Podcircle Podcast

Who is my target market or ideal listener? Who am I creating this podcast for? People often answer, well, my target market's everyone. No. Your target market is not everyone.

If you try to talk to everyone, you'll actually talk to no one, and I think there's more value in getting very specific about who you're talking to than just trying to broadly appeal to everyone.

Welcome to the Podcircle podcast where we bring practical tips and insights for every podcaster.

Whether you're just getting started or already a seasoned pro, these conversations dig into all the topics that matter most to you. So today, we are diving into the top five questions you need to answer before you launch your podcast. As we walk through this, if you don't know the answers to this, but you've already launched your podcast, don't worry. It's never too late to get strategic. So as a reminder, we post all of these shows on YouTube, so you can make sure to subscribe to our channel and follow along to this episode and catch up on past episodes.

Also, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we'd really appreciate it if you took a few moments to also leave us a 5 star rating and a quick review there as well. It really helps us out. So let's dive in.

Alright. So all of these questions require a fair amount of thought and intention. So we're gonna give you a very high 30,000 foot exploration into these questions, but we would really encourage you to take the time to dig deeper and give this the breadth and time that it deserves, and we'd love to come alongside you. That's something that Kyle and I love to do. We love to have strategy sessions with you and with podcasters to help you get really clear.

But all that to say, my disclaimer is take some time to really dive down and get the answer to these questions. The first question that you need to ask about your podcast before you launch is, why am I starting a podcast? I know it sounds pretty basic, but let's be clear, not everyone knows the answer to this question. And why we do something is always gonna dictate what and how that follows. So if we don't know why we're doing something, when it gets tough, we won't stick with it.

And honestly, the why is the secret to success, both for yourself and your listeners and your potential customers. I love this quote from Simon Sinek. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. So if you're really clear, that's gonna come across in everything you put out into the world with your podcast. So I think it's really essential to start with your why and let that inform everything else that comes after it.

What do you think on this one, Kyle?

Yeah. I totally agree. I think Simon wrote that book called start with why. Yeah. Really popular book.

So it's just really important to ask a question, like, what are my podcast goals? I have a lot of conversations every week with podcasters, and that's the number one. And oftentimes, the first question that I ask is, hey. Before we talk about podcast equipment and recording location and guests and all those really fun things to dig into, let's back way up and say, what are the goals of your podcast? Because that's first and foremost what I'm concerned with as a podcast agency is is how can we help you frankly monetize your podcast, whether that's through advertising yourself, selling your products and services, things like that.

So I like to zoom way out and help folks determine what their goals are so that we can figure out how do we best help you achieve those goals with the podcast itself, but also with all the clips and marketing assets that would come out of a podcast. And there's so many different ways we can do that. I was thinking about the famous Zig Ziglar quote just about kind of goal setting. If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. And

Yeah.

I think that's why so many podcasts fail is because maybe they have a loose idea of what they wanna do or or maybe they have an idea that podcasting and getting listeners and growing a podcast is a little bit easier than it is. But I just really try to press on podcasters to identify what their goal is and to honestly be really honest with themselves about it because I think some podcasters are fearful of saying, I really just wanna grow my business. I want to use my podcast as a marketing tool to increase revenue and build my brand. I think that's Yep. A perfectly good reason to start a podcast, and I think it's

your reasons.

Maybe one of the best reasons. Yeah. So Yeah. At Podcircle, we're in the business of helping people get super clear about those goals. And just running through a couple of those, like, is your goal to build brand awareness and build loyalty with your target market?

Is it to sell products and services directly to them? Is it to market a lead gen that's ultimately gonna sell a larger offering? Is it to grow your digital presence online, or is it a little bit of all these things? What do you think, Mackenzie?

I think when you know what it is, then you have something to aim for. So if we start with the why, that's kind of like a philosophical intention, and then you kinda get practical with that what. So I wanna grow my business as my why or I wanna connect with my consumers. And then what is the what of that? Like, I want to build loyalty.

I wanna sell products and services. And I think it is often a multitude of these things. But if you just say, oh, I just wanna talk, like, that's not enough reason for you to continue to show up every day.

And to spend the time and the money that it takes to produce a quality product because it's it's one or both of those things. And we talked about this ad nauseam on this podcast. It's a huge time investment. I think Mhmm. So many pod new podcasters have a misconception about how much time it takes to plan, record, and edit, and distribute, and market a podcast.

It's it's a lot. Can be a full time job for people. So, again, always coming back to that why. If it's just kind of a hobby thing and it's if it's something that you really joy enjoy and you have the space and the bandwidth to do that in the season of life that you're in, by all means, go for it. I love that.

That's just honestly being transparent about Podcircle and who we work with. That's just not who who we tend to work best with. We work best with people that have, monetary and business goals around their podcast.

Then I think the next logical step is to say, who is my target market or ideal listener? Who am I talking to? Who am I creating this podcast for? And I think one of the biggest mistakes that we see is when asked who their audience is, people often answer, well, my target market's everyone. No.

Your target market is not everyone. If you try to talk to everyone, you'll actually talk to no one. And I think there's more value in getting very specific about who you're talking to than just trying to broadly appeal to everyone. So this podcast is specifically for people who are launching and maintaining and doing podcasts every day. We are not talking to people who are creating video, just video content.

We may talk a little bit about that, and maybe some of our episodes may appeal to them. But our ideal listener is that person who is wanting to start a podcast that will support their business, their products, their services, and they'll they can optimize their time. They're trying to figure out how to be strategic with this whole podcasting thing. We may pull in some ancillary other people, but that's not who we're creating content for absolutely every day. So get really specific.

Name them if you want to. This is maybe an exercise we could do, like, you and I, but I have done this in other context And then very strategic at my date, my 9 to 5, we have 3 specific people we talked to, we've named them. We know where they shop. We know what kind of podcast they listen to. We know who their favorite influencers are.

We know how they spend their discretionary income. We know what they're doing while they're listening to their podcast. Just kind of being really strategic, and you can guess on that. But then you can create a one sheeter, and you can know who you're talking to and be very strategic with everything you put out into the world. When you get clear about who you're talking to, you can talk directly to them.

You can create content that directly relates to their felt needs, their problems, their wants, their desires, and position yourself as the answer and the solution to the problems they have.

Because think of your podcast as a business. Like, if you have a growth mindset about it, and I would even say whether you're a hobbyist for now hoping to, like, maybe turn it into a job at some point or whether you're doing it as a part of your business as a way to market yourself, your services, your products, and to get yourself out there and brand yourself online and things like that. Think about of it as a business, have a growth mindset about it, and say, hey. Once I get 3, 6, 9 months into this thing and I've gathered some feedback from listeners who like the podcast, start kinda putting together, like, am I noticing any common threads here? And how is that informing how I'm selling to them or the kind of offerings that we have?

Like, we're I'm constantly doing that in pod circle. Like, after this call, transparently, Mackenzie and I are going or we're revamping some of our service offerings around just some of the feedback that I've gotten from prospective clients and just trying to best meet the needs of people in the podcast space. So I like that you brought that up just because I think it's a really good goal to kinda chase after for a for a podcaster, but especially a business podcaster.

Yeah. So I appreciate that, Kyle. I think that's such a good goal to get to and to know. But I think starting with identifying what are the biggest problems I have and how can I use my podcast to position and talk about the solutions that I could offer to help them? Because as we always talk about, selling is easy when you're solving people's problems.

So what's that 4th question, Kyle?

The 4th question is what does success look like for me in my podcast? So once you've determined what your goal is, it's really important to also identify what the success of that goal would look like for you and what you're trying to build. I think it's also important to differentiate that from maybe the perceived goals of some of the other podcasters in your space. So if you look, you know, if you kinda look across at another podcaster who feels like they're talking about the same things that you are, or maybe they had it seems like they had the same goals. Maybe not just trying to take and drag and drop copy paste what they're doing and expect to have the same results.

Really get specific, about what you're trying to do and and dig into that and say, no. What does success look like for me and my business and my path and what I have to offer instead of just trying to say, oh, they have a podcast. It seems to be going super well. I just need to do what they're doing and even kinda copy you know? I I don't know.

I just I feel like, do you? Like

Yes.

I feel pretty strongly about that, especially because, you know, as a podcaster, you're gonna bring a certain perspective and personality, so lean fully, fully into that. And then we also talk often about the show about defining success beyond just the metrics that most of us think about in podcasting, like achieving high download numbers, which what even is that? That is the most subjective thing in the podcasting space is what are high download numbers.

Go listen to our podcast about download numbers and how you are at the whim of an algorithm.

You're at the whim of an algorithm and download numbers not to just repeat that whole episode, but they they don't mean listens. And they don't mean that the listeners that you have are actually even your ideal target audience. So Yeah. All of those things are we we kinda call them jokingly call them vanity metrics. And oftentimes, they're used just to to try to plump up those numbers to sell ads to advertising agencies where they can sell liquid IV and Bomba socks and all these wonderful, great products that we all hear all the time on podcast Yes.

And love. But that's for 9 out of the 10 of our clients is not the game that we're playing. We're trying to market, you know, our business. Not to say that it won't look like downloads and listens. Obviously, those things are good, but it's it's also important to right size them.

But the important thing is listens that build trust with your audience and compel them to engage with you at a deeper level. Otherwise, apart from that, listens don't mean very much to me. So I think when you're clear about your goals for your podcast, you can also get much clearer about what success looks like in your podcast.

Right. And so some of those goals you identified, success for you might look like brand awareness. It might look like generating leads to a lead gen that has a larger, marketing funnel, or it might be networking with other people in your industry. We've talked about this in other episodes that maybe a really big goal of your podcast is just to network and create connections within your industry in a way and having a platform to elevate them so that you can create a mutually beneficial relationship So now it's time for a little bit of tough love or perhaps just a challenge. But as Kyle mentioned at the front half of this interview, podcasting takes some investment, whether your time or your finances.

So before you launch, it's important to get realistic about what you can invest. I'm talking total investment, time, energy, finances, emotional, mental capacity. What is your capacity in this and future seasons that you can invest in your podcast? Because that's gonna help you create a plan for sustainability, whether you're outsourcing specific things you don't have expertise and talent in. Like, hey.

I wanna start a podcast, and I can do my content on the front end, but I'm really not even gonna touch the editing. That was my plight a couple of years ago. So just get really intentional. We did a whole series on outsourcing. I will not, rehash all of that.

Go and check it out because you really may be undervaluing your time. Your time is not free. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. So here are a few questions that we proposed in that episode on outsourcing was, what is the total time every day that you spend on tasks that you don't enjoy or don't excel at or that you could outsource to someone else that maybe they could do more efficiently. I think that's something that you're you're kind of in right now, Kyle.

You're trying to find more editors and you're an expert editor and you probably could do it better than anyone you have on your payroll, but you're training people to do it just as well. Right?

Yeah. Because it's it's takes so much time. I'm trying to run a business and not just be a freelance podcast editor, which I was for a while and loved that. And that was great while it lasted, but that that also stifles you, and you you end up being the bottleneck to your own business success. And I think that's a very relatable feeling for a lot of entrepreneurs.

Exactly. And so I think just my encouragement here is whatever you're doing that's outside your skill set. So if you're starting a podcast and saying, I don't wanna learn how to audio edit. I don't wanna learn how to create reels. I don't wanna learn how to create a cohesive strategy for my launch and all of that.

Outsource it. Whatever you're doing that's outside your skill set is keeping you from doing the things that are best inside your expertise. So all these questions that we're having you ask really is helping you create a sustainable and enjoyable and successful show for your business. I believe when you get strategic and have an answer to all 5 of these questions, you are going to be able to take the next step into launching the business podcast that is actually gonna give you the ROI and success that you want for your business. I know we've posed a lot at this, and if you start this process and say, I'm really struggling to answer these questions, maybe you need an outside voice.

I find this a lot when you invite someone who's not in the weeds of it. We often say with business, you have the curse of knowledge. You know all the intricacies of your business, and so you need to pull someone in that doesn't have that knowledge rightly at their brain to make the connections that maybe your consumer won't. So if you're really ready to, like, narrow your focus, get clear about your goals, and create a plan of action that leads to the success that you're after, Kyle and I often do strategy sessions with podcasters either at the front end or if they've reached a stall point in their podcast to really help them get clarity that they need to win. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out or if you're just feeling a little bit of stuck.

We're here to help, and we would love to come alongside you in this process.

It's really enjoyable sessions. Most of the time, they're about 2 hours. We send a brief questionnaire beforehand, and then Mackenzie and I, we take that, talk about it, and then spend a couple hours with you, and then go away and just really get help you get strategic about what your goals are. It's all all the stuff that we've been talking about. It's defining what those goals are and what success looks like in your podcast so that you feel equipped and confident going into your podcast journey.

Or a lot of people, like you said, are maybe at a stuck point in their podcast. Maybe they've been doing it for a couple years. Maybe they're 50, a 100, a 150 episodes in, and they just feel like they're stuck either from a content perspective, or they just need help clarifying their goals to continue going. One of those things is not very different from the other, if that makes sense. Like, the reasons for starting or the reasons for keep going.

Sometimes you just need help getting some clarity around this thing and figuring out if it's it's worth the time and the money investment, and that's what Mackenzie and I do are really well at, honestly, and, I mean, that's our wheelhouse. Those are the things Yep. That we do every day here at Podcircle. We say that we offer premium podcast services for busy professionals. We can assist you in every stage from ideation to launching your podcast, to helping you prep your episodes from a content perspective Mhmm.

Preproduction recording. How can you get your recording set up, picked out and dialed in all that stuff? Yes. Audio and video editing, copywriting, even the asset creation. So I just had a call with a prospective podcaster yesterday, and she just said, well, tell me about what you do.

And I just said, if there's a service that helps podcasters, we probably offer it. And

Ah, yes. That's a great way to put it.

Which can be which can make it a little amorphous and hard to talk about sometimes, but we do. We just we offer so many services just because there are so many needs in the podcasting space. So we try not to dilute ourselves too much. We're not social media managers, things like that. Sometimes we get asked like, hey.

Can you, like, run my social media? You're already creating all these assets. We don't do that, but we do create the assets, and we can write copy around that and things like that. So maybe that's an important point of clarification for some folks that are listening. But whether you're just starting out or you've been at it for a while, we can help take the headache out of podcasting and make sure that it achieves the goals that you're setting out for.

And our team can do what we do best so that you can get back to doing what only you can do. So if you wanna set up a free consultation with me, I would love to do that. You can just follow the link. It's in the show notes, or you can email me at kyle@podcircle.com.

Alright. Well, friends, we are so grateful for you tuning in. And if you are on our YouTube audience, we would love to hear from you. And our question today is, what is the goal of your podcast? We'd love to hear how and why you are approaching your podcast in the way that you are.

Alright. We'll see you next week, friends.