When you sell something that is a “necessary evil,” like accounting, insurance, mortgage, and even real estate to an extent, I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that people are interested in long-form audio content.

HGTV shows with pretty homes and pretty hosts? Absolutely, people vacuum it up.

But notice what’s happening. In shows like House Hunters, the hard parts of the transaction are glossed over. The emphasis is on the homes and the fun of speculating what home these idiots are going to pick and yelling at the TV about how dumb they are.

Then you have flipping shows, which actually do show the hard parts, but play them up for drama and in the end, the house still ends up selling and they usually turn a profit. 

So if I’m advising someone who is selling a professional service to the consumer, check the search traffic on Google and YouTube for the content you want to put out.

Which brings me to a good rule of thumb I just made up:

If you can’t find evidence that people are actively searching for the content you want to put out, then long-form podcast content on the subject probably won’t be a winner.