How effective are paid ads for podcast growth?

Voice Over: 00:00:00

Got dreams of being a professional podcaster, but have no idea what you're doing. This is impossible. That's about to change. A new kind of school. Welcome to the PodSchool Podcast.

Rachel Corbett: 00:00:10

Hello. Welcome to the show. Sorry if I sound a bit raspy today.

I've had one of those weeks where I'm just like, not quite keeping my head above water, if I'm brutally honest. My kids started getting up at 4.30am she also got sent home from daycare on Monday.

So she was home with me for a couple of days because she had a temperature. And I also had this like, massive project I had to get done anyway at work. So I'm trying to juggle this toddler while also taking work.

I was just like, I have crawled to the end. So I thought, you know what, stuff it. I'm not recording video for this episode. I'm going to go old school.

I can see myself in Riverside right now, but I'm so glad nobody else is ever going to say it because I've put in absolutely no effort and I'm the only one that needs to see it. So today's question is about paid advertising and whether paid ads are a good way to grow your show. I am going to be honest, actually, if, if I.

If you would ask me this question. And this question was from Helen. If you want to submit a question, you can do so at the link in the description.

If you had asked me a year ago, I probably would have said, don't bother. And I'm still going to say don't bother for the most part.

But I have just seen some really effective ads that we've run at work over the last six months that have brought in an unbelievable amount of downloads. And so I'm like, okay, actually there is something here, but I do think you need to be doing a couple of things right for that to work.

So I wanted to just start first of all by talking through why paid ads don't actually work. And the reason is that podcasting isn't like an E commerce business.

It's very rare that you're going to have somebody scrolling through their phone while they're watching TV or doing something else and think to themselves, themselves. I'm really in a space right now where I want to click on an impulse listen for a podcast.

You know, I think about myself when I'm kind of stroll scrolling through social media and I see ads.

If I'm going to click on something or buy something, it's usually because I'm like, oh, I don't want to miss out on that or I don't want to lose that. But I'm not really in the mode in that environment of, oh, you know what?

I'm really hoping I find now a podcast that I'd have to dedicate the next 30 minutes to. So you've got to think about the people that you're appealing to in that space.

And most of them aren't ready at that time to make a commitment to 20 to 40 minutes of content with a stranger. So that's usually why most paid ads underperform. It's not because they're bad ads.

It's just because that medium doesn't really lend itself, as in podcasting, doesn't really lend itself to impulse listening. When they do really work is when you have super tight targeting.

So if you have a show that is, it actually would be quite easy to target the specific people that you are doing this show for. And again, this comes back to some of the work you need to do around who is your ideal audience, who are the people that you are trying to capture.

The more general that is, the harder it's going to be to target.

And the couple of campaigns that we ran that worked really, really well, we were able to hyper target to the kind of audience that we were looking for and that would be interested in the show. So you really need to think about who am I appealing to, who is my audience and can I specifically target them?

To find these people your niche and, and how you can explain your show to somebody is always so important.

But when you're doing work like this, it's actually the difference between spending money effectively and getting a return on your investment and just throwing money down the toilet.

Because if you're not targeting the right people, well, you're just going to spend money chasing after people who are never going to listen to your show anyway. So that is really the key. Can you target those people?

And one of the things that the team at work were doing really well was constantly looking into those ads and optimizing if creative wasn't working either making small tweaks to get that ad to work or pulling money and putting it somewhere else where it was working.

So naturally that means that you're probably going to have to hire somebody to do that for you, unless you have the time, inclination, passion to sort of learn that stuff yourself. But it does take time and you do need expertise in that space to understand how things are moving and to work with that.

And that is going to take, you know, money. It's not cheap to hire someone to do social media advertising, and then you have to pay for the ads on top of that.

So the reality is, yes, it can work if you can get your targeting right and your creative right, but you've also got to potentially spend money that you don't have. So it's often not an option for somebody that's right at the beginning of of their journey. So that targeting is really important.

You also really need a hook in your creative. You know, a vague listen to my podcast is like for. You're basically appealing to a cold audience. These are people that don't know you.

So you want to make sure that the creative, the content, it resonates and it gives them a reason to click on something. Often a good piece of creative to use is content that you've shared that's gone really well organically on your social.

Like, often we will take that content that's working and then put some money behind it, because clearly, if it's really gotten a lot of reach on social, that's going to be mostly followers that don't follow you. So it's already appealing to a cold audience.

So if you're going to put money behind that and target it at the right kind of audience, then you can often get a lot of traction out of that because you know that the creative already works and you've already tested it in a way on the organic side of things. So you can sometimes throw money behind it and get some value there. The other thing I would say is essential to do is tracking everything.

So we use a tool called Potter. There used to be a tool called Chartable, which is an now kind of in the back end of Spotify, since they bought it.

That tool honestly worked better than a lot of the other tools. But POD is quite good in the sense that you can at least see if people have listened.

So you can create a link and then it links up with your RSS feed so that when people click through on that link, it will actually track whether they listen to an episode within a certain number of days. So that is really good for working out what is actually most effective. So what's not just leading to clicks?

Yes, you can track that when you're advertising, but what you want to know is ultimately how many of those clicks are actually leading to a download. And if a thousand people are clicking but nobody listened, then what's the point? It's not doing what you thought it would do.

And ultimately it means people are clicking through and going, oh, no, this isn't where I want it to be taken to, I don't want to listen. So you really want to be monitoring that data and making sure that you are optimizing your ads to get people to listen to your show.

Because that is the whole point of that exercise. So those are the three things that you really need to do.

Have super tight targeting, really think about your creative, have a strong hook, a strong reason for people to listen and check it out who don't know you. That's what you need to be thinking about when you're sharing contents like, these are fresh eyes, fresh people.

What about this content is going to make them go, oh, that's really compelling. I have no idea who this person is, but actually that's a really interesting thing.

So if you can get something like that that makes them piques their interest, even if they don't know you, that can really help. The other thing I would say is that paid ads are only going to work if your foundations are already solid. So this is not something to lean into.

On day zero of your podcast, Ideally you want audience there. You want to know you've got clear messaging around your show. You want to have a really clear description.

Because when people come through, if you do get somebody to click and they come through to your podcast, you want make sure everything is set up well to get the highest chance of somebody coming into your show. So make sure your podcast description is on point and your episode descriptions and your episode titles are enticing and your artwork stands out.

And make sure that all of that is set up before you start to do paid ads.

Because if none of that storefront is appealing enough, then you're again going to be throwing money down the toilet because you are not going to get enough uptake from those ads to make the return on investment worthwhile.

Once your show is humming and you've got an audience there, they like what you're doing, they're returning, they're giving you good reviews, you know you have something worth marketing to a wider audience, then I would think about trialing with some small budget for paid ads and then you'll have a much better chance of getting people into your show because you know it's something that people already love and you're much better off just holding off. Even if you're like, but I've only got two downloads. It's like, it's okay, it's okay. That's where most people start. That is okay. That is normal.

And a lot of people start there. Every single show that has a bajillion downloads now started at two downloads once.

So you really want to focus on nailing your audience, improving your content, publishing your content consistently, so that when those people come in, they're like, wow, this is a serious show. Look at all these episodes they publish consistently. They are going to be around if I commit to following them.

And just make sure that you're thinking about that targeting, the messaging, because if you don't get that right, people often spend money on paid ads and they think, oh, it didn't work for me, it works for everybody else. But it didn't work for me. It doesn't work for everybody else. More often than not, I have seen paid ads not work.

So you really have to get the back end right, and the creative that you're sharing and the targeting that you're doing, which means you need to understand your audience, who you're trying to appeal to, the kind of content that's going to resonate with that, with them. And that takes time to understand. So if you're right at the beginning, just wait.

Okay, if you are thinking about paid ads because you have no listeners, get some listeners first and then get to the point where you're thinking about paid ads and realize that at that point they might help. They're not going to guarantee your audience growth.

But at a certain point where you, like this show is humming, then you can start to think, okay, well, I'm going to do some smart experimentation.

I'm not going to throw $10,000 down the toilet here, but I'm really going to be smart about this because I understand my aud, and you've got some great creative that you could share that would really stop the old scroll, as they say, because most of it does not. Does not. If you've got a question, make sure you send it through. You can head to the description of the episode and there's a link there.

And if you'd like to find out about how you can start your own podcast the right way so that you create a show that if you did paid ads on, people would want to listen to, then head to podschool.com you'll find all the ways that you can work with me in the description of this episode, too. And I will see you next week.

Voice Over: 00:10:54

That's all for today.

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