145 | 12 Days of Podcast Growth Day #3: Your Listener Mission

This is Grow the Show, the podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland. I am your podcast growth coach and we are on day three of the 12 days of podcast growth. So this is a 12 part audio course on how you can grow and monetize your podcast with these regardless of where you are in your podcasting journey. That's because today we are talking about your show's mission. This is part two of my three part cat one premise framework. So cat one stands for category of one. And the idea there is that it is much easier to grow a podcast when you have what I call a cat one premise, a category of one premise, meaning your show is truthfully the unique combination of three things, your audience, your mission, and your show's format. And ideally, you can truthfully say that no other podcast on the planet has the same combination as yours. So yesterday we talked about our audience. We talked about how to define who our listener is through demographics and psychographics. And today we are going to talk about the mission of the podcast, which is the guiding light aka the core promise of what your show will do for its listeners. That what your podcast will do for you, the creator, and not what your podcast is. Conversations, stories, perspectives, tips, interviews, not that stuff. We're not talking about what your show is. We're talking about what those things will do for the listener when they hear them. It is your podcast's listener mission. Now a well defined listener mission actually does two things for your podcast. Number one, it makes it crystal clear to potential listeners why they should tune in because it directly speaks to how your podcast is going to serve them. But the listener mission also serves you and your goals as a creator and a podcaster. How does it do that? Well, having a well articulated listener mission makes it easier for you to make grow and monetize your show because a well defined, clear listener mission simplifies your decision making process by providing you a clear direction. When you have a clear listener mission, it's going to answer really hard questions like, what topic should I cover on my show? Who should I invite on as a guest if you have guests? What social platforms should I be on? What other podcasts should I try to be a guest on? How can I monetize my show? All of these questions are really difficult to answer if you don't have a clear listener mission behind your show because either you're going to get overwhelmed by all of your options. You can do literally anything you want. And so there's too many options and so you freeze in analysis paralysis. Or you might do what many podcasters do and simply answer those questions in a really self-serving way. Like I want to invite guests that I want to talk to. I want to talk to people from all walks of life, just whoever I feel like talking to, that's what I'm going to have on the show. Or I want to cover whatever topics I want to talk about. Or I don't care how I monetize as long as I make money. Now, am I saying that you shouldn't chase your own passion and curiosity and enjoyment with your podcast? No, obviously, absolutely not. Those are table stakes. And honestly, you're not going to be a successful podcaster without those things. But what I am saying is this, if you don't have a clear listener mission, you're not going to get listeners because there's nothing in it for them. The show is made for you, not them. In my opinion, the best, most successful creators are the ones who are able to find the sweet spot between those two things. So they channel their own motivations and passions through a listener first mission. And that is when you get the best of both worlds. Okay, I can hear what you're thinking. All right, Kevin, I'm in. I'm ready to state my podcast's listener mission. How do I do that? You do it by writing your podcast tagline. Now if you've been following Grow the Show for a while, you probably have heard me recommend my favorite podcasting book called Make Noise. Make Noise was written by Eric Newsom. Eric was the very first guest of Grow the Show. So if you go back to episode two of the Grow the Show podcast, you're going to hear Eric on the show. And within that book, Eric instructs you to, quote, describe your podcast idea in no more than 10 words and do so in a way that describes nothing else in the world, unquote. Now, since Make Noise came out in 2019, I've been lucky enough to work directly with over 400 podcasts to craft their podcast tagline. And one of my favorite moments is when that podcaster that I'm helping finally lands on a description that actually accomplishes both goals. It conveys a clear listener mission and it also lights that creator up with excitement. And sometimes the creator is able to come up with a great tagline in a couple of minutes. Other times it takes us multiple weeks of figuring out what the show's mission should be. Inevitably, there's a wonderful moment where the creator comes to me and they're like, I've got it. I know what it is. And I can just see in their eyes and I can see with how high they're holding their shoulders that they've got it. That is the moment that I want for you. And so here's what to do next. Convey the listener mission of your podcast in 10 words or less by writing a podcast tagline. Now when you do it in 10 words, it forces you to be clear and succinct. And you want to keep it short and clear because you're going to be saying this tagline a lot. You're going to be welcoming listeners to every episode of your podcast from now on. Just like I did at the beginning of this episode where I said, you're listening to Grow the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. That's my podcast tagline. But a word of caution, be careful not to prioritize making it 10 words or less over making your podcast tagline clear, specific and serving the listener. This is the number one pitfall that I've seen as people try to craft their 10 word description. They latch on to the 10 word requirement and actually make the tagline less effective and less specific because they're trying to use as few words as possible. And that's actually why I don't really call it the 10 word description anymore. I now call it your podcast tagline because some of the best taglines I've ever seen, yes, are 13 words instead of 10. So it doesn't matter if it's not exactly 10 words. It's okay. If it's even up to 15 words or even longer, not the 10 word requirement is not set in stone. It is a guideline. It is a target. It is something for you to shoot for so that you can make your podcast tagline as short and specific and clear as possible. And again, make it so that it is conveying the listener mission. And if you're having trouble figuring out what your listener mission should be, go back to the exercise that you completed in yesterday's lesson where you conveyed the tangible outcome that your audience seeks. That is the pro tip here. You have pretty much already determined what the mission is of your podcast because you've articulated the tangible outcome that your audience wants. So you can literally just pull that forward and use that as your tagline. So for me, the tangible outcome that you, the listener of Grow the Show wants is you want to grow your podcast audience. You want to reach your first 10,000 download month or there's another milestone that you want to reach, right? But you want your podcast to grow. And so for that reason, the tagline of Grow the Show is the podcast that grows your podcast. Okay, so let me give you some example taglines from shows that you have probably heard of. And I know that you've probably heard of these shows because whenever I work with a new client here at Grow the Show, I always ask them what podcasts they listen to. And these are seven of the top 10 podcasts that show up whenever I ask that. And so in putting together this audio course, I went and found the taglines of the seven shows. These are all taglines that came directly from either the description of the podcast, the intro of the podcast or the podcast website. Now note, some of these are indeed more than 10 words. A couple of them are exactly 10 words. Some of them are more. That's okay. But what's important is that they are clear. They are concise and they convey the listener mission. So here are seven big time podcasts and their taglines. So I'll start with one of the more popular podcasts that I know a lot of Grow the Show listeners listen to. And that is the game with Alex Hermosi. If you ever listen to his show, you'll hear him in the intro, say you're listening to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to keep them longer and the many failures and lessons we've learned along the way. How to get more customers and how to keep them longer is the show's listener mission. Another really popular podcast that Grow the Show listeners listen to is Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn. One of my favorite podcasts around, and actually I just interviewed Pat a couple weeks ago, his episode is going to drop in January. And if you ever listen to the Smart Passive Income podcast, you hear the voiceover guy says, welcome to Smart Passive Income, where it's all about working hard now. So you can sit back and reap the benefits later, right? So listener first, the number one most popular podcast that Grow the Show listeners listen to is Huberman Lab, and the tagline of Huberman Lab is Science-based tools to help you live a healthier, more fulfilling life. Another popular one is the Real Estate Show Bigger Podcasts, where their mission is to break down real estate investing strategies that work, modern wisdom with Chris Williamson. The tagline of that show is life lessons from the greatest thinkers on the planet. The Tim Ferriss Show, the tagline is teasing out the habits, tools, tactics, and routines of some of the world's greatest performers. Finally, online marketing made easy with Amy Porterfield breaks down big ideas and strategies into actionable step-by-step processes designed to get you results. Now, those are some examples of taglines of bigger shows. And what you'll notice is that some of those taglines do break the rules that I just set for you. Because let's be real. There are no rules, right? There are no rules to this game. The idea here is to give you a framework, is to give you some guidelines so that you can achieve the ultimate goal, which is to convey to your listeners what they are going to get if they listen to your podcast. So now it's your turn. I want you to reflect on the tangible outcome that your audience seeks. And ask yourself this. If your listener listens to your podcast every single week for the next year, how will their lives change? What will they gain? What will they achieve? Or who will they become? Your listener mission is to help them make that happen. Convey your listener mission via a 10-word-ish podcast tagline. And with that, you are two thirds of the way through your Cat 1 premise. You've got your audience. You did that yesterday. You've got your mission. And tomorrow, we're going to talk about your format. And that is when I'm going to change your mind about doing all those freaking interviews. I will see you then. By the way, if you want to get the remaining lessons of this 12-day course, email to you every single day for the remainder of the 12 days of podcast growth. If you go to 12daysofpodcastgrowth.com, that's one, two daysofpodcastgrowth.com or just click the link in the show notes and you enter your email, you will get written versions of lessons 4 through 12 in your inbox for the next 12 days. Also I want to thank those of you who have emailed in with questions or with support. I've been absolutely blown away by the response of this email course so far. I've had so many people writing in to express things or ask questions or whatever. So know that if I haven't answered your email yet, know that I'm super behind. I'm even more behind today than I was yesterday. But I still have had people reach out asking, what can they do in exchange for this free course? The number one thing I can ask for is for you to share this with another podcaster. If you know anybody else who is either already a podcaster or they're thinking about launching one in 2024 and you think that they could get value out of this, just hit the share button in whatever podcast app you're listening to and share it with them or you can let folks know on social media that you are three days into a free 12-day course and you can direct them to 12daysofpodcastgrowth.com so they can hop in to get caught up on the course and join us in this journey as we grow and monetize our shows. So that's it for today. I will see you tomorrow when we talk about podcast format.