How to find podcast success: Sharon Taylor

Cracking the podcast market is harder than you think, but not impossible.

Recently Omny Studio CEO, Sharon Taylor, spoke with Niklas Hildebrand on Audry, talking all things podcast and detailing the dedication that’s needed to be successful.

“I think everyone has a ‘build it and they will come’ mentality with podcasting,” said Taylor. That is not always the case and podcasters have to work hard to build an audience.

Omny Studio is a start-to-finish podcast platform that allows users to sculpt their podcast and monitor analytics after they’ve put their final product out into the abyss of podcasts.

Of the 48,000 using Omni Studio, the difference between the top 3% and the remaining 97% is astounding.

“In the 30 days of release after an episode, if you’re getting more than 100 downloads in that 30 days after a new episode – you’re already our top 50% of publishers,” said Taylor.

“If you look at the top 1% on Omny; the 1% is 26,000 downloads per episode after 30 days, but if you pull apart that 1% to the top 10% – the numbers are staggering.”

“The top performers are doing insane numbers and then it falls off into an L-shape really quickly.”

It’s hard to put a finger on what exactly makes a podcast go viral like some do, but in the pool of shows out there, not many will go viral like the top 1%. A big part of the spread is quality networking, according to Taylor.

“It’s very hard to go viral in audio. Really really hard,” said Taylor.

“You really do need to go and find your audience, and you need to figure out what you want to be as a show, how you want to engage with those listeners, and they will tell you how they want to be sold to too.”

Podcasts are difficult to market without a defined niche, but Taylor says that if you know your subject and where your audience is, then you will find opportunities.

One extremely niche example is an Australian tree-lopper who found an audience by marketing his chainsaw maintenance podcast in a Stihl hardware magazine.

“It’s about knowing your industry and where to find a thread to pull on,” said Taylor.

“Don’t be dissuaded. You can be really successful, and you can still have 1000 or 10,000 downloads, you just need to know who your audience is, form a personal relationship with them and give them the content that they’re asking for.”

“It doesn’t matter how crowded the category is, if you know your topic inside and out and if you’re doing it and it is a passion project, eventually it will tip over into professional.”

Listen to the whole interview with Omni CEO Sharon Taylor here.