Episode 072 | 5 Steps to Launching a Top 100 Podcast

Is ranking in the top 100 of the podcast charts even that big a deal? Well, not to beat about the bush on this one, the simple answer is yes. And in this episode, we're digging into not just why, but how to get there in five simple steps. Hi, I'm Viv guy, seven figure business owner turned online mentor on a mission to help online course create us like you to navigate the roller coaster that is business, so that you can attract dream clients and hit your enrollment and sales targets every single month to reach six figures and beyond. If you're ready to create a thriving and profitable podcast to accelerate your audience growth, engagement and sales in a way that's fun, makes you money, and allows you the freedom to thrive, join me here every week on podcast sales made easy. Welcome. Welcome to today's show. So when I launched my first podcast, I'll be honest. I knew nothing, nothing about the tech of podcasting, nothing much about podcasting other than having listened to podcasts. But I knew that I wanted something that was outside of social media because I had left social media a couple of months before that and I had been guesting on shows. But I realized I needed somewhere, someplace of my own. So I launched a podcast, or I decided to launch podcasts. And I didn't give myself a very long Runway, like two and a half to three weeks. It was crazy, maybe four weeks at the most. Now, here's the thing. I knew nothing about tech. And I decided, you know what I'm going to learn? I'm going to learn how to edit. I'm going to learn how to do the stuff, because why am I going to outsource in these early days? It's important for me to learn how to do these things. Well, that was a big mistake. I should have just outsourced the tech, the editing, all of that stuff from the start, because, well, that is a skill in itself. That is something that was definitely outside of my zone of genius. But nonetheless, I decided in those first episodes to do my own editing. You can go back and listen. It's still here, like trailer episodes one through five or something. And the editing, you'll hear all sorts of pops and clicks. Yes, I was bad. So mistake number one, don't do your own editing unless you're pretty confident with it or give yourself more time to learn. Anyway, aside from all the bad audio and all the bad tech, hand on heart, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. But I did a little course, figured it out. Like, what are the basics? What do I need to have. And that was really useful. But that's not what's going to get your podcast, a, charting and b, generating clients for you. Tech is just like one tiny, tiny component in having a successful podcast. But here's the thing. What I did have was a launch plan, okay? And that meant that I hit number one in the marketing charts. Number one. I mean, it was crazy. Like I was ranking above Amy portfield. Jenna Kutcher, the giants of the marketing and entrepreneurial world. It was amazing. Maybe it was because it was my 40th birthday and the stars were aligned, I don't know. But it all worked because I did have a launch plan and a launch strategy in place. Two years later and in a way, more competitive marketplace. I mean, podcasting is still, hands down less competitive than social media, YouTube, blogs, hands down still the place to be. There's only about 60,000 active podcasts that are still going after the first ten episodes. So still the place to be, but way more competitive than it was two years ago. I still hit number seven. So in the top ten. In the top 100, but the top ten in the marketing category. Yep. Again, up there, beating big names, Jenna Kutcher and the likes, which is an awesome boost. But what does it mean? Is it important? Does ranking mean anything? Is it just gamifying the system? Gamification. So what I wanted to dive into today was this idea and this premise of ranking in the top 100. Does it matter? And if so, why? Well, yes, I'm going to make this pretty short and succinct for a change. The answer is yes, it freaking does. If it didn't matter, well, all those shows that didn't rank initially, who didn't kind of make it to the charts? Well, they would have lots of organic traffic finding them each week, and we know that that's not the case. Like, why do these shows end up in the Apple graveyard after six episodes or ten episodes and not released beyond that? Because they're not getting discovered. They are not getting the traffic to them, they're not getting the downloads. Why? Well, here's why they're not being discovered. If you look at podcast platforms, Apple, Spotify, et cetera, they will generally show you the top 100 shows, maybe 200. And if you're looking for a show in a category, if you're kind of saying, oh, hey, I've got this problem, or I'm just looking for a show on entertainment, let's be honest, you're going to pick a show that's in the top 100. Why? Because that's what shows up. That's like the list. That's what you're going to see. And when you're out of the charts, when you're out of the top 100, you're less discoverable. And we're going to do another episode soon with a guest on how to ramp up your discoverability and how to see and then how to see if it's performing in the platforms, a bit like Google rankings. So, yeah, anyway, yes, it matters. So let's just talk about the first thing. When does this ranking happen? What's the time frame? What's the window? It's within the first 48 hours of an episode being released. So the more episode downloads we can get in that 48 hours period, the more chance your show has of ranking. Okay? So that's what it's all about. So when we launch, we want to drive as much traffic to your show and to the episodes that you have available for download as possible. The more eyes on it, the more clicks, the more downloads, the better. The more it's going to push you up. And here's a quick tip. The more you can get in a very short period of time. So, for example, if you are running an in person workshop or something on that day, you can say to people, get 2030, 40 people in the room and say, hey, can everyone just go and like my show, download the episode or this episode or these five episodes or whatever it might be, because we're launching? That is really going to boost you quickly because it's a very concentrated number of downloads in a short period of time. So that's really going to help. Okay, so let's look at the five reasons. The five reasons why ranking in the top 100 of the charts, especially the Apple charts, because Apple still own. Apple still own podcasting, even though Spotify has come uploads. It is all about where you rank within Apple. Reason one is discoverability, and that is big because a show with no listeners, well, it's got a high chance of the hosts throwing in the towel and adding that podcast to the other 3 million shows in the Apple graveyard. Okay? That is the reality because we are busy people. Whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're running a podcast as an entertainment show, whatever the reason is, and obviously, I'm talking to you guys because you are interested in podcasting or a podcast host, because you want to use it to generate revenue and generate more leads for your business and more sales. So if you're not getting discovered, if no new people are coming to your audience and you are literally preaching to ten, 5000 people every week. It's not enough. It is not enough to get you a return on the investment for the time and energy that you are putting into a podcast. And it was really sad, but it's true. But that is the reason why only two in ten shows make it past their first six episodes. Two in ten. That is sad. The time and energy people go into wanting to and setting up a podcast, recording those episodes, planning it all out, only then to throw in the towel because they're not getting discovered, which means they're not getting the downloads, like literally press publish. And you sit back, you wait and nothing happens. A few pals might come and listen. And I don't know about you, but I don't think there's very long that you can keep doing that before your morale and your ego takes a bit of a knock. And that is why people will go, well, it's not working. It's an ineffective strategy. It didn't work. Now we talk, and we will be talking a lot more about what to do post launch on the show, because launching is the game. It's one piece of the puzzle. There are different pieces that we need to put together. Imagine baking a cake. If you've listened and been in my world for a while. You know, I am a cake aholic. Yes, I adore cake. I will take cake over biscuits and chocolate any day. And it is like making a cake, okay? You got to have all the ingredients. You got to put all the ingredients together in order to get the cake that you want. Carrot cake, chocolate cake, Victoria sponge, whatever cake you are making, you miss an ingredient, you miss the eggs, you make a biscuit. Like my husband did. Know he was like my Victoria Sponge when I went made cake with the kids, didn't work. It was really hard. You think he'd missed, like the flour or the eggs or something critical. It's not what it should be. And if you're starting a podcast that you want to generate leads, generate sales, then you have to be attracting new listeners. You have to be discoverable. The show has to be discoverable. So you have to throw that into the recipe. Discoverability. Like a plan. There has to be an ingredient for how you're going to do that and a method for how you're going to do that. So there you go. Discoverability. That is reason number one. When you're in the top 100, when people are searching for a show, you will be there. Okay? You will be there. Think about if you go onto Netflix, they have their top ten movies or whatever, or top ten shows, the featured stuff. And that's fundamentally what it's like when you're looking for something. How far? How long will you scroll? We have limited attention spans these days, guys, so we want to be featuring as high up as we can. Let's now move on to reason number two, credibility. When you rank well, nobody can take that away from you. When you pitch as a guest, you know what you can say to people, hey, I'm a number one podcast host. I'm a top 100 podcast host. Like people say, like, hey, I'm number one New York Times bestselling author. I am an Amazon number one bestselling author. I am an international number one. This, it makes people go, ooh, okay, well, they must be good. That's why we really want to get you ranking. But that's also why we want ratings and reviews as well. Because just like when you're going on Amazon or somewhere, and you may be looking for a book recommendation or you're buying, know, new phone, new whatever, new microphone, for example, you're going to look at and compare the ratings and the reviews before you make a decision on whether you want to buy that thing. And that's the same with your podcast. When you get the ranking and you also add in ratings and reviews, that makes your podcast way more desirable. More people are likely to tune into it. So again, bringing in new leads, new traffic to your podcast, and giving you a springboard with your growth strategies, because you've got credibility with your visibility strategies. Now, here's a mistake I see people making all the time when they launch, what they actually do is they hit publish. So they record an episode or two or three episodes. They might tell a few people, hey, guess what? I'm launching a podcast. And then they literally hit publish and they might share it on their socials. Hi, guys. Yeah, I've launched podcasts. Go check it out. But it isn't strategic. Remember, we want as many downloads in the first 48 hours as possible. That's going to drive the downloads and the traffic and the discoverability. So here are the steps that make launching effective. And there's five steps, and we go over these in much more depth within the profitable podcast mentorship program. But I just want to give you the kind of highlight here, real here, of what you need to include within your podcast launch or a relaunch. So you may already have a podcast, you may not have charted, you may be struggling, and you may have gone through the process of doing all the element, looking at all the elements that are sabotaging your podcast, discoverability and growth, which we will talk about and have talked about on previous episodes. So things like your cover art show name and so on and so forth. So once you've got those components and all of that nailed and dialed in and nailed, we want to look at the steps that make launching effective. So number one, pick a day. But not just any day. I want you to pick the quietest day of the week as your launch day. Okay. The quietest day of the week. What do I mean by that? I mean I want you to go into your primary category. So for me, I launch. Marketing is my primary category. And what I do is I literally get a I'm old school scrap of paper pencil. You can do it on the computer. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Literally columns with the days and you're going to go through. I do the top 100 because that's how much detail I want. You could do the top 50, but I recommend the top 100 because that's the position we're aiming for. And what I want you to do is I want you to go through and look at each show, click on the show, look at the day or days of the week that they regularly publish a show on. There will be some that do five days a week, but there will be some that are once a week or maybe twice a week. And I want you to put a tally on those days. That is it that simple? At the end of it, add up how many people are on? Like how many shows are on which day and which one is the quietest? That simple. When I first launched, my quietest day of the week was a Thursday. I think I now publish on a Wednesday. I launched on a weekend as an experiment because I was keen to test because weekends are generally the quieter days. But we also need to think about our ideal listeners. How are they consuming an episode? Like, are they doing it while they're out? Are they walking? Are they at the gym? Are they doing it Monday to Friday? When will they be listening? What are the days like? I have my Monday to Friday routine. I generally have my earbuds in while I'm out on a walk. So I will be listening Monday to Friday, weekends less so because it's all a bit, you know, it's kids and it's all a bit like out of routine. So there's not a specific time I can say, yes, this is my podcast time on a weekend, so understanding when your ideal listeners are potentially going to be listening is really important. Because we also want you to be discoverable by those people thinking about when they might be searching. So pick a day, the quietest day of the week, as launch day. Number two, pick the least competitive show category, but that is still relevant. So you can select up to three, the least competitive category. So I have marketing, business and entrepreneurship. People have education. Just think about which is relevant and where would your ideal clients generally be searching? Like, where would they be searching? Would they look in marketing? Would they look in business? Would they look in entrepreneurship? Where are they most likely to go? And that is how we pick and ideally go with the least competitive, but it still needs to be relevant. Number three, and this is the biggie, get a community of supporters together. Community is so important. I cannot stress this enough. And this is what helped me with my first launch so, so well. And this time as well, this relaunch. But certainly for the first time, it was getting people together to support me. People who want to see you do well. Now think about a movie launch. They get out there, the celebrities, yes, they've done their filming, but they get out there and they are like, they pack those interviews in. They get as many interviews in, they get as much publicity for the movie because they want as many people watching in, watching the movie or whatever it might be, in as short a space of time as possible, because that's what determines a box office hit, how many people go and see it, the revenue that it makes. And we want the same. Same with a book. You think about people that are New York Times bestselling authors, number one New York Times bestselling author, top ten New York Times bestselling authors, all of those kind of big profile authors that have got that credibility ranking, what did they do? They got a big tour together. They got a lot of traction and a lot of people and a community of their peers together to really support them. So I'm going to use Amy Porterfield because I talk about her a lot, because everybody pretty much in this space knows who Amy Porterfield is. She launched last year, her book, I think it's two weeks notice. And if you look at what she did, she brought in her colleagues, her peers, Jenna Kutcher, Jasmine Starr, people that have got very, very big audiences, that are really big supporters of hers. They're friends, they're supporters. They're part of her world, part of her community. They want to see her do well. And she leveraged their audiences and their networks at the same time. And that's what we want to do here. We need as many people downloading your content as possible within those first 48 hours. So you need to build a community to do that, okay? And you need to be really clear, like, let them know what you want them to do, when you want them to do it. Give them specific instructions and think about how many people can you get together if you're launching or thinking of launching, like, literally just go and write a list now, get a Google sheet, do it on a piece of paper, in a notes section of your phone. Literally write down all the people you could think of. And these do not have to be your ideal clients for launch. Yes, we want ideal clients to be listening to your show. But for launch, to get you that discoverability, we can bring in people within your wider network. If you don't have a big audience already of your ideal clients, if you don't have a big email list, if you don't have a big social presence and you can't get many people together, you can bring in people from your wider sort of social network, and that's fine. So I want you to get a list together. How many people could I invite into my community for my launch or relaunch? Because that's what's important, support. Now, you know me, it always comes back to math. It always comes back to the numbers. I want you to work out how many downloads you want for your show at launch. Like when you're launching, what number of downloads do you want in that first 48 hours. Now, obviously you're going to say, well, I want as many as possible, but I want you to pick a number. You might say 501,000, 5000, great, whatever your number is. Okay, I'm going to say, like, depending how long is a piece of string, it depends on your country, your category and so on and so forth. But I would aim for one k minimum. It's a good number, 1000 downloads minimum. Because this will then help you determine how many episodes you need to launch with. It's really simple math. So let's say you've got 200 people in your community who've said, absolutely, we are so excited for your podcast coming. We want to support you. We absolutely want to support you, Viv. So if you know for every episode you're going to get 200 downloads ish, it's always going to be ish because on the day things happen, people might not be able to support you. But let's say 200 downloads and you want to get to a thousand. That means you need five episodes to launch with to reach 1000 downloads. If your community or support team is bigger, great. But I would not go for less episodes. Don't use that as an excuse to launch with less. I would get as many as possible. The more you can get up there, the better. So it helps you determine when you've got this community, this support network together. It helps you determine how many episodes you need to launch with. Literally, just multiply the episodes by your support team numbers to work out how many downloads you should get. Number five, launch day. Promote, promote, promote. Literally, it's that simple. Ask for the downloads, ask for the rating, ask for the review. Now, ratings and reviews, they don't help you rank. But as we said at the beginning, it really is great to rank for credibility's sake. Okay. And more people, when they are finding your show organically, because you're discoverable, because you're in the top 100, more people are going to be able to look at the ratings and reviews, and that is going to be like a deciding factor for a lot of people in whether they want to listen to your show and whether they're going to select your show over your competitors. So they are the five elements, the five things that are going to make launching effective versus just hitting publish. Now, that's all fantastic. So we've got you there. You're in the top 100. Ideally, you are now more discoverable, but we want to ideally get you staying there. Now, the reality is, if you are not a global sort of celebrity sensation, guru leader that everybody knows about, when you launch, staying in the top 100, it can be difficult. It can be challenging. And the reality is for most people, they don't stay in the top 100. But you now know from where you ranked with your downloads that you had. So if it was 1000, if it was 5000, that that was what you, the goal that you set for launch and you had that number and you hit the charts, you now know that actually, I need 1000, I need 5000 downloads every episode in order to rank in the charts. So you've got a baseline, because how can we say, like, I need more downloads, how many more downloads? How many more downloads? And why do you need more downloads? To increase your ranking, to increase your organic discoverability, for sure. So we need to continue to be found. We need to think about how do we grow beyond that. So organic discoverability is just one way of getting new eyes on your podcast, new traffic coming in, new listeners, new people into your marketing ecosystem. Now, as I said at the beginning or earlier on in this episode, this is just one element. Ranking is just one thing to being discoverable by your ideal clients, because ranking is just one thing, and in order to be discovered and actually have your ideal clients, so say you're there, you've hit position number 50 in the top 100 of the charts. Somebody comes across your show, they see it amongst the others, but in order to select your show, to click through literally on that cover art, to then move into looking at the episodes, looking at the description, and so on and so forth, we have to ensure that the five obstacles that will determine whether somebody actually clicks on and listens to an episode have been covered. And we cover all of these five obstacles. Episode obstacles in episode number 65, which I'll link in the show notes. So if you're not sure what they are, because, again, like I said, we can have all the discoverability in the world, but actually, if we haven't got our cover, our show, name, all of those elements in place, nobody's ever going to click on the show, and you will fall out of the charts anyway. And alongside, once we've got our ranking, once we're here, it's, again, one small step we need to then move on and think about how do we drive traffic to our show beyond discoverability? Because that's one small method that is one part of your growth strategy. We need to be growing this podcast. We want to be getting you back up to that number that, you know is what's going to get you and keep you in the charts. So, in order to do that, we've got to have a strategy that now drives more traffic to the podcast, and then the strategy for turning those listeners into leads so that you make more sales, because, again, it's all wonderful having a great podcast that's really popular, but it's like being an influencer on social media with, like, a million followers. But you're making no sales. Like, what is the point? Don't waste your time. Your time is your most precious commodity. So make sure all your ducks are in a row. Everything is working. All the levers that you need in place, or levers, depending where in the world you are, that need to be pulled by clients to move them along, are in place. Now, if you've got a podcast already and you're thinking, oh, my God, Viv, I never did that. And I'm not getting the downloads. I'm getting less than, like, 500 downloads an episode. I'm not in the charts. I am not growing. Don't worry. Okay, number one, we will take you through the relaunch method within the profitable podcast mentorship program. And number two, we will implement our growth and profit elements of the strategy to your business, to your podcast. So you're growing a podcast. You know how to create content that converts, you know how to drive more traffic to it. Every single week a month you have a strategy and you know how to convert listeners into leads to make more sales. So if this sounds like you and you're thinking, oh, my God, Viv. Yes, I need some help with this. So go book in a forward slash chat if this is something you need help with. And I will talk you through how to apply the profitable podcast method to your business so that you can increase your downloads, you can relaunch. Well, if you need to, you can launch for the first time and chart, get discoverable, have a growth strategy in place, and most importantly, make consistent sales. So I cannot wait to hop on a call with you. These are entirely free of charge, but when they're gone for that month, they are gone. So get booked in. Now. Look, if you love what you've heard today, I would love, love, love for you to connect with me on Instagram at Viv guy. I'm not on there often. I tune in once a week, check my messages. But I do like to hear from you, and I would love for you to share your biggest takeaway while you're at it. I know nobody likes to take the time to do these things, but not many people realize how much your reviews and ratings help other people really struggling in their business right now to find this show and to choose this show and to get inside it, to consume the content. So if you really love what you heard today, it would mean the world to me. If you would take a moment, like 15 seconds tops, guys, at most, to tap the five stars and write a little sentence and let us know what you think of the show. And when you do, here's the good stuff. When you do, I'm going to enter you into a draw and you can win a free 90 minutes mentoring call with me. And we draw this at the end of every single month. That's all you got to do. We'll pick up the review and we will enter you into the draw. So, guys, thank you so much for tuning in today. Next episode, tune in. Like, what happens when you have a podcast but it doesn't fit your business and your brand because you have pivoted? Do you start over? Brand new podcast? Do you relaunch? That's what we're going to talk about next time. Now, let's get the needle moving in your business this week. Remember, go dare do? Review. Dare to try some something new. Experiment. Do the thing. Review the results. Have a good time and I'll see you soon.