85: Death to the Podcast Intro Clip

Today, I am declaring death to the podcast intro clip. If you are a podcaster who puts a clip of your podcast episode at the very beginning of your podcast episodes as a part of your intro, today I am going to tell you why I think that is severely damaging your podcast and severely hindering your ability to grow and monetize your show. I'm also going to share the podcast episode intro strategy that I use and that I have seen to work way better instead. And spoiler alert, it's way cheaper, faster and easier to make. So after this episode, not only will your podcast episode intros be more effective and get more listeners to stick around and listen to the rest of the show. But you'll also spend less time, money, and energy making them. So stick around. This is Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Spidlin. I'm a seven figure podcaster. I've been podcasting for more than four years. I've got more than 300 podcasters in my program, more than 20,000 podcasters combined in my audience. And I have seen that a lot of podcasters will use this trick to try and intro their podcast episodes where they pull the clip forward. They try to pull the most interesting clip from the episode, put it in the intro. And the idea is that the listener is going to hear that clip, be really intrigued and then listen to the rest of the episode. But here's the problem. It almost never works like that. And in most cases, it actually just confuses the listener and they leave never to listen to your podcast ever again. The story of how I figured out this for the first time goes back to my days as a podcaster when I lived in Philadelphia. I had a podcast called Filio. It told the stories of Philadelphia's doers, thinkers, and performers. And for the first year of that podcast, I would spend tons of time and energy pulling three clips from later in the episode and pulling them into my intro so that I can tease the listener and show them what's to come later in the episode. I would literally spend one to two hours selecting, editing, and mixing those intro clips into this like beautiful podcast intro that had voiceovers and music underneath. And it was just this incredible thing. And that work to create that intro took me the bulk of the time that I spent on that episode. It was only after like more than a year of making episodes this way that I actually put out a survey to my podcast listeners just to get some feedback on the show. I had 80 people fill out the survey and there was a question on the survey that said, how do you feel about the podcast's intro on a scale from one to 10? I also asked how do you feel about the questions that are asked? How do you feel about the guests that are featured? Just like asked a bunch of one to 10 questions about how my listeners felt about the content of my show. Almost every single question on average got an answer above eight. Meaning for pretty much all aspects of that podcast's content, my listeners who filled out the survey anyway rated it at eight or above out of 10. They loved it. But there was one question that got a four out of 10. And the question was on a scale of one to 10, how do you like the podcast's intro? Four out of 10. Now, thankfully, I also added a space for people to add comments to explain what their rating was and sure enough, everybody said the intro is too long. It's not really interesting. I often skip it to get to the actual part of the interview. Sometimes it turns me off. I was mortified. I couldn't believe that I was spending all of this time crafting this incredible intro with all these clips from the episode and it was negatively affecting my show. So I was like, you're telling me that if I just don't do that at all and save myself three hours of work for episode, my listeners will be happier. That's exactly what I did and that's exactly what happened. For that moment on, I never used a podcast intro clip ever again. This episode of Grow the Show is sponsored by Riverside.fm, the leading platform to record studio quality podcasts. More than 70,000 other podcasters use Riverside, including myself, GuyRaz, GaryVee, Spotify, and even the New York Times. Riverside is not only great because it has unbelievably high recording quality regardless of your or your guests' internet quality, but it also gives you separate audio and video tracks for each person speaking. It's high tech, but easy to use. Unlike Zoom, you don't have to have anything installed on your computer and your guests don't either. And did I mention that the audio quality is way better? If you're recording your interviews remotely, get off of Zoom now and hop into Riverside for your next interview. Your listeners will thank you. Head over to Riverside.fm and use code Grow. That's GROW to get 60 free minutes of recording and 15% off a membership plan. The link is in the show notes. Now, fast forward a couple years after I had founded Grow the Show, this podcast as well as the Grow the Show accelerator, I work with dozens and dozens and dozens of clients for Grow the show every single week to help them improve their show. And I still to this day find that a lot of them use intro clips to intro their podcast. Now, I don't blame them because in episode 37 of this podcast, I actually share an example of a well-renowned podcast that does this. That shares an intro clip at the beginning and does it very, very well. And that podcast is how I built this with GuyRaz. And so in episode 37 of this podcast, I share a clip of how I built this and how they use an intro clip from their episodes to intro their episodes. Did you follow me there? Long story short, it's a really great intro. It's like, you know, 50 seconds long, they pull forward a really, really climactic part of the episode where the person being interviewed is very, very emotional and it's just really, really interesting and intriguing. And you don't know what he's being emotional about. So it really hooks you into the rest of the episode. And it makes sense that these folks pull this off because how I built this is a show that's produced by a handful of people at NPR who are all on full-time salaries and all that their sole purpose, their sole job is to make this show. We are one person who also has to market and monetize our shows. So we do not have the resources of NPR. But nonetheless, in episode 37 of this podcast, I shared that example as an option for how you can introduce your podcast effectively. Since then, I actually regret sharing that example because like I said, most times in practice, people get it wrong. And so I'm going to explain to you how I've seen it done wrong, why it doesn't work for most podcasters, and then instead, what I recommend doing that's way cheaper, way easier, way less energy and more importantly, way more effective. Now, before I do that, you got to remember the whole purpose of your podcast intro, the whole purpose of the first five to 10% of your podcast episodes. So if your podcast is 30 minutes long, the first minute and a half to three minutes of every episode of your podcast has one purpose, one purpose. It is not to get listeners to go to your website or check out your next thing or click or subscribe or listen to an ad or do literally anything, except sell them on listening to the rest of the episode. You have to spend the first one to three minutes of your podcast episodes selling your listener on why they should stick around and what they're going to get out of listening to the rest of this episode. What the rest of this episode is going to give to your listeners. If you don't make it super clear to them, they're going to turn the episode off. And that's because of the phenomenon that Pat Flynn calls the magic moment. Think about it. When podcast listeners are listening to your show, they're doing something else in most cases, right? So they're working out, they're doing chores, they're commuting in the car, whatever. Think about when you listen to podcasts. It's when you're doing something else, right? And so when it's time for you to do that thing, what do you do? You pull out your phone, you're like, I'm going to listen to a podcast. You pull out your favorite podcast listening app. You look at the options of new episodes of your favorite shows that you have available and you pick one and you press play on one. But you're not done because once you press play as a listener on a podcast episode, you're not listening to that whole episode no matter what. In fact, for the first few minutes until you're hooked as a listener, you're sitting there listening, oftentimes with your phone still out. And you're saying, what is this episode about? Who is this person they're interviewing? Is this really what I want to listen to for the next 30 minutes? And if you don't quickly believe that the answer to that question is yes, and you're not quickly hooked and interested in what's about to come in the episode, you're going to turn it off and select a different episode of one of your favorite other shows. So the same thing is happening to you with the listeners of your podcast. If your intro does not quickly and immediately hook your listeners in and convince them that they have picked the right episode to listen to today, you're going to lose them. And what really, really sucks about that is that when somebody turns off your podcast episode in the middle of it because it didn't keep them engaged, it's very rare that they ever come back to listen to your show again. So if your intro is not doing the trick, there's a good chance that you don't actually have a podcast growth problem. You have a podcast retention problem. You don't have a problem getting new listeners to your show. You have a problem keeping listeners listening to your show. So like Pat Flynn says, the magic moment is when your listeners are hooked. You hook them with some sort of intro that makes them excited for the rest of the episode and they go, yes, this is exactly what I want to listen to. They put their phone in their pocket and they do whatever it is they're doing while they're listening to your podcast. And at that point, that's when you have leeway to dive into a story or dive into a conversation or just have more leeway to not have to constantly be getting their attention the whole time. It's a beautiful thing. But you've got to earn that first with the first few minutes of your podcast episode. And so what I teach podcasters is that the way that you do that is by in the first three minutes of your podcast episode achieving three things. Number one, hooking the listener emotionally. Number two, posing a specific question that this episode of your show will answer. Even entertainment shows, even talk shows do the same thing. And number three, by introducing the podcast and the host. You think that'd be obvious, but a lot of people skip that and don't introduce. Hey, you're listening to grow the show. The podcast to help you grow your podcast. So those are the three things I've found to be most effective in selling a listener on sticking around to the rest of the episode and hooking them so that they put their phone away and they listen to the entire episode. Now, let's bring it back to the intro clip. Assuming that you do need to achieve those three things to hook them emotionally to pose a question at the episode will answer and introduce the host and premise of the show. Assuming you have to do all those three things as quickly as you possibly can when you play an intro clip to your podcast, you're not spending time doing that. And instead, you're relying on that intro clip to hopefully do those things or to hopefully, at the very least, do one of those things by hooking them emotionally before you can then cue the intro music and introduce the show and the question that is posed. But the problem is that in practice, the vast majority of podcasters completely fail to do any of those things and then they lose virtually all of their listeners before minute five, before the content really even starts. More specifically though, when it comes to selecting an intro clip to put at the beginning of your episode, it's really, really, really hard to make that work because number one, you're relying on a clip from the interview itself to be really juicy and to have kind of a cliffhanger. So you almost need for your guest to have said some sort of cliffhanger at some point. The other thing that people miss is that the goal of the intro clip is not to just provide an interesting excerpt of the conversation. It's meant to be a hook. It's meant to have a cliffhanger. So if you're just selecting an interesting piece of the episode that doesn't really have a cliffhanger and doesn't really leave the listener wanting more, and instead it's just like some opinion that your guest shared, it actually doesn't achieve anything that you want to achieve. In practice, it's just like, I don't know, somebody told you something random. Like you press play on an episode and someone says, the other day, I found five dollars. You're like, okay, who cares, right? Why do they do that? Why do they tell me that? What makes these intro clips even less effective is that just overall in practice, the vast majority of these times, a listener doesn't really know, especially if it's a new listener to your podcast. They don't know who you are. They don't know what your voice sounds like. They have no idea who your guest is or what their voice sounds like. They press play and they just get dropped into the middle of a conversation. They don't know what you're talking about. And so it's just like if you were to randomly start listening to a stranger's conversation on the phone. It's just like, who are these people? What are they talking about? What does any of this mean? I'm going to go listen to Joe Rogan, right? That's what happens. That's literally what happens to a lot of people's shows. And if you go look at your retention rates on Apple podcasts and you see a huge slice when people press play, that's what's happening. People press play and they're like, I don't know what this is. I'm going to go listen to NPR, right? That's what's happening. That's why you're losing listenership. The other problem that makes intro clips really ineffective is that people mainly get it wrong by sharing just some sort of interesting clip rather than sharing a clip with a cliffhanger on it. But number two, even if you do understand that the clip needs to be a cliffhanger, it's just really, really hard to nail it to get it right. It's really hard to make it work. For that reason, the intro clip is very high-risk, high reward. It's high reward. If you nail it, it's awesome. But it's also really high-risk because it's really hard to nail it. And if you miss, it's just confusing, which makes it completely defeated its own purpose. And actually, does the opposite of what you were trying to do by including the clip. Finally, the third reason why the intro clips are a huge problem, I alluded to earlier in my own story. They take so much time. You or somebody that you pay have to go through the whole episode and find a clip and pull it out and test it and see if it works, edit it, make sure it's edited right, make sure the music flows, it takes tons of time, tons of energy, whether it's you doing it yourself or you paying somebody else to do it. The irony is that you spend all this time and money and energy selecting and editing in that intro clip and it not only doesn't work for what it's there for, it makes things worse. So, here's what I recommend, podcasters do instead of dropping an intro clip at the beginning. It's very simple. Do what's called a cold open, where at the beginning of the episode, it's just people press play and it goes immediately into a one to three minute passage where the host just tells the listener what's going on. Listen to some of the best podcasts in the world and many of them start with a cold open like that. I start virtually every single grow the show episode with a cold open. All you have to do is hook the listener emotionally, ask a question or talk about a scenario that the listener finds himself in now or you can talk about some current event, anything to hook the listener in emotionally. Then you want to pose a question that the episode will answer. That concept is a little bit more complicated and I got it from legendary podcaster Robert Smith who is a previous host and editor of Planet Money, one of the biggest podcasts ever. He was a guest on this podcast on episode number 35 and he shared how Planet Money introduces podcast episodes in a way that gets you hooked. And quite simply what it boils down to is they pose a specific question that you as the listener are interested in hearing the answer to. So do that second and then third again, everybody skips this, but just introduce yourself and the mission of the show. So for me, I say at the beginning of most grow the show episodes, my name is Kevin Schminlin, I am your podcast growth coach. And my mission is to help you the independent podcaster to grow your audience faster and monetize now so that you can have a thriving podcast business. Boom, I just rattled that off the top of my head. There's no voiceover artist, there's no crazy theme music required. It's simple. In summation, all you got to do to hook your listeners in is number one, hook them emotionally. Number two, pose a question that the rest of the episode will answer. And number three, introduce yourself and the premise of the show. You can do that in literally 180 seconds of you just turning on your microphone and saying it, just recording a quick voiceover, a quick intro. There is literally, literally no better minute and a half that you can spend that will grow your podcast more than getting your intro right. So I don't want to hear that you don't have time for it because you must do it. You must have time for it. And it is literally the most efficient way to grow your podcast is to record a really, really great simple and clear episode intro. That said, it is a skill to build. So if you want to hear more about the details of how to craft a great intro, I do recommend checking out episode number 37 of this podcast, which incidentally is the one where I share the intro clip example. So go listen episode 37. You'll hear an example on that episode of a pro Pat Flynn mentioned him earlier too. Absolute pro introducing his podcast in the cold open fashion. And you'll also in that episode here, the NPR example I was talking about. In that episode, I tell you you can do it, but here I am saying don't do it. But you know, if you listen to that episode, just remember back then, I told people that they can do it now. I really don't recommend it because what I found is that it's just really, really hard to pull it off. A lot of people creatively try to do it because you know, it's cool to have a clip. It's creative, but honestly, most people, it's just a time and money suck and it actually harms their show. Finally, I'm sure you want to hear examples of cold opens done right. So in addition to listening to Pat Flynn do it on his podcast smart passive income, you can listen to me do it on virtually any other episode of this grow the show podcast. Or right now, I want to share with you a clip of a grow the show accelerator student who I recently gave this advice to who absolutely knocked it out of the park. When he joined the program, his podcast intros were not sufficient. He didn't do an intro clip, but they were just meandering. He didn't really introduce himself for the purpose of the show. He just kind of really started talking to the guest and it wasn't effective. And so when he joined the program, the first thing we did was we looked at his episode retention rates and we found that 35%. 35% of people who tuned in to his podcast episodes did not make it past the first minute. Why? Because the intro was confusing and vague and did not do its job to hook the listeners in. So this student joined, we said, hey, we've got to get your intro under control. We're losing three to four out of 10 listeners in the first minute alone. So do a cold, open intro that achieves these three things. I just laid out all of how to do that. And so we gave that coaching to him. He implemented it for his very next episodes and he shared his new intro with me. And it was so good that I had to share it with you here on the feed. And so this comes from grow the show accelerator student Nate Palmer who just joined the program a few weeks ago. His audience are people who go to the gym, people who train, who want to get more lean. And so listen in this literally minute and a half intro. How he hooks in those folks emotionally. How he poses the question that the episode is about to answer. And how he introduces himself and the premise of the show all insanely effectively, efficiently and in one take. And I guarantee you the podcast episode that he is about to introduce to you had very, very, very few people bail definitely lower than 35%. Here's the clip. Have you ever noticed that the junk food in your house seems to just disappear into your stomach? I have. I don't know what your weakness is, but mine is the uncrustable sandwiches with grape jelly. And I steal them from my kids lunches. But short of throwing out all my kids food and telling them they're on a celery and hummus only diet. What can we do to avoid eating junk, especially at night? Have you ever wondered why it's so hard to start a new habit? You're going to want to check this episode out. Because I'm going to give you the five steps to building a new habit. And as a bonus, we're going to talk about how to easily crush the behaviors that aren't serving you. This is going to help you get leaner by making the process less of a constant battle. You're listening to the low carb hustle, helping you get leaner, live longer, and be legendary. My name is Nate Palmer. I'm going to coach since 2008. I've helped over 1100 people transform their bodies. My mission is simple to make it effortless for you to drop fat easily and wake up for the rest of your life, feeling lean, strong, and energetic. So if you're ready to dive into the second part of this episode where Kyle and I are talking about how to actually use our environment tactically to get better results without pissing off everyone in your house and your office, stick around. Let's do this. That's a pretty freaking great intro, right? Congratulations, Nate. So pumped to be working with you. So pumped to see where your show goes over the next few months. Now, for you, I really, really compel you to consider ditching the clip intro if you are doing it today. Just forget about it. Stop doing it all together. Be like me in 2019 and just stop and see how much time, energy, and even perhaps money of yours is saved. And how many more listeners listen to your podcasts. Of course, if you want feedback on your specific episode intros, join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group, where myself, my team, and my community are in there all the time giving feedback to podcasters. We would love to help you make your intro way better and one more time for the people in the back. Death to the intro clip. Don't do it anymore. Save yourself the time and energy. It doesn't work. It's killing your show. Introduce it yourself instead. That is it for me. My name is Kevin Schmanland. I'm your podcast growth coach. I will see you in the next episode of Grow the Show. And I hope to see you inside the Grow the Show Facebook group community. Till next time.