Podcasting Secrets

Welcome back to another episode with Mark Schaefer. In the last episode, we talked about Mark’s book Marketing Rebellion and the need for human-centered marketing. Today, we will continue the discussion of Mark’s book by discussing four strategies for human-centered marketing: constant human truths, values-based marketing, customers as our marketers, and honesty and consistency. We’ll also discuss tectonic shifts and fractures in the status quo.

• Focus on Constant Human Truths

Many companies Mark consults with feel overwhelmed. There are so many options and things to do. He often tries to emphasize the constant human truths, which he discusses in his book. These truths are that people want to be loved, belong, be acknowledged, and be respected.

Mark said we are too focused on technology. We need to put these human truths first, and then we can think about how technology can help us provide for these needs. “I'm not anti-technology. [But] I'm anti-technology when it creates barriers with our customers. When we do things like spam them or send them robocalls, that will just tarnish our brand,” Mark said.

Being acknowledged is one of these important truths. In Mark’s book, he discusses statistics that say 50% of young people said, “It's important for me to be acknowledged by my friends on social media,” but 60% said, “It's important to be acknowledged by my favorite brands.” It is more important for them to be acknowledged by their favorite brands than their friends. There’s a longing to be acknowledged. 

The pandemic has made a lot of these needs more prevalent. People are feeling more lonely, isolated, and depressed. Mark believes companies have a role to play in this. Customers are telling us there’s a way to engage with them: give them a place where they belong.

• Consider Values-Based Marketing

There is a lot of research from companies like Deloitte, Accenture, and McKinsey that shows loyalty has been declining over the last 20 years. 87% of our customers are “shop around” customers. Research by Harvard shows that almost all of our traditional marketing activities are not building loyalty except for one: demonstrating shared meaning or shared values.

A well-known example of this is Nike and Colin Kaepernick. Some people think Kaepernick is a patriot and a hero and others think he’s not. Nike made a deal to do a line of clothes with him. When they did that, Nike’s value went down by about $4 billion in one day and people were burning their merchandise in the streets. Two weeks later, however, Nike’s valuation was even higher than it was before.

Mark had a friend who said he was so mad he was never going to buy from Nike again. Mark told him, “They don’t care.” Nike realized that in order to earn their audience’s trust, they have to show what they stand for. 

Nike also knew that Adidas was trying to make a deal with Kaepernick. They had both looked at research to find out what their customers believe, and they were looking for ways to align themselves with those beliefs. It was a race for shared values.

This is a very, very effective way to create loyalty, but it's not for everybody and it’s not necessary for every company. We don’t all have to express our political or other views. If we think about all the products we’ve purchased in the last two weeks, how many of them do we know where they stand on political or other issues? For me, it’s none of them. Values-based marketing can work very well, but it isn’t necessary for every brand and many brands do well without it. 

• Embrace Customers as Our Marketers

In the past, we were the markers; we viewed ourselves as the marketing team and the marketing agency, and we decided how to market our brand. There is a fundamental shift happening as our customers become our primary marketers. As we discussed in the last episode with Mark, two-thirds of our marketing is occurring without us.

As Mark found this research for his book, he was overwhelmed by how wrong we were in the past. He thought, “I don't know what it means to be a marketer anymore,” because the customers have control now.

Instead of trying to hold on to this control, we should embrace it and earn our way into being part of the dialogue. We shouldn’t bother, annoy, or interrupt our customers. We should let them speak and then join the narrative.

Many people are in love with content marketing, but the content has no value unless it’s seen and shared. Mark said, “The value is in transmission. It's getting that story, getting that content, to move in that two-thirds. That's where the marketing is occurring.”

• Be Honest and Consistent

A long time ago, Mark realized he can’t depend on social media, Facebook’s algorithms, Google, or SEO. There are thousands of other digital marketing consultants out there, so he’s never going to have a number one ranking on Google or beat out the richest competitors. He can only depend on himself.

Mark creates content that is so honest, it’s unmissable. People know from his content that he doesn’t have an agenda. He’s just trying to find the truth; he’s on the journey with them through the good, the bad, the success, and the failure. He’s consistent through it all.

We often think that success will happen overnight, but most often success comes from consistently showing up. 

Mark shared the example of a band called the Black Keys. Before the band was big enough to play arenas and sell out Madison Square Garden in 15 minutes, Mark had the chance to talk to them when they were playing shows for about 1,000-2,000 people. Mark asked the drummer, “What was the catalytic point that took you to the top?” The drummer said, “There wasn't one. We've been touring for seven years, we've made seven albums, and every year we do a little bit better.”

Hard, consistent work will eventually lead us to where we want to be. Mark said, “There is no overnight success. You just [have] to keep on working, working, working [with] patience. Consistency is more important than genius.”

Gain Momentum through Fractures in the Status Quo

On this show, we talk a lot about tectonic shifts or changes in the business landscape we can leverage to help us grow. Mark talks about a similar idea that he refers to as fractures in the status quo. Like tectonic shifts, these fractures can lead to great success.

Fractures in the status quo create new and unmet or underserved customer needs and provide opportunities when we can meet them with our core competencies. When our initiative meets that fracture, we can burst through it with all our might and speed to create winning momentum.

Bill Gates was able to leverage one of these fractures. He had access to early computer prototypes as a teenager, allowing him to learn how to code—his core competency. When the fracture came, personal computers, Gates leveraged that competency to build software and find success.

We need to be aware of our own core competencies and the fractures or shifts happening in the world. Then we can leverage them and gain momentum.

Mark’s Manifesto

While Mark was writing Marketing Rebellion, he reached about the halfway point and realized there was no way people would be able to remember everything he was covering. Mark challenged himself to write a 10-point summary of the first half of the book. This summary became the Manifesto for Human-Centered Marketing. A hand-drawn copy of this manifest is available here. We should also create manifestos to communicate our core mission in a way that will inspire our audience and help them remember what we’re about. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Mark for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. People want to be loved, belong, be acknowledged, and be respected. We can help fill those needs for our customers by acknowledging them and creating a place where they belong.
2. Almost all of our traditional marketing activities are not building loyalty except for one: demonstrating shared meaning or shared values.
3. Customers are in control of our marketing now. Instead of trying to hold on to this control, we should embrace it and earn our way into being part of the dialogue.
4. Consistency is more important than genius.
5. Being authentic and consistent with our customers will help us gain big success little by little.
6. Fractures in the status quo provide great opportunities for us to gain momentum. We need to be aware of these fractures.

Connect with Mark

To learn more about or connect with Mark:

•  Connect on LinkedIn
•  Visit his website at BusinessesGrow.com 
• Check out his book Marketing Rebellion

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Download the free Passion Marketing ebook at PassionMarketing.com.
2. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast.
3. How can we shift our marketing to be more human-centered? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Need help with your digital monetization strategy? Visit MonetizationPartners.com to schedule a free consultation.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/4-strategies-for-human-centered-marketing/ 

Mark Schaefer is a globally-recognized author, speaker, podcaster, and business consultant who blogs at Grow, one of the top five marketing blogs in the world. He teaches graduate marketing classes at Rutgers University. Mark has written eight bestselling books, and his newest book is called Cumulative Advantage. Mark has many global clients including Pfizer, Cisco, Dell, Adidas, and the US Air Force. He's been a keynote speaker at prestigious events all over the world. He's also appeared as a guest on CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and CBS News. 

Today, we're going to talk about one of Mark’s books, Marketing Rebellion, and the need for human-centered marketing.

Why We Need Human-Centered Marketing

Mark was recently on a Zoom call with a client and an agency that’s working with them. He was on mute during the call, but they could see his face was getting more and more disturbed because they were proposing spamming customers. “The first thing we need to do in our marketing is to stop doing what people hate. We need to treat each other like human beings and treat our customers like we would like to be treated,” Mark said.

Those old strategies used to work, so many people still lean toward them today, but they aren’t working well anymore, and eventually, they’re going to go away. Our customers won’t put up with it; if we do something that annoys or interrupts our customers, the customers will rebel and they’ll win. So we have to adapt to a more human, customer-centric model.

If we want to keep our customers and get ahead of the curve, we need to market in a new way, a way that respects our customers, their lives, their time, and their privacy. This is why Apple is updating its privacy features and why Google is trying to figure out how to protect its customers in regard to third-party cookies. These companies are trying to position themselves with the right side of the rebellion; they want to be on the customers’ side. They don’t want to be who the customers are rebelling against.

This is the time for traditional marketers to be humbled and listen to the newer people who may be more in tune with what the customers want and how to better market to them.

Treating Our Customers as Humans

Mark greatly admires Seth Godin, an author, and former dot com business executive, but he disagrees with something Seth said in his book This is Marketing. In that book, Seth says that marketing is about changing and manipulating people. Mark thinks that maybe this was true in the 1970s, 80s, or even 90s, but customers are different than people were back then.

We have the world at our fingertips. We have the accumulated knowledge of the human race in the palm of our hands. Customers can make really good decisions by looking at reviews or seeing testimonials; they can go down the rabbit hole on any product out there. 

Mark said, “Marketing is not about trying to manipulate people. It's about coming alongside them at their point of need and saying, ‘You know what, we respect you. We respect your intelligence. We respect your privacy. What can we do to help you?’” 

We should be asking “How can we help you save money? Make money? Have a more healthy life? A more entertaining life?” It doesn’t matter what we are selling, the role of our company should be to help them in whatever our field is. We shouldn’t view them as just the people who give us money. We should treat them as human beings who have real lives and real problems.

Helping them may not be enough. We talk a lot about passion marketing on this show because it is such a relevant topic. Our customers have so many options to choose from, so we have to show them why they should choose us by building our products and services around the things they are most passionate about. If we don’t, we will never become a priority or differentiate ourselves from a sea of good options.

Being In vs. Being Part of the Community

To be a successful brand today, we can't just be in a community, we have to be part of a community. Being in a community is donating money to a charity for example. Being part of a community is something more.

For example, a few months ago, an ice storm hit the US, impacting many places not accustomed to that kind of weather. In Texas, many people lost their power and their heating. There was one furniture store that didn’t lose its power. They told people to come to their store if they were cold. They brought in food, set up a play area for children, and had more than 500 people sleeping overnight on the mattresses in their store.

That store was part of the community. They asked, “How do we act like human beings? How do we act like friends?” If our friend is cold, we say come warm yourself. If our friend is hungry, we say come and let me feed you. 

“In this era right now where so many people are suffering, there are so many unmet and underserved needs, we have this opportunity to not only be memorable but to be legendary. I can guarantee you there's no one in the city of Houston that will ever buy furniture from anyone again, other than Mattress Mack. . . . You're just acting like a human being. You don't have to be a marketing wizard, you just have to be a good person,” Mark said.

The companies that get down in the trenches, roll up their sleeves and become part of the community will thrive. The companies that are wed to the old ways and advertising agencies’ scripts are going to become irrelevant.

In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this change. There was a video on YouTube called “Every COVID-19 Commercial Is Exactly The Same”. It has taken the ads from many large companies and edited them together to show that they all had essentially the same script. 

These companies that couldn’t break through the old ways became laughing stocks, but the companies that act as part of the community and do things that mean something to their customers will become legendary.

The End of Control

In Mark’s book, he discusses some research done by McKinsey. Over 10 years, they looked at 200,000 customer journeys across 90 different industries and found that two-thirds of our marketing is occurring without us. A brand used to be what it told us. Customers didn’t have a choice. They didn’t have the internet or social media. If they wanted to learn about a company, they had to engage with their ads.

Now a brand is what people are telling each other. They're in control. They're defining the message based on their experience. We don't have a choice. We have to understand how we get invited to that conversation.

Mark got sick with COVID-19 at the end of March 2020. His business crashed to almost zero. He had to pivot and work in different ways. He had to connect to the opportunities and needs that were present right then. He stopped his marketing and asked himself, “How do I help people? How do I help my community?”

Mark is a teacher, so he started teaching how to handle things like anxiety, disorientation, and uncertainty in his blog posts. The traffic on his website doubled, so he turned those blog posts into an ebook and gave it away for free. He turned that into a speech to inspire people at leadership meetings. In June, July, and August of 2020, Mark had record-breaking months because he let the people’s needs control his business.

We shouldn’t try to control our brand or our messaging. We need to come alongside our customers and listen to their needs. They have to invite us to that conversation.

Just like in a marriage, we can’t trick someone into loving us. We can’t trick someone into marrying us. If we trick someone, even if we're successful, it's not going to work long-term. Our goal is the long-term, lifetime valuable relationship with that customer. If we trick someone into marrying us, how well is that marriage going to work out? How happy is that marriage going to be? 

We can’t change our customers just like we can’t change our spouses. A marriage only works well if there is respect, love, and understanding. We must do the same thing with our customers. We must accept them and love them for the unique person they are.

A chef needs many different spices in a kitchen to make many different kinds of food. If their only option was cinnamon, their food would be pretty boring. Some foods call for cayenne pepper or oregano. Each spice brings value to the kitchen just like each unique person brings value to our life.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Mark for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Customers won’t put up with annoying or manipulative marketing anymore. We need to shift to a human-centered approach.
2. We must treat our customers as humans, think about their needs, and build our brand around their passions.
3. To be part of the community, we need to serve our customers during the good and the bad times. We need to treat them like friends.
4. Two-thirds of our marketing is happening without us. Customers control our messaging, especially with the internet. We need to listen to them and join the conversation, but not control it. Now a brand is what people are telling each other. They're in control. 
5. We can’t trick our customers into loving us. Like a marriage, long-term relationships with customers will only work when there is respect, love, and understanding.

Connect with Mark

To learn more about or connect with Mark:

•  Connect on LinkedIn
•  Visit his website at BusinessesGrow.com 
• Check out his book Marketing Rebellion

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Download the free Passion Marketing ebook at PassionMarketing.com.
2. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast.
3. How can we shift our marketing to be more human-centered? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.
4. Need help with your digital monetization strategy? Visit MonetizationPartners.com to schedule a free consultation.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/why-we-need-human-centered-marketing/ 

In today’s episode, I interview an inspiring entrepreneur named Rebecca Clyde. Rebecca and I will be discussing how women influence technological advancements. She also shares great advice for any entrepreneur, such as finding opportunities in crises, artificial intelligence, trusting our instincts, and building a team.

Rebecca Clyde is the co-founder and CEO of Botco.ai, a company that is modernizing healthcare with intelligent chat for patient engagement. Rebecca is on the 2020 list of most influential women in Arizona. She was listed as a Most Admired Leader by Phoenix Business Journal and was a recipient of the ATHENA Businesswoman of the Year Award. She has also been recognized as one of "35 Entrepreneurs 35 and Younger" by the Arizona Republic. 

Rebecca’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Rebecca moved to the US to go to college. When she was graduating, she was recruited by Intel. She stayed there for about eight years learning important business fundamentals and going through their management and leadership development program. 

She left Intel to start her own company, a marketing agency. She was able to take everything she’d learned at Intel and consult clients with that knowledge. The business grew, turning into a thriving marketing agency.

Rebecca is now working on her next company, Botco, which is a software product aimed at solving a problem she saw in her last two jobs. She noticed marketing automation platforms were no longer suited to today's modern customer and modern expectations. She wanted to bring that technology up to date, making it easier for people to accomplish the task they went to a website for or get the information they need, and then complete the next step in their journey. Botco just raised $2.2 million of seed capital.

Digital Shifts and the Role of Women

Digital engagement and the transition to remote business is a huge tectonic shift happening in the business landscape right now, especially in the healthcare industry. People are no longer willing to sit in waiting rooms for hours to see a doctor, so the healthcare industry must embrace digital technologies to accommodate for that shift.

One thing that is driving this change is women. They are saying, “I can’t wait on the phone for 45 minutes to make a doctor's appointment. That's not worth my time; my time has value. You need to improve your systems so I don't have to waste my time doing that.”

Rebecca is passionate about women and their roles in technological advancement, along with women in business in general. She said, “Technologists need to listen to what women have to say, understand that their time is valuable, and start to create solutions that actually deliver on the promise of a truly frictionless engagement experience. When we do that, we will realize that we will jump ahead leaps and bounds, or we can fail to listen at our own peril.”

How Women Influence the Creation and Consumption of Technology

When Rebecca worked at Intel in the early 2000s, they had a discussion about mobile computing. Francine Hardaway, who worked at Intel at the time, said she was sitting in a meeting trying to explain to the executives that they needed to pay more attention to mobile for one reason: women don’t like to carry large bags and they want more computing power that they can fit in their purse. She told them women make up half of the world’s economy. Women played a big role in the shift to mobile, and Intel missed the shift to mobile because they didn’t listen.

Women have been a contributing factor to many technological changes and advancements. Cars started to change when they shifted to make them appeal to women more. In 2001, the first all-female team designed a car; on their wish list was better visibility, practical storage, parking assistance, and smoother ingress and egress (Source: Vice.com). Women influence many products for families and households. 

They are conscientious and think about the waste we generate, the value to the community that something may or may not contribute, being good citizens, adverse effects of certain products or ingredients, etc. They tend to approach things with a little bit more of that holistic thinking and put pressure on companies to pay attention to those sorts of things.

Rebecca’s Advice to Female Entrepreneurs

Rebecca said, “Don't be afraid of making mistakes or failing. . . . That goes with the territory.” There’s a lot of risk that comes with being an entrepreneur and some of those risks aren’t going to work out. It is important to bring people along and find great mentors to help avoid roadblocks and pitfalls.

“There's a lot of socialization that women or girls deal with even from a very young age that we have to unwind in our minds,” Rebecca said. “Realize your job isn't to make people comfortable, your job isn't to be the nice one in the room, your job isn't to be the amenable one. Your job is to know your truth. Speak it.”

Rebecca said one of her biggest mistakes has been not listening to her intuition sufficiently and allowing too many outside voices to prevail. One of her investors told her he's never met somebody with better instincts and she needs to listen to them more. Rebecca has noticed when she doesn’t let her instincts be the driving force, things don’t go as well as they could have.

Never Waste a Great Crisis

Rebecca started both of her businesses right before big crises. She started her first business going into 2008. When the market crashed, Rebecca’s clients’ budgets were reduced to almost nothing. She was faced with the harsh reality that she had just left her reliable Intel job to start a business during a terrible time. 

Rebecca discovered that being small, nimble, and unattached to any big overhead company allowed her to navigate the white spaces and find unique opportunities and solutions she would have never been able to see had it not been in a crisis. “That moment taught me to never waste a great crisis,” Rebecca said.

Hard times can be horrible, but they can also give us opportunities and perspectives we wouldn’t have had otherwise. I remember when the dot-com bubble burst in 1999, most of the funding for dot-com companies dried up and they pulled their advertising. There was a company called Classmates.com that saw this happening and did the opposite. Advertising became crazy cheap so they bought hordes of advertising. They launched their company, became mainstream, and achieved a huge valuation because they saw the opportunity in crisis.

During this worldwide pandemic, we’ve seen companies that pulled back are now really struggling to regain their momentum and pick up where they left off. Rebecca was in the early days of her new business when COVID-19 shut down the world. Her entire pipeline was made of fitness and wellness businesses, but they all went dark. Rebecca was left in a moment of panic. She’d worked so hard to get the software ready and wanted to see it succeed.

Then a couple of old relationships reignited. She knew some people in healthcare who reached out to her with a need, and her business could fill that need. Pretty soon they had a really great business from the opportunities that came with those connections. It was hard, but Rebecca and her business got through it. She considers getting through 2020 to be one of her greatest home runs.

Crises can be terrifying, but if we keep our heads we may be able to see many great opportunities that come from them.

How to Leverage AI

Rebecca’s current business works with AI. She said the best thing to do is train the AI to answer all the questions our customers and employees might have and train the AI to help us find things faster. Then we can be more available to do the high-value work. 

AI shouldn’t replace us because humans have a great ability to think complexly and creatively. We should let the machines do what they’re good at, the rudimentary things, and leave the human mind to take care of the exciting, rich problem-solving.

To learn more about AI, we can check out conferences like AI World or groups such as the AI Consortium. There’s a misconception that we need to be good computer programmers to do AI. There are many great programmers and scientists working on it, but they need more people who are creative and humanistic to help apply the applications to human problems and real-life situations.

Building a Team

Rebecca’s best monetization strategy is building a great team and multiplying herself with that team. “All the work ethic and time in the world that I can put into something will never be sufficient. . . . My dreams are much bigger than my time allows,” she said.

With a great team, we can accomplish more than we ever could on our own. Not only does a team help with timing, but we can also fill a team with thought leaders and learn and improve from their ideas. Great team members can expand on what we’ve started and through them, great things can happen.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Rebecca for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Women have played a large role in technological advancements such as the shift from desktop to mobile. We need to be listening to them to keep up with these tectonic shifts.
2. Mistakes are a normal part of being an entrepreneur. Learn from them. 
3. Rebecca’s advice to young female entrepreneurs is to know the truth and speak it.
4. Crises can provide us with great opportunities to look at things from a new perspective.
5. If we’re using AI, we should let the machines do the rudimentary tasks, so we can focus more on the creative side.
6. We should listen to our instincts when we’re making decisions.
7. With a team, we can achieve more than we ever could alone.

Connect with Rebecca

If you want to learn more about or connect with Rebecca, you can:

• Find her on LinkedIn or 
• Visit her website at Botco.ai.  

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

How have you made money off your podcast? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

In the last episode with podcasting expert Dave Jackson, we discussed podcasting hacks we can use to create and grow a successful podcast. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss five ways we can monetize our podcast from Dave’s book, Profit From Your Podcast. 

• Products

One of the easiest ways to make the most money from our podcast is to sell our own products. Chances are, our listeners are listening to us because they like what we have to say. According to research done by PodcastInsights, podcast listeners are “loyal, affluent, and educated” and 80% of podcast listeners listen to all or the majority of each episode (Source: CreativeFixAudio.com). 

If we have listeners, we have an audience who likely feels connected and loyal to us, especially if they are downloading our content each time we release an episode. And if we have a loyal audience, we have buyers. We already deliver value through the episodes our audience likes, why not add additional value through products?

If we can make a product our audience can’t get anywhere else, they will love it. For example, Dave knew a podcaster who was a chameleon breeder, and that’s what he talked about on his podcast. He had an incredibly hyper-niche so he could target his products to his audience in a very specific way. He sold chameleon cages and his listeners wanted to buy from him because they trusted him and had already developed loyalty. 

The bonus of already having an audience is we can figure out what they want before we create a product. We can ask for their feedback and advice, and then create a project targeted directly to them, something we know they will like. Here are just a few examples of products we can sell:

• Books
• Products we manufacture
• Swag
• Consulting/coaching 
• A service
• Membership site 
• Courses

Of these options, Dave said membership sites are the best. Instead of relying on a one-time purchase, recurring revenue allows us to make money each month. With School of Podcasting, Dave makes a lot of money on recurring fees from his membership site, and it provides great value to his audience. 

“I still have a guy who’s been [a member] for probably 10 years,” Dave said. “He [said], ‘When I send you an email and I have a question about podcasting, I know I'm probably going to get an answer.’ . . . They come for the content but they stay for the community if you're doing it right.”

While we can produce valuable content on our membership sites, our customers also stay because they build a community. They build a relationship with us. This is the same reason they will listen to our podcast episode after episode. They feel connected to us and build a community. 

• Affiliate Marketing 

The second best way to make money from podcasting is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when we promote another company’s product or service and make a profit based on a percentage of each sale we generate. While many people can find ads to be annoying, 40% of people find podcast ads to be less intrusive than other types of ads (Source: SemRush). This can be a very effective way to make money. 

The best way to find success with affiliate marketing is to find something we love. We should only promote a product we have used and liked. This will help us sound genuine and retain trust with our customers. If we promote a product our listeners buy and don’t like, it can damage the trust we have developed with them. 

“I switched to using affiliate marketing, and I'm blowing it out of the water because I found something that fits my audience. It really does come down to [choosing] the right product for the right audience,” Dave said. 

Dave explained that, whatever market we are in, we should find a product we’d love to talk about that our audience will also love. We can reach out to the companies and brands we like and ask if they have an affiliate program for us. Even if we don’t have thousands of listeners, brands will want to work with us if we have a specific niche audience. 

As part of finding something we love, we also need to find a product we think our audience will love. What product or service will resonate with our audience? With affiliate marketing, we don’t get paid until we’ve made a sale. Even if our listeners are loyal to us, they aren’t going to buy something they don’t want or need. If we can find a product we love and a product our audience will love, our sales and profit will increase. 

While affiliate marketing can be slow at the beginning, it often grows in the long run. One of the best parts of affiliate marketing with podcasts is that it creates permanent ads. Podcasts are not radio. People often don’t listen to podcasts live, or even when they first become available for download. Sometimes a listener may listen to our podcast a week after it became available, or even years after. When we talk about a company’s product on our podcast, it is there forever and can be watched forever. This increases our chances of making more sales and more money. 

• Sponsorships

A sponsorship is similar to affiliate marketing, except we don’t make money based on the sales we make. We make money for simply promoting the other business. We get paid for the ads or promotions we run and based on the number of listeners we have on each episode, regardless if we make a sale or not. On average, a 30-second ad will bring in $18 CPM (cost per 1000 listeners) and $25 CPM for a 60-second ad (Source: PodcastArticles). 

As with affiliate marketing, for sponsorships, we want to make sure we only talk about a product we’d use ourselves. We want to keep our trust with our audience, and they aren’t going to trust us if we promote a product that doesn’t work just because they know we are getting paid. 

Dave believes that sponsorships aren’t as effective as people may think and prefers affiliate marketing. Dave explained that at Libsyn, an official podcast launch partner, they get an average of about 1200 downloads per episode, but their median number is about 300 downloads. This means 50% of their episodes get below 300 downloads and 50% get more than 300 downloads. Potentially, we may only make $10 or less off an episode we put a lot of work into, and sometimes it doesn’t pay off. 

Dave also mentioned that sponsorships can be extra work as we have to send in reports of how many downloads we get with each episode. However, if we have a lot of listeners, sponsorship can make us a lot of money. We can even charge more than the average price of a 30- or 60-second ad based on how popular our show is. 

• Crowdfunding

Another great way to monetize our podcasts is through crowdfunding. We can ask for donations to help support our podcast content. 

Dave has seen a lot of podcasters use Patreon, a membership platform that allows creators to run a subscription service. We can charge a monthly membership fee for exclusive content on our podcast, access to a community, and additional behind-the-scenes content. 

If we have a very loyal listener base, our audience will pay us just because they want more content and want to support us. Chapo Trap House, an American political podcast, has generated more than $170,000 in a month from their subscribers with nearly 40,000 patrons, and as of 2020, the podcast was the highest-grossing user on Patreon (Source: SFGATE). For every two free episodes they release, they also offer two additional podcasts for a fee and people are willing to pay for that because they love their content. 

We can also start charging people who want to pitch ideas for us to talk about on our show. We can charge even more for people who want to be interviewed on our show. 

“It's a matter of figuring out what my audience wants,” Dave said. “In some cases, . . . the podcast is the product.” 

• Events 

We can also host events and charge our audience for tickets. These events could be hosted in person, or through an online platform such as Zoom. Not only can we earn a profit off our events, but we also build relationships with our customers and bring in the value of a community. Events can be great ways to grow our email lists. 

We can also use our events to build our membership sites. A virtual summit is a great way to create content. We can take the recordings and split them into different video segments. These videos can stand on their own or be turned into a series of videos for an online course. 

Above all else, if we want to monetize our podcasts, we have to be focused on the needs and wants of our listeners.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. One of the easiest ways to make the most money from our podcast is to sell our own products. If we have a loyal audience, we will probably have buyers for our great products and services. 
2. Our listeners often come for the content but stay for the community. 
3. While affiliate marketing can be slow at the beginning, we often make more money in the long run, especially if the affiliate programs pay us a recurring affiliate commission. On the other hand, sponsorships can provide better short-term profit for each ad.
4. To be successful with affiliate marketing and sponsorships, we should only promote products we love and products we believe our audience will love. 
5. If we have a very loyal listener base, our audience may pay us just because they want more content and want to support us. 
6. We can host events and charge our audience for tickets, while also reusing the content on our membership sites and other places. 

Connect with Dave

If you want to learn more about or connect with Dave, you can:

• Find him on LinkedIn
• Listen to his podcasts School of Podcasting or Profit from Your Podcast 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

1. Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How have you made money off your podcast? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-ways-to-monetize-a-podcast/ 

Dave Jackson is a podcast consultant who helps people plan, launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. He began podcasting in 2005 and launched the School of Podcasting, which has more than 2.7 million downloads. He's the author of the book Profit From Your Podcast and is a featured speaker at events. In 2016, Dave joined Libsyn, which is one of the largest podcast hosting companies. 

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Dave’s journey to podcasting and three of his key strategies to hosting a successful podcast.

Dave’s Journey to Podcasting 

Dave began his journey as a teacher and taught in the corporate world for about 20 years. “The great thing about being a teacher is you get to help people all the time,” Dave said. 

While he loved teaching, he wanted to find a new way to help people beyond the corporate world. A friend told him about podcasting, so he googled it to find one and a half pages of results. Podcasts weren’t big at the time, but as he continued to do his research, he realized the shift towards podcasts was going to be a tectonic shift in the future. 

Dave went back to school to get his degree and started a podcast, while also working other side jobs to help support himself until he could build a big-enough audience to make money with his podcast. What really got him hooked on the idea was his first voicemail from an audience member. Someone from Germany reached out to him to let him know how inspired he was from his podcast. That’s when Dave realized he could teach through podcasts and help people from around the world. 

“I got to help people, and I [thought it was] the best thing ever,” Dave said. “That's when I decided I was going to launch the School of Podcasting. I just knew if I waited long enough, it would catch up.”

Since then, podcasting has grown exponentially with more than two million active podcasts and more than 48 million episodes as of April 2021 (Source: Podcast Insights). 

In 2016, Dave joined Libsyn where he helps customers with questions about building their own podcast. He’d been a customer for Libsyn for 10 years when he gave them a call. He told them he had bad news and good news. He was out of a job, but it meant he was available to work for them. He also told them about his podcast, School of Podcasting.

His podcast wasn’t just a way for him to make a profit or to help his listeners. It also helped him get a job. He has been hired three times because of his podcast. His podcast gave him an opportunity to show people he knew what he was talking about. “Our podcast isn't, in many cases, our business, it's our business card. It's what allows people to get to know you without making a giant commercial,” Dave said. 

While Dave works at Libsyn, he continues to host his own podcast at the same time. With years of experience in the podcasting world, he has learned many lessons and key strategies we should implement in our own podcast. Here are three of them. 

Focus on a Specific Niche

The biggest mistake Dave sees podcasters make is trying to be everything for everyone. People often want to start a podcast with a very vague goal in mind. For example, someone may start a podcast with the idea to interview people with interesting stories. But what are those interesting stories? What is going to make someone want to listen to us over others? 

If we don't bring in an audience, we don't have a podcast. Generic and wide-ranging goals don’t work 99% of the time. If we want to host a successful podcast, we need to focus on a specific niche audience. 

Dave said that people often come to him with a goal to get sponsored, but sponsorships only happen if we have a large audience and can get massive downloads. And we only get massive downloads, if we are speaking to a specific group. We want to appeal to the needs and wants of a target audience. If we aim to meet the needs of everyone, we will end up meeting the needs of no one. 

Even if we host a great podcast with a specific audience in mind, it can still be really difficult to get enough downloads to actually make money off a sponsorship. Instead, Dave recommends going even further and directing our podcast to an ever-smaller audience. “You don't have to have a ton of listeners if you have a hyper-niche show,” Dave said. 

If we have a very direct, niche audience, we can get sponsored by other companies who have a similar audience to us. They will choose to sponsor us over others because we have such a specific audience that their product or service will resonate with. 

For example, Dave had a client who ran a podcast called Special Mouse, a guide to the Disney Parks for guests with health issues and special needs. She didn't even have a thousand downloads in an episode, and yet she got a sponsor. Why? Because there was somebody in Florida that specialized in transporting people with special needs. The sponsor knew Special Mouse would reach their audience because it was such a hyper-niche. 

Get Personal

In our podcasts, we should get personal. 

Dave explained that one of the biggest business tectonic shifts that have happened over the last decade is the shift towards podcasts. Podcasts have become easier and easier to create. Technology exists that allows anyone to create a podcast. This is both good and bad. While podcasting has gotten easier, it also means the number of podcasts out there has increased. We can find a podcast on just about anything so why is someone going to choose to listen to our podcast over the millions of others out there?

“Why are you doing this? How are you going to be different [from] the other people you know?” Dave asked. “You have to have [something] that's going to set you apart, that is going to make a difference. You have to share a little bit about yourself if you really want people to connect with you.”

This doesn’t mean we have to reveal our darkest secrets or tell our audience everything that goes on in our days. It means we have to show our personality. We have to show what makes us unique. Sometimes this means sharing our hobbies or a funny story that happened during our day, but it has to be something that relates to the topic of our episodes. 

“If you can share stories about your life that help accentuates whatever point you're trying to make, you do two things: you make your point, and you allow your audience to get to know you. You start to build that relationship,” Dave said. 

Talk to One Person

We should talk to one person when we talk on a podcast. This means referencing our listeners as “you” instead of referencing a group of people as if we are speaking at a live event. 

Most people don’t listen to podcasts with others. It’s often an independent activity. They don’t sit down with a group of friends on a couch to listen to an audio-only file while staring at the wall. They listen to podcasts while they’re driving, cleaning, or they slip in headphones and listen to a podcast while they are at the gym. 

64% of podcast listeners listen to podcasts while on the road (Source: Semrush Blog) and 76% of Americans drive to work alone every day (Source: Brookings.edu). 59% of people listen to podcasts while doing housework or chores, and 87% of podcast listeners said podcasts are enjoyable because they can listen to them while doing other things (Source: Semrush Blog). This means, when someone is listening to our podcasts, they are often alone. Our podcast episodes can feel a lot more personal because of this as it will feel like we are talking directly to the listener. 

“When you do a solo show, number one, do not follow the advice of a YouTuber and start off with ‘Hey guys,’” Dave said. Instead, we should talk to the listener as if it is a one-on-one conversation with them. At the end of the podcast, we can thank them for listening, not “thanks, everyone.”

“I have people tell me all the time, ‘I always kind of feel like you're talking to me’ and I would say, ‘It's because I am,’” Dave said. Podcasts are a great way to connect with our listeners since it is such an independent activity. We can take advantage of this personal “conversation” and make sure we talk to them specifically, not a general group of people. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Our podcast isn't just our business, it can also be our business card.
2. If we want to host a successful podcast, we need to focus on a specific niche audience. We don’t have to have thousands of listeners to be successful if we can really narrow down our target audience and serve them well.
3. In our podcasts, we should get personal. There are millions of podcasts out there so we need to find what makes us unique and share it so our listeners will choose us.
4. We can share stories about our life to help get our point across and allow our audience to get to know us and connect with us.
5. We should talk to one person when we talk on a podcast. This means referencing our listeners as “you” instead of referencing a group of people.

Connect with Dave

If you want to learn more about or connect with Dave, you can:

• Find him on LinkedIn
• Listen to his podcasts School of Podcasting or Profit from Your Podcast 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

Do you have a podcast? If so, what strategies have helped you find success? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/3-podcasting-hacks/