The Salt Sessions

Transcript

0:11
Hi, I'm Bev Salt, the founder of Add Salt.

0:14
I'm a marketing consultant.

0:16
For more details about me, head to my website: addsalt.co.uk

0:22
Today I have joining me Andi Jarvis, the founder of Eximo Marketing.

0:29
Andy set up Eximo back in 2017 to help companies win more new clients through creating effective marketing strategies.

0:38
Andy is also a professional speaker and he has his own podcast called The Strategy Sessions which was a lockdown project and he set that up in back in 2020.

0:52
Andy and I actually know each other through our client, the legal PR agency called MD Communications.

1:00
They are the best in business.

1:01
So a shout out to everybody at MD Comms today.

1:06
Let's talk about the podcast landscape because in the last few years they have taken the digital world over by storm and apparently there are now over 6,000,000 podcasts in the world.

1:24
So that's quite a lot of podcasts.

1:26
And I've just been looking at recent figures in the latest UK podcast consumer report for 2024 and 71% of the UK population listen to podcasts and that's way more than I expected.

1:43
And 42% of these people listen monthly and 30% listen weekly.

1:48
Now I listen to podcasts weekly.

1:50
I listen to them when I go running.

1:52
I used to listen to music, but I found that music didn't actually help me.

1:57
It doesn't make me run any faster.

1:59
So in the end I thought I'll just use that time to listen to podcasts instead.

2:03
Do you listen to podcasts, Andi?

2:06
I do, but not while running.

2:07
I cannot have people talking in my ears when I'm running it.

2:11
When she was saying I was thinking, Oh my goodness, it like talk, talk radio, podcasts just is the worst possible thing I could imagine.

2:19
When I'm running, I need I either if I listen to anything and I don't often.

2:23
I think the young people would call it raw dogging these days, but that's because they want a word for everything.

2:27
But I much prefer running without any noise or without any music.

2:30
But if I do, it's music with a rhythm.

2:33
So it's just rhythmical to stay in there.

2:35
I find it upsets my breathing otherwise that's the problem.

2:39
Gets my breathing out of sync which is a real pain when you're running.

2:42
I find I can only concentrate on the podcast while I'm while I'm running.

2:47
I can't concentrate any time.

2:48
There are too many other distractions in the day. Of course podcasts can reach all age groups.

2:54
So whether you're targeting Gen X, millennials and even Gen Z because almost half of that generation listen to podcasts.

3:03
My daughter does, she likes the Crime girl gang, so she tells me that's a very good podcast.

3:10
In terms of the UK listeners 40% women and then men at 60% and by country fascinating.

3:20
the US have the biggest podcast listeners followed by China, Brazil, Mexico, Germany and then finally the UK in 6th place.

3:30
Podcasts are forecasted to grow year on year and over the next few years will reach 25,000,000 listeners.

3:39
I guess marketing point of view and as businesses, it's a good time to leverage podcasting for your own business as part of the content marketing strategy.

3:50
I've just started the Salt Sessions, my own podcasts.

3:53
It's a business podcast with marketing advice mainly, but I will be discussing other things.

4:00
So as you've been doing it for a few years now, I thought it'd be good to get somebody more experience to share their learnings and journeys.

4:08
Since you started your podcast, the Strategy Sessions, what have you learned that you wish you knew beforehand?

4:16
The main thing I think that I've learned and that I wish I'd have known a little while ago is, is the dramatic increase in production quality that's happened across the podcast ecosystem.

4:28
When I started in 2020, it was peak lockdown.

4:34
Actually, the reason it started in May and not April was because it took me 4 weeks to wait for a microphone to arrive when I ordered it online because everybody would order the microphone to start a podcast.

4:44
Not as many of them are still going four years later.

4:46
I think that's an important caveat to add.

4:49
One of the things I think is what podcasting was very much a bedroom hobby I think for most people back then.

4:57
And what happened from COVID and sort of accelerated since is things like radio stations have got involved, professional production companies have got involved.

5:05
And if you look at the production quality of what they're turning out now, it's professional broadcast quality.

5:11
So if you're going to kind of hanging that landscape, you have to maybe not meet what they do, but certainly try and get closer as close as you can.

5:21
Now tools like the one we're using today, Riverside are fantastic in helping you do that in terms of, you know, getting kind of audio video, giving you different things.

5:31
And also then, you know, the cost of microphones and stuff like that has dropped to give you the audio experience.

5:36
But if you look at the top 20, 35, maybe even top 50 podcasts in any particular segment, they're almost all with a product professional production company behind them.

5:50
Now that's sort of the day of the little independent starting out and getting a million downloads.

5:54
It's not gone, but it's really, really hard to do now.

5:58
So yeah, I think the increase in production quality, something I should have known a while ago.

6:04
Yeah, that's interesting.

6:05
And you've been going for four years now, which is a great, because I know a lot of people have the idea I'm going to start a podcast and then they don't go beyond season 1 because it is a lot of work, isn't it?

6:17
And I have, I found that out much more than you would.

6:22
You'd think it's only a 30 minute episode.

6:25
It's only an hour episode.

6:26
It'll take me maybe 2 hours to do.

6:30
No, I, I, I think my, my podcasts are about 45 to 55 minutes, depending on the guest.

6:36
I'd say there's probably 1/2 day's work in each of them.

6:41
And that, you know, and what I do, I've got a bit slicker and I have a little bit of help with a couple of bits and bobs now.

6:46
But yeah, it's probably 1/2 day in every episode.

6:50
Yes, definitely.

6:51
And because you're, you're in marketing, most of your strategy sessions will be marketing focussed.

6:58
Can I ask, how do you actually generate content ideas for your own podcasts?

7:03
I mean, I recently read Diary of a CEO, Steven Bartlett.

7:07
He uses the Financial Times as a source of ideas for his podcast.

7:13
Yeah, I'm utterly convinced he doesn't, by the way.

7:16
Is he sponsored by the Financial Times?

7:21
Yeah, well, I mean, that would be, that would be fairly on brand for him, wouldn't it?

7:24
I think it may be.

7:27
I, I don't know.

7:28
I always kind of take most of the things he says with a pinch of salt.

7:31
But I, I kind of, we're not here to, to bash other people here.

7:34
Talk about how you come up with ideas.

7:36
The way I, the way I think about it, putting a season together.

7:41
So I, I tend not to think about it on an episode-by-episode basis.

7:44
I sort of do September to June is my season and I tried to release every two weeks roughly so to get, but I don't do the big school holidays because my listenership just disappears.

7:58
So there's no episodes over Christmas, There's no episodes at Easter.

8:02
Sometimes the way bank holidays fall, I think it was May the other year when we had, yeah, there was a bank holiday at the beginning of May and then some royal thing with another couple of bank holidays and then a bank holiday at the end.

8:13
So I didn't bother with any then.

8:15
So you're kind of looking across going right?

8:17
I need maybe 18 episodes, 15, 16, 17, 18 episodes.

8:22
What are the subjects I want to cover?

8:24
So it's a marketing podcast and you know, so three years ago there was nothing about AI in there.

8:29
But now I'm looking going, OK, I need an AI, need to talk about AI.

8:32
What's an angle?

8:33
What other AI podcasts have I seen?

8:36
What other people have I seen at conferences talking about AI?

8:39
How can I do something that's just a little different?

8:42
And because it's the strategy sessions, I'm not necessarily looking at someone going, here's five ways you can hack your way to growth with AI.

8:50
I'm looking at how does it fit into your marketing strategy?

8:52
So I'm always looking for people who can do that, and I'm always looking for people who tell different stories.

8:58
So in any industry, there's people who appear on not almost everything, but kind of, it's easy to default to just the same handful of people.

9:06
I'm always looking for people with different stories, interesting stories, non-traditional backgrounds, who've got into marketing or done interesting things.

9:14
So I would say kind of, I always try and look and say, if somebody looked at all 18 episodes at the end of the year, would they see a fairly diverse line up?

9:25
Would they see a range of subjects, but all kind of tethered together by their, their link to marketing strategy.

9:31
So that's how I kind of start and go, what do I want to do this season and then work on it from there.

9:36
So I, I think if you do it episode by episode, you can just get too focused on that and you can end up, and you can look back after, you know, you look back after 12 months and you're like, oh, I've got 83% men on the podcast and we're all talking about broadly the same thing.

9:50
Every episode was great but too similar.

9:53
So I always try and look for a whole season first and then dive into the detail.

9:57
OK.

9:58
And you'd mentioned there that your season for podcasting runs from September til June and you have a break over the main Christmas and Easter holidays or bank holidays.

10:10
So that's quite a lot of podcasts to do in a year from a frequency angle.

10:17
I mean, is that what you'd recommend for someone starting out a podcast?

10:22
No, I so I started because it was a lockdown project and I was a bit quiet at work.

10:28
I knew that I would fall into the trap that everyone else did of putting 5 episodes out and then never going back again.

10:34
So what I said was I, I put a post out on social media and I said I'm going to do an episode every two weeks for a whole year and that's what I'm gonna do.

10:43
Now, was that a bit stupid?

10:44
Yes, it was.

10:45
But what it did was I got into a rhythm of releasing episodes every two weeks.

10:48
I learned a lot.

10:49
What I learned in those 26 episodes in the first series was nobody listen.

10:53
It's not a podcast you listen to on holiday.

10:55
It's, you know, it's not an easy listen.

10:56
It really it is an easy listen, but you don't want to be thinking about work all the time on holiday and all that sort of stuff.

11:01
So I learned holiday season, don't put episodes out.

11:05
Some guests do better than others.

11:07
Went to time them, all that sort of stuff.

11:09
Since then I've played around with it a little bit.

11:11
I went every three weeks one season.

11:15
I tried every week for a little bit at the end of last season, putting extra episodes in just to play around to see what difference it made.

11:21
I generally find every two weeks gives me that chance to put an episode together, promote it, talk about it a few times on social media.

11:30
Without, when it was every week, you would just non-stop promoting podcasts all the time, Bom bom bom and it felt like too much.

11:38
But what I would say is that that's me for my business.

11:40
What I would say for anyone who's looking to get into podcasting is think about what do you want to do with it?

11:47
How many guests you can get.

11:48
I don't find it hugely difficult to get guests.

11:51
Now I'm five seasons in.

11:53
I speak at a lot of conferences.

11:55
I know a lot of people.

11:56
I pull in a lot of people, you know, So I've got, now we're here in what, September, I've got all the episodes I need to take me through til Christmas.

12:04
And so I can, I can keep up that frequency.

12:08
But if you maybe don't have the awareness and you're trying to build in, start small and go right, I'm going to release 6 episodes and I'm going to do it.

12:15
You could do that over six weeks, you could do it over six days, or you could do it over 12 weeks or whatever you want me to do, But just start, get a frequency and just do it because you will learn more in that six weeks or that 10 weeks or 12 weeks releasing than you ever will trying to plan it on a bit of paper.

12:31
So have a plan, have an idea, go through a whole season and then go right, what did we learn from that?

12:36
So it's two weeks ideal.

12:37
It is for me.

12:39
You're at, you know, your episodes, your contents.

12:41
The other thing is as well, my episodes are 45 minutes to an hour.

12:45
That's a bit of a commitment.

12:47
Some podcasts are 10 minutes long.

12:48
If you're just doing 10 minute episodes of little bits of information, you know, you could churn them out daily if you wanted.

12:55
You know, it's just up to you in terms of how it works with your resource and your timing and what your audience needs and the length and that sort of just to add, I my podcasts are 10 to 15 minutes.

13:07
I thought since I'm just starting out, I'll go for something that's easily manageable rather than the long podcasting because one thing I didn't anticipate was the amount of editing that's required even for a short episode.

13:20
So I better start giving short answers.

13:24
I'll give you shorter answers then if we're going to start, if it's 15 minutes, yes, I'm going to cut you off in 2 minutes.

13:29
Andi, That's OK, I'll be quick.

13:32
You've obviously done a lot of podcasts now.

13:34
Can I ask you what has been your favourite podcast?

13:38
That's like asking someone what their favourite child is.

13:40
It's really, really difficult to do.

13:43
What I might do is I might answer that in two different ways.

13:46
So I've had some relatively famous people in marketing on my podcast and the top performing episodes of all time with the most listeners by 10s of thousands of listeners miles away from everybody else have been the ones featuring the famous people, Rory Sutherland, Mark Ritson, Seth Godin, people like that.

14:06
April Dunford, They're kind of, if you look at the figures, they are noticeably away from everybody else and they are very good podcasts from people who know their subject inside out.

14:17
What sometimes gets missed though, I think is that some of the more rich discussions and better discussions come from people who aren't as famous and just nobody listens because they look at it and go, I don't know who's Sharice Anibaba is, But what I view as success for me is ones that I lessons I learned from those episodes that I talk about regularly.

14:36
So Sharice, for example, talked about how she did customer research when she works for McDonald's and how she used to go and work in a McDonald's to understand their customers.

14:46
I love that.

14:47
Britney Muller said a phrase which is ‘prioritise by impact’.

14:50
I probably use that phrase three times a week with clients.

14:54
So I wouldn't say I have a favourite because there's probably, I think there's over 70 now over the, over the course of it all.

14:59
But I have episodes that I use frequently and I refer to them all the time.

15:05
And I, you know, so there's a couple that kind of come up from there, but you can't get me to point to one that I think is more favourite than the other.

15:13
Very diplomatic answer and you touched on big name guests.

15:19
So is having would having a a top guest make or break an episode, would you say?

15:28
I wouldn't say it'd make or break, but it would bring you a lot more listeners.

15:31
So any and it's not just a necessarily a famous name, but anyone with a big and active social media following.

15:38
But there's an important point that comes on the back of this is that I think podcasting more than any other medium, is something where you genuinely do not need to worry about the number of listeners.

15:49
You need to worry about who is listening.

15:52
So it's an absolutely a method where you probably want 100 people who are the right 100 people listening.

15:59
You know, you mentioned Steve Bartlett, diary of a CEO.

16:02
It gets millions of downloads.

16:04
It probably does, right?

16:05
10s of 1,000,000, no doubt over a year infinitely bigger than the strategy sessions will ever be.

16:11
But I don't need 10s of millions of listeners.

16:13
I have this podcast to help build my business and every year I can point to 1,2,3 clients who have generated from having the podcast.

16:21
That's the measure of success that I'm interested in.

16:24
Not how many listeners does each episode get.

16:27
Yes, I look at it, but I never share those figures publicly because I'm not interested in, they are not relevant for the people's judgement of the show.

16:36
People listening and saying I found that thing useful on that episode is wonderful.

16:41
That's a measure of success.

16:43
But the main reason I do it is it to grow my business.

16:46
So if I can keep pointing to clients and going, I know Client A joined me because they listened to that podcast or the guest on that podcast got a new bit of business because they were on my show, which happened recently.

16:57
That's a success measure.

16:58
Measure for me, not how many listeners you get, but a big name guest will bring you more listeners and can make it easier to get other guests on the show.

17:07
So, you know, there's a little bit of a trade off, but don't just go for a business-to-business podcast particularly.

17:12
Don't just go chasing, you know, how many, how do we get to 10,000 downloads?

17:16
How do I get to 50,000 downloads?

17:18
I think it's the wrong metric.

17:20
It's how what's it going to do for your business?

17:22
Why are you doing it?

17:23
What's your strategy with it and then measuring it that way?

17:28
That's great advice, Andi.

17:29
I think a lot of people might just look at metrics and get to hug up because numbers are so low and then decide, well, it's not working, so let's not bother with another season.

17:42
Yeah.

17:42
But think of it this way.

17:44
If you go to a networking event, do you want to go to a networking event where there's 50,000 people there?

17:51
Or do you want to go to a networking event where there's 20 people there who probably need your services?

17:56
I know which one I'd rather go to.

17:58
I'd rather go to the small party with 20 people who all need marketing help.

18:02
That's what you're almost aiming for with a pot.

18:05
You know, if you're, if you're listening to this thinking, I want to put out a consumer-based podcast.

18:10
I want to do something, you know, like mental health for teenagers or something.

18:13
Yeah, you probably want to go big.

18:15
Ignore everything I'm about to say.

18:16
But if this is a business-to-business podcast to build your business, focus on making sure the right people are listening, not the number of people who are listening.

18:26
There's an ego thing.

18:27
So the best and the best way to stay away from the ego thing thing is just don't tell anyone what the listener figures are.

18:32
Just don't worry about it.

18:34
Don't even look if you don't want to because the thing is you want to know other right people listening And there's, you know, try and find that out.

18:41
Send it to clients, make sure you're sharing it on your social media profile so that the right people see it.

18:46
Build it that way.

18:48
OK.

18:49
And touching upon that point, how did you build the strategy sessions?

18:53
So you mentioned social media posts and emailing it to clients.

18:57
And are there any other things that people can try?

19:01
No, I did a little bit of paid ads in the early days.

19:04
I did a little bit of social media spend.

19:06
And I'm not when I'd said social media spend, I'm not talking about, you know, 5 grand a month or anything like that.

19:11
It was literally £10 behind some episodes to push it into the right, you know, the into marketing news feeds.

19:18
That was Facebook ads.

19:19
Did a little bit of Google ads in the early days.

19:22
Just that was it.

19:23
You know, I, I kind of realised early on that it wasn't necessarily about getting 10 million downloads.

19:31
There's always someone does it, but it wasn't going to be me.

19:33
It was just making sure the right people were there.

19:35
So mostly it's social media.

19:37
I have an e-mail list that I send it out to, but I also send specific episodes, like personally to some people.

19:44
So I might be like, oh, Bev, look, I know you, I know what you do as your, your services.

19:49
I had this person on the podcast and they talked, they said this thing, which I think you might find really interesting.

19:53
They, you know, sat 35 minutes in.

19:55
Have a listen.

19:56
I don't know if they listen, but I know they'll see that and they'll be going, oh, I'm just thinking of us.

20:01
Might not get your business this week or next week, but it just keeps that discussion open with either a lead, an existing client or just it's a good thing to do for old customers.

20:10
You know, I believe once you're a customer of mine, you never stop being a customer.

20:14
You might not be paying me now because we haven't worked together for five years, but if I can help your business at some stage, I will.

20:20
So if something comes up, send it to them.

20:22
Go here, have a look at this.

20:24
And it just it's a great way of building connection.

20:27
It is and it lets them know that you're thinking about them and it's a good personal personal touch.

20:33
From your perspective, I know you've mentioned your podcasts are much longer, 55 minutes plus.

20:39
Do you find longer or shorter podcasts more popular?

20:43
Which ones work better for you?

20:45
For me personally, this and this is kind of upside down, but I much prefer shorter podcasts.

20:52
I listened to them the other week that was nearly three hours long.

20:55
I say the other week it took me about a month to listen to.

20:58
It was a look, it was an effort, it was like an audio book.

21:00
It took forever.

21:02
If it wasn't for the fact I had a 2-hour drive, I'd have never finished it.

21:05
But it's generally the way I consume podcasts is in in short bursts.

21:11
So I prefer listening to short bursts podcasts.

21:15
But I enjoy the long interview, the longer interview with a guest, and some people love long form podcasts.

21:21
You said you can't concentrate unless you're running and there's no other distraction.

21:25
But there are a whole bunch of people, as weird as they are, and it is very weird to me, who listen to podcasts all day in their working environment.

21:33
So they put it on and they listen for two hours and it's just on in the background while they're working.

21:37
Now I can't concentrate to that noise while that's happening, while I'm doing other things.

21:42
But some people love it and they'll just have podcasts on all day.

21:46
So that longer format works for some people.

21:50
It all depends on your objective, I guess.

21:53
Absolutely.

21:55
OK, brilliant.

21:57
Well, thank you very much for your time today, Andi.

22:00
And if people had any questions around podcasting, what's the better way for them to contact you?

22:06
I am always on LinkedIn.

22:09
It's my it's one of my main vices.

22:11
I'm Andi Jarvis, Andi with an I.

22:13
So you'll not find many of those on LinkedIn.

22:16
So just have a look for me there.

22:17
Send me a connection request, mention that you know, you, you listen to the ad salt podcast, isn't it?

22:23
That's right, the salt sessions, salt sessions, sorry, sorry, the company's add salt.

22:28
Sorry.

22:29
Just mention that you listen to the salt sessions and you know, you sort of came through Bev and I'll say hi.

22:34
It's always nice to know where people come from and always happy to answer questions and you might get a response at a strange time in the morning when I'm at an airport or something like that.

22:43
But yes, please do.

22:45
OK.

22:45
Brilliant.

22:46
Thank you for your time, Andi.

22:48
No problem, Bev.

22:48
Thanks for having me.