For International Podcast Day, I joined Chris Vasquez to discuss tips to grow and monetize your podcast. Chris is the Chief Product Officer at AWeber, and a veteran in the growth marketing space.
We chatted about lots of cool things, from dynamic content to cryptocurrency, finding your first 50 listeners and making your podcast sticky, and much more.
Check the video below for the live stream from earlier today.
How Dynamic Content Can Be Used in Podcasting
While dynamic content isn’t new per se, the way it’s currently used is primarily for ad insertion.
- Get your sponsored message or ad
- Use pre-roll or post-roll to insert the ad at the start or end of your episode
- Rinse and repeate
However, dynamic content and dynamic insertion offers so much more than that, and it’s here where you, as a podcaster, can really grown and monetize your podcast.
For example, Bryan Barletta over at Sounds Profitable uses about eight dynamic insertions in every single episode!
These are timely insertions, and can relate to previous episodes of his, cross promotions, audio slots, and more.
Taking it a step further, think about how you could identify the listeners on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc, and target a shout out just for them on these specific apps. Talk about personalization!
This area is only going to grow even more, as podcasters experiment with everything they can do with dynamic content.
Captivate.fm (whose team I’m part of) has its own in-house dynamic content and audio mastering platform AMIE coming out next month, and trust me, it’s going to be awesome!
Using Personalized Sponsorship to Grow and Monetize Your Podcast
One of the ways a lot of podcasters look to make money is through “traditional advertising”. That is, they’ll run an ad on their show and their payment will be based on two things:
- How many downloads they get (podcaster metrics)
- How many impressions they get (advertiser metrics)
Both of these approaches can hurt/hinder the smaller indie podcaster. Because their episode doesn’t get thousands of downloads, the advertiser pays less because they get less “impressions” (downloads).
Since advertisers tend to pay on a cost per impression (CPM) approach, less downloads equals less money.
The thing is, though, downloads aren’t a great metric to use as a barometer for success, because a downloads doesn’t necessarily mean a listen.
- Auto-downloads on podcast apps can skew numbers
- Save for later on podcast apps can skew numbers
- Bots and scripts can skew numbers
Because downloads can be meaningless when it comes to actual engagement with a podcast, the real value of a podcaster can be missed by advertising partners.
This is where personalized sponsorship comes into play.
- A local business, or an online business that ships globally, and resonates with your audience
- Targeted partnerships based on related audience demographics
- Partnering with your podcast’s most vocal advocates to work with you and sponsors
There’s much more to adding value as a podcaster than just being a generic number for CPM reports.
Create a Multi-Pronged Marketing Plan and Adapt
There are so many ways to grow and monetize your podcast. Too often, podcasters – especially those that may consider themselves “too small for sponsors” – sell themselves short.
They feel that there’s no point in approaching sponsors because the numbers don’t match Podcaster X whose busy bragging about their numbers on Twitter and Facebook podcast groups.
The thing is, many times these “success stories” are anything but and, while they may be making money, they’re probably missing out on the real opportunities.
To grab the proverbial bull by the horn for your show, take a multi-pronged approach.
- Use multiple avenues for growth (email marketing, social media, friends and family, online connections, rich media, cross-promo feed drops)
- Analyze the data and see what’s working and double down on that
- Ask for feedback from your audience and act on the stuff that makes sense
- Cut the dead wood that’s not working – if Twitter is great for you, do you really need to be on Instagram (which, let’s face it. is pretty unfriendly to podcasting when it comes to links, etc)
There’s a whole bunch of tips to grow and monetize your podcast – the key is in identifying the ones that are right for you, and putting them to good use.
Resources to help your podcast:
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