Podcasting Momentum

Microinfluencer Success: Why a Small Podcast Can Have a Massive Impact

• Pedal Stomper Productions - Josh Troche

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Want a real look behind the scenes of what makes a small podcast thrive? In this episode, we’re diving deep into how becoming a micro influencer can lead to powerful audience relationships, even without massive downloads.

We’ll break down how to attract aligned podcast sponsorship opportunities and grow your email subscribers list with content that connects. You’ll also learn how to elevate your podcast marketing game and why it’s crucial to niche down if you want to create content that actually converts.

If you’ve been stuck wondering how to approach podcast monetization without relying on CPMs or ad platforms, I’ve got you covered. Plus, we’ll touch on podcast branding essentials and a simple podcast strategy that will help you build momentum with the audience you already have.

From creating an interactive podcast experience to brainstorming fresh content ideas, this episode is packed with tips for sustainable podcast content planning and genuine podcast engagement. If your goal is to grow a loyal audience and increase listener growth over time, this one’s for you.

Hit play and let’s turn your podcast into a magnet for the right people and real results.

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. 
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Everyone seems to still be going after downloads, and that is definitely the wrong number to be looking at. In fact, a lot of people have a small number of downloads, but they've got a lot of really, really big fans. How do they do that? Well, that is what we're going to talk about this week. It's titled Michael Micro Influencer, but God I hate that term. So we're going to we're going to I want you to help me figure out what we're going to say here. Right. Stay tuned. Welcome back. I am glad that you're here, because this one is where we're going to go all over the place. And I'm going to let you guide me with some of this, because really, we're talking about people that have smaller size podcasts. I mean, everyone looks at those downloads and I mean, you know, people ask, I was just at the Higher education, podcast and one of the one of the topics there was kind of it was about followers and that and like, look, it's funny how so many of us treat that as that kind of gold standard metric. We ask, like, how big is the show? Well, it's it's this many followers, Baker. It's this many subscribers. Big. And that doesn't really always make that much sense to do because that doesn't talk about engagement, that doesn't talk about like, are these people clients? Are these people doing things that are engaging them as part of that community? And no one really asks, like, how many people are in your community? Because that's a tougher thing to gauge. Tougher thing to judge. But let's talk about how you build that community. And I hate the term micro influencer because it makes it sound like you're small. We don't want to minimize this because in a lot of cases, you can be very, very effective with a smaller group of people. In fact, the smaller group that you talk to, the more effective you're typically going to be. With that, we're going to talk about like the niche. Everyone says the riches are in the niches or whatever. However, they and I hate that one too. But we're going to talk about like where where you should be talking about things. If you try to talk to everyone I know you guys have heard me say this all the time. If you're trying to talk to everyone, you're going to talk to absolutely no one. You need to find very specific people to talk to and be okay knowing that there's going to be people that aren't going to like you. Tough pill to swallow in that. I need you to be authentically, authentically you. Gosh, I'm going to have a tough time with words today. This one could be an adventure. Seriously. Authenticity wins every single time. If I show up here and start talking like someone else, or started sounding like someone else. You guys are out and I understand why you you want you want to hear from that authentic host. We're going to talk about how to how to position yourself. I mean, how do how do you make it? So you're going to build that loyal audience. How do you make it so that people are going to show up for you? And then the other thing that I, I'm going to kind of finish some of the stuff with is a little bit of encouragement, because we all need that. When you see like eight, ten, 12, 14, 15 downloads, it's kind of tough. And the reason why it's tough because in so many other cases, you see people getting two, three, 4 or 5 million downloads and you're like, well, wait a minute, I am not that much different than they are. Well, you are, but let's do what we can to make the best out of that, and let's do what we can to make sure that whatever your podcast is geared for. Let's make it effective. That's that's the thing that I, that, I mean, I always want to come back to is I always want to make sure that we are being effective. So how do we build that dedicated audience? That's that's always the tough piece. How do I get people that are going to show up week in and week out? There's the I still remember there's there's someone that says that talking about friends and, big mobster looking dude and, he's like, you don't need, you guys, you don't need 100 people. You need to emphasize, and I loved it because he goes, those two guys are the ones that

when you call at 3:

00 in the morning, they're not going to ask any questions. They're just going to be like, where? And they are going to show up with a shovel, and they're not going to ask any questions about what's going on. That to me, that those are the types of fans that you want to build. On the business fix, Christie and I talk about culture in companies and you want to build the same culture with your followers, with your subscribers. It's it's finding those people that I joke that would take a bullet for you. They're like, yeah, whatever, we'll do it. Whatever you need us to do. How do you do that? So you need to you need to to niche down. You need to narrow down and figure out exactly what spot you need to be in. Too many people spend too much time trying to talk in a wide berth, and in that no one really feels like they're speaking directly to them. I, I see this all the time with so many business owners and so many marketing people, they're worried about leaving stuff on the table and instead they leave kind of everyone on the table because they're trying to talk to everyone. If you talk to specific people, those specific people will feel so connected to you. I mean, I get who our audience is. I am speaking directly to you, you know? I mean, you know this. You're you're you you you get that feeling like I need to make sure that I'm including everyone, and this is that area where you just don't want to include everyone. You want to figure out exactly who you're talking to and why you're talking to them. So the actionable piece to this is what specific problem are you trying to solve? What specific thing are you going to try and talk about? If your podcast is related to your business, this is the thing. What specific problem does your business solve? That to me is the big thing, because then you can go on and say who is exactly the beneficiary of that? Who is going to I mean, who is going to benefit the most by hearing about you, by hearing about your product, by hearing about what that does. So many people miss the mark on that because they want to talk to everyone. That's not the case. Realize that in that you you need this to to really narrow that down, your unique voice in this is going to be your brand's personality. So make sure that you are speaking in a, in a way, in a language, in a manner that is going to, to, to resonate with that group of people. If I got on the mic here and in front of the camera and I just sat here with my hands clenched together and just talked in a very monotone way, I think that most of my target audience wouldn't be interested at all because, I mean, look, I'm talking to people about podcasting. We're excited. We're interested in what we do. We're we're typically pretty animated about it. We enjoy doing this. If you didn't, I don't think you'd be podcasting about it. So with that, I'm making sure that I'm matching and thankfully, going back to the authenticity piece, that's just how I am, that that's what makes this such a good match. So to to kind of review on building that dedicated audience, go back, figure out what's the specific problem that you solve and who do you solve that for that who is is exactly who you want to talk to. Everyone uses that avatar speech. And I guess we'll we'll continue with that. Pick a person to talk to. Other people will listen, but pick that one person to talk to. So the other thing that we're going to talk about here is in order to build those stark raving fans for you, is you need to make sure that you have engaging content strategies. Let's say you do interviews, make sure that you're talking with clients, industry peers, but make sure that they are people that are interesting. Make sure that they've got a story or something that you can learn from. I've seen it so many times where people bring someone on, they bring on a client because they're like, hey, I've got a client that uses my product. I will bring them on. And that will make everyone feel good. And then the client comes on and is an absolute bore or is an absolute drag. That's not good for anyone. So make sure that you're you're getting these engaging content stories. Remember this is for content. That's what this all comes back to. Additionally you can do some case studies. If if you've got a client that you want to talk about how some things help them or how your product has fixed things for them. Make it a case study. I mean, do an interview with them and say, hey, look, I kind of want to do your story on my podcast. What was it like before we came along? What was it like after we came along? Ask questions about what you do specifically. Well, you should know what you and your business do well, so make sure that you ask about those specific questions. How did us doing this change you? Or how did us doing this make it so you wanted to work with us? Those types of case studies. Once again, you're basically getting, testimonial. I mean, this is like a this is like a 20 minute Google review. Look at those things that you can build that with. The other thing that I want to say is you can do the behind the scenes stuff. And we've talked about this before. Go back. Show them how things are made. Talk about how the things are made. If you make the widget, if you design the widget. Go through that process. Show people that they're like, when someone's paying $1,000 for something, show them why they're paying $1,000 for it. Show them why they're paying $1,000 for it, and there's $1,400 worth of value in it. That's that's a huge thing that you can do when it comes to building that dedicated audience, because once again, you're making people you're you're giving them that value. You're showing them the value that they're getting in that. How how can we get there with some interactive elements? Well, those interactive elements, in a lot of cases you can do question and answer segments. Submit. I know a ton of shows that are vlogs or whatever you want to call them. Now that they solicit questions pre show. Hey, we're going to be looking at this x, Y and z. What are your questions about it. One that I love you guys know I'm into motorcycles. There's one called Daily Rider. They go out and ride a motorcycle and he rides it basically on his commute. That's why it's Daily Rider. I love it. And beforehand he says, look, I'm going to be riding this motorcycle. What questions do you have about it that I can answer after the show? And in the end of the show, he scrolls through and goes through those questions and shows them on the screen. I absolutely love it. What a great way to get people engaged. What a great way to get people engaged. The other thing you can do is you can do some listener challenges. Maybe you're saying, hey, look, if you share this or like this and subscribe, give or get someone else to subscribe, make sure they send us a message saying, I subscribed to because it's so and so. We'll send you stickers. Maybe we'll send you a hat. Maybe we'll send you a t shirt. Whatever. It's not it's it's a terribly it's not a terribly expensive way to get people to share stuff, to get people to pass that information on. The other interactive, element about that poll's direct feedback put a poll up. Hey, what would you like to see? What are some of the things that we're missing on? What are some of the things that you're curious about that I mean, that gives you direct feedback not only for your podcast, but also for your business. There's so many great, great things that can come from that. And once again, I talk about the great things that come from it for you as a marketer, as a podcaster. But think about the feedback that gives your business. Think about the the the input that gives back to you. That's absolutely amazing. Now, the flip side of that is people feel like they are guiding you. They are telling you they're helping you. You're getting them involved. It's that involvement that brings them into the community. If people are just floating along and it's a one way conversation, they aren't feeling that when you ask them to do some things, when you ask them for some help, they're going to become invested. They're going to be they're going to be coming along for that ride. So how are the things how can you start to leverage some of the power that you get as you get more influence over the people? Now, remember, we're talking about more influence over people, not over not more people. That's the thing that I want to talk about with this, because we're building that community. Well, one of the things that you can do is you can look at like some of the cross-promotion and reach with that. When you collaborate with others, not only are you going to be able to, I mean, you will grow your influence with that in terms of the number of people. But when you bring others in, once again, that's going to solidify you as the expert, that's going to solidify you as the person that they want to hear from. Because when you bring others in, it shows that there's there's a certain amount of respect there. If I have a guest on the show, we are going to bring them in. And it just the fact that they're willing to spend the time with me there is going to show us. I mean, it shows that respect. And it says, look, they have enough respect for me, which that should build that community piece. Let's talk content springboard next. Because there's we the podcast generates so many. I mean, there's such a long tail of content that can be generated from a podcast, audio and video. Those can go for snippets for reels, social media, graphics, blog posts, newsletters. I talk about that. In many cases, that is a way to grow the audience. But if you do that correctly and if you look at that correctly, that's actually a great way to connect better with your audience. If you're going to build that blog post, that blog post should have some more detail in it about at least one section of what you're talking about a newsletter. Same thing. It shouldn't just be a reminder to go listen to the podcast. The newsletter should have some actionable information that is slightly different than what you had in the podcast. The social media graphics, the snippets. Once again, when people see you and hear from you in more places, in different places, that's really going to solidify that connection that you have with them, especially, is if you're constantly giving them new value everywhere they're going. Once again, like I said, that that newsletter make that just a little bit different than what you have in the podcast. It should cover the same subject, but say, hey, look, if you want more information about this, go to our newsletter. If you want more more information about this, go to our blog post. Once again, you're building that community. You're building yourself as that resource that's I mean, it's that type of information that becomes just so, so amazing. So once we've got content built, we've got that content springboard. We've talked about a little across promotion. I'm going to talk about something that is often misconstrued. Let's talk about some of the monetization in this. Everyone thinks you have to go CPM. Everyone's waiting for their podcast platform to say, look, I'm going to get X number of downloads and my podcast platform is going to pay me for it. Let me give you the stark reality of that upfront. You're probably not going to get to the point where your podcast is paid for by clicks. It's just not typically feasible. It may be hard to hear, especially if you really if you really dial in on your audience and make sure that you've got those people that are supported. You're probably not going to be getting that many clicks in your podcast. You're not going to be getting enough like ad revenue that way, because let's face it, the platforms are the ones that are keeping 95% of that. Google keeps a I mean, most of the ad revenue from YouTube. Guess what? Google keeps a large chunk of that. It's not. I mean, if you see a Ford ad, if you see a Pepsi ad, any ad that you see, typically, if you're on my YouTube for some odd reason, if you see an insurance company ad, most of what that ad paid for is not going to the creator, it's going to YouTube. That's how they support the platform. That's how they do those things. And that's obviously how they make money. And they've done very, very well at it. So when you realize that's not the case, what you want to look at is if you are trying to monetize your podcast, there's a couple of ways to do this. There's one, there's the affiliate marketing. If you're talking about like if you do service items and there's products that you use that you could get affiliate marketing from, that's fine. Realize once again you're going to getting low dollar amounts there. Now the flip side of that is if you have a very specific market that, hey, go to someone that's not a competitor that does this, that's in the same realm that you're in and ask if they'd like to sponsor the show. It's a great way to pay for your show. I mean, let's say an for the lack of a better thing, I'm going to go motorcycle here again. If you've got a motorcycle podcast where you're talking about let's let's say you do reviews on motorcycles, well, people are going to need tires. People are going to need oil. People are going to need grips. People are going to need boots. They're going to need helmets. They're going to need all those things. All those companies can be great targets. And when you say, hey, look, I know there's companies out there that make helmets, but you make dirt bike specific helmets and I talk with dirt bike specific people. Let's go away and even further. You talk about people that are bringing up kids on dirt bikes. That's I mean, it's a great way to do it and say, look, you sell children's helmets. These people are looking for children's helmets for their kids. These are the ones that listen to the podcast. I have 250 people that they're your direct or direct people. That's what they want. That's why people advertise on Google. That's why people advertise on YouTube. That's because it can be directed. It can be very direct at people that need that type of service, which when I go back to it and think about it, insurance, it makes sense because there was just a bunch of damage done to my hand and I had to use my insurance for it. So it makes 100% sense. There. The other way that you can do it is you can offer premium content. Hey, the first 20 minutes of the podcast is here. The remaining 40 minutes of the podcast is behind a paywall. You can do that now because we typically talk with and about businesses, I don't want you to overlook the fact that the monetization that you could be using could be sign up for the newsletter. It could be sign up for, go read the blog. It could be go look at our social media. Those are all ways to monetize the podcast. Don't lose sight of that, because if it supports your business, if this is your marketing effort, then that's how it's monetized. The only thing that I will warn you about with that is make sure that there is something directing people to use your services or to I mean, make sure that it fits in that funnel, your sales funnel someplace. Is it top of funnel? Is it midway through the funnel, or is it as people are getting closer to buying? Figure out where it's at and use the podcast to do that. One of the last big topics I want to talk about in this is how do you measure the success of this? Because there's some there's some metrics that you want to track and there's some that really don't. Listenership growth that's one. Now downloads once again we we all know how downloads recently how they're being measured is getting a little bit less transparent. Maybe that's the right way to put it. Downloads we still are like seeing it. It's it's like getting a like on Facebook. It's like getting a comment on YouTube. We're like yay I people like me. They really, really like me. It it downloads give you that same feeling. Look for unique listeners that tells you the number of people that you are reaching. With a program like Pod Track Pod Up, any one of those can help you really get that metric correct. Engagement in terms of completion rate, how far are people getting into the podcast? Do they listen to the first five minutes and then they go, I'm out. Are the listening to 20 minutes and then leaving? Are the listening to 40 minutes and leaving that can help you figure out like how you're engaging with your people. The other one is audience demographics. I typically tell people when you're talking on the microphone, your audience is you. In a lot of cases, and in a lot of cases, it's you -5 to 7 years. It's just how it works out, especially in business podcasts. So see if you're hitting the right people, see if you're getting out to the right people, because that can make a huge difference if you're not. Let's say your business is someone that I mean, let's say you're selling, arts and crafts stuff. Maybe it's more female oriented and suddenly you realize that 75% of your audience is male and you're not seeing any conversions on your site. Well, then you got to realize you may need to change what you're doing in your show line. That's tough with that is staying authentic with it. So that's we'll talk about that balance here in another episode. When we also talk about that completion rate, where is there a drop off you want? I mean, we will all see this steady decline as the as the episode goes on. That's perfectly fine. But what you don't want to see is a drop off. If you see a drop off that tells you that, go look, go listen to that piece of the episode. Why did it drop off their YouTube analytics for this are phenomenal. So make sure that you go ahead and use those. The other thing that we should look at, which episodes are performing the best you you know it. Go look at the chart, see which see which topics you have that are performing the best. Hone in on those. Those are the ones where people are telling you, yes, I really want to hear more of this. These insights are all things that you should be using to adapt your content, to make sure that you are serving your audience, because very much so, podcasting is about serving your audience. If you're not here to serve your audience, people will realize that and they will move along to someone who is, because there is someone out there that is looking to serve your audience. Last thing I want to talk about when it comes to the days podcast is encouragement. The growth isn't always linear. We'll see spikes. It'll be like, oh my goodness, we're on a roll. And then it stops. And that's I mean, it's all it's that's tough to deal with. Look for the small wins. Buzzsprout. One of the platforms we use to host podcasts on, they let you know, hey, you've reached 250 downloads, you've reached 500 downloads, you've reached a thousand downloads. They send those things out. Look at those, Mark those. Be proud of those because there's a reason why they send those markers out. We talk about this all the time. Most podcasts don't make it past episode 15. You may. You made it to episode 25. Congratulations. You did a great job, even if there's not that many people listening to you, you still done a great job. With all that, I want you to do me a favor. Go to the website. Let's get you on the mailing list. I would also love to hear from you. What are some of the things that you'd like to hear coming up? As you may know, we are switching up the format here in a couple of episodes. I'm really excited about that. Who should we be having on as a guest? Who is someone that you would like to hear from in order to help grow your podcast? In order to help grow your business? Those are of the things that we're really after. This as always, do me a favor. Take care of yourself. Can take care of someone else, and I will see you very, very soon.

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Josh Troche

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