Case Studies
Podcast
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The Challenge
Taylor Moore is the man behind Fortunate Horse, maker of the popular comedy-adventure podcast Rude Tales of Magic. And when he's not recording jokes about Dungeons and Dragons, he is - like most other solo creators - trying to grow his show's audience.
Some form of social media advertising would normally be his go-to for this. But having grown tired of complicated interfaces, long setup times, fussy campaigns and uneven results, Taylor was determined to try out something new. Which, funny enough, led him to an old method of acquiring new listeners: cross-promotion.
The Solution
Podcast cross-promotion is basically when you advertise your podcast on other people’s podcasts. But the trick to remember here is that not just any ole podcast will do. The best cross-promotions happen when the podcast that you're advertising on is just like yours. Even better if they have big followings, as the whole idea is to get your show in front of large audiences that already enjoy your kind of content. That way a lot of them will hopefully become fans of your podcast too.
And in this case, Taylor's podcast as well.
Introduced to AudioGO through our mutual friends at Simplecast, he created a couple of cross-promotional audio ad campaigns for Rude Tales of Magic that targeted 18 to 34 year old listeners of other fiction and comedy podcasts on the AudioGO podcast network - a collection of over 7,500 top shows from some of the largest podcast and talk media publishers in the country.
The Results
Then over the course of two months: those ads played over 28,000 times to an audience of 22,000 unique listeners, 96% of whom heard his 30 second spot all the way through. But that's not all. Here's what else happened during those two months, straight from the Fortunate Horse's mouth himself:
"I mean, we've been loving it. There's always a bump and a drop off when you do any kind of marketing, but this bump in listeners has sustained itself for the past two, three months since we started using AudioGO. I have my podcast on Patreon too and it's also been our best 2 months ever there! More people are converting and becoming patrons and I really owe it to some of general awareness marketing I was able to accomplish using AudioGO."
More than that, though, the process was, as Taylor gushes, "by factors of 10, the easiest way to put marketing out in the world." Because unlike traditional cross-promotion where you'd have to continuously research and endlessly email for your promo swaps, AudioGO does all of the targeted advertising for you in mere minutes. You just need to set your budget and schedule, upload or request an audio ad, choose your target audience and press play. A game changer, as Taylor goes on to say:
"Being a small business, like many other podcasters are, when I run into something like this that is easy to use and I can get a campaign up and running in a few minutes, that is a miracle…it changes my whole day, I have way more time for the show, everything becomes easier, it’s fantastic, I love it."
One Last Word
81% of those surveyed in a recent Midroll poll said they sometimes or always pay attention to podcast ads, while another 80% of listeners say they can recall a brand advertised in a podcast. But here’s another reason to consider podcast ads for your cross-promotions: the average podcast listener regularly streams anywhere between 3 to 5 different shows at any given time.
So not only, as we've already seen with Rude Tales of Magic, does podcast advertising work really well, but it's also clear most people hearing them are in the mood to listen to more podcasts. Just like yours.
About 'Rude Tales of Magic' and Fortunate Horse
Branson Reese and his jester's retinue, Christopher Hastings, Carly Monardo, Tim Platt, Joe Lepore, and Ali Fisher, buck and bumble through the magical backwater world of Cordelia. One hopes you enjoy both japes AND scrapes, because honestly, it would be impossible to disentangle one from the other, given their profound entwinement in this particular piece of entertainment.
Produced by Taylor Moore @ Fortunate Horse, Rude Tales of Magic is a D&D podcast full of 'rude' yet absurd and hilarious laughs that you can count on every episode. Make sure to check it out on their Patreon page or wherever you get your podcasts! For more information, visit: rudetalesofmagic.com
