Marketing Woes of the ‘Coffee & Cigarettes’ Podcast
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Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend of mine who knows a little bit about Internet marketing. I was telling him that my podcast has a decent sized loyal audience who listens to the show fairly regularly throughout the week. However, my audience doesn’t do much sharing of the episodes they listen to. So, the audience has a really slow growth compared to what it would if people actually shared the podcast with their friends.
Now, I’ve got to be honest with you. I don’t spend a lot of time marketing the show. I believe creating the content should always come first. If I own a restaurant and I spent a bunch of money on advertising, well, I might get a lot of customers through the door, but what good will that do if the meal and the service is terrible? They’ll never come back. Generally, I follow the principle that content will speak for itself. The interesting thing I see happening with this podcast is that the content is drawing listeners back to it day after day. At the same time, not many people are turning around and sharing the episodes with their friends even on Facebook and Twitter where people are sharing stuff all day long.
So, the question I had for my marketing friend was, “Why?” He suggested something I had not considered but it makes a lot of sense to me. The first thing he said was that perhaps a good chunk of my listeners are not Internet-savvy people who really think about or even know how to share the podcast on sites like Facebook and Twitter. That is definitely a possibility but it certainly doesn’t account for everyone. I can list at least 40 or 50 people just on Facebook that I know listen on a semi-regular basis. I would say most of them know how to share an article or a podcast or anything on Facebook.
My Internet marking friend also suggested another possibility. He said, “Maybe your podcast is comparable to a train wreck.” Seriously. He said, “People don’t want to see a train wreck but they can’t look away when they do.” He went on to explain how the people listening to the show may not agree with what I say but they’re intrigued enough to listen anyway. Yet, since they don’t espouse my views, they don’t turn around and share the episodes with their friends. That makes a lot of sense to me. I would say most of my friends online and otherwise are primarily conservative Christians. But I express many libertarian Christian views which makes my target audience much smaller. Most people think of libertarians as those isolationist people that want to legalize all kinds of sin like drug use and prostitution. So, in turn, conservative Christians may be interested enough to listen, but they’re not willing to share the podcast with their friends.
I guess even though I’ve not thought of it in this way, I’ve really known all of this since the start of the podcast. I said early on that even the name of the podcast, Coffee & Cigarettes, would likely turn some people off. The thing is it’s never been about numbers for me. I didn’t get into podcasting to become famous. I didn’t get into it to make a lot of money. In fact, the podcast has only brought in $50 since the first episode. Let me give a shout-out to Carole Hoffer, by the way, for being the only contributor thus far. It’s not about the numbers. It’s about the content which is, in most cases, a message I’d love for people to hear. At the heart of the message is the idea of thinking outside of the box–questioning conventional wisdom.
If you question conventional wisdom, you are going to be met with plenty of opposition. People don’t like it when you question the status quo. However, for me, I eventually came to a point in my life when I realized it’s a wonderful practice. Even if the status quo happens to be right, it never hurts to ask questions and give things serious consideration. So, that’s what I’ll continue to do here on this podcast despite the fact it results in very slow growth of my audience. The message is more important to me than the numbers.
“Marketing Wars | 063 Coffee & Cigarettes” Transcript”
About The Author
Jeremy Sarber
I'm the pastor of one of the most blessed churches in all the world. I'm married to the most wonderful woman to walk the face of the earth. I'm host of possibly the most unconventional podcast on the Internet. I am thankful because I deserve none of it. Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email
