Hey welcome back to another bonus episode of cubicle to CEO the podcast where we ask successful entrepreneurs, the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin, and I am so excited to celebrate today being the 20th bonus episode we have recorded. We started this in the new year, adding a new bonus episode usually with just me on Wednesdays, and I'm so proud of us for making it to the 20 episode a mile mark for this bonus series.
This actually will come into play in our conversation today on three things that have grown our podcast significantly in terms of downloads over the last 12 months, I felt like this would be a perfect complement to our guest interview with Les this week of Balanced Black Girl. She shared how she grew her podcasts exponentially, 5X in fact, in the course of a year, and is now averaging 350,000 downloads a month on her podcast.
And while we're not quite at that level yet, I do feel like we have some additional tips that we can share in reflecting on how we've grown our podcast significantly over the last year or two. What's really interesting is the timing of this recording, we actually just reached our first time hitting 70,000 downloads over a 30 day window on our podcast. So that's a huge celebration that I wanted to share with you. It's such a long ways from where we came, I mean even a year ago, I don't think we had ever reached even half of that amount 12 months ago in a single 30 day window. So to hit that milestone was something really cool that I just wanted to share with you all and celebrate with you all.
Alright, so let's get right into the three things that I feel have grown our podcasts the most over the last 12 months in terms of downloads. So I'll save the most significant one for last. But since I already just mentioned the bonus episodes, I'll start with that. Like I said at the beginning of the year, we decided that in addition to our regular Monday interviews with guests, we wanted to add an additional bonus episode that would air on Wednesdays, these episodes are typically shorter, not always, but typically 20 minutes or less. There are bite size behind the business focused episodes with usually just me where I'm sharing in real time what's going on in our business, and different strategies that we're implementing different things I'm learning as a leader, think of it as a founder's journal or or a diary of you know what it's like to walk in the shoes of an entrepreneur. And the thought process behind this was really quite simple and very obvious, right?
When you think about it, if you're wanting to increase the downloads of your podcast, then naturally the more episodes you air each week or each month, the more downloads you'll have. So instead of airing four episodes a month on average, if a month has four Mondays, sometimes five, right, but typically four. If you now are airing eight episodes in that same time window, then it's not unreasonable to assume that your downloads would essentially double in that time period. If the same listener who's listening to your Monday episode also tunes into your Wednesday episode, that instead of contributing one download that week, they're actually downloading your episodes twice that week, right. So naturally, the effect would be that your overall monthly downloads would double.
Now, is this always the case? No. Not every single person who listens to our Monday episodes tunes into our Wednesday episodes. And what's most surprising is sometimes our Wednesday episodes actually eclipsed the download numbers of our Monday episodes. So sometimes, these bonus episodes are actually receiving more downloads than our weekly Monday episodes. So that was the most interesting trend that I've noticed throughout, you know, these first five months of the year running this experiment of doing two episodes a week. It's not always the case. But there have been several instances where our bonus episodes actually do receive more downloads than our Monday guest interviews. And I think maybe it's just the format is a little bit more digestible, a little bit more easy for people to tune into, let's say a 15-20 minutes snippet than a full one hour case study interview that is typical of our Monday episodes. So while I don't think that implementing bonus episodes alone necessarily doubled our download numbers automatically I do think they have contributed significantly to our increase in monthly downloads overall.
So strategy number two that has really helped in increasing our downloads significantly is sponsorships. Sponsorships is a complex topic because this can look in and be executed in a number of ways but the sponsorships I'm referring to specifically are event sponsorships. So any opportunity that cubicle to CEO, the brand but most importantly highlighting the podcast can act as the sponsor of an event has been really fruitful for us in acquiring new listeners, I have just found that the relationship and the depth of connection you make with someone who gets to hear you speak live, or gets to interact with you face to face at an event at a booth or any form of in person interaction, right?
The level of connection that you make with someone like that in your community just looks completely different than someone who has only ever interacted with you through Instagram or even through a virtual event. And so we have found that event sponsorships, especially in person events have been really helpful in introducing new audiences to our podcast, and not only acquiring new listeners, but retaining loyal listeners. And so this has been an interesting thing that we've tested over the last year is finding opportunities to either pay for sponsorship.
So sometimes there's an event where there are sponsorship packages available, where we can, you know, invest a certain amount of money and be a sponsor of an event. And there's different placements that they may use to promote us throughout the event. Or they might, you know, give us let's say, a sponsor booth or a sponsor table, to show up and actually have representatives from our team there to interact with guests. It all depends on each event. But what has also been a really cool way that we've utilized and leverage sponsorships is actually through in kind trades. So I think I may have touched on this a little bit in one of my other bonus episodes on how you can get paid as a speaker, how you can start getting paid speaking gigs. So I will go ahead and link the bonus episode that I'm referring to in the show notes below. So if you haven't heard that one, listen into it, because I give some creative ways that you can get compensated as a speaker, starting today, even if you don't have a lot of speaking experience.
So with an in kind partnership, how that looks for for me is sometimes I'll be asked to speak at an event that doesn't necessarily have a speaker budget, or a very large one, perhaps that doesn't cover what my normal speaking fee would be. So instead, I might ask them, hey, if I donate my services in time as a speaker, in place of paying me would you be willing to have cubicle to CEO are podcast as a sponsor of your event or as as your events media sponsor, let's say. And a lot of times, it's worked out really well for us where, you know, I get to speak, which is already a great opportunity to great platform to reach new audiences. But also, in addition to that cubicle, the CEO, our podcast gets featured as a sponsor of the event, and we don't have to pay for that sponsorship right. And we can negotiate what is included in our sponsorship package.
Sometimes they'll have ready made sponsorship packages available that we can choose from. But oftentimes, I find that when it comes to these unkind trades, or in kind partnerships, we're able to really customize what we deemed the most important things that we want to have our name on or to have some sort of activation at, for the event. So for example, sometimes, you know, there's been all sorts of ways that we've done this, but sometimes it includes some stage time for us to talk about the podcast. Sometimes it includes, like I mentioned, having a table where we can interact with attendees at the event. Sometimes it includes our logo on printed signage or materials. Sometimes it includes us being able to offer a printed item or stickers in the swag bag. So there's all sorts of ways that we can participate. But it just continues to build that brand awareness around our podcast, and encourages people to listen.
Now, I'll add to this and say that one of the most effective ways that we've been able to leverage event sponsorships to truly grow our podcast downloads is you know, typically, if you speak at an event, they'll allow you at the end of your presentation, for example, to provide a free offer or some sort of lead magnet that people can opt in for via email. And then you're getting these attendees added to your email list, right?
I've seen this happen a lot, you know, people offer, oh, if you, you know, scan this QR code, you're able to, I don't know, give us your email, and we'll send you this resource or additional template or whatever it is. So what I've started doing speaking events is I'll have a QR code that people can scan that actually takes them to our podcast. And instead of asking people to opt in with their email, if our goal is to grow our podcast listener base, will say hey, go ahead and follow or subscribe to our podcast and show me at the events will come up to me at the event and show me that you've done that action. And I will email you our slide deck and that has worked really well as an incentive because oftentimes when I'm speaking I'm covering A lot of things right and that session, and sometimes it's hard to take notes as fast as someone is speaking. And so people really find it valuable to have access to the slide deck after. And so it's such an easy thing for people to do to click that plus button on Apple podcasts, or to click that follow button on Spotify, or wherever they listen, it takes literally one second. And they can come up to me and show me that they've done that thing.
And it's also a great way to encourage people to actually interact with you after the fact right for them to have a reason to come up to you and talk to you. So you can further get to know them and develop that connection even deeper. And by doing so, you know, I'm able to have a great conversation with many people who are actually at the event, we acquire these new subscribers who become listeners. And also we still get their email because we need their email in order to send them the slide deck, right. So it's really a triple win, and the name of the game.
And podcasting is, unlike social media, it's not really about having the largest listener base ever, right? One listener, one new listener added to your podcast community is immensely valuable, much more so than one new follower, let's say on Instagram, or tick tock, because with one new listener to your podcast, that listener doesn't just represent one action, right? It's not like oh, if I acquire a listener, they're only listening to my podcast one time. Typically, if you create quality content, and the goal is getting that repeat listenership, then that one new listener added to your podcast base could amount to dozens or hundreds of downloads. Think about it, if that one new listener comes into your ecosystem, and you create really quality content that exactly matches their needs, and what they're wanting to learn more about, they could potentially go back in and start from episode one in your library and binge listen to, I mean, at this point, we have more than 200 episodes in our podcasts database, so someone could potentially come into our show, and that one new listener could result in 200 new downloads in a single month if they're binge listening to all of our episodes. And then as they continue to come back week after week for our new episodes, the download numbers continue to come in from that one subscriber. So one subscriber is not just one, one download, it really does add up.
And so that's why we have found this to be so valuable in acquiring new listeners. Because even if I speak at an event, and only five new people, subscribe to our podcast as a result of it, that is so value to the long term growth of our show. And so that's why I really wanted to share this strategy with you all.
Now, the last thing that has been most impactful and growing our overall podcast downloads and subscribers, I told you, I would save the most significant one for last is actually advertising on the native podcast platforms. So instead of investing a lot of money in Facebook, Instagram, Google or Tik Tok ads driving people to listen to your podcast, instead advertising on the podcast apps themselves. So think about apps like Spotify castbox, overcast, there's so many there's hundreds, actually of podcast apps that people will listen to podcasts on. We usually in the podcasting space only reference apple and Spotify, because those two apps have the largest market share of listeners. But in reality, there's millions of other podcast listeners who don't use those two apps, and listen on many, many other apps that they prefer every single week.
And one that we've have found to be a huge player for us is castbox. That is a platform that we have advertised over and over and over again on because we have found that our content really resonates well with their listener base. And even though they're not a big player, like Apple or Spotify, they still have millions of active listeners every single month. And so we found that when we advertise with a display banner ad right within the app, and we're reaching podcast listeners who are already attuned to the habit of listening to podcasts on a regular basis, we're not asking someone to adopt a new behavior, right? Which can be the case sometimes when you're advertising on an app like Instagram or Facebook, because not everybody who's served your ad is necessarily already a podcast listener. But if you advertise on the podcast apps, if you present a native ad, where someone is already listening to a podcast, then you don't have to convince someone to adopt this new behavior of listening to podcasts, they can just continue on with the behavior they already have and add your show into their weekly rotation of shows that they're listening to.
So we've found that to be much more effective in terms of results for an equivalent budget, so it's definitely more cost effective in our opinion. To acquire new listeners through that channel, then through, you know, social media ads. And so we do still implement both in terms of paid advertising, we do advertise on Instagram and Facebook. So I want to be clear there to drive new listeners to our podcast. But we spend a much larger percentage of our of our advertising budget monthly on advertising on native podcast player apps.
So if this is something that's new to you, and you're like, I didn't even know that I could do that. I do have a hookup at castbox. This is not a sponsored episode, by the way, for castbox, I just want to be clear, we've just seen really amazing results with them. So if you are a fellow podcaster, that's interested in potentially advertising on castbox, I will say as a heads up, their advertising campaigns typically require at least a few $1,000. So if you're working more in the range of a couple $100, it's probably not the right investment for you at this time. And maybe you can try the other two strategies I shared earlier that are free that you can implement right now without a budget. But if you are playing in that space right now, where you have more budget to invest towards growing your show, and you want to try your hand to advertising, then I would be more than happy to connect you with our castbox representative. And they can share with you what upcoming campaigns are available, you can geo target, which is great, you can target by country of residence for the listeners. So typically, we're running US campaigns. But we have also tried advertising in other regions of the world, like in Asia, for example.
So anyways, if that's of interest to you, just go ahead and shoot us an email podcast at Ellen yin.com. And put in the subject line, "castbox referral", and we'll know what you're talking about. And we can introduce you to our representative there to get the conversation going.
I do think it's also important to test different things to see what works for you, especially when it comes to paid advertising, right. So, for example, while we have found the best results with native ads on podcast player apps, we also have been testing for example, this summer, we're running a print ad I know a lot of people say print is dead, but you never know till you try it. Right. So we're running a print ad in a local magazine that targets moms, so their primary readership is other moms. And because it's such a hyper targeted local ad, we feel like it would have better results than if we were to run a print ad in a national magazine. Right. So there's kind of that community support appeal where, you know, in our creative for the ad, we've specifically called out that I'm a fellow Oregonian. I'm a Salem podcaster. And so I feel like that piece of intrigue or curiosity is there a little bit when people are reading a local magazine and they see a local person doing interesting things, they're much more likely to go check it out, then, you know, if you're reading a national magazine about a stranger who's advertising their podcasts, you may not be as interested to check them out. So we're testing different things.
And also this summer, we're going to be allocating some of the budget that we normally allocate towards castbox ads to reading ads on Spotify. Specifically, Spotify is more expensive overall, in terms of listener acquisition, at least based on our preliminary research, but we are wanting to test it because Spotify is such a big player in the podcast space. So we have yet to run our first ad campaign with them. But once we do, I will be curious to see what the results are and potentially record an update episode on how that's going. Alright, so those are my three strategies for how we've been growing our podcast this year. I hope this helps you if you're a fellow podcaster.
Also, again, if you're looking for a community to plug into with other podcasters who are having conversations like this on the daily, I highly recommend my friend Hayley Gaffin's MIC CHECK society. We've talked about them a little bit before on the podcast, they've been a past sponsor of ours. So we're really grateful to them, and they're supportive of our show and allowing us to continue to create this quality free content for you all, but I also just want to shout them out because I'm a member in their community. And I think it really helps when you're trying to grow a specific content channel like podcasting that's so unique and not necessarily the same as growing on social it really helps to be around other people who understand this industry in this space and can share tips that are working well for them like we just did with you here in this episode. So if you found this helpful and you're looking for more resources like this, I highly recommend you check out Mic Check Society. I believe Haley created a code for a community I want to say it's "CEO". I'll have my producer Sabrina double check but the correct code will be in the show notes. So if you scroll down to the show notes, you can check out what MIC CHECK Cociety is all about what's included and you can use our code CEO if you want to save on your membership there.
Alright, that's all I have for you today. I will chat with you in the next episode.
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