Podcast Production Company Owners Talk “Red Flags” for B2B Podcasters

A. Lee Judge [00:00:00]:
They come in, say, hey, I want a podcast. And you’re like, you’re thinking you will get all these things, but you’re just asking, you’re asking for the sprinkles on top when we can give you the whole bowl of ice cream, right?

Katie Brinkley [00:00:12]:
Yeah.

A. Lee Judge [00:00:13]:
And they just say, hey, do you sell sprinkles? We have to go, yeah, but for the price of sprinkles, you get a banana split full of ice cream.

Katie Brinkley [00:00:22]:
You sold the analogy. I was going to use, man. I was going to use the bananas. Influential and thought provoking minds in marketing, sales and business. The business of Marketing Podcast.

A. Lee Judge [00:00:38]:
Welcome again to the business of Marketing. I’m a Lee judge. If you’ve ever had questions about starting or growing a podcast and today’s episode is for you, you’ll get advice from not only one podcast professional, but two. We’re going to answer frequently asked questions by those considering podcasts for either their business or their personal brand. So joining me today is the owner of Next Step Social and Podcasting, the host of the Rocky Mountain Marketing Podcast, and a fellow speaker that I always look forward to hanging out with when we meet up to speak in places like social media, marketing world, Content marketing world and more. So joining me today is my friend, Katie Brinkley. Hey, Katie. Hey.

Katie Brinkley [00:01:18]:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad that we were able to make this happen.

A. Lee Judge [00:01:22]:
Yes, yes. As I said, you know, I love, I look forward to seeing your face when we’re out speaking somewhere. A person I can hang out with and talk shop and just have fun and who gets it. In fact, we’ve even done business together for some of our clients. So I want to start with that part. We work together because you’re a social media expert and love your book, the Social Shift.

Katie Brinkley [00:01:44]:
Gee, you got my book there?

A. Lee Judge [00:01:45]:
Got my book there. Yeah. And I want to know how you made the transition. First, tell us about Next Step Social. But then I wonder how you made the transition or the addition to working with podcasts. Yeah.

Katie Brinkley [00:01:57]:
So it’s crazy because social media, it’s always been something I’ve been passionate about. I started in radio, so adding podcasting, which I know we’ll get to, but social media was always something that I was passionate about, but it was a part of what I was doing with radio. I started with MySpace by helping bands with their MySpace pages. I need. Part of my job at the radio station was to get bands to send us their music for free to find new talent. And, you know, I was talking with bands, interviewing them and this thing, MySpace was new and you know, they, there was a lot of bands out there that were just trying to be found and MySpace was one of the great ways to be found out there and in the world of music back in the early 2000s. It was also my introduction to HTML code and I being a social media anything, you know, that was non existent back then, heck, 10 years ago, being having a social media as your main job, that was non existent. So fast forward a few years and I was a marketing manager for the Colorado Rockies TV station and I did a lot of traditional media buys.

Katie Brinkley [00:03:14]:
I was, you know, buying billboards and doing like commercial spends writing scripts and social media was part of my job. And about, yeah, 10 years ago my, my position was eliminated. And actually it was, it wasn’t. It was. I was offered the opportunity to move to Atlanta because that’s where my position was relocated to. And I was like, I’m not going to.

A. Lee Judge [00:03:40]:
Can you name the company?

Katie Brinkley [00:03:42]:
No, I’m in Denver. I’m a Colorado girl through and through. And so I chose to be laid off. And it was the best thing that happened to me because it gave me the opportunity to say, what do I really want to do? And social media was my favorite part of my job. And so I started trying to find clients where they just needed social media help. And soon I had enough clients to where I was making what I was making at the TV station. And, and I was like, well, what if, what if this was, what if I could turn this into a social media agency? And that was about, that was in 2017, so about eight years ago. And now Nextup Social was born and we added the podcasting division about three years ago.

A. Lee Judge [00:04:33]:
I didn’t realize we had that many parallels despite the time we spent together. So we both been in radio, our companies were Both founded in 2017. We both learned our first leg in HTML and coding through MySpace. MySpace, I guess birthed so many people who learned how to design in websites through HTML encoding. I’d never played with code until MySpace. And now it’s a normal day to day thing. But that’s interesting. It’s interesting.

A. Lee Judge [00:05:04]:
So now, now we’re in podcasting. And so this idea, this conversation came up when we were at Social Media Marketing World and you had thank you for making the meetup for podcasting. And there was a different, definitely a range of people who were there who were thinking about from their personal brands to their businesses to all different reasons for podcasting. Lots of questions came up and a lot of questions that we hear a lot of times from our clients that come up that we love to answer. So I want to kind of go into some of those things and hopefully for the listeners, viewers answer some questions they may have about podcasting that they can get answered up front. Have you ever thought about doing a podcast for your business? And if you have, you probably have some questions. And we understand that because podcasting isn’t for every business. That’s why we’ve created a tool called podcastornot.com.

A. Lee Judge [00:05:55]:
if you go to podcastornot.com you can take a quiz that gives you a full assessment of the strengths and weaknesses you may have in terms of if you’re ready to start a podcast and how it can benefit your business. Now, we know podcasts are, are a great marketing tool and a great source of content for all businesses, but maybe you’re not there yet. So take this assessment@podcastornot.com we’ll give you a full report that you can share with your team about are you ready? And is a podcast a fit for your business? So go to podcastornot.com take the quick quiz and get a full assessment of should you start a podcast for your business. Back to the content. So I’m going to look over here to a couple of things we have here that I know are popular questions and, and let’s see, episode format, solo, co hosted interview. You know, people ask what fits best for them and what keeps listeners coming back. So what are your views on different formats? Let’s talk about that.

Katie Brinkley [00:06:56]:
Yeah, and I think that, you know, I kind of skipped over the radio part of my career. So I started my career in radio and I was a sports journalist. I got to interview the Rockies and the Broncos. I was the post game interviewer. So I got to go into the locker room, you know, great job. And I learned very quickly about how to be an interviewer. And so that’s, that’s a very important skill is how to ask good questions, how to be a good listener and doing research on who you’re having a conversation with. Now, Lee, you and I, we’re friends.

Katie Brinkley [00:07:43]:
You know, we go way back. Like, we could probably just have a phone call and hit record and it would probably be a great podcast episode. But there’s a lot of times where I’ll pop on and have a podcast episode with someone and I’m like, I don’t know if I can air this because they did not answer any of the questions the way that I thought they were going to. This did not go the way that I thought it would. So now I’ve started doing pre calls with all of my guests to be like, where do I want this conversation to go? And so before you even start your show, I think that it’s really important to decide, like, what is the purpose of your show? If it is an interview show, who are you interviewing and why do you want the interview? Like, so for you and me right now, Lee, we are having a conversation to provide value for your listener and you and I are the two subject matter experts that are giving value to your listener and the listener hopefully will reach out to you or me for, to work with us for our services. Right. Or if you want to, you could interview someone and say, hey, maybe you are thinking about having a podcast and you could be asking them all the questions about like, well, why have you not started? Da da da da. And at the end of the episode, did you know that this is something that I offer? So it could be for lead gen? So there’s a lot of different reasons to have an interview based show.

Katie Brinkley [00:09:16]:
So knowing the why of your podcast is one of the most important things. But before you launch, I’m glad you.

A. Lee Judge [00:09:24]:
Mentioned the pre interview because there’s, there’s a lot of reasons to do it, a lot of reasons not to do it. And I think the difference comes in to who you’re talking to and why.

Katie Brinkley [00:09:34]:
Totally.

A. Lee Judge [00:09:35]:
For me, for example, I never do pre interviews, but for my podcast is typically with marketers who also do other podcasts who do it so much that we don’t need pre interviews 1 million percent.

Katie Brinkley [00:09:48]:
You’re talking further experts.

A. Lee Judge [00:09:50]:
Yeah, other experts. The further I get from marketing, even I do some people who are in sales. When I start heading into sales and further away from marketing, then it becomes more, maybe we should do a pre, you know, that kind of thing. I also rarely ever interview strangers. Like I know them somehow. I’ve met them before, I know their personality. So the reason why we’re talking is based on some kind of connection already. Now, from the standpoint of interviewing your clients or potential customers, in that case, maybe you should because it could be legal reasons, you could have marketing things you want to get across or get from them.

A. Lee Judge [00:10:28]:
You want to make sure that their time is used efficiently. You want to get those answers out, right?

Katie Brinkley [00:10:33]:
Yeah. And I think that this is where before you launch your show, knowing the why is extremely important. What is the purpose of your show? Who are you talking to and why do you have your show? Is it for lead gen? Is it for networking? Is it for thought leadership. What is the purpose of your show? And when you know who you’re creating the content for, it’s going to make creating the content a whole lot easier.

A. Lee Judge [00:11:04]:
You know, thinking about what you just said about what you’re doing it for. There is also a case for doing a podcast that is not for the podcast before the content you. You capture. Right. We have a client right now who emailed me this morning who said their goal in this particular case is to capture video. And so they said, should we read the questions of the person off camera and then edit in the questions? Should we have a conversation? How should we do it? My answer to them was, first, conversations always sound more natural, so let’s go that route first. The second is have someone on their level ask them questions off camera so that it’s still kind of a conversation and the person talking, the subject matter expert feels like they’re talking to somebody on their level. And then third is just having a producer ask questions off camera because their goal, again, isn’t to have a podcast episode, but if we start as a conversation, it’ll be podcasty, it’ll be great content to be natural.

A. Lee Judge [00:12:03]:
And then we found clients who do that once or twice and end up having a podcast only because that realize, wow, conversations work. They do it again and again.

Katie Brinkley [00:12:12]:
Totally. And I. I think that when you just decide, like, oh, I’m gonna have a podcast, and, you know, me and Lee are just gonna hit record every week, and we’re just gonna talk about podcasting every week, it. Well, that’s the perfect recipe for, you know, failure, not success. The. The average podcast, like, the series only lasts for. For six episodes, which is really sad. So Rocky Mountain Marketing has been going for over 400 episodes.

Katie Brinkley [00:12:46]:
And now I’m crazy enough that I’ve launched another podcast, which I didn’t even tell you about, Lee. It’s called Marketing Trends Now. But I have two podcasts, and that’s a solo episode, so it’s solo only. And, you know, Mark, Rocky Mountain Marketing is interview only. And so I think that this is where, you know, you have to figure out what’s going. What are you going to be able to remain consistent with. And if you’re like, I’m just going to go ahead and hit record because Lee and I always have great conversations, we’ll surely be able to find things to talk about. Well, that’s not going to be able to, you know, be sustainable.

A. Lee Judge [00:13:25]:
Yeah, well, something you just said, I thought was funny. You said, I haven’t told you about it yet. But I had this new podcast. I know about the podcast. And the point I’m making is you have to know how to promote your podcast to get listeners. Because podcasts, especially the audio versions, are not discoverable. They don’t have the discoverability that a video version on YouTube would. And so we know, we have our newsletters, our email databases, we utilize those to promote our podcast.

A. Lee Judge [00:13:54]:
I, um, I know I’ve seen at least a newsletter from you, Maybe even a LinkedIn newsletter from you about your new podcast. If you had just done the recording, put it on Spotify, Apple or whatever, we wouldn’t know about it. Right? I would know about the old one, I wouldn’t know about the new one. Unless for some reason at some point you mentioned it or in a solo. So you don’t have guests to mention it. It would have been just you. So that’s something that. Let’s talk about that.

A. Lee Judge [00:14:19]:
Because when we do podcasts for audio only clients, especially now, because things have changed over the past four or five years, they don’t tend to understand that your marketing machine, your promotion of how you promote any kind of content has to go into play for your podcast. It’s like a tree falling in the woods. You can’t just drop an audio podcast and expect it to blow up. Right?

Katie Brinkley [00:14:44]:
Yeah.

A. Lee Judge [00:14:46]:
This is where you can put on your social media hat some, because that’s another place to get it known. So what are your thoughts on that?

Katie Brinkley [00:14:51]:
Yeah, exactly. And I think that that’s one of the biggest mistakes a lot of people make is like, okay, well, now I’ve recorded this podcast, magic is going to happen and now my business is going, you know, my business is going to change or. And it’s the same with social media. It’s like, okay, I created this, this TikTok video and now I’m going to go viral and my business is going to change. Or it’s, it’s no different than being like, all right, I went and bought a lotto ticket. I, you know, my life is gonna change. Like, that’s not like a strategy at all. That’s just like hoping and hoping to get lucky.

Katie Brinkley [00:15:30]:
So you have to tell people. You have to have a strategy behind it and plan. When you launch a podcast, you have to tell people. So, I mean, when I launched Marketing Trends now, I told my, I did an entire email series about it. I told everyone on my social media networks. I’ve, you know, really promoted it a lot. And honestly, I probably should promote it a little bit more. But it’s, it’s one of those things where you have to tell your audience about your show and when you have a podcast.

Katie Brinkley [00:16:05]:
Oh man, you have a content generating machine. I don’t think I’ve. Well, my birthday is in July and so I did write a fresh email only about my birthday, but other than that, I’ve only used my podcast to write all my email newsletters. My email is directly repurposed content from my podcast and all my social media content is directly repurposed content from my podcast. I mean, if you have a podcast, it is a content generating machine and it, it’s, it’s one of the best ways to tell people that you have a podcast and it’s a great way to get people to listen to your podcast and it’s a great way to get more content out there. It’s, it’s really. I don’t know, I think that everyone should have a podcast. But I have a strategy.

A. Lee Judge [00:17:05]:
Hey, marketers. Imagine harnessing the power of conversations to elevate your brand’s authority and visibility. With Content Monsters podcast production services, you create a platform to connect with executives and subject matter experts, fostering relationships that position your brand as a thought leader. Our expert team collaborates with you to craft engaging podcasts which can be repurposed into videos and social media content, maximizing your reach across platforms. Don’t let content creation challenges hold you back. Partner with Content Master to transform your marketing strategy and reach more customers. Visit contentmonster.com today to get started. Well, you know, as creators of podcasts, we work with businesses to create podcasts, but we have to, we’re on a crusade, I guess.

A. Lee Judge [00:17:55]:
We have to kind of change some of the language that is being used, I think, because there are already preconceptions of what a podcast is and what it’s supposed to do, and they don’t realize that it’s a content machine. Like the, the traditional idea of a podcast, it’s just one of the many byproducts, maybe be a byproduct you don’t even use because you can create so much content. As you mentioned, I’m the same way my podcast is going to drive an article. The best part about that is it’ll be original conversation, like what you and I are saying today. This is not chat GPT. This is our actual conversation with our own human thoughts and mistakes in it. And it’s original content because we’re saying it right now. That’ll make for a great article.

A. Lee Judge [00:18:38]:
The transcript will make for content as well. The Clips from this, from this podcast or clips, a YouTube video, webpage. Content. All of this is content. The audio version, yeah, it’ll go up because we have listeners who have subscribed. But the bigger part of that pie is all the content we can create. And do you find when talking to clients that, you know, they have these preconceived notions, they come in, say, hey, I want a podcast. And you’re like, you’re thinking you will get all these things, but you’re just asking, you’re asking for the sprinkles on top when we can give you the whole bowl of ice cream, right?

Katie Brinkley [00:19:17]:
Yeah.

A. Lee Judge [00:19:17]:
And they just say, hey, do you sell sprinkles? We had to go, yeah, but for the price of sprinkles, you get a banana split full of ice cream.

Katie Brinkley [00:19:27]:
You sold the analogy. I was going to use, man, I was going to use the banana split. I wanted to sell banana splits. And you already sold them on that. No, yeah. I mean, it’s so true. It’s so true. I mean, like, and with a podcast too.

Katie Brinkley [00:19:42]:
And, and I, I think that with podcasting and AI now, so one of our clients has been, been really cool. So she, she has a weekly podcast, it’s solo episodes and she just launched. So she wants to target another demographic in her region. She wants to target the Spanish speaking market. And she hired three people that are 100 Spanish. Well, they. 100% bilingual. So they speak English and Spanish, but she doesn’t speak Spanish, but she has her Spanish speaking podcast.

Katie Brinkley [00:20:19]:
So what we’ve done is we’ve taken her Spanish, her English podcast, and used AI to translate it into a Spanish speaking podcast. Now we have her speaking Spanish with her podcast. And now she has two podcasts in English and in Spanish that go out and she’s targeting that other demographic. I mean, it’s insane. And it’s. She’s able to get more people in, she’s able to talk to them without having to create the content twice. Um, and I mean, like, this is where we’re at with technology now. I mean, like, if you, it’s.

Katie Brinkley [00:20:57]:
The world is your oyster and if, if you want to reach more people, if you want to do new things, if you want to, if you want. I mean, all she has to do is sit down for 10 minutes a week to record these podcast episodes. And we get all sorts of social media content, email content. We were able to write a book for her last year. From these podcast episodes, we’ve launched the entire new division of her business. You know, the Spanish wing because of this one 10 minute a week that she devotes to having a podcast.

A. Lee Judge [00:21:30]:
Well, think about this. I don’t know if you’ve had access to this yet because this may be a new feature announcement for those who are listening to this episode. Did you know that YouTube now has auto dubbing? Yeah, so I just turned mine on recently and you know, it happens only with new uploads. And so my first new upload since having the feature on was me and Neil Shafer episode that was, I guess as you’re watching this now would have been a few weeks ago. So I go back to it. A funny thing happened though. So the voices, it doesn’t lip sync like some of our AI apps do and it doesn’t match the voice. It just has a male or a female voice trying to w.

A. Lee Judge [00:22:12]:
Funny thing was though, my podcast format, as you have seen, if you’re watching this right now, is it’s a hot take, the beginning, a clip, then it’s the like a three second teaser with the lady’s voice that says welcome to the business of marketing. And then it’s typically me. Well, AI Dub gave Neil had the hot take at the beginning. It gave Neil a male’s voice. So it could be in Russian or Japanese. Then there’s a lady’s voice for the intro. Then it comes to me, it kept the lady’s voice.

Katie Brinkley [00:22:43]:
That’s awesome.

A. Lee Judge [00:22:44]:
So if you go back to that episode and you change it to German or French, it’ll be me speaking in not only French but a female’s voice.

Katie Brinkley [00:22:54]:
That’s pretty awesome. I’m gonna have to go watch you speak Japanese in a female voice.

A. Lee Judge [00:23:00]:
Yeah. So the interesting thing now is to see if, you know, it’s a prediction that we should see an uptick in viewers because now it can be dubbed. I think that’s yet to be told if that’s going to happen. But unless again, you go back and you promote it. Because now even though I may not get organic German speakers finding my content, may or may not, I don’t know. But I do know that now I can promote the content to a German audience and they can listen to it in German.

Katie Brinkley [00:23:28]:
Yeah.

A. Lee Judge [00:23:28]:
So things are opening up, right?

Katie Brinkley [00:23:31]:
Exactly. And I think that, you know, this is where AI is. You know, it’s not coming after you, it’s not coming after your job. It’s just, it’s just use, use these tools to make your. To make your big business bigger. You know, use these tools to make your business bigger and to, to get new Audiences to, to expand your reach. Because now you, maybe you were just, you know, a local. You maybe, you know, like, like Rachel, she was, she doesn’t speak Spanish, but now she’s like, oh, I do want more clients.

Katie Brinkley [00:24:06]:
There are a lot of Spanish speaking people here. What if I hired someone that speaks Spanish and we, you know, made a Spanish version on the website? We did this. We did this. Let’s give it a shot, you know, global.

A. Lee Judge [00:24:22]:
It’s no reason not to be global with anything you’re doing at this point because language, the language barrier is crumbling. So why not? I want to give our listeners some inside baseball from the agency side because you and I are both in positions to take calls or sales calls from businesses who want to start a podcast or individuals who want to start a podcast. And I’m sure there’s some things, whether we have them listed or not, that are red flags. Like when you hear certain things from someone when they say they want a podcast, your thoughts are going to be like, oh, this is going to fail. This wasn’t work. This is the wrong reason. Or I don’t want to work with you. Whatever.

A. Lee Judge [00:24:59]:
Let’s talk about some of the red flags so maybe people can think about them before they approach an agency like ours. I’ll start with the first red flag that happened to us recently. We had a lead for podcast for business. And on this, the first call, the CFO is on the call. Now the company’s big enough where the CFO doesn’t need to be. I was surprised. The CFOs on the call and they kept firing off all kinds of ROI questions for the podcast. And they were thinking, okay, in the first month, how many listens, downloads, you know, leads can we get from this? Can we put on this page? They were talking leads.

A. Lee Judge [00:25:36]:
ROI in one month. That was, yes, huge red flag. I mean, in any kind of content marketing, that would have been a red flag, let alone podcasting. And they weren’t even talking about doing video. So see your eyes. I agree.

Katie Brinkley [00:25:54]:
Yeah. For those that are listening and not watching. My, my, you got to go to YouTube and see my face.

A. Lee Judge [00:26:00]:
You got to see Katie’s face is totally appropriate. Like, cringe red flag. Like, oh, my God, what are you thinking? So that’s a red flag for us if we hear a client talking those things too soon in not understanding content marketing. So can you think of a red flag you’ve seen when a client calls you and you go, this might not be a fit?

Katie Brinkley [00:26:20]:
Well, I actually had had to fire a client A few, about, about six months, six, seven months ago, we had to release them from their contract with us. And so it just wasn’t a fit. And we had a lot of, we, we had the data and they wanted to do two episodes a week, which is great. I’m like, okay, cool, you want to sit down and record that much? But they were two, two hour long episodes a week. I know. Yeah. Yep. See you guys.

Katie Brinkley [00:26:54]:
You gotta watch the.

A. Lee Judge [00:26:55]:
I’m already seeing two red flags now.

Katie Brinkley [00:26:56]:
I know. Two, two hour long episodes a week because they wanted Joe Rogan style interviews. And I was like, this is the problem. I was like, I was like looking at the data, we’re losing a lot of people around the 22 minute mark. So they’re not watching the full thing. Like, what about if we just put the first 20 minutes up there and then put the rest behind a paywall? And so we let, and so then you can. Because the client wanted to monetize the show and it was like, we’re not monetizing. We’re not.

Katie Brinkley [00:27:29]:
And I was like, well, people aren’t listening to the whole thing, man. So if you want to monetize, how about we do this? And then, you know, that way we can start getting some money. Because you’re doing all these, you’re doing, you’re putting out great content, but people aren’t listening to the whole thing and you don’t want to shorten it up and you want to still make more. What about if we put the rest behind a paywall? And I mean like they, it’s hard. So I guess like the red flag is when people see when you present the data and people are resistant to knowing, thinking that they have the, the better answer than the strategists. I mean like you hired us for a reason. I mean we, we have the tools. We have, we’ve been doing this for a while.

Katie Brinkley [00:28:14]:
We, we know what to look for. We’ve, I mean like we, we know the people in the industry and I mean like I’ve worked with some of the, the best in the industry to, to talk to, you know, to get these tools, to have access to these tools, to know what to look for, to have some of these strategies. And so I mean like, that’s why you hired us. Otherwise, you know, save your money. And if you wanted to go ahead and do it your own way, then do it your own way, don’t hire us. But I mean, yeah, so I mean, they’re, I let them out of their contract, they can do it their own way then. But it’s that. That was a real frustrating one because they wanted to.

Katie Brinkley [00:28:54]:
That was. Their goal was to monetize. It’s kind of like you, you know, like, what’s the roi? So they wanted to monetize. And then the way the solutions we gave them to try to monetize the show, they were. They didn’t want to do any of the solutions we offered.

A. Lee Judge [00:29:10]:
You know, why are you gonna like Steve Jobs? I think it was said hire people who are smarter than you. Yeah, you pay people because they know something you don’t. If you don’t listen to them, then why are you paying them? Or it’s not a good fit. But what you said reminded me of another red flag when you mentioned Joe Rogan. And we started saying this even more and more. Even some of our sales calls, like, to put it nicely, you’re not going to be Joe Rogan. So whenever we have somebody who we feel like is only wanting to do a podcast because they’re a pod, they want to be a podcast bro. We’re like, okay, you know, I mean, once something gets to a level where it’s satired.

A. Lee Judge [00:29:47]:
On Saturday Night Live, there was this kid where they had. They were. The wives were buying the husband’s podcast kits. They were like Fisher Price podcast kits because it’s such a podcast bro thing. So whenever we get a client who we think is a podcast bro who’s like, hey, you know, we want to be like Joe Rogan. We want to be the Joe Rogan of flooring or something, you know, like, yeah, not. It’s not going to work that way. You know, Joe Rogan had a career and a fan base before he had a podcast.

A. Lee Judge [00:30:14]:
Right.

Katie Brinkley [00:30:15]:
Again, coming back full circle here, Lee. Like, this is where having a social media presence, an email list, a community is so important. If you launch a podcast and then just expect magic, it, you know, it’s like, oh, I’m just gonna go buy a lotto ticket and magic’s gonna happen in my life’s gonna be different. It’s not. If that’s not how it works. You. There’s all these other little moving pieces that all fit into the giant digital marketing, the content marketing puzzle. And this has a certain spot, this has a certain spot, this has a certain spot.

Katie Brinkley [00:30:55]:
And they all work together. That’s when the magic happens. And the thing at the middle of it, Lee, is community. Your community. The people that want to stick around.

A. Lee Judge [00:31:08]:
The community could even be your business community. So to give a silver lining here, we have Clients who do have very niche type industries, like, they could be, they could make circuit boards for factory machines or something. Very niche. And what they, what we helped them realize was if you had every circuit board buyer in the country, you may have 10,000 people, right?

Katie Brinkley [00:31:34]:
Yeah.

A. Lee Judge [00:31:34]:
So don’t expect a million listens. And those who understand that, they go, you know what, you’re right. There’s only 10,000 buyers. And if we get a thousand listeners, we’ve got 10% of the, of the industry listening to us. And they’re excited about those. A thousand listeners, right. They get a hundred listeners on an episode like, wow, we have a large part of our community. And then they have conversations with those people that they can’t say, hey, can we pick your brain? Or can we find out what you’re doing in your company? But we can say, come on our podcast to tell us about why you’re winning in the industry.

A. Lee Judge [00:32:09]:
And now you have a new relationship with somebody in industry, you may have some, some residual authority by being seen with them on your own podcast or on their podcast. And even now I look at, sometimes if I have an episode that I think the numbers weren’t that great. I look at the bigger picture as a marketer and I thought, wait a minute, today 100 people listen to my podcast episode. That sounds weak compared to Joe Rogan. But then I think, wait a minute, they listen for 10, 15 minutes. Did I have 100 blog articles read for 15 minutes today? You know, did I have 100 emails? Attention, you know, so when you compare it to other forms of content, all of a sudden it flips over and you go, wow, that’s actually a lot more attention than I would have gotten. If you don’t compare it to npr. Joe Rogan.

Katie Brinkley [00:33:04]:
Exactly. And it’s, you’re not comparing apples to apples. I mean, like I sit and watch SNL skits all the time, you know, but what we’re talking about isn’t, it’s not funny, you know, and, well, I guess a lot of people could say SNL isn’t funny anymore either. But you know, their own. But I mean, like that, that’s the thing. Like you, you’re not comparing it to like, that’s entertainment. This is education based. People are tuning in to learn something.

Katie Brinkley [00:33:31]:
To walk away and be like, you know what? I didn’t really think about doing a solo episode. I had no idea that I could, you know, clone my voice and translate it into Spanish like that. I, I would love to do that. A podcast like that. I had no idea that was possible. And so, I mean, like, this is where taking those downloads and turning them into the actual people. Like, you and I are speakers. You know, we speak all over the world.

Katie Brinkley [00:34:00]:
And I think that I love having a room of, whether it’s 100 people, a room of 20 people, you know, just to sit in front of and be like, all right. And then having the three people at the end that come up and say, like, I had no idea on this. Like, that’s the part that’s like, yeah, this was all worth it. That was worth me leaving my family.

A. Lee Judge [00:34:18]:
I’m glad you mentioned that, because again, when you think about what to compare it to. So you and I, if we’re in a room full of 500, 700,000 people talking, that’s a win. It’s like, wow, I have their attention for an hour straight. People want to be in that position that we are often in on stage with a captive audience.

Katie Brinkley [00:34:37]:
Yeah.

A. Lee Judge [00:34:37]:
And at that point, 500 sound like a really good number. But take that same person who has a podcast and go, what only got 500 listens like, dude, you just did a keynote. You’re doing a keynote every week. What’s the problem here? So let’s talk about measurement, because that’s probably something that we catch red flags from, too, a lot. I mean, having to explain measurement in the context of business content marketing and not in the context of traditional podcasts.

Katie Brinkley [00:35:09]:
Yeah.

A. Lee Judge [00:35:10]:
Where do we start measuring?

Katie Brinkley [00:35:11]:
Yeah, we. Well, and I think that too. What is. What is your goal?

A. Lee Judge [00:35:15]:
Who.

Katie Brinkley [00:35:16]:
What’s the purpose of your show? Like, for one of our clients, his goal was to network. So the people he was interviewing, he wanted to establish networking conversations. He wanted. The people he was talking to, he wanted to deepen that relationship. It really didn’t matter how many downloads he got, because he wanted to strengthen the relationship with the person he was interviewing. And whoever listened, great. They were getting a master class between two extremely smart people, like, right now. And then there’s other people, you know, like the solo episodes from our client, you know, she’s doing it for thought leadership.

Katie Brinkley [00:36:04]:
She, you know, she. She just wants to have this content now. She has all these con. All these episodes out there so that whenever there’s trending legal issues, like, she’s the go to person that goes on the news whenever there’s like, high profile cases, and they’re like, oh, well, we got to get her on to talk about this because, like, she’s the legal expert in our region, you know, so because we listen to her show So I mean, like, what is the purpose of your show? Is it for thought leadership? Is it for networking? And so I say all this because the, the person that had the networking show, they were getting about 40 downloads an episode just for audio YouTube, they were getting around 300 views, which is great. But we went to a potential sponsor and said, hey, this is what, these are the people that, these are the people we’re having conversations with. This is where our listener is. These are the people who we can, that we can see, who are listening, their demographic, their income levels, all of that. And we think that this is your ideal client.

Katie Brinkley [00:37:20]:
If you make one sale from one of our listeners, that’s $500,000, would you like to be a sponsor of the show for six months for ten grand? And they said, absolutely. It was a no brainer because if they got one person to sign up, that was a, you know, they got two, you know, yeah, it’s a big win. And we were directly in front of their ideal client on a regular basis. So I mean, this is where again, like knowing who it is that you’re in front of, knowing the data, knowing what it is that you are having conversations are. It doesn’t matter if you have 500,000 downloads an episode. It matters on who you’re having conversations with and knowing who your listener is because you’re going to be desirable for those potential sponsors. And depending on the leads, like, I mean, like for our, the solo episodes, she just wants the visibility, she wants the thought leadership. So now she’s getting on TV and she gets those calls after that.

A. Lee Judge [00:38:25]:
That’s, that’s something very important. I hope people hear, especially the sponsorship part because I’ve gone to several podcast conferences and you’ve done more than I have. And most of those conferences are people who, they’re mostly solopreneurs who want to get sponsorship for their podcast as opposed to businesses who, their goal is to promote their own brand. And that’s the biggest question I see these conferences is how do I get sponsorship for my podc? Because they’re trying to figure out how to get enough money to sustain doing the podcast as opposed to using the corporate budget. They’re trying to figure out how to get money. And you made an amazing point there. It’s that, you know, typically the typical, we both come from radio, so we know when you look at advertising the first question is what’s your listenership? And that’s how it used to be. Like, what is your listenership? We’re going to base what we spend with you based on that.

A. Lee Judge [00:39:18]:
But as you mentioned, with podcasts, it’s more like, who was your listenership? Like, we don’t need a lot. We need the right ones.

Katie Brinkley [00:39:25]:
We need the right ones. Exactly. And this is where I think, coming back full circle, knowing who your podcast is for what, the conversations that you’re going to have, you know, the biggest answering, the why, why am I having this show? Is it to network? Is it to have thought leadership? Is it for lead gen or why am I having this show? And then when you know that and then looking at the data behind it, it makes everything fall into place.

A. Lee Judge [00:39:59]:
Absolutely. Well, I think that about wraps it up. I hope that those people watching and listening got some insider information from two professional podcast agencies who were working to help businesses and individuals grow their podcast. There’s a lot of questions they have and I hope we answer some of those today. And the cool part is we’re friendly, competitive, because we both are providing podcast, but we’re cool with each other. And I look forward to seeing you again soon. I didn’t. I feel weird that we have been around each other so much.

A. Lee Judge [00:40:30]:
There’s so much more that we didn’t know that we had in common, like the background in radio and all that kind of stuff. So now we have more to talk about when we see each other in person. Probably in a few months. Right? We’ll be at cex, right?

Katie Brinkley [00:40:40]:
Yep. Cex. I’m. Are you going to be. I’m going to be at Podcast Movement Speaking there, Empowered Podcasting Conference and then cex. And yeah, I’ll be around. But you know, it’s always great seeing you, Lee. You are just one of my favorite people.

Katie Brinkley [00:40:55]:
I can’t thank you enough for having me on the show.

A. Lee Judge [00:40:57]:
Likewise. Thanks, Katie, again. Thanks, Katie, for joining me today and thanks to the listeners. If you’re listening to the podcast and want to also see Katie and I, the video of the podcast and others are available in the Podcast section of Content monster dot com. Catch you next time.

Katie Brinkley [00:41:15]:
Thank you for listening to the Business of Marketing Podcast, a show brought to you by contentmonsta.com, the producer of B2B digital marketing content. Show notes can be found on contentmonster.com as well as aleadjudge.com.