Podcast Growth Lessons After 90M Downloads and 3,000 Episodes

Let’s get right into it,

First off, podcasts are one of the hardest channels to grow.

But it's also one of the most rewarding because the retention levels crush other channels like YouTube.

The same podcast on YT might get 25-30% retention, whereas an audio-only pod will get 85-90% retention.

Here are some lessons if you want to grow your pod faster:

1. Do impression trades

For example, we've done trades with @myfirstmilpod and @JordanHarbinger, where we read an ad promoting their pod, and they do the same for us.

We traded 500k impressions, and they did the same for us.

In fact, we'd love to do more, so if you have a pod that can do around those numbers, DM me.

2. Make use of your owned and earned channels

If you're fortunate enough to have an e-mail list, push it to your e-mail list.

Same thing if you have a site with great organic traffic.

Same thing if you have a good amount of social followers.

On social, make sure that you're posting natively to each platform. People can tell when you're just cutting and pasting.

Going the extra mile doesn't take that much longer, so do it.

3. Ride the coattails of organic reach

What do you see on TikTok, Reels, and YouTube shorts right now?

A bunch of podcast clips. Milk the organic reach as much as you can.

Hire an editor (Upwork works) and have them prove to you that they can find the right moments in each pod and cut them up for you.

Again, going the extra mile isn't so bad once you do it.

This will lead to more discovery.

4. Publish your pod onto YouTube

You can have one channel dedicated to the entire episode and one channel dedicated to shorter 5-10-minute clips.

@lexfridman does this well.

YT gives you the discoverability that other channels lack, and they're pushing harder into podcasts.

5. Do podcast trades

Reach out to podcasts in your niche and offer a trade.

You can either repost one of their episodes to your pod and tell your audience to check them out as a call to action, or you can do an episode on their pod where they're interviewing you and vice versa.

For example, for Marketing School, we're in talks with a few popular marketing podcasts to do this.

We're all in this to get more reach, so why not?

Bonus: get these pods to promote your collab episode to their e-mail/SMS list, community, etc.

To your growth,
Eric Siu

P.S. If you want to transform your marketing in 2024, request a free marketing plan from my team here — and we’ll guide you every step of the way.