The Beginner’s Guide to Dynamic Ads: Use Your Podcast to Sell Smarter

When we've got a live promo like maybe a launch coming up or we've got maybe a big live event that we're sharing or we're doing something like a book release, we want to be promoting those things to the audience we've built with our podcast. However, if we're building assets we want to be able to repurpose, we want to be building something that's pretty evergreen, something that we can plug and play again for redistribution should we choose to do that. How do we carry both of those things? The answer: dynamic ads. Consider this dynamic ads 101 because we're breaking it all down in this episode. Let's get into it.

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.

I think dynamic ads are such a powerful tool and the fact that something like this is so accessible to us as micro business owners is incredible. We use Buzzsprout to run and host our show, and we are able to run dynamic ads through Buzzsprout. If you're a micro-business owner and you want to be running dynamic ads, I highly recommend Buzzsprout.

Other platforms will make it possible, specifically Libsyn also totally makes this possible. However, you need to have an enterprise kind of account. There is a much bigger financial commitment to have access to this feature than there is with Buzzsprout. Captivate also has this option. Captivate is not a tool I've used in full transparency, but we do have a couple of intensive clients who use Captivate, use dynamic ads, and have raved about it so the functionality is there.

As we get into today though, I want to talk less about tools and more about your process. We're going to talk about a few ways to use them, and we're going to talk about some best practices as far as structuring them. Again, this is going to be something that is kind of the 101 of this. I'm going to be talking about this in a pretty general way.

If you have specific questions about dynamic ads in your business, make sure you submit them for The Podcast Newsroom. We've got the AMA question form open over at uncommonlymore.com/ama and I'm happy to answer more specific questions and go deeper on this, over in The Podcast Newsroom. If you're not yet subscribed to The Podcast Newsroom, now, stellar time to fix that, thepodcastnewsroom.com is your place to sign up. It is completely free, but it is a private podcast, so you do need to enter your email address to get your specific feed details.

I am answering your questions over there. I have already answered some great ones. We had committed to experimenting with this through the end of the year, but I intend to keep it going so keep your questions coming, and again, make sure you sign up for that private feed over at thepodcastnewsroom.com.

I want to get into some ways to use this first because frankly, it's more exciting. If I can first get you excited about how you're going to use it, then we can talk about the how you're going to do it. I want to first qualify: is this something that's going to be a fit for you? Because maybe it's not and if I'm going through these options on how to use this, it's totally okay to be like, “Hmm, not for me right now,” and not worry about it.

However, if any of this is resonating, if any of this is feeling like, "Oh, I love that idea. I've got X, Y, Z happening in the next month or in the next quarter or in the next year. This is how I want to be using those," then make sure you tune in for those best practices as we're closer to the end of the episode because that's going to be building your process, your best practices. It's going to allow you to build the best version of these you can from the jump, which is always what I'm aiming to do with this show and frankly, any of the work that I do is how can we make it easier for you to see success sooner.

Before I get too ahead of myself, because I immediately want to jump into like, “Ooh, how are we going to use these,” let me truly 101 this, and let's talk a little bit about what dynamic ads are. Dynamic ads allow us to run one ad across multiple episodes, including all of your episodes, without having to edit them into the actual audio.

When you hear, and I'm running one right now on this episode so that you can hear it, you heard it at the beginning of this episode. Before you heard me talk about dynamic ads, you heard me promo something. If you're listening to this when it went live in the first place, that thing was a Podcast Strategy Intensive, because we are booking out next month's Podcast Strategy Intensives right now and I want to make sure you know about that.

Again, we're going to talk about how we can use these in just a second. But I wanted you to experience one right here. There was and will always be a dynamic ad ahead of this episode. Even if they're not across all the episodes, I'll keep one here so that you will have experience to what we're talking about. They don't always have to be at the front though.

I will be honest with you, I most often run pre-roll, which is what it's called when it sits at the beginning of the episode or really before the beginning of your episode called a pre-roll ad, this is the kind I run the most often because I don't have to worry about what it is up next to in the middle of the episode and I don't have to trust that you listened to the whole show to hear it at the end of the episode.

Most often, I run short ones right at the front. You can however run them as a pre-roll (at the beginning of the show), as a mid-roll (somewhere in the middle of the show), and depending on the tool you're using, that may be automated where it goes or you may have been able to specify where it goes. I know in Buzzsprout, you have the option to set your mid-roll marker by episode so it's possible for you to say 17 minutes in this episode is the best spot and 13, 27 in this one, etc., etc. So you have more control over what's going to be around whatever promo may happen.

Specifically again in Buzzsprout, you have the option to run up to three mid-roll ads. You also have the option to run a post-roll ad which is, that's right, the end of the show, the opposite of our pre-roll. So our pre-roll sits before the beginning and our post-roll sits after the ending, and then mid-roll somewhere in the middle. I don't love a post-roll just because there's not a huge amount of people that are going to listen to every second of your podcast, including every second of your outro.

With that said, if you are somebody who knows your podcast is binged, we've got a production client like this actually. She's got feedback and she's got statistical evidence that her show is most frequently binged. When someone new finds her show, they go back to the beginning and they listen to every episode.

They also tend to listen while they're doing another activity and so oftentimes, they will listen to episode after episode after episode and they'll just let the feed run so they're hearing that post-roll, they're hearing that end of the show and so you could absolutely be in that case running something geared towards frankly your warmest listeners because those are the folks who are staying in, they're retaining episode after episode.

Those folks are going to be your warmest leads. This is an excellent opportunity for a sales-focused post-roll ad. But those are the options. So pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, at least on Buzzsprout. Again, this may vary by provider, but with Buzzsprout, you get one pre-roll, three mid-rolls, and one post-roll. What I love about dynamic ads is they run on your schedule.

If I've got a new year program, I'm running a workshop on January 2nd to kick off the new year with production, by the way, I'm absolutely not doing this, loves. Absolutely not doing this. But if I did, I could run for the last couple of weeks of December a promo across all of my episodes promoting that workshop. Or let's say I am running a special summer series on the podcast, I could, across all episodes that aren't that summer series, say, "Hey, make sure you don't miss right now, we're running a special summer series. If you go to your player and you scroll to the most recent episodes, you're going to hear the one or three or however many we've released series to do XYZ."

But here's the best part, is I can also then turn those off. Let's say I was doing that January 2nd workshop, it's now January 3rd, that's no longer relevant, I don't need to worry about the fact that my four most recent episodes from December are all promoting this thing that no longer exists. That is done. We don't want that. Because now we've made a promise that we're not really following through on. So I'm able to turn that ad off or replace it with something else.

Maybe I don't turn the ad off. What I do is I replace that ad with a new promo that is a way to purchase the replay of that workshop or is to purchase what it is that I launched on the back end of that workshop. I'm able to then update that and make sure I'm staying in alignment with what I'm promoting now with the content I built to sell whatever this larger thing is.

That's what I want you to be looking at when you're looking at this, and as we start going through these ways to use them, I want you to be thinking about the ways you want to be using them, all right? But that's the basics of this. That's the foundation is this is simply an ad that we can upload separate from any of the episodes and then run it across some, most, or even all of the episodes in either that pre-roll, those mid-roll, or that post-roll spot.

Let's dig into how we want to be using this. I put them in three categories. dynamic ads in general. First and foremost, updates. The example I was just sharing about like, "Hey, we're running a summer series. Come hear these," great update. Availability of something or capacity within your team. Like, "Hey, just a heads up. Our team is currently on our end-of-the-year break. If you want to make sure that your show's set up for the new year, submit a form and we'll get back to you after January 3rd," or whatever.

A great example that a client used this for that fits in this update category is our client had an existing show that she was no longer running. She started working with us and we launched a new podcast with her because her business has changed. Her audience has changed. She needed a new space. The previous container was not a fit for what she's talking about or who she's talking to. It's still a great asset.

It's a good evidence of her experience. It actually absolutely is still serving an audience. She was even finding that clients in her new business were referencing that old show. It's still an asset. It's just not the asset we want it to be and it's not worth continuing in that space. She needed a fresh start, she needed a new show. So we launched this new show but when we launched this new show, we didn't just forget, or worse, delete the old show.

What we did is we let it continue to attract an audience but we put a pre-roll across every episode of that old show pointing people to the new show, saying, "Hey, if you love the content here and you love what we're talking about, make sure you come join us over on this new show. This is what we're talking about. This is who we're serving. This is what's going on there."

So we were able to drive traffic from this asset that was already working to this new asset that was going to be doing the job moving forward. She still gets downloads on that old show. She still gets traffic to that old show. She still hears about that old show on sales calls, frankly. But oftentimes now, it's that I heard about the new show because I found the old show.

We're just starting to get to a point where people are straight up just discovering the new show. Even with that, people are still coming through from that old show. The new show is bringing people more frequently. The new show is being quoted to her more frequently. It's been around a little while now, but that old one still keeps trucking without any real ongoing effort. She recorded this pre-roll, we uploaded it and scuttled it and it's done.

This is a great example of using that pre-roll as an update, using that dynamic ad as a way to let an audience know, “Hey, here's what's happening here. There are no new episodes coming to this show, but we do have something that could serve you over here. Here's what it is. Here's who it's for.” Simple as that. All right?

The number two way to use it, opt-ins, driving traffic to your opt-ins. We have clients who have a collection of different opt-ins that drive traffic to the same kinds of places, but there's a variety. You know what? Based on the sales season she's in, because her content is built to speak to her expertise, we will shift what that promo is for her email list based on who specifically in her audience she is selling to right then.

Maybe she's got capacity in her entry-level program, then we've got an ad in her show promoting the email opt-in that's most likely going to speak to them. The core podcast content could work for many portions of her audience. They're all going to see that content through their own lens and so it's going to land differently, but we know that specifically right now, she's got an open door for program A and so we want to have an ad in that episode that speaks to the opt-in for group A.

Then in two months, when she's really talking to group B, we can have a different dynamic ad rolling that speaks to an opt-in, that speaks more to that group B audience. Again, the core podcast content will speak to A and B. There is something in there for both groups, but we're able to funnel in the most right-fit for her sales calendar at that time by changing up that opt-in.

This can also be a way to just change it up, keep it fresh with your opt-in. I am a big, big, boring girl. We've got one way to get on the email list here most of the time and that's The Podcast Newsroom. Occasionally, we'll do things like the roundtables or a workshop or something, but not very often, it's in and out.

When I do run the roundtables, again, I don't run them all the time, so it can be easier for me to run a promo that says, "Hey, we're doing a roundtable next month, we're doing a roundtable in July," or whatever I want to do, and then turn that off and replace it with my standard Podcast Newsroom promo, so that that promo, that way onto my email list, is always current with what's happening and what's available right now.

Now, is this required? Absolutely not. You'll absolutely find that I have baked in promo for the roundtable that's been in episodes. This just exists and that's fine. It's okay. It doesn't have to be a dynamic ad, but that can be a really powerful way to use your dynamic ads.

The third way I want to talk about is sales, I especially love this if you're somebody who has a launch component in your business, for example, we've got The Profitable Podcaster Mastermind, it only opens a few times a year, honestly, next year it's only going to open twice, I really want to be building promo across all of my episodes when that card is open because it's the one way in my business that I have an open and close. It's the one offered in my business where it's not just evergreen because production intensives are always around.

I may not have a spot this month, but I will probably do next month. Those are something I'm promoting all of the time. There's not a set open and close. If we've got capacity, the doors are open. It's as simple as that. But with the Mastermind, that's not the case because we run a live program. We've got live group calls. We are on a calendar. We are on a schedule.

When that's open I want to make sure you know. We're running it as pre-roll ads when those doors are open across every single episode so that if you find an episode of this show and you like it, you know already that the Mastermind is open now. The same can be true if you're somebody who is maybe a done-for-you service provider—we've had clients do this and I loved it—you're a done-for-you service provider and you don't always have capacity.

Maybe you're on the waitlist early. You've got an option for people to be on your waitlist, but there's nobody available to do the work right this second. What I want you to be thinking about is how powerful would it be to be able to turn on an ad that said, “Hey, we've got capacity right now. I've got an opening next week. I've got an opening next month. Make sure you head to [insert link here] to find out more about working with our team.”

This can be a powerful, powerful sales tool. Again, if you're somebody who's got an audience who is listening to these shows back to back and they're just binging a sales promo as a post-roll, great. I want to now shift to best practices because I'm sure as you're hearing me talk about these three options, updates, opt-ins, and sales, you're curious about what that actually looks like.

And because I know you, I'm guessing there's some like, “Do I really want to be putting a sales promo at the very beginning of my episode?” Honestly, yes, it's okay. Let's talk about best practices. The first best practice question that I get the most is how often to run them and how often to change them.

I am a big believer that if you want to, you can be running dynamic ads all the time. You can even be running one kind of dynamic ad all the time. If you want to have a pre-roll ad that runs all the time, you're allowed to do that. You get to do whatever you want to do.

Be aware of the fact that two things need to be watched for, especially with your pre-rolls. You need to be looking at the length and you need to be looking at audio blindness, I'm going to call it. First of all, let's talk length. If you're running it as a pre-roll, you need to be mindful that it needs to be short.

This is not about telling them everything they could possibly want to know ever about this thing. It is instead about telling them what they need to know to go and learn more. Again, this is not about creating an audio sales page that runs before your episode, it's about simply saying, "Hey, this is available now. Make sure you learn more at such-and-such."

I recommend keeping these at around 30 seconds. You can sometimes get away with a minute. I really try to keep these to around 30 seconds, and I really, really encourage you to keep them under a minute. When you start looking at ads that are two, three, and five minutes long, that's not an ad. It's now an infomercial. It's just not going to retain your listener.

It's going to distract them from the episode and you're going to lose them completely. Keep this brief. This should not be the only place that anybody is hearing about what you're sharing. This can act as a touchstone and as a reminder. What I love about dynamic ads with Buzzsprout is they allow us to put some text in the show notes as well.

You can send them directly to the show notes to run a link. You can send them directly to the show notes to get information. You do not have to send them to some far-off land and hope they remember the link. You can say, “Check the show notes now. Find the link to get full information about this offer, to sign up for this thing, or to get more information about this update I just shared.”

But especially when you're talking about running them as pre-rolls, 30 seconds. Even when you're thinking about running them as mid-rolls though, you want to be mindful that you're stopping what they've been engaged with, and you're starting them on another path.

You are putting up a shiny object, and so you want to be mindful of putting them back where you found them before you lose them. Even in mid-rolls, you can maybe stretch a mid-roll to a minute 30, but you want to be mindful, again, you need to return them where you found them before you lose them.

Because if we send them down too big of a rabbit hole, if we spend too much time out of the episode, it's going to be hard for them to re-enter and stay. Be mindful of that as you're going through this process. Be mindful as you're building these that you are being succinct, that you are being action-focused, and that you're just popping in to let them know and then you're popping back out.

The other component of this is noise blindness, that audio blindness I talked about. That really comes down to thinking about driving down a highway. Think about a commute you make every day. Maybe it's to take your kid to school, maybe it's to go to the gym, maybe it's to go to your favorite grocery store. I don't care what it is.

You're driving down the street and there is the sign there. The sign is there every day. I bet you dollars to donuts right now you couldn't tell me what that sign is. You have a sign in your mind and you cannot tell me what that sign says because you no longer see that sign. It no longer is a pattern interrupter. It no longer is disruptive. It's no longer getting your attention. It just exists.

So when you have the same promo, be it a mid-roll or a pre-roll or a post-roll, when you have that same exact verbatim recording they're hearing every time, they're going to get blind to it. It's going to lose its impact. It's going to lose its luster if you will. You want to be mindful of changing these.

I try to keep these running for no more than about 20 days. Because after that, somebody's heard two or three episodes of the show if they listen to one a week. If you've got somebody who's binging your show regularly, if you've got people and you're in a rapid growth stage and you've got people binging across many episodes, you might want to look at varying it more often than that.

Most often, we look at 10-day stretches for a dynamic ad. Even if we're going to put up another dynamic ad that's promoting the same thing, we will create a different version. Because again, we want it to be disruptive. Not in a shocking way, not in a horrible way. We're not making terrible noises or yelling at them all of a sudden. But we want it to get their attention. We want them to be reminded that we've been talking about this program, that you read that email about the update, or that you saw this opt-in on the website, whatever the case may be. We want to have that reminder there. We don't want them to become blind to it.

Think about how can you create alternate versions. How can you be shifting things? How can you be cycling things? Especially those of us who are selling something evergreen. For those of us who are service providers, we're selling the same thing. For those of us who are running long-term coaching containers, we're selling the same things.

We're selling the same thing every month. Membership site owners have the same issue. Memberships open 365, baby. We're always selling this thing. You need different ways to do it. It might be that you've got a dynamic that’s talking about, and in fact, we just talked about this with a client during our quarterly production calls, but, “Hey, this happened in a call in the program last week. The replay's up in the library now. If you're already a part of XYZ community, make sure you go listen to the replay. If you're not part of the community, this is going to be the moment you want to join because you want to check this out.”

It can be that and it can run for 10 days or 5 days even and it can get your most warm listeners to convert, to get them over, get them moved in. For those listeners who are new to you, because this is often the pushback, especially with pre-rolls, but what if it's the first episode that anybody's ever heard, the first thing you want me to do is sell them?

One, that's why we keep it short. Two, that's why we're going to keep this feeling like a quick note from you, a quick reminder because it's going to perk their ears up for when they hear it next time. “Oh, this is what Stacey was talking about. Oh, this is the thing Stacey mentioned.”

It's going to have a recognition the next time they get more or another promo for it. If you've got somebody coming into your show who's going to be so incredibly offended by you selling them something or letting them know something for 15, 30, 45 seconds before going into the incredible value that is your podcast episode, they likely weren't going to buy from you anyways.

If they don't know how to hit that skip 15 seconds button, are they really the client you want? But it is a thing to consider. I'm being flippant with it but it is worth considering and it's again why we're looking at variations. It's why we're also looking at how long they should be.

It's also good to look at what are episodes most likely to bring in a brand-new listener. We don't always run dynamic ads across every episode. If I've got a show that is built for somebody to discover me, is built for somebody to find me via Google who's never heard from me before, it might not make sense for me to run a dynamic out at the front of that.

That's a call you'll need to make. It's worth considering, it's not worth being stuck in. For me, I don't worry too much about it. Either you're going to suck it up for the 30 seconds that I'm telling you, “Hey, Podcast Strategy Intensives are open now,” or, “Hey, come join us in Podcast Newsroom. We just answered this fantastic question last month and you're going to want to hear it,” or you're not and you're going to be offended and you're going to leave.

But frankly, if you're going to be so offended by my doing that, you're going to struggle to do it in your own show and you're going to struggle to see the results you need to see because you're so stuck in the idea of not selling anyone and not offending anyone that you're never going to generate sales from any amount of content because you're never going to include a strong-enough call to action to put them in what is next, to give them that next step.

We've talked before about how damaging that can be to your credibility, and how difficult it can be to be using a show to build your expertise and never tell them what's next. It's detrimental to your credibility. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago. We talked about it recently.

So be looking at: are you getting stuck in that “But what if they get mad?” energy because it's important that we have at least a little bit of, “All right, I'm willing to let somebody get mad. And I'm going to be building in what I need to do to minimize that. I'm going to be creating something that is quick, that is personal, that is warm, and welcoming, and also says, “Hey, here's what you need to know. Then I'm going to get them into the show. I will also leave you with this.”

This is one of the reasons I really like having a hook at the front of my show. Because when I'm running a dynamic ad, you're going to hear that promo, and then you're going to hear me come in and go, "Hey, hey, hey, here's what we're talking about. Here's why this is valuable."

I immediately get to hook them back into why they're here, why this episode matters, why they hit play. That's super valuable, especially when you're talking about potentially having a sales promo right at the front of your episode. I'll be honest, for me, I most frequently run dynamic ads that are sale-based.

I rarely do update ones, although I really should occasionally do an update one for when we've got a big episode happening in the Newsroom. Frankly, it's a good idea, and I'll make a note of that while I'm recording this year. But most often, it's sales. Most often it's, “Hey, the Mastermind's open now,” or, “Hey, we've got production spots available because we don't always have production spots available,” or, “Hey, the Intensive is happening.”

That's a big sales focus for me right now. That's a big sales focus for me because it is the best, most evergreen way for us to bring in new clients and for us to support podcasters who aren't ready to up in production. It just is. Most frequently I've got a sales-focused dynamic ad if I have a dynamic ad on.

That means I want to return them right back to why they're here. Not a minute and a half long intro, which is too long for your intro. Not two minutes like, "Oh, here's what's happening in my world and it's so great to see you. I hope you're having a good summer and whatever else." No, I want to take them from a very short promo to a reminder of why they hit play and then into the episode. That's the structure I choose to take and it's the one I will recommend to you as well.

Remember, if dynamic ads are something that you want to be doing more with, if up-leveling your show, going pro in this way, it's something you're interested in, this is something we do cover in Podcast Strategy Intensives.

But the biggest way we support clients with dynamic ads is in our production work. If you're interested in learning more about what production with our team looks like, head on over to uncommonlymore.com/podcastproduction and book a call with me. You and I can chat, make sure it's the right fit for you, talk about dynamic ads, and get you on our roster.

We have very limited availability as we move into the next few months, but we do have some availability for production clients, and we'd love to welcome you into the fold. If you have any questions, reach out, and I will see you again 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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