Podcast Pontifications

Fishing where the fish are is a solid strategy, so using similar podcasts to promote your podcast is obviously a good idea, right? You bet! But like any marketing effort, what you put in determines what you get out.

Cross-promotion has been a part of podcasting since there were two podcasts. Cross-promo campaigns make up the backbone of growth plans for large podcast networks and are used by some of the biggest podcasters to increase the size of their audience.

Let's start with a successful podcaster who spends $10,000/month on a successful cross-promotional campaign. But maybe you only have $1000 in your budget. Or $100. Will it still work for you?

Yes, but about 100 times less well.

According to Dave Zorhob, co-founder and CEO of Chartable, the new listener acquisition rate for cross-promotions was 0.75%.

Not 75%. Point-seven-five. Less than one percent.

With 10,000 impressions of your promotion, that's 70–80 new listeners. With 1000 impressions, it's seven to eight new listeners. And with only 100 impressions, you'll be lucky to get one new listener.

So why do podcasters do this if the math sucks so bad? At scale, that math works fine and it doesn't suck at all.

Acquiring a lot of new listeners for $3 each makes sense if the impressions they generate over the course of a year are worth $7.50 or more. And that is precisely why big shows and big networks spend big bucks on effective cross-promotional campaigns. To increase their available and saleable inventory

If your show is on the smaller scale, or if you're not selling ads or have another hard outcome with your podcast that you can directly trace back to increased listenership, then the scale problem is real and probably out of balance for you.

But that doesn't mean that you should give up on running a podcast cross-promotion! A new listener or two is a new listener or two. Just understand the realities. And don't expect your listener numbers to skyrocket unless you've got big bucks to spend.

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Sponsored by:

• Captivate.fm, the world's only growth-oriented podcast hosting company

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Links

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• Got a podcasting service? Become a sponsor of Podcast Pontifications.
• Serious about podcasting? Join the Advancing Podcasting Community today!

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Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. New episodes are released weekly, providing ideas and questions every serious podcaster should be thinking about.

It's created and hosted by Evo Terra. Follow him on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come. Allie Press assists with the production and transcription of the show.

If you received value from today's episode of Podcast Pontifications, return some of that! We call it value-for-value and there are many ways to show your support.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th. Abortion is a basic healthcare need for the millions of people who can become pregnant. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what’s best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld, access to safe medical procedures shouldn’t be determined by location, and it shouldn't be the privilege of a small few. You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate for each state, visit donations4abortion.com. If you or someone you know needs help, or if you want to get more involved,...

To me, I equate happiness to contentment. That’s not the same thing as complacency, which is to be avoided. What makes me content about my podcasting journey may not be (and likely will not be) the same thing that makes you content about your podcasting journey. We both have to chart our own paths toward happiness and contentment.

Doing More To Achieve Podcasting Happiness

Sometimes doing more with your podcast can greatly increase your level of happiness. Like focus more effort in post-production, investing more in marketing or outreach to grow your audience, or spend more time building a bigger and better-connected community

Doing Less To Achieve Podcasting Contentment

Sometimes unburdening yourself from commitments can go a long way toward getting you to a more happy place as a podcaster. Can you outsource some podcasting tasks that you really don't enjoy? What about cutting back on (or cutting out) a social platform that you don’t find all that enjoyable? Or reduce your episode output frequency to lower your stress and anxiety?

Doing Things Differently To Achieve Podcasting Bliss

Maybe do different things to cause a positive outcome on your happiness and contentment as a podcaster. You can shift the entire focus of your show if you're not happy with the direction Or you might consider joining a network or a collective. Or maybe something as simple as changing where you podcast will give you a fresh perspective and, with luck, increase your overall happiness as a podcaster.

Ultimately, your happiness is just that: your own happiness. So take control over it. Especially if you’ve tried to chase someone else's definition of what success in podcasting looks like and found it lacking. Podcast in a way that makes you as happy of a podcaster as you can be.

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/the-happy-way-to-find-podcasting-success

https://twitter.com/evoterra for more podcasting insights from Evo Terra as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at https://BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit https://Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about. Subscribe today at https://PodcastPontifications.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th. Abortion is a basic healthcare need for the millions of people who can become pregnant. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what’s best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld, access to safe medical procedures shouldn’t be determined by location, and it shouldn't be the privilege of a small few. You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate for each state, visit donations4abortion.com. If you or someone you know needs help, or if you want to get more involved, here are 5 resources: 1. ShoutYourAbortion.com is a campaign to normalize abortion. 2. DontBanEquality.com is a campaign for companies to take a stand against abortion restrictions. 3. Abortion.cafe has information about where to find clinics. 4. PlanCPills.org provides early at-home abortion pills that you can keep in your medicine cabinet. 5. Choice.CRD.co has a collection of these resources and more. We encourage you to speak up! And spread the word.

Podcasting is like crack for your ears, many have said. Listen once, and they're hooked for life, right? Well... wrong. What do we need to do—as podcasters and an industry—to help build listening habits?

It's a harsh reality that most people who listen to podcasts don't keep listening to podcasts. 62% of the US population +12 have listened, but only 26% frequently listen, according to Edison Research's Infinite Dial survey.

I blame the podcast listening app makers. But I also blame us, the podcasters who provide the content to those apps. We could both do a better job of helping listeners develop the podcast listening habit.

What happens when your Netflix series ends? Netflix immediately makes recommendations. Not after the credits. But during them. And it works.

What happens when you reach "the end" of an ebook on your Kindle? Amazon is making recommendations. Not after the book's back matter. And it works.

Why aren't podcasting apps doing that? Podcast apps are the ones that actually own the relationship with the listeners. So yeah, it's on them!

Or is it?

How do they know when the end of a series or a season has been reached? We have a tag for that, but not all podcast hosts support it. How can we get better at giving app makers more data?

And what do app developers do on the vast majority of podcasts that don't have proscribed endings but just keep going? Recommend a new show too quickly and piss off a lot of podcasters.

There isn't an easy answer. So what do you think we should do?

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Sponsored by:

• Captivate.fm, the world's only growth-oriented podcast hosting company

-----

Links

-----

• Edison Research's Infinite Dial 2022 survey
• The moth joke
• Proposed podcast index namespace tag <podcast:complete>

• Got a podcasting service? Become a sponsor of Podcast Pontifications.
• Serious about podcasting? Join the Advancing Podcasting Community today!

-----

Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. New episodes are released weekly, providing ideas and questions every serious podcaster should be thinking about.

It's created and hosted by Evo Terra. Follow him on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come. Allie Press assists with the production and transcription of the show.

If you received value from today's episode of Podcast Pontifications, return some of that! We call it value-for-value and there are many ways to show your support.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th. Abortion is a basic healthcare need for the millions of people who can become pregnant. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what’s best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld, access to safe medical procedures shouldn’t be determined by location, and it shouldn't be the privilege of a small few. You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate for each state, visit donations4abortion.com. If you or someone you know needs help, or if you w...