DOES THE WORLD REALLY NEED ANOTHER PODCAST?
The answer to that question may be no. But the more relevant answer is this: The world may not need yet another podcast...but you know who does? Your narrowly defined target audience.
People likely laugh at my dogged enthusiasm for podcasting as a thought leadership platform. Want to know why I’m such an avid believer?
Busy executives and decision makers—the people you need to reach and sell to—self report that audio is becoming their preferred format of media consumption for a variety of reasons:
It’s passive: They can consume it on the go, during a commute or while working out.
It’s immersive: Though they may be doing something else at the time, you have their full and undivided attention for 30 minutes at a time! What other format allows you to achieve that?
It’s personal: The experience is multi-sensory and four-dimensional. Your audiences will come to feel like they know you personally, which is ultimately who they will award their trust and business to.
It’s on their timeline: Podcasts are consumed on-demand, meaning podcasters maximize their exposure in this new world of anytime/anywhere media consumption.
Remember, if you are producing a podcast to grow your business—and not be the next internet celebrity—you don’t need to appeal to everybody. You only need to serve a very distinct and defined core audience. Unless you’re the next Joe Rogan or Howard Stern, you’re not going to amass an audience of millions. But that’s not the point.
THE SMALLER YOU GO, THE BIGGER YOU’LL BE
Consider my friends Bryan O’Keefe and Gena Usenheimer, who co-host “Into the Breach,” which bills itself as “the first law firm podcast exclusively devoted to reps and warranties insurance and the transactional risk markets.” Whoa. Talk about niche. What even is that, you might be asking.
Yes. Extremely niche.
When Bryan approached us about his idea to start a podcast serving a very niche audience, he really meant niche. He told me, there are maybe 20 companies in the entire world that would be in a position to hire me and my firm for this type of work that I specialize in. My audience is a very specific person within those types of companies. I figured, the largest his audience might ever get would be one or two hundred people.
Did that discourage Bryan and Gena? No. It emboldened them.
Bryan told me, “Nobody out there is doing this type of podcast. Nobody’s serving this audience. We have the opportunity to be the first. And if we do it well, we may be able to stake out a position as the only podcast serving this market.”
SMALL BALL YIELDS HOME RUNS
So how’d that turn out for them?
Bryan wrote me on LinkedIn, “Gena and I saw an incredible explosion of work in the last two months. We were averaging about [X] deals per month previously. And we’ve had [10X] the last two months, including [6X] alone this month! It was a very good ‘problem’ to have. We can't say enough the role that we think the podcast is playing in the growth.”
You can do the same for you and your podcast. But resist the urge to appeal to a mass audience, and instead target only a small niche, with niche content and specialized expertise.
So here’s step one: Complete this sentence:
My podcast is going to provide valuable __________________ for ___________________.
The first blank is your content focus. The second is your audience.