Eric Montgomery — The Benefits of Using Branded Podcasts for Brand Growth

I think if people just opened up their eyes a little bit and followed best practices in the industry, but just had a little bit more fun with it and a little bit more creativity, I don't know that that would generate more downloads or more leads or more brand awareness, but at least there's an element of fun to the project. Welcome to the Marketing Leadership Podcast brought to you by Listen Network. Join your host, Dots Oyobulu, as he learns from CMOs and agency leaders and business leaders about the state of performance marketing, plus insights on strategies, campaigns and intelligence for commercial impact. Connect the dots and enjoy the latest episode. Hi, marketers, this is Dot, and welcome to the Marketing Leadership Podcast. With me here is Eric Montagomeri, founder at the Podcast Haven. We will discuss the benefits of using branded podcasts for brand growth. I know you guys are ready, so let's get it. Eric, welcome. How are you doing? I'm good, man. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to chatting. Yeah, absolutely. I hope I didn't murder your surname there. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's gotten better over the past five years. Well, yeah, it's really, really nice to have you. And for those who don't know you, you know, do you want to tell us a bit about yourself, your background and how you've done so well? Yeah, so. So currently I am the founder of the Podcast Haven. I started the company officially in 2018 when I became a legitimate company, but had been working in podcasting since maybe like 2015. So it's, it's been in the space a while, but how I even got there, I'll try to keep this short. Was grew up in Los Angeles and always was a musician my whole life playing guitar, playing in bands, and that kind of led me to wanting to record myself, playing music, playing my guitar, recording friends. And so it's about 2008, I want to say, when I started to teach myself how to record. I started initially on a Mac with GarageBand and slowly just the dream was to be like, get a Grammy and like record record bands, you know, in a professional recording studios and mix albums and, you know, go on to like rock and roll, like hall of fame. But I, I did get a little bit of taste of that. I, I, you know, I started out with friends eventually after college, had a few internships at recording studios here in Los Angeles. And, you know, it's tough to make it in music, obviously as an artist, but also on like being a recording engineer. Had a, had a Little. Had a little bit of taste of that. Got to work with some, like, maybe C level or B level artists, but slowly realized that I'm in Los Angeles and all my friends were working in TV and film. And so I slowly. And I saw how much money they were making, and it was a lot more than me. And slowly I started thinking, all right, I'm going to take my audio skills and try to get into TV and film. Long story short, eventually got a job at a voiceover studio where I would record voiceover artists. Recording voiceover for commercials for radio. Got the chance to work with some people at like, Nickelodeon, cnn, Comedy Central, and I would record them. You know, I'm not the talent, but on the other side of the glass as the audio engineer. And while I was doing that, um, funny enough, I got an internship on a podcast. I started getting back. I started discovering podcasts. I mean, I knew they were a thing, but this was maybe like 2014, 2015. Got an internship on a podcast. Kind of saw the opportunity in that. Joined upwork, the freelancing site. It was called something different back then. And start. Yeah, I think it was called Elancer. Like, it was Upwork. Okay, this must have been like two years before that, or 18 months. But started seeing, like, the potential in. In podcasting and started applying for gigs on upwork. Got one gig who I'm still working with today. She has a big show, but, you know, editing and mixing her show. Got a couple other side gigs. Eventually I was like, okay, this podcast thing is legit. I started cold emailing people. I'd go to Apple Podcasts, I'd look at their contact information, and I'd email them. Hey, do you need an audio engineer for your podcast? I can edit and mix your podcast. Probably sent about 300 or 200 cold emails and got one or two clients. So I was starting to get paid work with podcasting. I was also working at the voiceover studio. And then I decided to get a website and kind of go all in on podcasting. And it's just kind of grown since then. I've had several iterations of the website and slowly just decided, like, I was making some money. And I was like, all right, I'm gonna make this a real company. I'm gonna produce, edit, mix podcasts. And it's. I've been fortunate. Kind of a little bit early, but also like, right time, right. You know, the timing was right. So that was kind of lucky in that sense. And it just kind of grew from there. Yeah, I mean, I Don't want to go in all motivational speaking here, but at the time when you started, like, what was that? Like, what were your friends, your family telling you? Are you crazy? Because I've walked a lot of crazy roads in my life since, you know, since the past 30 plus years. Like crazy, crazy, crazy all over again. You know, I can't just get a break now that, you know, people listen to podcasts, you know, over almost one and a half hours a day, the average American adults. Would you have seen this kind of future at that time? Or you're just like, well, I'm not making it in music. Let's see if this is my, you know, I don't know, insurance. You know, it's interesting that you say that because, because I was still working at the voiceover studio and I started very, very part time in podcasting. It happened so slowly and organically that nobody thought I was crazy because I wasn't like, taking out a big loan from the bank and being like, I'm going to launch this company. It happened so organically that I think, and since I had the money from the voiceover work, I think that it just, it didn't feel like scary or didn't feel like I was taking a big leap because of how slow it was. But to answer your question, I mean, I never thought it would really get this big. Yeah, and a little bit of luck with the timing and podcasting been around for a long time, but I want to say, you know, 2016, 17, 18, and then into the pandemic, it really started to blow up. And so I was, to be perfectly honest, a little bit lucky with the timing, but I was able to just DIY the whole thing. Never had to take out like a big loan or, or anything like that. So that, that definitely worked to my advantage. Now I don't think people think I'm crazy now. My parents, I don't even. They kind of know what podcasting is, kind of. But, you know, I think it's here to stay. And so, so very feel very fortunate the way that it happened. I mean, some people compare podcasts, a podcast to a blog, for example, you know, 5 million podcast to 1 billion blogs. But the engagement is a little bit different. So there's way better engagement and more, I would argue, 10 to 1 on podcasting compared to a blog. So it sometimes almost seems like, are there podcasts everywhere? But I don't think so. I think there's still more ground to cover. And, you know, again, now it's more of podcast Created this attention bucket for users, customers, and so on, and it's beginning to fill up. Right. So how many podcasts do I listen to? Or 11 1/2 hours a day or 1.2 hours a day, according to eMarketer. How do you help your brands to reach their audience and cut through the noise so that, you know, you get that content market fit, as I would call it? Yeah, so, so that's a, that's a good question. You know, I think I take a little bit different approach to that because when I get on like a discovery call with somebody and they, I think some, a lot of, not everybody, but a lot of people in their mind, they think that the podcast is going to, you know, get millions of downloads and be this like, massive thing that a lot of people listen to. And the days of that are kind of over. It's. It's a lot more difficult now. I mean, 10 years ago you can make a podcast and there, there were so few of them out there that you would get a lot of downloads quickly. But when I talk to clients and just people in general in the industry, I try to steer them away from thinking that it needs to be this massive show with, you know, hundred, thousands of downloads. I try to focus on, okay, like, what really, like, hone in on your niche and try to find your, like, ideal listener, your ideal client. Because I think like, 500 dedicated listeners is a lot more powerful than, you know, that are really in that niche than a hundred thousand really broad listeners. So I tried to, I try to explain to them that, you know, your podcast likely isn't going to get that big, but let's look at the audience that you have and let's, let's talk to them specifically. Let's, you know, the whole conversation around, like your ideal listener. It's, it's a little bit exhausting because everybody talks about it, but it's kind of true. You know, you really, I think with your messaging, want to talk to a specific group. And I think when you start connecting with that group, you're going to get, get. You're gonna, you're not gonna see the, the huge numbers that maybe you thought you would have, but I think you're gonna get feedback and you're gonna build community around whatever it is, your product or your service. And I think long term, that's a little bit more valuable to build, to build that community, to build those relationships with. Exactly it is that you do or that you talk about. Yeah, I agree with you. I. But we all want a massive Podcast, don't get me wrong, if you want to give me a million downloads and I start making a ton of money from ad sales, like, hey, I'm, I'm into it. Yeah, you're right. I mean for me, like with this podcast, for example, I, we started out looking at marketing leaders on. I don't want to use the word agency side, the consulting side, that deal with brand strategy, performance strategy, D2C, B2B. Of course, you know, that makes that a bit broad, but there was a bit of a niche in there. I wasn't sure I was going to get an Eric on the podcast. I thought I was just going to interview my friends over maybe he knows a thing or two about marketing in general. And now even the podcast is starting to evolve from what was a marketing specific podcast to a content podcast marketing type podcast. And you know, so we're going, you know, depending on when this comes out, you know, there will be a lot of rebranding or you know, shift going forward. But you're right, if they are dedicated, if they are giving you those, in our end, we call it the 50% benchmark consumption rate that the one that Apple gives people or if they are giving you that, you know, multiple episodes listen per podcast, then you know that you've got a select loyal audience that you know, will, that are more, that are more fans than just audiences or more fans that just use us. And, and then you could really shape your brand around that and hopefully overwhelm them, which, which makes a lot of sense there. But yeah, another thing I was thinking about is branding. You know, branded podcast should be branded brand identity. How does that work? You know, and we are not here to discuss. You need to get a logo, you need to get your font. Yeah, that topic has been around since, since before any of us in the, on this, on this recording were born. So what are some of those aspects of the brand that you cons often consider is starting a podcast and rebranding the podcast so that it's better positioned to the audiences intended. Yeah. So I think when it comes to like branding and specifically with your podcast, I would say that I don't know that I'm necessarily trying to create something new with clients, but in a perfect world, the people that I'm working with or people doing branded podcasts in general, hopefully the company already kind of has an identity and then that makes it a little bit easier. But I think when we talk about branding, we need to talk about like company culture. What, what's your current company culture and how can we kind of unveil that through the podcast? I mean, what, what is it that you guys stand for internally as a company and externally? What is like the tone and the vibe that you project across all forms of digital media? How do you like to be perceived? Is there a cause or a charity that you partner with it? It's just kind of like getting the podcast to unpack some of that so that the people that you are talking to can kind of understand more about like who you are and why they might want to work with you or just getting more awareness. A lot of the branded podcasts, honestly, I mean, some of it's kind of like lead generation on the side on like the DL, but it's also just like brand awareness. And how do you want you to, how do you want the company to show up in the world, but also your, your host or, or the people that are, are producing the podcast or a part of the podcast and it's not easy to do. I, I think it can be tricky. But it's kind of just talking about your products and services and your people and maybe highlighting people on the team and, and kind of how your leadership works and how when you work with clients, what that process is like and hope and hopefully it is like people oriented and trying to get that to come across. And it is a challenge. It really is. And sometimes it takes like whether it's one season or whether it's, whether it's an on, let's say it's an ongoing podcast, it's not seasonal as it can take a while to kind of figure that out. And you know, it evolves over time. And as your company evolves, hopefully the podcast is evolving as well. But it's not, it's. It's challenging. Don't get me wrong, it's not, it's not the easiest thing to do correctly because sometimes these branded podcasts will just have like a CEO or someone high up in the company and it's so, it seems so stale sometimes. I think honestly choosing the right people to host or co host or some of them do, rotating hosts, using the right people within the company to fill those roles. I think that's important too because you'll be talking about all this stuff about company culture and your mission, but then if you have someone who can't really like it doesn't have the personality to like project that on the mic if sometimes it feels like it's a mismatch. So there's a lot of things really, but the company culture piece is Big to me. Interesting. Would you, would you brand a podcast around the host? What do I mean by that? Apple podcast by Dots, and then Dots gets an offer from Alphabet and then we need to rebrand it again. What do you think about people branding podcasts around the host? That's a. I don't think anyone's ever asked me that, but yeah, that's what we do here. Yeah. Well, I would say that it's weird because I've worked with several companies or at least had discovery calls where like they. One, they don't know who should host it within the company. And I think if you do build it around the host. That's a good question. What if they leave? What if they switch roles or something happens and then now you've got to get someone else in and then the listeners are confused and who's this? And why is this changing? So I don't, I don't know if you want to do that. I, I think sometimes people like the I, the companies and, and the branded podcast, like the idea of a rotating host or at least rotating co hosts, and I, you know, I, I gotta say, I don't know if I have a hard stance on that because I think as listeners in general for all types of podcasts, we do get very emotionally connected to the host and we expect to hear them in our headphones and we, we start to feel like we know them. But then if they do leave, that could ruin the whole. That could ruin the podcast and people aren't as connected as like a new host. So it's interesting. I think, I think to some extent you have to kind of brand it around the host because that kind of helps create the identity of the, the show. But when you're dealing with like these larger companies, I don't know if they need to have the show around a host because you're talking it's more about the company than it is about one person. And, and, and they've got in the brand identity, a brand equity already. Those big companies. Yeah. So, you know, that's a good question. I think that's a challenge. I think, I think it would just take some, some brainstorming about how you want to go about that. I could see pros and cons to both, but I could also see challenges, especially if the host leaves or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's something that has happened to us with some clients and you tend to ask and, you know, and something else that might be bugging me is, have you seen companies use podcast in very special ways? So you've talked about brand awareness, maybe demand generation, lead generation, adm, not the scope of this episode, but obviously people use podcasting as a, as a very special purpose initiative. So for example, you know, I've seen people use podcasting to drive some sort of an advocacy. We want our guests to be our customers. We've seen people who drive podcasts from a hiring perspective, which is a little crazy, whereby we want to hire for this role the best people in the world. And we're going to hire, we're going to interview those who already work with us and share their journey working with us as that position. You know, there are, you could go on and on miniseries, blah, blah, blah. You know, have you. What are some of the craziest type of podcasting goals that you have seen companies most especially do? So I'm not talking about a dots podcast where I want to end ad revenue on Spotify. Yeah. So I think interviewing customers, I definitely worked on a show that does that. I think if you do that tastefully, you can pull it off and you're not, it's not like silly, but you're just getting their feedback. The craziest thing you. That's. Let's see. You know, I don't, I don't know that I've had anything crazy per se. Definitely had the customer thing. Definitely, definitely. I work with a law firm and the law firm practices all types of law and they've, they've taken the angle of like, it's not just one show for the law firm, it's the labor law group, it's the patent law group. And they've done shows for each division of the law firm. And in that case, they are trying to position their lawyers, who are hosts kind of as experts in their field to. And it is kind of a form of lead generation, but it's also a way to get their lawyers out out and get more awareness. But crazy. I don't know on the business side because I feel like businesses and brands are usually very hesitant to do anything outside of the norm. So even if you had a really cool or crazy. And I love that if there was a crazy idea, I might be a little hesitant too at first, but I'm kind of all for like experimenting and, and it's not like I know everything if the brand has a cool idea and maybe we haven't seen a lot of that in the marketplace and they want to try that, I, I love that because I think that in essence, I think podcasting should be like that. I think people should try new things and new ways to connect with people and something that might seem outrageous, but who knows, they could be a trendsetter. So, so I do like the idea of doing something against the norm, but I, I think brands can be a little hesitant because of their reputation and, but if someone's got something I say, I say roll with it. I think that's cool. I, I think that, you know, corporates also try to, you know, they, you, you're right about the hesitation and all that. And that's why I've struggled to get big time CMOs on this podcast, even though I've gotten folks like Neil Patel. I listened to that episode. Yeah, it was a great episode. So I, but I think some of the things I've also seen is at the episode level. So people try to get creative on the episode level. I've do a one minute skit as the episode starts and I was like, wow, this is good. It will have taken a lot to pull off. You know, I like that, I like that. I, I think that's cool. No, I, I, I think that's cool. I think trying stuff like that. I think one thing that's at least passionate to me because I come from a music background is the way that some of these branded podcasts could use music to kind of paint a visual picture or like just solidify like brand identity. I think a lot of times, and I know budgeting is a factor and cost, but I think licensing music and kind of using music strategically within your podcast, I don't know if that's crazy, but I think at the branded and the B2B level, not a lot of podcasts do that or they a lot of times use like generic, like corporate music. But I think if there's a budget to license popular music or just other music, that, that's a little bit different than what most people in, in their world are doing. I think that could be considered crazy almost in a way and I, I think that that would be really cool. But there's a lot of hesitation. Yeah, you know, I, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, corporates come from a lot of scars, you know, but you're right. I think people these days use music intro, outro, maybe sponsor blog. But what I've been thinking about as a crazy idea, say for this podcast is is there an episode where I can play music throughout? It's low volume and we are speaking. I love. How is that gonna be, you know. Sorry to interrupt you. No, I've Seen that. I've. I've thought of that exact same thing because I've seen it on YouTube where people are talking and they have, like, music, low level. I like that. And I've thought of that as well. I. Yeah, I say that that could be cool. I don't know that everyone would care or appreciate it, but I think part of, like, what you're doing, aside from, like, the messaging and the brand awareness or maybe the lead generation, is like, you're in. In a way, and people may not agree with me on this, but you're. You're kind of creating a piece of art too. Like, it should be a little bit unique and, and you should ultimately want to have fun with it. I mean, I know at the corporate level there's a lot of bureaucracy and levels of approval, but I think if people just opened up their eyes a little bit and, and followed best practices in the industry, but just had a little bit more fun with it and a little bit more creativity, I don't know that that would generate more downloads or more leads or more brand awareness, but at least there's an element of fun to the project because, I mean, it's marketing. I mean, look at the Super Bowls coming up. Look at all those commercials. All those companies are having fun with. With the. With the commercials, and they're effective. And I think. I think a little bit of that is lost. Even with myself. Like, even when I'm planning episodes, sometimes I'm like, this is way too. Like, I. I gotta, like, have some more fun with this, like, just because. And that's maybe just my personality too. Other people, if they want to be serious and, and they feel good about being serious, but I think it's. It's something to think about, I think. And I think, yeah, what do you think? It may not drive the volume, but we are getting to a world where even corporate clients are asking for relevance. How can I improve my consumption rates? How can I get return listeners? How can I get. Even though I can't track it directly, but how can I get a sale? And somebody says, you know, I. I found you through our podcast, which is going to be my last question, but I'll ask that after the break and some of these other things. So as the world moves, I think, to relevance in content marketing in general, and now even with podcasting, then I think people will start to, you know, get really creative because they need to not just compete for volume, they need to compete for relevance. I like that. That's a good way to put it. Which is really. Yeah, I think throughout this decade, once we hit that peak at the deficient of innovation, then we'll now start to look at how can this be relevant. So guys, if you're listening, you see how this is. You know, a few of them are on script, but a lot are off the script. I did not plan that. I just wanted to go into the rabbit hole with Eric here. But guys, please. It's the marketing leadership podcast. Subscribe to this podcast. Even if you don't subscribe, share. I probably will rank share better than anything else because if you share somebody, another human being gets it and that person might subscribe if they want to. So please, you know, share, like, subscribe, review, don't review. One star, please. You can review anything if you have a one star. Let's talk. But this is how we do it with great guests on this podcast and I want you to really follow us so it really keeps us going as we continue to record a lot here. I have one more question for Eric, but I've got the Dots Rapid Fire coming up. But we need to take a quick commercial break for our sponsor and when we get back, it's going to be the Dots Rapid Fire winner. We'll try to see how strong Eric is, you know, in handling this fire, you know, but we'll see how it goes. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by Listen Network, where podcasts meet their potential. If you're a brand needing podcast episode promotion or or podcast follower promotion, Listen Network is here to give you the best in class analytics, podcast growth attribution and podcast promotion success. Find out more at www.listennetwork.co. welcome back, guys. So like I said, it's the Dots Rapid Fire. It's going to be three questions. Eric saves the truth and nothing but the truth. Are you ready, sir? I'm ready. Let's do it. Right? Let's do it. I'm a little nervous, but okay, I know, I know. You'll be fine. Okay, the first question, of course, this all marketing slash business themed. What is your favorite marketing metric? You know, it varies across industries. For, for web, I would say views per month or users per month. For podcasting, I think consumption rate is a. Is a great metric. Yeah, consultories. It's getting a lot of attention these days and we at Content alliance would say just try to get your episode as concise as possible. If it's very long, it is a B2C podcast where you are discussing like crime or dating. But if it's B2B. It needs to be very concise within the 20, 25 minutes drive time. There's usually a correlation there. Okay, next question. How long do you use social media every day? Oh man. You know, I probably scroll more than I use it. I mean I could look my, my iPhone screen time is high, so. Too much, I would say too much. Definitely too much. Too much. You're probably connecting or something like that. Connecting with people more about this space. You know, I would like to tell people that. And I. And. But it's a lot more of just doom scrolling. Yeah man. Mental health is a thing. So please, by all means. Okay, last question. What is your favorite marketing or business quote? Well, I'll give you two. The, the generic answer is Nike. Just do it. And I think that that holds a lot of weight because it's, it's kind of true. It's like you just got to figure out baby steps and slowly just do what you can and then that'll compound and, and just do whatever your ideas. Just do what you can step by step. But there's a show I work on and the host of the show, when we're in team meetings, he's always talking about doing things with excellence. He'll say, eric, you always, you edit the podcast with excellence or you know, we like to do XYZ with excellence. So I, I like that because I think a lot of times, and sorry if I'm going to go off on a tangent, but I think a lot of service providers and, and there, there's a lot of people who, who want to start agencies or be service providers or I see it in the podcast world a lot where like they want to call themselves like a, a podcast producer or podcast company or. But I find like that a lot of these, it's kind of like a buzzword to like want to start a service based like agency. And a lot of these people, I don't know if they do things with excellence. Like I've been working in audio. I have a little chip on my shoulder, I guess, because I've been working with audio for like, you know, 15 years and so I really do pay attention to detail. But sometimes I'll hear these edits that people like get back to me and they're just blatantly, they're, they're not that good. But then they have a website and they're branded as like providing this like audio editing service. But their edits aren't that good because they didn't edit it with excellence. And I don't know if they just, they want to make the money or they like the allure of like branding themselves as like an engineer or like a podcast agency. Fake it so you'll make it. Yeah, I think that's what it is and that might be appropriate sometimes, but the truth will eventually comes out. Yeah. You know, when we're speaking at the back before we started this, you were commenting on the production and things like that. And I've had people tell me, I've not told Garen of, of Discrete this, that, you know, why don't you just use Zoom? You know, a lot of agencies use Zoom, you know, or, and I don't want to mention any specific ones, but I well versed in the space and I know a lot of the providers there and I'm like, well for me, especially on the video side, this is a business of the custom service and it gets me to that, you know, level of excellence. If I were to use your words there in my mind and if I pitch to people and I share on social media and they see all the nice things, they're like, oh yeah, okay, this should be a podcast. What's, what's joining? I mean, I don't ask everyone what's your motivation for agreeing to do this, but I believe just doing things with world class standard is really, really one of, one of those things there. So you're right about that. And I think it's two things. First, just do it, just execute. But when you execute, also make sure to execute with excellence. Yeah, no, 100 and just a comment on that. Yeah, I think too. Why, I think just in, in the culture we are today with Instagram and, and Uber and Uber Eats and everything happens so fast and on demand that I think that people aren't willing to put in the time as much to hone their crap. Or maybe it's part of the younger generation, I don't know. I'm 38, so, so maybe I have a little bit of that in me. But also I'm a little bit old school where it's like you have to hone your craft. If you want to start a marketing agency, a podcast agency, whatever. If you want to be a mechanic, it takes a long time to really hone your craft. And I think people are, it seems like late people are trying to cut corners and they want like the flashy instant gratification and you know, unfortunately it's going to, it's going to continue, it's going to get worse. I see it on LinkedIn. With all due Respect. You know, I try to be very mindful of sharing what I share. I don't have a course. All I do is promote Listen Network, which is a company I co founded and that's enough for me. But people do so much to get you to get a course. For example, you know, auto, get you to do something for them. And you know, they add value a little bit, but they don't add as much. There's just so much in there, you know, and I will just say this, you know, I am a man of faith and in, in the Bible we say, whatever you sow, you will reap. God cannot be mocked. The market cannot be mocked. Whatever you sow, at the end of the day, you will reap. The world is moving to a place of. We're talking about the podcasting. What Moving to a place of consumption rates, better engagement. Even from a business side. The world is moving to how well do your customers retain for. You know, they retain when you just overwhelm them to debt. Basically go above and beyond, you know, to, to deliver again, back to Eric's word there excellence. And over time that shows. And speaking of something showing over time, podcast branded, podcast done well, shows over time. And for me, I think there's data out there that shows that for some brands, podcast is contributing to their offline conversions, whatever that offline is, you know, install sales or just pure SQL generation and so on and so forth. For the happy customers out there, I guess some of the unhappy ones, what have they told you in terms of how the podcast has really impacted their business from a conversion standpoint? And this conversion could be anything, which is why I'm just making it a little bit blanket. Yeah. You know, to be perfectly honest, I would say as a company we focus a little bit less on that. Like, I like to think that we're more of a creative agency where, where we put the creativity. We're storytellers at heart. So I gotta be honest, I, in my experience and with what we offer, I think a lot of that, those discussions and those metrics happen within the brands and businesses intern. So I, I don't know that at least for what we do, if we've ever, if our clients ever come back and been like, oh, because of the podcast, you know, we've, we've, we've done X, Y and Z or we've converted X, Y and Z. So I don't. That's a, That's a good question. We should probably be paying more attention to that, to be honest. But we, you know, and we do dabble in some of that stuff, but it's mainly from like podcast metrics point of view. Like, you know, views, streams, consumption rate, YouTube growth, that type of thing. Not so much offline. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Storytelling is key. I think being able to tell the right. Storytelling is key. Yeah, I, I, of course there's a bit of starting to think about that, but I must warn you, there is a huge rabbit hole in there. I specialize in podcast marketing. I want to be able to build myself it as Dots. Loves marketing on podcast marketing. Because I think that podcasting is going to replace text as the next form of media, especially long form media. So. But yeah. Wow, that's. Yeah, you know, it's, it's. I know we're going long here, but. No, no, it's okay. You know, it's funny because my website views are like 100x what the podcast downloads are. But yeah, I think I would love that. I would love like voice and audio. And I know there's already some like search stuff that you could do with voice or like even with articles. Like there's plugins to get like an AI voice to read the article. Yeah, that's interesting because my website's starting to grow and I'm like, damn. Like, is this, it's like traditional, like written SEO going away? I hope not. Because I feel like I finally got to a point where like I understand like how to do it and, and it's starting to compound. But yeah, I mean, if the industry pivots, you're already sitting at the right place. A lot of people will have to like, what do I do? You know, so you, you already, you already can pivot at the snap of the finger. So that, that's really. But yeah, that's what I think. I think is going to happen. People increasingly get busier. Maybe not with AI, but if that happens, then people just want to be able to enjoy content in a certain type of way. Which is why people talk about video a lot these days. But slowly now moving to audio. Audio content. Audio content all the time. Yeah, because you want less screen time, probably. So if you want to consume whatever it is, if you can just be driving or vacuuming your house or something and you could. Yeah, it's funny. But yeah, because on a side note, the audio versus video debate, we'll have to see where that goes with podcasting. Because in a way, I'm like an audio purist. I do put my show on YouTube, but I'm not one to sit and watch like a Video, long form or even medium form, like video, like an interview. I'll play it in the background maybe, but then that's still audio. So there, there's a lot to happen with that. Most like, most likely audio, because people want to do that and do something else. Except if AI makes our life so better, we are all living on government stipends, then we can all watch stuff all day if we need to. But I think people will stick to watching movies and listening to, you know, thought leadership content on YouTube, for example. You know, so that, that makes a lot of sense there. This has been a very, very fun episode and I will tell you exactly why. Because people will say, oh, you're saying that because I'm a guest. But no, I have a different reason for everyone and for yours is because we're able to really just go up the tangent and away from the script and really discuss some, like you said, good questions which is really good for our listeners or you know, you ask to think about as well. So thank you so, so much for sharing your perspective, your insights. Really insightful. I learned a few things personally myself as well in these conversations and this really, really awesome. So Eric, where can people find you if they want to update their podcasting game and content marketing game in general? I would say yeah, you head on over to the podcast haven.com. everything's there, contact info, some, some of the services we provide as well as the blog. I, I recommend you, you may have a question that's answered in one of our articles. We talk about podcast marketing, podcast production. So the podcast haven.com is where you can find all that. And if you want to listen to our podcast, I'm the host. Like it's kind of our flagship show. It's called Clipped C L I P P E D as in clipping, audio editing and yeah there clipped pod.com is the website for that. That's Clipped Pod or just type in clipped to any podcast player and it should come up. Yeah guys, please ensure to follow. That's all we have for you as well. And more episodes like this on my website Dot lovesmarketing do. If you don't want the website, just go to your favorite podcast platform, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, search, marketing, leadership. I don't know if I'm going to change the name later, but we'll see how it goes. As the focus of the podcast starts to change. I would like to thank Content Allyce desquig and Listen Network for their support. Till next time, connect the dots. Thank you for listening to the Marketing Leadership Podcast brought to you by Listen Network. 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