How do you attract more listeners and organically grow your podcast? Despite what popular algorithms will have you believe, success in promoting your podcast does not have to be focused on social media! Come along as we discuss ways to make your podcast branding stand out to grow your show!

In today’s episode, we start with the phrase: “Connection, not perfection”, trademarked by  Lindsay McMahon. Lindsay is the co-host of All Ears English, a podcast that’s been downloaded 8 million times per month globally and ranked in Best of Apple Podcasts categories in 2018 and 2019, and as well as #1 in US Education Language Courses. Lindsay and her podcast have been featured in Podcast Magazine, Language Magazine, and Forbes. 

Get tips from this veteran podcaster on: 

  • Creating a perfect marketing strategy for your podcast
  • How hiring help will grow your brand to new heights 
  • The importance of designing a brand with your ideal listeners in mind

Links worth exploring from the episode:

Engage with Lindsay McMahon:

Connect with Mary!

Podcast cover art by Emily Johnston of Artio Design Co.

Transcript with audio description:

[MUSIC IN]

CLIP – LINDSAY: So it wasn’t really a business yet. Yeah, I just wanted to start a podcast, and then the business grew around it. I talked to another similar entrepreneur in Boston at that time, and I said, hey, I listened to podcasts. There’s this new thing called podcast. Do you want to start one? And she’s like, okay, cool. And so we started pretty casually. I mean, there really wasn’t a business yet. It was just having a show.

[MUSIC OUT // PAUSE A BEAT // INTRO]

<< Ghosthood Featuring Sara Azriel “Let’s Go” BEGINS >>

MARY: Welcome to the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

MARY: Reveal and define your voice to speak your truth through the power of podcasting. And I’m your host, Mary Chan.

<< WOMAN SINGS: So so so so let’s go >>

MARY: Hey there. This is episode number 57. Attract more listeners by building a compelling brand for your podcast with Lindsay McMahon of All Ears English Podcast. 

[INTRO MUSIC FADES // NEW MUSIC IN]

When starting out, I always recommend for podcasters to focus on the content before we ever get to the numbers, the downloads, monetizing, making money, all of that stuff. Without knowing the details of your show, the very specifics, your podcast is very intangible for a podcast sponsor. Like, just think about it. We’re just talking about audio. It’s not something that you can see or touch. And so when you don’t have everything laid out, it’s even that much more intangible for someone to buy into. So if you don’t do the prep beforehand, they can’t hear or see your vision and its potential. Now, after you create that plan, you’ve got a workflow, you’ve got your ideal listener, and you’ve ironed out all the whys of starting your podcast. Now, that is a lot of work, especially mental work that you have to do before you can start thinking about the next part of your podcast, the monetizing, the sponsors, and growing your show. But okay, all well and good. We’re not there yet, right?

Like I was saying, I want you to focus on your content, but it is nice to dream and think big. So if you were to go down that route from monetizing your podcast, what does that path look like? How do you grow your podcast so that you can eventually be paid for your work as well? Today you’ll learn from a veteran in the industry who’s been podcasting since 2013. That is, from this date of the recording ten years ago. Did you even know what a podcast was ten years ago? That is a lifetime or two in the podcasting space. And from there today, she has three podcasts all intertwined together under one brand, amassing more than 200 million downloads, since launch, by creating thousands of episodes. So she really knows what it takes. 

Lindsay McMahon is the podcaster and also the CEO of All Ears English, a fast growing ESL brand. So ESL is English as a second language, and of course, she is also one of the hosts of, the award winning podcast All Ears English, that inspires adult English learners to focus on connection through English by providing both general English training and IELTS test preparation. So what you’re going to hear today is how Lindsay knew early on she had something really special with her podcast and what it was like for her to launch this podcast in the early days, and then what it took to pivot from something fun that she was just doing and then making this podcast and the brand into a full, successful business. You are going to learn so much from Lindsay and her podcasting journey. Enjoy the show. 

[MUSIC OUT]

MARY: Lindsay, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on. 

LINDSAY: Hi, Mary.Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

MARY: Your podcast is amazing just in terms of the podcasting space, how long you’ve been around, and the branding that you have for your show. I love your branding and your tagline connection, not perfection.

LINDSAY: Thank you for saying that. Yeah, that is actually my favourite part of the show as well, is that it actually means something very deep to us and to our listeners.

MARY: Yeah, because it’s the same thing for me too. Like, I want people to create a podcast for the connection. I mean, you do it for English language skills, but,

LINDSAY: Mhmm

MARY: podcasting is such an intimate medium. That connection is the glue of it all. And every time we produce an episode, we learn. So it’s never going to be perfect the first time. Right?

LINDSAY: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I’m glad that you highlighted that it is such an intimate medium because when you’re in someone’s ears, it’s about as close as you can get to them, right? You don’t have the visual to kind of distract you. And so there’s a lot that people can kind of create in their imagination. It’s just really close to the person’s heart. Like having a deeper vision is so important to having a good show.

MARY: And literally close to the person’s heart too. Like the headphones literally close to your heart.

LINDSAY: Yeah, that’s right.

MARY: And so okay with your brand because I believe that when you have a great visual and audio brand, it really makes your podcast stand out. So, when I’m looking at your show, I see that it’s fun, it’s fresh, that yellow really pops. And so what does the role of your brand play in your discoverability of your show?

LINDSAY: Oh, yeah, I love this question. When I think about the importance of branding, I not only think about it in terms of obviously podcast marketing, but there’s a whole other side of it to learning the importance of design, good design and learning. And we won’t go in too much into that. But that’s also a key thing. Part of podcasting is learning. If people are learning and enjoying, they’re coming back to your show. So just the idea of the branding, I mean, it’s huge. You know, when we first launched, we made some key decisions that I think were really important. For example, our two final sort of colour options that we were debating between were the yellow branding versus the same cover art, but in blue. Choosing yellow was huge because it’s always popped out in the Apple podcast store. It just communicates energy, enthusiasm, as you said. So it’s huge. I mean, the colours you choose, what you put on your cover art really matters.

MARY: And then what about the trademark part? Because I get that question a lot too. You’ve trademarked connection, not perfection.

LINDSAY: Yes.

MARY: When did you decide that trademark was actually needed?

LINDSAY: Yeah, I went ahead and trademarked All Ears English as well as connection, not perfection. And then we copyrighted a few of our course names. Uh, that was,  I think a few years in, when I made a few key decisions, the team changed up a little bit. And I said, I just felt in my gut that there was something special about this brand. And that obviously goes way beyond the words, but I knew I had something special and I knew it was going to continue. And honestly, trademarking, once you’re a couple of years in, it’s kind of a no brainer. It costs about $2,000 per mark. That’s really not a ton of money if you’re thinking about investing in a brand, if you’re in it for the long haul.

MARY: Yeah, that’s a good point too. That if you’re in it for the long haul, this is your baby. Let’s trademark things.

LINDSAY: Might as well protect it. Why not? I didn’t see any downside. We’ve always kind of invested in the brand, maybe a little bit more than your average sort of freelancer, like just using free tools. I think it makes sense to invest a little bit in what you’re building.

MARY: When people think about marketing these days, 2023, they automatically think of, oh, social media. That’s marketing.

LINDSAY: Right.

MARY: Just the podcast. How important is social media for your podcast?

LINDSAY: Uh, I would actually say it’s not as important as other things. If we’re talking about strategies to grow a podcast, social media would not be in my top six, seven recommendations, to be honest. No. Maybe that’s a hot take. Um, I actually don’t think it works. There are other things that work for sure, but that’s not one of them. [LAUGHTER]

MARY: I’m totally with you here. So since you’ve been in the business for so long, what has been your most effective marketing tool for your podcast then?

LINDSAY: Yeah, so there were different things along the way. The first thing was choosing fantastic branding and the colours. Those are key, pivotal decisions. But nowadays, now that we’re we’re in our 10th year now and our 2000th episode, 8 million downloads a month, we’re at this stage, the things that are working for us right now are feed drops. That’s number one.

MARY: For those who don’t know what a feed drop is, that term. What’s that?

LINDSAY: So a feed drop is when we take an episode from one podcast, and we’re trying to promote that podcast, we place it into the feed of another podcast. And sometimes you can just play that episode. But I recommend doing like an intro outro and say, hey guys, today we’re going to play an episode from All Ears English podcast on this show, which is maybe Business English podcast, right. And here’s what we were going to talk about today. You should come and check out this other show, All Ears English. And at the end we say, hey, did you enjoy that episode? Please hit follow. Go over and find All Ears English and hit follow. Those are hugely working. When I track my stats in Chartable, I see a lot of conversions coming over to my show from another show. We do this within our own network right now. So we have a small network of three shows, all branded under All Ears English. I don’t know if we’ve ever done it externally, but we are in talks with brands will even pay for this too, if you want to get to that level of sponsorships. They’ll pay for feed drops if you have a big enough show. But that is the thing that’s working the absolute best right now.

MARY: And when you say big enough show, I usually don’t tell. Especially new podcasters go for the numbers. You need to have this X amount of download numbers. But what did you mean by that with the numbers?

LINDSAY: I think it really depends on who you’re talking to. Right. Because to be honest, if you’re negotiating with sponsors, looking to get sponsors, they like big back catalogues. They like to have a deep back catalogue. There are a lot of numbers in there and then we can do a dynamic ad across the whole show. But I think if you’re just an independent podcaster looking to get started, I would go for a smaller show because it’s more affordable and you’re just going to look at maybe the downloads per episode after 30 days. So I’ll work with a show, let’s say for a guest interview, which is my second recommendation to grow a show. Being on other podcasts, I’ll go on a show that has 10,000 listeners. Absolutely. Because I might get 50 new regular listeners for my show. That’s a really good number, I think. Yeah, it just depends on what stage you’re at, how much the numbers really matter and what you want to do and what you’re trying to sell on your show. If you sell high end coaching, you probably only need 15, 10,000 listeners. It doesn’t have to be a huge show.

MARY: You were saying, hey, Feed Drops number one. Podcast interview was number two. So if we’re going to do top three, then what’s your number? Uh, three effective marketing tool?

LINDSAY: Number three is promo swaps. So we’ve got Feed Drops, we’ve got guest interviews. Either going on someone’s show is obviously number one and then having them on your show, which is not required, but sometimes it’s nice, right? And then promo swaps. So there are databases online where you can find shows that are interested in doing this. Tink Media T-I-N-K tink Media has a promo swap database and you can apply to be a part of it. You just list your downloads and then people will contact you who are interested in swapping. This is free, no money is exchanged. It’s basically you just exchange based on number of impressions. So they’ll send me an ad for their show and I’ll send them one and then I’ll insert that ad for X number of agreed upon impressions.

MARY: And how effective do you see the return on that, for the work that you have to do to create all of that?

LINDSAY: Yeah, it’s a pretty light lift in terms of the work. It’s just a matter of well I suppose if you don’t have dynamic insertion in your podcast, you could also just insert it into one episode, which is fine. It could be part of the episode either receiving the ad they send you or sometimes I’ll record the ad for that show. I don’t have exact numbers. I’ve seen it work differently depending on where my ads going. I like to focus within the english language learning community. So I’ll have more success obviously if I do a promo swap with another english teaching entrepreneur versus if I do one with a big brand or network like Wondery or a huge name just because there’s no guarantee that their listeners are learning English as a second language. They might be, some of them, but not all of them. Right, so think about the audience match.

MARY: Yeah, definitely. Because if you’re not serving their audience, it’s not going to work for them. And if they’re not serving your audience, what’s the point?

LINDSAY: Yeah, it’s kind of hard. You want it to be an even swap 

MARY: For sure, for sure. Yeah. Okay, like, you again have been doing this for like ten years now, but you had to start somewhere. It is all a journey. So let’s get a lay of the land from the very, very beginning. Why did you want to start a podcast for your business?

LINDSAY: Yeah, so it wasn’t really a business yet. Yeah, I just wanted to start a podcast and then the business grew around it is actually what happened.

MARY: Oh, I love that.

LINDSAY: Yeah. So I had a different business at that time. It was still in my niche, which is language training for global professionals. English language training, that what I had was uh, a consulting tutoring company, one on One Consulting. And I thought maybe I talked to another similar entrepreneur in Boston at that time and I said, hey, I listened to podcasts, there’s this new thing called podcast. Do you want to start one? And she’s like, okay, cool. Um and so we started pretty casually. I mean there really wasn’t a business yet, it was just getting having a show.

MARY: So you bought a microphone, you plugged it into a laptop and you both started talking and, you got it out onto the Internet.

LINDSAY: Exactly. That’s right.

MARY: So early on then, if this wasn’t for your business, then what was your idea of success?

LINDSAY: I think my ideas back then were experimenting with a new way to reach a global audience. Right. So in my tutoring company, I would run ads on my website, my little website. I had local SEO marketing, uh, but I could only work with people in Boston. I didn’t really do any online teaching yet. This is 2013. Right. I think the idea was, oh my gosh, what if we could create one quote unquote lesson or a piece of content and the whole world could listen? That was really exciting to us at that time. And then I thought maybe I would use some of that content in my actual business. But instead I just fell in love with All Ears English and sort of discontinued. I kind of continued the other business in parallel a little bit and then kind of let it fade out because it wasn’t as interesting to me. So the scalable option was what excited me with All Ears English.

MARY: So when did you start podcasting for your business then? When did that shift happen?

LINDSAY: Uh, so All Ears English kind of became a business, I guess. How do I define that? How would you define when something becomes a business? When you start selling things, I guess. We sold our transcripts within the first, I think three months. We started selling our transcripts, and then a big milestone was taking on our first sponsor about a year in, which was cool. That was a big moment because it meant that someone was willing to give us money to talk about them, which was a big deal, right? It was kind of cool, Yeah.

MARY: So we’re going to talk more about sponsorship and stuff a little bit later on, but let’s get back to the beginning. Okay. So just you and your co-host, that’s it. That’s the only people that supported the show? You did all the editing and all of that?

LINDSAY: No, we never did. I think my co-host might have edited like, ten episodes, but after that we’ve always outsourced editing. We’ve never, I wouldn’t know how to edit. I don’t think that’s a good use of my time at all. So we’ve always had a virtual assistant editor. And then I think we hired the first virtual assistant, like Pure VA. It might have been like a year in or six months in or something like that. So we started taking on a small team, kind of on a freelance basis, like freelancers. And then I eventually hired teachers and so that’s how the team got a little bigger, but still pretty small. Team. Yeah.

MARY: Okay, editor. You’re like, okay, I’m not touching the audio. Great. That’s a defining moment. But when did you know a year in? You’re like, okay, we need to expand. We need to have a VA. What was that time like, 

LINDSAY: It was sort of a key moment because my co-host, so the original person that started the show, decided to leave the show. And that was a big moment because I had to figure out what’s going to happen with all his English. Is this thing going to continue? And at that time, I hired a couple of teachers, but the VA, I think we had hired the VA before my original co-host left. And so I think it was just a matter of, like, we had some business sense already, and we knew that we shouldn’t be doing everything. Although I still to this day am challenged by this, wanting to do these things, wanting to do it well, and just kind of control issues around the business.

MARY: Right, so, okay, then we’re going to fast forward now ten years. How many people does it take now to produce your show? Who are all shows? Because you have three.

LINDSAY: Yeah, we have three. So our teaching team, or let’s say our content creation team, there are four of us, so I’m one of them. There’s Michelle, Jessica, Aubrey and myself. Between us, we produce the three shows, or we co-host the three shows. And we’ve got an editor, audio editor, we’ve got two virtual assistants. We have a transcriptionist, and then we have a number of kind of freelance virtual assistants, or people just kind of helping us out. We built an app in 2018 and 19. So we’ve got like a tech team, like a development team, right? So it’s kind of people sort of a little bit on the outside that we check in with. We have an Alexa developer, so a lot of people involved here, but still a small company. Very, very small.

MARY: But as an independent podcaster, that’s a great success. Like, you’re growing your show. You have this team around you. When in that ten year span then was the pivot point where you’re like, okay, I definitely need more help. I need the two VAS, I need a transcriptionist, I need more teaching teams. What was that time frame like for you?

LINDSAY: Part of our formula is that in our market, a lot of ESL podcasts are just one person speaking into the microphone. And that’s great, that works for them, but that would bore me to tears, if I were the podcaster, I need the energy of someone else on the other side. Like, I just need that. I need the conversation. And I think our listeners like that it’s a little bit different. It’s kind of unique, helps them see what a real conversation looks like. So I couldn’t do it by myself. I was like, I’m not going to just make this a solo show. That’s not what All Ears English is. At that point, I had to hire a new co-host, and I put out an ad to all the, uh, graduate programs in the US. T-cell, uh, teaching English as a second language. Right? These programs so I could get someone who had the experience. And I ended up hiring two people. I got a lot of applications, did a lot of interviews, and I was like, I like them both. I’m just going to hire both.

MARY: Nice.

LINDSAY: And that was a good decision because they’re both still with me. This was 2014 to today.

MARY: Wow. Good hire. Nice work.

LINDSAY: Yeah. And so Michelle was one of the ones I hired, and she’s my main co host on all hers English. Uh, and then Jessica with her, she came in with an expertise in the IELTS exam, which is a niche within ESL. It’s a test that adults have to take if they want to Immigrate. Like, if you live in Japan, you want to Immigrate to Australia. You have to get a certain score on this exam. Right. It’s a big deal. Huge exam. And so I was like, you’re an expert in this. Okay, we’re building a course. We’re going to go into this niche immediately because I did some research and I thought, okay, this niche is growing. We’re building a course. We’re launching a new podcast. So with her, we launched IELTS Energy podcast. So that kind of opened up a new revenue stream. And our very first online course is what we built about a year after, about six months after she joined us.

MARY: What inspires you to keep going like, after three shows, like, thousands of episodes? What is that inspiration?

LINDSAY: I think it comes back to what we talked about in the beginning. There are moments when I’m on the microphone, and because I’ve been in the shoes of my listeners more in my twenty s more than today, obviously, but I still travel a bit. I did a lot of backpacking in South America, lived in South America for a year, lived in Japan for a year and a half, lived in Paris when I studied abroad. So I have the experience of feeling what it feels like to be disconnected due to a language, right? To feel a little bit of an outsider. And so I have, like, a strong conviction that I never want anyone to feel that way. So English is the tool to help people connect. So I think it’s still very close to my heart, the vision. And I think that’s part of what keeps me going and the autonomy of being a business owner. I don’t want to take instructions from anyone or ever be, I just don’t want to work a job.

MARY: Yeah. That’s why we start our own businesses, right?

LINDSAY: Yeah, pretty much.

MARY: Like I was saying, that podcasting is a journey, and we’ve talked a lot about your successes, but there is always the other side of the coin. You try different things. Some might work, some might not work at all. So tell me about a mistake or a regret that still lingers for you on this journey?

LINDSAY: Yeah, we’ve tried a lot of different things. We put out a lot of offers, we’ve launched a lot of online courses, products, things like that. I think a, uh, mistake well, I would say an original mistake that I made was with my original co-host not having a clear understanding of what would happen if someone wanted to leave the show. That was a big conversation that I think a lot of business owners make this conversation with a first business partner and you should have the conversation even if you just write it on a piece of paper and keep it, just say, here’s what’s going to happen. Um, that was a huge disaster and very very stressful.

MARY: Do you mean in terms of who owns the show, who gets to do what? Like who is relinquishing that ownership side?

LINDSAY: Mhm yeah. If one person wants to leave but the other person doesn’t want to just throw away all this amazing work and motivation and vision that’s there, what happens? We had to go through a whole thing and figure it out. It was very stressful for me and really shook me. And so that’s part of what motivated me to really keep going and make this exciting and love what I do. But I would definitely recommend to your listeners, have the conversation. It’s very uncomfortable, but you need to have a conversation about these things. And then beyond that, just launching products that I thought would be winners and they were losers. You would think because your listeners asked for things or your students asked for things and then you put it out there. I’m not sure whether parts of these failures have been because we didn’t promote them enough or because we didn’t position them right, but just thinking this is a winner, no question, and then just total fail. So yeah.

MARY: Do you tweak those failures and try and put them out again in a different form? Or how do you go about that?

LINDSAY: Kind of some of them or some of them just kind of limp along, to be honest, are still in our offerings, but just don’t perform. I may repurpose some things. For example, we launched a program called Conversations and Coffee because a lot of our listeners told us they’re okay when it’s just two people, one on one conversations. But when it comes to entering a group, let’s say they’re at a party, it’s very hard to enter the conversation, understand what they’re talking about. So we created a product because there are four of us where all four of us are on the microphone together talking about interesting things that they would talk about, like, uh, common societal issues. Right?

MARY: Right.

LINDSAY: Perfect. Program just hasn’t really taken off. So what I might do is take those lessons and actually make them into a new podcast and see how it does in that content as free material and then use that as a marketing or for ad content. Um, yeah.

MARY: Content is there. It’s good.

LINDSAY: because you created content.

MARY: Yeah.

LINDSAY: How do you get it to the people? Exactly. So you can do things like that. If it didn’t work as a course, maybe it works as a podcast in your network.

MARY: Yeah. I would love that. So let’s get into sponsorships. You said you had your first sponsor after the first year. What a defining moment. And, uh, I know it’s a long time ago, but congratulations on that one year in. That’s really amazing. Especially when thank you. Podcasting wasn’t as big as it is today. Yeah, thanks.

LINDSAY: Yeah, it was exciting, for sure.

MARY: Yeah. So did you decide that sponsorship was the next step or did they come to you? How did that happen?

LINDSAY: They didn’t come to us. I think I remember we reached out to them and they were a very, very young company at the time. They were a startup, and so they still had that level of flexibility, decision making, very small team. Um, and they’re like, sure, let’s try it. They didn’t have budgets, they didn’t have layers of red tape to go through. It went really well. We continued with them for, I think, a couple of years. Just ongoing contracts. Um, they had a lot of success. Podcast sponsorship was really new then.

MARY: Yeah, I bet

LINDSAY: Really new

MARY: So what made it a success for them? What did they see that was exciting for them to renew all the time?

LINDSAY: When you first introduce a form of advertising, it probably does the best when it’s first introduced way at the beginning, and then maybe over time, over ten years, you get diminishing returns because people are used to hearing ads somewhere. Right. That might have been the novelty there. Or listeners are like, oh, wow, here’s a tutoring platform. I’ve never heard anyone talk about this in podcasting. I guess it was just numbers. They would share you know, conversion numbers with me. I would have to get up at like, four in the morning to meet with them because they were in China. And so I was like, oh my. Gosh, I remember sitting in my kitchen. Yeah, like 4:30 in the morning. But yeah, so that was good. That was a good first experience.

MARY: And then after that experience, how did the sponsorships grow?

LINDSAY: I think after a few years, they sort of moved on. These things can’t go on forever. At some point, you do hit diminishing returns with a brand no matter what. There’s just no way, unless you’re getting tons of new listeners all the time. So they moved on. And then I turned my attention towards online course creation because I still think, well, having a little bit of both is good. Ads and courses of your own. But I wanted to build out our course suite, and I had hired Jessica, who is our IELTS expert, and so we launched. The new show I mentioned before, and we started building our first online course. And that launched around 2016, maybe it was 2015, two years in. Sorry, May of 2015, two years in. So we had built that podcast, that special Ielts podcast custom, just basically with the idea in mind that we’re going to launch a course in six months. This is an audience generator because you can’t just launch a course without an audience. I mean, that’s crazy. I needed a specific audience that was interested in IELTS, not just broad English. 

So that’s what it was. I mean, we just started doing baked-in organic mentions of the course. We did a launch. I bought a course on how to build the courses, right? How to build online courses. Like, one of the early courses on that, I was like, okay, I have to buy a course because if I don’t, I’m going to be searching around YouTube. It’s the same reason we encourage our listeners to buy our courses. Like, yeah, you could probably do this for free, but it’s a lot more work to search around different advice, different launch styles. uh, I would rather just buy a course, spend a couple of $1,000, whatever, $1,000, and then follow the system to launch day. And I did that. I just followed it. I didn’t look at anything else and I launched. I mean, it was great. So I’m glad I did that. Just stay focused.

MARY: It sounds like systems are key, especially if you’re going to have three podcasts. How does sponsorship work now with three shows? That’s a lot to manage in my mind.

LINDSAY: Yeah, we’ve really been getting so we’ve come back into the sponsorship world. So we are in it in the beginning, and then we went out of it and we focused on our course building, and now we’re back in it. We just reentered it about a year ago. So the first thing that I did when I was like, okay, we have big podcasts, we need to work with sponsors. We moved our show and now shows to a new host. It’s more set for networks. So now I’ve got all three shows on this new host, which has first of all, it has dynamic ad insertion, which is really important if you’re trying to systematize your ads. Should I explain what that is or?

MARY: Dynamic ads is basically you put a marker into, uh, your audio, and then the host will then automatically put your ads into those spots. So it’s done for you. In some ways.

LINDSAY: Yeah, In some cases, if you’re monetizing, like, your back catalogue with Backfill, the host does that. Or you can set up your own campaigns to be filled into those slots right. For your own direct sold stuff. So getting everything on the same platform for dynamic ad insertion was the first step we took as we’ve reentered this ads world.

MARY: So wait, why did you reenter the ads world? What was that decision?

LINDSAY: Uh, I think I was just sleeping on the opportunity for a few years. I don’t know, I guess I was really focused on creating courses, creating live events. In 2016, I built a course, like an adventure course. Went around the country, interviewed native speakers of English. In 2018 and 19, we did live events in Tokyo and Boston, New York. I was just into other things. I was just not thinking about monetizing our airtime, like our actual episodes. I don’t know, I think I missed an opportunity for sure, because that was really, like, the initial boom of podcast advertising. Now things are kind of we’re hitting a reality check in this world for sure. So bad timing. Bad timing. [LAUGHTER]

MARY: I don’t think there’s ever a bad time to make that switch, though. So what are your thoughts then, on joining a network versus staying indie?

LINDSAY: Great question. I think about this every day. I guess there are pros and cons. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to truly commit, like fully commit exclusively to a network. I’m working with a network right now, non-exclusively. That’s obviously an ideal situation. But I think what we really need in this market is more brands coming into the space so that there’s not so much of a conversation around exclusivity. 

A lot of the networks want you to be exclusive. In the past, like I said, in boom times, let’s say maybe like 2017 to 2021, minimum guarantees were more common. A minimum guarantee? If you have a show that has a certain number of downloads, when you sign with a network, you could potentially ask for a minimum guarantee. What are you getting in exchange for Exclusivity? Meaning no one else is going to sell your ad spots, including you. What are you going to get in exchange for that? I think that’s a very important thing to consider, because otherwise I’m sitting around waiting and the ads aren’t coming. That’s a problem, right?

MARY: Yeah.

LINDSAY: But these days, minimum guarantees are not as common. And so it’s a new landscape.

MARY: Yeah. The podcasting landscape has changed so much in the last year.

LINDSAY: Yeah. How do you see that it’s changed?

MARY: Well, brands were just pouring money into the space. And by brands, we mean, like, the big players of, uh, Spotify and smaller companies like Gimlet were being bought up by Spotify and like, all these things. And so they’re like, we need to pour money into this. This is the next big thing. And now they’re like, whoa, we need to examine how much money we’ve spent and if this is working. So we need to pull back.

LINDSAY: Yeah. When I think about that, like, the Spotify stuff, I don’t know, I kind of think that there’s a big business, big tech world, and then there’s an everyday podcasting for the long haul world. Right. I think the big tech world overinvested. I think the problem with Spotify, when people go exclusive on Spotify, they lose a lot of listeners because they’re asked to only have their show on Spotify.

MARY: Yeah.

LINDSAY: So imagine that if I did that, I would lose 90% of my audience.

MARY: Whoa, 90, that’s huge.

LINDSAY: Probably around there.

MARY: Yeah.

LINDSAY: I mean, uh, this is just my opinion, right? Just the person’s opinion. I don’t know. But my sense is that that really hurts those shows. And then I think there’s also the everyday market for everyday podcasters that are making a profession here. And I think that’ll continue to go on. I just think that, like, initial sexy tech boom of podcasting is maybe kind of pulling back for now, but it doesn’t mean podcasting is going away by any.

MARY: Yeah. For me, I’m going to be interested in the next year because right now, some of these bigger, larger podcasts that were exclusive, they’re now out of those contracts, and it’ll be interesting to see how much they grow, um, in the next year. So to close out this conversation, I mean, we could talk about podcasting forever, I’m sure.

LINDSAY: Yeah, for sure.

MARY: But what are you excited about podcasting right now?

LINDSAY: Oh my gosh, I am super excited about the Internet. Obviously, for us international expansion, that is the next frontier. And from the time I reentered this ads world, like I said, in summer of 2021 to today, the conversation has already changed dramatically. When I get on calls with networks and I say, uh, 10% of my audience is in the US. And 90% is global. Yeah, that’s now they want to talk to me. Right. Before, they’re like, we only sell US ads. Now they’re building relationships around the world and they’re like, you are the way we’re going to expand internationally. Right. Because, uh, we’re a big show. So it’s really exciting to see that these brands are seeing that. Yeah, we might be hitting a bit of a plateau in terms of US. Listenership, but the only place to go is abroad.

MARY: Oh, yeah.

LINDSAY: So that’s the most exciting thing to me.

MARY: Oh, I love that too, because coming from I’m in Canada, everything is so US-centric.

LINDSAY: I know, ugh it’s exhausting.

MARY: It’s so great to be able to see things expand now. Yes. I did have another podcast previous to this one called The Homestay Kitchen. I used to host international students that studied abroad.

LINDSAY: Oh, okay. Yeah. Very cool. 

MARY: So we talked to other homestay families and we talked about, um, how to get students to open up and use their English. So very similar to, uh, is that.

LINDSAY: One still around now or that one shut down?

MARY: It’s shut down because of COVID 

LINDSAY: Oh I’m sorry to hear that.

MARY: Yeah, right. We couldn’t host any more students, and so we were stuck at home with our families and we just didn’t have the time, like me and my co-ost were just so yeah, that’s hard. No, that sounds like a great topic.

LINDSAY: Yeah, but it was so fun and back to the global aspect. Majority of our audience was the global audience. It was the international students wanting to listen in on what it would be like to live in a homestay.

MARY: That’s perfect. And when we talked earlier about strategies for marketing, if you still had that show going, that would be a good conversation. We could have around a promo swap because it’s not exactly the same market, but it’s the, uh, same audience, right? Between you and me, international professionals and students, same audience, great opportunity for a promo swap. So to your listeners, I would recommend think outside just your exact niche, but think about your audience. What else do they listen to?

LINDSAY: Yeah, the adjacent.

MARY: Adjacent, yeah, exactly. 100%. Yeah. Podcast might come back one day. We’ll talk again. Cool.

LINDSAY: Okay, sounds good.

MARY: Lindsay, thank you so much for coming on the show.

LINDSAY: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Mary. This has been a fun conversation. I hope it helps your listeners.

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MARY: Yes, Lindsay, I know it’s definitely helped because I got a few insights myself. I loved how Lindsay talked about her why. That is something that I love to drill home. If you haven’t figured out yet, knowing.That she had something good at the very start and that she didn’t want to let it go when her original co-host left. And also, being in the same shoes as your listeners at one point in your life plays a big part of knowing that why and how to connect with your listeners. So, yeah, um, knowing your why is important, and that’s why I always say it’s the very first step in creating your brand, which is your podcast.  If we work together, that is the First thing that I turn to, especially for launching your show. 

The process of knowing why before you can create that brand is vital to all the other parts of your podcast. It really is all intertwined. And are you intrigued about the rest of my process in helping to launch or manage your show? Find out how we can work together. And learn more about my launch process, head on over to my website to set up a complimentary 30 minutes strategy session. We will talk all things podcasting, whether you already have a few ideas or you don’t even know where to start. But you know you want to have. A podcast or even you already have a show, but you want to know if your own process can be improved. So go to Organized Sound.ca and set up that complimentary 30 minutes strategy session. And like the All Ears English trademark says, I’m just going to borrow it. I’m definitely here for connection, not perfection, right? That’s what your podcast is all about. So keep on podcasting and speak with spirit.

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MARY: Thank you so much for listening to the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you shared it with a podcasting friend. And to reveal more voicing and podcasting tips, click on over to visiblevoicepodcast.com.

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