Creating Goals
Episode Show Notes
It may take around 18 months on average for a podcaster to reach a sizable audience, from the moment you launch to when you can actually start pitching to advertisers. Right off the bat, It is essential to set clear goals, not only to ensure your own productivity but to measure your show’s progress. Whether you are looking to monetize, or simply doing it for the love of podcasting, setting clear objectives and realistic expectations is fundamental, this episode will make you evaluate your goal setting and help you model it around your own take on podcasting.
Jump straight into:
(01:08) - Understanding the differences between goals and purpose — “We always recommend thinking about podcasting as another arm of your overall strategy.”
(02:50) - Is podcast revenue even achievable? All you need to know about monetization. — “It’s not impossible, but it does take some time and effort.”
(05:17) - How companies could benefit from internal podcasting. — “You want to get your employees to engage with the content that you’re putting out there.”
(07:17) - Podcasting as a hobby and the value of small wins — “You’ll be in a great spot to see or feel success from what you’re creating.”
PodOn is hosted by TJ Bonaventura and Julian Lewis, founders of the full-service podcast company based in San Francisco, StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at info@studiopodsf.com or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodmedia. Music by GaryOAKland.
Episode Transcript (via Rev.com)
Julian Lewis:
TJ, Couple Collective, 19 episodes in, I would say I have on average about 160 downloads. Where does that put me in the grand scheme of all podcasts?
TJ Bonaventura:
So with those numbers, according to The Feed, Libsyn's podcast, that would put you in the top 50% of podcasters out there.
Julian Lewis:
Bam, that's great.
TJ Bonaventura:
But there could be some improvement.
Julian Lewis:
Let's say I had 7,500 downloads. Where would that put me?
TJ Bonaventura:
That would put you in the top 5% of podcasts out there.
Julian Lewis:
All right. So I have some work to do.
TJ Bonaventura:
You got a goal. We like goals. And that brings us to this episode of the PodOn Podcast.
Julian Lewis:
This is the PodOn Podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
We're your hosts, TJ Bonaventura, that's me, and Julian Lewis.
Julian Lewis:
That's me. As founders of a podcast media company, we had to start a podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
So join us each episode as we and our guests drop knowledge on podcasting for you, the curious and scrappy podcaster.
Julian Lewis:
On today's episode, we're going to talk about, "What is the goal of your podcast?" TJ, can you break down the difference between a goal and a purpose?
TJ Bonaventura:
Absolutely. So in podcasting terms, the goal is going to be what is the end result of your podcast and your show? Whereas the purpose is why you're doing it in the first place. So when I think of goals, I think of, "Do I want to monetize this? Am I doing it for the reason of making some sort of income? Am I doing it just for a hobby with some friends? Or am I doing it as part of a larger branding initiative?"
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And for me personally, with Couple Collective, I see this as a marketing vehicle in the grander scheme of what I'm trying to accomplish. I think I've mentioned on here before that, ultimately, I would love to get couples out in the wild together and doing couples retreats and really building their relationships. And so for me, most likely I'll probably never have an ad on my podcast, but if I can engage with a handful of couples at one time in person, that would be me accomplishing my goal.
TJ Bonaventura:
And I think that's the right approach for the majority of podcasters out there, given where the industry is right now, it is a saturated market, there are a ton of podcasts out there. We always recommend thinking about podcasts as another arm of your overall strategy of what you're trying to do. Now for Couple Collective, you mentioned it, you want to be part of a larger scheme of what you want to do in getting couples together. We have a podcast on our network called Dating in the Bay. They're talking about different dating scenarios and experiences that these two women have had in the Bay Area, but also they're doing matchmaking on the side. And so the podcast is going to help elevate their matchmaking service and bringing singles together.
TJ Bonaventura:
Now, I want to be clear here, because oftentimes we have clients come to us and their goal is to monetize. Monetizing is not impossible, but it does take some time and effort. And often you're not going to get the monetization numbers you want until you get your listenership up. So we just want to set the stage and be very honest and candid about it's not like what it was in 2015. You put out a podcast out there, because of the limited numbers of shows that you are going to get listeners. And so advertisers are going to be wanting to advertise with you where you can make some income. So you need to have some sort of approach. It's not impossible, but you need to be realistic about what your goals are going to be for your show.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And TJ, you mentioned 2015, and I want to mention that there probably weren't as many advertisers that were leaned into podcasting then. So the opportunity now is probably greater just because of the sheer fact that more advertisers see it as medium that they should be on. But you have to have that consistency. You have to have patience and you have to spend time really harnessing your craft and really speaking and engaging with your audience so you can continue to build those numbers up over time. Like, I've been doing Couple Collective for almost two years, 19 episodes, and yes, I've had an episode that's had almost 500 downloads in one episode, but it's going to take me a lot more time if I want to get those numbers really, really up. And I know that it takes probably on average at least 18 months for you to get a sizable audience where you can then even solicit advertisers to come on your podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
Exactly. And most advertisers won't even be interested in advertising with you, and this is the hard truth, unless you have a certain amount of thresholds. For example, Midroll, a massive player in the advertising market, where they help you get advertisers on your show, won't have a conversation with you unless you have 30,000 downloads per episode. That's a lot.
Julian Lewis:
That's a lot, yeah.
TJ Bonaventura:
And so some of the tactics that we've talked about in the past, on our preparing the guest episode, we talked about having a strategy and leveraging your guest, being able to create different social media posts, having your guests share those social media posts. Those are all great strategies to start gaining your listenership, but consistency is going to be the best thing. You can't just be consistent without some sort of marketing strategy.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I do want to say from a monetization standpoint that you don't necessarily need to get to 30,000 downloads to make a dollar. There are ways for you to do ad insertions where right out of the gates you can have ads, but most of those are done on a CPM basis. And if you don't have the listenership, you're not going to make enough to really move the needle anyway. So TJ, I want to pivot a little bit away from monetization because if you are a company who is launching an internal podcast, your goal isn't going to be monetization. Do you want to touch a little bit on that?
TJ Bonaventura:
Yes. I think in that situation, if you're doing an internal podcast, you want to be part of a larger project that you're doing, right? So from an internal perspective, you want to use podcasting as another modality. You want to use it as a tool to help gain whatever it is that podcast is going to be about or what the end goal is. For example, training and onboarding. So I used to work at Salesforce. They used to fly everybody in across the world for an internal training. Maybe it would be in their benefit to create a podcast where some of this training can be done wherever these employees are flying in from, or maybe it's on the plane, maybe it's during their coffee break. That way they don't have to sit inside of a larger conference room to learn for five straight days. Now we can cut that time into three days. And then with different tools, such as Storyboard, you can start to track when they're listening, when they're falling off, how many people are listening and really start to gauge what the engagement is for that particular episode.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And you said engagement, and I think that's the goal, right? You want to get your employees to engage with the content that you're putting out there. There's so many emails that are multiple scroll emails with a ton of attachments, like 14 attachments. It's just like, how is an employee going to get through you that when they're trying to balance working at home with their kids in the background or responsibilities that they have, when they can listen to a podcast asynchronously to whatever they're doing? And if there's something that they need to dive deeper on, they can use the link in the show notes to get to that. So I think the goal with that would be engagement. You want your employees to engage. And to your point, you mentioned Storyboard, and Storyboard has the ability to have analytics to see how much of the episode are people listening to, where people are dropping off, and you can even reward people who are listening to the full episode. And if I remember correctly, that's at 90%, right? They just have to listen to 90% and they've done it.
TJ Bonaventura:
Yep. Gamify it, for sure. I think it's a great approach.
Julian Lewis:
So TJ, what if you're not a company and you're not focused on an internal podcast or you're not trying to monetize, or you don't have it as a cog in your marketing wheel, what else may you have a goal for your podcast?
TJ Bonaventura:
Yeah. There are little things that you can do, more tangible things, like upping the audio quality, making sure that you're releasing on the cadence that you've set forth for yourself, making sure that you hit X number of episodes. So perhaps you're getting started and you're doing once a week. You're like, "I want to hit 50 episodes." All right, hit 50 episodes, it's a year's worth of content, just about, you've hit your goal. Now, what do you want to do for your next goal? And then maybe you'll find that you want to take these other steps. So maybe it's a hobby and then it turns into, "You know what, I'm actually having a lot more fun. I want to invest more time and money into this. And now I want actually get some monetization." And now you have X amount of episodes that you've already recorded and you have a little bit more of a portfolio of what you've done in the past.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I think those small wins build it into a habit, and I think you'll be in a great spot to see or feel success from what you're creating. And in all honesty, it's like journaling. If you just want to get your voice out there and you don't necessarily need to be heard by the masses, maybe it's just your mom or your dad. That's how I started. Just put it out there and get the accomplishment from feeling like you did something that you set out to do.
TJ Bonaventura:
So for takeaways here, we have: Understand the difference between a goal and a purpose. A goal is what your end result is going to be. If it's going to be part of a larger branding initiative, make sure it is just that. Don't focus so much on the monetization, focus on how you're going to be arming your overall brand. And that's the same if you're a company doing an internal podcast, or if you're someone like Julian who wants to get couples together. Second, if you're going to monetize, make sure you have a strategy set forth. We'll go in more detail on a future episode here, but just don't assume that you're going to make money right away. There is a lot of effort that goes into making podcast revenue. And then finally, if you're a hobbyist and you're doing this for fun, make sure you're setting goals for yourself in terms of tangible items like the audio quality and number of episodes that you want to hit in a certain amount of time.
Julian Lewis:
Right on.
TJ Bonaventura:
Every episode of the PodOn Podcast is produced and edited by StudioPod Media. For more information about our work and our clients go to studiopodsf.com.
Julian Lewis:
Shout out to GaryOAKland for the fire track.
TJ Bonaventura:
Gary O.
TJ, Couple Collective, 19 episodes in, I would say I have on average about 160 downloads. Where does that put me in the grand scheme of all podcasts?
TJ Bonaventura:
So with those numbers, according to The Feed, Libsyn's podcast, that would put you in the top 50% of podcasters out there.
Julian Lewis:
Bam, that's great.
TJ Bonaventura:
But there could be some improvement.
Julian Lewis:
Let's say I had 7,500 downloads. Where would that put me?
TJ Bonaventura:
That would put you in the top 5% of podcasts out there.
Julian Lewis:
All right. So I have some work to do.
TJ Bonaventura:
You got a goal. We like goals. And that brings us to this episode of the PodOn Podcast.
Julian Lewis:
This is the PodOn Podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
We're your hosts, TJ Bonaventura, that's me, and Julian Lewis.
Julian Lewis:
That's me. As founders of a podcast media company, we had to start a podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
So join us each episode as we and our guests drop knowledge on podcasting for you, the curious and scrappy podcaster.
Julian Lewis:
On today's episode, we're going to talk about, "What is the goal of your podcast?" TJ, can you break down the difference between a goal and a purpose?
TJ Bonaventura:
Absolutely. So in podcasting terms, the goal is going to be what is the end result of your podcast and your show? Whereas the purpose is why you're doing it in the first place. So when I think of goals, I think of, "Do I want to monetize this? Am I doing it for the reason of making some sort of income? Am I doing it just for a hobby with some friends? Or am I doing it as part of a larger branding initiative?"
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And for me personally, with Couple Collective, I see this as a marketing vehicle in the grander scheme of what I'm trying to accomplish. I think I've mentioned on here before that, ultimately, I would love to get couples out in the wild together and doing couples retreats and really building their relationships. And so for me, most likely I'll probably never have an ad on my podcast, but if I can engage with a handful of couples at one time in person, that would be me accomplishing my goal.
TJ Bonaventura:
And I think that's the right approach for the majority of podcasters out there, given where the industry is right now, it is a saturated market, there are a ton of podcasts out there. We always recommend thinking about podcasts as another arm of your overall strategy of what you're trying to do. Now for Couple Collective, you mentioned it, you want to be part of a larger scheme of what you want to do in getting couples together. We have a podcast on our network called Dating in the Bay. They're talking about different dating scenarios and experiences that these two women have had in the Bay Area, but also they're doing matchmaking on the side. And so the podcast is going to help elevate their matchmaking service and bringing singles together.
TJ Bonaventura:
Now, I want to be clear here, because oftentimes we have clients come to us and their goal is to monetize. Monetizing is not impossible, but it does take some time and effort. And often you're not going to get the monetization numbers you want until you get your listenership up. So we just want to set the stage and be very honest and candid about it's not like what it was in 2015. You put out a podcast out there, because of the limited numbers of shows that you are going to get listeners. And so advertisers are going to be wanting to advertise with you where you can make some income. So you need to have some sort of approach. It's not impossible, but you need to be realistic about what your goals are going to be for your show.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And TJ, you mentioned 2015, and I want to mention that there probably weren't as many advertisers that were leaned into podcasting then. So the opportunity now is probably greater just because of the sheer fact that more advertisers see it as medium that they should be on. But you have to have that consistency. You have to have patience and you have to spend time really harnessing your craft and really speaking and engaging with your audience so you can continue to build those numbers up over time. Like, I've been doing Couple Collective for almost two years, 19 episodes, and yes, I've had an episode that's had almost 500 downloads in one episode, but it's going to take me a lot more time if I want to get those numbers really, really up. And I know that it takes probably on average at least 18 months for you to get a sizable audience where you can then even solicit advertisers to come on your podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
Exactly. And most advertisers won't even be interested in advertising with you, and this is the hard truth, unless you have a certain amount of thresholds. For example, Midroll, a massive player in the advertising market, where they help you get advertisers on your show, won't have a conversation with you unless you have 30,000 downloads per episode. That's a lot.
Julian Lewis:
That's a lot, yeah.
TJ Bonaventura:
And so some of the tactics that we've talked about in the past, on our preparing the guest episode, we talked about having a strategy and leveraging your guest, being able to create different social media posts, having your guests share those social media posts. Those are all great strategies to start gaining your listenership, but consistency is going to be the best thing. You can't just be consistent without some sort of marketing strategy.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I do want to say from a monetization standpoint that you don't necessarily need to get to 30,000 downloads to make a dollar. There are ways for you to do ad insertions where right out of the gates you can have ads, but most of those are done on a CPM basis. And if you don't have the listenership, you're not going to make enough to really move the needle anyway. So TJ, I want to pivot a little bit away from monetization because if you are a company who is launching an internal podcast, your goal isn't going to be monetization. Do you want to touch a little bit on that?
TJ Bonaventura:
Yes. I think in that situation, if you're doing an internal podcast, you want to be part of a larger project that you're doing, right? So from an internal perspective, you want to use podcasting as another modality. You want to use it as a tool to help gain whatever it is that podcast is going to be about or what the end goal is. For example, training and onboarding. So I used to work at Salesforce. They used to fly everybody in across the world for an internal training. Maybe it would be in their benefit to create a podcast where some of this training can be done wherever these employees are flying in from, or maybe it's on the plane, maybe it's during their coffee break. That way they don't have to sit inside of a larger conference room to learn for five straight days. Now we can cut that time into three days. And then with different tools, such as Storyboard, you can start to track when they're listening, when they're falling off, how many people are listening and really start to gauge what the engagement is for that particular episode.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And you said engagement, and I think that's the goal, right? You want to get your employees to engage with the content that you're putting out there. There's so many emails that are multiple scroll emails with a ton of attachments, like 14 attachments. It's just like, how is an employee going to get through you that when they're trying to balance working at home with their kids in the background or responsibilities that they have, when they can listen to a podcast asynchronously to whatever they're doing? And if there's something that they need to dive deeper on, they can use the link in the show notes to get to that. So I think the goal with that would be engagement. You want your employees to engage. And to your point, you mentioned Storyboard, and Storyboard has the ability to have analytics to see how much of the episode are people listening to, where people are dropping off, and you can even reward people who are listening to the full episode. And if I remember correctly, that's at 90%, right? They just have to listen to 90% and they've done it.
TJ Bonaventura:
Yep. Gamify it, for sure. I think it's a great approach.
Julian Lewis:
So TJ, what if you're not a company and you're not focused on an internal podcast or you're not trying to monetize, or you don't have it as a cog in your marketing wheel, what else may you have a goal for your podcast?
TJ Bonaventura:
Yeah. There are little things that you can do, more tangible things, like upping the audio quality, making sure that you're releasing on the cadence that you've set forth for yourself, making sure that you hit X number of episodes. So perhaps you're getting started and you're doing once a week. You're like, "I want to hit 50 episodes." All right, hit 50 episodes, it's a year's worth of content, just about, you've hit your goal. Now, what do you want to do for your next goal? And then maybe you'll find that you want to take these other steps. So maybe it's a hobby and then it turns into, "You know what, I'm actually having a lot more fun. I want to invest more time and money into this. And now I want actually get some monetization." And now you have X amount of episodes that you've already recorded and you have a little bit more of a portfolio of what you've done in the past.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I think those small wins build it into a habit, and I think you'll be in a great spot to see or feel success from what you're creating. And in all honesty, it's like journaling. If you just want to get your voice out there and you don't necessarily need to be heard by the masses, maybe it's just your mom or your dad. That's how I started. Just put it out there and get the accomplishment from feeling like you did something that you set out to do.
TJ Bonaventura:
So for takeaways here, we have: Understand the difference between a goal and a purpose. A goal is what your end result is going to be. If it's going to be part of a larger branding initiative, make sure it is just that. Don't focus so much on the monetization, focus on how you're going to be arming your overall brand. And that's the same if you're a company doing an internal podcast, or if you're someone like Julian who wants to get couples together. Second, if you're going to monetize, make sure you have a strategy set forth. We'll go in more detail on a future episode here, but just don't assume that you're going to make money right away. There is a lot of effort that goes into making podcast revenue. And then finally, if you're a hobbyist and you're doing this for fun, make sure you're setting goals for yourself in terms of tangible items like the audio quality and number of episodes that you want to hit in a certain amount of time.
Julian Lewis:
Right on.
TJ Bonaventura:
Every episode of the PodOn Podcast is produced and edited by StudioPod Media. For more information about our work and our clients go to studiopodsf.com.
Julian Lewis:
Shout out to GaryOAKland for the fire track.
TJ Bonaventura:
Gary O.