Finding Ethical Podcast Growth Experts: Reality or Myth?

For every poor fit under-researched pitch you have for podcast guests in your inbox, you likely also have one or maybe two pitches from podcast growth experts, somebody who can grow your show with thousands of downloads guaranteed for just a couple of bucks.

But here's the question: Is there an ethical version of this? Because obviously, that's probably not going to be legit, ethical, etc. But is there an ethical podcast growth expert? That's the question we're answering today.

Welcome to The More Profitable Podcast with Stacey Harris. I'm Stacey. This is the spot to learn more about the strategies, tactics, and tools you need to build your more profitable podcast. My team and I work every day with podcasters like you to shift shows from frustrating time sucks to productive members of your sales team, because your show should be built to generate and convert leads. So let's get into it.

This was a fantastic question submitted to us for the AMA feature here on the show that we've been doing. For most of these questions, we've just pulled together the like ones and pulled themes and shared them this month.

This one was one that really got me inspired to do something a little different. We're actually going to be moving this feature, this AMA idea, this Ask Me Anything idea to The Podcast Newsroom. Starting in August on the first and third Monday of every month, you will hear in The Podcast Newsroom a new AMA.

You have the ability to submit questions over at uncommonlymore.com/ama and I'll be sharing the answers to those questions along with any relevant podcast news on the first and third Monday.

If you've not yet signed up for The Podcast Newsroom, that's okay. It is a solvable problem and an absolutely free thing to do. Just head over to uncommonlymore.com/newsroom and get your subscription.

So, the question as it was sent to me says—and I'm going to read this out because I love the way this person framed it—I see DMs every day from someone who was a “podcast growth expert” and “can grow my show by thousands of downloads.” I know it's spam. But is there an “ethical” version of this?

I love this question because I too get these and I guarantee you do too because they're pervasive and invasive. Honestly, they are everywhere. They're in my DMs on Instagram. They're in my DMs on LinkedIn. They're in my inbox. They're in our general inbox. They're everywhere. They're on YouTube. They're everywhere. Oftentimes, this can be really appealing. Who doesn't want to grow their show?

But when you dig a little deeper, it's the same business model as somebody who guarantees to grow your Instagram followers by hundreds or thousands of people in 14 to 30 days.

They're buying or faking those subscriptions. All you're doing is introducing a lot of bots. To the credit of the person who asked me this question, they know that. This is clearly spam, but I'm also willing to bet, much like this questioner, much like this listener, you have followed the "Well, this is clearly BS" thought with, "I wonder if somebody actually does this. I wonder if there is somebody who could magically flip a switch and grow my show."

The answer is no. No one can magically grow your show. There are lots of ways to grow your show. I've talked about options to grow your show on this podcast. I'm going to link in the show notes an episode where we talk all about growth strategies and some ideas that you can implement.

I want to today instead talk about the first fundamental step you have to take before you hire anyone to “grow” your show. That's understanding why you want that growth. The purpose of the growth.

The reason I want you to understand this first is that until you understand the intent of the growth, the purpose of those new listeners, of those new people joining your community, you don't know who they are.

So much about marketing, so much about our business is about reverse engineering, figuring out what we want, where we want to go, and then backtracking to how we get there. When we focus on growth for the sake of growth, we don't filter who it is we want to invite in, who it is we want to attract, who it is we want to grow.

We grow for the sake of growth. Then we're like, “Well, great, I have 1,000 more, or 10,000 more, or a million more downloads than I had before. That makes my ego feel good. Look how many people like me.”

Then you end up in conversations with someone like me, and you want to know why your show won't convert. You're telling me I've got 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, 1 million people listening to my show every month—by the way, these are wildly dramatized numbers, just to put that out there—but you're telling me, and then you're like, "I don't know why no one is buying anything."

I'll go in and I'll listen, and sometimes it's because you have skipped the calls to action, you have not invited anyone to purchase anything. Honestly, that happens sometimes. But more often than not, I go, “Well, great, who's listening? How did you grow the show? Well, you ran a lot of Facebook ads. Oh, cool. Who did you put those ads in front of?” “Anybody who listens to XYZ podcast.”

It's like, “Okay. Well, we wanted to attract podcast listeners.” Well, but you don't actually want consumers to listen to your show. Your show is likely not built for somebody to just love it, binge it, and share it. If you're listening to me right now, it's likely that your show is built to generate, educate, and convert right-fit clients into your business.

That's why when we talk about strategy, we talk about who are your right-fit clients. What do they need to know to make the decision to work with you? These are the kinds of questions we're talking about when we talk about the audience, instead of, “I just want more of them.”

Because more is great. More feels good. More feels like it should work. More feels like, “Well, if I have more people listening, I'll have more people buying.” But that's not true. More is not better if the only reason it's there is because it's more. More is only better when that more is targeted, when that more is focused, and when that more speaks to your larger business goals.

The growth of your podcast is fun. The growth of your podcast is rewarding for your ego. Like, “Ooh, look, there are people listening to me.” But growth for the sake of growth will not deliver results. Not now, not ever, not in any part of your business.

In the same way, adding more teams will not suddenly mean you have more work for them. Adding more listeners will not suddenly mean you have more conversions. If that were true, every business owner who's ever gone out and bought an email list would be making a gazillion dollars because they just doubled or tripled or quadrupled or whatever their email list.

By all logic, they should have doubled, tripled, or quadrupled or whatever their sales and we do not see that correlation because more is not better. More is just more. Before you start looking for more, I want you to look at what is, is your show currently doing what you want it to do?

Are you getting people on sales calls who are talking about podcast episodes? Are you getting engagement in your DMs, in your inbox, wherever you get feedback? Maybe it's on LinkedIn, whatever. But are you getting feedback from people who show up and they're like, “This really resonated?” Then booking sales calls.

By the way, this is what happens. We talked to Nicole Otchy not too long ago and she was talking about her newly launched show and how this is already happening because she went in with this intent.

I talk about it a ton. My favorite thing is I get on sales calls and people just say stuff I've said in podcasts back to me or they'll ask me a question and I can tell they listen to the podcast because they're using my language. They're framing the question in the same way I talked about something in a podcast episode.

If that's not happening, it's not time to grow your audience. It's time to improve your show. It's time to up your calls-to-action game. You cannot increase visibility on something that's not working and expect the increased visibility to be the thing that makes it work. It needs to be working at each step of its growth.

Now if your show is brand new and you're not seeing these results yet, and you're like, "Oh, I really only have three people listening to the show, and two of them are married and/or related to me in some other ways, I'm probably going to need more listeners,” yes, then you need to be looking at growth.

But handing that responsibility over to someone else and saying, "Hey, just grow my show by whatever means necessary" is also not going to get you where you want to be.

It's going to be about you having targeted conversations. You going and engaging in targeted places. You starting to engage with the audience you want to be listening to your show and sharing your show with them. It's about going to them upfront.

Oftentimes when I find people looking for these fast-track growth people, they've skipped the step of understanding what they want their show to do inside of their business.

They have been sold on the idea that sitting behind a microphone once a week and talking to yourself and then sharing it with the internet is going to just immediately convert and there's no other step after that. That is not true.

So I thank you for submitting this question because I know we've all had that moment. I have it too, where you're like, “Oh, you could add 10,000 new listeners to my show tomorrow.” Well, for me, my show works, I know my show works. I know my show's converting. Heck yeah, let's just add 10,000 people and see what happens.

But when you start to explore what that growth looks like, it becomes less and less about attracting the people who you want to see there. That's a misstep that is going to lead you to so much more frustration and so much more burnout because you're going to wonder why it's not working.

If you're anything like me or literally any of the people I talk to, you're going to assume it's your fault. It won't be. I mean, not completely. It will be because you attracted in people who aren't receptive to the message, who aren't interested in doing what's next.

It will feel like, “Well, no one wants this. No one is interested because I've got all these people listening and they're not doing anything. So, why would anyone else want to hear it?” It's because you're talking to the wrong room.

I want to make sure we're filling a room with people who we want to be in that room. This will mean your growth will come more slowly. This will mean you've got to be in it and you've got to be doing the work of getting in front of the people who you want in that room so that you can invite them to the room.

It is not easy, but it is much harder to create content and feel like it should be working and not understand why it's not because you're talking to the wrong room. It is way more fun to open up your stats and see that your downloads have doubled or tripled episode after episode month after month.

But I'd rather see a consistent growth plateau, growth plateau, growth plateau than a straight-up incline because a straight-up incline is not sustainable and quite frankly it is wildly misleading because you're not going to see the conversions, you're not going to see the thing you need to see on the other side and although your podcast is something you're selling, is a part of your offers, is something that you are sharing with your audience, it's not the last stop on the trail. It's not where we ultimately want them to land.

It is a tool we are using to move them through their sales process. But they need to end up somewhere else. Even if that somewhere else isn't working with you but going and listening to someone else and hiring someone else. Because they identified that you weren't the solution to their problem.

That's good too. I don't want somebody sitting here who I can't help. That's not of service to them getting to their goal. It's imperative that I'm being super clear about who I'm for and how I help.

That is impossible to do when you're trying to appeal to growth instead of conversion. I'm sure we've talked about this in other episodes. I'm sure we'll talk about it more. Not every episode is going to do every job. Some episodes are about growth, some episodes are about conversion. They have to work together to move people through that decision-making process.

Yes, there are absolutely people who can help grow your show ethically. They're likely not positioning themselves as podcast growth experts, I'm going to tell you right now. They probably are positioning themselves as PR people, as ads people, paid traffic can be a great way to do this because you have the ability to target.

They might be positioning themselves as a guest expert like guest pitching, people who can pitch you on to other shows. Does that mean anyone with any of these titles is going to be doing it ethically? No. We're both grown-ups, you know that's not true.

But what it does mean is that when you have an understanding of what your goal for growth is, what your purpose and intent for that growth is, you'll know which one of these is going to help you get there.

Frankly, it'll probably be some combination over the lifespan of your show. There will be seasons for different things. That's why it's helpful to work with somebody from a strategy standpoint to understand when and where these levers might be helpful. This is something we do with all of our production clients. This is something we talk a lot about during Podcast Strategy Intensives.

I help our clients understand when and what levers to pull. So, if you're not sure what levers to pull and when, let's have a conversation, uncommonlymore.com/intensive is a great place to book a call with me. You and I can have a conversation around what is the best way we can help you now and what might be the best next steps for your show.

Head on over to uncommonlymore.com/intensive, book a chat with me, and let's talk. If you want more questions like this answered, make sure you're submitting them, uncommonlymore.com/ama, and be sure that you're tuning into The Podcast Newsroom because that's where questions like this are going to be answered moving forward starting August. I'll see you over there, and I'll see you right back here next week.

Thanks so much for listening to this show. Remember that content consumption does not make changes, so commit to doing something from today's episode. Maybe it's taking action on what we talked about. Maybe it's reaching out to me and learning more about Podcast Strategy Intensives or what podcast production looks like with our team. All of that is over at uncommonlymore.com.

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