Building the Tom Ferry Podcast Experience and
How We Reached 2 Million Organic Plays in 7 Months
- “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
– Abraham Lincoln
In theory starting a Podcast is a short and simple process. Record. Upload. Done. However, starting and growing a great podcast that can compete with top giants takes a lot more effort and planning than you think.
Before the Tom Ferry Podcast Experience first launched, we went through about 4 months of intense planning and testing, and the results showed earlier than expected. Without spending anything on paid advertising, we were able to reach up to 2 million organic plays/downloads within 7 months of launch.
In a nutshell, here is a small sneak peek on how we did it:
- Heavy Focus on Intentional Planning and Development
- Creating Great and Compelling Content
- Collaborating with Well-Known Thought Leaders
- Careful Packaging and Distribution of the Podcast
This is the actual folder from late 2018 that contained all the planning details for the Tom Ferry Podcast.
Heavy Focus on Intentional Planning and Development
In 2018, podcasting had already made a comeback to popular demand, and top thought leaders were launching their podcasts to join the podcast revival frenzy. Tom Ferry wanted this podcast to compete with content juggernauts such as the GaryVee Podcast and Tom Bilyeu’s Impact Theory, so planning a brand new podcast campaign was simple, but not an easy feat. It was still going to be a long journey until launch day, filled with thousands of major and minor decisions to make.
In order to make the most impactful decisions we needed to weigh in the right information, which began the research phase and various levels of SWOT Analysis. During this time, we initially looked at the entire playing field of podcasting and what made it such an effective medium to deliver a message to the masses. Then we looked at the top players on the field while asking, “who is dominating this space and what elements of their podcast contributes to growing their dedicated fan bases”.
After listening and watching to hundreds of hours of top podcasts then gathering all of the data on what elements make them so successful we asked: “How and where can Tom Ferry’s contribution to this space fit?”. We wanted to make sure that there’s actually a demand for the content that we were able and willing to supply, because in the end of the day, entrepreneurship is all about solving people’s existing problems for profit. Instead of creating a content product then getting people to buy into it, we believed that we had to create something that already demand for it because doing the opposite would not have brought the expected ROI.
Creating Great and Compelling Content
A ton of preparation needs to take place before pressing the record button on a camera.
Creating content after 2017, was a lot more difficult than ever due to three factors:
- With more and more businesses and individuals creating content, competition for attention skyrocketed.
- Due to the information overload brought online, people’s attention spans became more selective when it comes to consuming content.
- Algorithms keep changing to match the two factors above, so creators’ abilities to reach their target audiences dwindled even further.
These factors are what creators and marketing experts have been struggling with for the last few years. In order to compete for valuable currency of attention, I created a set of criteria (based on studying online viral content) to judge our content by.
I called it the “CARDS Method,” because if you want your content to succeed online, you need to “get your cards right”. It’s a simple checklist of determining whether your content is “great enough” that people are actually going to pay attention to it.
- Is my content Compelling? – First and foremost, great content needs to be compelling enough to trigger an emotional reaction (whether it’s a positive or negative). Every piece of viral content has somehow elicited at least one type of emotion from its viewers. It doesn’t matter whether you feel angry, happy, or even grossed out after watching something. If you feel something after viewing a post online, that piece of content has done its job, and is worthy of being spread by people and algorithms for others to consume.
- Is it Authentic? – Authenticity is crucial to continued loyalty from audiences. As soon as someone senses a lack of authenticity, they’ll immediately tune out of whatever content it is you want them to consume. In short, being authentic means staying true to who you are, what you do and who you serve. In an environment in which more human elements matter it creates value and benefits for your customers. The more virtual our lives get online, the more we hunger after something genuine and authentic. What people really want now is not just a product or a service, it’s an experience. An experience that is more honest and transparent. An experience that’s more authentic.
Your why and your intention will always be reflected in your authenticity. Don’t believe in the “fake it until you make it” mentality, especially if you’re just starting. Eventually people will notice who you really are and what your intentions are, because people have the intuition to sense hypocrites. The more authentic you are, the more likely people are going to keep paying attention. - Is it Relevant? – Relevance leads to attention. What isn’t relevant does not get attention. People like you and I only pay attention to what’s relevant to us. Otherwise we ignore and forget anything that isn’t. So if you want to earn and direct attention to your content, you can’t just create content and then try to make it relevant to your audience. No! You need to create content that you already know is relevant to them based on their needs, context, and timing.
- Can people Digest it easily? – With more and more consumers turning mobile devices into video viewing platforms, attention spans are dissolving. There’s a greater demand than ever for content that is easily digested. With your smartphone always handy it’s something you can do almost instantly, and that’s how content needs to evolve. Your content needs to be compelling enough to consume and be easily digestible. If you had 5 minutes to spare while waiting in line, would you consume a short 3-minute blog article or an intense hour-long educational podcast?
- Is it Share-worthy? Sharing has been a crucial part of human culture when it comes to building relationships. People share mainly because they want to give value, to build relationships, to express themselves, or even to feel involved. Every piece of viral content has spread online because it was shared by people who found it amazing enough that they had the urge to share it with others. When looking at your content, you have to ask: “Is this something I would personally share on my own profile?” or “Is this something people are going to want to share?”. If the answer is no, then your content probably won’t spread past the profile you’ve published it on.
Harnessing the power of content from a psychological perspective was not enough, yet it was only a piece of the puzzle. If you want to succeed in marketing your brand, you’ll need to master the art and science of gaining attention and diverting it to where you need it to flow.
Keeping someone’s attention in today’s world requires a delicate balance of context, timing, and syntax. We had to plan how we arranged the different components of our content, starting from the full podcast episodes all the way to the micro-content on social media. Because it’s not just about what you present, it’s about how you present it in the right order to keep their attention.
Collaborating with Well-Known Thought Leaders
Although we had the competitive edge on creating great content, knew that creating by ourselves and promoting it to our database was not enough to skyrocket the podcast to the same level as our intended competition. Creation is a collaborative team effort, and we wanted to position Tom Ferry as a formidable expert on the same level of success based on the concept of “success by association”.
We tapped into Tom Ferry’s inner circle of highly-influential thought leaders with a significant following. The concept of “cross-promotion” was applied.
However, we had to make sure that if we brought on a special guest, they had to match our mission or main premise. It didn’t matter how big their audience was, if they did not fit our mission or narrative, they were excluded. Would you highlight a celebrity rocket scientist with no cooking experience on your cooking show?
The CARDS Method also somehow had to also apply to potential collaborative guests.
Careful Packaging and Distribution of the Podcast
We constantly tested the user experience of our podcast episodes on different speakers.
Most content creators spend a huge amount of time, money, and effort on content creation but totally under-perform with their content distribution, discovery, and promotion. That means a lot of great content is left on the shelf, undiscovered.
Knowing the value of what we had built after 4 months of planning and executing, we also made sure that it was packaged correctly. Just like products on the shelf of your favorite department store or boutique, content needs to be packaged in a way that gets people to “click” on it.
Every time someone consumes content, a “transaction” takes place: the viewer pays attention and in return they expect to either be entertained, educated, or engaged. At the beginning of every transaction (and every piece of content) there is a small window of opportunity in which the audience is considering: “Why should I pay attention to this?”.
In order to successfully answer that consideration every single time, we made sure that every aspect of our content (the podcast artwork, titles, descriptions, etc.) accurately project the value of our content in that small window.
Speaking of windows, there is also a window of time on any platform (YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, etc.) in which a new show or episode’s performance is “judged” by algorithms to see whether it is worthy of being promoted to others or not. Algorithms define whether a piece of content is worth showing to people, and which content people might want to see or not see.
Therefore, within the first 30 days of launch our goal was to get as much attention to the podcast as possible, because it would determine our rate of growth. We weren’t given a budget for paid ad spend, so we had to rely on the quality of our content along with social media and email marketing.
In the end of the day, I wasn’t worried about whether the podcast would succeed or not because I knew that we had developed and created a show (using the CARDS Method) that people would love to consume, and as soon as we released it success followed shortly. Almost 7 months after launch, the podcast organically gained over 2 million plays/downloads, and as of 2021 the same plan has allowed Tom Ferry to accumulate over 10 million plays/downloads.