Transcript
Speaker: Joni, hi. Hi, Meredith. I am excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for inviting me. For anyone who doesn't know you, can you say who you are and what you do?
Speaker: I'm Joni Deutsch. I have worked in media, audio, publicity, marketing for 16 years this year. I'm the Senior Vice President for Marketing Audience Development, Podglomerate, where we oversee high-profile podcast clients who want to utilize our marketing, production, and or monetization services.
Speaker: I'm very excited to dig in with you on the work you do now, very meta on a podcast to dig into that. But before we do, can you talk about your career journey up until this role? So when I started 16 years ago, i actually was not going to be in media whatsoever. I was originally going to be pre-medicine biology and looking at becoming a doctor or physician.
Speaker: But in my freshman year, I wanted to have more non-science activities on my resume, show that I was a fully well-rounded individual And I started working at the college radio station. I loved media. I loved audio. I just didn't know was a career path for me. And i started that way.
Speaker: Loved it. Realized by my junior year of college that I actually wanted to switch majors and career paths completely. And so since then, I've been able to continue on that path. So what started in more so radio, so worked in public radio and pure music from hosting national programming, like Mountain Stage to producing local music discovery or even hosting local All Things Considered or podcast production that grew over time to the point where about five issues ago, I left public media and I became an employee the podglomerate.
Speaker: And Poglomerate, again, is consulting services agency where we do a wide variety of work. And what I oversee is specifically is the marketing of it all. So when we have a client like the Boston Globe for Economics Radio, Netflix, PBS, Harvard, any number of shows, outlets, institutions come to us wanting to grow their podcast. me and my team help them scale their show, their audience goals, and hit the top of the charts, get featured in new York Times, get featured on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, the list goes on. So through line of it all is that I love media. I love how we can be strategic in our communication to position our shows, our messages for success to the right target audiences.
Speaker: I want to dig a lot into what you do Podglomerate, but first, NPR, I feel like it in some ways was definitely at the forefront of podcasting and making it more of everyone's everyday lives. What were those years like for you? What did you do there? What did you learn? I was always very curious as someone in media, but not there. I was like, i feel like they're doing a great job. I wonder what it's like there.
Speaker: And they did. I think you're right in that estimation that basically 15 or so years ago, right around the time that Serial became that big true kind of hit, which is a public radio podcast at the time. It was those kinds of shows or like the This American Life or the NPR Politics podcast. There's a long list of shows that did extremely well and they likely had public radio roots. They came from public radio station or were distributed nationally by NPR or Or the people that went through Snap Judgment or This American Life or other stations, they then went off to do amazing things at the daily because they had public radio storytelling roots and production roots.
Speaker: Things changed after 2014 when Serial was that big launch. If you look at Google Trends charts, you can actually see the point at which in that year, people started showing more interest in podcasts and just listening to them and finding them, but also making them. And so that kind of just made everyone get into podcasting, irregardless of where they came from, public radio, not public radio, for profit, nonprofit, independent. So there was a time public radio was really there, like on the ground podcasting. And now, look, like anyone can make a podcast.
Speaker: We're making a podcast right now. So it's interesting to see the evolution of the industry from that point. What was the year you said that everyone switched over to being? November, 2014. And when I've done podcast 101 sessions and classes over the many years, I actually have a dedicated slide to that because you can see if you look on Google Trends and you search for how serial the podcast title was in November, 2014, when it launched, you can see that immediate spike, not just for the word serial, but also for the word podcast because of serial's launch. There's lots of podcast successes over years, Joe Rogan, Call Her Daddy, a few others.
Speaker: But that one really accelerated the path forward for podcasting as an industry. It's fascinating. Also, side point for anyone listening who's in to call her daddy on the Medbury newsletter a few weeks ago, we did a deep dive into the Alex Cooper personal brand, which I think was fun. So check that out if you're listening and into that kind of thing. So talk to us about Podglomerate right now when these incredible big names come to you.
Speaker: How do you all support them? How do you help them achieve those audience goals? Tell me everything. So depending if they're coming to us for marketing work, because again, other two service lines also include production and monetization. Some clients use all three of our service lines or one or even two. But for marketing, the division I oversee is SVP.
Speaker: Depending on the show and what their content is, what their goals are, their timeline, their budget, we talk through them. What are the KPIs for success? What are the things that they have done in the past to help grow their show? Or if it's a net new show, what are the things that they would like to see come about once they launch? We work with them pretty comprehensively on all the different things. What is their artwork and our visual branding going to look like? Because that also has a key role with the packaging of the show when we're promoting it or pitching it for podcast app features, right? Because before you even listen to a show, you're likely seeing the podcast artwork on a tiny little square in your podcast app of choice on your phone or device. That makes a world of difference to get someone to click into it and then actually listen and subscribe and follow the show over time.
Speaker: But of the tactics we employ to help grow shows, whether it's a net new show launch or a show that's been around for a while, they want to just help with audience growth in a larger way. We're doing cross promotions. So we're working with other podcasts that are similar in content or audience type and exchanging promo spots. I'll share 30, 60 second talking point script or a spot with you. You do the same external partner.
Speaker: That really helps with growing word of mouth. We also do podcast app pitches. So we have strong relationships with Apple and Spotify and other major editorial apps. So we can go to them and say, Hey, look, we're representing X client. They're releasing a new episode.
Speaker: Their big guest on that up episode will be Alex Earl. Do you want to feature the episode around launch? We also have a few other tactics, including publicity. We pitch the show for editorial coverage or the host for Q&A or interviews and other podcasts. We're doing paid advertising. If the show or publisher has paid advertising budget, we're looking at ways that we can leverage our historic conversion rate data to know what was effective for other comparable clients and how to execute on that budget with either newsletter spend,
Speaker: paid app on the podcast, app spend, or even paid audio spend, podcast feeds. And then we're also doing marketing in the sense that we're looking at anything that they have at their disposal. If they're a radio station, they'll likely have radio broadcast signal, or even an app, or they have a newsletter or social media. This goes on. And how can we optimize those channels to help promote the show? It sounds easy, but it's easier said than done. Some channels or outlets don't even know that they can utilize attribution tracking. So a specific link that they can put in there that is for the podcast feed so we can know did their newsletter actually effectively convert their audience over to the podcast feed.
Speaker: And then throughout it all, we do data management. So we're able to track chart rankings, downloads, plays, which are two different metrics, follower growth, episode consumption completion rates,
Speaker: a wide variety of things to be able to see how our efforts for earned or paid media are causing an audience spike or retentive audience over time.
Speaker: So it's a lot of things to do and it's not one size fits all. Every client and every show is different, but those are usually our tried and true tactics. Super comprehensive. Thank you. a lot of questions. And I know that advising and consulting on this is part of what you all do. So don't feel like you have to give away all of your secrets. But I guess I'm curious at a thematic level when a show comes to you.
Speaker: Maybe let's start with branding because I think you started there. What are some of the things that you notice really support a brand for a podcast? And where are you consistently seeing people make a mistake? And you're kind of giving the same advice to clients over and over where you're like, you guys should change XYZ.
Speaker: This also ties into something else we do in our marketing tactic. It's SEO and metadata. So even the title of the show, the episode titles, the description, and then the artwork and the thumbnails, if they're even doing a video podcast, which is also a big question we'd ask in our kickoff is, are you just an audio podcast or are you doing audio and video or just video?
Speaker: Those all tie into what tactics we would employ because marketing a video podcast is different and a little bit more complicated than marketing an audio podcast. not just with attribution and hosting platforms, but a wide variety of other topics. When we're talking to a client about branding, we're thinking through a few things. One is of course the visual branding. So the podcast artwork that is again, 3000 by 3000 square that when squeezed down into a podcast app is just a penny size.
Speaker: how can that communicate very quickly and effectively to the audience that this is the type of show that you are? So to leverage that space, I would say, don't use the word podcast in your podcast artwork.
Speaker: It's already known. You are a podcast. You are in a podcast app. Why waste that space? Also, are you someone that's well-known? If that's the case, then you should put your face or your name on the podcast artwork. Or if you want to be well-known, then and establish that brand. Or if you're attached to an institution,
Speaker: Like for instance, we represent Harvard Business School. Then we should make sure that the institution's branding is on the artwork. So if anyone isn't aware of the title of the show, the content, or maybe even the host of it, if they see the institution's branding, it's going to tell them, oh, I at least know Harvard. I should check out the show because I know that. It's little things like that. But again, you'd be surprised. Some podcasts we work with, when we're working through how to be able to create these branding elements with them and the specs involved.
Speaker: because we need the podcast artwork on this channel, but also on this platform and also for this capability. Apple has a whole suite of things they request specs or different types of artwork for. It is a longer process than you expect.
Speaker: It's interesting. I do feel like across the board sometimes really good advice when you're in a niche area is like it feels intuitive when you say it out loud, but it's things that people miss over and over. Not that everything you're doing is intuitive. It's not. I also understand like deeply sophisticated and niche. One thing I'm curious about is when folk come to work with you,
Speaker: In most instances, what are some of their KPIs? Are they like, we need to grow listenership so we can grow sponsorship? In the end, is the ah ah ROI revenue focused or they occasionally coming to you with other goals? It varies. Sometimes we have clients coming to us and they have put in for a grant. And so that is what's bringing my company to the table is the grant funding. So for that, then they need to hit certain KPIs. Maybe it's that they want to increase their follower count by 15%, or they want to get 100,000 downloads within a six-month period.
Speaker: So some are based off of the audience size. Some of it's based off of, let's say, specific editorial hits. Like they need to receive 10 to 15 hits, and their priorities include the Wall Street Journal and CNBC.
Speaker: Some of it is the revenue side of things, which if they're bringing us in for marketing, we'll be able to give them the data and analytics to say, here's what your audience looks like. But if they're doing monetization on their own, then that's not really something we're going to tie directly into with our metrics dashboard.
Speaker: But it's not one size fits all. That's why we like to have a very comprehensive onboarding with the client. Even after they sign a contract with us, they really understand what are our capabilities? What will we be doing over over the course of our many months of work together? Yeah.
Speaker: And the potential results, nothing's guaranteed, but the potential results we're predicting and then what they should know that they can take back to their stakeholders. So if it's their sponsors, it's their production team, their marketing team, whomever's funding our abilities to help them.
Speaker: Super interesting. How much do you all weigh in or advise on the content and the format of the show itself? If we're only being brought in for marketing services, then we'll give them some guidance of, hey, we recommend putting a podcast trailer in your podcast feed. It helps our marketing efforts. And here are some tips and tricks on how to make an effective trailer for your feed. And we give them like a guide for that.
Speaker: If we're looking at episode consumption completion rates, which just to define that further, it's how far along in the episode an audience member will listen to the content before they jump out effectively. A benchmark for that in the industry is for audio, if you're able to get to 60, 70% episode consumption completion, consider that a success.
Speaker: Video is much smaller. It's probably around 40-ish percent as the industry benchmark for success. If we're looking at the data for that, then we'll say, hey, look, we're noticing that episode consumption completion is lower than the industry benchmark.
Speaker: So here are three tips that we recommend to clients to help boost that. And the reason we recommend it is because for our marketing efforts, we want an engaged audience. We want to grow the feed. And if an audience is jumping ship or skipping out of the podcast before even the halfway mark,
Speaker: That's not going to help our cause to market the show. So we want to at least give some high level guidance to the producer should they choose to accept it. if we're not mandating it, it'll help both of our sides, not just how they create the content and edit it and release it, but also how we're able to grow the audience around it.
Speaker: When you are advising on content format these days, is there anything you're noticing that audiences are in general responding more or less to? if we're talking about genre, true crime is just a massive popular and churning genre of people wanting to listen and binge as much as possible.
Speaker: If you have a cheer-friendly podcast, as long as it sounds good and it's not hurting your ears with microphone setup, there's a lot of growth in like Spanish language podcasts, in children's podcasts, in audio fiction podcasts, some of which have been optioned in recent years for television shows and films. If you're looking at those things, great. There are a lot of daily news podcasts. There's a lots of interview chat casts, video and audio.
Speaker: But there's a lot of growth across the board, really. It's just a really a matter of how can you create a unique selling proposition? And do you know your target audience? Because at the end of the day if someone says, i want to make a podcast like Rogan or Alex, a color daddy, and i want everyone to be my listener.
Speaker: Even the most popular podcasts in the world aren't listened to by every single person out there. So it's better to really be specific about who you're targeting, whether in your region or in a niche,
Speaker: And that's probably where you're going to find more success. Have you ever supported a show in kind of an unexpected pivot that you can think of where at first they came to you, they're like, here's our goal, here's our budget, here's what we want to work on, et cetera. And you guys dig in with them and you're like really, truly pivoted the direction of the show based on what you figured out of around their target audience. And maybe that's a weird question, but as you were talking, I was like, that's interesting to think about. Like if you all provided insight where you're like, this is actually your target demo and here are the episodes they want that you should really double down on because here's what they responded to. Some of that is guided also by the data, right? So when we are able to add an attribution platform into their tech stack.
Speaker: And so for instance, when we do cross-premise or paid advertising and audio, we can give that pixel or that yeah URL, that cookie, if you will, to an external party. They place that into their feed and then we can see the conversion rate, the effectiveness of that earned or paid spot in the external podcast feed. And that gives us a better indication of, is that really the audience for our client show or is it not? yeah So to your question, we had a client in the last year or two where the general show concept was that the host would sit down with individuals to talk about deep, sometimes guilt-ridden or emotionally charged topics.
Speaker: And you think that, okay, maybe that would put them in more of the self-help, wellness, betterment category of things because there's like psychology brought into it. Yeah. But we were doing more cross promos and campaigns around it, what we found is that, yeah, like there's some overlap with those genres and types of shows, but actually true crime audiences like to hear this podcast.
Speaker: So that was a little surprising. We wouldn't have put that in because it's not a true crime podcast whatsoever. I think that tells you that as you're thinking through your audience, experiment, have the data to give you a sense of guidance of what's working, what's not, and also maybe test out something that might be more different than you'd expect and might be surprised by the results.
Speaker: Can you tell us a little bit about just like what a day in your life is like? I'm curious about your work day, but I also want to know the morning routine, the afternoon routine, an evening. And then i want to ask you what podcast you might be listening to.
Speaker: But let's start with a day in your life. A day in the life. So I wake up in the morning. i have a two-year-old son that I get to have breakfast with who is delightful right now. He's in a wonderful stage of his life where he's able to talk and we're able to communicate in sentences and He's just so sweet.
Speaker: So breakfast, head to daycare, come back. What time are you waking up? I usually wake up somewhere in a seven o'clock hour because we're usually out the door by before nine in order to get him to daycare. So I do not do the six o'clock wake up or anything earlier. I'm a night owl. I've never been an early bird.
Speaker: 7am and 6am is like the earliest I would be able to wake up usually. I love it when someone gives me 7 a.m. ish wake up time. i don't know what I am. I'm neither. I wake up around 7.30 and I need to be in bed by like 10.30. Kudos to anyone who's able to do it earlier. And I also get sleep. It's not like I work 24 hours and I get minute of sleep. I cherish the sleep I get.
Speaker: So daycare a drop off, I come back to my office because I work remotely at home. So I come to my home office and I start diving into email. We represent a wide variety of clients all at the same time. So currently we're representing clients that range from an Ivy League institution to a true crime podcast to a food and climate change show and list goes on. And so during the workday, nine to five, I might be taking A couple of client calls with different types of content. I might be taking a partner call with a podcast app or another publisher and then reviewing items across my team that I oversee in my division and getting lunch somewhere in between. And then by the time that five o'clock rolls around, it's daycare pickup.
Speaker: It's getting ready for the toddler nighttime routine of dinner and bath time and bedtime and story time. And then whatever hours I have remaining in the evening with my husband, we're watching TV or a movie or we are talking about our day with our dog in toes. He loves to cuddle up with us on the couch.
Speaker: And then that's it. It's time to go to bed and probably doom scroll for a little bit to see what news I didn't get to see throughout the day. What kind of dog do you guys have? He is a 70 pound Bouvier, which is a herding dog. And he is just lovable. He's an oath.
Speaker: And in fact, under normal circumstances, you'd probably see his little tail just running behind me in my office, but I closed the door for the day. Are you fully remote or do you ever go into the office? There's no physical office. My company is entirely remote and we're spread across East Coast to Central Time Zone.
Speaker: How big is the team that you're managing currently? By the time this interview will come out, we should have five full-time staff that are my direct reports, not including contractors that we work with.
Speaker: And across the company, we're currently in a hiring phase right now. So I think we should have an additional five individuals or six. So it should put us at around 12 if I did the math right.
Speaker: What kind of TV are you and your husband watching? It depends on the season. we are actually just re-watching mad Men along with the first season of Fluribus on Apple TV. I've heard good things.
Speaker: Haven't watched it. is really good. It wrapped up a number of months ago, but it is super compelling and it's so well done and it's not made for an audience where you can binge it all in one go.
Speaker: It really is, you need to sit with it and really figure out what is going on and have a water cooler moment to dive into the conspiracy theories with whoever's watching with you. Which I really appreciate it. It just reminds me of watching Lost back in the day. And actually having a moment with something rather than binging it and then all of a sudden forgetting it because then you have to wait three more years for the next season to come out.
Speaker: Right. And then you're like, what was that show? We've been watching Widow's Bay on Apple. Have you heard of it? I haven't. It's also month by month. It's some really good content, I would say for sure. I'm loving it.
Speaker: When you're going through your day with the team right now, are there some new and emerging things coming up that you're like, this hasn't come up yet, but it seems like we should be exploring this area? What's the bleeding edge for you right now of podcast marketing?
Speaker: Bleeding edge. It is GEO. So how can we position our shows for success so that if someone goes to an AI platform like a ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, if they ask who are the best podcast hosts on business or what are the best podcasts about environmental causes. We want our clients to show up in that.
Speaker: So earned media has a huge role in that. Reddit AMAs have a huge role in that. Quora, all of those are things that we actually integrate into our marketing campaigns and have been for a while, but it just doubles down the initiatives because we're seeing the results of that in GEO. So that's big attribution and data management is still massive because if we can't tell our client, this is how you're performing right now with your content and the audience growth they're in, and what are we using to be able to measure our abilities as a company and our campaign capabilities?
Speaker: that's a huge thing. And it's still evolving. If we looked at 10 years ago, what podcasting was like with data, yeah it is just night and day difference to where it is today. And it still has miles and miles left to go. It's not perfect, but at least it gives us some indication of who our audience is and what they like about the show.
Speaker: What are some of the gaps right now that you can't wait for the data to evolve or for the technology that produces the data to tell you? an all-in-one platform that would be able to tell me anything. It'd be able to tell me social monitoring. So if a show or a host is being referenced, but that along with Apple podcast data, Spotify data, the hosting platform data of how the show is distributed to podcast apps, the YouTube data of the show is on YouTube as a video show. All that put into one dashboard rather than in most cases, individuals have to go to each of those individual platforms or dashboards to see the data. And it's not put together in an easy way where you can see what the themes are across the board.
Speaker: One dashboard that we currently use actually at the company, proglomerate, is one that for getting social media monitoring for a second, it has all those other capabilities I mentioned in one handy which is really streamlined what we've been able to do and how we share our reporting with our clients. That's cool. What's the name of that tool? It's called Bumper.
Speaker: Bumper? That's interesting. Did you ever use Chartable? They sunset it a couple of years ago. Chartable was pretty good. I know it was like super fancy and it's not in line with what you're expressing, but there were some very cool high level aggregate data that it just- Oh, it was excellent.
Speaker: For those who may not be aware, Chartable was an attribution platform that at the time a few years ago, It would be able to give you a sense of chart rankings for the podcast. It would tell you about episode consumption completion. It would tell you downloads and also attribution data. So if you did pixels or attribution links, almost like Bitly links for podcasts, it would have all that in the platform.
Speaker: And then it got acquired by Spotify at large, which also acquired microphone if few other apps the time. And over the course of a few years, it slowly wound down to the point where at the end of 2024, believe, it went away completely. it wasn't perfect, but a lot of people used it and it was useful.
Speaker: And now we're scattered. There's basically three or four different platforms that we're now using at the same time to be able to make up for Chartable, which did it all in one place.
Speaker: When we first launched Content People, the podcast, I remember I was on Chartable all the time. And the times where we did hit the charts, it was like, really exciting. It was so easy to use. yeah i feel like we all have our tools where we're like, oh yeah, it's such a bummer that doesn't exist anymore. That's top of my list. If you're looking for something equivalent, I would say the ones we've been using more and more recently have been Magellan AI. Oh, okay. There's also swap.fm, which is, I don't believe at the time of this recording, it is public still. So you don't have to sign it for the waitlist, but we've been on it for about two years, actually, i think at this point.
Speaker: has a lot of capabilities of Chartable as well. wow And then there's also ones like PodScribe and Mopod and PodChaser. Again, they all have little capabilities to each that are what you would have found in Chartable's platform. On the PodClammerate's website, we have a full resource list of things from how to do a cross promo how to pitch for podcast interviews and editor editorial coverage. And we have a specific resource guide to attribution platforms. And basically this question of what do you to if you like Chartable so much or if you're trying to get chart rankings or if you're trying to get this data set.
Speaker: So if anyone's interested, it's free. It's on podglomerate.com slash blog. Thank you. That's a wealth of information. Before we wrap up, I do want to just ask, I feel like you probably have such a great perspective on the medium as a whole.
Speaker: and What are like some themes you're seeing, maybe not genre specific, but definitely noted around true crime, et cetera. What are some themes you're seeing and what do you think we're going to see happen over the next 12 to 18 months in podcasting?
Speaker: What we're already seeing now more and more is just AI generated content. There are production houses dedicated to putting out AI voiced podcasts. within seconds of a news headline coming out. In fact, there was a report this past year that when the Charlie Kirk shooting occurred, a podcast that was an AI-generated podcast immediately went out before any of the major news outlets put out their podcasts. And it hit the top of the charts. And because it was the first there, and people were searching for content around it. It did extremely well.
Speaker: Now that's not to say that it was editorially vetted, but it was the first the finish line. And so that makes a difference for better or worse. So I think we're going to see continual growth in how people are using AI to produce podcasts, but also market podcasts, because there are some platforms and tools that can allow for optimization of metadata for podcasts or artwork that are AI platforms. Yeah. Otherwise, though, the other big thing is just how podcasting is going to be a major player in different influential spaces. Between the podcast election of 2024, where you saw President Trump and former VP Kamala Harris going to podcasts, like Call Her Daddy or Joe Rogan, to have these interviews and be positioned to younger audiences that were probably more undecided at the time.
Speaker: It makes a world of difference. And when you also see open AI and companies that are acquiring for millions, if not billions of dollars, podcast networks or podcasts to be in-house at those for-profit entities, I tell you, you are wanting to invest in the medium because it works. It drives traffic and audience.
Speaker: I would predict growth in those sectors too. That's fascinating. On a personal level, do you have a personal feeling around AI right now? I think that AI is best used when it is an assistant and not a full-time employee that is autonomous. So knowing that I can ask AI to be able to help me with ideation or to do a basic task But knowing that it is not moving that to completion and representing me or the team or anyone else, me personally even, in that there's still needing to be editorial layer on top of that.
Speaker: Now, if you're also asking like ethically, given like data centers or human labor, what will happen with AI taking up that space? And that's a whole nother subject, but...
Speaker: As of right now, it's here. Will it go the same way as NFTs where there's going to be a bubble burst and all of a sudden and NFTs are no longer around and AI will also be no longer around? It's hard to say, but clearly if there's major investment in right now in it.
Speaker: I think that we're here doing so interesting. For folks who want to follow you or check out Poglomerate, where can we send them? And we'll put these links in the show notes. So if you want to follow me, you can find me at Joni Deutsch on LinkedIn. Happy to stay connected there.
Speaker: If you want to stay up to date on what the Podglomerate is doing as a multi award-winning PR and marketing and production house and monetization as well, you can find us at podglomerate.com. And also we have a wide variety of free resources where if you want to Learn how to hone your podcast strategy and all of its different threads from production to monetization to marketing. We have a resource guide on podglomerate.com slash blog.
Speaker: But otherwise, find the podglomerate on LinkedIn. And if you're looking to grow your show, can always reach out we can see what we can do together. Amazing. Thank you so much, Shoni. I really appreciate talking to you And I'm really glad to know you. Thanks, Meredith. You too.
