How to market a podcast

In this episode, we talk about why we started the podcast, who we think our ideal listener is, and how we plan to grow our audience.

After going back and forth, the following framework emerged for marketing a podcast

Why did we start the podcast?Who is our audience and ideal listener?What problem are we solving for our audience?What makes our podcast unique?How will we measure success?How will we achieve success?

Takeaways include: 

Our ideal listener is someone who:Wants to achieve freedom through entrepreneurshipWants to build something sustainable that will last for many yearsDoes things the way they see is the right way to do themDoesn't feel like they have a sufficient peer group for the hard conversationsControl, freedom, flexibility, and doing things the right way (as we define “right”) are important to our ideal listenerOur hosts (Tyler and Rick) share these valuesThere is a hole between the venture capital communities and serial entrepreneurs who are flipping companiesAnd that hole is build startups to last with sustainable impact and value creation for customers, employees, and ownersWe think the Startup to Last podcast is unique in the following ways:We have a deep-dive topic each weekWe do not follow the guest-interview frameworkOur hosts (Tyler and Rick) have skill sets that cover the whole spectrum in a way that most other podcast hosts don’tWe cover the spectrum in terms of company size and maturityTyler is 10 years into his company while Rick is in the very early stages of his companyWe are both comfortable with the essence of entrepreneurship: not knowing the answer and being OK with talking about it until we find itStartup to Last has achieved basic traction since launching in June 2019:200+ downloads across multiple platforms:33% are on Apple22% are on a web browser12% are on SpotifyThe rest are on various other platforms.11+ subscribers (Thank you)95% of our downloads and subscribers are from the U.SWe've got a couple in Mexico, and then some in EuropeFrom July to August, we doubled the number of downloads month-over-monthWe will measure success going forward by making the following metrics go up:SubscribersDownloads per most recent episodeWe will achieve success by:Talking to our existing listenersDoing customer development with potential listenersExperimenting with various growth channels and tacticsWe think our ideal listeners hang out in the following places:Online bootstrapper communities (e.g. people engaging at Indie Hackers and attendees at MicroConf )Social media sites (e.g. people who follow similar podcasts on Twitter)Q&A sites (e.g. people who are asking / answering related questions on Quora)

Why did we start the podcast?

Tyler: For anyone listening, you haven't been listening for long because this is our ninth episode ever. When we started this podcast, we were planning on just focusing on how do we make the content, so recording it, having a schedule, picking topics, editing, producing, publishing it. All that stuff, and at this point, we feel like we've kind of got it down. I mean, I'm sure we'll get better over time, but we've got a system where we can get podcasts published pretty regularly, so now the next question is, how do we get anyone to actually listen to this, and so we're going to talk about that today. 

Tyler: Keep in mind that neither of us have ever done a podcast before, so this is going to be very speculative and maybe every idea we have here is going to fail, but basically, we need to have this conversation anyway, so let's record it, and maybe people will find it interesting, what we're planning here. So with that said, you're more of a marketing person than me certainly, Rick, but I was thinking one thing we could potentially do is go over some ideas we already have or maybe you could start high-level and just talk about how you think we should even approach getting listeners to a podcast like this?

Rick: I think one challenge that we have, Tyler, is that the reason we created a podcast was pretty selfish. It wasn't with a customer in mind or an audience in mind. For background, we started this podcast because we want to spend more time together. Right? You live in St. Louis. I live in Utah. Well, you came out every other quarter or every few quarters or so. I recently made a trip out to St. Louis. We had a great time, and we both said, "We'd like to spend more time together. How do we do that?" I think both of us were thinking podcast when we said that. Two reasons. One, we want to spend more time together. Two, it's kind of interesting to see if a podcast would work. Neither of us have ever done that. Let's try it. And so we did that, and now it's been, you said, nine episodes, I think?

Tyler: Yeah. We did two or three that we kind of threw out before we started actually publishing them.

Rick: Yup, yup, and so now, what is kind of weird here is we have content that is valuable to us. I'm getting value out of this every week when I talk to you. I think you're getting value out of it. But the content that we've created was made for us. It wasn't made for some market out there of potential listeners that we have a high confidence that will get value out of this.

Tyler: Yes. Although, I listen to a lot of podcasts that are, if anything, even less for an audience than this. I listen to maybe five podcasts where it's two founders talking, and some of them don't even have deep-dive topics like we do. Some of them are just, "Hey, what did you work on this week? What did you work on this week? Okay. Bye," and I think they all have thousands or tens of thousands of listeners.

Rick: In marketing, that's luck. Right?

Tyler: Yes, but there's an audience that wants to listen to founders talking to each other I guess is my point.

Rick: I can't disagree with that. We're coming at this from a product-first standpoint or not even a product-first. We're coming at it from a, "Hey, we want to spend more time together, and then see what happens," which is a little different than, "Hey, there's a problem out there," like a normal business venture or something that you're designing to actually be sustainable and make money. You go, "Hey, there's a problem out here that I know about, or that I heard about, or I've witnessed, or I've felt myself, and there's a market for people who had this problem. I've talked to them, and they're... They don't tell me what the solution is, but based on their symptoms, what's out there currently from a current solution standpoint, what they are looking to achieve, what their ultimate outcome or job-to-be-done is. You go, "Okay. Well, this person is trying to get from A to B. There's a problem getting in the way. I'm going to solve that problem, and then we're going to create a solution for that." We really didn't go through that process. So, we're in our ninth episode. We've got some traction, and we could talk about that, but I don...