The Power of the Podcast: Unlock Your Brand's Marketing Potential

Nail the First Two Minutes: Mastering Podcast Intros That Convert

• Pedal Stomper Productions - Josh Troche • Season 2 • Episode 9

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Struggling to keep listeners past your intro? You’ve got 15–20 seconds to wow them—or watch them swipe away. In this high-energy episode of the Pedal Stomper Productions Podcast, we’re showing you how to turn those opening moments into pure podcasting gold.

If you’ve ever typed “how to start a podcast,” “what makes a good podcast intro,” or “branding tips for podcasters” into the search bar, you’ve hit the jackpot. This episode is packed with fun, practical, no-fluff strategies designed specifically for business owners and marketing pros who want their content to pop.

We’re talking:

  • How to launch with a bang using bold questions, juicy stats, and mini success stories
  • Why a crystal-clear episode preview keeps listeners hooked to the end
  • The do’s and don’ts of theme music that screams your brand’s personality
  • Crafting voiceovers that sound like YOU—but better
  • The psychology of sonic branding (and how it makes people remember you)
  • Seamless transitions that keep the momentum going
  • Common intro killers that make people hit "skip"—and how to fix them fast

Then, we zoom out to cover what’s shaking in the podcast world—like Spotify’s latest push into video. Is it worth the hype, or is YouTube still your best bet for visuals? (Spoiler: We’ve got opinions!)

Whether you’re a podcast rookie or a seasoned brand-builder, this episode gives you the tools to create intros that engage, impress, and convert.

If you're looking to talk podcasting and get more information on how to make your podcast shine, our 30-minute "no pitch" podcast consultation is right for you!  Click the link to sign up for a time. 
https://pedalstomperproductions.as.me/no-pitch

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If you don't get the beginning of your podcast right? None of the rest of it matters because no one is gonna stick around. To pay attention. So let's make sure you're getting it right and that it's what we're going to talk about this week. How to get the beginning of your podcast right. Stay tuned. I want to thank you for tuning in. We've got once again, I'm I get excited about each week's podcast as we dive into stuff. This one's no different because we're looking at grabbing the attention of people. How do you get them in? How do you draw them in, and more importantly, why you need to do that? That's that's really a big piece in this. Now, one of the things that I give when I teach the class that I do, we talk about how there are so many options to get your content out there. I, I'm old enough that I remember growing up where we had like four television stations, five maybe, depending on how the clouds were positioned that day. I know there's a lot of you that can associate with that nowadays. It has become very, very different. People know that if if something isn't interesting, it doesn't just grab them, it's the next things. Just a swipe away. I mean, swipe up, swipe down, left, right, whatever. It's a swipe. It's a it's a like it's a it's a back button. There's something good out there that people argue all the time that like people don't have the attention span that they used to, and I disagree. I, I've mentioned this many times before who's binged Netflix for like eight hours. I'm willing to bet most you're raising your hands right now. I know, yeah, it's been a while, but I've done it where you binge something. That doesn't mean our attention. I mean, that means our attention spans are still intact. It's just got to be something really compelling. It really has to draw us in. And that's why I know that when you do the right things with your podcast, that's what's going to draw people in. So with this, we want to make sure that we are grabbing people's attention immediately. And you can do that a number of ways, whether it's I mean, just getting their attention in terms of you're going to have something compelling to say or just grabbing the intrigue. So one of the things that I always like to say that I like to do in some cases is start with that compelling question that's going to resonate. Now, if you're a business, one of the things that you want to look at with that is like, is it going to resonate with the pain points of what you're trying to cover? Working with a podcast with a firm that does some real estate items, they have a platform that helps take care of off real estate offers for them. That's a pain point for real estate agents. So they're going to be talking about those pain points and how the podcast will help take care of it. The podcast is just going to mention their platform, obviously, but it's going to go through all of that. Another thing that you can do on this is you can present a surprising statistic or like a bold statement, do you know that like it's estimated that there will be 600 million podcast listeners by the end of 2025? That's a big statistic in people's 600 million. That is a lot of people. If I could get just a couple of those, but I can get, I mean, at a 600 million, if I can get two, three, 400 people to listen, that's pretty awesome, right? So it's something like that is is a stat that you can tease out. That's good. Now the piece with that is once again, and you're going to notice a lot of these that I'm talking about. I'm going to say make it brief. The actual point that you're trying to get across needs to be brief. It needs to be impactful, and it needs to go directly at people. Another way to do that is with a success story that you've had with someone. But you have to say the success. And then you can go ahead and tell the story. The reason why this goes back to some advice that I was given many, many years ago when I was in sales. Someone would ask a question like, hey, can we do this? And I would say, well, there's this and this and this and this and this involved. The problem is in that is I told them all the things that were involved, but I never said yes or no. You have to do the same thing when presenting a success story. You tell them this person was successful and here's why. Now I'm going to go ahead and tell you the story about it. Make sure you pick one of those items. You can combine some of them, but really it's it's a compelling question that's going to cover the pain point. A surprising statistic or a like a big, bold statement or a success story that you can tell very quickly because once again, you just have a few seconds to grab attention. That's what we need to do. Now, this is all that that first 1015 20s of your podcast. The reason why we say that is we're gearing this because we're assuming that you're doing both the video and audio to this. I know there are a ton of very high level podcasts out there that start with a minute and a half, two, sometimes 2.5 minutes worth of ads. Don't do that in your podcast. You're a branded podcast. You're looking to grab attention. A lot of the podcasts, those bigger podcasts that are doing that, they have a large marketing budget to bring people in. That's what they're doing with that. So they've spent the money to get you to to stop by and they've spent the money to get you interested. Before you click the the listen button, before you click in to listen to that podcast. So keep that in mind that this is handled very differently than some of those bigger podcasts that you're going to listen to. So the other piece of this is we want to look at that. Those are all kind of the house. Let's look at the why of these strong intros. So a compelling intro with this. It's it's going to immediately establish your brand identity. And it's going to establish that you've put some thought into answering these pain points that nothing's worse than the. Hey guys, glad you're back. No one cares. And it's just frivolous. Tell me what I'm getting into you as a as a listener. I want to know why I'm showing up. What we talk about value all the time. What value am I going to get from this? You need to use that value. Is that character. Is that hook? I always like to say that that first intros the hook. Use that as that hook to to real people in get that, get them in, get it. Show them that value of what you're going to be doing with this. The other big thing with this is you have the ability to captivate them. You're going to set the tone. The very first thing, and it's going to be your informative. It's going to be your unique and style. Make sure it's engaging. So with that beginning to that, once again, this is what sets the tone for everything that you're going to say from then on out. If I start with, hey guys, how's everyone? Do you. You're just gone. You want nothing to do with it. So I want you to to realize that you need to do something to say, to engage people. Because that's what's going to carry them throughout the rest of the podcast. What that is going to do in the long run is that is going to it's going to build that brand recall. People are going to know what you're doing because you're you're either asking the question or you're you're reading a statistic. There's a lot of podcasts I know that give just a related statistic. The first thing because you're you're interested, oh, hey, they're going to talk about this this week in that you're going to make you're going to make it easier for listeners to remember you and to remember your brand and to remember that, hey, this was valuable content. That is what's going to keep people coming back is when they, as I've said so many times before, when they're finding value in it, that is going to ultimately be the thing that's going to foster that audience loyalty. The other thing I'm going to say is, once again, it comes down to attention. You're either going to get their attention or you're going to get swiped. That's all there is to it. When we get past that initial hook that I mean, that to me is that the thing that so new people do not spend enough time on. They say, okay, here's my topic and great, whatever. Let's spend the time. Go look for different ways to get that hooked on. After that. That's when we typically tell people to put a theme, some music, a couple of sound effects, whatever. That is where we typically say that because and and there's a couple of reasons for that. The big psychological reason behind that is what it does is it separates the hook from the body. You guys get the same thing with the when the meat like in ours, when the music comes up a little bit, you hear the the thud noise from the way the logo comes in. That's that, that's that's the separator. You know that I'm going to come back slightly differently from that. It's the same thing. Think of think of this production as the same way it happens in television shows. There's the teaser to get you to watch. Then there's the theme. There was usually an ad or two around it, because those front end ads are worth a lot of money to those to the production side of that. But there was that theme that let you know, hey, the show is coming up. Here's here's what we're going to have into the show. What I'm going to tell you, though, is most old television shows like it's a 30, 45, 52nd theme, right? We don't need that. No one wants to sit through that. I absolutely despise when podcasts have these big, long themes that explain their show every single time. Hi, this is Bob. Bob does a show about X, Y, and Z, and Bob is really glad you're here. And Bob loves all the stuff, and Bob wants to make sure that you like, share. And so no one just don't make people sit through that. Once again, their time is valuable. Make sure that you're adding the value to it. So keep that theme concise. Keep it. I mean, respect, respect people's time. Avoid that fluff. There's a there's a few instances that I can think of it. There is the Business Fix podcast that I do with, Chrissy Meyers. We co-host that podcast. It's a very short theme. It comes up, it basically says, I mean, if you're having problems with your business, she's the CEO. I'm the marketing and ops guy will help you fix it. Done. It's ten 12 seconds. That's it. It's out. Very short, very impactful. The big thing with this is this is going to create some of that. I mean, it's going to cover some of that unique value proposition that you have. You can put some of like the hey, here's what we do in there, but make it that just it's got to be 3 or 4 words. That's it. If it's more than that, you're going to start losing people. We talk about some of the music in this sometimes too. And the problem is, is so many people like PEDs, they spend so much time listening to music, they're like, oh, we need the perfect track. And you really don't. You need something that kind of covers the personality of your business, but you don't need this, this perfect song. And I know some people spend just hours of time on this. You if you have a generic corporate podcast, then get some generic corporate music. If you have something that has a little more attitude to it, like this podcast, if you have something like that to me, the music I feel like reflects the attitude of what we're doing. The last thing that you want to do is you don't want to have music. That sounds disingenuous to this. If I had classical music in front of this, which I do love, classical music, it just wouldn't sound right. It wouldn't fit right. So you need something that generally fits, but you don't need to find the the one hit wonder song or the chop, the chart topping song. That's that. That's not what's going to make break, make or break your podcast. It should just have the attitude of it. Just give us a little bit of that attitude. Additionally, some sound effects can help. There's the Late to Good podcast. Again, we've got some revving engines on that one. There's another company that we work with called Front Burner. Guess what? There's a sizzle with theirs. Imagine that. There's a there's a sizzling noise with that. There's all sorts. We used to do one with, digital sandwich for that. I mean, you could hear the sandwich being made and you knew what was going on with that. That gave that brand recognition. That gave that. It was that sonic branding. That is what, really started to set it apart. And when someone heard those noises, you started to realize that, oh, this this is them. It really associates with that brand. There's so many things that are out there. When you hear them, you're like, it clicks that brand in your head. There's always I mean, there's always a jingle. There's always a some sort of ad that's got that. I mean, it's catchy. That's what it's designed to do. Additionally, even if yours isn't as catchy, if people hear it enough, anytime they hear something like that, they're just going to think of you. So having that noise that fits your podcast fits your brand. Having the music that fits fits you. That is that is a very key piece in that branding. Because once again, we're talking about building a branded podcast and all of this. So we've got the we've got the hook out front, we've got our theme. And once again short, concise, keep that just I mean condense that down as far as you possibly can. That music can play a can. We typically have the music come up just for a couple of seconds, and then it plays under the initial piece of the conversation and it starts to fade out and it's one of those things where we, I always say, if you shouldn't notice it, unless we take it away, if you don't notice the music, but you notice when we take it away, we've got the music at the right volume. Speaking of that initial conversation, what do you start talking about afterwards? Once again, this is not where you insert hey everybody or hey guys or anything of that nature. I typically like to say you should have a clear episode preview. You don't necessarily need to do a full, detailed outline. There's going to be the chapter markers for your podcast, if we're doing that for you, or if it's on like a YouTube video, there's going to be those chapter markers there too, where people can look and they're like, If I'm only curious about one spot to this, they can skip to that. So you don't necessarily need to cover that. But I do typically try to say, what's the goal of this episode? Where are we going to go? What are you going to know how to do when we're done with this episode? It should be the same for you. For for us, we're trying to teach you basically the first two, 3 or 4 minutes of your podcast how that should be based, how that should come rolling out of the gates to really make sure that you're hooking up with people on that. So give give a brief outline of of what you plan to do. You're going to set the expectations for that. And once again, you're reinforcing that value of why they're sticking around with, why am I going to be here? The other thing that I want to cover with this is now is your time to talk about guests. And I, I've, I've talked about having guests on and how to do this or we'll keep this brief because we're going to do a full episode on this a little bit later. Again. It don't I don't typically like to let guests introduce themselves. You can if it's if it's that important to them. But what happens in so many cases is guests will start to come off the rails a little bit. You'll find them. They will either be awkward talking about themselves. We've had that in many cases where people come on and like, hi, I'm, I'm, I'm so-and-so, you know, like, well, what do you do? Yeah, I have a thing. Those are the types of people that you're like, okay, well, that doesn't really tell me why you're here. In the same sense, you have the opposite end of the spectrum where once again, people may feel like they're very important and just go on and on and on and on and on and on about who they are, about what they do. And they still may not cover why they're there. To me, you should be very specific about this. You should say who the guest is. You should say, why they are there. You should cover their expertise and if there's any information. Hi. In the studio today, we have Bob. Bob is an expert on the introductions of podcast. Bob just released a book on how to introduce your podcast. We're really looking forward to talking to you. Bob, thanks for coming in. That is the way you should do that, because once again, you've told people the specific value that that guest now has when you let them introduce themselves. Sometimes that gets lost. So make sure it's going to come around to that, that piece, that why they're there. The next thing that I want to look at is host engagement. I mean, your energy and enthusiasm are contagious. You know, there's it's funny, there's some people that just have a certain level of charisma. I always say that if you ever want to look for charisma, look for politicians and cult leaders. I, I don't drink the Kool-Aid. In that if you want to learn charisma, those those are the people that have it. Is it confidence? No, because I know some very confident people that aren't charismatic. It is a way to present. The big thing is, is be enthusiastic about what you're doing. I know there's some people that do a podcast that aren't necessarily enthused about it. I don't know if they should be doing a podcast. This should be something that you should at least enjoy pieces of it. You should enjoy talking about what you're doing. You should enjoy talking about it like how you got there or things of that nature. You should enjoy bringing value to people. If you do that and bring your best energy to it. Once again, not over the top, be you, but be excited to do that. You will do very well. Make sure that you do that with a welcoming and engaging tone. Once again, it's the hey, I'm here for you. And it's I'm curious. So it's it's those two things that, you really want to make sure that you have the other one. And I've got my notes here. So you see me looking down, but, I engage with you directly on the camera. I, I look at the camera as much as I can when I don't, when I'm not going to look at my notes. I have the notes to make sure that I get stuff right for you guys, but I spend as much time as I can looking directly at the camera I want to engage with you. Looking at the camera is absolutely huge for that. Coming back to one more piece on that, on that introduction, reiterate the why with this is once again, you did it in the hook. Tell them what they're going to learn and why they why they should stick around. We need to keep the people engaged. We need to keep the people around. So make sure that you find a way to do that and bring it. Like I said, back to the hook, hey, we're excited because I know we're going to talk about X, Y, and Z this week. Obviously X, Y, and Z is all about the podcast intros. So it's the it is the hook, it is the intro, and it is the starting to to introduce the main body of the podcast. It's doing those things. So once again bring that hook back around. Avoid any big like abrupt shifts. It's always awkward when you you hear someone talking in a podcast and they like, make a hard left turn on a subject. Do things that you can to make the subjects evolve. If they can't evolve, if you if you're at a spot where like, look, this is really all I can talk about on this topic with this guest, make sure you say things that give people warning that you're going to make a left turn. Don't just stick a left turn in the middle of the freeway and expect your audience to come with you to put signs out front, say things like, okay, that's that's interesting. So I'd like for us to take a few minutes and to move to another subject. If you say something like that to your guest, it's not necessarily to prepare your guest, it's to prepare your audience like, hey, that is the the, the 35 mile an hour ahead turn sign. They're 35 mile an hour turn ahead sign that that is that slow down sign that is that warning sign that lets people know, hey, we are going to we're going to we're going to make this slight turn here and we're going to go a little bit of a different direction. Don't give your audience whiplash always. It's a great way to lose your audience. And it's tough because it it really it loses the continuance that that you lose that piece of your, podcast. And it makes it tougher to listen to when you do that. The other thing that I would say is when you're doing video, have music, have things that that pull you out of the body to the same way that we've introduced it. We've kind of wanted to come out. The big reason why I'm saying this now is because this deals with a little bit of branding. This is, once again, this is a chance for you to play the same song, the same sounds, and have the same logos, same thing up on the screens. It's just that extra content point right at the end. Hopefully you've gotten people to stick around that long with all of that kind of. To sum this up, consistent music, consistent ways of starting your podcast with that hook. Make sure that you are just, I mean, something just pow right out of the gate to get people thinking about it and to make sure that people know that there is a value in them staying around. The other thing that I want to leave on this is visual branding. In this, make sure the visual branding, the audio branding, the those things, we'll call it audio branding for both the sound effects you use and your voice. Because remember, that is going to be a big part of this. Make sure that those stay consistent. Once again, it is hearing that same thing over and over and over and over again. That is what's going to help with that recognition. That is what's going to help to keep people coming back. And that is what's going to help your branded podcast and moving forward from there. I have the news coming up next, which there was some interesting news when it comes to branded podcast coming out here. In terms of video and audio and what Spotify is doing with that, how is that? How is that going to affect your branded podcast? That is what we're going to dive into when we get right back. In the meantime, do me a favor. Make sure that you have us followed on whatever podcast platform you're looking at or listening to. I'd also love to get a review from you. It would mean the world to me. Make sure that you leave a comment. If there's if there's a topic that you would like to cover, let let me know. Would love to cover anything that you guys are looking for. With that being said, I'm gonna take a short break and when we come back, we're going to have the news for you. Oh, recently sounds profitable. Had an article about the impact of Spotify as a video. It raises some important questions for that podcast on Spotify that I started to look into. Spotify, there's no question in my mind, is pushing video. Spotify is coming after YouTube. Should they? I don't know, this is something that's something that's going to play out with time. But we're finding that what's happening is, as Spotify is still very much the audio platform, it depends on where you look. Sometimes iHeartRadio is the top, podcast platform, sometimes it's YouTube, sometimes it's Spotify. It depends on who you ask. But with this, Spotify very much is considered the audio platform. No one is necessarily searching video on Spotify. There are people that are doing it, but it's not the typical place where you go to search video. I understand why they're putting it there, but is it going to be enough? The problem is, is when you put video on Spotify, there is that with Spotify being primarily an audio platform, they're talking about, okay, is the video consumption there? Is it happening or is it just incidental? Because like for me, I use Spotify in a lot of cases to listen to podcasts and I will have my phone sitting on my dashboard. What happens if I have my phone sitting on my dashboard and let's say diary of a CEO is on that has video to it? A lot of cases. So does Lex Fridman podcast. Those have video to them in Spotify, but they're just they're sitting on my dashboard. I'm not watching them. I mean, there's some people that might, but I definitely am not as I'm going down the road. So is that actually helpful? Because the other piece too is it's small on the screen. I think Spotify is trying to do that to go after YouTube with this, but I don't know if they're going to be successful. The the problem is with this is Spotify. When you upload to Spotify, you're platform metrics then become Spotify. So they consider it that you're hosting with them and they don't tell anyone else that you've gotten the download. That becomes difficult, because now you have to harvest that data from Spotify and bring it in. Other than just looking at whether it's Buzzsprout or Acast or any one of their transistor to see how many downloads you have. So those are the pieces that are difficult to look at with those Spotify listeners. It's been proven they're less inclined to actively watch a video. So the the, the active piece of that that Spotify is going for, it very much seems like they are missing on. With that, our biggest piece of advice, I guess I would say, is your podcast. It is it's branded to your business and you need to make sure that you're using it to get to the people that you want to get to. We talk often, like if your business is B2B, LinkedIn's probably your platform. That's probably one of your better platforms. Instagram can be effective to like for the smaller clips and stuff like that. If you're branded, if you're going to focus on video, we're typically recommending right now keeping the video to YouTube. You can also full length video to Facebook. Others like that. We don't necessarily say, let's put that video to Spotify. It's just not aligned with what Spotify is doing. They're an audio platform, and you need to carefully consider whether video there is going to help you reach anyone. From what we have found, the added the the addendum to video to Spotify is not really helping a podcast grow much in this. We want to make sure though, that you are considering a diversified strategy. It's one of the reasons why I love the RSS feed. This is not housed in any one spot or place. This will not just die if one platform decides to get upended. We saw that earlier this year with TikTok. When you see all these these influencers that have built up their following just on one platform and hadn't bothered to cross over to other platforms when TikTok got banned, they were out of luck. So if you're just building on one platform that can that rug can get pulled out from underneath you. If you do it with an RSS feed, you will always have that. With with the news about Spotify. To me, like I said, it's changed a little bit of our mindset with video on Spotify. We've pushed out a fair number of podcasts with video on Spotify. We did not see a difference in what they did, and it made the statistics on the back end more difficult to deal with. So with that being said, we're going to take a little bit more of a wait and see approach on the Spotify video and let the audio do its thing the way it's supposed to, and go from there. What are your thoughts, dear? Are you watching video on Spotify or are you just sticking with the audio side? Let me know. I would love to hear about it. But that being said, we've got some great stuff coming up over the next couple of weeks. We also just last week released The Business Fix. That's Chrissie Meyers and I on that podcast talking about how to fix your business. We have a lot of fun and we talk a lot about a lot of great topics. You should definitely go check that one out too. That being said, do me a favor, take care of yourself. If you can take care of someone else too. I will see you very soon.

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Josh Troche

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