I don't care about podcast demographics and neither should you

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Okay, that’s not strictly true, but it is true that podcast demographics aren’t terribly important to me for the purposes of audience building. Why? Because this is new media, not broadcast media. What’s the difference?

In broadcast media, you send out a message to your target audience and hope there’s enough relevant people in that database that some of them take action and buy your product or service. Broadcast marketers tend not to give a rat’s ass about feedback unless it involves a lawsuit; the only feedback they want to hear is the ringing of the cash register.

In new media, you send out a message to people who want to hear from you. Not only do they want to hear from you, they want to talk to you and each other, and if you do your job well as a new media creator, they’ll want to talk to lots of other people about your media. Here’s the thing. Except for the highest profile people like the Scobles and Pirillos of the world, it’s very hard to quickly make a judgement call on who is an influencer and who is not. Thus, either you spend a crapload of time researching everyone carefully in your database, or you treat everyone like an influencer.

That’s the secret that broadcast marketers are missing. For example, with my show, the Financial Aid Podcast, a broadcast marketer would say, okay, the audience is students, so specifically market and target 18 – 21 year old American students. If a listener who is a 33 year old parent of an 8 year old and a 5 year old, broadcast marketing tactics would say completely ignore that person, because they have no sales potential.

However, that broadcast marketer is going to miss the fact that said parent has their own podcast with thousands of listeners, and a positive mention of your show could instantly add 10% more audience to your own show. New media marketers understand this one fundamental tenet (which is also a Buddhist one):

Everyone is connected.

In your marketing efforts, step back and think about your audience, whether you’re a broadcast marketer or a new media marketer. Are you excluding a group of people from your market segmentations – and if you are, who do they know that you’re no longer able to reach? If you have advertising on your podcast – do your advertisers understand that demographics are less important than word of mouth and influence?

Edit: I’m clarifying this post to mean demographics shouldn’t matter as much for your audience building efforts as a podcaster. The subsequent post will explain why they’re still relevant to advertisers.

Comments

8 responses to “I don't care about podcast demographics and neither should you”

  1. Chris Hambly Avatar

    Nice one Chris, you piss me off you are always on the ball.

    I had a chat just yesterday with a potential advertiser asking me about podcast demographics. I explained that you could ask any podcaster and get the same general reply that it simply doesn’t work that way.

    Thanks for sharing, and reinforcing.

    Chris

  2. Chris Hambly Avatar

    Nice one Chris, you piss me off you are always on the ball.

    I had a chat just yesterday with a potential advertiser asking me about podcast demographics. I explained that you could ask any podcaster and get the same general reply that it simply doesn’t work that way.

    Thanks for sharing, and reinforcing.

    Chris

  3. Jason @ Insomnia Radio Avatar

    May big league advertisers the world over read and embrace this article 🙂

  4. Jason @ Insomnia Radio Avatar

    May big league advertisers the world over read and embrace this article 🙂

  5. Todd Cochrane Avatar

    Like it or not Podcasters will have to continue to play by the same rules as everyone else on the Internet does. To think differently is kidding yourself. While meeting with a large number of Media buyers in NYC last month one thing was very clear we have to play by their rules, and under sponsorship systems they can understand until we can through education shift the way media companies look at podcast advertising buys.

    The ROI you deliver in a campaign will be measured and if you are not reaching their target audience you will not have that company as a advertiser for long.

  6. Todd Cochrane Avatar

    Like it or not Podcasters will have to continue to play by the same rules as everyone else on the Internet does. To think differently is kidding yourself. While meeting with a large number of Media buyers in NYC last month one thing was very clear we have to play by their rules, and under sponsorship systems they can understand until we can through education shift the way media companies look at podcast advertising buys.

    The ROI you deliver in a campaign will be measured and if you are not reaching their target audience you will not have that company as a advertiser for long.

  7. Christopher S. Penn Avatar

    Todd –

    Thanks for joining the conversation. I agree that advertisers will still want to know that their ROI is meeting their expectations. What I’m focusing on is primarily the audience building tactics of the podcaster himself or herself. I’ve been doing some fairly targeted MySpace promotion recently and have found that some segments do much better in terms of responsiveness than others, and those segments are not necessarily the ones I’d expect to perform well. For example, I would not expect a podcast outreach campaign to do well among women 25 – 34, but they respond better to outreach than women 18 – 21, which is what an advertiser would probably, in the short term, demand to see. The women in the segment I’m working with go on to recommend the show to others, and eventually I find that the 18 – 21 segment is responding, but not from my direct efforts – from word of mouth.

    By the way, I sent you my media kit. Enjoy!

  8. Christopher S. Penn Avatar

    Todd –

    Thanks for joining the conversation. I agree that advertisers will still want to know that their ROI is meeting their expectations. What I’m focusing on is primarily the audience building tactics of the podcaster himself or herself. I’ve been doing some fairly targeted MySpace promotion recently and have found that some segments do much better in terms of responsiveness than others, and those segments are not necessarily the ones I’d expect to perform well. For example, I would not expect a podcast outreach campaign to do well among women 25 – 34, but they respond better to outreach than women 18 – 21, which is what an advertiser would probably, in the short term, demand to see. The women in the segment I’m working with go on to recommend the show to others, and eventually I find that the 18 – 21 segment is responding, but not from my direct efforts – from word of mouth.

    By the way, I sent you my media kit. Enjoy!

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