Audioland: Specificity the key to cut through in a saturated podcast market experts assert

Specificity in podcast content is key to cutting through in a crowded market according to a special panel of podcast creators hosted at Mumbrella Audioland yesterday.

“I think there are so many podcasts out there where it’s two friends deciding that they love having a chat and maybe they should launch a podcast together,” said Shameless Media co-founder Zara McDonald speaking on a panel at Mumbrella’s Audioland conference in Sydney on Thursday.

“Definitely in 2023 we’re in a place where you need to have more specificity with your idea for it to cut through,” she continued.

McDonald spoke on a podcasting panel alongside co-founder Michelle Andrews, Fear and Greed co-founder Michael Thompson, acting head of podcasts at Nova Entertainment Ellie Beattie and head of studios at Spotify ANZ Ben Watts.

McDonald said that she and Andrews were “lucky” to have to have launched their first podcast, Shameless, in 2018 when the market was less saturated, but had to sustain a high level of growth to be able to compete as the podcasting space really took off during the pandemic.

Creators are no longer able to “throw anything at a wall and hope it sticks” she said, with the exception to the rule being when they already have a large platform or public profile before launching into the podcasting space.

Acting head of podcasts at Nova Entertainment, Ellie Beattie, said the network is increasingly looking for talent that have “already worked to build their community”.

“We talk a lot about influencers having podcasts and you know, you look at somebody’s Instagram page and they have a million followers, that doesn’t necessarily mean their podcast is gonna get a million downloads,” she said.

“For me, I’m looking for people that have a really engaged audience where if talent says, ‘I have this great new project’, the audience runs towards it.”

But building an audience isn’t an easy task, according to Andrews, who described Shameless’ difficulty working with a non-existent marketing budgets when the pair launched.

“I think we were spending $30 on Instagram ads a month, because that was what we could scratch together,” she recalled. “I remember we’d pool together our money to spend on Officeworks printing and we’d print out flyers to put on the back of university bathrooms about our show.

“We were really meticulous about trying to tap into an audience that would care, and it took a really long time. I remember when we found 10,000 monthly listeners in October the year we launched. It’s been five years down the line and now we have a million unique listeners a month across the shows, which is really exciting. But that has been such a process.”