Quill and CoHost’s Fatima Zaidi on the Future of Distributing Branded Podcasts

Jeff Umbro: This is Podcast Perspectives, a show about the latest news in the podcast industry and the people behind it. I'm your host, Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of the Podglomerate. Today, I am speaking with Fatima Zaidi. Founder and CEO of Quill, the award winning branded podcast agency. Quill specifically works with Fortune 500 companies like PwC, Microsoft, and Expedia, among many others. Last year, Quill also launched a new hosting and analytics platform called CoHost that has been providing brands with tailored demographic data for their shows. 

On the show today, we will dive into the idea of how to measure success for B2B podcasting, why Fatima launched a podcast hosting platform this late in the game, and we also spent some time digging into the Canadian podcast scene.

Let's get to it.

I want to talk to you about what Quill [is] and how you came to actually start that company. 

Fatima Zaidi: So Quill is a full service production agency. We work with Fortune 500 brands to create their branded podcast, so a very specific niche. We work with the PWCs, the Expedias, the McKinseys of the world. We do operate in a very specific sort of, I would say, vertical. And then we also are responsible for audience growth for their podcasts as well. And so typically our clients are looking for us to do complete end-to-end work from creating high quality production all the way to bringing in their qualified audience. 

Until a few years ago that the sort of data within the podcasting industry was very limited, it's gotten a lot better, and we were facing a lot of pain points and challenges on the production side of our business, because when you're working with the PWCs of the world, you can't just get away with giving them downloaded, unique listener metrics. Like that's just not going to be enough. They're looking for Google Analytics level data.

And if you can't provide it to them, then they cannot justify the creation of a production budget. So we went and built CoHost, which is really the first platform, at least at the time, that was servicing brands who are podcasting to provide you with very premium analytics on your listeners. So things like age, gender, household income, occupation, what platforms are they coming in from, what companies are listening to your podcast, revenue sizes, industries… And that's really the sort of data that they're looking for, or at least our clients are looking for to inform their success. And so Quill is a tech-enabled agency and our product is called CoHost.

Jeff Umbro: I have a thousand questions based on what you just said. So I'll just take them one at a time. I wanted to start by just talking to you about what it looks like when a brand comes to you asking for a podcast. Are they aware that they're asking for a B2B podcast when they come through the door? What does that process look like?

Fatima Zaidi: It's a bit of an education process, just because I think that oftentimes we get the vanity projects, which we won't take on – the CEO trying to become a influencer with no sort of thought or process around what business objective the podcast is going to serve.

And I think our team is actually very particular about creating podcasts that don't necessarily sound like the shows that are out there today. So we love doing narrative shows for corporations and even B2B companies, and we love it when companies allow us the creative flexibility to create content that isn't dry, or sounds like a sales infomercial. 

But there is a bit – and when I say a bit, I mean a very long – education process and learning curve. One, we don't hodgepodge shows together. You can't have a podcast up and running that's a high quality show in just a few weeks. And two nobody wants to hear another interview style show with two people talking for 30 minutes straight. So I think it's a bit of an education on formats and what really resonates with listeners. And then the third education piece is setting aside enough time and resources for marketing the show, not just production.

Jeff Umbro: I think that a lot of B2B / branded podcasts really do need to define what they're hoping to do before they actually go through the execution part. So how do you do that?

Fatima Zaidi: Totally. So for example, we have a client [who] only interviews CMOs. It's an interview style show. The entire objective of the podcast is to target chief marketing officers to provide value to that space or very specific industry vertical. And honestly, the show does really well, because it doesn't have a lot of competition in terms of other podcasts that are similar, and because it's such a niche audience, we have found that people seek out the content.

It has created some sort of a natural community around the podcast. Every CMO out there, whether it's in the US, Canada, or global, wants to either be on the show, is listening to the content, or is engaging with the show in some capacity. And so to your point, I think identifying the business objective [is very important], which you can do very early on in the podcast strategy, thinking about: what a success look like, how you want to position your show in the market, what is your competitive matrix, what other similar shows are already out there filling the same objective that you are, and how are you going to be the first, the best, or different?

Jeff Umbro: This may be a silly question, but how often do people have those goals in mind before they come to you versus after?

Fatima Zaidi:  I don't think that's a silly question at all. In fact, I think it's silly that people don't have [a] goal in mind when they come to us. So many times either they don't know what success looks like or what the objective of creating a show is. And if you don't know why you're creating a podcast, I don't know if it's the right strategy for you.

And then the second sort of surprising sort of factor is how many people want to start a podcast because they think it's going to make them famous, or give them some sort of industry clout. And absolutely, I think podcasting is a really great way to build brand awareness, thought leadership, [to] position yourself as a subject matter expert… But if you want to become famous and become an influencer, then you probably want to go out and hire a publicist or PR team that can turn you into an influencer. I don't know if podcasting is the right strategy. 

And sometimes those conversations can be a little bit difficult – those CEO vanity projects.

Jeff Umbro: How do people find you or how do brands find you when they're looking to make their next project or podcast?

Fatima Zaidi: That is a very good question. And that is actually a question that comes up all the time. I mean, it's so interesting how many people in the industry think I have a PR background when I don't/ I don't have a PR or marketing background. I'm not a PR person at all. 

However, I do recognize the importance of being out there in the community, through speaking engagements, through volunteer work – I'm the chair for SickKids Hospital, I teach at University of Toronto, I teach podcasting there. I'm doing quills PR myself, so I pitch journalists day in, day out, trying to get coverage.

And that's actually how our clients are finding us. It's through conferences, it's through articles that were popping up in, it's through my LinkedIn, it's through one head shake at a time, by keeping my network warm. It is a grind, building a business and then being responsible for all of the outbound sales. It's a lot of work.

And I think that if people are looking for overnight success or instant gratification, they're not going to find it. Building a podcast audience, it is a marathon, not a sprint. And I would say I probably bring in about 60 to 70 percent of our sales just through our network. And then the rest are referrals [and] word of mouth.

The landscape is not what it used to be. When we launched Quill, there were not a ton of competitive agencies and production teams out there. And now there's a production team for every sort of vertical. If you're looking for a not-for-profit podcast, there are like five experts. If you're looking for a corporate show, there are like 10 experts. If you're looking for an indie show in the influencer space, there are like 10 production agencies. 

That wasn't the case when we started Quill. So we've had to really adapt our sales technique.

Jeff Umbro: My next question had to do with the marketing and audience development specialty that you have for B2B podcasts. I just read an article where you were talking about how this is a service that you've provided for a long time as a full stack asset or service to folks that you were helping produce the podcast for, and now it's a one-off service because there was a demand for it.

What have you found since you've started offering this as a service externally or to third parties? From an outside perspective, it looks like you're pretty successful.

Fatima Zaidi: It's interesting because I feel like what we constitute as successful isn't necessarily what everybody else or brands constitute as successful.

So if we have a brand that comes to us and says, “we don't care about the qualification of the listener, we just want mass listener reach. We only care about the download count.” We won't take that project as a standalone, because you're better off just working with the ad sales networks directly.

Like if you just want 50, 000 listers brought to you over a two week period, then go to Castbox, go to Player FM, go to mowPod. You should just work with them directly and they'll get you your numbers. 

Where the project makes sense for us is if you're looking for very qualified listeners to come through. You're not just concerned with the download count, but you're concerned about the listener being the right listener. And the reason they want to work with us is because we have a very fleshed out marketing team that is committed to: organic, owned, earned, and of course paid is a very small portion of that.

Maybe 5 percent of our effort is going to be on paid. We all know paid is easy. You just allocate the money, the vendors do all of the work, and it brings in the numbers. But that doesn't necessarily bring in the right numbers or the right listeners, and we know it doesn't. We see all the traffic coming through on CoHost and like 80 percent of the time it's bot downloads or people who are dropping off in the first five minutes.

It takes a lot of effort and it is a grind, it is a lot of work to be doing PR pitching and playing the long game, essentially. But what it does is it actually brings in your qualified audiences and listeners. And we really think that the marketing or the future podcast marketing needs to be paid balanced with a lot of these organic tactics.

So we're now offering it as a standalone. It's expensive because it's a lot of hours put in. It's a lot of work/ But we're not about the instant gratification and like hitting 100,000 listeners overnight because for us, success is actually hitting your ideal listener.

Jeff Umbro: And how do you qualify a qualified listener? What are you looking at? What tells you if it's somebody that you're aiming to reach? 

Fatima Zaidi: So this is where CoHost actually comes in. It makes our life a lot easier. First we have a whole list of engagement metrics that we're measuring – average consumption rate for the show, but also for each individual episode, we know it needs to be an 80th percentile, and they're dropping off in the first five to ten minutes they're clearly not engaged with your content. We're measuring loyal listeners, repeat listeners. Are people staying on for the entire season? 

Then beyond engagement metrics and where the dropoffs are happening, we are also measuring things like demographic data. So are we hitting the right age profile? Are we hitting the right household income profile? We can give you metrics like family pets, or do they have children? What are their social media habits? hobbies and lifestyles. 

So we look at all of that and we create a bit of a brief for who the listener is. 

So we measure all of the demographic data and then on the flip side for B2B shows, they really care about the companies that are listening for a couple of reasons. One, a lot of B2B shows are looking to build a better relationship with their customers or their stakeholders. And so if we can give them a list of all the companies that are listening to their podcast, we're essentially showing them whether or not they're qualified target audiences. 

They also use those lists and convert them into sales pipelines for themselves. So if Walmart is listening and they know that is a potential really good lead for them, then they go and reach out to Walmart and build a relationship with them, ask them to be a guest on the show, show them the stats on how many employees at Walmart are listening to the podcast, which we can show you on CoHost.

So I would say those are sort of the metrics that we're looking at to identify success. We don't really care about the listener count.

Jeff Umbro: We had a Harry Morton on the show from Lower Street a while back and he had this idea – which I've heard elsewhere – [that] your show may only have 500 qualified listeners and if you can get 400 of them, that's a huge success.

Fatima Zaidi: Oh, 100%. Think about 400 people in your living room. Think about how many people that is. If you're reaching 400 of the right people, then ultimately, why does it matter if 10,000 bots are listening to your show or 10,000 17 year olds [who] are not your qualified audience? Harry and I very much are cut from the same cloth in terms of what we think matters in the industry from a measurement perspective.

Something that Dan Meisner and I talked about a very long time ago [which] still resonates with me today is not enough brands are using the cost per minute of human attention as an ROI metric. And podcasting is in such a unique position where we can actually calculate that and use that as an engagement metric. 

So that is kind of the work that we're doing at CoHost. We're really hoping that the industry follows suit. I think that while we keep prioritizing ad sales, it's going to be very hard for us to break through the noise.

Jeff Umbro: So I think that what you guys are doing is so cool, and it's so interesting technologically how you did it. So I wanted to spend a minute just talking about how you [stood] up a technology platform on top of the agency that you were running?

Fatima Zaidi: Yeah, it's definitely aged me very drastically. The agency took off and we knew that we wanted to build this product. 

I just didn't see a need to bring in any external capital. We tapped into a lot of grant funding, of course. In Canada, if you are a female founder creating a new technology – which we did, this technology has never been created before – and not only has it never been created before, I'm a BIPOC founder. So again, there are very big buckets of grant funding available to people like myself. 

I will say that [there are] definitely lots of challenges with bootstrapping. People ask all the time, “if you could do it again, would you raise capital?” I probably still wouldn't raise capital because: A, we just didn't need the money. The agency was able to fund the product. B, we had no pressure internally to make investors happy. 

So the product is a bit of a slow burn, and the only people that [I’m] accountable to is myself. I'm the only stakeholder on the cap table. And so if we don't have a good month or if we make a really big mistake – and goodness, there has been so many mistakes along the way that we have made – all we do is think about what the key learning is, how we're going to ensure that it doesn't happen again, and how we can move forward. 

But there were some roadblocks for sure. We can't grow as quickly as we want. We're competing with the Casteds and the Megaphones of the world. We can't compete on the same playing field as that. They have way more runway to do what they can with their product. And then Megaphone is backed by Spotify. Omny's backed by Triton. 

So all of these players that we're competing with are backed by incredible revenue sources. And so ultimately we do have challenges in that we're being very scrappy. We have a very small development and product team. We're not able to move as quickly as we want, but I would say at least we get to enjoy the process.

Jeff Umbro: I love that. As a bootstrapped founder myself, Every day I kick myself for not going out and taking financing. At the same time, I'm just like, wow, that's the best thing that [I] could have ever done for all of the reasons that you just articulated.

You mentioned earlier that you're able to get a lot of demographic data for your listeners. Can you walk me through how that works with CoHost?

Fatima Zaidi: So when someone listens to the podcast, we get a log, it pings our RSS feed, and what we do is we take those logs and we send them off to our third party data enrichment partner. We have actually a couple data enrichment partners we're working with. 

One of them is Clearbit – what they do is they obviously identify the user agent, the location, the IP address, and then with census level data, they match who that person is and send us back the demographic data. And it's all automated. So we're not sitting here manually taking spreadsheets and uploading [them]. When I say they send it back, they send it back to our system and it displays directly within our platform. 

So typically for B2B analytics, company-level data, and demographic data, we work with third party enrichment partners who with census-level data matching are able to give us a verification on who that listener is and the profile of that person.

Jeff Umbro: There are a few competitors of yours where you can access similar data sets. And I've seen CoHost. I've done a demo. The data is similar, but also very unique. It does give you, and I imagine most brands, the kind of information that you are looking for. Specifically, you mentioned earlier somebody who works at Walmart, for example, listening to the show. That's really valuable if your company is selling shipping / logistic optimization software or something. It's a terrible example.

Fatima Zaidi: No actually, I think it's a great example because usually it is those examples.

Jeff Umbro: You are competing with folks like Omny, Casted, or Megaphone. How are you convincing brands or anyone to use CoHost instead of one of those platforms?

Not that it's a better or worse product, but it is difficult to look at this bootstrapped company and say. “I'm going to stick with those guys as opposed to the Spotify-backed company.”

Fatima Zaidi: So interestingly enough, we no longer have that challenge because CoHost is not just a hosting platform anymore. Recently, only a month ago, we launched our prefix. And so you can actually use an Omny, Megaphone, or whatever, and still use our product as a prefix. 

So similar to how brands were using Chartable as an extension of whatever provider they were using, we're now operating in that space. Luckily, Chartable got acquired. There are sort of no longer in this space. And we've kind of come in and replaced whatever it is that they were doing before the acquisition happened, and truthfully, the innovation stopped. 

So I actually am a huge fan of Omny. I’m so impressed with Sharon and what she's built. And to be honest, if somebody was just interested in looking for a prefix option, I would say, “absolutely host with Omny and come to us for that additional demographic and the analytics enrichment.” We just provide you with an added layer of the data that other hosting providers aren't providing at this current moment. 

In terms of hosting, I would say you could definitely host with us, it's not a priority or mandatory. And in fact, we've been seeing that for political reasons. iHeartRadio is a customer of ours, but they couldn't host with us because of course they own Omny. So they have to be on Omny, but they still wanted to use this as a prefix option.

And if you're like an indie podcast creator, for example, and you are looking to monetize your show, and that is your prime objective, then I actually wouldn't recommend CoHost for hosting. I would recommend that you go with an Omny or a Megaphone that have very robust ad plugin networks and dynamic ad insertion processes. We have those, but we're certainly not optimized for indie content creators. We are 100 percent built for brands and monetization is not a priority for the brands that we are working with. 

So I think that it's less about how we convince them and more [how] serve a very specific market sector. And it's very clear that we are the go-to platform for Fortune 500 brands. If you fall into any other category, I will personally give you a list of recommendations on who you should be using outside of us. And luckily now we don't really have that challenge because of the prefix option.

Jeff Umbro: When I did my demo, they gave me like a little hint that the prefix was coming and I was so happy because, it's a big deal to move your show from platform to platform, if you have a robust offering or a lot of shows. 

Separate from that, do you have any plans to launch attribution tracking or anything like that?

Fatima Zaidi: Most definitely. We're almost done. Campaign attribution data is really important to us. We obviously have tracking links so we can see where the listeners are coming in from. But measuring drop off points, for example, for each episode, episode consumption, show consumption, all of that data is extremely important. And we're in the process of building that out right now.

Jeff Umbro: I wanted to spend a minute talking about the Canadian podcast scene. It's interesting to me because there are a lot of organizations that operate in Canada, more than most people would probably imagine. Outside of the CBC, you have Quill and CoHost. You have Jar Audio, Pacific Content, Rogers, which owns Pacific Content.

Fatima Zaidi: Yep, Frequency Network. Triton.

Jeff Umbro: Triton, yeah. You mentioned earlier before the interview, there's a big difference between Canadian and U.S. podcasting. How would you define that?

Fatima Zaidi: Okay so I'll start off with the good and then I'll go into the bad. 

So, the good is everything that you just listed. We have so much talent in the podcasting industry that is located in Canada. It's actually pretty comical. We laugh about this so much. We're like, “all of the awards are being won by like 80 percent Canadian companies and Canadian talent.” And when I think about this, some of the smartest people in our industry, a lot of them happen to be Canadian. 

But all of these companies that you just mentioned… We're all really good friends. And not only are we really good friends, we're all competitors who work really closely together to fill competitive gaps. And I think by proxy of having that mindset that competitors can work really closely together and support each other. And actually doing so, we have helped move the industry forward and propel each other up. I would say a lot of these competitors really helped us do better at our jobs and vice versa. We're always looking for a way to get back. 

On the con-side of the industry, I would say a lot of Canadian companies are doing the majority of their business in the U.S. and globally, because: A, Canadian companies are very traditional compared to American companies. So even when I look at the genetic makeup of our customers, we're 97 percent American and then 3 percent Canadian, mostly because Canadian companies don't want to make the investment that it's going to cost to do a show properly. And they would rather hodgepodge a show together or work with freelancers. So I think that's a really big detriment in the space is that Canadian companies are very traditional [and] have smaller budgets.

Also the market size. We're looking at 300 million Americans versus 30 million Canadians. And by proxy of that, I would say the innovation has kind of stagnated in Canada versus the U.S. [American companies are] early adopters and also invest in the industry. And that's part of the reason that we're half Canadian, half American. We have our legs in both countries for that reason. 

But if it was truly just based on revenue and financials and our customer base, we would have been an exclusively American company and offshored for a very long time.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Fatima for joining us on the show today. You can check out more about what she is up to at quillpodcasting.com 

For more podcasts, 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 at 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 thank you to Dan Christo. Thanks for listening and I will catch you next week.