Kevin Schmidlin (0:00)

If you want your podcast to grow faster and you want to make more money from your show, you need to fully understand your audience. And that can be really hard with podcasting, because unless you're on YouTube, you don't get any comments from your audience. There is no way for a podcast listener who's listening to your show to contact you and let you know who they are, what they like, what they dislike, and what they think. And so there's a good chance that you, as a podcaster, do not have a lot of engagement and interaction with your audience. And that's a huge problem, because in order to grow a podcast audience, you must know who your current podcast audience is. So you can answer the question, how can I go get more of these people? Number one. And number two, the only way to monetize your podcast is by getting your listeners to buy something. Either something from your sponsors who pay you, your affiliates who pay you, or from you, who pays you. And if you have no idea what type of people are listening to your show or what they like and what they dislike, it's going to be really hard for you to be fully monetized because you're not going to know the products that they want to buy. This is grow the show, the podcast that grows your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidlin. I am your podcast growth coach. And today I'm going to introduce to you something that I think you should do at least once a year that's going to make it way easier for you to grow and monetize your show, because you're going to have a much, much deeper understanding of your audience. And that thing is an audience survey. Now, this comes up because I was speaking with a podcaster not too long ago who has a pretty decently sized show. They get about 10,000 downloads per episode, which is actually pretty high in the podcast world. But that show has been producing episodes for, like, 15 years. And they've made episodes about all kinds of different things. Their show topic is very vague, and every episode they feature a guest, and it's really all over the map. And so that group came to me because they didn't know how to grow their show and they didn't know how to monetize it more. They feel really stuck. So they came to me, I asked them, okay, well, who is your audience currently? What episodes of yours do they like the best? What sort of products do they buy? I got blank stares. And they said, you know, we've been publishing our show for over a decade, audio episodes only. And really, all we know is how many downloads we get. And I said, yeah, my friend, you are not alone. That is the plight of the audio podcaster. Our audience is nothing but a number of downloads that either goes up or goes down. If it goes up, we're kind of happy. If it goes down, we're really upset. And all the while, we really don't have much interaction with the actual human beings that are doing the downloading. And so what I explained to them was, look, in order for your audience to grow and in order for you to make money from your show, you need to know who these people are and why they're listening. You need to know what your show is doing for them. Why are they tuning in week after week? And even more than that, is it the same 10,000 people tuning into every episode? Usually it's not, but it could be. And so I told these podcasters, look, I think you should do a listener survey. If you do a listener survey, you're going to learn stuff about your show that is invaluable, and that is going to make it way easier for you to grow and monetize. I've experienced this myself for my own shows twice. The first time I ever did it was for my show that's about my hometown of Philadelphia. I did a listener survey. I made some mistakes. I made the survey way too long. There were some questions that I asked that weren't really relevant, but there were a couple things that I asked on that particular survey that really changed the way that I look about my show. And the biggest one was this. Back then, I would work really hard for every episode to put together a bunch of clips at the very beginning of the episode. So I would go through the interview, I would find the coolest moments, I would take them out, and then I'd splice them together into, like, this trailer at the beginning of the show. And this would take me one to sometimes even three hours of time. If I was, like, really caffeinated and into it and I didn't have anywhere to be, I was taking a lot of time on these intros. As a part of that initial survey, I asked my audience to rate on a scale of 1 to 10, what they thought about the host, the guests, the intros, the questions. Like many different pieces of my episodes, everything about the show was rated an 8 or above except the intros, which was rated a 4. And somebody wrote in the comments, like, I just kind of skip that and get to the interview. And I was like, you've gotta be kidding me. I spend most of my time cobbling together these clips at the beginning of the episode because I think it makes for a better intro. And you're telling me that people skip it? Couldn't believe it. So after that, after I got that feedback from my audience, I stopped doing those crazy intros and I just cut to the chase. I did a brief cold open where I simply introduce the guest and get going. And my retention rates went up. And because of that, my downloads went up because people were sticking around. It was incredible. So that was the first time I learned the power of surveys. The second time was actually one year ago. For the first time ever, I did a survey of the Grow the Show audience, and I asked a bunch of questions. And once again, I got some incredible insights, including, number one, I was so surprised at how many people in my audience were newer podcasters. I had this idea that, you know, I had been making the show for three years. I thought that most of the audience were people who have been generally around for three years. But what I found was that the vast majority of people who were listening to Grow the Show then had become podcasters within the last six to 12 months. This was really surprising because I was like, oh, I'm talking to these people as though they've been podcasting for years, when really most of them are beginners. So that was huge. Those are just two of the insights that I've gotten from doing audience surveys. And now, because they're so valuable, I'm going to do one every single year. And so, hint, hint, at the end of this episode, I'm going to ask you to do something. However, back to you and your podcast. You might be somebody who's in one of these camps. Number one, you are publishing your podcast. You get a certain amount of downloads every episode, but you have no idea who those people are, and you never hear from them. You don't know what type of content they like. You don't know if it's the same people, if it's different people all the time, what their demographics are, what their psychographics are, why they listen to the show, what they get out of the show. You just. You have no idea if that's. You do an audience survey, ask them questions about not only your podcast, but the thing that your podcast is about, and try to get them to share with you why they're listening to your show. What do they get out of it? Not what did they like, but what do they get out of listening to the show? What does your show do for them? So if that's you, 100%, you should do a listener survey. If that's not you, maybe your show is growing. Maybe you do hear from listeners on a regular basis, either through email or social media or something else. I still think you should do a listener survey because there's probably stuff about your podcast that you're doing that people don't care for or that might confuse them, or you're not doing something that they really want you to do. In any case, an annual listener survey is a great way once a year to just get the lay of the land, see who's listening to your show, how often do they listen to your show, and again, most importantly, what do they get out of listening? Once you have this information about your current audience, you can decide, number one, is that the audience that you want to have. If not, you should make some changes. Or number two, if it is the audience that you want to have, now that you know more about them, you'll be able to ascertain ways to get more of those people into your audience. Now, at the end of this episode, I'm going to invite you to take my annual listener survey. So this episode is coming out on October 22, 2024, and if you complete the survey within the next seven days, you will be entered to win an hour long one on one strategy session with me where you and I can dig in, solve whatever problems you currently have with your podcast, get it growing, and get it monetized. But again, that is only if you complete the survey within the first seven days. So it has to be by midnight Eastern on Monday, October 28th. The survey is going to be about seven to ten questions. There will be more that are optional, but at minimum there's only seven to ten questions that you have to answer. And I say only 7 to 10 because there's a couple that I haven't decided yet whether they're going to be required. And so my ask is that you answer that survey as honestly as you possibly can. We'll get back to the show in just a moment, but first a quick question. Are you pouring your heart into your podcast but not seeing the growth or engagement that you hoped for? Well, imagine if there was a way to not only grow your podcast audience, but also create better content more efficiently and unlock the secrets to transforming listeners into buyers, aka monetize. Well, there is a way. It's called the 12 days of podcast Growth. It's an email course that is completely free and packed with everything that I know about how to grow your audience in 2024, how to make captivating content in less time, and the strategies that I use to drive over 2.5 million in sales from my podcast to my business. This email course is your golden ticket to elevating your podcast game and in turn getting more clients and customers. It's just 12 days and every day you'll receive a bite sized email lesson straight to your inbox that'll give you the tools that you need to achieve remarkable growth. So if you're ready to learn how to take your podcast to the next level, just go to 12days ofpodcast growth.com. or you could just click the link in the show notes, enter your email and you will receive the 12 days of podcast growth from me. All right, that's it. Let's get back to the episode. Now here's what you're also going to do. You're going to take my survey, you're going to fill out the questions, and then you're going to steal my survey questions and use them for your audience. Some of the questions in the way that I've worded them are probably not going to apply to your audience, right, because it's specific to you, the podcaster. But just put your thinking cap on and think about how can I ask this question in a way that makes sense for my audience? So, number one, you're going to take my survey within the next seven days. You're going to answer honestly and you're going to be entered to win a hour long one on one session with me. Then you're going to steal my survey questions and adapt them to your show. You're then going to offer an incentive for people to fill out the survey just like I just did. Ideally, that incentive is something that is related to your show. So, you know, I mean, at the very least, you could do like a $25Amazon gift card, but ideally it's something related to your show. As an example, for my Philly show, I offered a gift card to a really popular coffee chain that's only here in Philadelphia. So for everybody that filled out the survey, they were entered to win a gift card to that coffee chain. It was awesome. Feel free to be creative. It could be a product or service that you sell. It could be a gift card somewhere. Just make it something that your audience is really, really gonna want. And the reason you do that is because far more people will take out the survey if they know that they could win something than if you just like, ask them to do it out of the kindness of their heart. Have the survey be open for a week max. It will be tempting to give people more time, but most people are just gonna fill it out whenever the deadline is anyway. So I say three to seven days is the sweet spot. And then once the survey results roll in, use the information to make decisions. Now, if you get negative feedback or even positive feedback, if you get feedback in either direction, that's super strong. Be sure to only take action on things that, number one, you want to. Right? Because sometimes people have ideas and it's like, that's cool. But no, I don't want to do that. But also, be careful not to take everyone's feedback. Try to only really action feedback that you hear from multiple people unless there's something that's really important. As an example, when I did the Philly survey, there was somebody who filled it out and said that they have some sort of hearing issue and they love listening to podcasts. But the way I was, like, using music underneath the interview was making it really hard for them to listen. But there was a way that I could change the music and still have it there so that it would be easier for them to listen. So, like, that was something where I was like, oh, that's really good feedback. It's only one person, but I should do this, right? But if there's like one person who says, I hate interviews, you should do all solo. And nobody else says that. Take that with a grain of salt. And overall, you'll see this in my questions that I share with you. But overall, I'm looking for three buckets of information. Number one, I want to understand who my listener is. What are their demographics, but also what are their psychographics? What are they getting out of the show? Why are they listening? How does it relate to their current situation in life? That's number one. So ask a few questions about that. Then I'm going to ask questions about behavior. How often do they listen to my podcast? How did they discover my podcast? That's key. You might be surprised. There might be something that a lot of people say or like, oh, this is how I found your show. And like 80% of your listeners found your show that way. If that's the case, make more of that happen. Focus on that growth strategy. Also, you can ask whether they're on social media. What social media platforms are they on? If you're trying to figure out what social media platform you should be on, take that into account. And then finally, I ask for feedback on the content itself. What types of episodes do you like the most? What type of episodes should we stop doing? Is there a topic that we haven't covered that you would love for us to cover? Is there a topic that we're covering? Too much feedback on the actual content itself. Finally, for those of you that are business owners and entrepreneurs, you can also use this opportunity to gauge interest in products and services. So I usually have a question that's something like, if you were to pay for help with your podcast, how would you like to receive that help? Is it one on one coaching? Is it a do it yourself course? Is it a community? Is it group coaching? Is it completely done for you, whatever it is? So I like to have a question there to just see, like, what are these folks looking for? Is there a product or service that people want that I'm not offering? Stuff like that? And that's kind of the bonus. So, all in all, in summary, if you don't feel that you are as engaged with your audience as you could be, and you don't feel like you really fully understand who is listening to your show, do a quick audience survey and see who they are. One other question that you probably have is, how do I get people to take the survey? Number one, you want to talk about it in your podcast episode, so mention it. This is one where you can mention it at the beginning. Hey everybody, before we start, I want you to know that this is a thing, right? You can also post it on social media. But keep in mind that if you do post it on social media, there might be people who fill it out who don't listen to the podcast. So in that case, you're doing more of an audience survey than just a podcast listener survey. You can email it to your list. I do this, I'm going to spread the survey far and wide just because I want everybody that I can reach online to take the survey so I can understand who they are and whether or not they listen to the show, et cetera. So I'm going to spread it far and wide. But you can, optionally, if you only want your podcast listeners to fill it out, you can just share it on your show itself, have a link to complete it in the show notes, and again, make it very, very clear what the incentive is, what they're going to get from completing the survey. And then the last thing, what's funny is whenever I tell people to do a listener survey, every once in a while somebody comes back to me and they say, I did it and nobody filled it out. And I say, okay, how many questions was it? And they're like five. I'm like, okay, it wasn't too many questions. Okay. Did you offer incentive? Yes. What was it? It was something really great. Okay, cool. So it wasn't the incentive. If those two things are true, it's a short enough survey and you've offered a good incentive and you still can't get anybody to fill it out. We have a deeper problem at play. Because if you can't get people to fill out a quick survey, how on earth are you going to get people to listen to a podcast? That's a problem that I really can't solve here in this video. It's a little bit more complicated, but just know if that happens, if you put it out there and nobody answers, then we've got a deeper thing that we have to solve for. And the problem might not be your podcast. It might be your ability to reach people, which are two different things. So that's going to do it for this episode. My 1 ask for you today is to complete the Grow the Show audience survey. You can do that by going to growtheshow.com survey or you can click the link in the show notes. Once again, if you fill this out by October 28th at 11:59pm Eastern Time, you will be entered to win a free one on one session with me where I can roast your podcast. We can talk strategy, I can review your episodes, whatever it is that you want. You will have me at your disposal for a whole hour. It'll be super fun. So complete the survey now. You have seven days. But I say just do it now so that you don't forget. It'll be really quick. It'll be really helpful. It'll help me make better content for you. And again, once you're done with it, you can steal my questions and make them your own. That is going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. Now, I have a quick favor to ask you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five star rating. And if you're feeling generous, a review in the app that you're using to hear my voice right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable growth and monetization tactics here on the show because it helps us land bigger guests and it helps show the world that what we're doing here is actually valuable. So once again, if you've ever gotten any value from the show and you haven't already, please just take a moment leave us a five star rating, maybe a brief review on what type of value you've gotten, and I will be eternally grateful. This episode was produced by me with post production by Podcast Boutique. And if you want your show to be post produced with quality really freaking fast. And if you want to save yourself and your team tons of time working on your podcast, you should chat with Podcast Boutique. Just head to podcastboutique.com or click the link in the show notes and set up time with them. Because I spent no time editing this episode and neither should you. All right, that's going to do it before grow the show. My name is Kevin Shmidlin. I'll see you next time.