Is Podcasting Worth Your Time? with Travis Chappell

Courtney Elmer 0:00  

Welcome back, you're listening to another episode of the AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™ Podcast and this is episode 124.

And here with me today is a very special guest who is going to reveal the truth about using podcast marketing as a strategy for your business. That's all coming up next, so stay tuned.

[INTRO]

Courtney Elmer 2:42  

The other day, we get messages all the time from people on Instagram. And we teach a lot about podcast marketing too. We teach students how to install podcast marketing to their business. So I get a lot of podcast marketing questions. And someone on Instagram reached out to me the other day, she said, Courtney Elmer, I have been thinking about launching a podcast for a long time. I really want to launch one. I feel like I have some things I could share with my audience. But is it too soon? And this is why I am so stoked to sit down today with Travis Chappell, who is my friend and the host of the build your network podcast, as well as the founder of a brand new podcast marketing tool called Guestio which you're going to hear more about in a moment. And we cover a lot in today's episode, we talk about podcast marketing and why podcasting is such an effective way to drive revenue. We also talk about who should have a podcast and who shouldn't. Travis, welcome!

Travis Chappell 8:22  

Thanks so much for having me Courtney Elmer.

Courtney Elmer 8:23  

Yeah, I'm excited to connect with you. you have been up to some really cool stuff in the podcasting space. And as our listeners know, we are really big on podcast marketing, helping people streamline their business, helping them get better systems in place so that they can scale and part of that is helping them get more visible. Often on the show, we'll talk about podcast marketing, using a podcast as a marketing system as a marketing strategy to help you build that visibility, build that authority, and that credibility so that you can get in front of your ideal audience, have them see you as that go to expert, and drive leads and traffic to your business on autopilot. So that's where I'd really love to start with you today is to hear a little bit about your background and for you to share with us about the platform that you've created, and how you're helping business owners get more visible though podcast marketing.

Travis Chappell 9:10  

[Travis tells his background story]

Courtney Elmer 13:53  

It's crazy all the twists and turns that our journeys take us as entrepreneurs. Now you've got this amazing podcast and this really cool platform that you've built, where you're helping other people though podcast marketing, and you're really fostering the connections. In the business space, particularly the online business space, usually it's us in our office with a laptop, we might have a team, many of them are likely remote. And so we're very virtual. And because of that running a business, you can feel very isolated.

Courtney Elmer

I remember back in the day, I would go to those networking events and the breakfasts and the after hours cocktail things and try to meet people and connect with people. And that was great, particularly locally, but it only got you so far. And of course the pandemic hit and then all of that went away completely. And so a lot of people had to learn how to network differently. And I think online it's kind of tough, right? Because we've relied on social media.

Courtney Elmer

Maybe You've had someone on your team, or maybe you yourself, have been pitching yourself to be a guest on other people's podcasts, but the time that it takes to go in and look up those podcasts, write the pitch, follow up on the pitch, all of these podcast marketing things can be really time consuming, and quite frankly, very discouraging, because you're gonna get those nose, you're gonna get that rejection. I actually get people to see me for that, and to your point about borrowing other people's audiences to grow your own, I think is one of, quite frankly, the most underutilized resources out there that we have, and creating these connections and creating these opportunities for collaboration and podcast marketing.

Courtney Elmer

So that's what intrigued me about what you've created with guestio is that you've made it so much easier now, for people to be able to connect through podcast marketing. By taking out the time consuming piece of that process by having to figure all that out on your own, you can connect with a whole network of other guests and other hosts. It's kind of amazing for podcast marketing.

Travis Chappell 16:32  

Thank you Courtney Elmer, that was exactly the problem with podcast marketing. People started figuring out that being a guest on podcast can actually like drive revenue and bring business to you and get more people to trust you and like you and follow your stuff. And so the the demand skyrocketed, but the supply is still so limited. That that it became almost impossible to do it from the old way of like, oh, let's go scrape list, scrape a list from somewhere, and then let's cold email them. 

That model, that approach, doesn't work very well anymore Courtney Elmer, because of the overabundance of pitches. There's so many that come into everybody's inbox all the time, it's hard to differentiate yourself. The beautiful thing about guestio is that the people that are on the platform, they signed up to be on the platform. So the odds of them responding are a lot higher, because they're raising their hands and saying like I want to get connected with guests. So it makes it makes the process a little bit easier and less complicate Courtney Elmer.

Courtney Elmer 18:22  

If you think about it from a business reflective too, especially if you've got someone on your team that's handling the podcast marketing for you, right, let's say maybe you didn't outsource it to an agency who's booking you, but you've got a team member who's coming up with those pitches, it saves them time, which in turn saves you money, and saves time all the way around. So I think , podcast marketing is super effective. And this is where I'd really love to kind of dig in with you to hear your perspective on what you think the future of podcasting really is and where this industry is going. I'm curious to hear your take on why that growth is happening right now. And where you see that growth leading for the long term?

Travis Chappell 19:06  

It's a good question Courtney Elmer. 2004 was when podcasts were around, but nobody knew what they were, maybe till 2010 to 2014, I think was like kind of an inflection point where, where podcasts like started to take off and things were going the right direction. And then 2015 I think they like doubled that year.

Travis Chappell 

And now it's consistently growing year over year. I think I think we're still in a really good spot. And podcasting, I think it's still in its infancy Courtney Elmer. If you look at traditional forms of media, they've been around for decades. And they only continuously get better improve and have a wider adoption with with like the newer generations of people that grow up using those mediums. The the thing about podcasting that I love is that it is now now that YouTube is like trying to compete with Tik Tok. It's now the only platform that exists. That's Built for long form content consumption, every other platform now is going after this, super short style of content, these tick tock style videos. That's why Facebook and Instagram is so heavy on making you do reels. And that's why YouTube wants you to do more shorts because Tik Tok took over as the number one platform for video consumption in our in total number of hours, watched in like November or October of last year, which is pretty crazy when you think about it, because YouTube has so many videos that are like two hours, three hours, four hours long.

Travis Chappell 

And so podcasting 80% of listeners said it listened to all or most of the episode after they hit play. So it's the only it's the it's the only form of content left that's built for that long form relationship building, trust driving, credible content. So I think that it has an advantage in that regard Courtney Elmer. And a lot of people are going to start really noticing that the crappy thing about podcasting is the discovery. I hope that more podcast platforms make an effort to make podcasts more discoverable. Because that's kind of the difficult thing about podcasting right now is like YouTube's the second largest search engine in the world. So it's a little bit easier. Once you get a bunch of videos out there to get to be discovered, or to have one video pop off and bring in an influx of subscribers, it's way more difficult to do that on a podcast platform. You're responsible for all of the podcast marketing and grabbing those listeners Courtney Elmer.

Travis Chappell 

And so we found now that with a lot of our clients and with ourselves that we pull in, listeners from all of our other content, because that's how they start getting to know us, but the best way for them to start trusting us and doing business with us, is to convert them into podcast listeners as soon as possible. Because it's so much better for that Courtney Elmer. So I think the future is going to be a lot more of the same. We're going to continue expanding and podcasting, podcast marketing is becoming more lucrative for advertisers. They're gonna keep dumping advertising dollars into podcast audiences, that's not going to go and go away anytime soon. And more brands, more people, more influencers, more creators are going to start starting podcasts are going to continue starting podcasts, I should say, the next few years, I don't think it's going anywhere for quite a long time, to be honest, is because, like radio is going to keep going down and listenership and then podcasting as like older generations, move out of the work scene. The newer generations Courtney Elmer, aren't going to be tuning in to FM radio or XM Radio.

Courtney Elmer 25:09  

Yeah, I agree. And also because it's on demand, and you can go down a rabbit hole on any topic that you want. That's the beauty. And as a host of a podcast, this is where you can build so much leverage for your business through podcast marketing. Because imagine, for all those listeners out there that are listening to shows, and the last that I checked, I think we're projected to have about 160 million new listeners in the US alone by the end of this year, so 2022 At the time of this recording. And I mean that that's crazy. Like, there's a ton of listeners. And that's not even talking globally, right global listeners. But all of those people out there looking for content. And there's only about maybe 850,000 active podcast today, right?

Travis Chappell

There's a couple million total Courtney Elmer, but if the ones that are active and content consistently producing content, and so more listeners and fewer podcasts to listen to equals such huge opportunity for you though podcast marketing. And one of the things we hear from our students all the time is they're getting frustrated with social media, not because , of course, Facebook ads are more expensive now than ever, but even organic reach, it's lower than ever, and people are spending so much time trying to compete for people's attention and capture people's attention on social media. But to your point, podcast marketing is like a completely different game altogether. And so if you really want to get seen, and you really want to get visible and to be known for something to be seen, as that go to expert on XYZ topic, a podcast is a perfect way to do it. if someone really wants to learn on a topic, they're gonna go to long form content, but nobody has time to read a blog anymore. So like you said, listening at the gym, or you're vacuuming your house, let me pop in a podcast. And it's such an easy, easily accessible type of content as well. That, it's positioned totally differently than anything else out there.

Travis Chappell 27:31  

And it's less saturated than every other plant. That's one of the craziest Courtney Elmer. I don't know about excuses, but like reasonings that I hear from people it's like, yeah, but everybody in their mom has a podcast like should Is it really okay to start one again? I'm like, Are you on Instagram? Yeah. Are you on TikTok? Yeah. Are you on Facebook? Yeah. You realize those platforms have billions with a B, billions of users, you're competing for your audiences, two seconds for them to hopefully read at least half of your caption or watch five seconds of your 32nd video.

Travis Chappell

You're competing with all of these other channels and people that they follow Courtney Elmer. People follow 1000s of people on a single Instagram account, or at least hundreds. And you're competing, with all of those people, when there's a billion plus 1.5 billion on Instagram, I think over 2 billion on Facebook, over a billion on tick tock, like over half a billion blogs. You're competing with all of these things. But with podcast marketing Courtney Elmer, there's 3 million podcasts. I've heard varying numbers on this one, but five to 700,000 of those are active.

Courtney Elmer 28:41  

Yeah. So even lower than I was then the last stat that I looked at, wow.

Travis Chappell 28:44  

Yeah Courtney Elmer, can you can you compare? You compare that to all the other platforms that are out there? I mean, yeah, sure, podcasting is saturated. But I mean, it's way less saturated than every other platform that you're putting focus into. That doesn't make sense to me as an argument at this point? Well, it's, I mean, yeah, like every platform is saturated, their name, a platform is not saturated. The thing you should be worrying about is not about whether it's saturated or not, it's whether or not your podcast marketing content is good enough to stand out. That's how you get listeners and followers on every platform Courtney Elmer. But you probably a little bit better poised to get them on a platform that has the least amount of people consistently creating podcast marketing content rather than some of these other ones that are filled with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people.

Courtney Elmer 29:27  

Knowing how to create podcast marketing content worth listening to, I mean, that is it and then knowing how to position yourself so that those listeners can find you amongst all the other podcasts that are out there. So Travis, I'm curious to hear your take on this question. Who do you think should have a podcast? Who's the perfect type of person?

Travis Chappell 30:21  

I get this question sometimes, and I always give the same answer Courtney Elmer. And some people are kind of combative with me on it. But I'll explain to you my reasoning. I think everybody should have a podcast. If for no other reason, than networking, like, it's an opportunity vehicle, and we call it we call it engineered serendipity. It's kind of an oxymoron, because serendipity by definition, can't be engineered. 

But if you have a podcast, you'd be surprised at random opportunities that come your way, because you had a show, even if you don't have, a massive audience or a big audience at all, you still get these types of opportunities through podcast marketing. We had a client recently, Courtney Elmer, he's a lender. And this is back when we were doing a lot of podcasts coaching. And he came through our coaching program, he started a podcast, he's doing about a quarter million a year and is in his, his lending business. And he texted me, like, like two weeks ago, and we worked this guy over a year ago, , probably a year and a half ago. And he texted me two weeks ago, he ended up building a little studio in his office, and he had local agents coming in all the time, his business started growing, he started doing more revenue, because the relationships, he created them a podcast. And then this guy that's like the president of some lending Association out in his area, offered him a position that's going to like in total compensation payout over $600,000 a year. It all began with podcast marketing Courtney Elmer.

Travis Chappell 

And the majority, the reason that he offered it was because he saw his podcast, love what he was doing. And he wants that to be a part of his new position is helping the people in that guy's office that , hold their license there. Start podcasts, like helping them all do the same thing that he's doing. So he's like now in a position to triple his compensation. Working with a really large private lending Association, because he had a podcast, like in his pockets isn't big, it doesn't get a ton of downloads. And if I had to guess I would say it gets a couple 100 downloads an episode or something like that. It's it doesn't. He's not becoming famous off of it. But like I said, Courtney Elmer, it's an opportunity vehicle, it attracts opportunity through podcast marketing.

Travis Chappell 

Podcast marketing helps you get to know more people Courtney Elmer. It's always better to know more people than less people Courtney Elmer. And if you can get to them on a podcast, like that's a perfect way to do it. So my, my answer Courtney Elmer is usually always, everybody should be doing it. But especially if you're an online entrepreneur, or really mean any entrepreneur. I tell local business owners all the time, you should have a podcast for the podcast marketing. If you're a local business owner, and you want to be known as the person that does business with all the local businesses, then you should start a podcast that interviews all the local business owners in your area, and get as many of them on the show as you possibly can and then do a monthly meetup where all the local business owners get together and you're the one orchestrating and organizing it. And then eventually, you can bring in a speaker and you get to share the state to that speaker, your authority continues to rise, you become the go to person an expert in that space. Podcast marketing is a great underrated Trojan horse of a tool to get yourself into the door of places that would normally not give you the time of day. So if you need to do that Courtney Elmer, then podcast marketing is a tremendous vehicle to use for that.

Courtney Elmer 33:27  

Yeah, oh, Trojan horse, what a great way to describe it, because it truly is in the relationships. We launched our podcast right before the pandemic shutdown, like in February of 2020. And it's amazing the growth we've seen through podcast marketing. The relationships that have come out of podcast marketing, the doors that it has opened, even before we were, fairly big, like it has opened so many doors, and it's connected me with so many people who I would have never had the opportunity to connect with. Otherwise, we would not be sitting here right now having this conversation, where it not for podcast marketing.

Courtney Elmer

One of the things that we hear a lot is yes, podcast marketing is time consuming, I don't know that I would have the time or the bandwidth to sit there and create episodes every week but you've had a podcast for a while Travis and of course you're deep into this podcasting space you work with a lot of podcasters bust that myth Will you? How much time does it actually take?

Travis Chappell 35:03  

Yeah, sure Courtney Elmer, especially if you're a business owner, and you can outsource like editing pretty quickly, which I mean most editing services and depending on how many episodes releasing, they're anywhere between 300 and 1000 bucks a month. So if you have any sort of like, if you're a business owner, then you should be outsourcing it from day one, like I did. And if that's the case, and you're doing one episode a week, all you got to do is open up your calendar, one day a month, knock out four to five interviews, and then you're done for the entire month. The secret the key is batching episodes.

Travis Chappell 

So before we before people launch their show Courtney Elmer, we always tell them like you need two months of content batch to before you hit the launch button so that you can stay ahead of your podcast marketing schedule. Then when people stop and they quit their podcasts, it's because they don't stay ahead of their podcast marketing schedule, though they'll they'll realize like it's a Tuesday night, and it's like I'm supposed to release on Wednesday morning. And then they throw a quick episode together, and then you start sacrificing quality. And then or you decide not to throw an episode together because you don't want to sacrifice quality. And now you're sacrificing consistency, and sacrifice and either one of those will stunt your podcast marketing growth tremendously. 

It's as simple as being disciplined Courtney Elmer. Staying ahead of your schedule. I would literally have only date on my calendar that was open for interviews, the first Wednesday of every month. And I would sometimes have like six interviews on that day. But I do it for a day and I have enough content now for the next five, six weeks. And it's it's going I all I did was jump on I interview them, I put it into Google Drive, my editing team takes it they write the show notes, they edited it, they tag it, they upload it, they publish it. Now I have podcast marketing that drives massive credibility and authority for my brand. It helps me network with all the people that I want to get in touch with. 

Travis Chappell 

I think that was really what that issue comes down to Courtney Elmer is that people, it's hard for some business owners to do things to fit things in their schedule now that don't benefit them immediately. There's so many other things that can take your time when you're an entrepreneur or business owner, that you view as being a higher and better use of your time. You have to be thinking, especially the CEO and founder like your goal is to be thinking as far in the future as you can be. And you should have a team that's been implementing all the day to day stuff. And so if you're looking at how can I be successful, and in five years from now, not in five weeks from now, I don't think that you can make an argument for not having a podcast or not having some sort of podcast marketing content that allows you to connect with people and build great relationships and put out great content and build a following or an audience Courtney Elmer.

Courtney Elmer 39:30  

Absolutely. Oh, yeah. I couldn't agree with you more. And , to what you said earlier that we're in a good spot with podcasting, it's still in its infancy. And that might seem tough for people to wrap their mind around if it's been since 2004. But nobody knew it 2004 , it's only now kind of becoming something that's more relevant, something that is more user friendly, and people know what it is they're accessing podcast marketing content that way. So it's a growth curve that you want to be on the front end of Absolutely. 

Travis Chappell 39:56  

In 2017, I thought the same thing Courtney Elmer. Like, podcast marketing is saturated. There was like a half a million shows. Now there's 3 million . But at the time I was like, man, there's so many shows up. There's nobody listen to my show. And then I, I adopted this mantra from Steve Martin that I've like lived by since day one, which is be so good. They Can't Ignore You. And Tom Bill, you said it when he was on my show, too, because I asked him why he went to the nutrition bar space, the protein bar space, because such a crowded space to get into. But they built a company. And within five years, he exited for like a billion dollars. I was like, Why did you pick , protein bars? And how did you do it? He was like, and the way that he said it was there's always room for the best. So even if you're in a super competitive space, even if there's saturation everywhere, doesn't mean that you can't be successful, it means you got to be good. And so there's no way to get good except for starting and putting in the reps and, and watching the results happen over time Courtney Elmer.

Courtney Elmer 40:48  

Thank you, Travis. I really appreciate you being here to talk about podcast marketing with us today.

Travis Chappell

Of course, thanks for having me Courtney Elmer!

Courtney Elmer

All right. Go find Travis on Instagram, he is @TravisChappell 

Now coming up next week on the show, I'm excited for this. We have a special four part series where I am going to be lifting the curtain to show you our exact hiring and interview process so that you can find the right people know where to look for them. Put them in the right seats, and build the Dream Team you need to support you as the visionary leader of your company. So I will see you back here next week where we will kick off that series. And until then, go live your EffortLESS Life®.