How to Start Marketing Your Podcast with Taesha Glasgow

[Excerpt] Taesha: And I say, well, what are you doing right now to grow your show? They say, oh, I post on LinkedIn or I post on Facebook or Twitter and that’s all I do. And then I say, well, that’s probably why the growth is not happening

[00:00:35] Nemanja: welcome to another episode of The Nootka Sound Podcast. I’m your host pneumonia. And today we’re joined by Taesha Glasgow, who is a partner at The Pod Squad, which is a podcast marketing agency based in Leeds. And she’s also the host for the Just Sleep podcast. Are we going to get into promoting and growing your show and what is the best way to go about doing that?

Thank you so much for joining us. It’s a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for having me. Sure. Let’s jump right into it. And to start us off. Can you tell us what are your three most favorite podcasts? Well,

[00:01:08] Taesha: this was interesting cause I, I listened to tons of podcasts in the course of my work. And so I’m going to, I’m going to name.

A podcast that’s particularly my favorite, which is the fall of civilizations podcast, which for some reason I can listen to again and again and again and again. So that’s, that’s definitely one of my favorites, a new podcast that I’ve been listening to that I’ve been enjoying is a podcast called bridge to you.

It’s understanding black unity and. I’m also going to give a shameless plug for my own podcast. Always see. Well, we see one of my favorites, which is just sleep bedtime stories for adults, which is a podcast that I started in March of this year and has been doing really well. We’ve we’ve done 1.5 million downloads so far.

[00:01:58] Nemanja: Wow, awesome. Yep. Yeah. And the keys. Tell me what are the qualities that these shows have that makes them your favorite?

[00:02:06] Taesha: Um, well with fall of civilizations, it’s just the storytelling. It’s it’s he does it really well. And it’s really interesting content. I remember I learned about the Incas when I was a kid.

And, and so when he did that kind of episode, I was totally hooked. And with the bridge do podcasts, it’s really the mission of her show. I’m wanting to unite black people from all different parts of the world. So I really appreciate her mission and obviously it was just sleep. It’s mine. So, but I would say, I would say that something about the creation of my podcast, when I started it, it was really an experiment and a project.

And over time I really started to love the fact that I am actually helping people. Because when I get that feedback from someone saying like, you really helped me and falling asleep and all of that, it’s kind of shifted from being an experiment, to be something that I really enjoy helping people. So. I totally love that.

[00:03:04] Nemanja: I got it. Okay. Before we move on, can you tell us how you got into podcasting and how the pod squad came to be?

[00:03:12] Taesha: So I have been in digital marketing for many years. I won’t say how many years, but let’s just see early noughties. Um, so I’ve, I’ve been in marketing for awhile and I did a lot of SEO, a lot of digital marketing, and I had to try and find links for my clients for, for SEO purposes.

Defensible links. So, you know, links that are going to stand the test of time. The Google are not going to be like, you know, this is spam. And during the course of my work and researching new and new ways to get those links for clients, I came across podcasting because obviously in the show notes and on people’s websites, links are placed to, to the guests website.

So I started down that road. And it’s really started when I was researching, really started to think, hang on a minute, this, this is not only great for my work, but I’m really interested in it because in the back of my mind, since I was a kid I’ve been interested in audio and the thought of being involved in audio, I went into a different route when I actually went to university, but a lot of people used to encourage me and say, well, well, you know, you really should be doing kinda like broadcasting and blah, blah, blah.

So at the time when I came across podcasting and it was just. Kind of like a fusion of something that I wanted to do for awhile and my marketing. And it was just like, yeah, pretty good combination. So that’s how I got into, into podcasting and pod squad. We really started with podcast guesting services to begin with.

So we replaced replacing experts on two shows, and now we’ve evolved into doing podcasts and marketing. Because with the experience of working on my own show and driving that to succeed, it’s just been working out pretty well. Awesome. Glad to hear it.

[00:05:07] Nemanja: So let’s say I was thinking of doing a brand new show and I came to you guys.

Why would you say would be the first step that we’d actually do in regards to launching the show?

[00:05:16] Taesha: If you are show is not live, and you’re just thinking about a show concept and you came to us, the first thing I would say is. How are you going to make your show different? There are, I don’t even know the number now.

I think it’s 2 million podcasts out there. Probably a good 1 million active podcasts around it’s really growing. And in your particular niche, there could be a hundred other shows that your audience could, could listen to. So why are they going to listen to your. Instead of those other shows, you really need to put the thought into that from the outset, if you can, because that is how your show is going to really, that’s going to be the foundation of being able to have a successful show.

So yeah, we would really talk about how to make the show today.

[00:06:12] Nemanja: Awesome. Well, let’s double click on that just a little bit. How do you build an audience from scratch? So if you have zero reach zero followers, what would that process look like?

[00:06:23] Taesha: I would say hopefully if you were starting a show and it’s about something, either that you’re passionate about, that’s kind of hobby or it’s for your business that you feel actually.

Nothing. You don’t have like no one in your world at all, but in the event that you do an important place to start is thinking about your listener. So who are you doing this show for? Who is the listener? Who is going to be listening to your show? So if you establish that from the beginning, that’s an important point.

So for example, where do they hang out? Yeah. Why are they going to. Listen to your show. What other shows are they likely to listen to? This was really, that would really be a great guide for your audience development. For example, if you’ve got to show, um, I came across a show that was about Peloton. I can’t remember the name of the show right now, but they, they were talking about Peloton.

And so if you’re creating a show like that, Your listener is going to be interested in health and fitness and all of that. And so you can look for other health, fitness podcasts and do kind of promo swaps. So that’s, that’s something that you can do to grow your audience.

[00:07:41] Nemanja: Obviously social media presence is key.

And one of the biggest platforms that is currently out there, tech doc is a really ideal for podcasting because of its short visually reliant content format. So do you have any tips for creating content for tick-tock when it comes to podcasts?

[00:07:58] Taesha: Well, this is what I would say to you that I I’m going to disagree because this is something that I’ve, I say a lot to the clients that I work with.

Social media. It’s brilliant. Yeah. It’s great. It’s great for. Keep in contact with listeners that you already have getting some feedback. If you’re looking to grow your show, it’s not fantastic for that. So if you’re creating a blueprint for audience development and show growth, I wouldn’t put social media high up on that.

A lot of times when I have my discovery calls with prospects and I say, well, what are you doing right now to grow your show? They say, oh, I posted. LinkedIn or I post on Facebook or Twitter and that’s all I do. And then I say, well, that’s probably why the growth is not happening. Social media. I wouldn’t put that high up on the list at all.

I would be thinking more about promo swaps with other podcasts and that sort of thing. Are there other methods that are not in terms of tech talk? I wouldn’t even begin to justice for ticks out because I, I definitely wouldn’t recommend that if you are going to be doing something like that, maybe you want to be looking at YouTube instead of tech talk.

Okay.

[00:09:18] Nemanja: I’ve got to hear this. What would be the number one spot from your list?

[00:09:22] Taesha: The number one thing I would say would be getting on other shows. So podcast guesting, if that’s something that you can do with the type of show that you have. So I’d say getting podcast guesting, if you can get on 10, 20, 30 shows and funnel those people back to your show.

So that’s extremely powerful. I would also say promo swaps with relevant shows. That’s also extremely powerful. Yeah. And that’s, if you, especially, if you want to go down the route of low or no cost,

[00:09:55] Nemanja: Yeah, that makes sense. And do you think paid advertising is a reliable way to grow for sure.

[00:10:00] Taesha: Paid ads? Yes.

But again, not first and foremost with social media. Um, if you, if you have like a massive budget and you can try multiple channels then yeah. Okay, sure. You can give Facebook and Facebook ads and all that, a try, but if. Really trying to keep your budget pretty tight. If you want to do paid ads, I would suggest that you look at an app placements with overcast or Castro, or even doing Spotify, paying for ads in that way, because.

Your listeners are already there. You’re not. Yeah. So you’re not going into Facebook with people who may not be listening to podcasts and they’re like, oh, that’s what’s going on. But if you’re doing an overcast, the list they’re already on overcast, see your ad. So you’ve kind of like skipped a step there in terms of getting them onto the right platform.

So if you’re going to spend money on ads, I would say. Yeah, that

[00:11:01] Nemanja: makes perfect sense. And I have a question for you because I think the number one question that like, especially my clients come to me and ask me how much money do I need to start like advertising specifically like beta ads. So if we talk some numbers from your experience, is there a minimal amount of money that you would need to invest in order to build a decent amount of followers?

[00:11:23] Taesha: Hmm. It’s kind of like how long is a piece of string, right? I mean,

you can’t really give someone that kind of number, for example, if you were thinking about doing ads on overcast, if you have a business podcast right now, overcast discharging about. Two grand two and a half thousand dollars us in order for free to get a slot or for 30 days. But if you have a podcast that is true crime, the cost on that is I think like 300 or $350.

So that’s difference. Huge difference. So it really just depends on your podcast. That’s that’s what I would say. It would really depend on how much you would need to invest. Well,

[00:12:11] Nemanja: you already said that you kind of social media ads aren’t really that reliable. What do you think about the Google ads?

[00:12:18] Taesha: Same. I would say the same.

I would think again, I would leave, I would leave Google ads to somebody who’s got a significant budget. I would think any most people who are either independent podcasters or they’ve got a smaller, maybe even medium sized business, and they’re doing a podcast to kind of get new clients. Not a massive budget.

I would think don’t go. Now that route, you’re going to be sinking money. It’s going to be going down the pit, especially with Google.

[00:12:50] Nemanja: Okay. And if we were to launch an ad, like, for example, for Spotify, how would you go about creating that ad? Like what formats would you go for? It, obviously, you wouldn’t need any graphics, but like in terms of the audio and generally, what would you focus on in order to get people to actually click on the.

[00:13:08] Taesha: Well, you’ve got to have a hook for getting someone to listen to your show. So that’s something that you probably would have thought of in the initial stages of creating your show. Because a lot of times people do like a 32nd or 62nd trailer for their podcasts when they start out. So it’s essentially telling people what the show is about and a bit of a hook to get them excited.

So that’s what you really would need to focus on. If you were going down the route of Spotify, because Spotify has ads or audio. What’s in it for them. Why should they be interested? Yeah.

[00:13:40] Nemanja: Yeah, that totally makes sense. And when we’re talking about organic ranking and SEO, how important are the episode names and description?

[00:13:49] Taesha: I would say pretty important. I would say even possibly more important is your show name. And this was something that I considered strongly. And again, because I have an SEO and marketing background, when I created my show, I was thinking all of this from day one. My show was just asleep, bedtime stories for adults, and I did the keyword research.

Before I named the show, I did the keyword research for phrases that people are likely going to be searching for in order to find that time stories of sleep stories. And so I found bedtime stories for adults as the phrase that I wanted to optimize for. And so I basically have it. It’s just sleep colon.

That time stories flat out. So I think that’s been, that’s been important. So if you can find a way you don’t want to be spammy because apple, for example, could kick you out. If you are spamming keywords and all that in your, in your name and your, your titles and all of that. So you don’t want to be spammy.

Definitely think about that in terms of creation of the name of your show, and then in terms of your episodes, titles and descriptions as well. So got to think of the keyword, the keyword groups that you want to target and then be sparing with it and not be. Yeah,

[00:15:12] Nemanja: I absolutely love that because like, most of the people that come to me are like the first thing that they have on their mind when launching a show is the name, the title for the podcast.

And unlike the first thing you would actually need to think about is the target audience. And then like once you have that target audience in mind, you can actually then start thinking about the name. I think like in that process, the name would come last. If that makes.

[00:15:36] Taesha: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people approach their podcasts as if it’s like, like their baby, like their little pet project and the super personal, and there has to be, and that’s fine if you’re doing something, like I said before, less a hobby show that you’re doing for fun.

And you know, if you have 50 listeners, For the next three years, you’re not bothered because you love it. That’s fine. But if you have a goal for monetization or getting new clients and, and all of that, then you’ve got to detach yourself a little bit and think have like that business hat on and be thinking really about your listener a lot and how your listener is going to discover your show.

And one of those ways is going to be the show title. So doing.

[00:16:21] Nemanja: Yeah, totally agree. Okay. And how can we improve organic ranking? Do we need a specific like landing page on our website or is it enough if the landing page is provided by our hosting platform, for example, like Podbean or transistor.fm, have those landing pages.

[00:16:38] Taesha: Yeah. I’m actually with transistor. I always recommend that if you can own your stuff, you should. So if you’ve got the budget for it, hopefully you do create your own. Website for your podcast

[00:16:52] Nemanja: and websites are not that expensive. Exactly.

[00:16:55] Taesha: So have your own domain and put everything there and then you can, you could building up your own property.

If you do posts on all of that, that are linked to your episodes, all the SEO, great juice is coming to you, you know? So in your site, so I would say have your own site, if you can.

[00:17:11] Nemanja: And here’s kind of a controversial question. Um, do you think YouTube presence is essential for

[00:17:17] Taesha: podcasts? I would say no, if you can, yes, do it.

You should Scott. It’s awhile ago, rhythms and it’s all kind of stuff. And you’ve got to figure out if you’ve got the time and you’ve got the bandwidth for that, go for it. It’s it’s going to be, it’s going to be a whole other set of work for you at, but if you can do it, do it. I wouldn’t say well, just, yeah, just throw the episode up on YouTube, because then you’re going to get five view.

Which is probably going to be you clicking on it five times. Um, so that might not be worth, worth the effort, but if it’s something that you definitely want to pursue and you have the time and money for it. Yeah, absolutely go for it.

[00:17:59] Nemanja: Cool. And the, how hard is it to get to the point where you’re able to monetize your show and in your experience, how long does that typically take.

[00:18:10] Taesha: Again, depending on your show type, but you could probably monetize your show in some way, pretty early on. You can get listener support, so you can ask them to buy you a coffee or join Patrion and all that and send you some dosh. So you can do. You can also, if you, weren’t something that’s super niche and has a really defined audience, you could probably look for advertisers from pretty early, because if you’ve got 50, a hundred lists, And it’s a really targeted audience.

Somebody might be interested, it’s worth it to explore and, and see. And what have you got to lose somebody who just says no. Right. So I would say definitely don’t think to yourself. Well, I’ve got, because a lot of people say that 10,000 downloads per episode, within the first 30 days, that tends to be the benchmark that you’re told.

And let’s be honest, a lot of people are not going to ever get there. So I would definitely say. If you’ve got a smaller show, just try, try and reach out to some people and see if they’d be interested to support your show.

[00:19:20] Nemanja: Yeah. I love two things. Like first, specifically the Patrion. I think it’s a great way for people who are starting out and even merge people tend to like buy merchandise and that’s something that can support the creators as well.

[00:19:33] Taesha: Um, that’s it? Yeah, that is interesting. I’ve been thinking about March for my show, so yeah, definitely something.

[00:19:39] Nemanja: As we all know when it comes to podcasting, consistency is one of the most important things when it comes to growing your audience base. So do you have any tips on how can people achieve that without burning themselves out?

[00:19:51] Taesha: And I would say one of the first things I’d say is to be realist. From the start about what you can handle. And I’ll give an example from my own experience, I started a podcast called business bound. And in that podcast, I was speaking to authors of business books. I was talking about their books, talking about the principles in their books and having that discussion and my personality type.

I wanted to make sure that I read their entire book before. The podcast interview. I didn’t like the field. I didn’t want to just go in and wing it. I want you to read the entire book. It’s too much work, you know? So at the beginning that didn’t occur to me. I thought, yeah, no problem. I’m just doing one episode a week.

Come on. I will be able to read the book, prepare the questions, do the interview. Along with everything else I’ve got going on in my life. And I quickly realized that that was not sustainable for me at that time. So I would say that be realistic with what you can handle, if you can handle a daily show and you can really do that then fine.

But if you can only do one episode a week or one episode every two weeks, Be realistic so that you can be consistent. And also obviously batching episodes, if you can, if you can, you know, have a week in which you would like to do three, four episodes, do that as well, so that you can get out of the way.

Yeah.

[00:21:20] Nemanja: And I think it’s important to also mention that it’s kind of, it’s okay for you to miss an upload date, especially if it’s your mental health. Like it comes first, you know, when you’ve got to take care of you and then get to all the other things. So even if you do miss an upload that.

[00:21:36] Taesha: Yeah, I think most people are pretty understanding if an episode is missed.

And again, it’s, it’s your audience. If you’ve got an audience there that they’re looking forward to your content once a week and you miss one, it’s not a huge deal. If you go dark for six to eight weeks, then they’re going to be wondering what’s going on and you’re going to, you’re going to lose momentum.

So ideally you want to try and have. I would say a month’s worth of episodes in the can, as they say, in the event that you get sick or what have you. And that’s why batching episodes it’s pretty useful so that you can like have some stored away. Yeah.

[00:22:16] Nemanja: Awesome. And, uh, can you tell me, how do you measure success on the podcasts then?

At what point can you actually say, oh, my show is successful.

[00:22:24] Taesha: I think that that varies for every podcaster and it varies for what their goals were initially for starting the. If you have a show that’s pretty small and you have really no expectations and you end up having a thousand dollars in a month.

You might think this is pretty successful. If you have a show and your goal was to get new clients and you’re getting 1, 2, 3 new clients a month, that’s successful for you. If your goal is to become a full-time podcaster. It’s not going to be successful until you’re monetizing to the level that it replaces your full-time income.

So it’s success does vary, but again, when you’re planning your show, know what your goals are from the beginning, so that you’re motivated. As well to keep going. Right. So, because like, for a motivation for me, when I was doing just sleep, I just had in my mind, like 10,000, 10,000 downloads per episode, that’s the number.

And so that’s the point at which I thought, yeah, really successful now we’ve hit that. So it varies for everyone. Yeah. So

[00:23:32] Nemanja: would you say that success is subjective?

[00:23:35] Taesha: Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, so.

[00:23:37] Nemanja: Okay. And do you use like any third party apps to measure statistics and how, how do you use that data to get more people to tune into your show?

[00:23:47] Taesha: I haven’t been using third-party apps. I mean, I’ve been looking at the data that transistor provides up and looking at the data that Spotify provides, because we got a lot of listeners with Spotify and Spotify. It kind of shows you the, kind of how the completion rates, like how power people get into the episode.

So I’ve been using that kind of data to see what’s. What episodes are people resonating with? What’s getting the most downloads with the kind of content that people are listening to the types of stories, because I read classic literature and fairytales and that sort of thing. So. I can look at that kind of information, see where people are dropping off and say, well, okay, well, yeah, fairytales are pretty popular.

So I know that. So, yeah, it’s as important. I think it’s really important to look at your data and to see what’s going on. And because then it helps inform your content creation moving forward.

[00:24:39] Nemanja: And I’m interested to hear, like now that you mentioned it, how long are your episodes? Do you have like some data that you could share with us that you can tell us at what point people like to now.

[00:24:49] Taesha: Yeah. So the, the episodes that I do vary from kind of 30 minutes to an hour, most sit in kind of 30 to 40 minute mark. Now, the goal of my show is to help people sleep. So most of the time people are going to be putting it on. And trying to fall asleep, so it will continue going. So obviously I know if somebody switching it off, it’s not working for them.

They’re not liking it for some reason. Maybe they’re not liking the story or something like that. So I pay a lot of attention to that. I pay a lot of attention to what is doing well and what is working.

[00:25:26] Nemanja: Okay. And for our final question, can you tell us what advice would you have for people looking into starting a podcast?

[00:25:33] Taesha: I think my advice would be a lot of what we’ve touched. Already in the episode in terms of be realistic about what you can handle and make sure that your, your show is different and plan really plan don’t wing the whole process. If you are serious, if you are serious about getting something out of your show, then plan it out.

Plan how you’re going to grow plan, what you’re going to do in order to, so that you can be consistent and reach those goals. So that would be my.

[00:26:05] Nemanja: Okay. And before we end, can you tell us where can our listeners find the pod squad and just sleep and, or even reach? Okay.

[00:26:12] Taesha: So what I’ve done is I have done a checklist, which I’m calling the pod growth checklist.

So it is a little checklist for when you’re creating your show. And you’re thinking about audience development that you can just run through and see, get yourself some ideas for growing your show. So I’m going to put that on our website. So the URL is the pod squad.com/checklist. So you can head over there and have, take a look at that checklist and download it and you can reach me on LinkedIn, Taisha, Glasgow.

Uh, you can do a search and find me there. And yeah, the just sleep podcast is just sleep podcast.com.

[00:26:57] Nemanja: Awesome. Well, thanks so much. It was such an insightful conversation and I appreciate you taking the time to do this.

[00:27:04] Taesha: Thanks for having me.

[00:27:10] Nemanja: Thank you for listening. Make sure you shared this podcast with your friends and click that subscribe button. So you never miss an episode. If you have any questions for us or suggest. About a topic we can cover related to the podcasting industry. Leave a comment below, or send us an email at info@nootkasound.online.

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