💡 At least 18 podcast marketing tips from Jordan Harbinger 💡
💡 At least 18 podcast marketing tips from Jordan Harbinger 💡
Plus, 52 weeks of podcast growth🪄
From his site:
Jordan Harbinger is the host of The Jordan Harbinger Show, and the main voice you hear on the podcast. As a recovering lawyer who speaks 5 languages and two-time kidnapee, Jordan brings his unique background and personality to every episode of the show.
What his site doesn’t say: Jordan uses brilliant marketing tactics for his podcast that will make you go “whoa.”
I tell people what to do on their podcasts. Jordan actually does them for his own show. He knows what he’s talking about and isn’t into gate-keeping. He graciously agreed to answer my questions below. Enjoy and hold onto your butts! (Also read: Marketing is Not a Real Thing in Podcasting: An Interview with Eric Nuzum.) But first…
💫 52 Weeks of Podcast Growth
This week’s tip is: Spend 15 minutes writing a new pitch for your show. Time yourself!
So far, we have worked on 150 and 300 word pitches. This week, we want you to throw the word count out the window and just spend 15 minutes on yourself. Try to write a pitch that would require minimal editing. We suggest writing for 12 minutes and spending 3 minutes to edit. This will, hopefully, get you in the mindset to think about pitching yourself for 15 minutes straight, which is easier said than done.
We know that we’re getting you to write so many pitches but bear with us. The practice will help you hit the ground running when it’s time to start sending them.
To sum it up, the tips so far are:
Find 10 podcasts that are similar to yours.
Connect with 10 new podcasts on social media.
Join 3 subreddits and/or discords that are relevant to the topic of your podcast.
Write a 150-word pitch for your show.
Time how long you spend on podcast creation and marketing.
Describe your podcast from a friend/listener’s perspective.
Write a 300-word pitch for your show.
Spend 15 minutes writing a new pitch for your show.
🎙️ Meet: Jordan Harbinger
How have you changed as a podcaster since you began?
Jordan Harbinger (JH): When I first started as a podcaster, I used to outline every single element of every show. Then as I got better at winging it, I began winging it. Then I started to really, really wing it and I realized that my show sucked. So, I went back to taking more comprehensive notes. It's a funny thing because I realize I've changed in a million ways since I began. I’ve noticed that when you're a beginner, you prepare a ton. When you transition to an amateur, you think you don't need to prepare. Then, when you're a real professional, you realize that you need to prep a ton. I come across shows that have like three hour long interviews, they could have done a 90 minute or even an hour long interview if they had prepared in advance. When a host is not prepared, you can tell and it wastes the listener's time, so I decided not to do that.
What have you learned about ways to connect with your audience?
JH: I don't like low-lift ways like YouTube comments because it's too easy to give feedback. While I love feedback and creators thrive on feedback, you don't want feedback from the peanut gallery; they're not invested. What you want is for people to email you or write to you in a way where they have to actually make an effort. When that happens, you rarely end up with nonsense in your inbox. (You'll still get crazies here and there, but there'll be crazies who've taken the effort to write to you even if they're unhinged).
What do you say to people who are hesitant about doing promo swaps because they don’t want to send listeners to other shows?
JH: I understand why people think that; that's kind of the idea. But, the idea is also that your show is good enough not to lose listeners to the other show. So you have to be careful if you're playing a zero sum game where somebody who listens to your show can't find out about other shows lest they leave you. You're signaling that your content quality is low. Here's the real truth: people know that other podcasts exist. So you're not gonna hide very long, especially if you're on YouTube or any sort of discovery platform. So instead of hiding the fact that other shows exist from your listeners, work on bringing your quality up. People will listen to high quality stuff, period. Also, when you do promo swaps and you recommend other good shows, you build trust with your audience – they trust your recommendations more and they'll probably stick with you because of that. So, I actually think it's misguided not to do promo swaps for that reason.
What are three things podcasters can do to market their shows for free?
JH: Swaps, swaps, and more swaps. Social media doesn't do anything. If you want to challenge me on that, go ahead and show me the data. Nobody has it yet. All these little content pieces that people are making where it's like, I repurpose this and I put it there. Perhaps that might work for YouTube. However, I know tons of shows that have tons of followers on TikTok and they don't have any real podcast followers. There's a reason for that: nobody is leaving TikTok to go listen to an hour-long thing after watching a 20-second clip. While conversion has been seen, it remains extremely low, immeasurable, and so unsustainable.
What’s the best way to be a good guest on a show if you’re lucky enough to be invited?
JH: The best way to be a good guest is to listen to an episode or so of the podcast. This will give you a sense of the host. You don't need to have an outline ready, but you should know your talking points and generally what you're going to be talking about. However, don't stick to them like glue. Have a conversation, be relaxed. That's it. Also, try to make sure your environment allows for a decent audio quality.
How do you balance doing things that scale and don’t scale? Are both things equally important?
JH: I do a lot of stuff that doesn't scale. For instance - replying to every email, replying to every Instagram DM, getting back to everybody on everything fan mail-wise. I balance both things by setting a time limit. I’ll say that I'm going to answer 40 messages today and I'll do that. However, if it takes longer than an hour, I just stop because I only dedicated an hour to this. Sometimes I just make dents in the task but sometimes I'll check and I'll realize that I finished in half an hour.
How courageous do you think people can be when it comes to switching up their content?
JH: In the earlier days you can be courageous when you're switching up your content; experiment with a bunch of different stuff. Putting something new on the feed is how I have actually grown the show quite a bit. Like when I got a bunch of listener questions, I did feedback Friday. When I saw that it was really popular, I did it every Friday. Along came a skeptical episode. That was really popular! So, I did skeptical episodes on a regular basis and that’s how skeptical Sunday came about. Be courageous, but don't get married to your ideas. You want to be relatively consistent, but not so consistent that you become boring.
What’s one or two rules every interviewer should adhere to to get the good stuff?
JH: The first one is to make sure you know what you're hoping to get from your guest, at least in the beginning. Don't sit there and meander. If they've got a book, read it. The other thing is to get out of your own way. A lot of times people will write down questions and then they're married to that list of questions. Don't do that to yourself. Have your questions ready, but be available to go on tangents. Keep your notes and Google Docs ready to navigate through.
I don’t think most people use their backlogs enough, but you do. What are a few ways people can drive people to it?
JH: I make trailers and I send people to the back catalog. You don't have to do that. They get expensive fast. You can mention previous episodes when relevant; a lot of listeners do go back and listen to the older episodes.
However, the trailers can't be beat. If you're editing your show and you want to make trailers, I recommend the trailer method that I use on my show.
If people don’t have any money but want to grow their show, what should they do?
JH: Swap, swap, swap, swap swaps. That's it. They're free. That's the only thing that works other than paid ads. Everything else is a waste. You don't need to spend any money.
I heard you’ve been scaling back your output in 2023. How’s it going?
JH: I'm doing a lot less and it’s going great. The reason I'm doing a lot less is because I hired people to create skeptical Sunday episodes with me instead of doing two interviews. Now I'm still doing two interviews, but my plan is to phase out the second interview each week, do feedback Friday, skeptical Sunday, and one interview. So I only have to read one book per week instead of two or three. And that is so far, glorious.
From the desk of Tink
Becoming An Icon chronicles the lives of Latinx artists who have left an indelible mark through the sustained brilliance of their careers. This podcast brings you an exploration of various genre-defining stars, like Shakira, Rita Moreno, Bad Bunny and more, whose talent is so memorable that they surpass mere performers and ascend to the iconic level. Here, we chart the paths and trails these unique artists have blazed on their way to global fame. The first episode dropped this week and features the biggest music star in the world today: Bad Bunny.
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