Thumbnail Strategy of a $1.2 Million Podcast & Doubling Active Users to 80 Million in Less Than 1 year.

[00:00:00] The Strategy behind the 1.2 Million Podcast Diary of a CEO and I will say that's from 2021. I'm sure now he's probably doubling that. Easy.

[00:00:13] A lot of people pay a lot of attention on the thumbnails. Even some creators say they first imagine the full thumbnail and title before they even create the video, right? Is this going to be attractive enough for us to create if not worth it?

[00:00:25] Test, test, test and then invest. And we're also going to be talking about Duolingo's marketing playbook to 2x their active user base.

[00:00:35] Things like, hey, if you don't log into your app, we'll kidnap your family type of deal, right?

[00:00:40] Literally, yeah. So look at how you have been personifying your brand. Is it you? Do you have somebody in your team? Are you going to create some sort of fictitious personality?

[00:00:50] Again, are you going to grow to $1.2 Million using this strategy? Who knows? You know, disclaimer, we don't promise anything.

[00:00:59] But, hey, I'm Luis.

[00:01:01] And I'm Luis.

[00:01:03] And you're listening to the Content Is Profit Podcast.

[00:01:11] Yo, yo, yo, what's up everybody? Welcome back to Content Is Profit.

[00:01:15] We are back here in the studio for a solo episode. Fonzie called me this morning. He's like, no guest today, no problem, bro. I got you.

[00:01:21] That's right. You might be asking yourself, what are you guys talking about? We're talking about the strategy or part of behind the $1.2 Million Podcast Diary of a CEO.

[00:01:35] And I will say that's from 2021 on an episode that he talked about that he said he was making $1.2 Million.

[00:01:41] That's crazy.

[00:01:42] I'm sure now he's probably doubling that easy.

[00:01:46] Easy.

[00:01:47] Not only that, but, you know, he has companies that he's an investor of, that he promotes, the relationships that he has built.

[00:01:55] Yeah.

[00:01:55] I'm sure this podcast is probably anywhere between $4 to $5 million at the moment.

[00:02:00] And we're also going to be talking about Duolingo's marketing playbook to 2x their active user base to over $80 million.

[00:02:11] I'll tell you something. They have not gotten Katie yet. She has not been learning Spanish on Duolingo.

[00:02:17] I feel like Katie would see their strategy and run the opposite way.

[00:02:21] But there's a lot that we can learn. Yeah, there's a lot that we can learn from, again, from both.

[00:02:26] From this strategy, again, are you going to grow to $1.2 Million using this strategy?

[00:02:32] Who knows? You know, disclaimer, we don't promise anything.

[00:02:35] But there's a very good takeaway for you here that you can actually start implementing right now, regardless of the size of your business.

[00:02:42] That's right.

[00:02:43] And same with Duolingo, right? Sure, they have all the resources in the world.

[00:02:47] But the main, the key takeaway from this conversation, you can start pretty much implementing from today.

[00:02:55] Right away. That's right. I'm excited, man. Let's dive in.

[00:02:57] So the first example, right, like you showed it to me.

[00:03:00] And this is maybe a strategy that we've kind of commented here and there, right?

[00:03:03] We've seen it, you know, people testing. Can we dive into it a little bit?

[00:03:07] Yeah, of course.

[00:03:07] Testing thumbnails, right? On YouTube specifically, right?

[00:03:10] You hear creators like Mr. Beast, right?

[00:03:12] Like, hey, we create X amount of thumbnails and we test them out.

[00:03:16] We put it out to the world and see what people are reacting to.

[00:03:19] And then we're learning from them.

[00:03:20] And then you actually choose the one.

[00:03:22] There are tools out there like TubeBuddy, for example, V-I-Q.

[00:03:25] They let you A-B test thumbnails.

[00:03:29] And why the thumbnails, right?

[00:03:30] Specifically on YouTube is because that's one of the entry points for your audience into your content, right?

[00:03:36] They'll see the thumbnail. They'll be attracted to it.

[00:03:37] They click on it and then they present it to your content, right?

[00:03:40] So a couple of the metrics that YouTube is looking for is click-through rate, right?

[00:03:43] That's the percentage of people that click on that thumbnail and watch your content, right?

[00:03:48] Yeah. At least that they go into your content.

[00:03:50] I'm not sure if they watch it, but...

[00:03:51] And then the second one is retention, right?

[00:03:53] Is your content good enough to retain them for X amount of time?

[00:03:56] Yeah, they watch time.

[00:03:57] So that's why the thumbnail, a lot of people pay a lot of attention on the thumbnails.

[00:04:01] Even some creators say that they don't, they first imagine the full thumbnail and title before they even create the video, right?

[00:04:09] Is this going to be attractive enough for us to create if not worth it?

[00:04:13] Yeah.

[00:04:13] I have a concept that I want you to put in between your ears, in your brain and cement this.

[00:04:19] I think this is very important.

[00:04:20] We share this now with our clients every time I'm on a call with them.

[00:04:25] I tell them asymmetric effort, right?

[00:04:27] And asymmetric effort, what means is spend majority of your effort where most people spend majority of their time,

[00:04:35] which is on their thumbnails and on your hooks, right?

[00:04:38] If you don't get people's attention in the first three, five seconds of the video, people are going to fall off.

[00:04:45] And all that effort that you put in the rest of the video is going to worth zero, nothing.

[00:04:50] So asymmetrical effort means put more effort where you're going to have majority of people, right?

[00:04:56] In copywriting, for example, that would be on the headline.

[00:04:59] Great copywriters spend so many times.

[00:05:02] They do so many variations of their headlines.

[00:05:04] And sure, of course, they put effort and their craft into the rest of the copy.

[00:05:09] But majority of their effort is going to be focused on the parts that the people are going to spend the most time in.

[00:05:14] Same with your content.

[00:05:16] Asymmetrical effort.

[00:05:16] Spend the most amount of effort and time investing into the thumbnail, into the hook.

[00:05:25] Things where majority of people are going to spend their time consuming.

[00:05:28] And then you can go ahead and create the rest.

[00:05:31] So here's the deal.

[00:05:33] Like, Luis, how does this apply to me?

[00:05:34] Obviously, you know, maybe you have a podcast.

[00:05:38] Maybe you already have.

[00:05:39] Wait, wait, wait.

[00:05:39] Before that, before you dive into that, we didn't fully explain his strategy.

[00:05:43] I know, which I'm setting up so you can go explain the strategy, right?

[00:05:48] You know, obviously, the example that we just talked about was people pre-think their thumbnail before we go to, you know, before you go to create the content.

[00:05:56] And this is mainly like creators are doing like entertainment type of content, for example.

[00:06:00] But let's say you have a podcast, you run a B2B, you collaborate with people in that way.

[00:06:06] Well, it's very hard to figure out, like, what are we actually going to talk about?

[00:06:10] And we've talked many times that if you script the thing and we're going to talk about this topic, right?

[00:06:14] It might not be the most fluent or, you know, exciting conversation for the host, for the guest, and hence for the audience.

[00:06:19] So how do we flip the script, right, to where with a long form piece of content, we can still take the data and the juice of like what people are attracted to, right?

[00:06:31] So this is why tactically what Fonz is about to explain, it's really exciting.

[00:06:36] And it's something that you can try, you know, at home.

[00:06:40] And we're going to dive into like how can you do it.

[00:06:42] So go ahead.

[00:06:43] Quick heads up, parentheses.

[00:06:44] I'm not counting your ass today, so you're lucky.

[00:06:46] Yes!

[00:06:47] Let's go.

[00:06:48] So let's dive into the strategy again.

[00:06:49] We talked about A-B testing.

[00:06:51] A lot of people use tools like TubeBuddy, VitaIQ.

[00:06:54] Now, Steve Barlett, which is the host of Diary of a CEO, if you haven't heard that podcast, go ahead and listen to it.

[00:07:00] It's absolutely amazing.

[00:07:01] He talks with a lot of great experts.

[00:07:04] Yes.

[00:07:04] He has a little bit of a different approach to the A-B testing.

[00:07:08] Now, caveat, he has lots of resources, has a huge team.

[00:07:13] I think he has one or two people just dedicated to his trailers only on the podcast.

[00:07:19] And he has people that are strictly dedicated just to creating thumbnails.

[00:07:24] Now, quick plug here.

[00:07:26] Remember the six levers, right?

[00:07:28] On your creation side of things, right?

[00:07:30] You know, and then the publishing pyramid.

[00:07:32] What are your resources on creation, production, and distribution, right?

[00:07:35] This is what we're talking about.

[00:07:36] That's how it fits in the model.

[00:07:38] Yeah, point is the strategy works.

[00:07:40] Now, you got to scale it down to your own resources and capacity that you have.

[00:07:45] So, what he's doing here is he's not limiting himself just to TubeBuddy and VitaIQ because those platforms are A-B testing once the video is already published.

[00:07:56] So, he wants to have a winning thumbnail before he actually press publish on YouTube.

[00:08:03] So, he can maximize the amount of people that are going to click, right?

[00:08:06] Maximize his click-through rate.

[00:08:08] Therefore, YouTube rewards him with more views.

[00:08:12] Show him his video to more people.

[00:08:14] So, what he's doing is he's actually had like 100 different variations of a thumbnail of the podcast that he's going to be releasing that week.

[00:08:25] By the way, he's not exaggerating.

[00:08:26] There's actually 100 variations of this thumbnail.

[00:08:28] If you go to Facebook Ads Library and you look for Stephen Barlett, you're going to see all the ads that he's currently running for his next podcast.

[00:08:36] At the time of this recording, he's promoting the podcast with Andrew Bustamante.

[00:08:41] And it's literally hundreds of variations.

[00:08:44] And what he does is he is just promoting the thumbnail.

[00:08:49] It's an image of hundreds of different thumbnails, right?

[00:08:54] Actually, they're very similar looking.

[00:08:55] The style is absolutely the same.

[00:08:57] But the thing that says on the thumbnail that catches people's attention is different.

[00:09:01] I'm going to read maybe two or three examples.

[00:09:04] One says, how to be a good liar, right?

[00:09:07] That is one of the variations.

[00:09:08] And the next one says, get people to do exactly what you want them to do.

[00:09:12] So, he has hundreds like this.

[00:09:15] He puts a small budget into each one of them, smaller campaigns.

[00:09:19] And then he runs them, promoting first the podcast.

[00:09:22] If people click on the link, they're going to be taken to the YouTube page and they can subscribe.

[00:09:26] So, it's already a win.

[00:09:28] You're already building awareness for your podcast.

[00:09:30] But this is where the juicy thing comes in, which is he's going to realize which one of those ads has a better click-through rate.

[00:09:40] That winning ad, he then turns it into the thumbnail.

[00:09:45] So, when he launches and he publishes the podcast on YouTube, he's going to launch it with a winning podcast proven to catch people's attention and to get people to take action and click on it.

[00:09:58] So good.

[00:09:59] So good.

[00:09:59] Now, again, you might be saying, but this guy has millions of dollars.

[00:10:04] He has lots of resources.

[00:10:06] He has a team.

[00:10:06] How am I going to do the same thing?

[00:10:07] You can scale it down.

[00:10:08] You don't need a hundred different thumbnails.

[00:10:12] Sure, that would be absolutely amazing.

[00:10:14] And by the way, we're going to put a screenshot here on the screen of like maybe an example of those ads here, right?

[00:10:19] Where it's like production-wise, it's very simple, right?

[00:10:24] It's like a solid background.

[00:10:25] You have the face of the guest and then you have your title, right?

[00:10:28] And there's methods where you can use tools like Canva, for example, where you can do a template type of deal and then all you got to do is change the title.

[00:10:37] I'm sure that's what they do.

[00:10:38] Yeah, they have a main piece and then they – obviously, your team or whoever is going to do that is going to find an efficient way.

[00:10:45] Hopefully, they found an efficient way to do this.

[00:10:47] Now, if it is you doing it, you don't need to do a hundred, right?

[00:10:50] You can start by testing two.

[00:10:51] You can start by testing maybe five and you don't need to be spending hundreds of dollars on this.

[00:10:56] You can put $10 behind each one of them if you're doing five, right?

[00:11:00] That is 50 bucks.

[00:11:02] Can you spend 50 bucks into creating awareness for your podcast, driving new subscribers to your podcast, and at the same time, figuring out which one is the right thumbnail for you?

[00:11:14] Again, asymmetric effort.

[00:11:16] Spend effort and resources up front on the part that most people are going to consume so you can maximize your results.

[00:11:24] I freaking love this.

[00:11:26] And as we're going through this, obviously, full transparency, I don't think today we have the resources to run a hundred of these ads.

[00:11:32] But I think we can start testing for at least one episode a week.

[00:11:36] 100%.

[00:11:36] Where we can start doing something like this.

[00:11:38] So I think that would be a cool experiment to run on our side internally.

[00:11:42] Obviously, you know, we've followed this guy for quite a while.

[00:11:44] You have followed this guy for quite a while.

[00:11:46] And, you know, there's some things that he does on his show that we've done on our show and on our clients that works.

[00:11:52] So we're like, perfect.

[00:11:53] Model what works, right?

[00:11:54] So on your side as a creator or, you know, as a creative director of your company, if you're in that role, what are other companies or other creators doing that are working, right?

[00:12:05] Look at the successful publishing side of things.

[00:12:08] So obviously, I'm very excited for this specific tactic because it's very doable, right?

[00:12:14] A lot on YouTube, the YouTubers talk about testing it inside of YouTube because that's their platform.

[00:12:19] But as a podcaster, we're multi-platform, right?

[00:12:21] You're on the audio side.

[00:12:22] And then obviously, that's the title that also can be the title of the podcast itself because maybe it's not just a picture.

[00:12:29] It's also, you know, what we say inside of that.

[00:12:33] And, but anyways, I just want to, I think this is super cool where we can start testing it out internally for us.

[00:12:40] And I'm excited to see what comes out of it.

[00:12:44] Any other?

[00:12:45] I'm just excited.

[00:12:46] I'm just excited.

[00:12:47] Yeah, I'm excited too.

[00:12:49] It's definitely a great strategy.

[00:12:51] I don't think I've ever seen it before.

[00:12:53] Now, the key takeaway, this is actually that we've been saying for a while is test, test, test, then invest, right?

[00:13:00] That was actually part of our first publishing pyramid guide that we created that had a little workshop site on the back.

[00:13:08] And one of the key takeaways was that was test, test, test, and then invest.

[00:13:13] Here's a cool test.

[00:13:15] We talked about the long tail of your content, right?

[00:13:17] Like the content that you have published and people continue to download, right?

[00:13:20] On the audio platforms, that's very common, right?

[00:13:22] We have episodes that for the first seven, 30 days, they might not be top performers, but because of the title, people are searching for that specific content, that specific person that comes into it.

[00:13:31] They continue to gain downloads on the backend.

[00:13:35] Same with YouTube, right?

[00:13:36] We have a couple episodes that they continue to perform really strongly.

[00:13:41] So I'm curious, running this not only for your new episodes, but also for your older episodes that might not be performing as good, running that and then updating the thumbnails and updating the titles inside of YouTube, maybe can give them a second life and people can start downloading those.

[00:14:00] Yeah, that's a good reminder.

[00:14:01] There's actually a creator, I forgot his name right now, but he runs a channel called Film Booth.

[00:14:06] And he is one, I would say, of the leading education creators out there on YouTube.

[00:14:13] And he scores, he actually sells a course that the whole premise is creating incredible thumbnails to revive some of your content.

[00:14:23] A lot of his testimonials are people coming back and saying, I had this great video I spent so much time creating, but it flopped.

[00:14:32] I changed the thumbnail all of a sudden is gaining so much traction.

[00:14:37] That is correct.

[00:14:38] Maybe we can do the same exact thing with the podcast.

[00:14:41] We have some incredible guests that have been in content is profit, right?

[00:14:44] And it's such a disservice that we cannot present that or do our best for people to listen.

[00:14:50] The advice that these people are giving on the show.

[00:14:52] Yeah.

[00:14:52] So there we go.

[00:14:53] That's our to-do personal for us.

[00:14:56] Yeah.

[00:14:56] We're going to grab maybe the five episodes that we want to do this with, create a few thumbnails for them, and then run the strategy.

[00:15:04] I love it.

[00:15:04] Let's move on to the next topic.

[00:15:06] Do you remember what it was?

[00:15:08] Oh, yeah, baby.

[00:15:09] The Duolingo app that teaches you different languages, specifically Spanish.

[00:15:13] Talking to you, Katie, my wife.

[00:15:15] But we came across a bunch of content not so long ago about what they're doing strategically to increase the subscribers, right?

[00:15:26] And it's a massive number.

[00:15:27] Well, yeah.

[00:15:28] Active users.

[00:15:29] It's insane.

[00:15:30] The app, it's insane.

[00:15:31] There's social media.

[00:15:32] It's insane in the actual sense of the word.

[00:15:35] It's weird as heck.

[00:15:36] They're running wild.

[00:15:37] Yeah, they're running wild.

[00:15:38] But, you know, we're going to share how they grew two times their active user base.

[00:15:43] They grew it from 40 million active users to 80 million active users in something like two years, which is out of this world.

[00:15:52] It's insane.

[00:15:53] But I want to share a little bit of the story because I think it's also an interesting story.

[00:15:56] The founder is actually a watermelon entrepreneur.

[00:15:59] And he sold, he actually created ReCAPTCHA, those little things where you put the letters on Google that are very annoying when you're trying to sign up, right?

[00:16:06] That they think you're a robot.

[00:16:07] Well, he created that and he sold it for like 10 million.

[00:16:10] Well, the article quotes somewhere between 10 million and 100 million.

[00:16:15] That's a big gap.

[00:16:15] That's a very big gap.

[00:16:17] But later on, he came up with the genius idea of starting Duolingo.

[00:16:20] And he got founders like he had investors like Tim Ferriss and Ashton Kutcher, some big investors in there.

[00:16:27] That's cool.

[00:16:28] Now, fast forward to 2014.

[00:16:31] They're raising $20 million and they have 25 million registered users.

[00:16:37] Pretty, pretty good.

[00:16:38] But their growth has been insane.

[00:16:41] Since then, they now have 500 million users.

[00:16:46] Actually, that was by the end of 2020.

[00:16:47] So now they might have more.

[00:16:49] 500 million users.

[00:16:51] And now they have 83 million active users.

[00:16:55] That is absolutely bonkers.

[00:16:58] People that are literally logging into the app.

[00:17:01] I think it was at least those 83 million people were once a month.

[00:17:06] But they have 24 million people that they sign up into the app that they log in every single day.

[00:17:13] And this is not to play games.

[00:17:15] This is actually to learn a language.

[00:17:16] That's to learn a language.

[00:17:17] And well, obviously, they've done multiple things for their success.

[00:17:20] Part of it is gamifying the app.

[00:17:23] If you never use Duolingo, it's a fun app to use.

[00:17:26] Personally, I don't know how much it actually teaches you a language.

[00:17:30] It must.

[00:17:30] It must.

[00:17:31] Yeah.

[00:17:32] If people keep coming back, it must learn it.

[00:17:35] I have a preference.

[00:17:36] I use one called Pimsel.

[00:17:38] I think it's better.

[00:17:39] Duolingo.

[00:17:40] I'm sorry about that.

[00:17:41] But lately, they've been doing marketing.

[00:17:45] What is called unhinged marketing on TikTok specifically.

[00:17:49] Which is just straight up weird.

[00:17:52] It's meme heavy.

[00:17:53] They do a lot of memes.

[00:17:55] Right?

[00:17:55] But it's just, again, straight up weird.

[00:17:57] You see these things and you start laughing.

[00:17:59] You're like, what the heck?

[00:18:01] Like, the one that I saw the other day was their mascot, Duo.

[00:18:06] Right?

[00:18:06] And it was portraying a bouncer on a club.

[00:18:11] And the people to get into the club, they had to show them their streak.

[00:18:14] Meaning how many times they've been doing Duolingo in a row.

[00:18:18] How many days in a row.

[00:18:19] In a row they used it.

[00:18:20] And one of them didn't have it.

[00:18:22] And he's like, no, you're out.

[00:18:23] Kicked out.

[00:18:24] And then it's just like the Duo is just raving out there.

[00:18:27] I get something super random, super weird.

[00:18:29] But I saw it.

[00:18:30] I laughed.

[00:18:31] I shared it with you.

[00:18:32] And I was like, this is awesome.

[00:18:34] Then I started going through their whole Instagram.

[00:18:36] It's just, again, I don't have any other words.

[00:18:39] Straight up weird.

[00:18:40] Things like, hey, if you don't log into your app, we'll kidnap your family type of deal.

[00:18:44] Right?

[00:18:45] Literally.

[00:18:45] Yeah.

[00:18:46] The comments.

[00:18:47] You hear the comments.

[00:18:48] And people are like, please, please, please don't hurt my family.

[00:18:52] I promise I'm going to log back in.

[00:18:54] Right?

[00:18:54] And they have so much engagement.

[00:18:56] It's absolutely amazing to see.

[00:18:58] And honestly, you would imagine brands like that would be all about being professional.

[00:19:07] Right?

[00:19:08] About, all right, we're going to keep it all super brand.

[00:19:10] But they did a big shift because they weren't like this.

[00:19:13] They shifted.

[00:19:14] And now I think this is actually a better brand.

[00:19:16] And they're catering to younger people as well.

[00:19:18] And again, elements.

[00:19:20] Right?

[00:19:20] Like lean towards the polarization side of things.

[00:19:23] Like they obviously, their main objective is getting people to use and be active on the

[00:19:27] app because they're going to provide the result of their product, which is learning a new language.

[00:19:31] Right?

[00:19:31] So for that to happen, people need to use the app.

[00:19:33] So how do we get people to use the app?

[00:19:36] Before that, how do we get people aware of the app that the app is actually on their phone?

[00:19:40] Because, you know, it's happened to me.

[00:19:42] Right?

[00:19:42] For example, you know, I want to refresh on my Italian.

[00:19:45] So I downloaded the app.

[00:19:46] I did a couple sessions.

[00:19:47] But then, you know, life happens and then you forget to use it.

[00:19:49] How do we re-engage those customers that are already there, those users that are already

[00:19:54] there and gain new ones?

[00:19:56] Well, it's all about the attention.

[00:19:57] So how do we get the attention?

[00:19:58] So for them, the strategy was going, hey, let's go full polarization, full unhinged.

[00:20:03] Right?

[00:20:03] Right?

[00:20:04] You know, culture references, meme references, you know, crazy jokes and things where it

[00:20:11] will start the conversation.

[00:20:12] Right?

[00:20:12] You have people that are going to love it.

[00:20:14] Like us, for example.

[00:20:15] Right?

[00:20:15] We're like, oh, this is actually great.

[00:20:16] We go towards the side of the comedy.

[00:20:18] Right?

[00:20:18] Maybe darker comedy.

[00:20:20] Maybe a little bit.

[00:20:20] Right?

[00:20:21] Yeah.

[00:20:21] But there's also...

[00:20:22] I mean, I'm going to be honest.

[00:20:23] I saw some of their posts that I was like, eh, this is just straight up weird.

[00:20:26] Yeah.

[00:20:27] Eh, it doesn't really call to me.

[00:20:28] But some of them...

[00:20:29] But it's memorable, right?

[00:20:29] It's memorable, right?

[00:20:30] Yeah.

[00:20:30] Some of them are pretty funny.

[00:20:32] But you remember, right?

[00:20:33] Yeah.

[00:20:33] At the end of the day, it's like, okay, how consistent can we be with this?

[00:20:36] Like, how frequent can we be with this?

[00:20:38] Because you're going to get winners.

[00:20:39] You're going to have a piece of content or engagement side of things that are not going

[00:20:42] to be winners.

[00:20:43] And that's okay.

[00:20:44] Right?

[00:20:44] And then you're going to have the people that really love it or remember it.

[00:20:47] And then you're going to have the people that might not love it and might not

[00:20:50] remember it.

[00:20:50] But guess what?

[00:20:51] They're not your ideal clients.

[00:20:52] Right?

[00:20:53] Because then these people might reignite the relationship with you and your company.

[00:20:56] So, you know, as we were walking and talking about this episode, I told you, I'm like,

[00:21:01] I would love to see the pitch of the person that had that idea to the CEO.

[00:21:05] Right?

[00:21:06] And we made a mission.

[00:21:07] We made a mission to actually find out who is their main creative out there at Duolingo.

[00:21:15] We're going to bring them to the podcast.

[00:21:16] Hey, this is like taken.

[00:21:18] We're going to find you.

[00:21:20] We're going to find you.

[00:21:21] We won't kill you, but we'll bring you to the podcast.

[00:21:25] So, there's a principle in this.

[00:21:27] Right?

[00:21:27] Again, sure.

[00:21:28] They have probably a huge creative team that is making all this stuff possible.

[00:21:33] How can we bring it down to us, to our brands?

[00:21:36] And the principle for me is personification of a brand.

[00:21:41] And I wrote something about this recently.

[00:21:43] But pretty much, you want to personify your brand so people can relate to you.

[00:21:49] Right?

[00:21:49] You're going to have a set of values.

[00:21:51] Your company is going to have a set of values.

[00:21:52] Those are portrayed through your persona that you're putting out, you know, through your brand.

[00:21:58] And people are going to relate to that.

[00:22:00] And they might become customers of yours.

[00:22:03] There's plenty of examples of this.

[00:22:04] Right?

[00:22:05] There's companies that their founders are the main persona.

[00:22:09] For example, Gary Vaynerchuk or Mosey.

[00:22:12] You got ClickFunnels with Russell Brunson.

[00:22:14] Right?

[00:22:14] There's a lot of those.

[00:22:16] I feel like those are the most cost-effective ones.

[00:22:19] The main ones to start.

[00:22:20] Right?

[00:22:20] They're founders.

[00:22:21] They know their values.

[00:22:22] They know exactly what they want.

[00:22:23] Who better to speak of the company than they are?

[00:22:27] Now, you have brands like Duolingo, which have a fictitious character like Duo or Geico with the little lizard.

[00:22:35] But then...

[00:22:36] Gecko.

[00:22:37] The gecko.

[00:22:37] Yeah.

[00:22:38] Lizard, gecko, whatever.

[00:22:39] But then you also have influencers.

[00:22:42] Huge, huge brands, you know, that maybe they stood a test of time.

[00:22:47] They've been out there for a while.

[00:22:48] And for them, you know, their CEO might be somebody that doesn't really want to be on screen.

[00:22:53] But guess what?

[00:22:54] They got plenty of resources to go and hire somebody with similar values that can be a good face for the brand.

[00:23:01] And, you know, they sponsor them.

[00:23:04] A good example that comes to mind is Ninja with, you know, Rebel.

[00:23:08] Rebel wanted to go into the e-gaming industry.

[00:23:12] And they went on and sponsored Ninja.

[00:23:15] And, again, it's happened in all their industries with multiple, multiple people.

[00:23:20] Now, another one that I think we actually discussed this one in an episode of Condem's Profit with Ben Bradbury, episode 340, which is internal personalities.

[00:23:31] Maybe you as a founder, you don't want to be the personality.

[00:23:34] But you have somebody in your team, in the leadership team, that they have a great personality.

[00:23:38] They do represent the values of your company, right?

[00:23:41] And they know the message and they know how to communicate that to the audience.

[00:23:45] So they could become that personality of your brand.

[00:23:49] Again, there's multiple ways on doing this.

[00:23:52] And you can always bring it back down to you.

[00:23:54] But at the end of the day, your brand needs content, right?

[00:23:58] You need to be creating content consistently.

[00:24:00] And you need to be thinking about, okay, what is this personality that we're putting in front of the audience, right?

[00:24:06] What are their values?

[00:24:07] What is their core message, right?

[00:24:09] And again, don't try to appeal to everybody because if you try to appeal to everybody, you appeal to no one.

[00:24:14] That's why Duolingo, they are unhinged and they're unfiltered.

[00:24:19] And they're polarizing as heck because that attracts more attention.

[00:24:23] And sure, in that process, you're going to segregate some people that might be interested in trying to your audience.

[00:24:29] But you want people that are going to be faithful to your brand.

[00:24:32] You want 24 million people that are going to log in daily to your app.

[00:24:37] Do you want some Karen's in your audience?

[00:24:39] Do you want some Karen's in your customer base?

[00:24:41] I don't think so.

[00:24:42] I don't want Karen in my customer base.

[00:24:43] There you go.

[00:24:44] So you can just be polarizing your message.

[00:24:47] Again, as long as it is aligned with your values and your core message that you want to express to your audience.

[00:24:53] My personal opinion here is obviously you have these big companies.

[00:24:56] Some of them are taking these risks and they're leaning on to strategies like this one or tactics like this one.

[00:25:02] And it's paying off.

[00:25:03] And it's going to be really good and it's a great example for others.

[00:25:07] But I also think that smaller companies and smaller creators have an edge to be able to do this and adapt faster than bigger companies.

[00:25:14] You might have a smaller team.

[00:25:16] Maybe you are the decision maker.

[00:25:18] And then you can make that decision today and be like, perfect, from next week, this is how we're going to communicate based on our values and what we want and the product that we have and how we do it.

[00:25:28] So earlier today we were talking about can we do, on our specific example, I ran a specific value proposition of one of the episodes through ChatGPT and be like, hey, ChatGPT, let's see how funny you can be.

[00:25:42] Write a skit about a minute.

[00:25:44] Not too funny.

[00:25:45] Not too funny.

[00:25:46] I laughed at the end.

[00:25:47] I thought it was hilarious.

[00:25:48] But the buildup was a little slow.

[00:25:50] But anyways, and I ran it to Fancy.

[00:25:53] We need to feed him the episode that we did with Mike Free so it learns that people need to laugh every 30 seconds.

[00:25:58] Yeah.

[00:25:59] But here's the point.

[00:26:00] It's like, okay, can we try a new piece of content that resonates with us, right?

[00:26:03] Obviously, we like comedy.

[00:26:04] We like to be funny.

[00:26:05] We like to laugh, right?

[00:26:06] How can we relate it to the wins that we can provide to our audience, for example?

[00:26:10] And then how can we create something that's really unique and see what happens?

[00:26:14] Obviously, there's going to be people like, oh, this was cringe.

[00:26:16] This was horrible.

[00:26:17] I don't like these guys.

[00:26:19] Don't do it anymore.

[00:26:20] There's going to be people that are going to laugh.

[00:26:21] Or there are people that are going to be loving dad jokes like me.

[00:26:25] And they're going to be like, this is actually great.

[00:26:26] But at some point, there's going to be that engagement.

[00:26:29] There's going to be something like that.

[00:26:30] So maybe that's something that we do again.

[00:26:32] And we have to align it with our levers and our publishing premium resources and things that we do internally.

[00:26:37] But, man, start thinking about those ideas on how can you lean into strategies and tactics like the ones that we talked about today for your advantage.

[00:26:46] Because you are in a position to gain a lot of ground very fast and capitalize on it very quickly.

[00:26:53] Yeah.

[00:26:54] So let's recap on today's episode.

[00:26:57] First, what strategy you can do to build your podcasting brand.

[00:27:03] And it is a test, test, then invest.

[00:27:06] We talk about A-B testing specifically on Facebook before you drop your episode.

[00:27:11] So you have a winning thumbnail so you can maximize that click-through rate and the attention that you're getting as soon as you launch your podcast.

[00:27:22] And then the second one, we talked about the Duolingo marketing playbook to two X or active user base.

[00:27:28] And the principle there was to personify your brand.

[00:27:32] So look at how you have been personifying your brand.

[00:27:34] Is it you?

[00:27:36] Do you have somebody in your team?

[00:27:37] Are you going to create some sort of fictitious personality?

[00:27:40] Right.

[00:27:41] But at the bottom line, at the core of this, you need to understand what are your values?

[00:27:46] What is your core message that you're trying to communicate with people?

[00:27:49] And don't be afraid to be polarizing.

[00:27:53] So good.

[00:27:54] This was pretty good.

[00:27:54] I absolutely loved today's episode.

[00:27:56] Lots of fun.

[00:27:57] I like when we do this one.

[00:27:58] I really do.

[00:27:59] And if you are looking to fully blow the creative potential of your brand,

[00:28:06] make sure you hit us up on the DM at Biz Bros Co.

[00:28:10] We can help you set up the systems, right?

[00:28:13] To create consistently.

[00:28:15] And we can provide you with also resources to make your brand look super nice and tasty.

[00:28:21] Nice and tasty.

[00:28:22] Nice and tasty.

[00:28:23] Is that the new title?

[00:28:24] Maybe.

[00:28:24] Nice and tasty.

[00:28:25] Your brand can be super nice and tasty.

[00:28:27] With that said, guys, thank you so much for tuning into the Context Profit Podcast.

[00:28:32] Go ahead and follow the show in your favorite podcasting platform and on social media at Biz Bros Co.

[00:28:37] That is right.

[00:28:37] And if today's episode helped you move one step closer towards your goal,

[00:28:41] please don't forget to share it and comment whatever.

[00:28:45] I forgot what it comes here.

[00:28:47] But, you know, just do something positive.

[00:28:49] Just do something positive.

[00:28:49] And we'll see you in the next one.

[00:28:50] Bye, guys.

[00:28:51] Take care.