At a certain point, every podcaster is going to ask themselves how they can leverage other media platforms to bring new listeners to their show. This is smart, and also it can be a money and time suck if not understood properly. There are 3 main types of media you can leverage to grow your show: media platforms you have earned access to, ones that you own, and ones that you can pay to appear on.
In this episode Tiff and Christine explain each type of media you can use to market your show and the best uses for each.
“Earned would be time, owned would be resources and paid would be money.”
Tiff Tyler
Topics covered:
- (1:00) What earned media is and how to get it
- (4:36) What owned media is and how to get it
- (8:25) What paid media is and how to get it
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Links mentioned:
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- Tiff Tyler
- Christine Baird
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Many thanks to our production team
- Worthfull Media for audio editing
- Mosaico Productions for video effects
- Amela Subašić for artwork
Transcription of this episode:
(auto-generated, please forgive typos)
Christine (00:04):
Welcome to Think Like a Producer podcast. I’m your co-host Christine Baird.
Tiff (00:09):
And I’m your co-host Tiff Tyler. Being in the podcast industry, being in the content creation industry. This is what we learned, and this is how you can get out of your own way and get started.
Christine (00:20):
You name it. We’ve probably done it. This podcast is about bringing all the wisdom to you. Tune in weekly, to learn how to think like a producer.
Christine (00:33):
All right. Take it away.
Tiff (00:34):
All right. Let’s see if the caffeine has officially kicked in or not. Welcome to this episode of think like a producer today. We’re gonna talk about something that I think we’ve hinted towards in other episodes, but never really took a deep dive into. So this is going to be a lot of fun. We’re gonna talk about earned own and paid media. I think that when people think about, you know, press being out there, um, social media, all these different things that you can do to sort of build an audience to build, you know, your brand, your reputation, all these different things. Uh, a lot of people see it in different perspectives. You know, whoever you’re following on social, you might have one perspective, but there are a lot of different ways that people have gotten their name out there.
Tiff (01:16):
So we’re gonna talk about these different buckets. Um, I’m gonna start off with earned media. So what that looks like is kind of what we talked about in the last episode. And we talk about a lot, you know, it can be called networking. It could be called building relationships, but it’s just this constantly being around people or putting yourself in positions to be around people who have maybe power or position to support your brand or your growth and whatever that looks like for you. You could be listening right now and you we’re mainly talking about your podcast, but you could also be someone who wants to be an aspiring actor, actress, or someone who wants to be a comedian. And maybe, you know, you are, you’re doing all these different things. You’re getting in all these different rooms to, for that future goal, right?
Tiff (01:59):
So you’re building a reputation. Um, you’re building a particular body of work. You could have YouTube videos with popular skits. You could have TikTok. I mean, there’s so many people who are just like consistent right now on TikTok who had, you know, maybe a certain following or whatever on different platforms, but are completely taking off. But again, Christine’s gonna talk about that in a different section, but just kind of talking about, uh, constantly building relationships with people, letting people know who you are, what your goals are, where you wanna go. And like I said, we talk about that in episode seven, about networking a little bit. We talk about in the last episode where we kind of go over how you build these relationships, but it’s very important to know that there are a lot of people and we worked with people who are so good at, um, constantly staying in front of people, constantly making sure that people remember them.
Tiff (02:48):
And I can kind of give a personal example to this. Um, in the last year, as of this recording, I have kind of transitioned out of, you know, sort of having a very steady clientele to being on set and in the, um, the film industry a little bit more. And so I’m on set and I’m meeting these people and there’s something to be said about getting work. When it comes to the film industry, you it’s always referrals. It’s always people like who has a, who have a position open or something. And they think of your name. When I first moved to Los Angeles seven years ago, as of this recording, you know, I would meet people and then, you know, they would be like, oh, you were so great to work with. Awesome. And then the texting or the, you know, I wouldn’t really follow up.
Tiff (03:31):
And then those positions and those jobs wouldn’t really come and now having worked so much, uh, now it’s just, I’ll just randomly check in with people, Hey, how you doing? Hey, I know you were, um, you know, going on vacation or going on your honeymoon. How did that go? You know, just constantly being in touch with people and building a friendship. Uh, and yes, of course, like I want my name to come up when they’re thinking of work, but I also wanna get to know the person the next time we’re on set together. I wanna be able to have a relevant conversation where, you know, I actually, or their dad’s name and all the things that we’ve talked about. So when we talk about like earning and building this relationship, it’s staying in touch with people, even if right now there isn’t something that you two can do for each other.
Tiff (04:09):
Like we said, over and over again, it’s always the long game. Um, so it’s the earning is in the time and the consideration and all the, you know, the effort that you’re putting into building these friendships across the board, with all these different people who may have power or relevancy, you know, to what you want, or just maybe someone who’s up and coming, and you really notice that their talent and their skillset they’re gonna be going somewhere, or they’re just a really cool person. And it’d be nice to have a good circle of friends. Again, we are talking about building a business, building your podcast, building your audience, but also being human, uh, is very much, uh, a part of this too. So it’s not all about what you can get. Like we talked about before. It’s the win-win what can you give as well? Um, does that make sense, Christine? Did I feel, do you feel like I covered the earned piece of this?
Christine (04:55):
Yeah, totally. We, we could go on and on and on, but that’s totally the heart of it.
Tiff (05:00):
Absolutely. I just needed Christine sign off before I pass it over to her. Okay. So I talked about the earned. So can you go over the owned media for everybody?
Christine (05:10):
Yeah. So as the name implies, these are the platforms you own. This can be your social media accounts, your email list, your website, your blog. If you have books, if you have live events like any platform that you own, or that you have an active presence on, we know social media, you don’t own, but like let’s say you have active accounts on those platforms. Those are what you consider owned marketing channels. So obviously some of this is pretty basic. If you’re gonna come out with a podcast new episode, you’re gonna share about it on your social media, but for some shows and for some people that is actually where you are gonna get the biggest bang for your buck, because if you have a really large or a very engaged audience on social media, then it might make total sense for you to just spend a ton of focus on marketing to your already owned platforms and channels and audiences.
Christine (06:06):
Maybe you’re a writer or an author, or a really popular newsletter writer or blog writer. So if you have a really large or engaged audience on a writing platform, then it might make a ton of sense to promote your show very much so to that audience, because if they’re already paying a lot of attention to what you’re writing, like go ahead and promote the show over there. Um, I’ve worked with authors who wanna do like a companion podcast to their book. And so they might put into the actual printed book, Hey, here’s a QR code of where can go listen to the podcast where we continue the story or the conversation. So writing might be something that would make a lot of sense. If you have channels that you own, where you write. And then obviously like, don’t feel limited just by that. Like, if you’re part of a professional organization and you have access to like the greater network of that, because you’re like the president or the chair or something like that, it might make a lot of sense to distribute and market your show to that channel because you have ownership of that.
Christine (07:07):
This is something that might seem really basic. But honestly, a lot of times we get questions from clients who are like, where should I spend my money to market the show? And I’m like, well, I don’t know, oh, maybe we don’t need to spend any money. Like maybe the money we spend is just making great social videos that actually, you know, give an awesome insight to your show. Um, so don’t necessarily think just because I have all these platforms and they’re not good enough. I have to go spend my money to market somewhere else. Even recently I was talking to some clients and they were like how, when we spend money to grow our show and I was like, well, honestly, you’re only in your first year of your show. And based on the numbers, the bulk of your current audience doesn’t even listen because they probably don’t even know it exists yet.
Christine (07:50):
Which can sound crazy if you’ve been podcasting for a while, but it takes a lot of exposure to people on other platforms like social media or even email sometimes to tune in and realize like there’s a podcast out there and I just need to click over and subscribe. So definitely don’t look over your own channels to be a really rich source of marketing for some of you, this might be obvious. And for some of you, you might be like, oh, well I kept thinking I was supposed to put marketing dollars some else, well maybe you just enhance the quality and strategy of what you market to your own channels. And that will actually give a huge return. So, uh, we’ll leave it there. Obviously you can understand the, if you have other platforms that you own definitely market to them, if you are part of an academy or an online course or a bigger community, you have a legitimate, um, access to market, like not spammy.
Christine (08:45):
Then, then definitely consider that before you just like throw money elsewhere. So with that said, we’ll go to our final section of this media marketing episode. And we’ll talk about paid media because sometimes you’ve done years of work or a lot of work to cultivate and get your current audience to subscribe. You’ve worked all your relationships in the earned space. You’ve done all of that. And you’re like, we still have more resources and we wanna put money behind the show and get it out to people who’ve literally never heard of it and never heard of us. And that’s where paid media comes in. Now this is an emerging field. So there’s always gonna be updates to this, but traditionally and currently podcasters can run ads. You can buy ads, space on podcast platforms to run it’s to your show. You could either pay shows directly to run ads to your show.
Christine (09:40):
And I know you’ve heard these on podcasts where the, the beginning of the show, the host will actually run an ad to another show and say like, Hey, you might enjoy this. Sometimes it features a clip of your show. Like you intro your show and they just run that ad. Sometimes the host of that show will intro your show. You know, obviously that’s a little bit of a warmer introduction, so you can buy those kind of ads. Um, there’s all kinds of different names for them. Feed drops and et cetera, cetera. But that’s what a lot of people do who are on networks. Part of the perk of being on a network show is that you typically are given access to run ads on other shows in the network to your show. Obviously it’s all in the same network. So it makes sense that the shows promote each other.
Christine (10:22):
Um, but even if you’re not part of a network, there are ad marketplaces that you can go and buy ad space on other shows. Um, I haven’t heard rave reviews of any of them. So that’s why I’m saying this is still emerging. Like I’m not gonna be like, you all have to go to the same one, cuz it’s the best. I would say there’s a lot of room for improvement, but this is absolutely where the industry is going. These opportunities are expanding constantly. Um, so Podcorn is an independent marketplace right now that you can do that on. What’s really interesting about what Spotify is doing. If you’ve kept up with the Spotify advertising news is they’re building like a very serious marketing platform within Spotify for podcasters to both promote other shows, but also obviously to promote products. So it’s a sponsorship marketplace and they are like very serious about it.
Christine (11:12):
Like it is very unique technology, the way they’ve set it up, doing it all within their ecosystem. So if you have an anchor hosted show, anchor is the hosting platform that Spotify owns. You have a lot of options to run ads. And I’m not saying like today, right now you can run ads on other shows over there, but that’s where things are heading. So if that’s really appealing to you, if you feel like your audience is in the demographic of Spotify’s demographic, and it just makes a lot of sense for you to focus on that, know that there’s a ton of stuff rolling out over there in Spotify’s ad marketplace. Um, there are some limitations, obviously they’re invested in having you promote Spotify stuff and Spotify exclusive shows and Spotify exclusive listening. So that might appeal to you. It might not, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening over there.
Christine (12:04):
I’ll just leave it there. As of October, 2021, keep an eye on everything. Spotify is rolling out. Um, but there’s also has seen other ways to run paid media to your show. Um, a lot of podcast hosting platforms or listening apps, uh, will let you run ads specifically to users who use their listening app to consume podcasts. So, um, there’s kind of a small variety of them. Some are more effective than others, and some of them have a more genre specific focus for certain shows, but, uh, you can definitely look into running ads on the app that people use to listen to the show. We’re not talking about apple and Spotify right now, obviously, but there’s smaller, independent apps that some people really love. And so you might end up wanting to put into some ad money to running ads for your show on those apps. So people listening to, uh, a podcasts on that app will hear an ad to come listen to your show. Um, so I’m gonna kind of wrap it there because you’ve probably picked up if you’ve listened to the show for a while. I’m yes, Tiff.
Tiff (13:13):
Oh, so I just thought of something while you were talking, oh, earn would be time, owned would be resources, and paid would be money. Like if we wanted to like sum it up in like a short thing, right. It’s just like, those are the things that are relevant. Okay. I’m done now. I just wanted to like throw that out there.
Christine (13:30):
I thought that was a great recap because I know some of this got a little and businessy and advertising and that may not be your cup of tea. So thank you for putting it in really clear terms. I’m that’s a great way to think about it. Um, but yeah, I’m not gonna go super deep into paid media. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, but I’ve had the opportunity to talk to some awesome industry experts who are very knowledgeable about paid media in the podcasting world. This is kind of the other side of podcasting where podcasting is an industry unto itself. It’s like the network agency type side of podcasting. We are kind of in the independent side. So that’s why I’m like we’re crossing over into the other side of podcasting. I’m not gonna go super deep, but when I’ve talked to experts, who’ve worked in the others side, the industry of podcasting, the ad marketplace of podcasting, it’s oftentimes a pretty high cost per acquisition, meaning you might end up paying quite a bit for each new listener you’d convert over.
Christine (14:28):
And so the numbers don’t always make sense for shows unless they’re very large shows that are already bringing in a lot of revenue through ads. That’s why I’m gonna kind of like put a little cap on it, know that those opportunities exist. I haven’t seen anything that was like super compelling to me as like an independent producer who works with a lot of independent shows who aren’t necessarily running ads. Um, I haven’t seen any numbers that I was like, Ooh, that’s really juicy. It was more like, Ooh, that’s kind of pricey, but I can see at a certain level for a show, that’s kind of maxed out all of their earned and owned media channels. This might make sense for a specific thing. So we’ll wrap it there. Uh, this is definitely a question we from certain clients we wanted to cover it. Um, we know you may be thinking like, how can I monetize my show? How can I grow it? How can I think of it as a business? Well, this is part of the conversation. So hopefully this is helpful. Any last thoughts, Tiff, before we wrap,
Tiff (15:25):
I would just like to point out that all these things in Christine’s brain amazes me every time she talks about it. Uh, but we actually do this on a regular basis. Um, we have a podcast creator incubator, basically that goes over these things in depth. It’s more of, I would say one of the best resources to learn more about these things and more in depth conversations about what’s going on. What’s relevant in the podcast world, where things are going, you know, it’s talked about, uh, private podcasts on a different episode. There’s just so many things and we do our best on this show to keep it bite size and small, and you know, enough for you to kind of take the ball and run with it. But if you want more, um, and just to learn more, definitely check out the incubator in the show notes.
Tiff (16:10):
That was my last little, little, little bit there. Definitely check out the incubator and the show notes. And thanks again for listening for watching. Um, if you’re listening, you can watch us on YouTube. If you’re watching, you can listen on any like platform you love to listen to podcasts. So thank you for being such an awesome audience. We are really enjoying, uh, a kind of hit and season two here, we got a couple more episodes left. So if you haven’t listen, go back and listen. And uh, yeah, thanks again for watching, listening to think like a producer. We will see you on the next episode.
Christine (16:44):
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Think Like a Producer. This has been a Worthfull Media production. Massive thanks to our team who makes the show possible. Worthfull Media for audio editing, Jorge and Veronica from Mosaico Productions for video effects and Amela Subasic for our amazing artwork and graphics.