration and collaborative efforts. If you build your genu- genuine relationships, and I say genuine in that, yes, you're coming in hoping for a goal, that goal being you wanna grow your show, but you are also wanting to learn and experience other types of podcasts and authentically help others just like you want them to help you, that's gonna lead to sustainable growth.

The relationships I have built up over the last 15 years of my career are still ones I'm in touch with today in various ways, for cross-promos, for editorial notes. Last week, I got a client of mine on an NPR program for a guest interview because the producer of that show is someone I've known for many years.

So be kind. We're all in this space together because we, we believe in this space together. And also, just remember that your success, it doesn't di- diminish someone else's and vice versa. So I just would encourage you to start building your collaborations. Network. Today's webinar is a great place to do that in the Zoom chat.

And if you have any questions, you're always welcome to reach out Big thanks to Podchaser for co-hosting this with us. Podchaser has been a wonderful platform for us to collaborate with and use over the years for The Podglomerate's work. And of course, reach out to The Podglomerate. We've been able to collaborate with a wide variety of shows over the years, whether we represent them or we do cross-promotions.

So if you have a show that you'd love to see if maybe there's a cross-promo partner that we're representing that'd be a good fit, you can send me an email. I'll put the, my email in the chat, but it's joni@thepodglomerate.com. Um, but in the meantime, um, Trent, are there any final words that you wanted to note?

[00:43:09] Trent Anderson: No. Just one quick note. There are obviously so many podcast promotion services that out there, out there. If you have linked podcasts as part of any section of your LinkedIn profile, you've probably been inundated with pitches from, "I will get your podcast promoted on Apple."

[00:43:26] Joni Deutsch: Yeah.

[00:43:27] Trent Anderson: There's a lot of noise out there, right?

The Podglomerate is our, our go-to resource when it comes to podcast marketing, podcast growth, et cetera, so you would be in very, very capable hands. So we appreciate our partnership with you guys, um, and cannot sing your praises enough.

[00:43:43] Joni Deutsch: Thank you. I appreciate it. And I promise we didn't pay you for that.

I feel like that's the theme of today. I didn't pay for that.

[00:43:48] Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Joni Deutsch, Podglomerate's SVP of Marketing and Audience Development, as well as Trent Anderson, Podchaser's Head of Strategy and Growth. This webinar was fantastic. We really appreciate both of you putting this together.

If you wanna learn more about Podglomerate, you can do so at podglomerate.com. And if you want to learn more about Podchaser, and I highly recommend that you join their community, you can check that out at podchaser.com. Thank you all so much, and we'll see you in a couple weeks.