Where are your listeners coming from? YouTube? Spotify? How are you communicating with them?

In this week's episode of The Circle Sessions, Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy™, and Don The Idea Guy cover

**Audio Consumption Trends:** They discuss a study by Edison Research on the "Share of Ear" audio survey, noting that traditional AM/FM radio listening has decreased significantly over the past decade while streaming music and podcasts have seen substantial growth. They also touch on the decline in CD usage in cars and the rise of digital audio formats.

**YouTube's Role in Podcasting:** The conversation highlights YouTube's increasing prominence as a platform for discovering and consuming podcasts, especially after the shutdown of Google Podcasts. They debate whether YouTube users truly see these as podcasts or more as video content.

**Spotify's New Features:** Spotify's introduction of new comment features for podcasts is discussed, emphasizing the potential for increased listener interaction and feedback. They suggest using these tools to better understand and engage with Spotify's audience.

**Advertising and Monetization:** They explore the power of podcast advertising, citing statistics from an Audacy report that show podcast listeners are more likely to visit stores and websites of advertisers. The conversation underscores the effectiveness of host-read ads and the importance of leveraging listener trust to drive business results.

Memorable Moments

[00:00:00]: Introduction to The Circle Sessions and The Circle of Experts

[00:00:46]: Don The Idea Guy joins the podcast discussion

[00:01:15]: Using Google Docs for podcast planning

[00:03:09]: Shift in audio consumption from 2014 to 2024

[00:07:20]: The rise of audiobooks and Spotify's role

[00:10:13]: YouTube's growth as a podcast platform

[00:18:14]: The role of video in podcasting

[00:24:37]: Spotify's new comment feature for podcasts

[00:31:35]: Power of podcast listeners for advertisers

[00:44:16]: How to get more ideas from Don

MEET DON THE IDEA GUY!

Possessing creative powers beyond those of mere mortals, DON THE IDEA GUY rescues those in need of innovative ideas through his brainstorming sessions, articles, and websites.

DTIG (DEE-tigg) has been featured in Small Business News, interviewed by the New York Times, quoted in Fast Company magazine, and served as the first president of the International Idea Trade Association.

Don is a proud member of the BzzAgent community, and is featured in BzzAgent.com founder Dave Balter’s book “Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing.”

His Innovation Channel on the Duct Tape Marketing Blog has been recognized as a Forbes Favorite.

Don is the author of the book “100-WHATS of CREATIVITY“, one-hundred ‘what if?’ questions to spur your creativity, unmuck your mind, and break through your mental blocks and has written dozens of articles and hundreds of blog postings on the subject of increasing innovation and adding creativity to your personal and professional life.

Each week, one of The Circle of Experts talks about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We focus on marketing, social media, monetization, website design, and implementation of all of these to help you make the best podcast possible.

Have a question or an idea for one of our episodes? Send us an email at podcasts@circle270media.com.

The Circle of Experts are:

Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs

Tonnisha English-Amamoo of TJE Communications

Don The Idea Guy

Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy, from Circle270Media Podcast Consultants

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/vince-mcgill/lemon-slice

License code: 2NRNUIV5VG7FU3K5

Copyright 2024 Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy™

Welcome to the Circle Sessions featuring the Circle of Experts. Each week, one of the Circle of Experts joins me to talk about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We focus on marketing, social media, monetization, and website design to help you implement all of these together. Well, who are the Circle of Experts? Well, they are Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs, Tonnisha English Amamoo of TJE Communications, and Don The Idea Guy, I'm Brett Johnson from Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants. This week, Don is here with the Circle of Experts. He possesses creative powers beyond those of mere mortals. Don The Idea Guy, rescues those in need of innovative ideas through his brainstorming sessions. They are at Five Buck Brainstorms. Don, thanks for joining me again today.

Hello, Brett. How are you, sir?

Doing good. What we do with this podcast, just a little bit behind the scenes, is Don will find a story, I'll find a story, and then we just share it on a Google Doc. Then we review what we put on this Google Doc prior to recording. We almost have a pre-show before the show talking about things, which is fun, but that's how we work. There's been some pretty decent stories over the last couple of weeks.

I just want to say, nice job right now. Everybody can do it.

Everybody can do it. Not like we were breaking ground on, Oh, you use Google Docs to share?

No one else knew how to do this show until you just told them.

Absolutely no one. But sometimes it's You would be amazed at some people when you tell them things that are fairly common, you can go, Well, that's a cool idea. We just email back and forth. No, no, no. I found a story about 10 years of Share of Ear. Edison Research has been researching Americans for 10 years now on their project called Share of Ear Audio Survey. Yeah, I know. They've been doing 10 years, and They take a look at talking to people aged 13 over how they spend their day with audio. This post showed the 2004 results against 2024 results, which I thought were interesting, the hugest erosion of- 2014 results. Excuse me. Yeah, 2014 versus 2024. Excuse me. Yeah, It was interesting on who grew and who eroded. Amfm radio, a huge erosion, according to them. 51% of the US population, 13 plus, was listening to an AM/FM radio station or stations. Here in 2024, as of April, it whittled down to 36%. But other audio options grew pretty well, quite frankly. Streaming music doubled. Owned music went down. That was the other one that went down, too, of just playing CDs in your car, which makes sense because I don't know up until probably five, six years ago.

I don't think the entertainment console in your car even has a CD player in it anymore.

That's exactly what I was going to say. I still fall into the owner category. I want to own my DVDs. For a while, I owned VHS. I know it was DVDs. I was a cassette guy. Then I had to convert. I had hundreds of cassettes, and then I ended up getting CDs. And now it's like you rent your music, and I'm not a renter that way. But with the streaming stuff, I do a Spotify account, but I don't use my data in my car to stream. So I still want to listen to CDs, or now I listen to podcasts because there's not a CD player in my car. I did find, and I should have had an affiliate link ready for this, I did I find a USB-powered CD player that plugs into the data port on my car that works great. There's no skip. I actually had one of those CD players, the portable CD players that people used to carry while they were jogging. It had the buffer in it, and that skipped. But this USB-powered CD player plugs into the port on the car. It works great. I've I got CDs back in my car.

I highly recommend it.

Yeah. Well, hey, give me that link. We'll put it in the show notes, seriously.

I'll have to find it. I was experimenting with it. I bought it about three or four months ago to give it a try, and it works great. I love it.

That's cool because there are some things you just want to hear that album. You don't want to have to stream on your phone or just have the... I know, now we're talking old school stuff now.

But that's the shift in how people use that data. You have this content, Things didn't exist before, and they made it easy. There used to be cassette players in the cars, and now there's not. There used to be CD players in the car, now they're not. Hell, the last laptop I bought doesn't have a CD. You can't install software that way anymore. You can't play music on your laptops that way anymore. You have to stream it. You have to download it. So cars are going that way as well. You think you'd see some AMFM growth, right? If you're taking out my CD player. But as you mentioned, there are way more choices now. I wish there was just a one-to-one list of, Here's where the migration of the listeners are going to these technologies, but here's the list of those technologies that were available in 2014. Here's the list that's available in 2024. People aren't spending more time in the car. People aren't adding more hours to their day. So the time they spend listening is going to be spread across all that media now and all those different outlets. I'm not surprised by any of this.

It's interesting to armchair quarterback why one might be higher than the other and why. But I'm not surprised by any of this. There's more things. It's like saying that the viewership on the three primary broadcast stations on TV have declined. Well, no kidding.

Yeah, right. Exactly, yeah. The results for 2024 do make sense if you If you see the radio going down, SiriusXM stayed static, which I'm surprised it's even at 8%. I don't know many people that have SiriusXM.

I know why it stayed the same. It was impossible. I know why it stayed the same.

It was a free offer, probably.

You can't cancel it.

Yeah, that's true. You can't. Once you're in, you're in. Oh, yeah. Other than spending about a half hour on the phone arguing, I'm going to cancel if they don't bring it down.

You have to spend certified letters and stuff. You can't cancel it.

Yeah, right. Youtube which we have a story here coming up, which correlates to why YouTube would be up. And podcasting, five times as much as 2% versus 10%, and then some audiobooks and such went in there, too. It's interesting, Garth. To me- But think about the 2014 audiobooks.

They were CDs and cassettes.

Yes, they were.

Now you download it to the app on your phone and you're playing it like a podcast. That falls into the podcast category.

Yes, it does. Going down a little bit of a rabbit hole for audiobooks, too, is that once you have that audiobook on your phone and you're streaming it, whatever, it does remember where you are versus playing it on a CD, and you lose track of where it was on the CD. If you happen to take the CD if you happen to take the CD out.

If you don't end on a track, then you forget, you can't even remember what track it was.

Technology is beneficial for audiobooks.

At least cassettes, you could pop them out and it stayed where it was, right? Yeah, right.

Exactly. That piece of it as well, too. The other thing that The other thing to think about the rise of audiobooks is Spotify-added audiobooks. Spotify is a huge player. That was just this year, correct? Earlier in 2024. That'll be interesting. It'll be given away for free.

Who's not going to listen to free books?

That'll be interesting to see that percentage go up in the next couple of years. That was one growth I was thinking, too, that, Okay, let's get the crystal ball out and what does 2025 and 2026 look like? Where does radio end the erosion, and what takes or grows as it goes down? It could be all of those mediums, quite frankly. I think audiobooks go up. I know podcast will go up.

It depends on how they'll be able to separate that out, because you're going to have a lot of people answering the survey questions, depending on the questions are asked, where they go, What do you listen to? And they go, Spotify. Okay, well, Spotify encompasses music, podcast, audiobooks, and it's going to be videos and video training courses. The They've become a destination for a lot of things. I think that's why you see the growth on YouTube as well. Youtube is all of those things, too.

Right. Yeah, exactly. I like your thought. If we could just know why Where they're coming from, where they're going. But as big as an entertainment center as Spotify is and YouTube, you almost don't answer that question either. Why they went from one to the other or why it's erosion. But But I think it's a good snapshot of what they're saying is happening to lead to that. Then leading into, we saw the YouTube grow in that survey, basically, let's see, from a tripled, from 5% to 14%. There's now a research coming out from Westwood One here in July. It was based on a spring 2024 report that YouTube's growth as podcast power player revealed in Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights podcast download. Youtube, they're saying, is America's primary podcast destination?

What was the time period for this?

They started the look at 2021. Youtube was the third most accessed destination for a podcast.

Then in- But it's the leader, yeah, 2023 to 2024.

2022, it tied Spotify, which okay, yeah. Now it's saying- But think about what happened.

Yeah. Think about what happened in that time period. What significant thing happened in that time period to move podcasters to YouTube?

Well, number one, Google Podcasts went away. Google podcast? And where did they point everybody? They went right into YouTube. That is an artificial growth to a certain degree. I mean, it's owned by Google.

Google stops users from subscribing to on their podcast platform, stops people from publishing on their podcast platform. And in every email, even though YouTube was not ready, and I would argue still not set up correctly for podcasters, they're pointing them to YouTube. So within that time period, of course, they're going to see a spike. You have the largest media company in the world sending all their users to you from one thing saying, We're not going to do this anymore. You better go to these guys. So of course, you're going to see that rise.

The big thing will be, will it stick? Because all this is really... Google podcast is now officially gone. It is gone. So now 2024 is the marker. It's the marker. So moving forward, do we still see the growth of 25, 26, 27, compared to what the activity Spotify is doing? We'll go into that in just a second. But I thought some takeaways from that study were interesting, though, that from what they saw, YouTube is used most among what they call podcast newcomers, so discovery, podcast pioneers, which, again, have been there quite a while, but they're there, and heavy podcast consumers. Those who discover a podcast on YouTube say they stick with the platform for video, comments, community, entertainment, recommendations, and platform features. Okay.

I don't- Yeah, but if you discovered it on YouTube, you're likely to stay consuming it on YouTube because you didn't discover it as a podcast. You discovered it as a YouTube show.

You think that's the only place to find it, probably. Depending on the show, if they're saying, subscribe to this podcast in your podcast listener, or if they're saying, subscribe here on YouTube, which most YouTube users do.

Correct. Without knowing which ones they're talking about. But if you discover it on YouTube, I would wager that you don't consider it a podcast. I don't consider the shows on YouTube a podcast. If I run across a podcast on YouTube, it's usually the filler video. Like a podcast or said, I should put it there for SEO and for discovery, and they're not creating a video show to go with it. It's the old equalizer images or something to keep a moving image going, so YouTube knows it's a video. And then when it said the power users, even the old school podcasters, I refer to the show This Old Marketing, which has been podcasting for years. This past year, they started doing a YouTube show. While they're recording it, they're recording the video like we're doing, and then they post it on YouTube. And in their podcast, which is still where I consume that content in the podcast list or podcast player, they tell people, Hey, you can watch us on YouTube. And for a while, they kept saying, Oh, I'm going to bring this up on the screen. I'm going to bring this headline up on the screen.

But I I don't need to go to YouTube to have them call up a news article on the screen. You could be sharing the screen now and doing that here, and maybe you can lure some more people over to your podcast. I don't need to your YouTube channel for the podcast. I'm a podcast listener, and I'm not a YouTube watcher of podcasts. I watch plenty of crap on YouTube, but I'm not watching audio shows there. I just don't get it.

Well, and I think the podcaster who doesn't think about They think they have a dual audience. I can be on YouTube and I can do the audio as well, too. But then, like you said, if they start inserting the... I'm going to pull that up right now. Let's take a look at that. You have pissed off your audio listener. Bottom line, they probably will stop listening to the audio portion of it. They'll just go on. I'm missing something.

One time, I made a note to go back. I'm riding in the car, I'm listening to the podcast, and they started talking about the new logo that the Browns came with last year. They started talking about all the intricacies of the hidden Cleveland icons that were in the logo. I'm like, Oh, that is cool. Well, they were talking about it, and I could get the gist of what they were saying. But they said on their video, on their YouTube channel, they called it up and they were pointing them out. I'm like, I wish I could see that. That would have been nice to have seen. I think once I got back in front of a computer, I just searched for a new Cleveland Browns logo. I didn't go to their YouTube channel to look it up. So that was the one time I heard something in an audio podcast of a group that had a YouTube channel that made me wish I was seeing that. But do you have more podcast listeners on demand, audio, or do you have more YouTube watchers? If your show, your podcast, started out as audio podcast, you put it over on YouTube and you're seeing this growth that YouTube says is happening for your channel, maybe you need to rethink your primary definition of the content you're producing.

Maybe you're not producing a podcast. Maybe you are actually producing a YouTube show all this time, a video show all this time, a TV program. Maybe you need to stop pushing it as a podcast or referring to as a podcast, start calling it a show.

Yeah, and vice versa. It could be that you started on YouTube and there's really no visual candy to it, then go to audio only. Why put in that huge effort of creating a video? Just go to audio only.

How entertaining is watching the talking heads? There's a reason I don't use a fake background when I do my interviews. I have the noisy messiness of my background. You might look at that and go, Wow, how cluttered and unprofessional But you know what? This is my version of Where's Waldo. I love looking at people's book shelves to see the titles. You could see the art print on the walls of the background and the weird crap behind me and make up your own stories about them. I think that's really Now, you look at Brett and you go, Dude, how much time do you have to spend in that cell? How long are you sentenced to prison with the brick walls?

Yeah, right. Exactly. I've got about two or three different locations. It depends on where I am when we record this. But if it's typically in my home studio, I've got the old radios in the background. You go to previous episodes and you'll see those. That always is a talking point. When I first start talking to somebody and they've seen me and there's like, Oh, those are so cool. It's conversation starter. We'll talk about old radios and my collection of them and why I got started. It leads me into my background then a little bit, too, with my years in radio, not that far back in the '20s and '30s, but how I got started collecting them. It First is what I have in the background right now, a fake brick wall with black sounders and highlights. But no, I agree.

Who needs a podcast that... You may as well have the animated Equalizer, although it's the talking heads, because the only thing I think of when I listen to a podcast and then I see the people talking on YouTube is like, Oh, they look totally different than I expected them to look.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, exactly.

You do that with every DJ, radio DJ, you've seen that in appearance, right?

Yeah, exactly. Especially the opposite sex. If you're a female, listen to a male, you're thinking, Oh, my gosh, and then turns into this big fat white guy. It's true For males, it's like, Oh, wow, what a sexy voice. It's like, Okay, it didn't match. I'm not going to call her ugly or anything like that, but did not match who I thought it was. For guys, we always joke around, We got a face for radio.

I cannot believe how shallow you are.

I know. Extremely shallow.

I've never thought of that.

Our listeners aren't thinking that. Exactly. That was probably one of the reasons I've not wanted to get into video. Not that I don't think I'm not video worthy or anything like that, but it just It's that always having to, Okay, what do I wear today? The hair combed, that stuff. Or if you're just audio only- What's in the background? Exactly. If you're audio only, you can do this, however, whatever you look like, just pop on and do it. That's the joy of podcasting. That's one thing I do love about that is that I don't have to look like anything, but I just have to sound good.

Number one reason people don't post more videos online, hate the way I look on video. Number one reason people don't do podcasts, hate the sound of my voice. I mean, that's That's just it. That's the way it works.

Yeah. Let's get into... This is a Spotify- Is there nothing that you want to hit on YouTube?

Anything else?

I don't think so. No, not really. There's a breakdown in regards to how newcomers use and such, but you know what? It comes down to, I think, let's finish that off. I apologize. That's only because I want to make fun of it some more because there's one bullet point on here that literally says, watching and listening to podcasts are equally favorite.

Fevered, They're not. No, they're not. No, they're not. For the 30 YouTube users that you profiled for this survey, there's no way. This stuff is so YouTube-centric that it makes you doubt everything, everything else in it. That's true. They're not equally favored. If they were equally favored, there'd be a gigantic podcast channel on YouTube, and there isn't. You still get a search for your podcast channels, so they're not equally favored. If they were equally favored, then Google podcast never would have gone away, or there would be a YouTube podcast app. There's not. So that's wrong.

You nominate the association as a platform where podcasts can be watched and heard.

Okay, for an in another six months because Spotify is rolling that out. By their own surveys, Spotify is the number one place for people to listen to podcast. By that virtue, they'll probably be the number one place for people to watch a podcast. I think that's why YouTube released this survey.

I think so, too. Yeah, or at least funded it through somebody else. It's a preemptive strike to Spotify's emergence as a video platform. Right. Well, and there's got to be a little bit of shaky, a little bit of concern on the Google part, I would think, via YouTube, the YouTube piece of it, because there's It's such a behemoth. I mean, they've got so many moving parts where Spotify is just Spotify. They are what they are. They're not a search engine, though. Do you know what I mean? They're an entertainment center.

They are. But all the things that people go to YouTube, YouTube was the number one place people go to to look at music videos, right?

Yes.

So think about what Spotify is doing. The first thing they're doing is adding the music videos. Now it's music because you used to even go to YouTube to listen to music on demand. Because you could find the music you wanted on demand.

Because, yeah, MTV was dying. Before Spotify.

Well, MTV was radio. It was a program. You couldn't listen to what you wanted to. So you'd go to YouTube to find the music that you wanted to listen to on demand. They cracked down on the copyright and the licensing loss on YouTube. Spotify emerges as a free and a paid platform where you can listen to your music because Pandora came out, but you couldn't listen to on demand music on Pandora. You could only do a mix. You'd say, I want to listen to Steely Dan, and it would create a Steely Dan station. You couldn't say, I want to listen to Hey 19. You couldn't do that. Spotify comes out, they're on demand, free for a small upcharge pay, but you could listen on demand. So that steals YouTube's. Then it's, now we're going to do videos, that takes away from YouTube. Now it's, oh, we're going to put shows and training videos on here. Well, where do all the entrepreneurs upload their online training course videos? Do you? That's going to go to Spotify. I think Spotify is hurting YouTube more than YouTube will admit, and this is a pre-interest strike about that. Now, I'm not going to say I'm a Spotify fan because you're going to cover Spotify's article next, and I'm going to rip on that.

Equal opportunity. Exactly. Spotify is going to allow their listeners to get their say as Spotify adds new comment features on its app. They're introducing comments on podcast for listening feedback and interaction with creators. We talked about this in a previous episode. I got to dig it up, which one it is in regards to the opportunity to interact with your listeners, different ways to do it. I like and I applaud Spotify for adding this in. Now, from what I am gathering, if you go on, you make a comment on Spotify, it doesn't automatically publish. As the producer, as the podcaster, you see the comment, you get to interact, and I think you have the option to publish that comment. It truly is a back-end interaction, but you also have to understand where your listeners are. Just because they're adding it doesn't mean, Oh, wow, now I get this opportunity to talk to all my listeners. Take a look at your algorithm, your stats, and see where your listeners are, and I think you're going to make that point.

It's a portion of your audience, which isn't a bad thing, but it's a portion. By Spotify's listenership studies, it's a growing audience. I would think of it in terms of, think about the TV shows that are out there, the TV talk shows, Old Jerry Springer, whatever other show is doing. This is not your son, DNA test, that thing. They film in front of a live studio audience, right? So you can hear the audience applauding. They can ask the audience a question, and they can clap or raise their hands to answer polling questions of only the people who are in the studio audience. So think about Spotify. If your podcast is hosted by Spotify and you want to take advantage of these polls and the Q&A and the commenting, keep in mind that this is the Spotify studio audience. If you're a Spotify, if you're listening to your podcast on Spotify, you can participate in our poll. A couple of good things come out of this. One, you're talking to one base group of your audience, which is always great. You know that that audience has one thing in common. They're Spotify users. So what else does that knowledge make possible for you in marketing your podcast and finding sponsors for your podcast?

Two, Spotify gets something out of it, because if you decide to use that tool and you say you take part in our Q&A, but you have to be listening to us on Spotify, you just sent people in your audience to become listeners on Spotify. So Spotify loves that because they may get more users out of it. Hey, if I participate in the show this way with this one, maybe I should subscribe to more of the podcast I listen to on this platform instead. And then your other listeners are the people who are watching on network television, or they recorded, they DVRed it, and they're watching it back, watching it later. I don't think it's a bad thing. Just keep in mind that it's a very specific thing and come up with ways to use it to your advantage.

A great opportunity to learn more about your Spotify users as well, too. I think the initial roll out of this is going to excite listeners. That's like, Oh, wow, a cool tool. Now I can talk to my favorite podcast. I think in that first six months, really dive into it. Have fun with it. Be very specific with it, but be careful of not alienating your Apple podcast listeners and everything.

You use it to extrapolate knowledge, too. Keep in mind, this is the way every ratings for media system works. They don't interview every person who listens to a radio station or everybody who watches TV or everybody who reads a publication, ask them which one is their favorite. They ask a small section, it's a sampling. From that, they extrapolate that probably the rest of the audience feels the same way. For good or ill, you can battle this both ways. I've done it. I fought this battle on both sides. But you could confidently ask a question of your audience in your Spotify polling tool and guesstimate that if the majority of your audience chose A from A, B, and C, that probably the rest of your audience, the majority rule would have been for A as well.

A great way to find out what other podcast they listen to on Spotify.

There's something that says you couldn't repost this poll someplace else. One of the places Brett uses to promote the podcast of his clients, and this podcast for circle of experts, is LinkedIn, because most of his audience that he wants of people who are interested in creating business podcasts or attracting a business audience of listeners are on LinkedIn. So when he posts this, he could easily accompany it with a poll in LinkedIn, because LinkedIn has good polling tools where he could accompany the post for this latest episode with a polling question of, where do you listen to your podcast? What podcast player do you use? And it would be interesting to learn, are they listening on Spotify or not? If he knows the majority of his LinkedIn followers are listening on Spotify, maybe he'll take more advantage the polling and Q&A tool on Spotify.

It's just digging down a little bit and thinking of one question, then go one step further and one step further about how to use these tools that are testing.

They're testing, right? Yeah, test them.

If you get crickets, go to the next question. That doesn't mean it's faulty or it won't work. That question just didn't resonate.

Keep trying. See where you get the most participation. Try it out on Spotify. Next time, promote the poll on your X. Com account. The next time, do it on LinkedIn, do a Facebook one. See where you get the most engagement. You may discover that Q&A works better on LinkedIn, but polls work better on Facebook. Use that to your advantage.

Exactly. Also, think about how people engage with that platform, too. If you're asking them to write a long answer versus just click, click, click, that may be inherent of the platform. So think about that.

I mean, let's just politely say that the audience for Twitter/X has significantly changed over the past few months. Depending on your show and who it appeals to, the audience you're chasing, even though there's a decline in X users, your audience have increased on X. I don't know. So don't discount it because the general population I said one thing, your core group could be there. Maybe I'm completely wrong about YouTube. I'm not a YouTube user or podcast, but man, maybe people love your show on YouTube. Don't listen to me. Go with your own information.

You have to. Exactly. All we're advocating is listen and think about, listen to your audience and understand why you're doing well where you are. Don't take outside information or research polls, which we're talking about here, done on a national scale. To heart, it's that, Okay, this exists. How does my listenership compare to that? How does my podcast compare to that? Why? Maybe I better not go there, or it's like, Maybe it's time for me to go there. That's what we're bringing to you to think about.

Don't be depressed if all this time since you launched, let's say you've had your Facebook group, wow, people really aren't following me on Facebook. They're not participating on Facebook. Maybe Facebook is the wrong place for you. Have you ever tried any of the other platforms? Maybe it's time to do so.

Right, exactly. We want to end with a story you found from Odyssey.

Yes. I thought the audience would have some appreciation for this. It's from Odyssey. So again, every time I quote an article from Odyssey, I will remind people this is a radio broadcast company, one of the largest in the world, and they have filed for Chapter 11. They They've been publishing some great information, but I have to wonder why haven't they been applying this to themselves. So here's the crux of this thing. It talks about the power of the podcast listener, which goes to your audience as well. Yes, We're talking about a large company, and they're going to be pulling data from their larger audience and their larger publishing list of their own podcast. But you can apply this to your podcast listener as well, because this general information, and that's that your listeners to your podcast are more likely to do business with your sponsors. So when you're out there looking to monetize your podcast and bring more people on board, keep some of the information in mind to present a valid business reason for them to advertise with you, not just because podcasts are popular and you're local and you shop at their store all the time.

These are real business reasons for them to Consider advertising in your podcast. Your podcast listeners, your podcast listeners, are 37 % more likely to visit the store because you promoted the store in your podcast. They're 40 % more likely to visit an advertiser's website because you're talking about it in your podcast episode. And they're 49 % more likely to believe a podcast host, to believe you as a host, when you're using their products yourself and their advertising in your podcast. For you to be able to do a promotional spot in your programming that talks about how you love this water bottle, and, man, you can buy this water bottle at such and such company, and you've had it for six months, and the reason you went after them to be an advertiser was because you love this water bottle so much. Think about the power that holds and the fact that you've increased the likelihood that they'll go buy it, that they'll visit the store, come into the store, that they'll visit the website, and how could they not advertise? So if they're just thinking about any other advertising, I buy an ad in the weekly Penny Saver, or I send out postcards, great.

Those are all great ways to advertise, and I hope you're getting fantastic results for them. If you are getting great results, think about that you could get 40% more People visiting your website if you advertise with me, then just sending out a postcard. That argument works better if they are getting great results using another advertising method.

A good example of everything you just talked about encapsulating the host using the product or talking about the product is a boutique store that I work with, a boutique pet food shop. Say their name, they're your client. Yeah, fangs and fur. Their slogan is feed like you give like a damn. They have a podcast, right? They have a podcast all about helping you feed your pet better. He has two dogs, and they live the life in regards to how he feeds them all-natural. Fresh meat, that's where I think. He's an advocate of that, but he's not to the extreme realizing, You know what? There are budget constraints. I get it. If you can do this, this, and this, you're going to help your dog live a a little bit longer and be a little bit healthier. He's giving these little bits and pieces of, This product is good, this product is good, and helping you keep your dog healthier, your pet healthier, without necessarily breaking the bank. He's using the product. He's talking about the product, he's bringing the people on that manufacture the product, that Nareans that promote that lifestyle as well, too. He's getting traffic because of that podcast.

He's taken a hiatus for a bit because of life getting in the We all know what that is like. But he still gets listens because of the content that he creates. It's advice. It's advice on how to do things better for your pet, but not pet-shaming you in regards to doing it. He's getting traffic all the way around. I think it's a really good example of the power of what you can do by just focusing on those things Dawn just mentioned.

That's an argument for them to advertise with you from a business level, right? That they're going to get increased percentages of people who are willing to take action, do business with them because they heard it on the podcast, because you're a trusted resource. This other piece is really important, and I want to set it up for us to go, if you're watching TV, and even now with the subscription streamers, almost all of them have introduced this ad level, and a lot of people have downgraded their subscriptions to the ad-supported level because of the price increases. So you're stuck watching ads again TV. And when your show gets interrupted or you have to sit through an ad before, do you feel good about those ads? You hate those ads. You're like, Oh, my God, I remember not having ads, and it was awesome, and now the ads are back. And you're listening to the radio in your car, and you listen to your favorite song, and they come out of the song, and then they talk about ads, and then they play more ads. And do you love those ads? Or you hate the block 10 ads or 12 ads that iHeart is playing for you?

You hate those ads. Here's what's different about podcasters. When you have a legitimate partnership with somebody, and you're doing one of these endorsement ads, or you're doing a live read ad, not talking about the recent trend that's emerging with the blocks of pre-recorded crappy ads that they're playing every place I'm talking about the heartfelt delivery of, I love this water bottle, you will too. When you do an ad in your podcast in that manner, 64% of your listeners appreciate the advertiser. They are happy to hear the name of the advertiser because they're supporting your content, which they love and subscribe to. So don't feel bad about putting an ad on there from the right part or delivered in the right manner, because they will love the fact that you're getting supported to continue producing the content that they're consuming. Sixty-four % appreciate the ad. Name me one more platform that can cite that statistic.

Yeah, right. Exactly. I do like this piece that they're emphasizing that podcast listeners are listening everywhere. I'm going to hearken back to the time we both were in or next to radio sales. These statistics are exactly what we would talk about in selling radio ads. You want to be within that 15, 20 minutes before a decision happens, that you can trigger that person. 43% of podcast listeners are listening at home. That's It changed dramatically over the last decade. It used to be a lot less at home because it was more of a portable device that you're listening to. At home is now, according to this research, the highest listening to place Second is in the car, public transport, just like we talked about, or typically we always talk about. Then at work, one out of four of us listen to podcasts at work. You are near a computer. You're near some type of transportation to activate somebody to do something with those paths.

Yeah, that's pretty interesting. The radio's big push was you could literally play an ad as somebody was pulling into a parking lot. I'm out shopping for groceries now, and I just heard a great ad for something that's on sale that I'm shopping for, and that could control my destination where I'm going. So podcasts have that ability as well. Now, with podcasts, you have a little less control over when it gets listened to because it is on demand. But you can also use that to your advantage because there are things you know about podcast listeners. They're usually doing something else while that's happening. So the at home, the fact that at homes rank so high, I would wager that those listening numbers are happening while somebody's doing the dishes, somebody's cleaning the house, somebody's mowing the lawn, they're working on their car in the garage. It's those kinds of other activities. So that same thing could What's going to happen? I'm out mowing the lawn and I'm hearing it for things you need to do this weekend. Think about the use cases. That's why it's important to listen to the statistics. Take the statistics that you think you can use and use them.

Apply them. If you've got a gardening podcast, let's use Brett's customer's example. If you've got a pet care podcast and you know that people listen to podcasts while they're out walking the dog, that's who I'd be talking to. Hey, you know what? That's another great thing to poll people about. When are you listening to this and where are you listening to it? Because if you can come up with some majority of when and where people are listening to your program, oh, my goodness, you can turn that into money and sponsorships.

Right. Let's go back to the things and for example of taking that podcast with you while you're walking the dog. You got an opportunity. We walk your dog 15, 20 minutes a day, maybe twice a day, something like that. So know that, okay, my podcast episode needs to be probably 10, 15 minutes long, maybe. I'm entertainment for them. Maybe I think of a daily podcast because we walk our dogs every day.

Wouldn't that be awesome? It's a big goal. You might want to talk. I know he's in a hiatus because of his time frame now, but rather than putting together the full-blown show with the interviews and stuff, what if he just did a 15-minute walk your dog podcast, a walk and talk.

Yeah, exactly. It's that reevaluate and think about the listener and give it a try. Again, we don't know this is solid information, but you're connecting the dots here.

You might not know that it's going to work, but when you put it together with some statistical findings, how people use the podcast, where they use them, the statistics that they're more likely to visit Webites, well, man, make sure that you're promoting a website. I want you to get my phone number. Nope. I can show you some stats that says they're 40 % more likely to visit your website. Let's give them your website address. They can remember the website address real easy. And that's a great way to count your leads, because if you do a redirect using something like Pretty Links, that plugin for your website where you can redirect and customize a link. So you can say, go to dontheideaguy. Com/appsumo. When I send that link out, now I know they went to that website through my link because I can see the stats on it. This is some good stuff. I love this application of the knowledge. Now that you know this information, what does it make possible?

We've done that, too, one step further within the store. Now you've driven them to this store, whether it's your advertising in another podcast or you have your own, we set up a QR code in that store right there at the register. You just scan and it pops up in your phone. It's a bitly link, basically, that shows up in the phone and gives you all these options to where you can listen to their podcast. You're taking advantage, again, of them walking your store, and it's tractable. It's that information in the store of where did they... Of the 500 people that walked in the door today, how many times was that QR scanned? That thing. It's those opportunities. Think about it. They're so simple and economical to do. Simple, simple, simple things.

Simple, low cost things that you can try. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn't work, stop doing it. Try something else.

Right, There are tons of other ideas leading me in, too. We threw a lot of ideas together here on this episode, as we always do. But you're available for more ideas. How can a listener that's like, Dawn, I really like what you're talking about. I need to pick your brain some more. How can they get a hold of you?

Well, I got the Don the Idea guy name because I love brainstorming business ideas. The best place to reach me is at dontheideaguy. Com. There's a brainstorming link on the website that you can schedule your very own session where we can come up with business ideas ideas, specifically for your podcast and attracting more listeners and building more revenue. Dontheideaguy. Com.

We can offer through Circle270 Media lots of different things, but we do podcast audits. It's a comprehensive review of your podcast designed to help you get some clarity, just like we talked about right now. Maybe it's just tweaking this, tweaking that. Don could be a part of that as well, too. I think there's idea generations in regards to clarity on your podcast.

Not just clarity, but one of the things I love about doing those audits is identifying opportunities. How many times have we spoken to one of your clients and throw something out to go, Have you thought about this? No, I did not think about that. This would be so easy for me to do. You're too close to it. It's an outside perspective, looking at what you're doing and going, Wow, you're chasing down all these typical sponsorships. What if you created this checklist product? Wow, man, I could knock that out in a weekend, and I bet you people would buy it for five bucks.

Yeah, exactly. That's why I think these audits are strong is because of who we bring in, myself, Dawn, Yasmin, Tanesha, we all podcast. You're getting a podcast audit from professionals who work and are podcasters. They get it versus an outside going, Yeah, I know what a podcast is, but We'll break it down for you anyway. They may be more in this world, this world. But I think looking at it from the aspect of you want to work with podcasters because they get it. They get the hardships of podcasting at times and understand it's hard. This medium is hard at times, as is any medium, but it has its ups and downs. But you can reach me at mypodcastguy. Com. Don, thanks for joining me again.

Always a pleasure. Always fun, and you never know where the ideas are going to come from. I love the end rift there. We started applying that last set of studies. Yes. Thanks.