When a podcaster stops producing episodes, suddenly and without notice, that’s called “podfade.”
Believe it or not, 50% of podcasts podfade before reaching episode seven. And then another 50% quit before episode 20!*
In this episode, Matt Halloran and Kirk Lowe share best practices for keeping your podcast going forever. Having produced 3500+ podcast episodes for clients and ProudMouth, they know how to avoid common mistakes that cause even the most enthusiastic podcasters to podfade.
Matt and Kirk discuss:
- Advice for new podcasters on managing expectations and staying motivated
- Four KNOWs that make or break a podcast’s staying power
- What you should (and shouldn’t) focus on during your first few episodes
- How outsourcing reduces the likelihood of podfade
- And more
(*Data from Blubrry, a podcasting company that serves over 125,000 podcasters.)
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Intro:
Welcome to the Top Advisor Marketing Podcast brought to you by ProudMouth. I'm your host Matt Halloran. Being your own loud is not new to marketing, but the mindset, strategies, and resources to help you get there are evolving faster than this industry is keeping up. It is time to find a new perspective on what works, why, and how to move your business forward.
[00:00:24] Listen as I interview guests to help you learn from them how to be your own loud. Let's get to the show.
[00:00:34] Matt Halloran:
All right. Hello, and welcome everybody to another Top Advisor Marketing Podcast. Today, we have Kirk and here's the deal: There's a word in our industry that a lot of people have never heard of –– It's called podfade and it's a real thing. And we're going to talk about some of the things that we have found to help people so that they don't have podfade, number one.
[00:00:54] Number two: We're going to define it here in just a minute. And then, number three: We're going to talk about some statistics [00:01:00] that are surprising at the lack of success people often have with podcasting. And then, of course, a couple of solutions to that. So, Kirk, before we really dive into all of these stats, how do you define podfade?
[00:01:14] Kirk Lowe:
Podfade is, man, we didn't even talk about the actual definition. So I love –– we just talked about it being a thing that people would want to understand. So, thanks for putting me on the spot. It's actually a great way to get going. So, I would define it as losing the, man, there are so many elements to it. Can I add all the elements? Or does it have to be like a beautiful sentence?
[00:01:41] So, podfade is really about losing –– it's really losing the ability or the process, the execution of, or the spirit to keep your podcasts going. And the stats are pretty telling [00:02:00] that podfade is a real problem. Maybe it's not as much –– maybe part of the biggest problem with podfade is the expectation of how easy it's going to be or the reality that it's not easy.
[00:02:13] It is easy, but it’s... you’ve got to put some perspective around that, which we'll do some of that today. But really, the numbers are pretty enlightening. And it'll be surprising and shocking to some of you, I suspect.
[00:02:33] Matt Halloran:
All right, before we jump into the numbers. So, how I define that is the loss of the motivation to do a podcast. And I think you really touched on it. I think one of the main reasons is terribly unrealistic expectations that they're going to drop three episodes and get a million followers, monetize their podcasts, and quit their day job. I think the other one is that they don't realize that you have to have a plan, that podcasting is part of your marketing.
[00:02:57] And so, therefore, you have to have a plan. And the [00:03:00] third thing, which I think is the biggest craziness of all of this, is that people don't understand that podcasters are a fiercely loyal community. And if you don't join a community of like-minded people who want to help you succeed, you're not going to be successful.
[00:03:18] There are a lot of podcasters out there who feel like they're out on a limb, dude, and they don't need to be. I'm going next week to the largest podcast convention in North America, and there are thousands of people who are going to be there because they all realize that we're stronger together. But let's talk about podfade.
[00:03:34] Kirk Lowe:
Yeah, well, yeah. I actually want to talk about your definition because you talk about motivation. I think some people could be highly motivated to do a podcast, but they just can't execute it. Having said that, maybe you're not quite motivated if you don't build the right processes or process to execute it.
[00:03:59] So, I [00:04:00] don't know...I don't disagree with your definition. It's just, there's a lot of elements to motivation.
[00:04:07] Matt Halloran:
All right. So, here's the thing. I'm totally motivated. I love classic cars. Okay. It’s just a great example. I love classic cars. Like, I would love to own classic cars and I'm very motivated to own classic cars.
[00:04:16] But if you gave me a classic car, I'm screwed because I don't know how to fix a classic car. I don't know how to maintain a classic car. I don't have any of the systems or the infrastructure in place, but I can network with other people who love classic cars and fill in some of those blanks. So that's what I think that –– maybe the word would be misplaced motivation or unfounded or ungrounded motivation?
[00:04:36] I'm not really sure, but I still think that there's a big motivation factor that people just lose their mojo. And I think a lot of it, Kirk, is those unrealistic expectations, which by the way, everybody, you need to stay tuned to the show because we have hired this unbelievably brilliant woman who is helping us create and analyze literally everything that we've done over the last five years [00:05:00] and compare it to what industry standards are and all of the reports and stuff that are out there.
[00:05:05] And the numbers are unbelievably shocking. But Kirk's going to talk now just a little bit about where podcast growth is happening, how many people are truly successful, where we see podfade happening, and then the second part of the show is going to be: What can you do to make it so that you don't fall subject to podfade?
[00:05:24] So, Kirk, dive into the stats, dude.
[00:05:27] Kirk Lowe:
Yeah. So, the first two stats are from our friends atBlubrry, and they are this: 50% of podcasts don't make it past episode seven, and the next one is that the next 50% who got past seven, only 50% of them get past episode 20. So, basically, 75% of podcasts don’t make it past episode 20.
[00:05:49] We've shared a stat on here before. If you're an avid listener, you’re saying, fellas, you guys told us a different stat...I don't know, six months ago? Which was that [00:06:00] 90% of all podcasts don't make it past episode 10. I know that's a stat that I read, but I haven’t been able to find the source.
[00:06:09] So I apologize, but I think these are really not that far off. And they really paint the same picture. It's that a lot of people start a podcast but don't get very far. Having said that, we've got some other really cool stats fromChartable that give us a little bit more in-depth view. I'm not saying Blubrry didn't have in-depth –– but we just grabbed those couple and then we grabbed Chartable here as well.
[00:06:33] Anyway, 2020 saw more than a 280% increase in the creation of new podcasts, which is incredible. So, the new podcasts, in 2019, there were 300,000, there were 900,000 in 2020. Those are just unbelievable numbers. Having said that, only 23% of the podcasts started in 2020 –– sorry, 23% of all podcasts started in 2021 have already published [00:07:00] more than 10 episodes.
[00:07:01] So, a quarter of those new ones are actually getting it done, which kind of gets back to our 50% and 75% are gonna fail. And many of these new podcasts have just one or two episodes, which is about 30%. So, they fade pretty quick, one or two episodes. I don't know how you get there, but probably not a lot of motivation to start a podcast, but just wanted to try it.
[00:07:31] What the heck,” I got nothing to do, and I’m bored like crazy cause I can't go out during COVID.” There's another neat one. We're going to get into some –– we're going to talk about where most of the growth in podcasts –– the languages where most of the growth happened, and I'll give you the top five.
[00:07:56] So the top five podcast growth by [00:08:00] language in 2019-2020 are Hindi, Chinese, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Spanish. So those are 14.1 times growth (which is crazy), eight times growth, eight times growth, 7.2, 6.8, and then English, by the way, is 1.9 times growth. So, that's still huge. Huge amount of growth.
[00:08:27] Then there's a bunch of other languages in the middle of there. Japanese, Turkish, Italian, Dutch, German, Russian, French, and then down to English. Those are pretty interesting. This isn't just a North American or American trend. This is global, which is really interesting. I'm not sure how much that's going to change what you're thinking about, but the next really interesting stat is on the genre.
[00:08:53] And this is a 2020 stat. So new podcasts by genre: education, [00:09:00] 133,000; society and culture, 121,000; arts, 94; business, 85; And then a whole bunch more. So, business did really well. There was a huge boom in business podcasts and education podcasts, and those can kind of be –– I kind of see that those could be similar, right?
[00:09:19] ‘Cause if you're doing a business podcast, you're educating. So, I could see that maybe education and business are similar, and they would absolutely lead if they were similar. So, I think that's really cool.
[00:09:31] Matt Halloran:
All right, I have to pause because we talk about this, which is the perfect podcast formula, right?
[00:09:37] Entertainment, education, storytelling, call to action. And as the number one growth thing here, which is this whole idea of education, and then you look down here, comedy would be entertainment. You know, society, culture, arts. I mean, some of these are very entertaining.
[00:09:54] And if you look at that perfect podcast formula, the fact that education is the [00:10:00] fastest growing –– we know, everybody, that people listen to podcasts to learn something. So, no matter who you are and what you do, always make sure that that's a component of your podcasts.
[00:10:09] Kirk Lowe:
Yeah, and if you're trying to monetize something in your business, that probably should be the main component. And some of you are funny. It's not Matt or I.
[00:10:19] Matt Halloran:
No, I mean, we're funny looking maybe, but...
[00:10:23] Kirk Lowe:
We laugh at stuff that's not funny just to make you guys think we're funny, but it's not, you know, it's a big deal –– education, business, really a lot of growth there. Now, there's a couple of people listening and saying, yeah, I heard that it’s saturated.
[00:10:38] We've done podcasts on saturated and blown big holes in that. The amount of people podcasting doesn't even come close to compared to the amount of people that are on YouTube, who have websites and blogs. It's like, we're talking like less than a percent comparison.
[00:10:54] Matt Halloran:
So, now, I was sitting with my wife yesterday, right? So, we're sitting on our back porch and we were talking about this. And my wife had this [00:11:00] amazing epiphany, and she's like, Matt, why do people watch shows that are similar? So, for instance, like she's a big Schitt's Creek fan, she's a big Parks and Rec fan and big Office fan. Right? You'd put those into the same sort of genre of sitcom, right?
[00:11:15] There are a million sitcoms. Why do people think, well, there's 10 podcasts in financial services, that I shouldn't have a podcast? What are you talking about? There are a million radio stations. There are 8 million sitcoms. There are 400 million romcoms. Come on, people. Your brand of what you do might be just what they're looking for.
[00:11:35] So, I dunno, I thought that was pretty cool. You know, just hanging out on the porch last night and my wife, who's a teacher, comes up with this freaking brilliant analogy that I have never said on a show. I'm sorry. I just had to say that.
[00:11:46] Kirk Lowe:
Yeah. Just get past the saturation thing. ‘Cause it's not a thing in podcasting.
[00:11:52] It's not even close. So, if you got one –– and the truth is that most businesses [00:12:00] or experts who own businesses do not need to have a lot of listeners and a huge audience to have mega success. We're going to come back with some wonderful stats. We're preparing benchmarks and all the stats that we've got from our clients.
[00:12:18] And we're going to do a podcast here in the near future. And it's going to be really interesting. Matt already let the cat out of the bag there a little while. Honestly, I would never put a cat in the bag, but ––
[00:12:28] Matt Halloran:
It's like, there's a million other things than a cat. Why are cats so discriminated against? I don't understand that, I don’t know...
[00:12:35] Kirk Lowe:
So yeah, let's dive into the heart of this. I'll let you tee it up here.
[00:12:41] Matt Halloran:
So, part of what we always wanted to do here at ProudMouth –– when Kirk and I first met, one of the things that we had an epiphany about was that advisors and experts don't want to be told what to do anymore. They want somebody to do it for them.
[00:12:55] So everything that we've built here at ProudMouth is really for the ease of the user [00:13:00], and a lot of what we're finding affects podcast longevity and this idea of podfade, we have desperately researched and tried to solve. Now, I'm not saying that we're a hundred million percent successful on all of these, but these categories that we're going to go over, and I'm going to highlight them really quick.
[00:13:16] So these are all KNOWs, right? So, K-N-O-Ws. Number one, know your why and what. Know your expertise. Know your audience. And know your who. Now Kirk's going to break down each of those, but with those four categories, if you write those down, you will start seeing how the knowledge and the confidence you have between those four factors will make it so that you're going to be able to have a longstanding podcast, great content in the can, and a way to build a relationship with people while you're sleeping.
[00:13:45] Kirk Lowe:
Dude, half of our listeners right now are walking their golden retriever in a park, and they have no way they're going to write those down.
[00:13:52] Matt Halloran:
I don't believe you because here’s the deal, because every one of them is listening to this on their phone, and they've got a notes app, and all they have to do is pause.
[00:13:59] The [00:14:00] dog is probably going to the bathroom right now anyway, so they just need to write it down.
[00:14:02] Kirk Lowe:
And there’s one person who's rollerblading on a boardwalk on a beach in California. And there's no way they're stopping that rollerblade to ––
[00:14:15] Matt Halloran:
So, this is on you brother. So, this means that you really need to drive these points home. If they're not going to write it down, you need to embed this in their brain.
[00:14:20] Kirk Lowe:
I'm going to repeat everything, especially for the person who's rollerblading on a beach.
[00:14:26] Matt Halloran:
Is that your visual image of who's consuming our podcast?
[00:14:29] Kirk Lowe:
And please, if you're actually doing that while listening to this, send us that because that'll make my day. Maybe my week.
[00:14:36] Matt Halloran:
Alright. So, know your why and what. So, this is part of our discovery process here, but why don't you talk about this and why don't you break this down?
[00:14:45] Kirk Lowe:
So, expectations are critical going into anything. And podcasting is no different. So, I find sometimes that we have to align expectations and spend some time here [00:15:00] because some of the greatest wins from podcasting aren’t things that people necessarily might think when they start.
[00:15:05] It depends on where you're coming from. If you're listening to this podcast, you'll have a better foundation for if it's something that you decide you want to do in the future because of listening to these ideas. Probably the most unheralded of all the expectations and has a huge impact I believe on everybody that we're working with.
[00:15:25] And I don't even know that they always know it, but it’s the improved communication skills they develop. Storytelling, what topics people cared about, how to organize your thoughts into an outline and, you know, how preparation really helps with sharing your expertise and thought leadership. The development that we've had in how we articulate the stories we tell, the evolution of our story, has had a huge impact on our careers and our business.
[00:16:01] [00:16:00] It's not so quantifiable. And therefore, some people really struggle with that stuff, the objective outcomes. But I got to tell you, you need to focus on, really think about objective outcomes versus, sorry, subjective. I said the wrong word there. Anyway, because they are a huge part of business success or life success. The little things that you can't always measure, that you know are really important. And your ability to improve your communication skills is a huge outcome.
[00:16:31] I've beat that one to death here. The next one is, inspire and ignite relationships. A lot of people would use the word lead generation here, which is perfectly fine. You're definitely, if you do this right, you're going to have lots of opportunities. I like to say that, we'd like to talk about those as being relationships.
[00:16:53] The reason we say relationships is because you're typically going to be talking to fans, not [00:17:00] skeptics. And traditional marketing is more about interrupting people. They become skeptics in trying to quickly engage. And with a skeptic, to move something along, it's all a numbers game. This is a quality versus quantity argument in podcasting.
[00:17:17] If you get quality first and then you build quantity, you’re in wonderful shape. If you go try for quantity first, that's your focus, you're not nearly as in a good position to avoid podfade. I never really thought about that, but how that came out actually made sense. See, I just proved point one. You improve your communication storytelling.
[00:17:40] Yeah. Being able to add value is so huge to your, to your, the people who are listening, to the people that are already in your network, and the new people, just them being able to show up and learn something new. So, if that point about improving communication ends up being a thing for you that [00:18:00] you leave listening, having left this podcast and take with you,
[00:18:05] that's a huge win for Matt and I, right? Because it's a big win for you. If it's not a win for you, it's nothing for us. So, I have to find a way to get you a win. How do I do that? I gotta create value. I think a lot of time, the more sales-oriented professionals or experts who think about starting a podcast for sales-oriented ideas really struggle because you've got to get past that.
[00:18:31] It's very difficult to add a lot of value when you have a sales mentality, because it's always about selling somebody, not educating them. So, if you can get past that, and where we see that the ones who have more of an expectation of leads and more of an expectation of having, and traditionally been more sales-oriented with how they have conversations and they've gone to sales institutes to learn how to take, move somebody along to become a client or saying yes –– those people struggle more with how to have [00:19:00] conversations in a podcast, which is really interesting because in my experience, advisors who are all about education, they can't stand the other end of the spectrum, which is, people who sell.
[00:19:15] So, this is a huge advantage if you're picking up on this, if you're more about education. It doesn't mean people who have traditionally been taught to sell can't make the shift. But it's absolutely a benefit for the people who are more education-oriented, because they're already there in their mind, and they already know where to add value and the conversations come more naturally.
[00:19:38] And the education in a podcast comes more naturally. The sales-oriented advisors are more –– they limit themselves to what they think they can tell, but share everything, share stuff you never thought you would share. And if you don't have enough to share, you got to build it, build that thought leadership, build that expertise to share.
[00:19:56] Anyway, that's adding value and that's a huge [00:20:00] expectation, like an outcome that you should expect if you're doing this well. The next one is scale of credibility. Why don't you talk a little bit about that? Because I've been holding the floor here and you know a lot about this. Actually, maybe, how we came to actually know and talk about the term would be cool because that's a good story.
[00:20:17] Yeah. You, you, how we came up with the term scale of credibility came from a conversation you had with one of our clients a couple of years ago.
[00:20:31] Matt Halloran:
Oh my God. That's so funny. I didn't remember. Yeah.
[00:20:36] Kirk Lowe:
This is an example. This is a wonderful example of when in business, what you choose to think was your idea, and you go back and you realize, ‘oh my gosh, that wasn't even our idea.o It's funny because, you –– we convinced, –– yeah, it's just been a while. And you’re old as hell. I mean, look at your beard. It's white.
[00:20:57] Matt Halloran:
This was two and a half, two and a half [00:21:00] years ago. So, I'm talking to one of our clients who's actually been a friend of mine, a financial services professional in Southern Georgia for a really, really long time. They're one of the largest mass mutual offices in the United States. And they were podcasting with us, and we were going over numbers, right? And he's sitting there laughing because his business partner is like, dude, we're not getting the numbers.
[00:21:21] And he said, this has nothing to do with numbers. This is scaled credibility. And of course, I wrote it down. And so, I said, “Well, what does that mean to you?” His name is Russell. And he's like, “Matt, when I say I have a podcast, nobody's in the same league as me.”
[00:21:37] He says, “and especially because we've got 10, 15, 20 in the can, he's like I'm 20 ahead of everybody else. And it scales my credibility because it builds credibility while I'm sleeping because my podcast is always working for me.” And I sat back, first off, his business partner was like, wow, that was really good, Matt,
[00:21:56] he should sell for you. And I was like, well, I knew he should've sold for me from [00:22:00] the beginning. Guy is, like, a great salesperson. But how insightful is that, right, for you to really look at. Kirk talked about it right at the top of the show, right? That people have unrealistic expectations of what this is supposed to do for them from a numbers’ perspective, lead generation, return on investment.
[00:22:16] What they don't understand is, how much of this builds your brand, how much this builds your panache, your respect, your everything within your area of expertise because there isn't anybody else doing it.
[00:22:32] Kirk Lowe:
It's not always unrealistic expectations. In some cases, it certainly is. But sometimes, it's just not understanding all the other wins that can happen.
[00:22:41] And so the next win is that the versatility of podcasting allows you to create a lot of marketing and synergy and content. Yeah. So, content creation really is marketing or content marketing is marketing, right? It's becoming that, has become that, just not [00:23:00] everybody's figured it out, which makes it really difficult to buy content and have success because it's about having your own authentic content, especially if you want to be known as the expert.
[00:23:10] But the versatility of podcasting is an example of really what we do with it is we take a podcast, we cut it up into sound bytes or video bytes or texts, and we leverage one thing and turn it into many. And then, we leverage those many to get awareness and top of mind. It's a very simple formula. It’s very versatile. A podcast can work great with social media.
[00:23:37] It can work with email. Heck, it could work with traditional media if you want, right? Tell everybody in your geographic region, send out a mailer and say, “I got a podcast. I'm going to teach you about this if you're interested.” So, there's other cool stuff we're working on, but I'm not going to talk about it right now.
[00:23:57] Because we're going to be testing some cool stuff. But [00:24:00] so marketing synergy is a huge opportunity win. Another one is the amount, you can build an unbelievable amount of trust, which is probably the most important attribute of a podcast is the intimacy, the trust, because you're really getting to listen to Matt and I. We can't fake it for 300 episodes.
[00:24:21] I mean, yeah, we're not that talented. And it's just being ourselves. It’s the only way to be. And not everybody is going to dig that, but that's okay because they might not –– if they don't like who you are and how you speak and what you talk about, they're probably not going to like you when they come into your meeting.
[00:24:43] So wouldn't it be nice to qualify those people before we go through all that song and dance? So, trust is huge. Trust is one of the most important elements of marketing. That, and awareness. Get awareness, [00:25:00] build trust, everything happens from that.
So, we've got to dive into some more of these best practices. Matt?
[00:28:24] Matt Halloran:
Oh, gosh, yes. The next one is, know your expertise. And so, I think this is one of the objections, Kirk, I hear all the time. So, as many of you know, if you want to join our ProudMouth family, you basically come through me. And this is one of the big objections that I get through our education process of onboarding new ProudMouth family members, which is, Matt, I'm afraid I'm not going to know what to talk about.
[00:28:43] Now, I want to tell this very quickly. For those of you who are financial services professionals, we've done over 3000 podcasts for advisors. We have hundreds of podcast topics for you if you can't think of anything, but then I [00:29:00] turn it immediately and say, but I don't want you using other people's content.
[00:29:06] I want you to help, we're going to help you come up with the greatest ideas that have to do with your specific niche and area of expertise. So, talk about that, Kirk, how do you and how do we help people come up with topics?
[00:29:24] Kirk Lowe:
I think the first thing is through our coaching our clients, but you know, not everybody's a client listening to this.
[00:29:30] So, it's really about understanding how, what your audience, like, it's knowing your audience for sure. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but if you know what people care about, and you know what your strengths are –– so, in this one, let's focus on your strengths. So, when you know your expertise, what are you good at?
[00:29:54] What do you know most about? And so you're looking for an advantage with your [00:30:00] expertise, because that has a chance to separate you from other people. And it's certainly going to be what you're going to want to leverage in your practice or your business is to do the stuff that you do best.
[00:30:10] It doesn't mean you can't do other things or bring other people in to fill the gaps, but focus on that. Now, that has to mesh with what your audience actually cares about. And it has to be something they find important. We'll get into that a little in a second. Oh, we already did get into it. But podfade is really about understanding what your expertise is.
[00:30:30] Not being overwhelmed by how you're going to come up ––so, don't fret about coming up with topics. It's a learned skill like anything, and once you get it, once you start understanding it, you, for a lot of people, they can't turn it off. And to be honest, even for this episode, I just asked our marketing person, Jessica, what do you want?
[00:30:55] What do you think Matt and I should talk about because she does all kinds of social media for us. And she said, [00:31:00] I think you really, I'd like you to talk about podfade. And we've talked about it a little bit before, but we're getting to more detail into it today.
[00:31:07] And so, that was kind of easy. So, you could ask people. There's all kinds of best practices, but brainstorm. So, have a process for brainstorming. So, we have a document that Jessica runs up. We call it visible expertise from Kirk. And I just fill it up with thoughts. So, and I've, if I haven't, I've talked about this before, maybe not a ton –– one of the ways that I best come up with topics is I'm really engaged in social media commenting.
[00:31:33] So when people talk about our posts, I always respond, and I also have, well, I've got people I follow, lots of people I follow, obviously on LinkedIn, everybody you follow, they follow you typically. So, but I have a group of probably 30 to 40 people that I really admire, and I look at their stuff and I comment on it.
[00:31:55] When I'm commenting on it, if I comment with a lot of [00:32:00] thoughtfulness, and I take the time to do it right, it ends up being my next post, our next post or our next topic. And that happens all the time. And it's, uh, so when you're thinking about going and doing some social media and you block out some time, don't sit there.
[00:32:17] Don't spend your time like, like, like, like, like. Spend your time being, find something that you think you'd really like to comment on and dig in and comment on it. If you do one comment a couple times a day that's really thoughtful or once a day, you're smoking it, man. You're doing really good.
[00:32:33] You can still comment on other stuff. It's more important to comment by the way, the algorithms love commenting way more than they do liking. So, that's really important. And the other one is, have, don't limit, so if you've got expertise, don't think that that's the only thing that can ever be talked about in your podcast.
[00:32:49] Think about other things that your audience wants to hear, and if they're not your expertise, leverage others. So have guests on, right? Or educate yourself, [00:33:00] on a new topic. Talk about, give credit to the person who did it. If they can't come on your podcast, just talk about their article, their research.
[00:33:07] We just talked aboutChartable. We didn't get Chartable on the podcast, but we leveraged their stats because we don't have the capacity to go do, or want to be a podcast research company. Having said that, we have hired an analytics person, and we were analyzing data about how our clients succeed and what the trends are so that we can do a better job as a company accelerating their success, which is already working.
[00:33:31] And we're really excited to share that stuff with everybody in the future. So that's know your expertise. That's a big one.
[00:33:38] Matt Halloran:
You alluded to this already, which is you have to really know who you're talking to. And as you had said earlier, that you are, too, right now talking to a person who's rollerblading in California.
[00:33:47] So when you're knowing your audience, you have to be able to close your eyes and really, truly understand who you're talking to, but it goes much deeper than just the visualization. Kirk, where does it go?
[00:33:59] Kirk Lowe:
Yeah. It's [00:34:00] gotta be all about your listener. So, your podcast, there's sometimes, when I, if I go back to a couple of minutes ago when I was talking about salespeople.
[00:34:08] Salespeople are more apt to make the podcast about themselves and their business. But if you can make the podcast about your listener and the things that they struggle with, the things that they want to know, and the things that they care about, whether they're financial or not, because they could care about life, work, and wealth.
[00:34:24] So, can you talk about life? We actually do talk about life because we have people talking about work-life balance on here. We've had people talk about that. You know, so, Matt, you've interviewed all these guests, so we don't just talk about –– we focus on marketing, but we spin it in with other things. But you can, as a financial advisor, you can absolutely go off of the financial expertise.
[00:34:48] You can weave it in. You'll always find opportunities to do that. We can talk about work and other things. So, don't limit what you talk about just because it's what your expertise is. Understand that your [00:35:00] audience wants to hear about other things and tie them in. Having said that, having your financial podcast talk about cooking all the time.
[00:35:09] You know, that's probably going to be odd. So, be smart about it, but know that you can tie in other things. Um, the next one is, make sure you understand what they actually care about. So, when you talk about –– if you want to talk about life, what do your clients actually seem to want to know? And make sure that it's predominant with your audience.
[00:35:32] So, if you have one client who's an ideal client, and they have some obscure affinity for something, and you think all your clients care about it, that might not be the best idea. But if you have a lot of people who are into sailing or traveling, or you live in wine country, and that's a big reason that drew them to where you are and what you do, you can talk about that.
[00:35:53] And if you've got a niche audience that are all dentists, for example, figure out what dentists yearn to.
[00:36:00] Matt Halloran:
So, you're just, you're, you're missing saying one thing. And I have to, I have to highlight this, which is freaking ask them. Go to your clients and say, “What would you like me to podcast about?”
[00:36:11] “Oh my God, do you have a podcast?” “Well, yes, I have a podcast. But what is the number one concern that you're hearing from your friends and family about what's going on with my area of expertise?” If you're marketing to dentists, join a dentist networking group and just say, “Hey, I'm only here to find out what you guys want me to talk about on my podcast.”
[00:36:28] It makes you look a lot less like a shill and like somebody who's trying to add value. Please don't be afraid to ask. It doesn't make you look like any less of an expert. It actually makes you look like you were trying to provide your expertise in a more palatable way.
[00:36:42] Kirk Lowe:
Which is a great point. And I just want to throw it out there that if you've got things that you want to know more about, and we haven't already talked about them, by the way, when you go toProudmouth.com, on the top right, you'll see our two podcasts there. SoTop Advisor Marketing andBe Your Own Loud. [00:37:00] If you've, if you want to look up, search up a keyword, you can go in and type that keyword in.
[00:37:05] If you type in marketing, you're not going to get very far because everything we've talked about is marketing. Having said that, if there's certain things that you're looking for help with, you can go search there. If they're not there, feel free to send us a note.
[00:37:19] Another thing to do is to join our academy because twice a week, we have office hours. And Julia –– we call her our librarian –– knows where everything is, and she knows a lot of the topics. So, she could easily help you if you need help on any topics. And, oh, that's the paid version though, that has the office hours.
[00:37:44] So you do have to pay for the mid-level membership, but it's having access to our team twice a week or whenever you need them, obviously, probably not gonna show up twice a week. But it's available. Plus, all the courses that you get with that, which are incredible. [00:38:00]
[00:38:00] Matt Halloran:
Alright. So, here's the last part, which is interesting, because when you created this mind map, I was looking at this last one, which is know your who. And I mistook that for know your audience. And so, it's interesting that –– hearing how your brain is processing all of this, this makes an enormous amount of sense because something that we have been working with for many years is ––
[00:38:23] it shouldn't be how to do it, it should be who should do it for you. And I think that's a major mind shift for business owners and experts, because as an expert, you know, you're wicked smart, and you can probably do everything. In fact, Kirk, you said this to me in a management meeting on Wednesday, “Matt, of course you can do that, but you probably shouldn't be the person who does it.”
[00:38:45] And I was like, well, damn, first off, that was nice that you said I could do that.
[00:38:49] Kirk Lowe:
Matt signs up to do all kinds of stuff in the company. And we say, no, we have people to do that now. It's so weird for us to, you know, we've got [00:39:00] 22 people and we're probably going to end up being closer to 28-30 within the next year. We've got the whole plan for it.
[00:39:08] Matt Halloran:
We have lots of plans.
[00:39:09] Kirk Lowe:
So much fun.
[00:39:09] Matt Halloran:
Right? Which, as Kirk just totally disclosed by the way, even if you have a who doesn't mean that you're gonna, you're going to easily and immediately think that that's the “who” who can take care of this, but who should help you with this? What we're finding is when you surround yourself with other people who are passionate about education, who are passionate about thought leadership, who are passionate about accelerating your influence, the who makes a lot more sense.
[00:39:33] So Kirk, break down the who thing
[00:39:35] Kirk Lowe:
I really think there's two options when it comes to who. And it's usually, for everybody listening in here, unless you're a marketing assistant, we know marketing assistants are listening, and wonderful. Thank you for being here. Please tell other marketing assistants and make sure you get the advisors that you're serving to pay attention to some episodes when you get one that you really liked.
[00:39:58] You need to [00:40:00] leverage what we talked about to convince them to be better at marketing. So, welcome. Cause we always say advisors, that we're talking to advisors, but we know we've got lots of marketing assistants listening. And by the way, we've got some really cool stuff for marketing assistants in our academy.
[00:40:13] So we have for you, our marketing assistants listening to this or a marketing role, shouldn't say assistant. If you're in a marketing role in a financial services firm, we have some really cool courses on helping you. And if you're an advisor who has a marketing team or marketing people that you think need to be better at changing, shifting their mindset and learn some new strategies, we got courses for them in our academy.
[00:40:34] Anyhow, here's the two ideas. I think most of the time, it's one of the two. One is delegate. If you're the advisor you want to, you don't want to be, you want to be focused on being the expert, not on anything else. So, hand that stuff off. This is typically, you can delegate some of this stuff to marketing people in your company who have certain marketing skills. Stay within what [00:41:00] they can handle.
[00:41:01] And in my opinion, most marketing people should be managing other talents and be the coordinators more so than the doers. If your first line is a marketing doer, they'll end up getting full and they won't be able to do everything you need. You're better off having them be organizers.
[00:41:19] And then they go find the talent to do everything and they coordinate everything. I think that's almost always the best use of marketing support. And as you grow and can build more marketing, then you can bring in certain pieces of expertise and then stop outsourcing, which is the second thing. So, as you build it and get more dynamic, you can take away some of the outsourcing and fill those roles internally if you want to do that.
[00:41:46] A lot of businesses are actually finding that outsourcing, having a good person to delegate and co-ordinate –– you can delegate to who coordinates and then having the talent be all outsourced is a [00:42:00] really smart way to do business. We've had a lot of success doing that in our company as we've grown.
[00:42:05] I don't really see shutting that off. It's always going to be a huge part of what we do. Having said that, I just want everybody to understand because I think people's brains go to saying, oh, you guys hire people who are really inexpensive, who might not understand certain stuff, and that doesn't happen here.
[00:42:21] We do everything. And that's not a slight to anybody. It's just saying that everything we do is done within our company by people that we employ, if that makes sense.
[00:42:34] Matt Halloran:
And we also hire humans, which I think is important. So, there are ways to outsource this to non-human entities.
[00:42:40] We also focus very heavily on training all of our people, so they truly understand what's going on from a content perspective. Now, hold on here.
[00:42:49] Kirk Lowe:
Sorry about the commercial there, everybody. Sometimes, when you say outsourcing, people have this, they invariably go to this idea that you're, it's a low-cost outsourcing option.
[00:43:00] [00:42:59] That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about hiring real pros and people to get to do the work. So, and those outsourcing, the reasons to do that, their technical know-how, you want to, you don't want to have that many skills. There's 11 different skills needed to produce and promote a podcast.
[00:43:17] And probably more if we want to get more detailed. It's highly unlikely you're going to have that in one person or even a team, and you don't want that. Because you don't need those talents all the time full-time, you only need them in spurts. And the second one is podcast experience. Who has the experience to help you avoid all the mistakes, understand the best practices, understand the etiquette, and quickly improve the skill?
[00:43:45] And the third one is who can consistently implement? If you outsource, they are not getting pulled by other things. Because this is what they do. You're getting pulled in your business by all kinds of things. Outsourcing, it gives you the chance to have [00:44:00] consistent implementation. And that's a huge one.
[00:44:03] You have something to add?
[00:44:04] Matt Halloran:
I do. And then, we need to wrap this up. I think we're going long again. Ready?
[00:44:10] Kirk Lowe:
Yeah, I know. Well, the person who's rollerblading, if they're using, I'm going to rollerblade for this episode, these guys usually have 25, and this one's had around 45. I'm really, they're really exhausted.
[00:44:22] Matt Halloran:
Anybody is using this to exercise, to time their exercise, they're going to get ripped after this. All right. So, podcast experience, Kirk was just talking about the academy, which we would love for all of you to join. We have a free version, there's links in the show notes, but the next thing is, you know, what other podcast company have you ever heard of who's produced over 3000 podcasts in the most heavily regulated industry in the United States, which is financial services?
[00:44:40] And by the way, that happens to be us. We are that company. Kirk talks about consistent implementation. We've published over 40,000 social media posts for financial services professionals in a compliance-friendly manner.
[00:45:00] [00:44:59] You are going to have to understand that there is a cost-benefit analysis to that. And I want everybody to keep that in mind. And surprisingly enough, Kirk, those are things that I don't really hear very often in the sales process here. People don't really say, “Well, you know, you guys don't have the experience.”
[00:45:17] We have the experience. I think really what it is, it's the outsourcing component. Because this is what I'll hear. And then I'm going to wrap today. Well, Matt, I have a marketing assistant. We don't need you to do that. No, you have a marketing assistant. You don't have a content creation specialist, right?
[00:45:31] There's a big difference. And if your marketing assistant is going to be truly successful, having that part of it outsourced so that marketing assistant can take the content and interact with the content, distribute the content, and actually do what a marketer does, which is distribute the content.
[00:45:46] That's the big game changer in the offices that we work with, who have that internal marketing assistant, that assistant loves us to death.
[00:45:54] Kirk Lowe:
Yeah, there's a, we have something called organic marketing tactics, and those are the marketing tactics that [00:46:00] your team need to focus on doing, because there are certain things that are much easier to do and do much better when they're done internally.
[00:46:09] And there's other things you can outsource. The things that you can't or shouldn't outsource, that's what your marketing person should be doing. And coordinating different digital media is one of them. But if they're so, so stuck at just editing podcasts and getting transcripts and creating social posts and doing all that, they might not have time for anything else.
[00:46:28] And you're missing that opportunity because our most successful clients are the ones who take what they do with us and add on to it and create marketing synergy. And they're the ones who are accelerating their success more. So, we're, you know, it kind of speaks to what we're talking about today with the who. So, who does what? And what can you delegate? And what do you need to outsource?
[00:46:54] I think it was really critical to your success in marketing. It’s understanding, you know, [00:47:00] where to start and stop.
[00:47:01] Matt Halloran:
I think this was great today, Kirk. I think we covered a lot of real estate. I think we did a really good job of explaining, you know, what the difference is between really kind of going into this on your own and really going at it with people who truly understand this medium.
[00:47:17] It's just like you as a financial services professional, right? Could they go online and Google something? Well, of course, and they do, right? But really what they want is they want you as the expert to help them be as successful as they possibly can. And we want to be able to fill that for you, too. If you have not subscribed to the podcast, do it because what are you doing? We’re like 300 in. Come on, you haven't subscribed yet, just freaking hit thesubscribe button.
[00:47:37] Number two, if you know somebody who really needs to hear this podcast, you can share it. That’s super easy. Drop us a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to this. And finally, if you have any questions or want to know more about who we are and what we do, you can join the free version of the academy.
[00:47:52] The link is in the show notes. For all of us here at ProudMouth, and Kirk, this is Matt, and I'll see you on the other side of the mic very soon.
[00:47:58] Outro:
Thanks for [00:48:00] listening to the Top Advisor Marketing Podcast brought to you by ProudMouth. If you want to learn more about how you can be your own loud, visit ourwebsite, read ourblog posts, and sign up for our new academy, where you, too, can learn how to truly be an influencer.
[00:48:18] Have a wonderful day.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
