Steve Goldstein: Unlocking the Power of the Audio Promo

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:12  
Steve Goldstein returns to talk about audio promos. Podcast pros, for the longest time, have said yet your podcast has to have a trailer, and now you should have an audio promo ready to go. And while radio personalities and podcasters can't wait to make their tiktoks reels and shorts, Steve is here to tell you that you might be jumping over a 20 to get to a five, audio promos are underrated, and making a great one is not easy as you're gonna hear I take my latest promo I did earlier this week, and I put it to the test today. Steve makes the case for audio promos. What makes them stand out, why they work and how often you should run them? The short answer to that, by the way, is a lot. We're also going to revisit our conversation from last spring, which is all about the importance of video to your podcast. In fact, we're gonna start there. And now Steve Goldstein joins me from Westport, Connecticut. So we were three years between episodes, and now we're mere months separated from the last time you were back and you're back again.

Steve Goldstein  1:14  
That means one of two things, either I have something profound to say to you, or you've cycled through a lot of people, and now you're just going on reruns. I

Matt Cundill  1:23  
think the industry and everything is just going so quickly. Now I've got to call the pros back to catch us up every time, because things change so quickly. It was crazy. How fast it changes.

Steve Goldstein  1:32  
Oh yes, it's nutty.

Matt Cundill  1:34  
So from the video side of things, nice to know, by the way, you did go and check the YouTube to see how the episode did, because I think you were the first episode that when we made the pivot, we're really going to take video seriously. We're putting it up on YouTube. I am not there with Spotify. However, you're the only episode with a video episode on Spotify, just to make you feel special.

Steve Goldstein  1:55  
Well, you know, that was our topic. Our topic was about how video is becoming a more critical play for podcasts, and that certainly isn't going away.

Matt Cundill  2:04  
I just couldn't get away from Spotify being an audio tool. There's an audio experience I make for the show, there's a video experience I make for the show, and I can't get away from the dynamic audio insertion. I've got clients. I've got 10, 15% of the audience who are on Spotify. I just I can't do it. I can do it with your episode. I can't do it with any others. So

Steve Goldstein  2:28  
I read a stat. It's a Spotify provided stat, but of the top 10 podcasts on Spotify, seven of them now have a video component. So

Matt Cundill  2:40  
without really saying it, you're saying we should probably have a separate RSS feed for video.

Steve Goldstein  2:46  
What I'm saying is, I think they are going to push that button hard so that YouTube doesn't run away with it that Spotify who does plenty of video. I mean, think about the music. I mean, there's music videos all over the platform. So there's, I'm guessing, in their mind, no reason that there shouldn't be video coming from podcasts, if indeed that is the threat. When people say

Matt Cundill  3:08  
video, they mean YouTube, but when you say video, you don't necessarily mean YouTube.

Steve Goldstein  3:14  
That's exactly right. Certainly YouTube will be the number one and the predominant share, but video can live on other platforms and other styles. So we're talking about Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube shorts, which is different than YouTube. This is all video, but chopped up and used differently. What

Matt Cundill  3:33  
do you make of the move from YouTube to go to a three minute short that doesn't feel so short anymore? No,

Steve Goldstein  3:39  
and I don't know what what that means. I just know that we are iterating, we are trying to master video on all of these different platforms. And by the way, I mean, some of this is handheld, simple stuff. Some of this is, you know, three camera setups with a somebody controlling the video.

Matt Cundill  3:58  
You know, every time I go to Podcast Movement and I take in one of your sessions, I'm immediately irritated at the end because I feel like you've given me homework to do. So last year it was video and this year it's audio promos. So I'm going to ask you, Why does every podcast need a promo?

Steve Goldstein  4:17  
It is getting harder to distinguish podcasts because there are so many podcasts. And in some cases, if you're talking about, say, a network of podcasts, SXM wandering, you know, whatever it may be, using owned media to promote the podcast is becoming more and more essential. Or if you're doing a swamp with other podcasts, again, more and more essential. And the problem is that this has been number 27 on the checklist, because you've got all this other stuff to do in creating a podcast, and so the promo does not get the attention it deserves, and you're squandering not you. Some people not. Everybody just Squandering a fantastic opportunity. There seems

Matt Cundill  5:03  
to be more of a rush to get a promo or a piece of marketing onto Tiktok or onto Instagram or maybe a highlight reel onto YouTube. Why is it that we overlook our own property or other podcasts? How come we're not spending more time on other podcasts and getting people to come on over and listen, because we're likely already in the app.

Steve Goldstein  5:24  
So we work with a number of clients, and I will tell you that the most squandered opportunity, without question, is their own media. And I'm talking about big brands that if you go into their app, you won't find the podcasts available. If you go onto their website, it's down at the bottom and you're scrolling away to find it. They're making podcast listening harder, and then they are making it even harder by not cross promoting it on their other assets. So of course, their number one mission is advertising. So they want to fill those holes, but they should be creating an opportunity for a promo in every podcast. And how you do that promo is really critical. It's the slapping it together. Once you've surfaced the opportunity to do it, slapping it together just kills off the whole thing most of the time. So that

Matt Cundill  6:16  
reminds me of something that Steve Pratt said a few weeks back on the show, is that quite often, when he would go in to talk with a company about a branded podcast, so often they would overlook the toys and the marketing pieces that they had inside the company to be promoting their own podcast. Steve

Steve Goldstein  6:33  
and I have talked about this many times. It's exactly the same thing. So we're again, we're talking about companies that have hundreds of 1000s, maybe millions, of customers, but they are reticent to use the channel to promote the podcast. By the way, they are using the channels to promote other things. Maybe they have TV assets, maybe they have print or newsletter assets. They're all competing for time and space, and so I think that is where much of this comes from. What what Steve is talking about is walking into these big companies where he's producing podcasts for Ford, or whatever they might be, and I know the first thing he says to them is, you know, you have these gorgeous assets. Let's, let's use those.

Matt Cundill  7:16  
Is there a standard for length in the podcast space that's been developed yet in radio, it was always we got to keep it to 30 seconds. Maybe you could get 60 out of the morning show promo. But if you and I were to exchange podcasts promos right now, what would the expectation for time be?

Steve Goldstein  7:35  
I don't know the hard answer to that. We worked with system one, which is a London based company that does a ton of research on audio and response. I can tell you that the bias is too short. That's not surprising. I can tell you that the bias too short is because we have Tiktok brain. I mean, everybody's brain has been rewired, and you need to capture attention within three seconds, and then you need to hold attention. And so I don't know how long the average promo could or should be, but I certainly would guide for it to be short and effective. And also, Matt, I think a lot of the promos that I hear in podcasting are very left brain. They're focused on logic and lists and really weak reasons why you should listen to the podcast, as opposed to right brain reasons, which are story based and emotional, and that's how you hook people in, and you can do that in a fairly rapid form, then you've got the best of both worlds.

Matt Cundill  8:37  
So you're essentially asking people to write a great story about your podcast often in less than 30 seconds,

Steve Goldstein  8:45  
I would hope so. And I would also say, here's the analogy, when you are looking for a podcast to listen to in an app, you're scrolling and what are you looking for? You're looking for the guest name. You're looking for a topic that's of interest, the promo needs to do the same thing. It needs to capture that imagination in just a couple of seconds. It needs to be a carrot that says, hey, take an extra look at this or think about this.

Matt Cundill  9:17  
So a few of the things that come to mind when I hear this sort of ask about a right brained approach to to a promo music, definitely. I want to get bring some music in, for sure. I don't want something loud and jarring. I want something that's going to be a headphone experience, because that's where podcasters are going to be. I think you also gave a list of here are the things you really need to do to make a great promo. I think you did about eight things, and I wanted to stick my hand up and say, number nine is, you need amazing voice talent to voice this speaking as a voiceover person myself. But I've often thought maybe I'm not the right person to be doing the promo as the host of a show. Maybe I should be going and getting some animated professional talent who could work with a piece of copy. Get it to 30 seconds and speak wonderfully over music

Steve Goldstein  10:02  
or unprofessional talent. I think it depends on what the podcast is about. I mean, if you're a doctor and you're talking about some clinical issues, you probably aren't that exciting or that interesting, but you are credible and you are unique, and that stands out from an announcer, and in no way am I being derogatory to having fine announcing. I think it's a critical piece of many equations, but is not the only solution. I think it needs to be bespoke to the mission of the podcast.

Matt Cundill  10:37  
This is a tough one, because how do we know when it's not good? It's I'm thinking of Jim Moore here,

Jim Mora  10:44  
and I'm promising you right now that you don't know when it's good or bad. You really don't know, because you don't know what we're trying to do. You guys don't look at the films. You don't know what happened. You really don't know. You think you know, but you don't know.

Matt Cundill  11:01  
And I've encountered morning shows who have put out promos, and I listen to them, and I think you shouldn't have put that promo out, because now I never want to listen to this show. So how would a podcaster who has to make a promo right now decipher good versus bad?

Steve Goldstein  11:16  
So I think that's an excellent example. Man, morning shows notoriously take 1520 seconds a clip from the show without context, and they're laughing uproariously, and we are not as the listener, because we don't have that context. So I think those kind of promos indeed do damage. You're probably not going to cycle into the morning show. In fact, you probably think less of the morning show because of that. The TV guys are much better at this. The movie guys are much better at this. Now they have teams. They have money. In the case of movies, they have time when they're developing the trailers. But there are some commonalities that I think are worth lifting. And number one, they understand how to capture attention right away. And number two, and this came from the system, one guys and I have ripped this off and obviously giving them credit, because I love the line. The cost of dull. What is the cost of dull? The cost of dull is dismissal, and that's where most promos die, is because you're not that interesting. But as I said, You should be right brain over left brain. So capture me by telling a story. Don't give me logic and facts. Don't tell me why you need this podcast. Make Me Want this podcast.

Matt Cundill  12:35  
So this brings up another question, because often I've said, Oh, you need a trailer for your podcast, it should be episode zero. Sit at the top, and then you also need a promo. And then I'll get the me go look, which is the me, eyes glaze over, kind of look and say, well, what's the difference between the two? And sometimes what they produce is something that sort of lands in a minute and represents both what is the difference between a trailer and a promo.

Steve Goldstein  13:00  
So the trailer is designed to establish your feed. If you look at any podcast and you look at the numbers, the trailer never produces a lot of traffic, but it's important to be there, often proceeding when you launch the podcast, to establish the channel. So I think, I think it serves a purpose, but I don't think it's the same kind of thing as a movie trailer, even though they they use the same terminology a movie trailer is when you are sitting watching Netflix and they are teasing you for something, or you're actually in a movie theater. Remember movie theaters, and you would get the big screen experience different on a trailer that's running in podcast form, so I prefer to think way more about the promo and how to attract the attention for the upcoming episode, and that's something we haven't touched on yet. Are you branding? Are you trying to establish the name of the show and the concept of the show, or are you pushing toward a specific episode? And those two things can live together, but way more of the promos that I hear are branding promos. You should listen to the show because we're good, because we do this, we're funny people, whatever it is, but I think the action today is way more episode specific, and you certainly see that on the TV side. Very little branding going on these days, and way more topic driven promos.

Matt Cundill  14:24  
So once again, every time I talk to you, I am assigned more homework. And now I feel, Oh, my God, I gotta do one of these, like every week, or I'm gonna take one episode a month and promote that and sub it in across across my whole channels. But Yikes, but I guess it makes sense.

Steve Goldstein  14:42  
I think it's the nature of the beast. You are customizing everything else for the episode. You're customizing the artwork. You do gorgeous artwork, and you're doing notes. So so the promo, yes, it needs to fit in with that. And when I did the presentation at Podcast Movement, I said that the podcast Promo. Far down the list. And whenever I bring this up, I get this look. And it's that cartoon look. It's that Bugs Bunny eyes popping out of the face look of, no, don't give me any more to do. And that's sort of what you're saying here. And yet, if you want to build audience, it's part of the checklist today, but not number 27 on the checklist. I think it's got to come up to number three or four or five.

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Matt Cundill  15:59  
I think the other thing that comes to mind is, is frequency. We talk a lot about that when it comes to like songs on the radio, how many times are we going to play the song? How many times is the ad going to run? Do you have something in mind that, if I'm going to take the effort and I'm going to do a promo, how much and how long I mean for an episode, if the show is evergreen, that episode can play a long time. So that's to an advantage. It's not like radio or it's like you got to listen here for this moment, for this thing. Well, and

Steve Goldstein  16:24  
again, that depends on the podcast and how many, how often episodes are coming out. And so that's ephemeral, that the podcast value is gone after a couple days. Okay, well, that's the case on that particular podcast, and many others do have, they have stock. I mean, you can use the promo and the podcast over a period of time. That's great. I think, though, that the modus operandi here should be to burn it in. This is something Pierre Bouvard from cumulus media says to me often, and he was a part of this whole thing, and he says, Don't worry about burning it out. Burn it in frequency really matters, and the system one guys say the same thing, and they can show you the charts and the arcs on frequency one for campaigns. So we're talking about longer term campaigns. Maybe the copy changes, but the arc of the campaign remains consistent that companies pull off of those too early, and I would guess that would hold true in podcasting as well. So don't worry about burning it out. Burn it in.

Matt Cundill  17:29  
That was really key. I think when you when Pierre talked about that was how much you could play a promo, and you're never going to get penalized for it, necessarily, unless, of course, it's truly terrible,

Steve Goldstein  17:41  
and then you should get penalized. Because, yeah,

Matt Cundill  17:45  
what's the call to action at the end of the promo? Because, I mean, and I think I heart's the driver on this because they ended all the same way. And I heart, nobody promotes podcasts more than I heart. You hear the promos all the time, but it's on Apple Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts. Tom Webster has gotten me to get off that a few years ago. So now I'm saying Apple, Spotify and website, but ideally, we've done this wonderful promo, and we've got about five seconds at the end to tell people what to do, if at all. What's the call to action?

Steve Goldstein  18:18  
Yeah, so I think the call to action is wherever you want to listen to this podcast or view this podcast. I think it's become a lot simpler and the choices are a lot fewer. I mean, the graveyard is loaded with dead podcast apps. There's really, you know, three big ones here, but there are other channels, and depending on the kind of podcast people are listening or viewing on their laptop, so that they're not getting podcasts in an app in the same way that maybe it was two and three years ago. I think it's easier to say it's a podcast, and people understand where they're going to find a podcast, and by the way, it's also at the end of something in which has been on a podcast. It's like saying at the end of the Netflix promo, and you can see it on TV, okay, thank you.

Matt Cundill  19:10  
How did radio, but specifically TV, get so good at promos? So

Steve Goldstein  19:14  
they have staff, and they know that they have a limited amount of time. There are 16 promo opportunities in an average TV hour 16. So what does that mean? Is it 16 traditional promos? Absolutely not. They run interstitials that are 10 seconds long. They run little banners that run at the bottom of the screen. They run little IDs now you see they're doing shrinking where they keep the show on, but they put placement. I watched this on the World Series last night, in fact. So they're giving you a five second ad. These are all marketing or revenue positions within the hour, and they are using them to move audience both horizontally and. Is across days or vertically, which is a different time during the same day. And they are both incredibly important strategies, and they have teams that are focused on putting the right ads into the right place, depending on the mission, whether it be vertical or horizontal. So let's say it's the newscast at 6pm and they want to get you to show up the next day at 6pm often easier, by the way, than asking you to come back at 11pm so you pick and choose the tactic.

Matt Cundill  20:33  
I do have a two or 300 level question here that has to do with attribution. So how do we know if this promo is working. I know there were smart links that chartable was using that were pretty handy and easy to use and helpful. That's going away unless you're a megaphone customer, but for attribution, what should people be looking at? What can they look at to see if this is working? Yeah,

Steve Goldstein  21:00  
I think that there are other choices there. I'm not sure I have anything that I'm ready to recommend as cleanly as I did with the chartable product, but there are options. But I think some of this is a little easier than that. I think you can track your own numbers, your listening numbers, your download numbers, and your topics. I mean, I don't want to dumb it down, because it is not easy at all. But some of it is more obvious than I think we make it. If you run the promo with the current kind of frequency and the kind of content that is going to make a difference, we should see some difference over time.

Matt Cundill  21:41  
So once again, the solution is in house depends

Steve Goldstein  21:44  
on how big your in house is. I mean, This American Life is 36 people working there. Somebody can focus on this.

Matt Cundill  21:50  
So while you're here, get some free consulting, I figure, and I'm gonna play the sound off podcast promo that I made a couple weeks ago, and it's currently running. And I love your feedback. Is that okay?

Steve Goldstein  22:05  
Here we go. This is dangerous. All right.

Matt Cundill  22:09  
Hi. I'm Matt Cundill, host of the sound off podcast, the show of a podcast and broadcast Since 2016 we have been speaking with leaders in the audio world about their experiences, what they've seen, what they know and where they believe. It is all going if you live and love the audio between your ears, follow the sound off podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music or at sound off podcast.com

Steve Goldstein  22:37  
and we're under 30. Well, yeah, you're under 30. Okay, so two things. Jim Cutler, who does a lot of voice work like you do, has a great piece of audio that I've used in many speaking engagements, and it's called what 30 seconds sounds like when you don't care. And it's him just doing blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. That promo doesn't make me want to listen, because you haven't hooked me. You've told me the facts. So that is a left brain promo, not insulting anybody here. It sounded great, but you have great guests telling stories, and you are a great interviewer. So I think what we should do is reorient those promos to be way more specific to the topic. And that's a benefit. What's the listener benefit? Why should I come in and listen to your podcast and specifically this upcoming episode, and I think that will perform way better for you long and short term.

Matt Cundill  23:41  
So that's a writing thing. And I got halfway through that, and I go, Oh, crap, this is very left brain

Steve Goldstein  23:49  
right, yeah, but you have the material. I don't think it's that hard. I don't think it's hard to write the right brain promo here. I mean, you know, give me, give me a topic and a guest. Let's make the promo right now. It'll take us two seconds.

Matt Cundill  24:01  
I'm also the host, the producer, the everything else. And so my first inclination when I hear that is, I can't really read the label inside the pickle jar, and I miss my team that I used to have to go and write these things with me, or we would do it together. And I kind of feel like ringing them up right now and saying, Hey, let's get together and write some stuff about this. This show well, but

Steve Goldstein  24:27  
again, let's make it episodic. Let's not make it generic, and it will write itself. So you know who was on last week. I'm putting you on the spot. Since you just put me on the spot, it was Mary

Matt Cundill  24:39  
Ann Iverson, and what was the topic we talked about her career over the last three years, going from unemployed to successful business woman,

Steve Goldstein  24:49  
and how she did it, how she did it, yeah. So that's a story, and there's something that you can glean from that story that is going to resonate or be of interest to others. You. And that's what I would focus on. And

Matt Cundill  25:01  
I love writing from the episode side, because there is a MUST LISTEN TO component with each one of these episodes, but maybe the podcast as a whole isn't the most listened to, because I think if you put it all together, it's like, Well, I understand there's a show, and like you pointed out, there's a lot of facts, but you know what's in it for the listener? That's a

Steve Goldstein  25:18  
litmus test for all of this. Is what's in it for the listener. Why should I care? And so what? And if you can't get beyond that, it's not a good promo. So I think when we're talking about effective promos, you got to get it done in three seconds. You got to hook them in right away. And if we were talking about this episode, I would say something like, are the promos that you're doing connecting with the audience. We have seven ideas, tips and strategies that will improve your promos right away.

Matt Cundill  25:48  
Not only I think you just voiced it

Steve Goldstein  25:52  
right, and getting my usual fee that's right,

Matt Cundill  25:56  
residuals, and we can track that, and we will send you. We will send you money based on the number of times the promo plays. To

Steve Goldstein  26:03  
when I was 18 years old, I was a union member, but I clearly learned that I wasn't going to make money doing that performing. I mean, what's the part

Matt Cundill  26:12  
about promos that is the next level stuff that we aren't there yet to see? I think it's the attribution. But there's probably something else with next level promos.

Steve Goldstein  26:23  
Well, let me sort of rephrase that a little bit. I think a good promo generates heat. Nothing happens without heat in this environment. It arouses curiosity. It creates FOMO. And so the technical side of the attribution and everything else means far less to me if I'm knocking these things off intelligently and doing them properly. And you've seen and heard good promos, you know them when you hear them and see them, and often it causes you to change or remind you of something. I mean, it just occurred to me that Michael Lewis, who I adore, has a brand new set of podcasts, and I keep forgetting to listen. Well, on a Pushkin podcast, they are doing the promos, and they're reminding me that's incredibly important. That's a simple promo, just a reminder that the new series is out, and here's what it covers and why you should listen to me. That's the litmus test. So often

Matt Cundill  27:31  
I hear a really good promo that's playing too much. I love the promo. I will listen to it again. It's actually a trailer that sits inside like an ad block on a radio company's stream, but it reminds me that I want to listen to it again, or

Steve Goldstein  27:45  
the other way around. I find that comedy burns out faster, but I love the idea of smiling and having laughter and comedy in it, so I I'm not suggesting that you don't do that, but I do think that you need to be wary. And we've all heard ads where it sort of burns out faster because the joke has been told too many times. But you know, going back to Pierre's axiom, good. Let's get to that point.

Matt Cundill  28:11  
Steve, thanks so much for doing this once again, being on the sound off podcast and talking audio promos. I appreciate it.

Steve Goldstein  28:17  
Thanks so much for having me. The sound

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  28:19  
off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan serminsky, edited by Taylor MacLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company, there's always more at sound off podcast.com you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai