Episode 40: How We Doubled Our Podcast Downloads with Half the Effort
On Episode 40 of the Babies and Business Podcast, hosts Avram and Rachel Gonzales delve into their insightful journey of doubling podcast downloads in six months. Transitioning from intense social media content creation to a strategic, research-driven approach, they looked to double their downloads. Where the majority of the new downloads came from was a big surprise. Whether you have a podcast or not, this episode is an excellent reminder that what you measure grows and that you must keep testing to improve.
Show notes:
[01:04] Why this episode applies to any marketing strategy, not just podcasting
[04:08] Podcast download statistics before and after the experiment
[07:11] What actually happened during the experiment – plus some surprising findings!
[12:08] How we’re tweaking the strategy moving forward based on what we learned
[tcb-script src=”https://play.pod.co/embed/frame-v1.js”][/tcb-script]Mentions & Resources
E27: Strategic Decision-Making: Knowing When to Pivot
E28: How to Turn Goals into a Strategic Plan: An Inside Look
E30: The 5 Pillars to Support Your Strategic Plan
Episode Transcription
Below you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!
Avram Gonzales: Hey friends. Welcome back to the babies and business podcast. We’re trying to use our indoor voices today. Recording with the baby. On Rachel’s lap chest. He’s snoozing. We’ve got a fun episode for you today. Today marks six months. Since we applied a new podcast promotion strategy and we can’t wait to share it with you.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, we’re really excited to.
Avram Gonzales: Yeah.
Now whether you have a podcast or not, it doesn’t really matter. The reason that we did this experiment was to show you the power of setting new goals, adjusting strategies. And then making changes based off of what you observe. So today we’re going to share with you the results of what we discovered. And the changes to our strategy that we’re going to make moving forward.
And then we’re going to look back again in six months. So I think it’s like a fun demo of this process in action. We just happen to be using it for the podcast.
let’s get into it. Our goal was to double the total downloads of the podcast. In six months. And so there’s some numbers that we want to share with you here. And if you haven’t listened to, it could be very fun for you to go back, listen to episodes 27. 28. 30 and 32. I’ll share those again later again, 27, 28, 30 and 32.
Going over. You know where we started with our strategy, why we changed it. We go into a ton of detail by how we built processes around it, to how we chose the goals that we chose. Tons of analysis. So go back and check that out. The numbers that I think are really interesting. Oh, actually, we’re not going to share the numbers yet. Um, our strategy before. Was to heavily promote on social media.
Rachel Gonzales: Yes. Oh, gosh. And it took so much time, um, actually a lot of your time, most of your time. So, um, that’s the hard part is in everything that we’re doing with our business, we want to have less time for you doing things and we need to free up your time. So it was very time intensive, but very little result.
So that’s kind of why. We were inspired to change up our strategy.
Avram Gonzales: Yes. Yes. Because we were constrained on time. You. You know, baby was on the way baby is here now.
Rachel Gonzales: Yep.
Avram Gonzales: We knew that we weren’t going to have more time. Um, and we’re also struggling with, you’ve been hearing the podcast now we’ve been struggling with childcare for some time. And so, you know, we weren’t going to get more time back.
So it was just, how can we get the same result or better? With. Less time.
Rachel Gonzales: And really also the question is. What do we have to lose?
We weren’t getting growth or, or anything like that. So for all the time that we spent it really didn’t. Get a great result.
Avram Gonzales: Yep. And so we decided to shift our strategy and focus on. Coming up with better topics.
Rachel Gonzales: Yup.
Avram Gonzales: Uh, based off of what people might search for. So we, you know, we’re going to use our strengths as an SEO, a search engine optimization company. And choose topics that people are already searching for.
So we have the chance of being discovered, right? Um, but also choosing topics that we felt like if somebody saw it. Um, they’d be very interested,
Rachel Gonzales: right. Something that’s catchy or some of those. Hi, I’d like to see a little bit more about that.
Avram Gonzales: So we got, we, we spent much more time and intention coming up with the topics, doing some research for them and then prepping them.
Rachel Gonzales: Right.
Avram Gonzales: And that’s really where we focus the time. We also did some SEO work on the website itself, and here is what we found. All right.
Rachel Gonzales: Numbers are. Pretty telling
Avram Gonzales: numbers of retelling. So like we said, we got close to hitting our goal. All right. So check this out. When we started the experiment, we were at 1,491. Downloads, right, right there at 1500. And that was in the first 27 episodes. Since then the last six months we’ve published 12 more episodes. And we have accumulated. Another 1,472 downloads.
Rachel Gonzales: A little bit less than 20.
We were
Avram Gonzales: like 19 and downloads a way. And we did that. In less than half the episodes published.
Rachel Gonzales: That was pretty staggering. I think when we went over these numbers, I was blown away with the success that we’d had in less than half of the episodes. And. Would you say less than half of the work
? How much did we cut the work down?
Avram Gonzales: Probably cut their work by 33% because here’s what happened also. I could not help myself. So many good clips and things and quotes. These episodes. Uh, that I actually still, um, did some of the social media, even though I cut the time down. Sure. Was to cut it completely in half.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, it
Avram Gonzales: wasn’t able to do that. I still got caught up.
Rachel Gonzales: Well, let me think that we can give you a pass on that because I know you really enjoy it. It’s something that feeds your soul.
So while we didn’t have a ton of time, it was something that helped you.
Avram Gonzales: Yeah.
Rachel Gonzales: So,
Avram Gonzales: yeah, no loss there. No loss. Um, before the average episode we get about 55 downloads. Now we’re averaging 84 downloads per episode,
Rachel Gonzales: that statistically. High. Yeah. Percentage wise. It’s a lot to get that much more.
Avram Gonzales: Yeah. Almost, uh, almost 50% more downloads. Uh, Occurring now. And so I think there’s, there is momentum at play. Uh, we want to share some of the insights, things that we learned next. You know, the question is, did the strategy work.
Rachel Gonzales: No. Because we didn’t actually do the strategy that we set out to do.
Avram Gonzales: No, not totally.
Rachel Gonzales: Not totally. Not
Avram Gonzales: totally. Um, you know, I wanted to possibly break out sub clips from. Each podcast that might be more SEO friendly and keeping them bite sized. And it’s just like, it’s just so much work.
Rachel Gonzales: Right. And we were, the whole thing was less work,
Avram Gonzales: less work.
Rachel Gonzales: Less effort. To see if we can get more results.
Avram Gonzales: So it’s like interesting.
We hit our goal, but it wasn’t necessarily because of the strategy that we had up.
Rachel Gonzales: To do
Avram Gonzales: correct. At least not what we thought. Um, I think choosing better topics was a big deal. And so here’s what we, here’s what we did learn. Okay. If you look at the chart and here’s what I like to do. If you go to babies and biz.com forward slash 40, like for zero. That’ll take you directly to the website and you get the show notes. That works for any episode of Ford slash whatever the episode number is that will take you to the website and get all the show notes and resources. We’re going to put a graph on there.
The chart. That shows you how downloads occurred in the last six months?
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. And we did notice a pattern. The pattern was significant. It was in spikes,
Avram Gonzales: huge spikes. With very small growth. Or what appears like very small growth in between.
Rachel Gonzales: Right. And then we kind of dug in and we’re like, okay, so why are these spikes occurring?
And when are they occurring?
Avram Gonzales: We assumed that it would be around new episode drops.
Rachel Gonzales: That was not the case. It was
Avram Gonzales: not the case. There were some times when it was like two days before an episode drop. Um, it just wasn’t around that.
Rachel Gonzales: Kind of at the beginning of the month to
Avram Gonzales: all sorts of, end of. There
Rachel Gonzales: were some patterns that we saw.
Avram Gonzales: And what we realized and digging into it much further is that all the spikes. Came from targeted promotion. Oh, the podcast.
Rachel Gonzales: Yes.
Avram Gonzales: Yeah. And so,
Rachel Gonzales: and that was, that was something that we noticed early on. And we just didn’t have the time.
Every single time we drop one to do it every single time.
Avram Gonzales: So we will be moving forward. One of the biggest things is, is us creating and posting stories to our Facebook stories, Instagram stories. So that our warm network. Can see the episodes and, you know, discover them that way. Right? So not just resharing the episode, um, thumbnail of the announcement, but sharing something on video, talking about why somebody would want to tune in,
Rachel Gonzales: and both of us are coming to that mostly me because they Avram is excellent at that.
He will get on video. One take done. He’s putting it up on social media. For me. It’s like,
Uh, no takes, I haven’t done that at all. Um, I guess I’m terrified of it maybe. Um, but also it’s like, I’m breastfeeding my baby. When am I going to have that time? There’s so many things that get in my head. So I’m committing to actually getting on video and promoting the podcast. It, when the podcast drops, that means one time a week, I’ll be stretching that muscle, which is going to be probably really cringy to begin with. But, uh, you don’t grow if you don’t try it.
Avram Gonzales: Yeah.
So
Rachel Gonzales: that’s my commitment to helping our podcast grow.
Avram Gonzales: One of the advantages that I have on that end is that I will listen to the episode so that I can generate the copy for the announcement.
Rachel Gonzales: Right.
Avram Gonzales: Right. And so Rachel also is at a disadvantage because she hasn’t heard it since we recorded it.
They could have been months ago.
Rachel Gonzales: Right?
Avram Gonzales: Okay. So,
Rachel Gonzales: yeah, there’s, there’s multiple things
Avram Gonzales: going on. Yeah. So we’d see some smaller spikes around personal promotion. But here’s where the huge spikes occurred. When there was a hot topic, either on my own. Um, Facebook post, you know, I’d ask an open-ended question and then the conversation will evolve. And then I would insert a podcast link to a relevant episode. Uh, that’s when we got some really huge spikes, there was one, um, post that my friend Danny Barrera made. Uh, about, um, waking up early. Like a 5:00 AM, like the miracle morning. And I made this joke about the miracle morning and why it was created. And then I posted. Our podcast about the power hour.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.
Avram Gonzales: We got so many downloads that day. Because the joke was funny, it was super relevant. And then Danny’s got a bigger audience than we do. Right. And so, you know, in his friends are cool people. They’re like cool things. They check out our podcast.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.
Avram Gonzales: Another thing that we noticed was we did another episode around like working with your spouse.
There was a conversation that I had started on Facebook couple months ago, re re really. Reignited that yeah. Could you work with a spouse reignited that conversation drop the podcast link and then a bunch of people went and downloaded it. So. Here’s what I learned. From that. When you a
sk people, how do you promote your podcast?
People are going to say you promote it on social media.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.
Avram Gonzales: And in my mind that meant we need to create new social media content. Sure. Just like Gary V to feature our stuff.
Rachel Gonzales: Sure.
Avram Gonzales: That strategy is sound. But it’s really good and most effective when you’re on video. Sure. And we didn’t have that plus. They had the time.
Rachel Gonzales: Right.
Avram Gonzales: But what we realized from this is promotion means taking this piece of content and finding ways to get it in front of the right people at the right time.
For them to be able to consume it.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, for sure.
Avram Gonzales: Whole podcast
Rachel Gonzales: for sure. Yeah. You
Avram Gonzales: know, and, and, and some of the people that, that like the short clips. Don’t ever go listen to the podcast. It’s
Rachel Gonzales: true. That’s all they consume. Of the.
Avram Gonzales: The content of the content and the goal is downloads. The goal is creating more of this long form content.
People are getting to know us, us being able to build some influence in an audience, right. Right. That’s all part of the bigger picture here. So here’s what we’re going to do. Moving forward with what we learned here. All right. You’ll do another six month test.
We’re going to move to one episode a week.
Rachel Gonzales: We are so excited about this because we will be able to create so much more content. And have it put out there. And not do any work. All that. Extra work. All we’re going to do is we’re actually going to do only the announcement for the podcast drop. That’s it. And then like, we’ve already said, we’re going to do the promotion for that episode.
So a video or story, but it’s probably, it will contain a video each time,
Avram Gonzales: each time. Yeah. Right. So none of that extra activity, because we just noticed that, you know, We posted something like 74 new reels graphics, things like that to our Instagram page, 74 new posts and the page grew by about three followers.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. Yeah.
Avram Gonzales: That’s rough.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.
Avram Gonzales: You know, it’s rough spending all that time and the contents not reaching a lot of people. Um, that means that something’s missing. So. We’re not going to come back to this until we have more resources and it makes sense.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. Correct. But also it’s just, this was a passion project. And still is. And we want to. It would be really great for people to hear this content too.
Um, because you know, if you have a business, you have family, you have kids, small kids. These topics really are relevant.
Avram Gonzales: Yeah.
Rachel Gonzales: And there are things that. Maybe don’t get talked about all the time, so,
Avram Gonzales: well, where else can you, where else can you consume content about running a business? Uh, that also takes into account. You having a small family at home.
Rachel Gonzales: Nuance. New
Avram Gonzales: ones.
And that, that challenge, that’s what this podcast is all about. It’s that kind of like that balance between the two worlds and playing full on both.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.
Avram Gonzales: And, um, you know, we just need to create more of this stuff. We like talking about creating more resources for folks with new episodes. Yeah. Doesn’t need to be spent on social media. Yeah. Um, one other like side note that I wanted to mention is the website traffic barely changed, even though we updated all the. All of the, the foundational SEO type work. Um, Geeky part of that that’s worth sharing is, um, podcasts themselves living on your website.
They’re not search friendly. Like when somebody is looking for information about a particular topic. They’re looking for that skimmable article where they can dig into parts of it. So in order to make the website work, I think we would need to create. Other blog posts and stuff that feed into our podcasts.
Sure. And, um, so the initial strategy of just posting it, putting the transcripts on there and doing some of the basic stuff was not enough.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.
Avram Gonzales: Um, we’re also looking at taking the, we’re going to take the commercial out of the middle of the correct podcast because, um, people are responding to it.
I think it’s a really great audio that we’ve provided.
Rachel Gonzales: Sure.
Avram Gonzales: But, um, either it’s not interesting or people will simply just not interested in, um, Or they forget to go back and download it. Like they’re listening to their car for
Rachel Gonzales: whatever reason, whatever reason matter,
Avram Gonzales: it’s just not working. And why not just spend more time. Delivering the content that you want to listen to.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.
Avram Gonzales: Uh, anything else, babe?
Rachel Gonzales: I just love this experiment because we got to check something out, change it up and see the results from changing something.
It’s kind of, um, brilliant having that time of six months. And I think that we. When we were doing this, we thought, you know, this can apply to so many different things in your life. Like. When is it necessary to change our strategy? I mean, there there’s like a dating strategy, you know? If you’re single or there’s different things. What isn’t working, maybe look at what isn’t working and then choose what to change up.
So I just love that it can apply to other things.
Avram Gonzales: So again, You know, it’s, it’s worth going in and backtracking to episodes 27, 28, 30 and 32 to witness the whole process. And what went into it. I think it’s pretty interesting. And there were quite a few people that reached out and said, yeah, Uh, that was awesome.
I’m going to come back to this episode every time I need to switch things up where every time I want to plan. A new initiative and make sure it happens, the resources and stuff we put in there. Some of our best that we have provided. Yeah. So we’re excited to see it. The next six months brings we will be doing another recap, uh, early 20, 25.
That just sounds wild. It seemed so far away. But, uh, it will be another 24. 25 episodes deep by then. And we’ll be able to see, uh, where we’re at. Be interesting to, to notice.
Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. All right.
Avram Gonzales: Thanks for joining us today for the babies and business podcast, you got questions. You can reach us via email hello@babiesandbiz.com. You can also go to the website. Babies and biz.com. Find us on social media @babiesandbizpod. We’d love to hear from you. Let us know if you’ve got something special from this particular episode. If you’ve got a podcast, we’d love to hear about it. How you might be changing things out for yourself moving forward or not? We’d love to know. We’ll catch you. On the next episode.
Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.
