Bringing SEO to Podcasting with Ausha’s Odile Beniflah

Jeff Umbro: This is Podcast Perspectives, a show about the podcast industry and the people behind it. I'm your host, Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of The Podglomerate. Today on the show, I am speaking with Odile Benaflah, Head of US at Ausha. 

Ausha is a French podcast hosting platform founded in 2018. What makes Ausha stand out among podcast hosts is their promotional and marketing tools, which help creators grow their podcast. You can think of it as an all in one marketing suite attached to a hosting platform. Ausha is one of the largest podcast hosting platforms in France, where it was founded, and in the last few years has been making an effort to expand into new markets, including the United States, where today, Odile oversees their growth.

We'll spend some time speaking about Ausha's podcast services and platform, which include a lot of great marketing tools for their users, but I'm really excited to speak with Odile about brass tacks marketing specifically. I'm really excited to talk to her about Ausha's new PSO system, which is generally a search engine for audio platforms like Apple and Spotify. It helps you to optimize your content to appear higher in search results on these platforms. 

If what I'm saying doesn't make any sense, then this is the perfect episode for you. And let's get to it.

How are you Odile?

Odile Beniflah: Doing great. Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff Umbro: So you are the head of US at Ausha. Can you walk us through like, what is Ausha for somebody who hasn't heard of it?

Odile Beniflah: So Ausha is a podcast marketing platform. It's like a hosting provider with all the tools to promote your show everywhere. 

Jeff Umbro: There are a lot of hosting companies out there. Ausha is actually very successful, especially in France and Europe, but also in the US, when it comes to like the number of shows that are hosted on the platform. However, something that I have noticed is that it's really difficult to get bigger enterprise publishers to migrate from like some of those big enterprise platforms to other platforms.

So what I have seen is that a lot of these smaller or newer hosting platforms are actually building tools to allow existing shows that are hosted elsewhere to integrate with Ausha and the different tools that you guys are using on the platform. 

I guess my first question is like, do you see that happening as well? And then the followup to that is how do you all think about those kinds of integrations? Like, is the end goal still to get people to like move their hosting platform to Ausha, if that makes sense?

Odile Beniflah: Ausha started in 2018 in France and within a year, in 2020, it became a leader in hosting and broadcasting for native podcasts in France. A year or two later, we did a big online summit on podcast marketing, which was our biggest value add in France. And why was Ausha focusing on podcast marketing? Because the founder noticed that in the space, there was just no marketing tool dedicated to podcasting. 

I joined the company in 2022 to launch in the US and I noticed that nobody was talking about podcast marketing. So the strategy today is to really like laser focus on making the most innovative tools available out there on podcast marketing and enabling everyone to have access to our tool, meaning being able to integrate or to work on top of every hosting platform out there or every other tool.

Jeff Umbro: I mean, that's really at the ethos of Poglomerate too. Like we started as an ad sales company/production company and I just saw like every time I talked to anybody, the question was, how do you grow a podcast? I have my own answer to that question, but what is your answer to that question? How do you grow a podcast?

Odile Beniflah: I mean, we met as you were teaching this workshop on like really podcast growth for beginners. And what is my answer on how to grow a podcast? You answered everything already. 

It's like, okay, first, what's your goal? What's your strategy? What do you want to do? Do you want to drive business? Do you want to raise your brand awareness? Are you trying to keep your customers? 

Then who's your target audience? Like, who are you talking to or who do you want to talk to? And then where are those people? 

It's funny because usually when I start teaching, like any event on podcast marketing, I ask a very simple question. I'm like, okay, who in the room has the podcast on YouTube?

Jeff Umbro: Yeah, it's not many.

Odile Beniflah: Not many, right?

And I'm like, what? This is the second biggest search engine in the world. And people are not on YouTube. I also asked the question, like, do you have a newsletter? Same. Nobody. And you know, when I talk [about] newsletters, I'm talking about, do you let people know when you launch a new episode? 

Even though I have 20 years of experience in growth marketing, the podcast space is fairly recent to me. I joined the space less than two years ago. So I must say I was shocked by the lack of expertise in the space. It took me a while to understand that I was really in a creator world and the word marketing was just really scary for people.

Jeff Umbro: You come at this from a really unique vantage point. You are a marketer.

Odile Beniflah: Yeah.

Jeff Umbro: Most podcast marketers are people who launched a show and then had to figure out how to grow that show. I do want to make that distinction because I think that podcasting is like a very young technology in context with everything else in the world. So that means like our forms of measurement are often kind of early in the process. The way in which we gauge success is different from other industries. 

Some of the tools that Ausha provides to podcasters in other industries would be table stakes, would be very basic. It's like you have a podcast website, you have a newsletter, you publish updates on social media. Ausha lets you do that really easily and in a quick, fast manner.

But I wanted to actually take one step back and I want to like break this out by each of these categories and just talk about like why it's important for somebody to have a podcast website or a podcast newsletter and like what you should consider when you're like building these things out. And we should look at it from a first principles idea of like marketing in general, as opposed to podcast marketing.

Let's start with websites. Like why does somebody need a website for their podcast?

Odile Beniflah: We always talk about funnel, right? Marketing funnel, big word, just to say, hey, if you do something, whether you are creating a show, you are building a music school, you are launching an incredible product, whatever people need to be aware of it.

So we have this funnel, where it's like, first, people need to be aware of it. Then they need to be interested. Take a look at it. Then they need to consider maybe buying it. You need to convert them. And then you need to keep your customer. 

So at Ausha, we have defined a podcast listener journey. Same thing. It's the same funnel. And we have defined four stages on how to turn a stranger into a loyal listener. 

And that's where I'm going to answer your question on the website. First thing when you create a show is you need to be discovered. Why a website? Because Google is the first search engine in the world. So you want people to find you when they are interested in a topic. 

And let's remember people are still struggling with the word podcast. So at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Anybody who's interested in a topic, you want them to find you. So you should have a website dedicated to your podcast with the right keywords so that people can find you.

And again, on Ausha, we make it a one click thing based on your podcast show title and description. We immediately create an optimized website that is optimized for Google.

Jeff Umbro: We work with a lot of folks who, maybe they're affiliated with a big media organization or a university or something, and they have tons of existing traffic on their websites. Of [the] people who may already be interested in this stuff and they can just use that to kind of create the funnel you're talking about to bring people back to the podcast. 

So it's really key to assume that your show is answering the questions of people who are searching for this on the web, and so on and so forth. So when people find your show, assuming you've made this great website that has all the keywords and everything, what do you make sure is included on that website landing page?

Odile Beniflah: It's mostly, you know, using the right keywords. And this is something by the way, that is not just in podcasting in any marketing projects that I've ever had in my career. 

And I work with a lot of creators. People like to come up with very creative titles or descriptions, but at the end of the day, those are not the words that people are going to search. So you really have to make sure I know sometimes it's really boring, especially for creators that you just use plain English.

Actually, this is a real example in New York. There is this running group called the Dashing Whippets. They are famous now after 10 years. But like, if you're just going to talk about Dashing Whippets and how to motivate yourself to run a marathon, I mean, people are not going to find you. You have to use the right keywords.

So that's what we call metadata – super important. So, okay. This word, big word, metadata. What does it mean? Super easy. It's basically your show title and description, and then your episodes, titles, and description. That's it. I mean, just be careful of using words that describe what you do and that people can find you with.

Jeff Umbro: I'm so glad that you said that because like, I'm constantly talking to people about trying not to be too clever.

Odile Beniflah: Right? I know.

Jeff Umbro: Title and metadata is one piece. Like what else needs to be on a website? And I'm specifically thinking about like embed codes for the episodes, links to other places to listen.

Odile Beniflah: So one of the other like 101 rules of marketing is to eliminate every single step. Each time you send people somewhere, you’re losing 70 percent of them. So on your website, you should have an embedded player where people can just like taste your podcast. Like they can listen to it right away. You don't send them to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, somewhere. No, no, no. They can immediately listen to you. Like have a sense. 

The other thing, when you actually send them to an episode, something we have on Ausha, we have deep links. Not just smart links, deep links. I'm sure you know what it is. Most of the people, when they send a link to an episode, it goes to the show. On Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Let's say you've talked about something incredible or with an incredible speaker six months ago, or like a regular speaker like me. And then in six months, I'm like top of the news. The entire world talks about me. Maybe you want to promote this episode again, right? If you send people to, you know, use the link of the episode, you can use directly on Apple Podcasts, but then you’re losing all the people who are on the other listening platforms, on the website. 

The deep links go straight to the episode on the listening platform where the listener is actually listening to a podcast. This is really technical, but so powerful. Whoever ends up on your website, you want them to have immediately what they were looking for and give them a good experience, so they stay with you.

Jeff Umbro: Whenever we're talking with clients and they're building websites, whether it's with Ausha or other platforms, or it's something bespoke, we always talk to them about making sure that they're including the title, the metadata links to find the show on other platforms, have a very clear description and call to action for people to like know what the show is about and what to listen to.

Build it so that they can then share it and like use it however they're intending to.

Odile Beniflah: And something that I didn't mention, make your website also for your loyal listeners or your fans. So that means put your social media – I mean the social media handles that matter to you, enable them to share, to follow you, to like, subscribe to your newsletter. To send you to a subscription on Patreon, whatever it is you want to do, like make sure that you make it super easy for new listeners to stay up to date and for people who fall in love with you to actually start building a community, feel like they like and share. So all those things should be on your website.

Jeff Umbro: Okay, so we have the website, we have this main platform that people can go to, to search for and to search about the show. What is the purpose of an email newsletter at that point? Doesn't everybody already know where to find the show?

Odile Beniflah: Who wants to think about that? I mean, people don't know when you release an episode. You cannot assume that, Oh yeah, Odile, she launches her podcast every Tuesday, once a month or every week. Like, no, no, no, no, no. 

By the way, I may not want to listen to every week's episode. It depends on the topic, right? I mean, that's the basic: when you publish a new episode. 

And then it depends on the goal, right? If you are doing a podcast to create a big community of activists or drive people to your business, or, I mean, you may want to add a little bit of like news, or if you do special events, like you show up in a city and you want to meet your listeners in person, I mean, you can use the new letter in so many ways. From a marketing [perspective], it's golden. It's easy. 

I think people sometimes think newsletter has to be like this complicated, like very rich content. This can be like two paragraphs [helped by] AI. For those of you who are shy with their writing, and I'm one of them, this is just like saving my life to have these tools available.

Jeff Umbro: Whenever I get an email that is just like the link to the latest episode with like a couple sentences. As somebody who is very steeped in podcasting, who does check his cue every day, I get not annoyed, but I become curious as to like why somebody is doing that or taking the time to do it.

But then I've seen the data on a lot of these newsletters and you are a hundred percent correct. Like the vast majority of people do not listen the same way that you and I might. And also it does, it builds you a bridge to your listeners. So like, if you do have something to communicate beyond just a new episode, you have a framework to do it.

Odile Beniflah: Even in marketing, traditional marketing, we're like really? Do we have to do email marketing still in 2024? Well, yes, the data shows.

Jeff Umbro: It's frankly, the most powerful tool that most people have when it comes to social media. How does Ausha help you to promote your show on social media?

Odile Beniflah: You can create a social media campaign within Ausha for each new episode. So you can create a post automatically again for Instagram, for LinkedIn in the right format, animated, and you can schedule. You can say, okay, in the coming months, after publishing an episode, we're going to do one post a week. We generate again with AI a little like blurb, but you can customize it. You launch your campaign. 

But most importantly, we give you the data. So on Ausha, you see how many people have viewed your posts on social media. How many people have clicked and that way you don't waste your time for the next campaign. I mean, again, you can assume that all your listeners are on this, on Instagram and guess what? They're on LinkedIn. So maybe you're going to do something differently.

Jeff Umbro: Do you have any learnings just from what you guys have done over the years with Ausha about what is effective at driving like real engagement with social media?

Odile Beniflah: When I talk to agencies in particular or the media or studios, right. It's very much about the launch and the PR campaign. And for me, when I think about podcast marketing, it's the constant work in progress. Like you test a lot of different things. So for me, social media is one of the tools.You have all those distribution platform, you have YouTube, you have website, like you mentioned before, you have all your social media channel and you just look at the data, try this, try that. 

We make a like column, right? Like these are all our growth tactics. This is the expected impact. This is the estimated effort. So of course you start with like biggest expected impact and lowest effort or costs, the low hanging fruits, and then you see what you get, and then you do as many tactics in parallel as you can, and you move from there. 

And then the other thing that I see, which to me is often a mistake, but not always, it's like when people think about marketing, they only think about paid marketing. Ads and ads are great. I mean, I'm not saying, you know, if you have money and you want to go fast. But the problem with that is if you only do that, is that when you stop paying, then that's it. Versus what we call organic marketing. It's like it's building long lasting relationships with your audience, your trust, and it takes a little bit of time to gain momentum, but to me, it fits the medium much more. It's authentic, it's a relationship. 

2023 was a huge year of learning for us. The biggest learning was that even though we clearly have the most incredible podcast marketing tools, nobody wants to switch. Independent podcasters have so many things to do. They're like, oh, please don't make me do this, you know, even though it takes two seconds, but no, they don't want to do that.

And they don't care enough about whose hosts they have. And then the marketing is overwhelming. So we're like, okay, we absolutely have to decouple the power of our marketing tools from our hosting platform. So we can make those tools available to the big networks and the big enterprise customers, because they ask for it. And there's nothing like this out there. 

So we made our latest innovation, the PSO, which is the like SEO for podcast apps. So podcast search optimization, and we made that tool available independently from the Ausha hosting platform. And it's a game changer.

Jeff Umbro: Can you explain what the PSO system is? Like, what does it do?

Odile Beniflah: PSO, it's like SEO for podcast apps. So when you’re on Apple podcasts or Spotify, like a listening app, there's a study from the podcast hosts that shows that the way people find podcasts, they don't really browse. When you’re on a podcast app, the way people find podcasts is by searching keywords in the podcast app search bar. 

So where your podcast ranks is actually super important. Apple Podcast serves you 100 results. You know, for any keyword you get a hundred podcasts, you want to be in the top three. You want to be in the top 10, you want to be in the top 20, but you really want to be in the top three. 

Jeff Umbro: Because that's above the fold.

Odile Beniflah: Exactly. And what the PSO control panel shows you is the position in which you rank on Spotify and on Apple podcast search results for those keywords. So maybe you are position 20 on Spotify, position three on Apple podcast for the keyword “marketing podcast.”

Jeff Umbro: I was just looking at this literally yesterday, by the way. So this show Podcast Perspectives ranks number one for “Jeff Umbro'', for “The Podglomerate.” But it's cool because like, correct me if I'm wrong, but like the purpose of this is to give you the information that you need in order to make the tweaks on the platform and the metadata in order to rank higher, or lower if needed, in certain categories.

Odile Beniflah: Exactly. And the thing that's really fun about it is that when you make tweaks, you have results the following day. It's like literally a 24 hour turnaround on your visibility. So you can really test and play with – you make assumptions as usual on what you think listeners will look for to find your podcast and you see where you rank and you can optimize, optimize, optimize on those keywords.

And when I say optimize, it's not rocket science. Optimize means you have a goal to use those keywords. If those are the most important keywords for you, for your audience, your target audience, the audience you want for your podcast. If those are the keywords that you think are the most important, then you have to use them in your episode titles, episode descriptions.

And we also tell you how many times you use those keywords in your episode titles and descriptions. So we really tell you like, look, you are telling us how to run a marathon in less than four hours. If that's what really your podcast is about, you have used the word marathon only three times in your last 10 episodes. Something is wrong, you know? 

So we give you the data to help you do that. We worked with the host of What Fresh Hell, which is a podcast about funny moms talking about parenting, giving parenting tips, right? And it was so interesting. We talked to Amy. So we asked her, what are the keywords for your podcast? And she said, you know, “parenting,” “parenting tips.” And we looked and she was not even in the top 100, even though for her, that was like the most important keyword. And so, you know, we worked with her on that, on the keywords and we improved that. And then as we were really having a conversation, she said what we really are about, we're just “funny moms.”

And we managed to make her like rank number one for this keyword.

Jeff Umbro: Is there any way that you can get penalized from like – could I just go and publish like 500 keywords in every episode at the end of the description?

Odile Beniflah: Like SEO, if you're trying to trick your listeners, if you add keywords that have nothing to do with your podcast – like, okay, you make a keyword, “Call [Her] Daddy.” People won't click on your episode when they find it. Let's say you rank high, they won't click. And so you are not going to rank higher because there are other criteria.

Jeff Umbro: There is a couple of pieces of literature out there that say that the only three metadata inputs that are indexed by every podcast search engine are show title, author tag, and episode title. I believe you disagree with that.

Odile Beniflah: I disagree. Description is very important. Show description and episode description. And we just launched AI generated transcripts. We are going to use that also for optimization. So definitely titles are not enough. Definitely.

Jeff Umbro: Well, thank you so much Odile for joining us. This was awesome. I learned a lot and we'll be sure to have you back soon.

Odile Beniflah: Thank you so much, Jeff.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you to Odile for joining us on the show today. You can find her on LinkedIn or on Twitter @obeniflah. To learn more about Ausha, visit ausha.co. 

For more podcast related news, info, and takes, you can follow me on Twitter @JeffUmbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of the Podglomerate. If you are looking for help producing, distributing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us @thepodglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all social platforms @podglomerate. This episode was produced by Chris Boniello and Henry Lavoie. And thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Annabella Pena, and Vanessa Ullman.

And a special thanks to Dan Christo and Kaitlyn. Thanks for listening and I will catch you next week.