896: RedCircle: Grow Your Audience Through Podcasting with Mike Kadin

Unknown Speaker 0:00 marketer of the Day episode 896. grow your audience through advertising platform with Mike Kayden.

Robert Plank 0:11 Hey, welcome back to the podcast. We're here with Mike Kayden. And he is from red circle, and you can find them at get red circle.com. Now, Mike has experience building red circles technology growing the company's customer base. And he has the unique experience of working with 1000s of podcasters. And advertisers just like you from the largest to the smallest. And even if you're not yet a podcaster, you will be inevitability you have to do it. And not only that, but you have to have your podcast on red circle. So we're going to be talking with Mike about the podcasting industry and how he's moved the audio advertising space forward for independent creators, just like you, Mike, super glad to be talking to you. Yeah, thanks

Unknown Speaker 0:54 for having me.

Robert Plank 0:56 Glad to have you. And so you know, there's always these new innovations with with the internet and podcasting, there's always some new services and platforms. So what the heck is red circle? Why should we care about it? Why should we be using it yesterday? That just that quick?

Speaker 2 1:10 Yeah, sounds good. I mean, red circles got two sides to the platform for podcasters. We're something called a podcast hosting company, which is what every podcaster needs to have to distribute their content to Apple and Spotify and everywhere else where people listen, and we give you a bunch of cool stuff to go along with that some cross promotion tools and techniques, some good analytics to understand your audience better. Some listener payments tools, if you want to collect a few dollars from your fans, you can create your own little paywalls, you know, and a bunch of other bells and whistles that come along with a good distributor for your podcast. And then we merge that together with a bunch of automation that we do on the advertising side. So a brand or agency can point and click and buy advertising space on these podcasts in a fully automated manner. So if you're a podcaster, you just get an invite that says, hey, you know, for $500, who read this ad for Squarespace and you read it, you upload it and the platform takes care of the rest of the inserts the added to your content, that takes it out. And it puts the money in your bank account at the end of the month. So we built a platform to try to make podcast advertising as easy as possible for both you know, brands that are buy in and and for podcasters by just putting a lot of automation behind it and plugging it into your distribution platform for the for the audio.

Robert Plank 2:20 And that sounds great because you like you always hear about, you know, I want to make a podcast, I want to have a huge following want to get sponsors, but then I have to go and like find them and then like talk with them and do all this back and forth. So this sounds like a great platform for somebody to just jump in and be able to buy ad space. And then uh, you agree to it, and you record the thing. And then it's on there. And it sounds great for both parties involved, right? Because then you like even the advertiser can just jump in and say, let me look around and all the podcasts and you find one that's relevant, and then jump in without a lot of kind of unnecessary back and forth humans involves.

Speaker 2 2:56 That's right. I mean, despite the fact that podcasting is a digital media, most of the advertising deals that get done in the space are done with emails and spreadsheets and PDF signatures and checks in the mail. And so we recognize that that's not going to help get a bunch of independent podcasters paid in the long run. And that's why most of the dollars end up in, you know, Joe Rogan's hands are the New York Times hands there, you know, if you're going to only be able to do you know, one deal per hour, because of all the operational inefficiency, then you might as well spend it on the largest podcast you can find to get the reach you're looking for. But you know, if that can be solved with technology, if the software can do the work, and we can make it really easy for both sides, well, then we can make sure that it's not just the biggest publishers that are making money in this space, but that all the independent middle class podcasters that have audiences, sometimes with 10s of 1000s of people that are super under monetized, can participate in the market as well as it grows,

Robert Plank 3:52 right, give the rest of us a chance. And so you're in the business of helping podcasters get to where they need to go. And you always hear about how podcasters or would be podcasters, they get so confused, overwhelmed by the equipment they're recording, they think that they have to have all the stuff recorded ahead of time you hear about how a podcast will have a handful of episodes and then go away. And so in your opinion, where are podcasters stuck? Where do they need? Do they need help?

Speaker 2 4:19 Well, I mean, there's a lot of folks ask us about like, you know, okay, how can I make money on this thing. And usually, the advice that we have first is make sure that your content is really good. Because if you're don't have great stuff that people really want to listen to and want to come back tomorrow or next week to listen to again, well, then you know, you're not going to be able to grow the audience to a size that's going to make that money worth it for you. And if you don't really have an audience that's fully engaged and listening deeply, your ads are not going to perform either and the advertisers are going to try and not come back. So the number one thing to focus on before you worry about like do I have the $500 microphone and my scoring and ad deal from the best advertisers possible and you know everything else is easy to make a podcast that people really want to listen to, and that they can build a habit around so that they're listening to each week and really care about what you have to say. And so I don't know, maybe that's like advice. Sometimes people don't want to hear, they just want something where they can click a button or two or sign up for a service, and they're going to be billionaires. But in practice, the number one thing is you got to make a really good podcast.

Robert Plank 5:19 And what are the ingredients for that? Because I mean, it sounds easy in theory, and you know, there's these podcasts, like, you know, cereal, ones like that, they get all kinds of awards, all kinds of attention. But then if someone out there says, Okay, I want to have my podcast, and Mike says that it needs to be really good. It needs to be something that people will listen to. And then I think what happens then is, then the thought processes will I'll go out, and I'll see what other podcasts are out there. And as you know, there's 1000s. And then it's easy to then give up and say, Well, I went out, I went looking at the competition to say, let me get some ideas. But then there's so much competition. I'm so thinking like, it's already been done. So what what's the missing ingredient to having a podcast that it's it's dialed into what people want, but it's unique, but it's also good. How's that done?

Speaker 2 6:07 Yeah, I mean, I'm a technologist, I won't pretend to be the best content creator, there was the world, but we've seen enough out there to give you some ideas. So the number one is don't be too afraid of competition in your area, unless it's from like, you know, a huge podcast that everybody knows, right. So like, you don't want to create another podcast about Adnan SIADH, which is what cereal is about, because cereal is gonna kick your butt on that every time. But you know, just if there's, that said, there's 50 Different True Crime podcasts, 100 different True Crime podcasts that are all sizable, because people really enjoy hearing those kinds of stories, right. So you just have to find something that that you're good at. And that you can create compelling content, don't be afraid about the competition that said, make sure you don't name the podcasts the same as something else that exists or is bigger, especially because then when people go searching, they're gonna find something else. And we've seen that time and time again. And so that's also super important. But at the end of the day, you know, you if you're going to study and try to understand what do people want to listen to, you know, what they want to listen to, is what you're good at telling stories about. So whether that's like your content expertise, or technical expertise, or some content knowledge that you have, that you want to share, or the research that you go out and do or the guests that you're gonna be able to go out and find, you have to create stuff that like you're uniquely capable of telling the story of, that people will really want to come back to, you have to find to find it right, and you're not going to be good at it in the beginning, you're gonna have to practice you're gonna get better. We've met podcasters all the time that have 1520 episodes stacked up that they haven't published yet. And that's not the right idea, either, like, get get your first one out there, put it out there, listen to feedback from your fans and iterate and just continue to get better. That's not, there's no tick tock algorithm that's going to take you to a million views tomorrow, you got to put in the work. It's a long term thing. It's a slower medium, both in terms of how people listen. But also in terms of how you grow, you got to put in the work over time.

Robert Plank 7:55 Well, great. So you're saying at first focus on what my skills are? What's unique to me when I can talk about and then so at first, just focus on on that that inner circle of fans, and then kind of just create from there and see what it evolves into. And then as far as like the, like the structure or the uniqueness of the show? Do you have any opinions on that? Because me personally, I'm the kind of guy and I say, you make a podcast and just make it 20 minutes, right? Because that's kind of a good format for whatever you want to do. But sometimes you hear about these shows where they'll do like a like a lightning round of I'll have like three guests back to back or like a panel or like limited to five minutes. Do you have any thoughts on that? Kind of? I don't know if that it's gimmicky or just like the the restricting structure? Is that is that needed to make it stand out? Or is it just recorded whatever length it ends up being?

Speaker 2 8:46 Yeah, I mean, it certainly depends on the pod, right? If you listen to Joe Rogan, or something, or somebody that Lex Friedman, some of these shows where they're doing three hour episodes where they're just talking, and there's very little structure, people love that. I mean, those are huge podcasts. On the other hand, you know, their podcasts that have a ton of structure where they're playing the same games, or asking the same questions to different guests each week. And, you know, that is something that gives the creativity for the, for the authors of the pod to come up with new stuff, and to give them the structure they need to create an entertaining show. So I don't think there's a right answer to that. And then in terms of length, I don't think there's a right answer either. We've got shows on the platform that are huge, that are like your five minute motivations, daily shows that are just a couple of minutes that are trying to get people started with their day. And then we've got some of those, you know, three, four hour long conversations where we actually had to write some code in our back end to be able to handle episodes of that length. Right. So you know, it really varies. There's no right answer there, I think depends on your audience. Depends on the topic.

Robert Plank 9:42 Okay, great. Yeah, your audience and your topic. And so then, then what that leads to is So, you know, everyone wants to have a podcast that people actually listen to, right. That's the whole point. And then the more listeners you have, the easier it will be and the more you can charge as far as the sponsors, and then it but then it's Are as getting the listeners, that's kind of a slow uphill battle, right? You hear things like recycle your content and post to the social platforms and like, you know, get the clips and get the images you hear about whatever it reads, you already have like an email list, promote every episode you hear about, go back to your guests and get them to promote. So do you have a favorite way of building listeners of getting attention to podcasts so that way it can grow and get the community it deserves?

Speaker 2 10:30 Yeah, totally. I think once you have the content, sort of well designed, and you have really high confidence that what you have, there is going to be compelling for new listeners, when they arrive, I would suggest two things. One is making sure within the show you have a call to action, like you know, make sure to subscribe and invite your guests to like make sure that if they show up for the first time that they create a habit from us, like Come back next week, tell a friend subscribe on Apple subscribe on Spotify, make sure that people start to figure out that you can capture them for weeks in the future, if they have that great first experience. And then once you have confidence that like the content is good, and I've got my hooks in place, then you need to start to fill the top of the funnel right and sort of, you know, put people into this bucket. And the best way to do that and got the data to show you this is through cross promotions is to get your podcast, either yourself a trailer for your podcast or an episode of your podcast in front of somebody else's podcast audience. And there are services that are out there that can help you do that you can do it yourself red circle has one built into our platforms. So you can partner up with another podcast that's of similar size on red circle, you can upload a little 32nd audio clip of your show. And you know, the other party does the same and then you both kind of approve of the audio and make sure it's good. And then red circle will insert that promotional ad and each other's podcasts for two weeks and then take them out. And that's all for free. It's like getting kind exchange of of the advertisement. And that's, you know, we can show you like sometimes when those are aligned really well and the audiences are similar between the two shows that sometimes as much as 10% of the audience can be added on to the other show. So like if you do that, you know, every quarter, once a month or something and you put in the work to go find relevant audiences and other places and put yourself in there, you can really start to grow that audience, but you got to do the work.

Robert Plank 12:19 Well, I love that Mike. And it just brings to mind all these kinds of creative outside the box techniques that they've always been around. But it seems like every like five or 10 years that they come back, like it hurts my brain to think back to the days of like, remember web rings, like like it is when you just sign up or you do like a like a link exchange kind of service where like you'd earn credits, and you'd spend credits. And then there was like ad swapping. So all of these techniques like they've been around, but then they kind of go in and out of silence seems like like podcasting has kind of brought back to life a lot of these things such as like kind of like links swapping in a way. And and it's it's overwhelming. But it's also exciting because like there's some some of these like high profile podcasters. They post like the monthly income reports. And they say like, here's where all the money in my business came in. And here's where all I spent money. And then there's one, one guy in particular, who gets a lot of like ad revenue. And like, you know, if I mentioned him, but I'm not going to mention them. But he gets a lot of like sponsor money, right, and he publishes every day, but then you look at what he spends money on. And he spends a ton on sponsors to his show. So I think that that's something that I always forget. And I have to remind myself that like there's money going in, there's money going out in order to like kind of build up the big pile of dirt and kind of creating it to be like this mountain size thing that you can then extract money from later. And there's always just like a million techniques like like what you mentioned there of doing kind of like the link swap through your system, or like, you know, podcasts guesting or things like that. And so there's so many things that could be done on your platform and in other ways. But do you think that is there a technique that's really like underused, that people aren't talking about enough with podcasting just as far as like, growing your audience making money from it any anything that's untapped these days?

Speaker 2 14:12 Well, I do think most folks, when you ask like, hey, what do you need from podcasting software, if you go and ask most podcasters, the number one thing they're going to say is I want to grow my show. And the number two thing they're going to say is make money from it. And so we've talked about growth and cross promotions. I think that's like the most obvious answer for most people that people are not doing what they should be. And then in terms of dollars, I think that there's sort of two things One is I think a lot more folks should be asking for listener support from their fans with a you know, we have it built into our platform where you can collect a few dollars from the fans, but you can use a Patreon or a buy me a coffee or whatever, if you're trying to earn I think a lot of people are sometimes anxious to like, ask their friends or their listeners for a couple of bucks to support the work that they do. But if you think about how much value you're giving back to someone for the time they spend listening to your content if they're We're getting 20 minutes every week or an hour every week listening to the show you're giving them, you know, so much of your time of entertainment of value back asking for like a couple of bucks. It just feels like such a small ask. And I think a lot of times when you start doing it, people are nervous. I don't want to ask people. And then in reality, when people hear that, they say, like, oh, look, yeah, I'd love to give you this person, I want to support this creator, I respect the value that I'm getting from them. The analogy I was given, I used to sing in an acapella group, which, you know, you can make fun of me if you'd like to, and I'll take it. And we used to have concerts, and I invite my friends, and it was $5 at the door, and we used it to, you know, get better microphones or just to buy beer afterwards. And I never had one friend be like, Man, what the heck, like, Why do I have to spend $5 to come see this concert. And they were excited to come and support the work that I was doing, right. And so, you know, asking folks for listener support, I think is something more podcasts to do. And then on the advertising side, I think a lot of people, you know, they signed up for a directory here, they get hooked up with an ad rep there. And I think if it's something that you want to take really seriously, then you got to partner with somebody that can really help you go out and find it, you're not going to if you're an independent podcast or on your own, you might get a deal here or there if you wait passively. But working with somebody like us to help sort of actively sell your your advertising inventory and do it in an automated fashion is going to make it so that there's real dollars on the other side of that if your audience is large enough to support that, right. So

Robert Plank 16:19 so that way, it's consistent. It's not something where you say, oh, no, it's been six months since I last look for sponsors, let me scrambled and do it for a couple of hours. And then six months later, you pick it up again. And that that doesn't seem like a real business. That seems more like a hobby.

Speaker 2 16:33 That's right. And look, I'm a software engineer, I'm not an advertising salesperson. And I'm sure that's true for a lot of podcasters that like being a ad sales person is not their expertise and not what they're good at. They're good at creating stories for people to listen to, right? So, you know, let let the people who are the hustlers that are designed in their careers to do that, take care of that for you and just partner with the right people when you're doing it. Because there's all kinds of, you got to make sure you get the right contracts, the right businesses that you're working with.

Robert Plank 17:00 Well, great, well, well, I want to mention in just a moment about red circle, and we want to push people to using it and to trying it out. But I also want to follow your advice your mind. And since you say it's important to do like youtubers do and say smash that subscribe button, I'm going to say that it's important to go to marketer of the day.com/r a t e, to give a rating on Apple podcasts. And you know, I think I have a thing at the end that says like, review the show or get more episodes, but I forget to actually mention it right in there. So you gave me that opening. So I will just mention, rate and subscribe to the show, since that's the show that we're on. But what's even more important than me is is the guests and the value they bring to it. And so the idea with this whole podcast models, and all its senses begun is you're the host of a show you have a guest on, they bring in some kind of content. But in the process, you make your guest look smart, which Mike has had so many insights for us. And then kind of the exchange here is you're a podcast listener and you say, Man, Mike, drop some value bombs here. And now in exchange, I'm not necessarily going to sign up for a service right away, maybe maybe in like a day or two or a couple of hours. But at least for now, check out what he has to offer, because he got this far in the podcast episode. And he just had all these ideas. And you were interested in this whole time. So now the next logical step is to go and check out Mike service red circle at get red circle.com. So what can we say to these listeners here, Mike, to tell them that red circle is the place for them. And you really motivate them to go and click and sign up right away?

Speaker 2 18:34 Yeah, I mean, if you're a podcaster, and you either have a podcast already, or you're thinking about starting one, you just switched us in, check it out, it's easy to do, it's free, if you have more just one podcast, so there's not a lot of risk there. And if you're an advertiser, or you've been thinking about playing around in podcasting, or maybe you tried it once and you got frustrated by the number of emails and spreadsheets, come take a look at what we offer there as well, because the buying software will really you know, keep keep the hair on your head instead of getting yanked out while you execute a campaign of size. But still with this sort of host read endorsement style campaign.

Robert Plank 19:07 Okay, so is the place to go get red circle.com? Is that the just the

Speaker 2 19:12 hub? Yeah, red circle.com or get us either one is fine.

Robert Plank 19:15 All right. So get red circle.com. And we will see you there. So that way that you can begin your podcasting journey and do it right and do it in a way where you can get traffic, you can get sponsors, and you're on this platform that they're continually innovating and thinking with you in mind so that that way you can get caught up to the Joe Rogan's of the world who seemed to have gobbled up all the attention all of the advertising space. It's so unfair that when you think podcasting you think Joe Rogan and you watch these shows in the three hours long and and they're okay, but you're just like, This guy's just rambling for three hours. I could do way better in my small little way, my small little corner so the next logical step is going to get red circle.com. We will see you there. And do you have anything for us to say just at the last minute Mike to wrap But or motivate us or just anything last minute to drop in at the end here.

Speaker 2 20:05 Yeah, I mean, last thing I'd say is that, you know, yeah, Joe Rogan and the New York Times with the largest publishers, there's maybe 1000, top podcasts together, they only represent 35% of the podcast listening. Everything else that happens down below 65% of listeners are out there listening to the middle class and long tail of podcasters. And so if banding those together, you know, it represents a lot of listeners. And so this medium like YouTube, like many others, doesn't need to be dominated by traditional media and celebrities. It's made up of indie podcasters, like you, and you know, platform like us is out here to help make sure that that happens, and that those folks get supported. So check it out. If, if that's you, or that if you want to be involved in that.

Robert Plank 20:45 Well, fantastic. So if that is you, but the Euro again, because like Mike said, we have to mention the call to actions, right, the call to action is get red circle.com. So go there. Now, if you're driving in the car, pull the car over and write down on a scrap of paper, get red circle.com, pull it up on your phone, browser, whatever, get red circle.com. Go there. Now you're going to love it, you know, you need it to do it. If you've been just considering a podcast for all these years. If you don't do anything different, it will remain a dream for you. And it won't get fulfilled if you're one of these people that has has like the 20 or 30 episodes piled up like Mike said, Don't do that. Get it out there. See some results, get some listener feedback. That way you can be motivated to do more. So get red circle is the place you need to go right now. And thank you, Mike for having us on the phone with me and talking podcasting. It's always a pleasure.

Unknown Speaker 21:33 Yeah, thanks a lot. This was fun.

Robert Plank 21:38 We really appreciate you being a listener of the marketer of the date Podcast the place to go right now. If you want to know more about running your own podcast is dF y podcast.com/free. Go there right now claim your free gift. DFI podcast.com/free