Finding Your Audience: Sounds Profitable's Tom Webster

Jeff Umbro: This week on Podcast Perspectives, want to know who's listening to your podcast?

Tom Webster: People always ask me, how do I grow my audience? It's such a long conversation that I just decided to write a book about it.

Jeff Umbro: Tom Webster is a partner in Sounds Profitable and the author behind The Audience Is Listening. In this episode, he'll teach us what we need to understand about our audience, how to gather that information and then grow.

Welcome to the show, Tom.

Tom Webster: Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me. I understand you're right up the road in New Hampshire as I'm here in downtown Boston.

Jeff Umbro: Glad to be neighbors. I want to talk today about all kinds of stuff, obviously podcast related. You have a long career, but like, why podcasting?

Tom Webster: I've been in media research for 30 years. That's my training. That's my education.

And, you know, and that started back in 94, primarily in the radio industry. And one of the things that. Even as early as 2004, 2005, when I first got into podcasting as a, as a fan, as a listener, you know, I just immediately thought, well, this is not just a niche format or medium, it's a behavior that I think people are going to want to incorporate into their everyday lives.

That behavior is simple. I want to listen to what I want to listen to wherever and whenever I want to listen to it. So, my, my goal back then was to track the behavior because that's what I believed would grow and, and I've always loved the medium and I'm, I'm really happy to be able to focus on it and concentrate on it the way that I do now.

Jeff Umbro: When you call this a behavior, do you mean like listening in general? Or do you mean like, you know, listening to on demand audio through an RSS feed?

Tom Webster: Somewhere in between. I think, you know, listening to audio in the oral tradition and storytelling, that's old and that's not going away. Commercial broadcast radio in this country is slowly going away or it's at least slowly declining.

I think there's always going to be room for, you know, linear live, especially local radio broadcasts. But the behavior that I saw was there are so many, you know, radio shows, radio formats that could not exist in a local market because in a local market, you can't catch enough people at the right time, right, in real time to listen to a show about knitting, right?

You, you couldn't do that on the radio, but in podcasting you could, and you could do it beyond a local market and you could do it, and people could access that programming whenever they wanted to, like when they were actually knitting instead of having to, you know, wake up at 6am to listen to the knitting show on WKNT.

So that was the behavior that I was looking at, the ability to time shift and, you know, kind of build communities around the content instead of communities locally around a radio tower.

Jeff Umbro: I've never heard it put that way, really, but even today, we were talking, the team, about when we were kids, like, you'd have to, like, you know, get to your TV at 8pm to watch that show. And now, you know, that is long, long behind us. So it makes sense that that's something that is appropriate for like listener behavior when it comes to audio.

So you today work at Sounds Profitable. You're a partner there. Can you explain what Sounds Profitable is and then like what your day to day looks like?

Tom Webster: Yeah, so Sounds Profitable today serves as the trade organization for the podcast industry. We have about 180 partners throughout the industry, both on, you know, the publishing and content side, the ad tech side, the agency and brand and buyer side. And our goal basically is to advocate for the industry, find the gaps, the reasons why people aren't making money or can't get ads or, you know, whatever is holding the format back, and do the work through research, advocacy, consulting, events, and networking to grow the space, to, to build the, you know, to, to be the change we want to see in the universe, because I, I, I believe, and I know from, from all the data that I've had access to and commissioned over the years, that podcasting punches well below its weight in terms of revenue.

And it's not all about money, Jeff. It's not.

Jeff Umbro: Money's great though.

Tom Webster: But you know what, it, it, it makes this possible to be a career for people. And that's something that's very important to me. It's been a career for me and I want other people to have that option.

Jeff Umbro: You touched on many things just now. One of them was like all of the data that you've seen historically.

You are the data guy in podcasting. You ran the infinite dial report for medicine research for 18 years. You're now running, how I view your job anyway, one of the many things that you do is running the research and data department at Sounds Profitable. What are some things that you've discovered over the years and then also recently that has like really surprised you about this industry?

Tom Webster: One thing that was revealed in the, you know, some, a couple of the studies, you sort of have to like triangulate them in your head that I've, I've noticed is that, you know, number one, there's a huge opportunity in podcasting for older Americans and I hesitate to say it, it's 55 plus, I'm 56, so I guess I'm an older American, so I can stop listening to podcasts now.

Jeff Umbro: I feel like I'm not far behind you, by the way.

Tom Webster: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's hugely underserved market, and it leans a little bit female as well. And what's interesting to me is that they have still not quite discovered podcasting, and yet, there is evidence in some of the data that I'm triangulating here that they are less engaged, With the sort of default choices that they do have.

It's not something that people think about all the time, right? People don't think all the time that, you know, day to day about their local radio stations and, you know, audio books and all the other kinds of acts, you know, avenues of spoken word audio that people have. It's not top of mind for people. So when you try to communicate changing that behavior, that's a tough sell sometimes.

But there's evidence, actually, that even though there's still a lot of inertia behind radio listening or moving away from audio to things like TikTok, that actually those other avenues and other media platforms are not, are not really filling the void that's been left by giving up some spoken word audio.

So that's a long winded way of saying, I think with the right introduction that there, that there actually is a significant segment out there that would be like, Oh my God, this is great. Why didn't I think about this earlier?

Jeff Umbro: Yeah, I think. It's funny because, and we're going to talk a lot about developing an audience in a little bit, but one of the things that, that you say, and that, that I believe is like, you know, when you're trying to introduce a new listener to the ecosystem as a whole, like, you know, you have to give them the things that work best.

So the tried and trues, the, the Serials, this American life, the Bill Simmons of the world, do you feel like, you know, if you're trying to get, you know, an entry point into the industry from people who may not be familiar with podcasting, like, that's still the best approach? And, and if so, like, you know, do you tailor that to these particular demographics that you're talking about, like these opportune opportunities?

Tom Webster: The audience that's out there that has yet to discover podcasting, they have higher standards than the people who discovered it early. And, and let me sort of explain that a little bit more. If you look at the other types of media that, and let's, let's just go here with older Americans are consuming, right? They're watching, they're watching a lot of, you know, Netflix. They're watching a lot of things on other premium streaming platforms, Max, Hulu. They are watching mainstream network and cable TV.

And in many cases, they're listening to syndicated radio broadcast programming that is some of the best talent in America. And it's very well produced. What that all has in common is none of that is amateur, right? It's all very highly produced. And the early days of podcasting, you're getting people who sort of resisted that, right? What's left are the people that actually, they have a very high bar for what does this sound, you know, does this sound amateurish or does this sound really good?

So it's not so much about, you know, not introducing them to niche podcasts or things with smaller audiences. But I think we need to put our best foot forward first if we're going to introduce the medium. And so people go, Oh, wow, you know, this is actually, this is better than I thought. And then you have the opportunity to go, and by the way, there's a show about knitting, by the way, there's a show about board games and, and, you know, people won't have that same expectation of those shows, but they've now been, I think, introduced to what a podcast really is.

And I'm sure there are plenty of indie podcasters who, who cringe when I talk about this, but it's not about denigrating them. It's more about what this next segment of audience is used to. What their standards are and giving them that as an easy on-ramp.

Jeff Umbro: So it's almost like a top of funnel initiative for like the entire industry. And, and this is exactly what Apple's doing with their new series promotion, or maybe not new when, you know, this comes out. But it's funny for years prior to me ever hearing you say that, like whenever somebody would ask me, Oh, what should I start with? I would always send them Bare Brook from New Hampshire Public Radio, and almost without fail, people would, would email me or text me like a month later and say like, That was incredible. What can I listen to next? So it truly is about finding those entry points.

So you are somebody who watches the podcast industry as much or closer than basically anyone. What are some of the trends that you saw in the last year?

Tom Webster: The number one trend you can't ignore is the rise of video. And, you know, as someone that's been in podcasting almost since the very beginning, video is not new. Video is nothing new in podcasting. And, you know, many of the very first efforts in podcasting, some of the, early, you know, hits with a much smaller audience in podcasting or video podcasts.

And they were downloaded painstakingly over an hour and, you know, synced to an iPod, which is like an iPhone, but you can't call people on it. And, and, you know, and then people would watch it on a tiny little, you know, pixelated screen or whatever. So it's always been a part of it.

But right now, you know, some of the biggest shows in podcasting, you know, certainly a healthy percentage of the top 50 are, are equally, if not more popular in video platforms than they are in audio platforms. And by the way, the predominant usage, the predominant, you know, way of consuming a podcast remains audio, you know, and that's something that we we're actually, we talked about in a study that we released at the end of last year, audio and video primes which you can find on our websites and really fascinating stuff in there, but video platforms, and let's talk about YouTube here, and certainly Spotify, is on the rise there as well. It's a lot easier to find what it is you want when you can see it.

People, you know, we may take a podcast with us for our ears, but we often buy with our eyes. And so it's not about, you know, putting your podcast on YouTube because not every podcast necessarily belongs on YouTube, but I think every podcaster belongs on YouTube.

I think you need to find a way to at least promote yourself or some aspect of the show that's a complete sentence. It's not a teaser or a trailer that's finished in the audio version. But it, but it works in that time and place, that people may then want to pursue a deeper engagement with you. But there's no question that video is, you know, number one with an exclamation point in terms of what's dominated the trends that I see.

Jeff Umbro: And at Podcast Movement last year, you spoke actually about kind of the downsides of video. Like what, what are some of those?

Tom Webster: I don't love that this is what we're seeing, to be honest with you.

And that's not, that's not a slam against, it's not a slam against YouTube and it's not a slam against Spotify's video efforts either. You know, maybe it's a desire for other audio podcast apps to incorporate better video discovery options, better, better discovery period, right? That's because I think some of the audio-only apps need to really catch up there.

But what worries me is, you know, the podcasting used to be a technical definition. It used to be the. You know, automatic delivery of an audio enclosure in an RSS feed and, or, or those days are long gone, you know, that's not something that, you know, the technocrats in podcasting lost control of that a long time ago.

That said, there is a format, not a technical definition, but there is a format that I think a podcast is that is true across video and audio. And I think there are some defining characteristics of a podcast that's separated from a Mr. Beast video. And I think we need to talk about that a little bit more so that we continue to stand apart and we continue to talk about what's really special about podcasting.

Because if we are just another video, then we lose something there. We lose the ability for people to think of podcasting as a companion medium. We lose the ability for people to think of it as something they can take with them on their commute or take with them on their walk. You can, you know, you can try to watch a video while you're driving. Yeah, go ahead. Let me know how that goes. Right?

No, don't. Don't sue me. Don't sue Jeff. Yeah.

Jeff Umbro: Well, the funny thing though, is that even with this podcast that you're listening to right now, or watching, we are in the process of trying to figure out like, what does our packaging look like for the show and why? It is really, really interesting for us, or for me personally, to see like how the other half live in the video space, because it takes a lot of the rules that I have learned from the audio space and throws it out the window a little bit.

Your audience on YouTube or on most visual platforms are very much going to favor like a lot of tricks and clickbait and packaging. And, and that is the opposite in my opinion of, of what makes a podcast like worth kind of tuning into. It's, it's more of like the nuanced discussion and, and there's no wrong answer there, but it is fascinating to me because the sentiments that you've talked about. We've heard on this show 10 times and we've heard the exact opposite 10 times. And, and I don't know what the right answer is, but I will say everyone in my house is really sick of me like throwing YouTube on and watching a Mr. Beast video as, as research, but it's been a fun experience. Yeah. So.

Tom Webster: Well, it's funny. You talk about packaging and marketing and things like that. If you look for a show on YouTube, right? What are you going to get? You're going to get some search results and those search results are going to come with an image.

And that image is not an abstract piece of cover art, is it? It's an image that looks a lot like what you and I are looking at right now, which is two faces talking into microphones. You know exactly what it is. The cover art for a podcast does not work in a YouTube search, I don't think. And yet YouTube is the most important, by far, discovery vehicle in podcasting right now.

So, you know, am I suggesting that every piece of podcast cover art should be a zoom screen or whatever? No. But I do think that you have to think about the channel that you're distributing on and paying a little bit more attention to that channel.

Jeff Umbro: Are there any challenges that come to mind for the industry? We've already talked about video, but is there anything else that's, that's a big one for you?

Tom Webster: I'll start with a business challenge because, you know, at Sounds Profitable, our focus is the industry. I still think that the, the very long, long tail of podcasting is massively underutilized and under monetized.

And it's still just hard to buy. It's really hard to buy, you know, and it's, you know, a lot of things that make podcast advertising great and special. Those things are sometimes hard to scale. There are some ad tech challenges, you know, there's, there continue to be noises about brand safety and brand suitability, which I don't think, I think podcasting is actually better in than a lot of other media platforms.

I think that's, That's just plain old skepticism or maybe cynicism about the medium, but it's really hard to monetize the long tail. And yet it is, you know, that's where 99 percent of podcasts are. And the majority of the audience listens to at least one independent podcast.

So I think that's a, that's a, you can call it a challenge, but I think it's an opportunity that's going to get solved. And when it does, it's going to unlock incredible revenue possibilities for, for creators. Because one thing I can tell you is that those smaller shows, with the more tightly focused topics and things like that, they convert better.

Jeff Umbro: I think it has a lot to do with how the agencies are trying to buy versus how people are trying to sell. And then also like there is a scale question. If you are thinking of that as like a prime challenge, then, then many other people should be as well.

So I wanted to talk to you about your book. The Audience is Listening. Do you want to start by giving everybody like a quick overview of what's in the book, and then I have a million questions I want to ask you about that.

Tom Webster: The book was written really in response to the question I get asked the most whenever I'm wheeled out in public, which is not all that often, but when I'm at a podcast event or, or whatever, people always ask me, How do I grow my audience? And it's such a long conversation that I just decided to write a book about it because a lot of the, a couple of things, Jeff, a lot of the answers that people get when they ask that question are tactical things.

They are advertising and promotion things, right? And you know, and those things work, don't get me wrong. And you need to have those things. But I have to say that when I have the time and ability to listen to some of those shows, and people are asking me, you know, do feed drops work? Does cross promotion work? I listened to the show and the show's not good.

And yeah, there's all the technical hygiene things that you need to do to produce a podcast, but then you, but you also have to build a show. And, and what, what really kind of irks me about a lot of the advice you get is that the, the podcasts are treated like white papers or blog posts.

They're sort of lumped in with content marketing and you know what? They're not, they're an entertainment. They're different. A podcast is the worst way to transmit information. If you just want to find something on a topic, I can scan something in 15 seconds, right? So you have to build an entertainment and to, in order to entertain an audience, you have to know what entertains that audience, which means you have to know that audience.

And I, I knew there was no book out there that did that, not for podcasting and not for a lot of other media platforms as well. So rather than continually give unsatisfactory answers to that question, I decided to write the book.

Jeff Umbro: A big part of the book is basically like understanding your audience before you can market towards that audience.

So what would you recommend that a podcaster does when they're like sitting down and having that first conversation where they're saying like, Who is our audience? Hopefully well before they actually make the show, but what does the process look like?

Tom Webster: Well, I think, you know, first of all, if you haven't even started a show, it's a whole different set of activities and challenges.

And let's assume that you don't have the budget to go out and do a whole bunch of market research on it. I don't, you know, I'm not suggesting that you do, but you can surely find the people that you want to talk to in the wild somewhere. And whether that's listening to their conversations on social media, or I'm a bigger fan of this, finding them in the real world, finding where they hang out and having conversations with them and not conversations about, If I made a show, would you listen to it? Or, What kind of show do you want?

Nobody knows what they want in, in that kind of a setting, but you can figure out something, you can figure out who are these people when they're at home, and what else do they have in common? And how can I turn that into a perspective? How can I turn that into a point of view that is a more specific take on a topic that I'm interested in, right?

You know, you can look at, I want to do a show about sports. Oh, okay. Who's your audience for that? People who like sports. Good luck. Godspeed. Let's get a little more specific about that, right? Well, let's just pick something, right? Let's just pick an audience of, you know, people who are, I'm going to give you a show idea I've never heard before. It's for young, young people in cities where their team never wins, right? That's a sports show I would, I would, I actually'd listen to. There, I just gave you a whole idea for a perspective, right?

Jeff Umbro: That was Boston in like the nineties.

Tom Webster: That was Boston in the nineties. That was the Red Sox for nearly a hundred years, but there are all kinds of like sad sack sports cities, right? And instead of like covering the sports of that city, you know, let's cover why do you keep caring?

And you're going to, you're going to figure out some things that these people have in common that aren't sports. And that's what, that's the stuff that you talk about. And that's the stuff that, that brings people in because if it's just a functional show, it's functionally replaceable, what can you do that has a particular perspective, a particular point of view on something that's a bit more precise, right?

How can you podcast to one person? What does that one person look like? Describe them as accurately and as fully fleshed out as you can, do the show for that person. You'll find out there are a lot of people like that person. You try to do a show for everybody, you're doing a show for nobody.

Jeff Umbro: Once you solve for who your audience is, what are some things that you would pay attention to, to actually like implement in order to try to engage that person a little bit more?

Tom Webster: First, I would ask yourself, why are you doing this? Are you really committed to this? Even if it's just a hobby, is this a hobby you're going to stick with? Okay, let's get past that. Make six shows and put them under the bed. Don't release them. And people are going to, you know, people are going to hear that and they're going to say, that's not authentic.

And you know, you're, you don't suppress your art, you know, put it out there and stuff like that. You, sure do that. But if you're asking me how to grow an audience, you don't do that, right? If you just want to make your art, make your art, have a good time. But if you expect to have an audience, make six shows, put them under the bed for a while, come back to them in a month. Listen to the oldest one first, listen to it fully through, have them transcribed by humans and ask yourself, would I spend 30 minutes or an hour listening to this show? All right. The answer is probably no. And what could I do to improve it? Let me have another take at that.

I don't believe with podcasting and the kind of fail fast and iterate in public thing. Because you never have a second chance to build an audience. And if, you know, and if you launch something, a grand opening where the, the shelves are dirty and you know, the produce smells, people aren't going to come back to that store. I don't care how many feed drops you do.

So, you know, do the best you can with the resources you have, but take some time and some patience and some perspective and ask yourself, does what I hear, could I make it better? Okay. Let me make it better. Let me redo it. And then listen to it again. Does this accurately capture the vision I had of who would listen to this show, right?

I just don't think there's enough introspection and enough baking of a podcast by a lot of individual creators and, and again, it's fine if you don't want to do that. It's fine if you say, I don't have time. I have a day job. All of those things are true. And if you want to build an audience, this is what you have to do.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah, you say often in the book and in all of the interviews that you've done, like, you know, anybody can make a show, but nobody deserves an audience. But this show, we actually made 12 episodes, it might even, it may have been more, before we ever released any, and in this show has like a very particular purpose, and it's also something that is the labor of love and also is our playground and also does 10 other things.

We know our audience is never meant to be huge, but we're very happy to have the folks that we, that we do have and, and they seem to like it. So that's great.

I want to ask you a few more questions about, like, developing an audience. The first one is going to sound a little bit arbitrary, but like what, what has changed with listener behavior and patterns over the years?

Tom Webster: As podcasting has grown, it has become much more diverse. It's become more gender diverse. It's become more racially diverse. It's become more demographically age diverse. And also more, more class diverse, right?

When podcasting first started, it was overwhelmingly men that listened to podcast. It was like 70 percent men. They were, they were super white. You know, there were so many podcasts that were just like two white dudes talking about routers.

Jeff Umbro: That's true, everyone. That is like one of the first podcasts. Most of the first podcasts were all about tech, so.

Tom Webster: Yeah, they were very tech, right? Because people were interested in the, in the tech of podcasting.

Jeff Umbro: Yep.

Tom Webster: It was very reflective of the nearly only platform where you could get podcasts was the Apple platform. And I can tell you that the, especially in the mid 2000s, people who bought Macs, people who bought iPods, later people who bought iPhones were of a very specific demographic. They had attained higher levels of education than the general population, much higher household income, not very diverse.

And the audience reflected that. The audience reflected the distribution channel. And now a couple of things have happened that just, you know, the distribution channel for Apple has diversified, I think, but beyond that, the distribution channels for podcasting have diversified. The Spotify audience looks very different from the, the YouTube audience, looks very different from the, you know, the Overcast audience, like, or the Fountain audience. You just, you get further and further from the mean as you, as you go.

And so that's even a thing I think to consider is, you know, are you going to have a channel strategy? And, you know, you could have a strategy that just says, I want to dominate Overcast. Well, there, there's a specific kind of person who dom, who listens to on Overcast, it's somebody who's a fan of the medium and not a show. It's somebody who's committed to be a heavy podcast listener, more so than people who watch on YouTube or, or listen on Spotify.

So, you know, the platform has a lot to do with it too, but, but all of those things have diversified over the years. And as a result of that, you have more access and opportunity, but you have a lot more to think about as well.

Jeff Umbro: To achieve the same things as even 10 years ago, it's two or three times as much work.

So, what are the metrics that podcasters should be looking at in order to gauge success? Let's assume they made a great show that, that, you know, caters to that one person, extrapolated, and they've, you know, built a little bit of an audience. Like what, what should they pay attention to?

Tom Webster: I would pay attention to completion percentage. I would want to see if people are listening to most or all of your show. And if they're not, then I think your show is in trouble a little bit. You may have attracted a secondary audience that's there for a topic or there for a guest.

It doesn't necessarily mean that the second half of your show is terrible because they're not hearing it. It means something else. So I look at that, and I also look at the engagement that you're getting from your audience, however large it is, right? And I think from the get go, you should have some way for your audience to engage with you, interact for you, some channel that is, you know, easily available to do so even, you know, one of my, one of the podcasts I listen to is a podcast called The Steam Room and it's with Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley who are half of the Inside the NBA show on, on TNT, which is sadly going away, and they actually have a phone number that they give out. They call it Chuck's cell phone and, and they take voice messages and, you know, if that phone's not ringing or whatever, that's another thing I think that shows that you're, you're just not engaging people, but if it is, even if your audience is small, then you have a kernel there, then you have something to grab onto, and then you can make an ask of those people.

What grabbed you? Really appreciate you writing me back. Really appreciate you posting about this. What's different about us? What's, you know, what's the thing that, that, that keeps you coming back? You have a lot of choices. So engagement and, and completion, I think.

Jeff Umbro: And how do you balance, and maybe you just answered this, but like, how do you balance qualitative and quantitative research with, you know, your audience development strategy?

Like, how much are you paying attention to the completion rates versus like the, the engagement? Or is it kind of a balancing act between the both, the two?

Tom Webster: It's a sequence, and one comes before the other. Any inquiry I have ever done, and you know, in my career, I have researched, you know, internet sites, I've researched tools, I've researched consumer package goods, cars, whatever. I always start with qualitative and because qualitative answers a question that quantitative absolutely cannot, it answers why questions.

And the key to understanding that is not to get hung up on how many people did I talk to, or they don't all agree, none of that stuff. What you're, what you're looking for are hypotheses. Because, you know, if you're trying to find out why does someone listen to your show, you're not going to get a single answer. You're going to get two or three answers, maybe, once you start to boil them down and put them into buckets. And then you have the opportunity, if you want to do quantitative later, to say, all right, how many people are in each bucket and what else do they have in common?

And then you can go back and you can do more qualitative inside those buckets. And then that's where you can find out, well, what else do you read, listen to, or watch? And you get, you can get more detail, but it's a cycle. It always starts with qualitative for me, starts with what are some of, what are the theories, what are their hypo, what are the hypotheses, what are some of the reasons why, and then you can write a survey.

I think actually the worst thing you can do is write a quantitative survey first and have, and have why questions in it with multiple choice answers, because what you have brainstormed there is not the language of the listener, it's your language. And I guarantee the listeners are using a different lingo and have different ideas about why than you do, because those circles just don't intersect.

So always start with qual.

Jeff Umbro: Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the crux of what you're talking about is very similar to what Dan Misener talks about, where it's like marketing versus marketability. And, and the key to marketing and finding an audience is to start with having a good product. Am I oversimplifying that or is that essentially like what, what we're talking about here?

Tom Webster: It's having a product that the audience is going to want. So it, you know, it's, it even starts before the product because if the product itself does not have audience input from the get go in some, in some fashion, then you're screaming into the void.

I once wrote a long piece about startup success. And there's a culture with entrepreneurs and founders and startups about, again, failing fast, failing and, you know, iterating and stuff like that. There was a giant study done by an arm connected to Stanford where they looked at, I think, 5,000 high growth startups and asked, and that failed. And they, they did sort of a quick postmortem on them. And by far the number one reason why they, why most of them failed, and most of them By far, the number one reason is they made something the market didn't want.

And that's a classic mistake. It's a mistake that, you know, you read some of the stories by the outliers, you know, the Richard Branson's, the Jeff Bezos's of the world. And you get lulled into thinking that I don't need anybody. I just, I got a vision, you know?

Jeff Umbro: Yeah.

Tom Webster: But it's got to start with some knowledge of the audience before you, before you build the product or you're, you're building something for yourself.

And again, if you want to build something for yourself, you know, something to have fun, connect with friends. Who am I to say, don't do that? But if you're gonna ask me, how do I build an audience of people I don't know? I'm going to have some thoughts.

Jeff Umbro: What are three things that people should look at before they decide to even launch their show, like when it comes to surveying their audience without actually like going out and running a survey?

Tom Webster: Try to paint a picture of who you are for, and that should not, and, you know, put, stop reading Ad Week. That should not be men, 25 to 54. I want you to build a person. I want you to give them a name. I want you to give them a job. I want you to tell me how old they are. Do they have kids, not have kids? What do they do on the weekends?

Because that's the work that I did in, in building radio properties and some television properties and things like that in the, in media research. Built a very precise and specific avatar. I launched an internet radio service in the UK with two other partners back in 2000. And, you know, for one of the stations that we launched, we built a very specific avatar of a 29 year old young professional woman that we named Kylie Unlikely, I was very proud of that, who is on her second job, still likes to go out, but it's starting to be more serious about her career, so doesn't have as much time to think about new music, but doesn't want to feel like they're completely disconnected from the, like it was really precise, Jeff.

And that's the key, right? It is getting, it is, it is broadcasting to that one person. So you need to meet those people before you start, but getting really clear about who you're for, I think.

I think also, you know, before you start, I think you should think about how you're going to introduce yourself to the world and, you know, keeping in mind that people are not going to commit to a whole show. People are not going to subscribe to a feed. What are some easy ways you can introduce yourself to the world that get that aspect or that perspective point of view across.

And then the third thing I think you should think about is where can you find your Kylie Unlikely in real life and how would you, how would you talk to them? Where would you go? Where in the offline world would you reach them? Because I, if, if you can answer that question, then you can mark it.

Jeff Umbro: I love that. Yeah.

Tom Webster: So, yeah, I mean, those are just some key questions that I don't think people ask.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah, and it's funny because I had a client once that showed up with a picture of their ideal listener. I thought it was both brilliant and I kind of chuckled to myself about it, but it truly is like a brilliant idea and something that is very achievable for anybody.

Okay, so I want to leave with asking you one question about what are you most looking forward to or predicting for 2025?

Tom Webster: Continued bifurcation between the walled gardens of podcasting and the open RSS world of podcasting and, you know, some further consolidation, I think in the former, and I think it's going to be more difficult to be in the latter, just because of the way discovery is working, which, which makes that kind of detail and precision about who you're for and, and where they hang out, I think even more important.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. And I could not agree more. It's something that we're looking at with every one of our clients right now.

So thank you for, for joining us. Everyone check out The Audience is Listening, pick up your copy and we'll see you all in a couple of weeks. Thanks so much, Tom.

Tom Webster: Thank you.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Tom for joining us on this episode of Podcast Perspectives. You can find him at soundsprofitable.com or you can pick up a print or audio copy of his book, The Audience is Listening.

For more podcast related news, info, and takes, you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jeff Umbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of The Podglomerate.

If you're looking for help producing, marketing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at Podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com, or follow us on all socials at @podglomeratepods. 

This episode was produced by Chris Boniello, and myself, Jeff Umbro. This episode was edited and mixed by Jose Roman. And thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Annabella Pena, and Perri Gross. And a special thank you to Dan Christo. 

Thank you for listening and I'll catch you all in a few weeks.