87: How to Double Your Podcast Audience in 1 Month, With Lauren Passell

By listening to this episode of Grow the Show, you're going to be able to double your audience in 30 days. But real quick first, I've got a question for you. Are you passionate about your podcast? I'm willing to bet your immediate answer is yes, of course. Podcasters are passionate people. But let me ask you this. How passionate are you today about your podcast? Are you just as passionate now as you were when you first launched the show? Has that passion waned at all? Have you lost it? If yes, if your passion has wavered, even just a little bit, why do you think that is? Well, I'll take a guess. It's probably because you're so busy or stressed or overwhelmed. Or maybe it's because the show just isn't as successful as you thought it would be by now. Well, regardless of where your level of passion for your podcast currently stands, I'm sure you have or will experience a dip in passion for your podcast at some point along the journey. It's inevitable. And when that does happen, what do you think the impact will be on your audience and your podcast when you, its creator, lose your passion? It's not good. You lose creativity. You lose the spark. And when that happens, it's easy to get caught in a death spiral where your passion drops, which means you're not having fun coming up with new strategies or creating new content, which means the show isn't really as good, which means it does poorly, which means your passion drops even further and so on and so on until, well, you quit. But what if we could buck that trend, hit pause and give ourselves permission to switch things up a bit? What would happen if you decided that for just one month, you were going to go all in on having fun being creative and escaping the podcast growth grind. That is exactly what happened to today's guest on Grow the Show. Her name is Lauren Pacelle, and she's the founder of Tink Media, a podcast growth company. Recently, Lauren was challenged to go all in on growing a particular podcast, not even her podcast, for just one month. And she did. And the results were insane. She was able to more than double the podcast's audience, which was not small to begin with in just 30 days. And on top of that, on top of those incredible results, she was able to completely reignite her passion for growing podcasts, which has made her strategies even more effective. So today on Grow the Show, Lauren joins us, and she's going to share two things. Number one, she's going to share how this exercise made her passion explode and how you can ignite and channel your passion better. And number two, of course, she's going to share exactly what she did to double a podcast audience in just 30 days. So if you want to double your own listenership by next month, then well, you should probably stick around. This is Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schmidland. I am your podcast growth coach, and my mission is to help you the independent podcaster to grow your audience and monetize your show with ease. Today on Grow the Show, we are going to learn from one of the most prolific and respected podcast growth experts in the podcasting world. And she's going to give you more growth ideas in the next 30 minutes than you've probably ever heard. So grab a pen and a pad and get ready to grow your show with Lauren Pacelle here on Grow the Show. 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. My name is Lauren Pacelle and I'm the founder of Tank Media, which is a podcast growth company and I have two podcast newsletters podcast the newsletter, which is all about discovery and podcast marketing magic, which makes podcast marketing fun. And I write for about podcast for a live hacker and I listen to hours and hours and hours of podcasts today. Like basically all of our Grow the Show guests, Lauren did not start her career in podcasting. Instead, she was pulled in by her own personal love of listening to podcasts. Well, I worked in book publishing for a while and I wasn't on the PR team, but everybody knew I loved podcasts. I had a podcast called podcast podcast that you can probably look up, but I wouldn't advise it. It was just I wanted to talk about them. So I had this podcast called podcast podcast and I was into podcasting at the publishing house and they would come up to me and say, can you get David Sideris on some podcasts? And I was like, yes, please, like a dream about this. And I realized that it's hard for PR people to get authors on podcasts. I don't think they were doing a great job. It's not their fault. Podcasts was a whole new world for them to learn and they didn't have time. They didn't know the space. You remember, it wasn't that long ago. It was hard to find podcasts, the podcasters, but I knew this stuff. So I started doing it at publishing, the publishing house, getting booking authors. And I'll never forget I emailed Anna Sale one time for on behalf of David Sideris. And I thought there was no way she is going to answer because to me, Anna Sale is like the biggest celebrity ever. And she answered and it had this like moment where I thought, I can do this. I can they're real people. They respond. I can do this. So I left there and I went to work for weight, what for a year to learn like that kind of side of podcasting. It was really hard for me to leave publishing. I loved that job. But then I started tink because I realized I knew these authors and I could start a company helping them get on podcasts. And the more I started working with podcasters, the more I realized, oh, they need marketing help. And the company just kept on growing because someone would be like, can you do this? And I'd be like, I guess so. You know, and I just kept on saying yes and yes and learning more and more and more and figuring more stuff out. And I absolutely love it. As Lauren has gotten deeper and deeper into helping podcasters grow their audience, her passion for listening to podcasts hasn't waned at all. And one of her favorite shows is called in your hands with Lizzie Cooperman. Lauren loves this show because its premise is super unique. Every week, Lizzie offers her listeners two choices. Is she going to get a piercing? Is she going to burn her notebooks? Is she going to let someone set her on fire? Is she going to get a job at Cold Stone Creamery? And her listeners decide for her, they vote in her Instagram. And whatever they say, she does the next day. And then the next week, she reports back. And every episode she asks talks to comedians about what they think she should choose. And then she talks to experts about what they think she should choose. So I emailed them and I said, because I'm like, what do you, what you call a Colin girl? When someone is like, Colin, with your stories about, I'm like, I have my phone. I'll first lie in line. Yeah. And I said, what if one of the options was grow the show, which is funny, because I didn't know about your show. All good. It's a very generic game. Well, it's my new favorite show. This is my growing podcast is my favorite thing. So, but it just I didn't know that that was taken. But I was like, let's call the episode and grow the show or, you know, give them another option. If they vote for me, then I'll help you grow your show for a month for free. As you might have guessed, Lizzie's audience voted that week for just that for Lizzie to bring Lauren on to help grow her podcast. And so their month long adventure together began. I had to get on a call with Lizzie and say, set up a system with her. What are you available for? You know, just get a breakdown like a normal, like she was a normal client. But I yeah, I immediately went to the people I know the best. You know, like I think I emailed the podcast, the daily's like ice the most the first thing because I thought she is so perfect for this. Like, and I have pitch, you know, I have clients on that show. So that's I went for the gigantic things that I really felt very, very strongly about. So I went for all like, I would say the biggest things that I always rely on, but I did them. It was so much more enthusiastically. It was so much more thoughtfully. There was a real story here. Then I started to notice other things happening. Other opportunities come up. So like day one was like, what have I known before I even started this campaign that I would rely on? And then it allowed me later to think a little bit more creatively and listen and see what the feedback was and what other opportunities there were. After going all in for one month, Lauren was able to help Lizzy more than double her show. They grew listenership by more than 160% in one month. And the most recent episodes numbers at the time of this recording were up 420% compared to the first episode that Lauren worked on. Even better, they were able to achieve this without a massive advertising budget or a massive studio to back it up. And so in this episode, we're going to talk about exactly what Lauren did to do just that to double a show in 30 days and how you can do it for your show too. Now, like you, Lizzy is an artist at heart. She really cares about putting out a great entertaining show that her audience loves. She identifies as an artist and a creator more so than someone who's business or marketing oriented. But the thing is I always say people should be spending half their time marketing and no one wants to hear that. But I kind of think it's true. I know it's like impossible. And it's also another side of your brain if you're making a podcast. But those people are out there. There are people you just haven't found them yet. So think really genuinely about where they could be. And if you're not finding them, they're somewhere else. Now, for many of us, the first place that we're going to go to try to find our audience that we haven't found yet is social media. We talk about it here all the time at Grow the Show. And it's most podcasters first reflex. So is that where you should go first to find that audience that you haven't found yet? Social media is good for the audience that you already have. You know, it's a good community. Listen, I write about podcasts all the time. I'm going to be able to add someone and have them respond. I want them to be there. I want to be able to find them. But I tell podcasters all the time that they shouldn't be spending very much time on social media. You know, if you have an episode out, you can put it out. You should be responding to people. And people have two reactions. They're either like, thank God. And I think a lot of times that's the people that really just want to make good stuff. And social media gives them a headache. And then I mean, this might be a hot, a spicy take. But because sometimes people are like, that's not true. I get a lot of retweets. And I'm like, or I get a lot of likes. And it's like, that means you have very good friends on social media. Those are probably the people that either already already have their listen or they're just your friends. And they love you. And that's great. But they liked your tweet because they like you. And they're not going to even listen. It's like an echo chamber. So if social media wasn't the first place that Lauren went to grow Lizzie's audience, what was the first thing that she did? Most important levers right off the bat are applying to the platforms. Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, they have links, which we can put in the show notes so that anyone can apply to be featured on these platforms. But it's just an air table. So you have to keep in mind when you're writing your, like, its subject line, just picture someone reading through an air table. What's going to stand out? Right? You have to say, award reading show does this. New season of this. What is going to catch someone's eye? Special episode for national umbrella day, whatever. You know, like, what do you have? Why is this so urgent that they do this right now? And another, there's a couple of important areas in those forms when you're filling them out. And I wouldn't fill them out more than once every three months, but you can do it. You should do it over and over again throughout the year. Also, in most of the forms, they ask, how are you going to promote this? And what they basically want to know is, well, we're a company too. How are you going to help us? So I wouldn't even throw around the word co-marketing. How are you going to co-market with Apple if they promote your show? So we'll say on the show, thank you Apple for featuring us, or we'll tag Apple in a post on social media, or we'll put it in our newsletter. We'll link to Apple in our newsletter. That's the kind of thing that they want to see. Another important part of that form is on the Apple one, you can choose which country to promote. And if you know from your analytics that you're big in another country, you should apply to that other country because those spaces are a lot less congested. So if you have a lot of listeners in Italy or the UK, you have a better chance of getting featured there. So you could apply in multiple countries, but keep that in mind. That's the thing that causes the spike. And you know, spikes make me a little nervous actually. I'm not anti-spike, but I generally prefer things that cause maybe slower growth and consistent growth. Why do spikes make you nervous? Because they go down. You know, you can get the people, but are they going to stay? You know, a spike goes down. And I know that you'll probably end up with more, but in general at my company, we try to set up partnerships like ongoing things that get in front of the right listeners. You know, if you have a spike, that means you didn't get in front of all of the right listeners, because some of them went away and didn't stick around. Yeah. And you could get a spike from an ad, you know, you spend money, you get a spike, but you're like, yay, look at it, the spike, but you know, you want those people to stay. But I believe that Lizzie's show is so good that these people will stay and they won't be able to, they'll want to know what they voted on. Yeah, exactly. So first step applied to the platforms, did any of them feature you? It was at the very top of Apple. And then it went down to new and no worthy. It was featured at the top spot on packet casts for like a week. And then is still in the carousel, I believe. And Spotify had it in a special like new episode category. Now Lauren admits that it can be difficult to get chosen to be featured on the apps as an independent podcaster. And that she and Lizzie did get a little lucky. But that is not to say that you shouldn't try because it's so easy to fill out the forms. But there are indeed other growth strategies that rely a little less on luck pitching yourself to newsletters. And there are podcast newsletters because the people that read those newsletters are the people who are actively seeking new podcasts. So and I would even kind of create an event, whether you're coming back from a new season or you have a special episode and try to get everybody to write about it the same week because you know marketing, you see that show mentioned 20 times. And you're like, I'll write already. I'll listen to it. You know, I got it. So the newsletters are really receptive, you know, especially someone like me, like podcast, the newsletter, I love pitches. And I love independent pitches. If I get a pitch that looks like this fancy PDF that was sent to 100 people, I don't want to see it. I like, you know, letter or just like a heartfelt note about why they really think their show is a good fit for my newsletter. So I would say sign up to podcast newsletters. I can also give you a link. I have a, I'm a podcast marketing magic. I have an issue about that. And sign sign up for them. Incredible. Read them before you pitch them. And another tip is don't cold pitch them. You know, I get a lot of cold pitches. I don't have time to read them all. But if someone responds to a newsletter that I sent out, I'm very likely to read it because I'm like, Oh, no, did I spell something wrong? Did someone have a note? So, and if you're responding to something they sent out, they know you're a member of their community. You're not just some random person. So I would actually wait for the right time and respond and say, Hey, I've been reading this newsletter. I really like it. And I actually have something you might want to include in it. And that is what I did with Lizzie. Getting featured on newsletters totally slept on. It sounds like you're saying extremely effective. Let's talk about that. Do you focus on newsletters that are like podcast recommendation newsletters or do you in addition to that branch out to newsletters that are about your niche? Definitely branch out. You know, I think a podcast about like I was just talking to someone who has a restaurant podcast. And I was like, there's probably a lot of like restaurant food related newsletters that don't get a lot of podcasts recommendations. So they might be extra interested. You might get extra attention. So I would absolutely. And also be following those people. I'm sure you already do. If you know, like be following those people on social media, I would also say before you pitch someone, make sure you're following them on social media, because they're probably going to look you up. Because getting featured in newsletters has a much higher success rate than getting featured on podcast apps. Lauren helped Lizzie get her podcast featured a lot. Got featured in in inside podcasting, pod news, vocal Fridays. And another one, I can remember a few. There's so many I've lost track. But yes, I think that that's one of the most underrated things. So far, we've talked about two big podcast growth levers getting featured in the podcast apps and getting featured in podcasting newsletters. Now, both of those features have something really important in common. It's something that I've mentioned before on this show, and it plays a huge role in determining how effective podcast growth strategies are. The thing that getting featured in the apps and getting featured in podcast newsletters have in common that makes them so effective is that both of those audiences are virtually guaranteed to already be podcast listeners, right? So Pew Research Center says that about 41% of Americans listen to a podcast every month, and that only 28% of them do it weekly. So if you were, for example, to buy a billboard to advertise your podcast, less than a third of people that see it, are even going to be podcast listeners in the first place. And an even smaller portion of those people are going to fit into your specific audience profile. And so no matter how great your billboard ad is, it is not likely to convince a non podcast listener to become a podcast listener. But in podcast apps and podcast listener newsletters, 100% of the people viewing those ads are podcast listeners who are looking to discover new podcasts. And if you feel like you've heard me say something similar to this on the show before you're right, because another place that you are guaranteed to find an audience that is made up of 100% podcast listeners is on other podcasts. You can be a guest, you can swap episodes, you can swap trailers, or you can even buy an ad on someone else's show. When I get a client, I pretend like I'm trying to find them podcast friends and set them up on podcast play dates. You can think of it however you'd like to think about it. That's how I think of it. Incredible. Podcast listeners contain multitudes. Think about your show tonally. Who tonally? Who what are their shows matched with you tonally? Those are the people that I think you might not have tapped into yet that will really appreciate you and come back every time and become your advocates and your biggest fans. And also there is something there are there's a huge community of people who love indie podcasts and don't want to listen to celebrity podcasts. They're looking for you. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean by tonal? Like they're a tonal match? Yeah, it's like not a subject match necessarily. Like if you were pitching, for example, every truffleman's articles of interest, you could start out going to clothing podcasts, you know, but also isn't that show about more like it's beautiful, right? It's good stories about people. It's very it's a deep dive into something. It's about culture and society. So just think of as a listener, what other shows might they listen to? And you can ask them, you know, what does the show feel like? What does it make you feel? You know, what does it sound like their cousins, right? Like not just it's you could pitch you could do a promo swap with the podcast about clothing that's like Janie and Jacob's hot clothing show. Wow, I just made that up. It doesn't sound amazing. And it's like not the same as every truffleman's beautiful piece about the history of clothing, right? So think about who your listeners really are there. I guarantee there's not so much. I stole this from Ariel. I say it all the time. There's not a discovery problem. It's like the audience is out there somewhere. I just have to find them. Now this whole getting featured on other podcasts thing is something that I've talked about a lot on this feed. We have a whole system for it called targeted podcast pitching or TPP. And while there are a lot of similarities between my and Lauren's systems, she taught me about another resource that absolutely blew my mind. The very first thing I do honestly is look up the show in Apple podcasts and all of the apps because usually there's a little thing at the bottom that says listeners also listen to this. And that is Apple data or whatever data telling you where the listeners are. So I start right there. And then I just start going into rabbit holes. If I see a really good match, I look up that show in Apple podcasts. And you know, you have to look and see is it still running? You know, is it actually a good fit? It just takes time. Another thing I love is this website called rafonic. I absolutely obsessed if you go to rafonic.com slash graph and type in a show. It will give you this three-dimensional galaxy of podcasts. And that's data that the closer these shows are to your show, the more audience overlap there is. And you can swivel it around. When I show it to clients on Zoom, I say, please act excited when I show this to you because if you don't act excited, my feelings are going to be hurt because it's so fun. I do this on Friday night. Get a glass of wine, play with rafonic. You can click on a show in the galaxy and expand it and find shows that match that show. This is a really fun, fun, fun way to find matches. I got a cut in here to say that you have to check out this tool. It's insanely helpful. When I recorded this interview, as soon as it ended, I shared this tool with everybody in the Grow the Show Facebook group and people went nuts for how valuable it was. You got to check it out. Yes, I'm like, I feel like I'm in outer space. This is crazy. Yeah. And another thing you can do is on my website at tankmedia.co, I have a promo-swab database, which means you can enter yourself into the database and you put the name of your show and approximately how many listeners you are interested in swapping for and some tags. And a little bit of other information. It's cool because if you want to swap and you go to that database, those are people that are actively seeking swaps. They have opted into this already so that when you email them, you're not really doing this huge convincing them to do this or telling them what a promo-swap is. These are people that know what it is and they're already in. So I would go and put yourself in that database right now. I get emails all the time saying that it works and I use it every day. It's at tankmedia.co. There'll be something at the top that says swap database. And there's actually a swap database for promo swaps and then there's a newsletter database that you, if you have a newsletter for your podcast, you can put that in that database because I also believe that podcasts with newsletters should be swapping as well. And the other thing that's interesting about Refonic, which you kind of said, is like you'll learn something about your audience too. There might not even be a tonal match, but you're like, why are there all these food shows on here? Oh my gosh, you'll learn about them. One of my very, very first clients when I started helping other people with their shows has a time management podcast and we did the trick where you scroll to the bottom of Apple podcasts and she discovered two incredibly surprising things. One was a bunch of shows about Louisiana, which makes sense because she lives in Baton Rouge and the other one was like six or seven shows for women real estate agents. So she didn't know it at the time, but she was, most of her, she was crushing it, you know, time, her show is time management for women, crushing it in the real estate agent space. You know, just from the like little 15 shows that Apple podcasts shows you and you might also like she was able to get that sort of insight. And so I can't even imagine what a tool like this would bring for folks. Man, like think about that one thing she learned and how that can change everything. Oh, and it did. I mean, she, she started with 1300 downloads a month. She just surpassed 20,000 and just signed a book deal with McGraw Hill, like, like, yeah, she's killing it. And it's because of different little, you know, tactics thinking outside the box like that. I would urge everyone to think very creatively about feed swaps because promo swaps, but I have noticed with feed swaps, which is when you put an entire episode of someone else's show onto your feed and then they do the same for you. And then you would introduce and say, Hey, this week we have a special episode from our friend copper and heat or whatever. I've been able to swap with shows that are much larger than mine. And I think it's because it's not an ad. It doesn't sound like an ad. It's a great piece of content, probably your best piece of content. So larger shows don't mind. Cause first of all, podcasting community is a wonderful community of people who like to help each other. And if they like your show and they want to help you, maybe somebody's helped them in the past. And they really like the show. They're thinking, I'm giving my listeners this great experience. I don't mind that I'm getting less numbers in return. And there's very playful things you can do. Like if you go big with the feed swaps, go big. You can negotiate. You can say, I'll leave your episode in my feed forever. You can take it out after 30 days. Or you can say, you don't want to do a feed drops in your show. Well, I'll drop a episode of your show into my feed. And all you have to do is give me a promo swap. That's valuable. Always think, what do I have that's valuable? And if it's a show you care about, you would probably love to put an episode of that show onto your feed. And they could give you promos in exchange. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a win win for you. Like, especially if you love that huge show because you get, I would love to be associated with that show and have an episode of theirs on my feed forever in perpetuity. Even if you don't promote my show, right? Yeah, I also think it's crazy. I also think like thinking around vacation times, like you might want to eat my women say, Hey, are you going out of town for Thanksgiving? You want a week off? Because people take vacations, they need vacations and they want something in their feed. So getting your podcast featured on podcast apps, podcasting newsletters and on other podcast feeds are the main ways that Lauren was able to help grow Lizzie's show. And there were a ton of smaller more creative strategies she used to like she went to podcasting conferences and she told everyone that she met there about the show. If she was getting interviewed about her business, she would make sure to at least mention Lizzie's show. That's just one example of how she was able to sneak growth opportunities into her day-to-day life. But whether she was getting Lizzie's podcast featured on a new platform or chatting up a stranger, there is one thing that Lauren claims helped her more than anything else. I think it's just what you can do if you have enthusiasm. I know that sounds so cheesy, but a lot of this was just because I emailed people and really I did not pitch. This wasn't pitching. This was really caring about something and understanding the story and telling a story. It's storytelling. That is what I learned. It's not pitches, it's storytelling. And just enthusiasm and optimism. And I know that that's so not what marketers want to hear, right? Right. It's like, no, what about the numbers? But it's also pull every lever, think outside the box. And especially if you're the podcaster, burnout is real. Mix it up. Do something new. I always tell podcasters, we'll just try one thing new or call up a podcast. I always say if you're getting started, make a list of your 10 podcast friends and reach out to them and have a 15-minute conversation. I guarantee you'll walk away with an idea and excitement for what you're going to do together. When you are on the daily grind, remaining energetic and enthusiastic can be difficult. Believe me, I know firsthand I have been doing nothing but podcasting for more than four years. And not every single day was 100% passion. So to wrap up this episode, I want to issue you your own one month challenge just like Lauren just did for the rest of this month. I want you to ramp up your energy and enthusiasm as much as you can and make sure that you're spending at least half of the time that you're spending on your podcast, working on fun, interesting, and creative marketing and growth strategies to grow your podcast. Take the steps to get your podcast featured on the apps in newsletters and on other shows and take some time to think outside the box and come up with your own creative growth strategies to find your specific target listener. I want you to go hard for this for just one month. Or if a month is too challenging, just do a week and see where it gets you. But above all else, try to break yourself out of whatever stressful, overwhelming schedule you currently have yourself in. Take some time, make some space and you will have some fun. Now, if you're not sure exactly what that looks like for you, your current podcast and your situation, then feel free to join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group where you can bounce ideas off of us and connect with other Grow the Show podcasters who are trying their own new creative ways to grow their podcast audience. So if you accept my challenge, I would love to hear that from you there. The link to join us is in the show notes. Grow the Show is a Q9 production. This episode was produced and written by myself and Catherine Nails with post-production by Max Graham and a very special thanks to Lauren Purcell, Ariel Nissenblatt and Lizzie Cooperman. For Grow the Show, my name is Kevin Schmidland. I'll see you next time.