So Everyone Has a Podcast. Should They? Bryan Barletta, Nadine Robinson, Harry Morton, and Jeff Umbro Weigh In

Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.

Jeff Umbro: Welcome to Podcast Perspectives. I'm your host, Jeff Umbro. This is a show where we talk to leaders in the podcast industry about what makes them tick.

Today we're bringing you a live panel that was reported at SXSW in Austin, Texas on March 13th, 2026. This panel was called, So Everyone Has a Podcast. Should They?

It was moderated by myself, Jeff Umbro. It included Bryan Barletta, Nadine Robinson, and Harry Morton, all three of which are former guests on this podcast. Nadine's episode is actually coming out in a few weeks so make sure you hit subscribe. Bryan is a partner and founder at Sounds Profitable, Nadine is the co-founder and CEO of Podcast Nation, and Harry is the CEO of Lower Street.

Everyone on this panel has a unique perspective. As the founder of Sounds Profitable, Bryan brings a really unique perspective of the more than 200 partners from Sounds Profitable and a lot of the data from the research that they do at Sounds Profitable, so he has an understanding of the industry at large, the pain points that people are experiencing, and all of the different reasons why people are getting into the industry.

Nadine is coming from Podcast Nation where they have a YouTube and creator first approach to the industry. So they've been actually working on the creator side and the YouTube side for a decade, much longer than most people have been thinking about video. It's built into their DNA and they have a lot of really amazing opinions on what people should be thinking about as a podcast today.

And Harry Morton comes from the branded podcast side of the world where they are looking at things like, why should a brand want to make a podcast? How should they be thinking about it?

The title of this panel is very tongue in cheek. Obviously, everybody on this panel thinks that people should be making a podcast. We all own companies that make money when people decide to make a podcast. But the thesis is really, should people be guesting on podcasts? Should they be buying ads on podcasts? Should they be making their own podcasts? What should people be doing at each step of their journey? What makes sense for all the people in our audience who are trying to move into the space?

I ask a question at some point about who in the room is a marketer versus a podcaster. It's about 50-50. I don't know if that's the case for the people who are gonna be listening to this episode of the show. I ask a question later on during this panel about who has actually purchased ads on other podcasts and not a single hand went up.

I'll stop belaboring this introduction, but I hope you all enjoy what you're about to hear and make sure you tune in next week to hear our VP of production services, Chris Boniello, speaking to representatives from HubSpot, YouTube, and another rep from Podcast Nation about why video matters in the podcast space.

Let's get to the episode.

So we're here today because podcasting is so popular that in 2026 it's become a meme. The TV show industry recently had a line where someone said they should put a tariff on podcasting equipment, and even then the joke wasn't funny. So every CMO and marketing professional thinks that they need a podcast as part of their organization's growth plan, and for the sake of all of us on this stage, that is great news, but it does beg the question, is that true? Should you or your organization have a podcast? So this seems like a great place to begin. Why should you consider podcasting. Bryan?

Bryan Barletta: So, we are the largest US researcher for podcasting. We do pre-reports out every year, multiple of them.

We survey in the US alone, 5,000 people twice a year about their listening habits, their advertising perceptions and things like that. We're also premiering our UK research in May and it's gonna be really fun there and be able to track together. But one of the metrics that my partner Tom, the lead researcher for our company, wanted me to share was that podcasting scores in the top three ahead of every form of broadcast media, YouTube, and all social media platforms on trust in advertising and perception of authentic and natural voice.

So that was 5,000 people surveyed of 22 or 23 ad supported mediums about their preferences on this. This wasn't, Hey, do you listen to podcasts? And then go down the survey. It was a general survey that included podcasts and we were able to derive that from there. So top three on that trust aspect there and the authentic nature of it.

And so to me, when a brand is talking, all of us are brands. Like it's about trust. Like we are here not to sell you anything. We're here to build that trust and authenticity and that relationship and. You know this is going to be a podcast.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. Well, would just to dig into that for a second, why do you think that is?

Why do you think that people trust podcasters as opposed to an ad that they see on LinkedIn or a billboard or something?

Bryan Barletta: I think that while there is a lot of catch up media for podcasting and all of that, I think that when we think of podcasting, we default to podcasting. We think about creator owned and creator forward.

Even if it's a creator that is part of a network that, and the creator doesn't own any IP, usually that creator is like getting a salary or has made that choice on things there. But when I'm listening, I don't. Care about the network that is from, or who made it, because I'm a consumer, I care about that voice and I'm choosing to put that person in my ear. I'm choosing to go drop the kids off at school with them to do the dishes with it, to try to go to the gym, but take a phone call halfway through and then just go back to listening to podcasts on my way home, like I'm letting them into my life and it's, you can, the connection with the creator, like you turn on late night and all that while, like, Stephen Colbert's amazing, you know, there's a network behind it, you know, when it cuts that commercial break, like it's not him that by listening to that ad you're supporting.

So I, I think it's just, there's something unique about it because it's so associated with the creator and their own voice.

Jeff Umbro: Okay. So Nadine we've established that podcasts are really trustworthy and why somebody may engage with that more than other kinds of mediums. What's the logic behind why a creator might want to make a podcast?

Nadine Robinson: Well, a lot of the creators we work with are obviously big on other platforms before they moved to the podcast space. And what we found is there's nothing like the community building aspect of having a podcast for creators than just like being in someone's ears, or now also on YouTube or other video podcasts, every single week. Like the intimacy and the relationship that an audience builds with a podcaster is very different than short form content on, say, TikTok or Instagram. It's just a different level of buying into their brand, their story, and what they're selling essentially. And I mean, most creators are really specific about the brands they work with.

Most of them don't just say yes to everything. Most of them are very authentic about their endorsements of the product. And I think that audiences can hear that.

Jeff Umbro: And typically when somebody's making a podcast that you work with, is this in addition to a bunch of other stuff that they're doing or is this like the sole thing that they're focused on?

Nadine Robinson: Yeah, it's usually in addition to other focuses of their overall brand as creators. It's, and I think that it works really well for that. I think that to see a podcast in isolation is kind of like a bit of a miss. I think it can be part of a larger community, build for that creator, whether they're building out businesses, whether they're building out just other avenues of entertainment.

It can be such a key point that kind of like is the hub for everything else they're working on. I mean, you can have a successful podcast in isolation. It's not that you can't do that, but I think for, if you're thinking like a creator centric approach, it usually is part of a larger ecosystem.

Jeff Umbro: Okay.

And so Harry, I want to talk to you next. Can you share the reasons why a brand may be interested in investing the time and the money into creating a podcast, like sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Harry Morton: Yeah, so I think the reasons that I hear the most often when brands come to us is brand awareness is always the number one. They want more people to be aware of them. Then if we're talking about kind of like the B2B lens, which is quite a lot of the work that we do oftentimes is it's really about owning your own audience, having direct access to that audience, so not having to kind of rent it by advertising.

But also they, B2B, they talk a lot about, you know, thought leadership, credibility. We talked about trust just now. And credibility is really important. You need to not just. You know, exchange information, you need to be able to exchange that in a way that and build that relationship around it so that you are associating the brand with with that expertise and with, you know, 'cause if you are in B2B, you're typically, client projects might be millions of dollars at times.

And so the level of trust you want to have with the brand at that point, it's really important. So, brand awareness, thought leadership, credibility, trust. These are some of the reasons and I think the increasing trend is more, is towards that sort of ownership of the audience.

I think that's becoming really important.

Jeff Umbro: For the people in the audience, like, how many of you are here because you represent the brand that may be interested in adding podcasting to your marketing stack? And how many of you are here because you're a podcaster by hobby or trade and you wanna learn more about that?

So if you're a marketer, raise your hand. And if you're a podcaster who's like a hobbyist. Okay.

Bryan Barletta: Now pair up.

Jeff Umbro: I'm sorry.

Bryan Barletta: Now pair up and we're gonna move to the group assignments.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah, no. All right. We have homework for everyone.

That's really helpful though, because it's about 50-50 So at Podglomerate, people email us every day who are saying we wanna make a podcast. First question I ask them every time is like, why? And honestly, you'd be shocked at how many people cannot answer that question, or at least to the level that I would expect them to if they're trying to spend a few hundred thousand dollars to make a show.

So we have this thesis. Harry just touched on this for a second, but should you visit, rent, or own? So the idea is generally should you run a PR campaign to put your product onto a podcast? Should you buy advertising to put your product onto a podcast, or should you build your own community based around a podcast? So for all the marketers out there, like you should be asking yourselves and your organizations those questions and that is like somewhere somewhat of what this session's name was derived from, everybody immediately says we should make a podcast. And that's not necessarily true. Like maybe you want to dip your toes into the space first and see what it's all about. We got a little feedback from some of our colleagues in the space on LinkedIn based on this episode title because some folks don't agree with us on this.

So I'm hoping that we can impart some of this wisdom to everybody in here. Harry, your entire company is based around the idea that brands should make podcasts to support their business goals. Should they?

Harry Morton: Yeah, you can all leave now.

Yeah, so I think I mentioned about ownership of your audience. I think that's increasingly important. We're seeing more and more brands get into owned media as a thing because you, if you, there's nothing wrong with advertising. There's lot, there's a lot of value in advertising on a podcast, but the obvious benefit of owning your own show is that you get to not just kind of get in front of it each time you pay. You get to take that forward each time and build that relationship over time. What was the question?

Jeff Umbro: So I'm gonna ask two questions. First is what is the argument for somebody making a podcast? Yeah. So, and the second is gonna be like, what is the argument for somebody not making a podcast?

Harry Morton: Yeah. So I think, make a podcast if what you care about are softer metrics, things like brand lift. Like do we care about the way that people feel about our brand after having spent time with us? Do we. Do we need sales today? Like if we wanna sell a widget tomorrow, then owning a podcast is not necessarily the right thing for you.

It's not, doesn't mean you absolutely shouldn't have one, but that shouldn't be the reason that you create one. If you wanna sell more mattresses tomorrow, you should probably be an advertiser. But if you care about the success of your existing customers, the loyalty of those customers, the way they feel about your brand, the way they evangelize for you outside of, you know, in their everyday life, then the relationship we get to build with them on a podcast is incredibly powerful. Because we talked about the trust, we talked about the authenticity, and you know, if we can align ourselves with a voice that really resonates with that audience, then that's an incredibly powerful relationship.

Bryan Barletta: If you want to sell a mattress in six months from now, is the branded podcast good, then like, if it's the sales cycle longer?

Harry Morton: Yeah, absolutely. And so I and I think, I'm sure the conclusion that many of us might come to is that the combination is obviously like an incredibly powerful thing, right?

If you can buy ads today to sell widgets right now and do work on your conversion marketing, but you can also build your own audience alongside of that to nurture that relationship long term, then that's, you know, right?

Jeff Umbro: For anybody who hasn't seen any of these shows, there are actually a lot of podcasts that exist to sell mattresses.

That's a real example. Very curious if anybody's ever bought a mattress because of that. But okay, so that's one idea.

Harry Morton: Yeah. Can you, and you said not. Why not? Yeah, so the often, the reason I give why not is the kind of sales thing. If you wanna sell shit, it's not gonna, if that's not the best, necessarily the best medium.

The other thing is, if you need a large audience today, it's not great. Because like podcasting takes time. It takes a long time to kind of build that audience and nurture it over time. So if you want to reach tens or hundreds or millions of people tomorrow or this week or this quarter even then owning your own podcast is you're probably gonna be disappointed. Like it's something you wanna be doing for at least a year plus to really start to build that sort of, base of listeners. So again, that kind of combo works really well. If you can kind of, you know, do the advertising piece and have your own, then you can kind of run them in tandem. But but again, like if you, if what you want, we, I'd said one of the reasons that people want podcasts is for brand awareness and actually somewhat counterintuitively, actually, I don't necessarily recommend podcasting as the best medium for brand awareness as an owned medium because again, it's gonna take you so long to get there. Yes, it will complete that goal if your time horizon is two years, but if your time horizon is like that this quarter, then you're gonna, you're gonna probably be disappointed.

Jeff Umbro: So just to double down on that, because some people are looking for like actionable steps here. If you did want to build this for brand awareness or to build like a content marketing funnel or something for your organization, what are some ways in which you've seen people do this really well?

Harry Morton: Do what really well. Sorry.

Jeff Umbro: To build like a content funnel with a podcast.

Harry Morton: So we work with one particular example podcast called Moneywise. It's with a client of ours called Sam Parr runs a company called Hampton, which is a private community for founders and CEOs. So it's their high net worth, like typically quite difficult to reach people. They created a show called Moneywise, which is all about sort of high net worth people revealing their net worth and talking about how they manage money and all this kind of stuff.

Because of the level of affinity they were able to create with that segment, with that target audience, the show converted incredibly well. So it was a way of top of funnel of just like, y really as a, the, from the brand's perspective, our goal is to create something that makes our audience go, at last, the show that I've been waiting for. Like, this is so great, this is for me, you know? And this show was that it like revealed information that isn't shared in other places. And so people flock to it. So they flocked to it. They were excited about it. They talked about it on social media. And as a result it converted incredibly well for them as well.

So I think, yeah, we can get into, well, I'm sure we'll get into the weeds in a minute of sort of billboard.

Bryan Barletta: Well, that's really impressive that it converted well, as someone who's been rejected from Hamptons, because I don't make multiple million dollars a year, and it's like $10,000 a year to be a member.

Harry Morton: 12 and a half actually, Bryan. Yeah.

Bryan Barletta: And so bridge to convert really? Well, like that's interesting, right? Because that's like a smaller, like there's a.

Harry Morton: It's a small addressable market, right? Like relatively.

Bryan Barletta: Yeah.

Nadine Robinson: Out of curiosity, how did you track, how was that tracked?

Harry Morton: They have a really ugly spreadsheet which tracks MQLs, SQLs, average order value, all this kind of stuff. And it was directly attributed. This is they did, I think it was 700k in the first year of directly attri directly attributable revenue to the show. And that's just people that are in sales calls going, yeah, I listened to Moneywise and it was an awesome show.

Bryan Barletta: Yeah. How did you hear about it? It's like direct, they talked to everyone?

Harry Morton: Totally. Which is by the way, a really crappy way to track that metric. So you could gotta assume that there's more than that.

Bryan Barletta: Yeah.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah, this is a great example because Sam Parr is one of the hosts of My First Million. He has a huge audience on LinkedIn and Twitter.

So, and also part of the onboarding process for Hampton is to get on a phone call and tell them a bunch of stuff about yourself.

Bryan Barletta: Did you also get rejected?

Jeff Umbro: I'm not a member, no.

Bryan Barletta: Okay, cool.

Jeff Umbro: But, but no, so it's a really easy way to source that data. So you can assume that's really accurate.

Nadine, so you also produce a bunch of podcasts, usually for consumers. As such, you get pitched every day, I'm sure, for your shows. What are the main reasons that someone is making the rounds? Like why would somebody want to appear on your podcasts?

Nadine Robinson: We get, most inbound pitches that we get are somebody who has a new album, has a book, is promoting, maybe they're a professional in a certain field and they're promoting just their own personal brand within that field.

I will say most of the pitches that we receive are not overly enticing. They might be a very good potential guest, but the way that it's presented is really a promotional of like, you know, so and so has released this book and they'd like to come on your show and talk about it, which is not for a podcast that's focused on building their community, building their audience. There needs to be more of a storyline than just a promotional piece. So there likely is an avenue for that author to come on, you know, some of our shows. But it just needs to be approached, in my opinion, in a different way that's more about storytelling and more about like the connection with that show's audience as opposed to, you know, a straight promo piece.

Bryan Barletta: Do you think those ones that you reject, if they just came out to you with like a, Hey, we have a small budget, could we do this as some sort of collaborative ad campaign? Do you think it would be easier for you to have a conversation with them than being like, we think this matters, you should have them as a guest?

Nadine Robinson: Yeah, potentially. I mean, the paid guesting on podcasts is definitely up and coming in terms of, you know, founders or CEOs doing the rounds on podcasts and paid placements on various shows. So that does happen.

I would say we advise our shows to be really careful with it. Don't have someone on your podcast just because they're paying you to be on your podcast, like you're just destroying your own brand and you're destroying your trust with your audience. If they have also a really good story that would resonate with your community, then sure, consider it. And obviously it's great if someone pays to come on your podcast, but I would say be very careful with agreeing to those and making sure it's from an influencer standpoint, the creator standpoint, you have to, I think just be really protective of your content and your community.

Jeff Umbro: So, most of you are probably very familiar with the idea of like a press tour. If you have a movie, a book, an album, you're gonna go on, you know, TV, film you know, pitch the magazines, the newspapers, et cetera. Podcasting has become a big part of that, and there are a lot of podcasts that can, like, truly move the needle and are becoming like the next thing that a lot of these publicists want to book their clients on.

Podcast Nation has a lot of amazing shows that, you know, if you're a publicist, you should try and pitch your clients on if it's relevant. And so like that's one of the ideas of just trying to like, take advantage of the ecosystem that's out there as opposed to like spending a ton of money and time to try and make your own product out there.

Bryan why would a brand buy ads on podcasts as opposed to, like anywhere else?

Bryan Barletta: Like opposed to just buying ads on all their mediums or things like that?

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. Why would I buy an ad on Joe Rogan as opposed to like buying ads on Meta, LinkedIn? In a magazine?

Bryan Barletta: Well, I mean, I think the hard part is that a lot of times people don't buy podcast ads.

So the first thing there is that like it's easier to build into these systems that you have measurement for, that your company has built around and can and reconcile. And like we, we acknowledge that as an industry that like podcasting, while our measurement is getting better and we're doing great things there, it doesn't always fit one-to-one. So it is kind of putting your neck on the line. And we get that it's easier to buy other channels, but the trust is unparalleled.

I mean, like the completion rates for audio and video podcasts are growing and they're doing better, I think, than just general video content for completion rates, but there's just a lot of trust. And the price you can get a celebrity to read an ad endorsing a product on a podcast compared to them like doing your Toyota commercial is like, it's way cheaper on that end, and like the, they get to pick. A lot of them, the bigger the podcasters are, they get to pick if they want to endorse it. So I think that when we're thinking about like getting your feet in there, like sure you can buy programmatic if you buy audio and things like that, we have all those same channels. I recommend trying them. I think they're really great. But I think the truth is when people think about trying and testing, buying podcasts, they think about their favorite podcasts or talking about it. Like nobody is expanding into podcasts without caring about it. The person who raises their hand, who's like, I'm gonna go do that. Likes podcasts. They're not gonna risk it if not.

Harry Morton: So a lot of the pushback I hear about advertisers not wanting to, or their reticence or their nervousness about investing in podcasting is because they can't track it in the same way they can track other stuff. But why is it that radio and TV which are exactly the same, right? What do you think the gap is between those channels where you can place a TV ad, you can buy a Super Bowl ad and sure, like, you know, like a bunch of people watched it, but you can't track it in the same way that you can't track, you know, in the same way that you can't track a podcast as opposed to like a Meta campaign or whatever.

What do you think, what is the gap there? Like, if we've established like, trust is amazing, it's great, you can align yourself with certain talent, why are not more advertisers not investing?

Bryan Barletta: The boss that you have to convince to buy in advertising probably is old enough that they started buying in radio and broadcast and they had to defend it, and there was a measurement there. So it's locked in. It's legacy. Like there's comfort with it and all of that.

Harry Morton: So we need to kill a bunch of execs.

Bryan Barletta: A hundred percent. We like just. Yeah, just a certain age limit on that end. But here's the other truth of it. I mean, like our metrics, so.

Harry Morton: Retire, retire.

Bryan Barletta: Our metrics are really good on all that end. But like what happens if you've spent these years building this like media mix or marketing mix model, right, to pull all of your data and you have one dashboard for everything, you're buying everything and it's impressions, and it's like real time delivery and all these things, and we're talking about downloads and ad delivery.

Like I have never met anyone who like took $20,000 and bet on like a new channel in advertising and is now the CMO of the company because it got amazing returns. But like, I think I can name like three or four people who took a hundred thousand dollars, blew it on a channel that they couldn't justify with the measurement to their boss that it worked and definitely looked for a new job.

And so like what we need to remember is like the companies and the brands absolutely need to spend more in there, but like we gotta have a little bit of sympathy for that person who in this rough market has to determine, like, I love this, but like the upside is I keep my job longer. The downside is I don't have my job. And so, you know, they're looking it's easy to put it in the Facebook slot machine, in the YouTube slot machine, in the Spotify slot machine. And it works like, it's not that those don't work, it's that we're asking you to buy in more hands on. Some of the things that we're talking out here, and that's hard, but that's why I'm grateful for Spotify and the things that they do for SiriusXM, for YouTube, even on the podcasting because they are making it easier, which is breaking down that wall.

Harry Morton: We're getting super like podcast industry nerdy here, aren't we? So you gotta remember this.

Bryan Barletta: That's why nobody stood up and walked out when I said this.

Harry Morton: Yeah, that's true.

Jeff Umbro: I am curious, and I'm sorry I keep using the audience as a prop here, but how many people in the audience that don't work in podcasting have bought podcast ads before?

Bryan Barletta: That's a fun challenge.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. It, for anyone listening to this after we publish this on the Podcast Perspectives feed, you should subscribe, zero hands went up. That is a goose egg. So you guys all have homework. You can go to a lot of self-serve ad campaigns on Spotify, YouTube, Acast, Libsyn. This is all really easy. You can Google this stuff. You can spend a hundred bucks and get your first campaign today. You can literally do it while we're sitting here and you can get like some of your favorite podcasters to read an ad campaign. Honestly I'm shocked. I'm glad you guys are all here because I can guarantee you that this stuff will perform better than whatever Facebook campaign you guys just bought.

So before I move on, does anyone want to double down on what I just said?

Nadine Robinson: Well, I will say working in the creator space, we have a lot of creators that come to podcasting after ver being very successful on their Instagram, on their TikTok, and it is sometimes a process of education of how podcast ads are priced.

It's very different than buying an influencer campaign on social media. It is much more affordable to buy an ad read from a podcaster than it is to get that same person to do an Instagram story on their feed. So from a budget perspective, and it's like the podcast ads are typically very formulaic comparatively to influencer campaigns in general. So.

Jeff Umbro: I oversimplified it.

I oversimplified it, but you can reach out to myself or Nadine, and we will do this for you like next week.

Bryan Barletta: But you also like, just email your favorite podcast or the people that you're listening to that think that resonate to it. If they don't respond, then that's on them, but I think everybody will.

But I guess my question is on that social thing. Is the, when they buy an ad on social, like, and it's like a story or a something post, like that feels like buying a branded episode. The equivalent in podcast, it's not an ad read. Right? It is more so, I think it's justifiably more, but like that's, but it's, if you want to get that bite, like your favorite Instagram, like influencer has a podcast, that might be the easiest access point for it to see if it works to buy then into the bigger thing.

Nadine Robinson: Yes. I think if there's, if you find a creator and influencer that works really well for your brand, and you can, you know, maybe test them on podcasts, then you can say, okay, we wanna work them in a work with them in a more holistic way. We wanna do cross channel, we wanna do Instagram, and the budget can grow from there.

Bryan Barletta: How do you track Instagram?

Nadine Robinson: I mean there's.

Bryan Barletta: Well that's, see, we have pixels in podcasts. It was just, I was raked, guys. It was, yeah. But that's the thing. But the hard part is that you can visually see it, and this is, I know we're gonna get into video podcasts here, but like anybody who's pushing back in podcasting about visual podcasts is missing the thing that you can show your boss a podcast now, right? You can get buy in and they get it. Instead of being like, Hey, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna play my favorite trailer for my podcast, and start into all of your eyes for 90 seconds while I force you into this. You can send them a file, they can put it on and they can visually see it and be like, I get it.

Jeff Umbro: That would be a bad campaign though. Don't do that.

But I'm gonna move on, but truly, you guys should figure this out and run a test campaign. I see you nodding your head. Great. So, to help you guys do that, what is the first question that a brand company or podcaster should ask in order to determine if they should launch a podcast? And I'm going to tweak this question. Or if they should pitch themselves for an interview on a show, or if they should buy a podcast ad. Start with you, Harry.

Harry Morton: It's why. Like, why are you doing it? What's it for? What's the purpose? What's the goal? What are you gonna measure success by? If it's results, you might wanna advertise.

If it's brand metrics, you might wanna make your own podcast. But that's the starting point is why you're trying to do it.

Jeff Umbro: Okay.

Nadine Robinson: I would say the same thing from the creator standpoint is what's your goal? It's not necessarily the right avenue for every creator, just because you know, have been very successful in other platforms doesn't necessarily mean that a podcast is right for you.

It's right, it's great. But.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah.

Nadine Robinson: You gotta think about why.

Jeff Umbro: Bryan?

Bryan Barletta: I mean, I think that no matter what it's ads or branded podcasts, like the people that come in through that engagement with the brand are like saying that they want more, right? They want more from that brand or whatever in that in scenario.

So my question is, what are you gonna do with those people? Yeah, you've got them, right? Like if you build a podcast and you're done with it, if you just let those people float, if you don't have an idea of like how to convert them into something else, a newsletter or something, what you're gonna do with them and keep, like, keep them engaged, you might have just lost your most loyal customers if they come in through a podcast ad or things like that.

How do you retain them? How do you upsell them? How do you keep them as a separate list? They're very clearly more in tuned to your brand and that relationship there.

Jeff Umbro: So here's five questions you guys can all write down to ask if you want to do this. What is your goal? How are you measuring that goal?

What are the KPIs that you're measuring? What's your timeline and what's your budget? So.

Bryan Barletta: And if you check on your seat, there's a Post-it note with all of those written. I wonder, as everything converges and we're seeing brands have media and all of this, what's the difference between a brand and a creator?

I mean, B2B is like, you get to go, one person counts as a hundred people, and creator is, you need those a hundred people. Like, is that it? Or like, because like a creator has a brand, they have a media property, they can create cre a like things for sale now and stuff like this. A brand now wants to be a creator.

Like is it merging?

Harry Morton: Yeah, it is merging. It's kind of this thing we all want to be, yeah. Everyone is a creator at this point. It's a, I think the biggest difference is more like, how do they go about their business? Like a creator can just wake up on a Thursday and go, cool, I'm gonna make a podcast about my cows now.

But like, you know, for a brand that's got a lot of legacy and like clear messages they need to put out, it's a lot harder to kind of pivot that ship. And so what we find is like, it's a lot of our work is helping to encourage brands in away from things that feel safe and known and tried and true and into like, well, but if, what if we do this like the creators are doing, they're kind of stepping outside their comfort zone a little bit. They're doing these things that maybe aren't everywhere else then they can actually stand apart and do something different.

Bryan Barletta: What? What? On that end, if I wake up and I want to do the cows thing, if I'm a creator, don't have to like land 10,000 people listening to matter, but if I'm a brand, maybe it's like three dairy farmers that are listening and I've just sold like new machinery to them, right?

Like isn't, there's a little bit of scale difference.

Harry Morton: For sure there's a scale. I mean, again, it depends on the brand, right? Like if it's a mattress company, then you know it's an $800 mattress and you need a, an audience of this size. If you are selling Coke, then you probably need many millions of people to listen for that to me, what makes sense? So there's a spectrum, right?

Jeff Umbro: I had a conversation today where somebody said if you're trying to sell subscriptions to BetterHelp, you're gonna have a very different measurement than if you're trying to convince somebody at the grocery store to sell Coke as opposed to Pepsi.

And. So like brand aware, it's like does the measurement matter on the BetterHelp campaign more than it matters on like the Coke versus Pepsi campaign? And I thought that, I don't know the answer, but I thought that was a really interesting, you know, vantage point.

Bryan Barletta: I mean, one you can track.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah.

Bryan Barletta: The Coke or Pepsi, like you just, like, there's so many places you can buy both of them, right? Like how do you track, how do you measure that, the effectiveness? And that's interesting.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah.

Nadine Robinson: I would say also just from the creator standpoint, just the difference between how I think creators have to think about building a podcast versus maybe a brand is that, I think they should be a lot scrappier in a lot of ways and be so involved and like from the ground, from like everything from editing, everything from like concept development. I think when we see creators come in who want to just hire everything out. It doesn't create the best show for them as a creator. I think that they have to be like the heart and soul. That individual person has to be the heart and soul of their show. That doesn't mean that eventually they can't, you know, outsource some of their work. But I think for what we've seen as creators that wanna come in and just hire out immediately. It doesn't necessarily work in the way that, that would probably work better for a brand where it's like, there are marketing budgets, there's, there is strategy, there is thought behind all of this.

It's more than just that individual.

Jeff Umbro: This is actually the perfect segue. To give you guys all, some like tangible walkaway thoughts here, Harry, could you walk us through just like the broad strokes of what somebody needs to consider in terms of what it takes to produce a podcast? And then Nadine, could you walk through the broad strokes of what somebody needs to consider to like, take that podcast and like find an audience?

Harry Morton: Yeah, so the sort of process that I outline when I'm speaking to people, and I'll try and rattle this off quick 'cause I've said it about 5,422 times, but it, but it's different every time though. So, is every conversation starts with who are we trying to reach? So once we've established like, why do we want a podcast? What are we trying to achieve, then it's like, okay, who are we trying to reach? And we need to be really specific about who we're trying to reach because I think oftentimes brands get sucked into this idea of like, we wanna reach this by persona, but also these, and oh, by the way, don't forget this market because we might sell a few widgets over there as well.

And that's like, that's a bad idea when it comes to creating content because content for everybody is content kind of for nobody. We want to be really specific. So, so. Defining that, that target audience then makes it so much easier to come up with an original idea that isn't like every other podcast that's out there, because you're actually serving a specific and distinct need.

So that leads through the process of developing a concept for your show, a format, a concept, a conceit, a reason that this show exists, that differentiates it from all of the rest. Then you need to, you know, think about who's gonna host this podcast. Is it gonna be someone from inside of our team? Is it our CEO? Is it our marketing person? Is it outside talent that we're hiring? Oftentimes outside talent is a huge sort of cheat code because it, you get to ride the coattails of that person's audience, but it also adds cost and adds overhead and adds complication. But, so we're kind of nailing down, like who's involved, then we're gonna write the content. We're gonna come up with the sort of episode plans, everything that's involved in that. Then we need to kind of produce it, whether that's like we've got someone in house that produces it. We hire a producer, we work with someone freelance, we work with an agency which is a terrible idea. You shouldn't do that. And that which then allows you to kind of take the, I mean, to be honest the earlier you get involved with outside expertise is always good. Like, once you've got your why and your who, then you can sort of begin to strategize the ideas around what the show is.

But then you're making the thing and making the thing is a lot of work. People don't realize how much goes into making a podcast. You gotta write the content, you gotta plan the guest, you've gotta research everything. You've gotta then sit down and do the interview. Then you've gotta cut the tape, then you've gotta get back in the studio to record your voiceover or your intros and your outros, all this kind of stuff.

Bryan Barletta: We'll fix it in post.

Harry Morton: We'll fix it in post, we will certainly fix it in post, and we fix so many fix in posts. And, and then you ship it. But then when you ship it we don't, we kind of go, oh, great, now it's on YouTube and it's on Apple, it's on Spotify. Wicked. Like, job done. But no.

Bryan Barletta: Then you've got, then the more work begins, which is okay. Now we've gotta promote the content that we just made, which was designed to promote our brand, which is slightly you know, creates a little bit of cognitive dissonance, it looks sometimes. But yeah, was that waffly and long? Basically come up with a concept, know who you're trying to reach, first of, first and foremost, then you've gotta plan and really put the effort into planning, 'cause if you rush that, then you make something that's just bland and boring and no wants to listen to, then you've gotta make the thing which involves a lot. And then you've gotta spend the same amount of time again on getting it out there.

Jeff Umbro: Research, writing, coordinating.

Harry Morton: Right. The good news is, the good story around the distribution side is that hopefully you're doing a podcast because you want to. You know, espouse the values of your company. And it represents who you are as an organization, what you believe, what you do.

Therefore, it should be just like the perfect encapsulation of you as a brand, and therefore you should put everything into just, it should be everywhere because, like, why wouldn't you be proud of this thing? And so the good news is it should hopefully. You know, fit into every other campaign you're doing seamlessly because it is you.

Bryan Barletta: And to like, to compliment you guys on, on the seven, I think this is something that's missed on this, like just deciding to record and throw it up there and hope for the best is like riding a bike with no like pedals, right? Like you're just coasting and you're hoping, right? You catch it, you make the hill and then you catch it on that end. But like working with people like you guys is often cheaper than like me hiring it out in project managing because your efficient team's built to work on multiple projects.

Harry Morton: Well, that's a great point, Bryan.

Bryan Barletta: No, but I mean, look I mean, at the end of the day, like, it's like, sure, go ahead and try it. But like, this is complicated and you're not like doing it to scare people away. But we're also saying like, if you want to do it yourself, like you can't skip these steps. Like people love loving their favorite brand, but holy shit, people like nail in a brand when they do something bad. Like you as a creator, you can do that cow podcast and pivot entirely to business, right? You know what I mean? Like you can delete those files and people will forget it. Look at Blippy. But like, you know what I mean, like wild. I have two young kids so I have to think about these things, but like as a brand, like you remember that when they step in it, right?

Yeah. Like you absolutely. People would love to point out when brands make a mistake.

Harry Morton: Totally. And I think, you know, we talked, you asked earlier about like why you shouldn't start a podcast. I think one of the reasons you shouldn't start podcast is if you're trying to bootstrap it and kind of figure it out as you go along, 'cause it's just gonna like, I guess it's the same for anything but you, it's just gonna disappoint you. Like oftentimes we'll get brands come to us, we just wanna like pilot something. We're just gonna bootstrap it, try something quick and dirty, see if it works, and then we'll double down or not.

And I'm like, but you won't. It won't work. So then you'll decide not to, but you'll shooting yourself on the foot. So basically you should only do it if you are full throated, we are doing it. Like we're investing.

Bryan Barletta: I'm the worst panelist. You shouldn't have asked me, you should've just let me moderate on this end.

I apologize on that. But I gotta ask you like we, are the three of us hypocrites then, because we kind of just bootstrapped our own podcast, which is a B2B podcast to like get people to work with us in that way? Like is it a scale thing that when you're Pepsi, you have to take it seriously, but when you are a startup, you can, like, if it's a sales funnel, like is it okay?

Harry Morton: I guess. I mean, Pepsi's got a lot more to lose, right?

Bryan Barletta: Yeah. Like you started your podcast, you interviewed people in the space. It's that led to sales and things like that.

Harry Morton: But also Jeff knows podcasting. He knows how to do it right.

Jeff Umbro: Okay. Yes. I make a podcast and I use it for marketing and lead gen, and I love it.

Harry Morton: You should subscribe. It's called Podcast Perspectives.

Jeff Umbro: Oh, yeah. I don't know if you guys have heard of it. You're listening to an episode of it right now. You didn't even know that.

But no, it's, you can use a podcast for a lot of different things and there's many different goals and different ways in which you can produce it.

In order to establish like the different ways in which you want to present this to the world. We break it into clips and put it on LinkedIn. We send it out in our newsletter. We put blogs out because of it, we turn it into live events and webinars, like we take this one piece of content and we really milk it, and then it saves us a ton of money elsewhere in our business.

Also the people that I book as guests are people that I want to hire me to do stuff for them later on. So I use the entire thing as lead gen and, we have not pursued advertising on the show, but I can easily see a world where I get like some of the software that we use to pay us to be on the show and then that software becomes free.

So like you guys get the idea where you can just turn this into a vehicle that does a lot for you beyond just making a podcast.

Bryan Barletta: But you are the advertiser.

Jeff Umbro: Sure.

Bryan Barletta: Right? Like that's something that like, it is, it's.

Jeff Umbro: I don't have to be the only one, but just time check. I do want to hear from Nadine in terms of like, once the podcast exists, how do you grow the thing?

Nadine Robinson: I mean, I would agree with Harry that content is everything. So you have to be very, very specific about knowing the content that you're creating is what your audience wants to hear. Because if they listen to one episode and they're not into it, they may not try again. Right. So content is everything. I think there's a little bit more leeway with creators than brands, but I would say it's still, you know, it's competitive out there.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah.

Nadine Robinson: We always lean into finding audience where they already are, so sometimes someone will come to us with, you know, even like millions of Instagram followers and you know, they think if they launch a podcast there, it's going to be massive. It doesn't always convert. You know, sometimes those audiences can convert over to a podcast, but it doesn't, there's no formula. Like we, it's just, you know, it's a bit of a gut check to be honest in our team of like whether that's going to convert. So what we always recommend is thinking about finding podcast listeners where they are. That means guesting on other podcasts. That means doing ad swaps. That means I know obviously YouTube's now a big piece of it. So you know, if you're trying to build up your YouTube, really targeting YouTube podcasts. That would be our number one recommendation. Of course, social media clips are a big thing. They can be a great discoverability tool. Video podcasts, clips on YouTube.

Like there's, you know, there's not a, there's not a a magic bullet when it comes to growth. It is slow and it is and it has to sort of be an always on strategy.

Jeff Umbro: My least favorite conversation is when a brand or a person comes to us and says, I have a million followers on Instagram, we'll be fine. Because then you have to spend an hour explaining to them why they will not be fine.

So we've talked a lot about making podcasts for brands, for consumers, how to monetize these podcasts. I wanna spend like 30 seconds talking about the realities of what it means to break through as a podcast. And we've, it depends what your goals are and everything, but just, Bryan, could you give us some stats around like the podcast ecosystem and what it means to be like a top 10% show or a top 1% show? I don't wanna put you on the spot.

Bryan Barletta: As you get closer to the, in the 10 to 1% show where you're talking about like hundreds of thousands to millions of downloads a month for your podcast, right? Like these are the scale has changed. And I mean, globally it matters differently. In the UK that scale is different if you're thinking about the UK, but everybody wants the US audience.

There's advertisers here and all of that. So like, you know, there are, there are more than you think shows out there that do several million downloads a month with a single show, and that is who sometimes you're competing with when you think about those numbers. But every advertiser eventually wants to work with new people.

So it's not all, the belief that it's all being gobbled up at the top, isn't really true because eventually the advertiser is just like, I bought that for like two years. What's new? But breaking into that can be really hard. And that's where I think like having, like who your audience is, knowing your audience, surveying your audience can oftentimes be more powerful than how big your audience is, right?

Like, yes. How do you, are they in your newsletter too? Almost one to one. Is it as many Instagram as it is on YouTube? Or YouTube and on, on podcasts? Like how do you approach them? Do you do live events? Do you do these other things? So I think breaking into that higher tier, I think the ad money was really good like five years ago, four years ago. And I think it's changed a lot now. And you have to be more creative on it. You have to be 360 on these things here. You have to think about other objectives. So I think top is a real, like breaking through on top, like, cool, you can buy those downloads if you want it.

It making you money is a way different conversation.

Jeff Umbro: And Nadine, do you have any shows that are making crazy high CPM or something that don't have a large audience? I guess the crux of the question is are there situations where it doesn't matter if you have a million downloads a month and you still consider a show a success?

Nadine Robinson: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I actually think that mid-range podcasts, like a hundred to 200,000 downloads a month, actually, I would say on average, have a better CPM than the ones that are in the millions, because there's only so many brands that can afford to buy a podcast, a on, on a show that big. And then you're looking at really big budgets for one single advertisement.

So the CPMs tend to actually slip down a little bit.

Harry Morton: But also the audience has naturally become more generalized, right? Like, if they're smaller, they, you know exactly who it is, right?

Bryan Barletta: But you're so right on that, like, CPMs are lower for some of the bigger ones because you have to buy all of it.

Nadine Robinson: You have to buy all of it. And so it becomes like a budget for the brand. They can only, you know, buy so many podcast ads, whereas kind of a mid-range podcast can, you know, we can keep a higher, be really more, more strict as a CPM because there's more competition for those ad spots.

Jeff Umbro: I know a lot about her sales and she's really good at them.

Bryan Barletta: Really good.

Jeff Umbro: So trust her when she says that.

Harry, Do you have any shows that you would consider a success that have like hundreds of downloads or like low thousands?

Harry Morton: Abso, yes. It's really, so I, you know, with brands so often, the people you're, we have like multiple clients who goal is to reach Fortune 500 CEOs or at least C-suite execs.

Right? That's a very defined and clear, like that is 500 people.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah.

Harry Morton: And if you get 20% of those to listen to more than one episode, that's a slam dunk for many of these companies. So actually, rather than the sort of scale and the reach it depends on the brand, depends on the goals, right? So like, this isn't a universal rule, but like, so very often we will, instead of looking at the size of the audience, it's instead thinking about who is the audience as we've touched on already.

But then also to what extent are they engaged and how much do they care about this content? Because I think what we'll find, if we look at the consumption rate of our podcast, and we compare that to, on an average view, duration on our videos or the time people spend on our blog post or the extent to which they engage on our LinkedIn massively out outperform. So we see 80 plus percent completion rates on 30 to 45 minute episodes of our client shows, which is like a lot, right? If you're spending 80% of your time, that's like 30 minutes of your time every week you're spending with that brand in your ears, which when you compare that to like scrolling through your Instagram feed is really powerful.

So that, like success can be defined in lots of different ways.

Jeff Umbro: Hire that man. Those are remarkable numbers for a branded show.

So, so video. Where does that fit into strategy, particularly given the announcements from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Netflix, Hulu. For anybody who doesn't know, basically every platform we've ever heard of is starting to put video podcasts onto their systems. And we don't have that much time, so we're not gonna do this justice. But, Bryan, can you speak to the world of the consumer when it comes to video podcasts? What can they expect in the next year or two?

Bryan Barletta: Wow. Okay. Everything's video because it's easier to explain. It's easier to see, it's easier to look at it.

The industry argues over the, what the term podcast is and what it means, and anybody who cares what that term means is wrong. And it doesn't matter because none of the audience cares. They turn it on, they call it a podcast, they put it on YouTube, they call it a podcast. They get an audio file or a video file and a group chat, and they call it a podcast. Let them.

Like it, it doesn't benefit anybody to, to change it, but we are, take podcast as creator owned, creator forward, audio forward. And that's all it is. It's the right for them to own that. So whether it's audio, video, in person, whatever it is, we are seeing a revolution in creators. We're seeing a disruption in distribution, and there's never been a better time to be a creator or a content owner or anything like that because the entirety of consumption has, like consumers have said, like, absolutely, we'll buy it directly from you.

Jeff Umbro: Nadine. You do come from the world of social first creators. How do they view podcasts? I guess the crux of the question is like a lot of the people that, a lot of people will see a clip on Instagram or TikTok and call it a podcast. Like, is it?

Nadine Robinson: I mean, if it looks like a podcast.

Bryan Barletta: You sell an ad in it.

Jeff Umbro: If it quacks like a duck.

Nadine Robinson: I mean, in terms of like realistically what we can sell is we still sell like. I think what most people would think of as a podcast is something that is appearing on Apple or Spotify, YouTube. That doesn't mean that the social can't be part of it.

More and more brands are also looking to podcasters to do UGC content. So that's like, if you're on Instagram and you see two of your favorite podcasters. They're doing a little segment and then it turns out, oh, they're talking about a brand and they're doing a little segment about a brand. A brand has like very specifically paid for a organic seeming ad that then looks like a podcast clip, but is, you know, is an podcast advertisement that's then on Instagram. It's just all intertwining. So I mean, I still think that you have to be on the podcast apps for it to be a podcast from a sales perspective at this point at least, but it can all intertwine with social. I don't know if that answered your question.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. I mean, we could talk all day about that, but, do brands care about video, harry?

Harry Morton: Well, this was kind of what I was gonna say is that, sorry. Yes, they do care about video, but I was gonna say, do brand, this feels like an us conversation. And I, for any marketers or in the audience, like, much like an audience doesn't care whether it's a podcast like, I don't imagine marketers really care, right? Like, I feel like we were, you know, let's say beginning of COVID, it was really like, you know, adventurous brands that were going out there and say, I want to get involved in podcasting. That's a medium that I want to, I'm excited about.

Whereas now it feels like it's just a spectrum of content and podcasting is just a genre. So we could sit here and talk about the importance of video for podcasting, but I don't think the world cares apart from us here standing in the stage and like a bunch of people over at the Sky Lounge.

Jeff Umbro: Well, I guess the one pushback I have on that is like, is there a different budget that CMOs are using for video versus audio?

Harry Morton: For sure.

Jeff Umbro: So.

Harry Morton: And, and I think that's exact, that blurring of the lines is exactly, again, that's kind of more of an us thing than everybody else, but like fair, you know, like I, I think brands are just saying, yeah, we want video content. And oftentimes what they're thinking of when they think about video content is conversational podcasty stuff with people holding microphones. I honestly think it's more of like a, it's like a language thing, which is like this really. I can, I, anyway, I could. I'm nerding out here and this isn't helpful, but I don't think it matters is ultimately it and video is everything.

Jeff Umbro: We will continue that conversation off stage.

Okay. One final question, 'cause I wanna leave five minutes for everybody to ask their questions. If the audience walks away remembering one thing from this conversation, what do each of you hope it is?

Let's start with Bryan.

Bryan Barletta: You all chose to be here at SXSW with a thousand things competing on you, and you love podcasts and your audience loves podcasts too.

Jeff Umbro: Okay, Nadine?

Nadine Robinson: I would say whether you're a brand marketer or a content creator, if you're thinking about building a podcast, repeating what we've already said is like, really think about what your goals are and be honest and get feedback from whoever you can.

If a podcast will meet that, those goals.

Harry Morton: Can I go? Okay.

I think the one thing that we haven't talked about that I think is really important is, I think so many people underinvest in. Uniqueness in originality, in actually spending the time to think about their strategy.

Whether that's buying ads, whether that's partnering with particular creators, or whether that's making their own show. I think so many people see what exists out there already and kind of iterate by example. And I think the brands that are really excelling in this space are the ones that are willing to experiment and do things that are more interesting.

No one is gonna tune into yet another thought leadership podcast with two people having a conversation about the future of AI. That's like all the shows, right? So like what can we do that's genuinely different? How do we present that in a way that's really entertaining so that people choose to lean in and choose to pay attention?

So, that's my little mini brand.

Jeff Umbro: Think Different. Great Apple campaign. In my takeaways, everybody should run a hundred dollar test campaign on podcasts.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you all so much for listening. You can find Bryan online at soundsprofitable.com. Nadine at podcastnation.co and Harry Morton at lowerstreet.com. 

For more podcast related news info and takes you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jeff Umbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of the Podglomerate. If you're looking for help producing marketing or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all socials @podglomeratepods. 

This episode was produced by myself, Jeff Umbro, Chris Boniello, and José Roman. This episode was edited and mixed by José Roman. Thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Erin Weiss, and Sheeba Joseph, and a special thank you to Dan Christo. 

Thank you all for listening and I'll catch you in a few weeks.