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Acquisition Channel Trends & Opportunities: Podcast Growth, Yelp, Social Media

Want to get more paying users? I've analyzed 1500+ marketing news over the last week, identifiying acquisition channel trends that can help you do just that. Let's get started.

1. Podcasts Will Make Over $1B From Ads This Year

"Podcast advertising will grow as much in the next two years as it did in the past decade."

This was the conclusion of a recent IAB article, where they analyzed trends in podcast advertising.

Podcast advertising revenues climbed to $842 million in 2020, up from $708 million in the year prior.

The opportunity: When podcasters grow their audience, advertisers who place advertiseemnts on their content typically grow as well. Here are some additional stats on the types of ads that seem to work, according to the IAB report:

  • Mid-roll spot placements, advertisingments that occur in the middle of the content account, for 76% of podcast ads revenues;
  • 50% of podcast ads were over 30 seconds long. Longer ads allow you to show more of your value prop;
  • News was the top content genre for podcast advertisers. Tip: Consider a news angle when you advertise on podcasts.

Have you thought of advertising your SaaS/service/store on podcasts? If not, now might be a good time to consider.

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2. Targeting a local market? Yelp Has Some Major Marketing Updates

Yelp has just announced new updates to their ad platform. Here are the 2 updates you should care about:

  • Custom Location Targeting (CLT): Previously, you could only run ads in a short area around your business location. Now you can run ads anywhere on the map.
  • Connect Audience Model: Yelp Connect is Yelp's version of a Facebook post. Previously, you could promote those posts only to people who engaged with your business. Now, you can also promote them to a) people who engaged with similar businesses) b) people who searched for relevant categories. Essentially, this is Yelp's version of Facebook Lookalike audiences.

The opportunity: With these updates, Yelp has removed the barriers to advertising on Yelp. You can now advertise on Yelp in a very similar way you do on Facebook.

For example, if you own a software development firm, you can now target the entire US via Yelp, and also target people who engaged with other software dev. firms and those who searched for those types of companies on Yelp. Previously, you could only advertise to people who lived close to your office location.

This is pretty powerful and can unlock Yelp as your next major acquisition channel.

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3. Here are Most up-to-date Stats on the Best Times to Post on Social Media

Sprout social has analyzed posts from its 20,000+ customers to discover when people on various social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn) were most engaged.

The conclusion: Weekends suck. Work days rock. But you probably already knew that. Sprout Social has also analyzed the best times to post across 9 different industries:

  • Healthcare

  • Media

  • Education

  • Nonprofit

  • Restaurants

  • Tech

  • Travel & Tourism

  • Finance

  • Hospitality

The opportunity: Many of the "best time to post" articles are outdated, so it's handy when there's an up-to-date article from a company with a big enough dataset. Plus, engagement rates on social media sites are low, so this kind of data always helps.

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  1. 2

    Thanks for sharing! About time posting, I am a bit reticent about those stats when it comes to the time difference. An international social media account has to optimize visibility considering huge time differences (from New York to Sydney for example) which is challenging.

  2. 2

    A wild ride for podcast ads. Are they effective though?

    1. 1

      I think it probably depends on the average LTV of your customer. If it is a high price point and you have a sticky valuable product, it can pay it’s worth in advertising. As a podcast producer myself, we recently had a sponsor and since the advertiser got in early, this could pay big dividends as we grow and could easily pay the value of their advertisement with just one acquisition. Plus you’re helping small growing podcasters like myself

    2. 1

      Yeh thats comes to me too its really difficult for me atleat to go to the add after listening it most of the time I listen to some news or some tech what you people think

  3. 2

    Love your posts, thanks!

  4. 2

    Is there any good self-serving platform for podcast ads?

    1. 2

      I know Spotify has. They have a minimum limit of $250.

    2. 1

      Acast Marketplace is a self-serve platform (AFAIK). I used to work there, and lately they've been growing like crazy... recently they bought RadioPublic.

      I haven't used their marketplace tho—but it does have exposure to more than 25000 shows. I don't know if they have any minimum spend, but could be worth checking out.

      https://acast.com/en/brands

  5. 2

    I wonder if these 'best times to post on social media' reports eventually result in the reverse conclusions; enough people read it and post then; not enough people post on weekends for eg; ironically, because of less competition, weekends become the 'best time to post' in 2022.

    1. 3

      That's what happens with internet marketing in general :))) People recommend one thing; enough people do it, then over time the advice literally reverses.

      1. 2

        Been in digital marketing for over 12 years and seen the same thing. Totally agree.

  6. 2

    Can marketing agencies also make use of the Yelp update?

    1. 2

      I see a bunch of marketing agencies listed on Yelp so definitely yes.

  7. 1

    Some growth hack opportunities here:

    • Support small growing podcast shows. You will prob get a good deal on advertising if you see their potential. You also support growing podcasters like myself who use the money to put it back into the podcast.

    • having previously built up three instagrams up to 20k followers or more, timing is extremely important. I highly recommend posting first thing in the morning so people see your post and weekdays like this article suggests

  8. 1

    Podcast ads is real, period. It's gaining massive popularity lately. I've seen so many posts on the internet around this!

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