Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast

Guys:

Great job! I've come late to the game; I got my first ipod for Valentine's Day, though found you the next day. A transplanted Bostonian, I noticed the familiar Dunkin Donuts colors on iTunes (When DD opens a store here, San Diego can finally be a true paradise) Anyway, I have been hooked on your show ever since. Your insights have helped me look at things with new eyes. You guys have inspired several ideas for my personal website and branding. I've joined several social media sites, just began playing with my own podcast, and even got started with web analytics at my other job. Pretty decent progress in a few short weeks. Thanks for giving me a needed kick in the pants.

Enjoy the coffee!

Wow, thanks for all the comments guys! I'm coming around to seeing two ways a podcast can generate value - either paid subscriptions for those that manage to get a big enough audience (and that only has to be 1,000 a month at $4 to cover groceries), or writing off the expense and considering podcast a communication tool along side with direct mail, print ads, trade shows and other difficult to measure, but effective tools for creating awareness and interest.

Chris and John:

Semantics aside, you guys are doing a bang-up job. You've got great chemistry on air and it's great listening to 2 guys who enjoy marketing and new media like I do. I hope to see you continuing to climb the charts and buying out Dunkin' Donuts one day...

It is about the content.

The question is how do you monetize it?

You know who makes more money podcasting than anyone else?

Rush Limbaugh. He has 1,000,000 people paying him $5 a month in subscription fees to get his podcast. He's grossing nearly $50 million a year in podcasting.

Without valid metrics, subscription seems the way to make this a business.

I find it interesting that the success or failure of RSS-based technologies has to be measured solely by what an advertiser thinks. Old media forcing old models onto a new medium is the "bane" of any new technology.

RSS has more to do with publishing than it does with advertising. Through RSS syndication, companies can finally deliver timely and relevant content directly to their prospects and customers.

It's all about the content.

Probabilistic metrics are the bane of old media like Arbitron diaries and billboards.

I find it interesting that an old industry like radio is moving towards PPM technology (albeit slowly) while this segment of new media can't answer the simple question of "how many people heard my ad that you read at minute 10 of your 12 minute podcast?".

In this day and age advertisers want accountability more than brand associations.

I'm always one to keep an eye one the 3-5 episode trend in download stats to give a rough estimate of how many people are actually listening (via iTunes). If you remember, if people do not listen 3 to shows or mark as "not new" in iTunes, by default iTunes will stop downloading new episodes.

First of all, thanks for publishing the info John and Chris.

It's not so black and white. These statistics aren't flawed or irrelevant. They're simply indicators by which to make decisions. In addition to the trend that Chris talked about, there are other things to consider:

1000 people went out of their way to add MOC to an aggregator like iTunes. This says something about them: a) they like the source of the content, b) they like the content and c) they want to hear more of it in the future. Although technically we can't tell if anyone actually listened, we also can't say that nobody did. Probabilistically, if there was any demographic that is "most likely to listen," it is the subscriber.

Congrats! 1,000 is a great number! I'm sure it will go nowhere but up. Listed you guys as podcast of the month for Feb too! (Thanks for the comment, John) Must-listen every episode.

Erik - absolutely right.

That said, the trend is in the right direction - up.

More than 1000 subscribers, not necessarily listeners.

On the down side you have no idea if any of these people listened to the audio.

On the upside, some of your listeners may have been so inspired to have forwarded the mp3 file to others.

If you were in the magazine business you'd know how many magazines you printed, you have no idea how many people read them. This is the achillies heel of podcast advertising; there are detailed, measurable, 3rd party verifiable metrics of irrelevant statistics.