Test, Learn, Pivot: Using Campaign Thinking, Dynamic Audio Insertion, and Creative CTAs to Grow Your Podcast

Summary

Podcast Summary: In & Around Podcasting

Episode: Test, Learn, Pivot: Using Campaign Thinking, Dynamic Audio Insertion, and Creative CTAs to Grow Your Podcast
Date: July 7, 2026
Hosts: LC Escobar (Captivate), Christabel Insia Wadi

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the transformative potential of treating podcast episodes as living, flexible content—specifically through the lens of campaign thinking, dynamic audio insertion (DAI), and creative calls to action (CTAs). LC Escobar and guest co-host Christabel Insia Wadi share strategic approaches, personal experiments, and community insights on how independent creators can better engage, grow, and connect with their audiences using thoughtful, dynamic audio messaging.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Challenging the "Set in Stone" Mindset

• Podcast episodes as living things:
  • Many creators view episodes as finished artifacts after publishing. The hosts challenge this, suggesting that like communities and creative goals, podcast content should evolve over time.
  • Quote:

    "We've gotten so used to treating our podcast episodes like they are set in stone. Once you hit publish, you don't touch them. But what if we've been thinking about dynamic audio insertion all wrong—viewing it strictly as a tool for ads… instead of a way to keep our content alive?" – LC [00:00]

• The impact of legacy:
  • Creators should consider how to prepare for lasting impact and continually adapt their podcast content to meet evolving audience needs.

2. Editorial Perspective & Audience Focus

• Why editorial perspective matters:
  • Christabel explains that an editorial perspective is the creator’s unique point of view, shaping not only individual pieces but the entire platform.
  • Quote:

    "What's the one story that I know I can tell very well authentically, me, Christabel, with all my experience? What's the one thing that I can share that changes the water for people, right?" – Christabel [07:58]

• Bridging creator intent and audience need:
  • The importance of identifying who you are speaking to, and which knowledge gaps or emotional needs you address.
  • Many podcasters neglect to clarify their audience and mission, a critical but “unsexy” foundational step.
  • Quote:

    "People have not answered that question... once you start to answer that question even slightly, it helps with the content you pick, how you write it, where you put your platform—everything." – Christabel [04:54]

3. Dynamic Audio Insertion (DAI) as a Creative Tool

• Beyond advertising:
  • While DAI is mostly used for ads, platforms like Captivate have expanded functionality for content and community engagement.
  • Features include: campaign scheduling, content waterfalling (hierarchical campaign priority), geographic targeting (US currently), and granular placement options (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll).
  • Demo highlight:
    LC describes the flexibility and campaign management tools available—use cases include newsletters, event promos, community shout-outs, and more.
  • Quote:

    "The lovely thing I really love about the way Captivate has put this out is that it’s kind of de-centered the sales aspect... it can be monetization, it can be content, it can be editorial." – LC [10:01]

4. Campaign Experiment: Lessons from Testing

• Hosts' campaign experiment:

  • LC and Christabel inserted a 90-second pre-roll campaign across their back-catalog, promoting this episode and encouraging listener feedback via email.
  • Results: 1,701 impressions, zero direct emails received.
  • The experience highlighted the difference between activity and outcomes and the need to test, learn, and pivot.

• Key Lessons:

  • Don’t assume one metric (e.g., impressions) tells the full story.
  • A tool does not guarantee results—the strategy and creative choices matter most.
  • Testing should be iterative, not all-at-once, and involve reviewing what’s frictional in the call to action.
  • Quote:

    "Don't confuse activity with outcomes. And don't assume one metric tells the whole story.” – LC [17:32]

• Pivoting:

  • Consider if the CTA is too demanding (e.g., email vs. a click); should the message be shorter? Try different formats (mid-roll vs pre-roll); run for longer; test one element at a time.

  • Quote:

    “An email was probably quite a big friction point because you have to remember what the email is. Even though we've posted it… is there something that I can click on straight away?” – Christabel [20:50]

5. Community Q&A & DAI Use Cases

• Listener questions:
  • Example from Cheryl of Hearts of Gold Podcast: How to use DAI to build community in a niche show (Girl Scouts).
    • Solutions: Use DAI for troop “shout-outs,” highlight different groups, foster recognition, and drive engagement through creative campaigns (e.g., “Troop of the Month”).
    • Quote:

      "Maybe shout out different things that different troops have done using this tech... Can you interview different people?... maybe people can email you and you can read something someone from a different troop has done and shout them out." – Christabel [27:14]

  • Other community uses (from Matt Kundal, Dave Jackson):
    • Thanking listeners by name, correcting episodes, promoting events, rotating listener questions, updating evergreen content with timely calls to action.

6. Takeaways and Practical Homework

• Actionable Homework for Listeners:

  • Identify a single element in your podcast that changes over time (newsletters, events, recommendations, corrections, etc.), and consider how you would update it across your catalog using DAI.

  • Quote:

    "If I could update just one thing across my entire catalog, what would it be?" —LC [32:46]

• Process for Growth:

  • Test → Learn → Improve → Swap → Repeat.
  • Focus on clarity of mission/theme, measure progress appropriately, embrace the long-term and iterative nature of podcast growth.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It's almost like we put our podcast up in mausoleums, so to speak, and we're like, there it is, have it. So I love this." – Christabel [02:37]
• "Don't confuse activity with outcomes. And don't assume one metric tells the whole story." – LC [17:32]
• "We did get feedback on social media that gave us information, actually." – Christabel [24:33]
• "Your theme drives everything. It allows you to stay focused, which means you're gonna cut down on that overwhelm." – Christabel [33:45]
• "The tool is not your solution. The tool's not gonna solve the problem." – LC [22:23]
• "Test one thing at a time to see what happens." – Christabel [22:30]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00-04:54 | Introduction: Rethinking static episodes, defining the living podcast, and the value of legacy.
• 04:54-10:01 | Audience focus, editorial perspective, and community entry points.
• 10:01-15:15 | Overview of dynamic audio insertion capabilities and Captivate's campaign manager.
• 15:17-22:30 | Case Study: Hosts' DAI experiment, analyzing results, confronting “no response,” and lessons about strategy and measurement.
• 22:30-24:45 | Discussion on the importance of iteration, strategy over tools, and embracing long-term growth.
• 25:51-32:46 | Community Q&A: Creative use cases of DAI, including building niche communities, listener engagement, and evergreen content updates.
• 32:46-34:35 | Practical homework for listeners: Identifying and testing dynamic elements in your own podcast.
• 34:35-end | Final thoughts, Christabel’s contact info, growth lab event plugs, episode wrap-up.

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Additional Resources & Next Steps

• Growth Lab Sessions: Upcoming and archived workshops on campaign management and podcast monetization available on Captivate’s YouTube channel.

• Connect with Christabel:

  • Profile site: Insia Wadi
  • LinkedIn: Christabel NB (search for her full name)
  • Newsletter: (Sign up via her profile or website)

• Contact the Show: Email feedback, homework, or questions to [e-mail].

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Final Thoughts

This episode powerfully reframes dynamic audio insertion as an ongoing relationship with your audience—one built on iterative learning, creative strategy, and clear point of view. Whether you’re an indie creator or podcast pro, the message is clear: podcasting is not about chasing the latest tech or trends—it's about staying focused on your theme, building authentic connections, and continually adapting to serve your community.

Your challenge:
What’s the one thing you’d want to update across your podcast catalog right now? Try it, test it, and join the In & Around Podcasting community dialogue!

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Transcript

[A]

We've gotten so used to treating our podcast episodes like they are set in stone. Once you hit publish, you don't touch them. But what if we've been thinking about dynamic audio insertion all wrong, Viewing it strictly as a tool for ads and sponsors instead of a way to keep our content alive? Let's be real. Your episodes shouldn't just sit in an archive. Whether you're doing a highly produced narrative series, a weekly interview, or a seasonal solo show, your podcast is a living thing. And as your creative goals shift or your community changes, the way you talk to them should also be able to change right along with you. All right, that's a lot sitting in that. So let's get into. Into it. It's not just. In and around podcasting. Hey. Hey. Welcome to in and Around Podcasting, the podcast industry show that brings you a range of powerful podcasting perspectives. I'm LC Escobar from Captivate, and today I am joined by my guest co host. Christabel is Insia Wadi. Now, Christabel is someone who has truly been on every single side of this microphone. She's spent years in the high pressure world of newsrooms, directing breaking news coverage for NPR before moving over to Spotify to design and lead their sound up incubator programs. These days, she's helping independent creators, creative entrepreneurs, and brands navigate that tricky space between having a great idea and actually building editorial authority through her platform, your podcast pipeline. Today we're diving into how to actually put campaign thinking into action. We're going to talk about the common traps podcasters fall into with dead calls to action, aka CTAs, share some incredible creative examples from the community, and. And we're even going to open up the hood on our own dynamic audio experiment, including the metrics and lessons. That surprised me completely. And let's see where this goes. All right, so. Hello, Christopher. So happy to have you here today.

[B]

Hi. Yeah, hi. Yeah, how are you? What an intro. I was. As I was listening to you, I was just like, oh, yeah, go on. You know, and. And because. Because. Because I'm a Londoner. That's how we talk. Yeah, go on. Um, and I really loved what you were saying about podcasts not being set in stone. Like, that lit me up. I was like, come on. Yes. What you mean, like, tell me more. Because you're absolutely right. We think that once it's up there, that's it. It's done. When the truth of the matter is people keep on coming back to your show because they want something. So why not Take the opportunity to grow and update with it because you're building a community so that I was just like, oh, yes, brilliant. I love this. I love where this is going. And the fact that it's. Your podcast is a living thing. I don't think enough people look at it in that way. It's almost like we put our podcast up in mausoleums, so to speak, and we're like, there it is, habit. So I love this. I'm excited to see where this goes. Thank you for having me.

[A]

Oh, my gosh, absolutely. I'm so stoked to have you here and to have this discussion because really, I think overall, that whole. The sense of the living thing of it all is what's really been resonating with me the most as I continue to be in the industry and keep talking about this stuff. I've really been thinking about Legacy and the value that our work has after it's been created and how we can prepare for Legacy as we're creating, as we're starting our show, as we're doing our work together here. So relatively recently, you were featured on the podcast Marketing Magic newsletter. It was like a, like, about four months ago or something like that. And the keystone question that really kind of like, really. It really popped up, man. That was highlighted in that piece really encompasses why I asked you to be here today to talk about some of this stuff, because I knew you would just get it. So this is the question that I saw featured up there. I kind of, like, edited a little bit so that it's kind of more in context for us. But so it literally, it was this. How is what I'm doing going to fill an existing knowledge or emotional gap in this conversation or for my audience or for today?

[B]

Yep. What's the need You're. You're serving, like, what's the problem? You're business people say, what's the problem you're trying to solve. Right. But I come. I come at it like, when it comes to content creation, because that's my heartbeat, and I'm a community builder as well in that sense. Who are you talking to and who are you trying to serve? Right. I think with the creator community, you know, we all have an opportunity to talk about the things that are important to us. Right. And that's important. Right. But then the next step is if you are creating a podcast or you're creating a platform, be that a newsletter or anything else, and this applies to editorial shows as well, because that's the question that I've always grappled with when I'm talking to my hosts or talking to reporters, and they're like, this is a really important story. And I go, for whom? Like, who? You know, who are we talking to? Right. And that's a really niggly question for people because they're just like, well, it's important. It's important to you. I'm not saying it's not important, but if we can identify why it's important and it's important to. In different ways to different people. That's our entry point in new shows. They would call that your editorial perspective for creators. That's really your mission. Right. Who am I speaking to if I'm going to get on the microphone and I want to grow my audience and I want to grow my numbers, do I know who I'm talking to? And I have found over the years, and it continues to be the case people have not answered that question. Excuse me. And what I do know is that once you ask, start to answer that question even slightly, it helps you with the content that you're going to pick. It helps you with writing it. It helps you with understanding where you're going to put your platform. It. It helps you understand how you're going to let people know that what you have created exists. But no one asks that question, which is why I do when I. With the people that I work with. And no one really takes the time to answer it. And it's really unsexy. But you know what? It's a. It's the one thing that will set you up for success, in my opinion. In my opinion.

[A]

In my opinion. Okay, so I'm gonna. Before we continue on with, really, the core here, you just mentioned editorial perspective from sort of like how, you know, your experience with or like, news organizations. Right?

[B]

Yeah. And it's a very wonky term.

[A]

So I. I kind of want to educate a little bit, at least for myself. How do you view editorial perspective? Like, what exactly is that? Think that our audience right now is learning that for the very first time. Like, what is having an editorial perspective or the editorial perspective when you're putting something together?

[B]

It's your point of view. It's the point of view that you have, not just for this one piece, but for your whole platform, for your whole show. What am I talking about and who am I talking to? So when I'm working with individual content creators, I walk them through this process of closing the narrative gap.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Which is the one story that I know that I can tell very well authentically. Me, Christabel, with all of my experience, what's the one thing that I can share that changes the water for people, right? Where people go, I want to learn more about that. So that's the thing that's important to me. So that's my perspective. But then there's a second piece to that, which is in order to understand that the perspective is moving people and people will come back. The engagement piece. What is the part of what I'm talking about? Which part of that is making people go, I want to hear more about that, Or I never really thought about that. Or, oh, I really needed to hear that today. So you have to bridge those two things. And people don't. They actually see them as two separate islands almost. And the work, the editorial work, the perspective is being able to reach people from the thing that you can really talk about and saying, this is why I think it's important to you, or I'm talking to you about this thing because that person's going to go, oh, I'm curious. And they're going to listen to it. And then they're going to keep on wanting to come back because they can trust you and your perspective to kind of say, well, this is the thing that she's interested in. I'm interested in that, too. I'm going to keep on having this conversation. So it becomes a symbiotic relationship for a new show, I think, traditionally. And I'm not going to stay on the new shows, but I just want to use this as an example, right? New shows, they haven't had to do the work of, like, finding the audience, but they know that if you're in a new show, I talk about breaking news. So audiences go to trust and trust them because that's the platform that they're going to go to to find out what's happening today in the world. But that new show is selecting news items or articles or stories that they think their audience will be interested in. They're not covering the whole thing or should be here all day. They're saying, these are the things that I think my audience, my community, is going to be interested in or is important for them to hear. That's their editorial perspective. And when you translate that in a creator community, that's your perspective, that's also your expertise.

[A]

I love it. And so we've been talking about. We were sort of theorizing a lot of ideas, and I did ask the community to give us some examples, which we're going to talk about actually right now, in fact, our own experience of what we did together, you and I, to run a campaign. But before I get to that is we've been talking sort of very theoretically about these campaigns, whereas you can actually do these campaigns within the Captivate ecosystem. Mind you, Captivate is not the only one that has dynamic audio insertion capabilities. In fact, there's a lot of podcast hosting platforms out there that have this capability. And it's being used, you know, it's. It's some. But it's primarily being used for a lot of folks for ads or sales, more for the sales sides of things. But the lovely thing that I really love about the way that Captivate has put this out is that it has sort of taken away the. It's kind of de centered the sales aspect of it and made it so that it is more expansive, so that it can be monetization, it can be sales, it can be content, it can be editorial. And you can create campaigns in the UI where you can run these in the back end and insert them. Insert a campaign, a content piece in a handful of episodes. On all of your episodes. You can do it for two weeks, you can do it for one week. You do it for as long as you want. You can have it at the beginning of the show and wherever in mid roll you want. You can choose exactly where you want it inserted within. You can put it in the back. You can have them also waterfall, meaning that there are maybe you've got three things that you like. Let's say you have. You're selling some kind of course, you're running a meetup and then you happen to be doing a conference that you're attending, you're going to be speaking in. You can create campaigns separately for those and also have them be like, I want this one, that takes precedence. Then this one, then this one and then one when one is over, it'll automatically just come into.

[B]

That sounds amazing.

[A]

The other piece. So it's really great. And all of that functionality is open to anybody that has a Captivate account.

[B]

I have a question with the water waterfalling, is that what you call it?

[A]

That's what I called it.

[B]

I love that. The campaign that you build. So each of those calls to action, they don't run in the same show. Or you can control which shows they run in.

[A]

Exactly, you can control where they go in the same show. So like I was saying before, maybe you have an ongoing campaign telling people to sign up for your newsletter or to, you know, leave you a review in Spotify or something, or to, you know, subscribe to your YouTube channel, something like that. Maybe that's an ongoing call to. You're really focusing on growing your newsletter in 2026. And that's your thing. You have a newsletter campaign and then you're also speaking at, you know, podcast movement, and you want to tell people to come to your session and you record in a session, a thing promoting your speaking opportunity. But you're only going to be running that one for maybe in. Maybe you want to do it in September. You want to do run it in September, and you're doing those two as pre rolls or post roles, whatever. But then you can tell the campaign manager, please make sure that the number one priority in September is the podcast movement ad that I have in there for myself. And then the newsletter one goes to the bottom. And as soon as that campaign is over, then newsletter one comes back up and you can have them go one after the other, but you make sure that the first one is always the podcast. And you can actually drag and drop them. Like, you can move them up and down depending on what campaign takes precedence over other campaigns in every single slot. So in every single, like pre roll, mid roll, or post roll, you can add as many as you want in them. Of course, people probably wouldn't do all of that stuff, but you're able to, like, do that yourself the way that you want to craft the message.

[B]

Yeah, I was gonna say don't put three calls to action in one show, please.

[A]

Yeah, that's what I'm. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you can actually make sure. And then you can turn them off. So that's the other aspect. You can turn them on and off. You're able to then even. Even send them geographically. Right. So let's say it's, you know, you're taking a trip, you're going back to London, Christabel, you're having a meetup, you're gonna go sit down there. Will just be able to run that campaign just for folks that are in London. But at this time, y', all, it's. Unfortunately, at this moment in time, it is us only, but it is probably going to be expanding here very soon. But as of this moment, Elsie is

[B]

laughing because I pulled a face. I know one out of you.

[A]

Sorry, sorry. That was not a good example of on my part. But at. At the moment. But we are working to expand some of that stuff. It really is a logistical thing trying to figure out a lot of stuff, you know, geographic wise. But that is coming.

[B]

The rollout will come soon.

[A]

But we actually did Our own experiment, folks.

[B]

Yeah, we did.

[A]

Christabel and I got together and we recorded an ad. Okay.

[B]

Which is excellent, by the way, just so you know. If you didn't listen to it, why.

[A]

Well, it seems like there are at least there were impressions of this. So this is with the scoop. So in order to support this episode, okay. We ran a campaign across the. In and around podcasting back catalog.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So it was a 90 second pre roll we ran throughout June. So a little bit over three weeks. Because I think I started it like after June was like the first week I was still putting it on. And then I ran it and it went through June 30th at promoting this episode. And it included a dedicated email address that I talk about on the show. So if you have any feedback, email communityaptivate fm. That's like an ongoing sort of call to action I have here. So the results for that is we had 1,701 impressions on the ad. So that is what happens. But alas, we had zero emails come in.

[B]

Zero.

[A]

Zero.

[B]

Where were you guys? I'm telling you all off because you are listening.

[A]

You are. Obviously they had. Or. I mean, we don't even know. Like, people might have skipped it. They were whatever. But I actually, as I was sitting down with this, because of course, I mean, it actually makes you feel sad. You see all of that stuff and then you're like, nobody.

[B]

Nobody loves us. Not a one.

[A]

But I as I'm sitting there, because this happens all the time. The sadness that comes from you doing something that you put your heart and soul into and the time investment and you take action and nobody shows up, or two people are there or nobody buys the product, or it looks like

[B]

nobody shows up because you're about to get there, date what we have, and you're about to. You're about to make this pivot. Data helps us. And what you gave us was data.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Please continue.

[A]

Yes, yes, yes. All right, so here's the lesson, everybody, all of us together as we step into this. Don't confuse activity with outcomes.

[B]

Come on.

[A]

And don't assume one metric tells the whole story.

[B]

Say that again.

[A]

Yes. Because this actually really opens up a lot of questions. And it's how you have to think about when you're strategically trying to grow something. How to expand community, how you test things, how you use tools. Because we actually. This, mind you, this is a soapbox that I have. People think that tools grow stuff. People think that just because you have a tool that does all of these things magically that tool is going to give you the results that you want.

[B]

And my friend, that's why we're spending all this money we don't have on tools that don't work. And go, well, what I'm like, first of all, rein it all back, be really specific about the tool that works. And, and you're not going to find out what tool works until you test

[A]

it out and you have strategy built on that, which is what we've been talking about leading to this whole thing. Because folks are going to go now, magically, I'm going to dynamically use, create campaigns in Captivate and then all of a sudden it will be, oh my God, everything's going to be magical and amazing and we're going to get all these results. No, you test, you, you pivot. So here's the, this is some, here's some questions. What were we actually trying to measure Christobel? I mean, because that's actually part of it is this is so the goals, this is a goal that I came to Christobel with. And also as it pertained to using the campaigns, I wanted to use the campaign, I wanted to use, use the tool, I wanted to implement the tool, I wanted to get creative with Christabel, we wanted to test how it worked, placing it where we placed it. And then there's other questions that come after that. Was an email the right call to action for this? Maybe at this point in time, maybe having the email be the call to action, maybe that's not the right choice. Maybe, maybe there has to be. Maybe it could be something else, like anything else. Like we could figure whatever that is out was a 90 second pre roll too long. That's also something to think through and go like, wow, maybe that's like, that's a, that's a lot. Right? And we don't know. Did the message create curiosity? We don't know if that actually is measurable. We don't know. We won't know did listeners hear it, but simply choose not to act. And that's something else because there's a lot of folks that might know that and they might not be comfortable sending those emails or for that call to action. Is awareness itself valuable even without direct response? So all of those things are things you have to think through to be able to do this. And then there's the other aspect of this. Like if we think, would a 30 second version perform differently? What if the call to action was joining the community instead of sending an email or.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Or maybe a landing page. Or maybe there's like some something. Something they get right? Or what if it was a mid roll instead of a pre roll? And how long should we run the creative before changing the creative?

[B]

And I have thoughts. I mean, three. Three weeks isn't long enough. Number one, I think that to your point about the email, as I was hearing you say that, I was like, you know what? An email was probably quite a big friction point because you have to, like, remember what the email is. And even though we've posted it. Oh, okay, that feels really hard. But is there something that I can click on straight away? So we're so in. Do you know what I mean? So you're asking all the Right. All the right and the best questions. Exactly. So you gave us this wonderful data to say, what does it look like when we do it again? Because.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's the thing. So here's the roadmap in doing any of these campaigns, folks, because again, the tool is not your solution. The tool's not gonna solve the problem. Especially with. With the conversation that we were just having with Christobel as we started the show. There's a lot of strategy. There was a lot of philosophy. There was a lot of asking questions. There was a lot of really positioning yourself. That has to be clear, because, no, if you don't have that kind of clarity, no matter what tool you have, it's not gonna work. So this is how it goes. You test which we did, you learn which we are doing, you improve, and then you kind of pivot, right? You. You figure out, like, what. What's the other thing that didn't. Or, you know, even have a different measurement? Like, what does work mean? It worked because it delivered the campaign. We posted things out. We did get some feedback on social, right? Because on social, I did get feedback.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It just wasn't directly from the email. You swap things around, switch the creative, probably and repeat. So test, learn, improve, swap and repeat.

[B]

That's right. And I would even say don't test multiple things at the same time. Test one thing at a time to see what happens. I love the fact that you're saying tools aren't going to, like, magic this audience for you. We really do have to. We have talked about this outside of the show, and I think that that's been at the start of doing the work that I was doing. It was. It was a struggle for me because. Because people would come to me and be like, can you help me grow my audience? I need to do go from eight to rocket Fueled in six months. And I'd say, that's not what I do. It's not what I do. And I used to get really nervous about that, because then I was like, well, how do I manage people's expectations? And I suddenly realized, no, I. The people I actually work with are the people who understand that this is a. It's an iterative process. And you're working with people like yourself and myself who understand what that iteration looks like and can guide you faster, rather. Rather than you kind of like doing it blind, for want of a better phrase. So I love the fact that you're saying, the tools are here. You must try it out. Don't try over three months. Don't try it over six months. You got to be in it for the long term. I cannot stress that enough. And I'll say this. How many of you listening have had a podcast that maybe you may have. You may have stopped producing? And then someone said, I love this podcast. Years after or months after you producing it, I know that I do. People will be clicking on my. My old podcast and saying, oh, my gosh, where can I get more of these? I don't produce it anymore. It's about the long term, which is why it's so important to. For you to be focused on your perspective. And it's so important for you to set these goals with these metrics that are. That you can test, learn, improve, swap, repeat, so that you get to see your progress, because there is progress. For us. There was a win. We got no emails. I'm still hurt about that, guys. Please don't do that to us ever again.

[A]

Community Captivate fm. Y' all give us the feedback on that.

[B]

I'm like, noted, guys, but we did get feedback on social media that gave us information, actually.

[A]

Yes, absolutely.

[B]

It means that we get. We got some kind of engagement on social media.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So for me, I'm like, okay, well, if we did this again, we would do this for longer. Maybe we stay on social media.

[A]

Yep, absolutely. And that's, like, you start to think about how you get the results that you want or moves you towards whatever the end goal is. So speaking of that, here's actually some feedback that I did receive. Um, it's not like we didn't get any, but just some of the stuff that we did receive. So Cheryl Robinson from the Hearts of Gold podcast, she actually had a question for us, and I think that we've talked about a lot of these things already. She said, I have a very niche podcast. I'm not Looking for ads. How can I use DAI to build my community? And so she. My community question. The Heart of Gold podcast is about Girl Scouts. It's all Girl Scout related content. And so she's building community within the Girl Scouts. So what would you say in terms of using dynamic audio insertion for her to run campaigns for her show in the way that we've just talked about?

[B]

Okay, so my first thing is, what's your goal? So you want to build your community? So. So it's your build. You want to build your community for the podcast so that more people can listen to your. I'm using your word here now, Cheryl, quote, niche podcast, which is a good thing, by the way, that that's a good position for you to be in. Cause you're very specific about who you want to talk to. So you want more people from this community to listen to the podcast. Do we know.

[A]

I don't know. I don't know what the goal is. It's. She wants to build her community. So I'm assuming it has to do with engagement, right? It has to do with hearing from other Girl Scouts. Like building a sense of dialogue is what I'm assuming. Sheryl, do correct us if I am wrong in this stuff, but that's what I'm thinking in terms of community building.

[B]

I think there are different ways for different phases, right. So if you're trying to get people to know that this exists, then repeat where people can listen to the show. If you have a website, you know, or you want to point people to where they can listen to more shows, how often they can listen to it, you can use this for that. That's phase one. If you're growing for visibility. Excuse me. If you are trying to grow, which you are saying that that's what you're trying to do here. It's the stuff that we talked about, right? Is that you can insert your ads to tell people what you're doing or where you will be. Maybe you can highlight different troops.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That will get people to be like, wait, did you hear us? Because that's building a sense of community. So what are the different ways you can use this audio to build a sense of community and connection? People like to be heard. I don't mean it in a bad way. People like to be recognized. The Girl Scouts is a community. Right. So maybe shout out different things that different troops have done using this, this tech. Can you interview different people? That. That might feel like a bit more work, but maybe people can email you and you can read something that Someone from a different troop has. Has done and say, you know, and shout them out. You could do that. That would build a sense of community. And then you could connect that to, if you use social media or to your newsletter or however you talk about this show outside of here to say, look out for our shout out for such and such troop. That's just one example.

[A]

And like, the troop could be a troop of the month, Cheryl. So that you build a, like, it could be like a campaign that you build for your troop. It's a troop campaign. And every month you just record whoever you're focusing on, whatever the troop is or whatever the charity is or whatever that incentive is for that Truth of the month campaign. You record that, you run it in every. In the episodes you want. And then every month you, you can replace the audio file.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

It's the same campaign. Replace the audio file with a new troop and then you move it forward.

[B]

And the call to action for that is come back for the next episode to see who we're profiling. Yeah, yeah. And you grow that because then that way, is it us? Or you can also say, you know, if you did, you know, basically stay tuned. Like, if you wrote into us, you're probably here, right? And you're building community that way.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So yay. Well, let us know. Cheryl, what you thought you can email. Sheryl has emailed communityaptivate fm. Cheryl has emailed in the past. Yes. Okay.

[B]

Thank you, Cheryl.

[A]

So Matt Kundal from the Soundoff Media company, he uses his dynamic audio to thank listeners by name, retweets, shares, reviews, and donations. And he lets listeners know where he'll be speaking so they can meet him in person, which is perfect. Perfect, perfect. Then we have Dave Jackson. Dave has done dynamic corrections in the past. So Dave has used the dynamic insert to correct an episode after repeatedly announcing the wrong episode number. Because he did that like one time and he just didn't want to re record the whole thing. And he was just like, yeah, you just inserted it for that episode just to make that one work. He also has travel updates and audience engagement, so he uses it to share his current travel schedule so listeners know where they can come meet him. He rotates a monthly question of the month, ensuring that even listeners discover old episodes and hear the current community question. Which is great.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

So some information, like insight into that, you know, evergreen content with timely engagement is something that is helpful. Right? Because there's some evergreen content we create. You know, something like, you know, how to make soup five different ways, you know, and like, maybe that's something that can last forever, but maybe you are going to be creating. You have a new soup book that you're going to be releasing.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

So you can actually release it on that one because you're not going to update that episode. You know what I mean?

[B]

But I was looking at Dave's thing and I think it's related to what you were saying. I love the question of the month. Because you know what that also does? It helps generate content. It's use. It's listener generated content for you as well. Because you'll have a question for a month. But if you're running out of ideas or you just want to get a sense of what your audience is thinking about, by getting that question of the month, you're getting information on what your audience likes, what they're curious about, and that can help direct the kind of content that you can produce on your show or the people that you can speak to.

[A]

And that's exactly what I was going to say. Encouraging participation from listeners.

[B]

There you go. So I cut you off just to say that you were going to say anyway, my bad.

[A]

Yeah. Because that actually makes your. You're creating. To speak about the living archive. You're creating a podcast that always feels current to wherever people are being onboarded into the podcast episode. They feel like they know where you are right now, especially as folks with really big back catalogs. All right, so now we're going to start wrapping it up here because we've been going for a while. And here's. I'm going to give you guys homework, though. I am going to give you homework and I'm going to. I'm going to tell teacher Christobel what happened. Hopefully we'll get some feedback. And again, you can email us at communityaptivate fm. And this is what I want you guys to do this week or whenever you hear this podcast. Identify one thing in your podcast that changes over time and ask yourself, if I could update just one thing across my entire catalog, what would it be? So it's kind of like what we were just talking about. If there's something that you say that over and over again, but that kind of changes a little bit. Sign up for my newsletter. Oh, I'm gonna be at the. The meetup down the street. Or I just released my new thing. Or I'm gonna. Because sometimes we wanna tell our audience thing. We. We always say sort of the same thing over and over, and then sometimes it changes so if you would wanna change that one thing through your back catalog, if you wanna tell anybody, your people that one call to action the whole time, because that's the thing that you really wanna push, what would that be? So is it your cta, your call to action? Is it your sign up for your newsletter? Is it to join your community? Is it whatever next event you have, an episode that you have coming up that you really want people to listen to? Is there a recommendation for a new microphone or a new water bottle or a new whatever that you want people to use, you know, your resources page, a correction or a clarification, like all of those things that you can definitely use. So you tell us what that is and then email us what you're going to do about it at CommunityAPT FM and teacher Christelle will give you a gold star.

[B]

I will. It's true. I will.

[A]

All right. As we're wrapping this up though. So Christelle, anything else that we did not cover before, we hear where we can connect with you and follow all the things that you are doing.

[B]

I mean, we could talk for a lot longer about this, but I'm gonna say no. I think we've covered a lot of ground, honestly. But just remember, your theme drives everything. It allows you to stay focused, which means you're gonna cut down on that overwhelm. Focus is the thing. And remember, progress will go fast. Sometimes it'll also go slowly. But really like with these ads, you are take it as an opportunity to build your community, advertise what you're doing because your community's interested in that and also generate content like find out, learn the temperature of where your audience is. We've heard some examples and so I'd really, I'm excited for you to try this out. I'm excited. Like I'm looking at this going, what I can do, what I can do. This has been great. Now I love it. Yay.

[A]

So where can we find you?

[B]

Yeah, so I'm going to direct people to my profile site, which is my last name, Insia Wadi. And that'll take you to the work that I do with Closure, Narrative Gap, which is for Platform Agnostic and your podcast pipeline. And you can learn a little bit more about me. You can also, if you choose, follow me on LinkedIn which is Christabel NB or Christabel in Ciabody. I should check that. Give me a second. I'm gonna double check that.

[A]

And all. By the way, folks, all of these links are gonna be in the show notes too. So you can open up your podcast app. You can look at it and I know that if they just share, they just start searching for your name. You'll pop up.

[B]

I'll pop up. Yeah. Yeah, I'll pop up. And LinkedIn is my name.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I did that on purpose because I wanted to help you all out because it's long because so yeah, you can you find me there. And I have some. I'm. I ran a, a cohort earlier this year for closure narrative gap. I'm planning to do that later this year. I've got a bunch of other stuff. Most importantly, sign up for my newsletter. That is really where you will be able to stay up to date on what's happening with me. And there's a lot happening later this year from speaking and, and all this other stuff.

[A]

Love, love, love, love. All right, so before we go, we've got a few opportunities to help you put all of this into practice via our growth lab sessions. Everything that we talked about, Christobel, it's now there's lots of stuff so if you missed it, we just live streamed inside Captivate's new monetization suite and it's now available to watch on YouTube. So Mark Asquith and Brian Conlon from Dax from Dax us introduced Captivate Marketplace programmatic ads and the updated Amy campaign management tools which is what we talked about today. Then answer a ton of questions the creators had. It was so many people on the chat there, super lively. Then on July 7, which is literally today, if you're consuming when we release the episode, you can join Dane Cardiel and me for are you ready for podcast ads? And so together we're gonna walk through a practical diagnostic diagnostic checkl list to help you evaluate whether your podcast is actually ready for advertising. So you'll learn how to make intentional business decisions that protect the experience you created for your audience while also setting realistic expectations around monetization and revenue.

[B]

That sounds awesome.

[A]

Then finally on July 14, Dani Brown and I will be back for a hands on Captivate Marketplace walkthrough. So that's where will show you exactly how to use the Captivate Marketplace set up and manage campaigns and put everything we've talked about in today's episode into practice. So if you're like, well, that's all great, but I don't know, how do you do it? Like, how do you do the thing? July 14, Danny and I are going to walk you through the UI step by step exactly how to do all this stuff. It's very much more practicum so all of those three sessions are on Captivate's YouTube channel. The first is available to watch right now and the other two are scheduled and waiting for you. So you can do that. You'll find links to everything in the show notes. And while you're there, please be sure to subscribe to the Captivate YouTube channel. And so you don't miss any future growth labs, tutorials, and live events. We'd love to see you there. And just do that. Just follow us on the YouTube channel. That is all for today. Thank you all so very much. Christabel, thanks for being on the show.

[B]

Thank you for having me. It was awesome. I love talking to you. I learned so much as well.

[A]

Bye. Bye.