What signals is your podcast sending potential listeners?
In an increasingly crowded podcast market with an ever-rising bar when it comes to production quality and branding, it’s more important than ever to put thought and attention into thinking through every aspect of your show’s packaging.
Many podcasters still want to hide behind the belief that “Content is king”, but the reality tells a different story.
Yes, quality matters and is, in fact, essential to the long term growth and listener retention of your show. No arguments there.
But to discover the quality of your content, a potential listener has to first listen to a significant amount of audio to make an informed decision for themselves on the quality and relevance of your content to them.
By the time they get that far into a show, they’ve been faced with numerous cues and opportunities to make a judgment on the show.
Each of those inflection points presents either a hook that holds their attention and draws them in further or an off-ramp to take the next exit and move on to something else.
Understanding where your listeners are presented with these unconscious decision-making moments is essential to producing a show that converts browsers into listeners into raving fans.
Crafting Your Listener Journey
To find these inflection points, think about the typical podcast discovery process.
A podcast listener might be browsing through a podcast category, or searching for a key phrase.
When their eye passes across your show, what signal does your cover art send?
Our brains are always looking for shortcuts to help us move through the world quickly and efficiently without getting hung up too long on any of the thousands of minor decisions we’re faced with each day.
In the case of browsing for a new podcast to listen to, more often than not, a potential listener is going to equate high-quality cover art with high-quality production quality and high-quality content and tap into that one first.
That assumption might be wrong, but they’re going to do it anyway and so as podcast producers we need to understand that this is a potential offramp for would-be listeners and package our show accordingly.
Production Quality
So let’s say we do have cover art that is sufficiently enticing to our browsers that they do tap on it and make their way to our show listing page.
If our show description offers a clear sense of the content and tone of the show, and the titles are engaging (far from foregone conclusions for many podcasts), they may decide to listen to an episode.
I don’t have any hard data, but I would guess that when testing out a new show, there is an immediate judgment made in the first 15 seconds of listening that will either help or hurt our chances of that listener sticking around for more.
Again, less than stellar audio quality doesn’t mean our content is bad, but that’s beside the point.
There are more than enough good shows out there with fantastic production quality, why would any first-time listener spend their time listening to a show with below-average production.
Those first 15 seconds are essential in setting the tone and expectations for our listeners as they subconsciously ask themselves the question, “Am I going to be wasting my time listening to this?”
There’s so much content out there in the world today that people are actively looking for an easy reason to say “no” to anything that’s presented to them so they can move on to try the next thing.
Our job as content creators is to not give them a reason to say no.
The more of the boxes we can check off, from the cover art to the description, episode titling, and audio quality, the more benefit of the doubt we’ve earned in our listener’s minds, and the more likely they are to stick around and actually discover how great our content is.
Every Sunday I send out an exclusive article on how to use podcasting to build an audience and grow your business.
No opt-in, no checklist no bribe. But hopefully a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom. It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to share it with you.
Jeremy travels full-time, loves long-distance cycle touring, and will always look back on the day he finally saved up enough money to buy the Millennium Falcon Lego set as one of his proudest achievements. He believes that the way to grow sustainable businesses is by leading with heart, vulnerability, and helping your people be and become their best selves.
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