Defining your Audience
Episode Show Notes
On this PodOn episode, TJ and Julian chat about a topic that may be overlooked by the majority of new podcasters: defining their audience. Defining an audience is as important as having great content, in the end, what matters is who’s actually listening to what you’re putting out there. Tailoring your episodes around your audience will not only improve your workflow in the production phase but will impact your whole podcast in a positive way in the long term. Check out today’s episode to learn from TJ and Julian’s experience as settled podcasters.
Jump straight into:
(01:12) - How to ensure each episode is going to be built for your audience - “I could help singles and couples with the pain point that they are going through when starting or growing a relationship”.
(01:47) - What ‘defining your audience’ really is - “Hone in on your topic and add value to a particular group of people and they want to learn more”.
(02:25) - How Pod On podcast defined their audience. “They are curious because they want to learn more and perfect their craft of podcasting, and they’re scrappy because they started in their bedroom and want to improve the quality of their episode”.
(04:16) - Reach for quality over quantity - “Often times brands are looking for nano influencers who have engagement rates versus someone who has a huge audience”.
(05:17) - Make sure you are listening to your audience - “Learn who these people are and what types of content they are engaging with”.
(06:15) - Analytics as additional tools to narrow down your niche - “You can start to use those resources to help you identify your audience even further.”
(06:51) - Target your corporate employees if you are interested in doing a podcast of a company - “Think more from the employee perspective versus an executive perspective.”
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)
TJ Bonaventura:
Hey Julian, how many podcast listeners are there?
Julian Lewis:
Crazy that you asked me that, TJ, because I was just reading E-marketer, and in an article in February of 2020, they projected that there will be over 105 million podcast listeners. And in 2024, they're saying there's going to be over 135 million. Now, Infinite Dial is saying that 70% of the US population has listened to a podcast, and that number is only sure to be growing from there. At least we hope.
TJ Bonaventura:
This is the PodOn podcast. We're your hosts, TJ Bonaventura, that's me, and Julian Lewis.
Julian Lewis:
That's me.
TJ Bonaventura:
As founders of a podcast media company, we had to start a podcast, so join us each episode as we and our guests drop knowledge on podcasting for you, the curious and scrappy podcaster.
TJ Bonaventura:
On this episode of the PodOn podcast, we're talking about defining your audience, the importance, and why everybody should do this, and why it's often skipped out. All right, Julian, I'm throwing it over to you. Couple Collective, talk to me about when you got started, is this something that you did? And what did you do to ensure that each episode is going to be built and created for your audience?
Julian Lewis:
From the jump? No, honestly, I did not define my audience. Actually, I technically did, I defined my audience as actually me, because I wanted to understand, from couples, what made the relationship successful, and so I saw myself as an observing participant. However, as I got feedback, I did start to define my audience, and really understand that I could help both singles and couples with the pain points that they go through when starting or growing a relationship.
TJ Bonaventura:
And that's because Couple Collective is interviewing people who are in relationships, so that makes a lot of sense. On the last episode, we talked about pod fade, and we talked about planning out your episodes. A lot of planning starts with who your audience is going to be. I think often when we have our clients come in, and they're thinking about defining their audience, they're thinking about demographic information, so things like gender, race, age. That's not necessarily what we're talking about here, is it Julian?
Julian Lewis:
No, definitely not. And in all honesty, oftentimes, when people come in here, they start so broad. But in all reality, you want to hone in on your topic, and how that's going to bring value to a particular group of people who are going to want to continue to engage and are going to want to learn more in the cadence to which you're releasing your podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
And let's talk about the PodOn podcast, our show here. We think that there's a lot of people who would like to listen about podcasts, and there's a lot of people who are interested in podcasting, but we narrowed it down to two different adjectives around our audience: curious and scrappy. And so we had a whole white boarding session, and making sure that each episode that we record, and each show that we produce, is going to be focused around those curious scrappy podcasters. And again, those could be individuals, those could be people who have pod faded and they've come back, they could be corporate partners who want to create a show or episodes for their internal audience.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, and I think they're curious because they want to learn more, and they want to perfect their craft of podcasting. And they're scrappy because, most likely, they've started in their closet, they've started in their bedroom, and they want to improve the quality of the show that they're going to put out there.
TJ Bonaventura:
That's a really good point. So when it comes to planning all of our episodes, we ask ourselves a very simple question. How is this going to pertain to the curious scrappy podcaster? In our episode outline, it's always the first thing we ask, and it's always part of our theme of that particular episode, to ensure that we're always making sure the content is going to be relatable to the curious scrappy podcast.
Julian Lewis:
And I think to that point, TJ, I remember a conversation that we about a particular guest that we wanted to have on the podcast, or I wanted to have on the podcast. And the first thing that you said to me was, "Okay, how are they going to be able to address the curious scrappy podcaster?" And to your point, it's at the top of our doc, and it's important that whether it's us talking about a topic for 15 minutes, or we're bringing somebody on to dive a little bit deeper, they're adding value to that audience.
TJ Bonaventura:
Exactly. And some good exercises to do here, we white boarded, write down on a piece of paper, if you and your co-host separately talk about, if you want to talk about Star Wars or Star Trek, or women's rights, whatever it may be, write down some adjectives that you would define your audience and who you want to listen to. As we stated at the beginning, there's over a hundred million listeners of podcasts today. So rather than trying to capture the broader, larger audience, think less about the quantity and more about the quality.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, and I think when you talk about quality, it's the quality of engagement, and I liken it to influencer space in terms of marketing, right? There's these influencers who have huge followings, but their engagement is relatively low. And so oftentimes, brands, they're looking for micro or nano influencers who have engagement rates closer to 20%, versus somebody who has a huge audience but has like one or 2% engagement rates, so think about it in that context.
TJ Bonaventura:
And in addition, when you start to do other activities in tandem with your podcast, like sell merchandise, or use tools like Patreon, or any of those other third party platforms that's going to help you earn money some way or the other, that's going to be easier for you to grow when you have a listener that is more engaged with what you're doing versus trying to acquire someone new.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, definitely. And the one thing that I do want to point out, TJ, is that when you start and you define your audience, make sure that you're listening to your audience as well. As much as you want them to listen to you, make sure that you're listening to them. So on your social channels, make sure that you're asking for feedback. At the close of your episode, make sure that you have a place where they can reach you so you can get a better understanding of the type of content that they want. I think podcasting platforms out there today, they do a decent job of giving you analytics. But, again, it goes back to that demographic information, and really what you want to know is, who are these people and what types of content are they engaging with? And is it something that I want to continue to speak to? Or do I want to pivot to make sure that I'm hitting on the topics that they're most interested in?
TJ Bonaventura:
That's a great point, because then you'll find out that those quality listeners will give you that feedback. They'll tell you they want to have somebody on the show. They'll tell you what they didn't like about a certain episode, and they're going to be sort of your north star or guiding light in how to take the podcast forward.
Julian Lewis:
In addition to polling your audience directly, if you start to build an audience on like Facebook or Instagram, or even Twitter for instance, you do have the ability to look at their insights, and you could start to understand, okay, what are the interests that those individuals have and what are the adjacent interests? And do those things fit with a type of content that you want to put out there? And if you want to go at one level deeper, if you have certain keywords that kind of align with your audience, put those into Google, look at Google trends, and try to see are there adjacent or closely related topics that you can touch on that will excite your audience?
TJ Bonaventura:
Now when it comes to our corporate listeners out there, this is still something that you want to try and narrow down, even though you know the listeners are going to be your employees.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, definitely. You have to think about the different disciplines, right? So if you're creating a podcast that's going to be centered around your engineers, versus your sales team, versus your product people, you want to make sure that you're speaking their language, and so understanding who that audience is can go a long way.
TJ Bonaventura:
Exactly, and if you have a podcast where your CEO or an executive is being interviewed, think about it more from the employee perspective versus the executive perspective. I think oftentimes what we see, and this is a very common use case amongst our corporate partners, is they want to just get the CEO's voice or the executive's voice out there, but they're not really taking into consideration what the employees want to hear, it's more like, "Our CEO's talking, we all should be listening." If you can kind of take an approach of really understanding who your audience is, from an employee perspective, it'll really create more engaging content and it'll make your podcast more successful within your company.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, definitely. And I think a lot of tech companies, you know we're in San Francisco, so we get exposure to a lot of tech companies, and a lot of them do a great job of having Q&A's with their CEOs, which is a great format or a great platform for your employees to be able to ask questions. But maybe, once the CEO has given their overview of the business, and then gone into Q&A, maybe you don't need all of that content to live into a podcast. Maybe instead, the CEO can go back and record for five or 10 minutes, and say like, "Here are the highlights of the topic for today, and here's a little bit more on the questions that were asked, and how we're addressing those questions."
TJ Bonaventura:
Great point, and same thing with learning and development too. Everybody that goes on to, we've all experienced within an organization, when you either onboarding or you're learning something new, that it's pretty cookie cutter for the most part. Think about creating more L&D opportunities for your listeners based off their roles. So you mentioned different disciplines within the organization, maybe you want to do some learning and development for engineers specifically, maybe it's going to be for marketers, maybe it's going to be for salespeople. Whatever it may be, think about coming at a different approach for each individual discipline rather than the broader company itself.
Julian Lewis:
So let's quickly recap. There's really three things. First, whiteboard and establish who you think your audience is. Second, stay away from demographics. I know it's appealing to look into the podcast analytics, and it can be helpful, but really, try to go a level deeper. And third, make sure you get direct feedback from your listeners. As much as you want them to listen to you, you have to listen to them as well.
TJ Bonaventura:
PodOn.
TJ Bonaventura:
Every episode of the PodOn podcast is produced and edited by Studio Pod Media. For more information about our work and our clients, go to studiopodsf.com.
Julian Lewis:
Shout out to Gary Oakland for the fire track.
TJ Bonaventura:
Gary O.
Hey Julian, how many podcast listeners are there?
Julian Lewis:
Crazy that you asked me that, TJ, because I was just reading E-marketer, and in an article in February of 2020, they projected that there will be over 105 million podcast listeners. And in 2024, they're saying there's going to be over 135 million. Now, Infinite Dial is saying that 70% of the US population has listened to a podcast, and that number is only sure to be growing from there. At least we hope.
TJ Bonaventura:
This is the PodOn podcast. We're your hosts, TJ Bonaventura, that's me, and Julian Lewis.
Julian Lewis:
That's me.
TJ Bonaventura:
As founders of a podcast media company, we had to start a podcast, so join us each episode as we and our guests drop knowledge on podcasting for you, the curious and scrappy podcaster.
TJ Bonaventura:
On this episode of the PodOn podcast, we're talking about defining your audience, the importance, and why everybody should do this, and why it's often skipped out. All right, Julian, I'm throwing it over to you. Couple Collective, talk to me about when you got started, is this something that you did? And what did you do to ensure that each episode is going to be built and created for your audience?
Julian Lewis:
From the jump? No, honestly, I did not define my audience. Actually, I technically did, I defined my audience as actually me, because I wanted to understand, from couples, what made the relationship successful, and so I saw myself as an observing participant. However, as I got feedback, I did start to define my audience, and really understand that I could help both singles and couples with the pain points that they go through when starting or growing a relationship.
TJ Bonaventura:
And that's because Couple Collective is interviewing people who are in relationships, so that makes a lot of sense. On the last episode, we talked about pod fade, and we talked about planning out your episodes. A lot of planning starts with who your audience is going to be. I think often when we have our clients come in, and they're thinking about defining their audience, they're thinking about demographic information, so things like gender, race, age. That's not necessarily what we're talking about here, is it Julian?
Julian Lewis:
No, definitely not. And in all honesty, oftentimes, when people come in here, they start so broad. But in all reality, you want to hone in on your topic, and how that's going to bring value to a particular group of people who are going to want to continue to engage and are going to want to learn more in the cadence to which you're releasing your podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
And let's talk about the PodOn podcast, our show here. We think that there's a lot of people who would like to listen about podcasts, and there's a lot of people who are interested in podcasting, but we narrowed it down to two different adjectives around our audience: curious and scrappy. And so we had a whole white boarding session, and making sure that each episode that we record, and each show that we produce, is going to be focused around those curious scrappy podcasters. And again, those could be individuals, those could be people who have pod faded and they've come back, they could be corporate partners who want to create a show or episodes for their internal audience.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, and I think they're curious because they want to learn more, and they want to perfect their craft of podcasting. And they're scrappy because, most likely, they've started in their closet, they've started in their bedroom, and they want to improve the quality of the show that they're going to put out there.
TJ Bonaventura:
That's a really good point. So when it comes to planning all of our episodes, we ask ourselves a very simple question. How is this going to pertain to the curious scrappy podcaster? In our episode outline, it's always the first thing we ask, and it's always part of our theme of that particular episode, to ensure that we're always making sure the content is going to be relatable to the curious scrappy podcast.
Julian Lewis:
And I think to that point, TJ, I remember a conversation that we about a particular guest that we wanted to have on the podcast, or I wanted to have on the podcast. And the first thing that you said to me was, "Okay, how are they going to be able to address the curious scrappy podcaster?" And to your point, it's at the top of our doc, and it's important that whether it's us talking about a topic for 15 minutes, or we're bringing somebody on to dive a little bit deeper, they're adding value to that audience.
TJ Bonaventura:
Exactly. And some good exercises to do here, we white boarded, write down on a piece of paper, if you and your co-host separately talk about, if you want to talk about Star Wars or Star Trek, or women's rights, whatever it may be, write down some adjectives that you would define your audience and who you want to listen to. As we stated at the beginning, there's over a hundred million listeners of podcasts today. So rather than trying to capture the broader, larger audience, think less about the quantity and more about the quality.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, and I think when you talk about quality, it's the quality of engagement, and I liken it to influencer space in terms of marketing, right? There's these influencers who have huge followings, but their engagement is relatively low. And so oftentimes, brands, they're looking for micro or nano influencers who have engagement rates closer to 20%, versus somebody who has a huge audience but has like one or 2% engagement rates, so think about it in that context.
TJ Bonaventura:
And in addition, when you start to do other activities in tandem with your podcast, like sell merchandise, or use tools like Patreon, or any of those other third party platforms that's going to help you earn money some way or the other, that's going to be easier for you to grow when you have a listener that is more engaged with what you're doing versus trying to acquire someone new.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, definitely. And the one thing that I do want to point out, TJ, is that when you start and you define your audience, make sure that you're listening to your audience as well. As much as you want them to listen to you, make sure that you're listening to them. So on your social channels, make sure that you're asking for feedback. At the close of your episode, make sure that you have a place where they can reach you so you can get a better understanding of the type of content that they want. I think podcasting platforms out there today, they do a decent job of giving you analytics. But, again, it goes back to that demographic information, and really what you want to know is, who are these people and what types of content are they engaging with? And is it something that I want to continue to speak to? Or do I want to pivot to make sure that I'm hitting on the topics that they're most interested in?
TJ Bonaventura:
That's a great point, because then you'll find out that those quality listeners will give you that feedback. They'll tell you they want to have somebody on the show. They'll tell you what they didn't like about a certain episode, and they're going to be sort of your north star or guiding light in how to take the podcast forward.
Julian Lewis:
In addition to polling your audience directly, if you start to build an audience on like Facebook or Instagram, or even Twitter for instance, you do have the ability to look at their insights, and you could start to understand, okay, what are the interests that those individuals have and what are the adjacent interests? And do those things fit with a type of content that you want to put out there? And if you want to go at one level deeper, if you have certain keywords that kind of align with your audience, put those into Google, look at Google trends, and try to see are there adjacent or closely related topics that you can touch on that will excite your audience?
TJ Bonaventura:
Now when it comes to our corporate listeners out there, this is still something that you want to try and narrow down, even though you know the listeners are going to be your employees.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, definitely. You have to think about the different disciplines, right? So if you're creating a podcast that's going to be centered around your engineers, versus your sales team, versus your product people, you want to make sure that you're speaking their language, and so understanding who that audience is can go a long way.
TJ Bonaventura:
Exactly, and if you have a podcast where your CEO or an executive is being interviewed, think about it more from the employee perspective versus the executive perspective. I think oftentimes what we see, and this is a very common use case amongst our corporate partners, is they want to just get the CEO's voice or the executive's voice out there, but they're not really taking into consideration what the employees want to hear, it's more like, "Our CEO's talking, we all should be listening." If you can kind of take an approach of really understanding who your audience is, from an employee perspective, it'll really create more engaging content and it'll make your podcast more successful within your company.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, definitely. And I think a lot of tech companies, you know we're in San Francisco, so we get exposure to a lot of tech companies, and a lot of them do a great job of having Q&A's with their CEOs, which is a great format or a great platform for your employees to be able to ask questions. But maybe, once the CEO has given their overview of the business, and then gone into Q&A, maybe you don't need all of that content to live into a podcast. Maybe instead, the CEO can go back and record for five or 10 minutes, and say like, "Here are the highlights of the topic for today, and here's a little bit more on the questions that were asked, and how we're addressing those questions."
TJ Bonaventura:
Great point, and same thing with learning and development too. Everybody that goes on to, we've all experienced within an organization, when you either onboarding or you're learning something new, that it's pretty cookie cutter for the most part. Think about creating more L&D opportunities for your listeners based off their roles. So you mentioned different disciplines within the organization, maybe you want to do some learning and development for engineers specifically, maybe it's going to be for marketers, maybe it's going to be for salespeople. Whatever it may be, think about coming at a different approach for each individual discipline rather than the broader company itself.
Julian Lewis:
So let's quickly recap. There's really three things. First, whiteboard and establish who you think your audience is. Second, stay away from demographics. I know it's appealing to look into the podcast analytics, and it can be helpful, but really, try to go a level deeper. And third, make sure you get direct feedback from your listeners. As much as you want them to listen to you, you have to listen to them as well.
TJ Bonaventura:
PodOn.
TJ Bonaventura:
Every episode of the PodOn podcast is produced and edited by Studio Pod Media. For more information about our work and our clients, go to studiopodsf.com.
Julian Lewis:
Shout out to Gary Oakland for the fire track.
TJ Bonaventura:
Gary O.