Binge Factor Media

A creative topic deserves a creative podcast just so! And multi-million dollar creative agency owners Melissa DiGianfilippo & Alexis Krisay have absolutely done that in their podcast, Will It Stick?, where they explore the crazy marketing moments in history. In this episode, Melissa joins Tracy Hazzard to tell us how they have built a successful and stylistic podcast, attracting not only customers but also clients. She takes us across the transformation of their branding, the process of choosing brands and reviewing campaigns, and marketing and monetizing their show. Melissa and Tracy then dive into some content strategizing, offering tips on how to make the most of your show—from blog posts to video clips. With the access we now have to the world through social media, creative ways of reaching people are endless! Follow along to this great conversation to learn more about building a show that sticks.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Building A Successful And Stylistic Podcast Show That Attracts Clients With Melissa DiGianfilippo Of Will It Stick? Podcast

Melissa, I am so glad to have you here. Will It Stick? is such a great title for a show. Was that your first idea? Did you toss around a lot?

Thank you for having me. We tossed around a lot. Alexis and I were driving when we were brainstorming names for a big client kickoff. We were spitballing. She said, “Will It Stick?” It was her idea. I was like, “That’s it because that’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Will this campaign, this creative ad, or this stunt stick? Does it have staying power?

I love to talk about stickiness. To me, that’s the ultimate. It’s the binge factor. If it’s sticky, you’re going to listen to everything. If it’s sticky, you’re going to read it all. If it’s sticky, you’re going to watch it all the way through.

You become obsessed. You fall in love with the brand when something catches your attention. It sticks.

There are a lot of podcasts that make it easy on themselves. You have made it hard on yourselves because you pick a campaign, a story, or a brand. You’re a company. You’re going to review that. You’ve got to do research.

I don’t know if we knew that when we decided on this format but I don’t regret it. The research that we put into these campaigns and stunts opened up my eyes to so many cool ideas and possibilities. It’s almost like I’m doing research for my clients. I get all these fun inspirations and ideas. I get a chance to dive in and understand all the unique elements that make up a successful or a horrible campaign. It’s very time-consuming. We make sure we cover lots of sources but the content is worth it. It’s easier to have guests but we have brought on a few guests after we have covered a campaign. That’s our requirement. We cover you. If you were the chief marketing officer or a lead on the account, we will talk to you after.

We will get the behind-the-scenes story. I love it. This fascinates me because these stories about how things are working and your perspective on them are so unique because you’re coming from that agency standpoint or from that view. You do know what it took to put it together. Everyone was like, “It went viral.” It’s not an accident. You and I both know that.

We always know that. There is so much work, creative thought, mistakes, and bad ideas that go into creating great ones. As an agency owner, I own Serendipit Consulting. We’re a full-service creative marketing PR agency. We have seen it all. It takes so much with these campaigns. Some campaigns are created out of the brand. They might not have an agency partner. I’m always amazed at the thinking that goes behind it when it’s not an agency. Some are agency-led and directed.

I love diving in to understand. Where did the idea start? Where was it born from? What did it take to get client buy-in? What did it take to get it off the ground and make it happen? When virality happens with a campaign, it’s my favorite thing. For example, Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. We covered that campaign. It was 2010 when it came out. I had so many clients being like, “Can you make us a viral video like that?” It’s not that easy.

How much money do you want to spend? How much time are you going to take to create something that looked effortless? It’s harder to do something simple and effortless. It’s amazing that they pulled that off. I want to talk about podcast branding because you’ve shifted your brand. I noticed that your cover art changed over time. You’ve been shifting that. I’m curious as to why you’ve made the choices that you’ve made.

Originally, we did cover art that was elegant animation. It was just art, no imagery of us. It was a good starting point but as we progressed and evolved in our show, about a year in, we realized that it was taking off, first of all. I pay attention to what performs well. On Instagram, all of the social content that did feature Alexis and me a little more personally got more engagement. That led me to think, “If our cover art incorporated some of us into it and some of our fun personality, maybe that would be delivering to our audience base and what they were looking for.”

We did make that change. It has been positive. We’re still working on revamping our website to match our new brand. You’re always the last to get attention when you’re an agency owner but I am happy with the direction we have gone and also the new cover art. The words Will It Stick? are a lot bolder and easier to read whereas the first version was a little more script and maybe a little harder to read. You had to stare at it for a second. I’m happy with the new direction.

It’s so interesting because if you were my client, I would have advised you the exact opposite but in the beginning, not having your images probably served you better on the podcasting side. It’s interesting to try to judge and understand. In your social media, there’s a lot of you in it. They’re finding you and following you. It is personal, creating a better connection. Sometimes we create two sets of cover art, one that we use on social media and one that we use only in the podcast app because the podcast app is more like, “I’m the person finding what I want to listen to. It’s more about me and not about you. I don’t know who you are. I may not love the image of you.”

“I may judge you.”

It hurts the early launch of a show. We see a significant difference in the shows when they have their host on the cover art and when they don’t when they’re launching but after a while, you could switch it up because the marketing is all on you anyway. That assumes that you’re not shopping within the ecosystem that is the podcast app and relying on people accidentally finding you in the charts and things like that. I’m still a big fan.

We have done this for clients who had seasoned shows and switched them to art without their image on it. Their show got an increase in listenership. It’s simply because of the in-app issue. It’s a different model than social media. The idea of noticing this in your social is such a good point as to why you might want episode art, you might something special, or you might want more creative that is different from what you are doing within an app.

I love that perspective. Frankly, I’ve always been a podcast consumer up until we started the podcast. I was not an expert. I still am learning so much every day. I had thought about putting your image and associating yourself with your podcast up front with the cover art could be good or bad. People could judge right away and decide, “These two girls look like they’re drinking. No thanks.” It could maybe skew the other way but I’m happy with the way we did it by not starting with us on the cover art and then progressing based on the social changes. It’s always an evolving thing. I don’t know what’s next for it.

It will be a lot of fun. If there’s anything that love, I do love the boldness of Will It Stick? I do like the difference between your old art and your new art. It does look good there. I’m going to hit your binge factor because I want to talk about this. When I listen to your show, what I get is this tremendous rapport and respect between you and Alexis. There’s this equal respect for your skill and knowledge.

It’s not like everything you do overlaps. You each respect a different area of commentary that you make about this brand, the research, or what you’ve read about. That’s so wonderful to have those multi perspectives. At the end of the day, that’s what I’m listening for when I listen to your show and I’m binging it because I want to hear your two different perspectives on it. You give it to us. That’s fascinating because most often, a lot of them have so much ego when somebody is reviewing what somebody did.

It’s so interesting because it was easy for us to take those roles in the podcast because that’s how we operate our business. We’re business partners. We both have very unique skill sets that complement each other and also fill in the gaps where the other isn’t super strong. I’m a true PR professional. I’m a storyteller. I love media relations and getting my clients in the press and all that. Alexis is a marketer. She has a brand and color. She sees things differently than I do.

There’s something beautiful about both of us giving our perspective on a campaign and respecting what we see from it and our opinions. It makes it fun. For us at least, it’s very fun that we don’t talk about what we’re covering until we are recording. Oftentimes one of us is surprised, “I didn’t even know we were doing this.” It’s an in-the-moment live reaction. When I listen to podcasts, I love that.

It works for you there. You’re in the industry. You probably know this. I’m going to say this, and you have no idea what I’m talking about. One of my favorite things to read every year was the Pentagram papers when they put them out. Pentagram is a famous ad agency and creative agency in general. If you haven’t heard of them, you should look them up because they’re amazing. They would review their campaigns. I want to see that from you.

That’s a great idea.

I would love to see that because that’s the first thing that I got. This is why your show is brilliant. It did make me want to hire you. If I could then hear and see something that was a case study, what was your perspective on what it took to create this campaign? You’ve got case studies on the website and stuff you’ve done but it doesn’t give you that verbal detail that I love or the story behind that. That would be so helpful in closing clients.

That is genius. I haven’t thought of it because we have a lot of national brands but maybe not well-known consumer brands, which is what I often pick for the podcast. I want to deliver what listeners are looking for and I want them to connect with the brand. That is so interesting because that content is then repurposed on our website in some way, shape, or form. That would be so interesting to prospective clients.

I love inspiration from big brands but the reality is that I’m a small business. I don’t have the runway, or I might be starting this big brand that is going to become a billion-dollar company and a unicorn but I can’t start that way. I don’t know how you get that off the ground. You’re the right agency for that. I love those stories. I love to do it.

I love that idea.

I’m so excited about it because I miss the Pentagram papers. I loved it when they put that big book out. It was awesome.

There is something interesting about you dissecting your team’s work because you come at it from a different perspective. You know all that went into it and what didn’t go perfectly. I appreciate that idea.

Stylistic Podcast Show: There is something interesting about dissecting your own work and your own team’s work, because you come at it from a totally different perspective.

It would be fun. The other thing that I love is that you identify yourselves at the beginning. This happens so often on shows. They don’t say, “I’m Alexis. I’m Melissa.” You do. It’s so great because, from the very beginning of every single show, I’m getting your voice. If I got you on the phone as a prospective client, I feel like I know you. It wasn’t a confusion for me. That’s also brilliant in the execution and production value you put into your show.

Thank you so much. That’s important because that’s my biggest frustration as a listener of podcasts. I want to know who is talking at all times.

Tell me a little bit about the way you’re picking some of these brands. We normally ask you how you get great guests but in this particular case, I want to dive into how you’re choosing some of the brands or the campaigns that you’re reviewing.

We think about brands, household names, and campaign concepts that we know are a big deal to consumers like Just Do It by Nike or Got Milk? We have this running list where those were populated. We are big consumers of trade publications for marketing and advertising, Adweek, Ad Age, Marketing Brew, and Campaign Magazine. There are so many amazing resources. I’m emailing alerts, jumping into what’s hot that day, and trying to understand what brands are doing differently.

That’s where we scour those outlets for ideas. We’re following so many brands on social media because it’s interesting to see when they do something different on social media. We want to try to cover it pretty quickly if we can. It’s a blend of those things. We do get listeners suggesting ideas and topics all the time. My qualification for picking one is that I want to make sure first of all that there is a campaign I can cover.

It’s a little harder when it’s a brand over time all the marketing they have done because that show could go on for hours. My ideal situation is one stunt, one big campaign, or one activation that skyrocketed or went crazy south and focusing on that. I also like data. Our listeners like data. If I can’t find real stats and numbers, whether it’s revenue, an increase in this, or something, I might second guess covering it because I would want to hear that if I was a listener.

You want to cover all aspects of it. That’s brilliant. There’s a balance of workload between the two of you. Do you trade off? Does it end up one-sided? Those of us who are co-hosts know that it’s not always as balanced as it should be.

It’s always tricky. As a PR pro, I am a researcher and writer. It’s my unique ability. It’s my passion. You will hear when you listen that I probably do a little bit more than half the content. Alexis is the listener and is responding but she has developed a passion for this too, she didn’t think she would, in the research and the writing. It’s pretty balanced. We both put in the work for every episode.

If she’s reporting on a campaign or topic, I’m going to be in the moment thinking and responding. I want to make sure I have all my commentary. It depends on the day. I do run most of our social media but that comes down to the balance in our work too because we both own this agency. If one of us has overloaded, the other one picked up the pieces on both ends of it.

That’s good. You hear the excitement about certain campaigns and the way you take them off. It got me to think that maybe you’re swapping off.

We do our best to swap off.

You’re getting listeners. You’re a marketing agency. How did you market the show, especially in the beginning?

In the beginning, it was truly like reaching out to our entire network. That was our email list of thirteen years at Serendipit, our social media, and our personal network where Alexis and I are both members of entrepreneur organizations. We were reaching out to all of our networks because we wanted to make sure it wasn’t just our friends. We wanted listeners to get value. I would argue that anyone could get value but it’s entrepreneurs, marketers, and people who want creative inspiration for their next campaign or their next idea.

We did a lot of outreach. We asked them to subscribe, listen, and write a review right away. I have no fear of doing that always. Consistently then, it has been keeping up with social content. We took a while but we started doing an email blast for Will It Stick? to our Serendipit email list and our Will It Stick? email list. We focus on the content that we are pushing out that week or that month. Those are the key things. What we have not tried yet is any true digital push. We do a lot of ads for our clients but we haven’t done that for Will It Stick? We wanted to do it more organically first.

That’s important to see how that goes in the beginning because you don’t know what’s going to play yet. You don’t know what the listeners are going to be attracted to. You will spend money in places you aren’t ready for.

We wanted to be able to understand organically what would come back to us and the feedback we would get. That has been fun. LinkedIn has performed well in sharing our content because the audience on LinkedIn is business people. Their responsiveness to all the content there is solid. We get a lot of shares and recommendations there.

Have the brands and the companies you’ve covered shared it and responded well to the post or the actual episodes themselves?

Some of them have. I love when that happens. Oscar Mayer was one that was fun. They did comment back and respond. I love that because I want to hear what they think. I want to know, “What did we miss?” We brought on a senior executive marketer from Tuft & Needle. From LifeLock, we brought on Todd Davis, the guy who did that crazy stunt about sharing his social security number with the world. It has been fun to hear their take on our episodes and then for them to fill in the gaps. I love when brands let us play. We’re working hard to do more of that direct sharing with the marketing team of a brand once we produce the episode.

That’s wonderful. It will be even more exciting to have that be a double episode every time you do something like that. It would be a lot of fun. That’s exciting. Let’s talk about monetization or return on investment because that’s how I like to look at it. Alternative monetization is the way we look at everything here because you’re not always going to get that. You’re not going to put ads on your show. I can’t imagine what’s going to be your thing. What type of return on investment have you been seeing from the show that has been getting you more speaking events and clients? What’s working for you?

There are a few things. Our goal with this was truly to build our brands for Serendipit and to get people interested in hiring us. That was the number one goal along with sharing our passions. Alexis and I have an energy that comes to life on the podcast. The clients that we have grown over the years have told us our energy is one of the reasons they end up hiring us. I wanted to bring that forward. It has done a few things. We have done some natural press for this podcast.

We’re good at promoting through media. That exposure right there has gotten us high-quality listeners who have converted to clients, which has been interesting. The other thing is that it added validation and credibility to us. You said it earlier. You would hire us. By us covering these brands, being bold, and sharing our opinions but also being ourselves, we swear sometimes. We’re weird sometimes. Future clients and current clients see authentically who we are and how we show up. That’s attractive.

It has added validation for clients on the fence about hiring us. Perhaps it has gotten us some new high-quality leads and also employees. As an agency owner, 2021 was the hardest year of my life with turnover. In having this podcast, so many of the resumes have gotten in. People have been like, “I’m obsessed. I’ve listened. I want to work for someone like you.” That to me is an important KPI that we can’t avoid looking at.

It’s like a mentorship. I got this big report from an agency that was looking at this and saying that the Millennial hiring is seeking mentorship. You don’t have time to provide that when you’re running an agency. If they’re getting it from your podcast, that’s good for you.

It’s Gen Z. I’m a geriatric Millennial, the oldest Millennial who exists. There are Millennials but this Gen Z audience that’s starting to come up that we’re hiring is so interesting. What they want more than Millennials is true authenticity. They want to feel that you’re a person behind the facade of the business owner. Our podcast does that. We are ourselves on it. That has been valuable.

You’re getting across your creative philosophy or your perspective on things, which is hard to do with your staff in the process when you’re so busy working on that.

There’s no time for that. In your point about ads, you’re right. We were like, “We don’t think we will do ads.” It’s so funny because we won an award. We’re getting a lot of people coming to us. There’s one that we’re going to do but it has to be so authentic to the audience. It has to make sense based on what Alexis and I would like and what our audience would like. I’m going to be picky because I don’t want to be annoying.

When you do run ads, this is where you want an ad strategy. This is something that we built into the Podetize system that we founded because of this very reason. A 3D print podcast was my first one. The audience knows that but you might not. It was a geeky show. We would have people like Hewlett-Packard who would come in and advertise with us. They maybe didn’t want to be associated with some of the other brands or some of the other companies that we covered.

We were able to, with the way our system works, block out episodes and say, “No ads should run on this show.” We did an episode on 3D print guns. No one should be associated with that. That’s a negative brand association. We can block them from the beginning so that they never have ads on them. We can redeploy the ads by making sure that there are none in those spots. We built our system to be able to do that for this reason because we need to be picky, not only about the advertisers but where they go in our show as well and which episodes that they match with.

That’s super smart. There’s a balance, “Is it right for your audience? Is it right for this episode even?” I also like endorsement-style ads way more than I like listening to a produced ad from a company. I don’t know how you feel but I want to use it, love it, and talk about it.

If you’re in a rush and you want to get them out there, do the produced ad and then substitute the one a little bit later as you have time that’s more endorsement style, especially if you’ve got a story that you can add to it. It’s so much better. You’re excellent at branding advice for podcasters. What creative and branding advice do you have for podcasters?

You have to treat it as you would treat anything else. You have to take it seriously. I like thinking about right up front, “What are your voice and tone going to be?” People often don’t pay attention to that. They think the visual is the only important part of branding but it’s not, especially with an audio-focused format like a podcast. Thinking about how you want to come across, what is the tone, what is your voice, and who and how you are trying to draw people in was critical up front for us.

Stylistic Podcast Show: You have to treat branding like you would treat anything else. You have to take it seriously.

Alexis and I knew we wanted to be professional yet fun. We wanted to have fun with it. We wanted to be our true selves. We chose a route that allowed us to be a little freer and more flexible versus so highly produced. That’s critical. We talked about artwork readability and thought about color theory. That’s all important too. What do you want someone to feel when they see your cover art? What is going to make them click on you and subscribe to you? All of that plays a role in the decision-making of the podcast, the brand, and also the title. We had so many working titles but I like short, sweet, and punchy. I don’t like the word podcast in the title.

Please stop doing that.

Why do people do that?

It’s a podcast app. If I’m in there to put the word podcast, it’s redundant.

I know it’s a podcast. I’m here. The title is short and sweet. I loved that Will It Stick? is a question. Personally, I like action. You need to put thought into it. It’s not a quick thing. Get expert help and opinions if you’re not an agency and you don’t have those resources because it makes a lot of difference.

It’s smart to be looking at it as a piece of your brand and not the company. When I see a podcast that is the company’s brand, I think, “They’re selling me stuff.”

You don’t want that.

I want to have an aspect of it.

I don’t listen to one that’s like, “These so-and-so podcasts.” That’s not exciting to me. I want the title to scream what the content is. That to me is enticing.

Let’s talk about content strategy and plan a little bit. I’m assuming you’re repurposing and doing that. Do you have a strategic plan laid out for how you use your episodes?

Not very well, I’m going to be honest. I did something interesting because we won an award from Adweek. Alexis and I were so busy. We were speaking at a conference. Our first live show for Will It Stick? was at a big fitness marketing conference, which was very exciting. We were doing that when the award came out. I knew I needed content because I had a lot of new listeners.

What I did is encore the content of some of our most highly listened episodes. We have 60-plus episodes. There’s a ton if you go way back that is amazing and very highly listened to. What I did is push some of those forward as encore episodes and replay them for our new listeners. It performed insanely well. I don’t know why I had a little bit of fear of doing that before. I didn’t want to repurpose it if we didn’t have new listeners. It was this weird thing but that’s an interesting strategy.

Reruns can backfire. If you’ve got a lot of binge listeners, they will reach out to you and complain.

We haven’t gotten complaints yet.

That’s good, which says to me that you might have gotten people. This is what I find about marketing people. People that are interested in the marketing side of things don’t have a long attention span. They probably aren’t the best binge listeners. They pick and choose through your catalog. They may not have come across it, or they start and then listen going forward. They don’t always go back and check them all out. You may find that because of the type of personality. They will yell at you for repeating something.

That’s so funny. I wouldn’t do it often. This was more like, “We got this award. In honor of that, we’re putting out a couple of pieces of content that are our top most listened to. They’re pretty far back in the catalog.” I listen to a few podcasts that are more lifestyle-driven. When they do rerun episodes because I binged the whole thing, I’m like, “I’m not going to listen to that. It’s annoying.” It depends but I have done a few things. I like to cut up our audio for social media. It performs so well when I do little audio snippets of our episodes on socials.

Are you doing audiograms?

I make them myself. There’s an audiogram app but I didn’t love the options.

We make them ourselves too because I don’t love that either. Creative-wise, it’s not at your standard. I understand.

I cut the audio I want and then pop it over an image that works or a video that works. That works well but besides that, we honestly have not put a ton of deep thought into how else are we going to reuse this content.

I want to brainstorm with you too because it would be fun. First off, the first things that’s coming to my mind are seed articles or the articles that you put in trade journals that are your author byline and that are reviews of the episode. On the online versions, you can always put a video. A lot of them don’t have audio players but you could do a full-length audiogram of your show if you needed to for that purpose and have the YouTube video. That’s what we do.

That’s genius.

Seed articles would be so good for you because case studies or reviews of campaigns are always looked for in those journals. That would be one way to do it. I would love to see you have a book eventually. The book is needed.

That was something we did talk about. That’s a personal goal of mine anyways. I was like, “We’re doing all this research. There are themes that I already can tell you.” I think in buckets of themes. There are things that I’ve learned from covering these episodes that I know would make chapters in success stories of campaigns and stunts. There’s a book.

It’s recording videos from this point forward because it is more of the two of you. That’s working on social. It’s time to do that. You can start it up and use clips of it in TikTok. YouTube Shorts does tremendously well for my clients. Cutting them up and using them there in 30 seconds or 1 minute. It’s the same thing with putting them out on LinkedIn. The other thing that I would suggest is the LinkedIn newsletter. You’re putting out your newsletter already on LinkedIn.

That’s a great idea. That’s genius. I love the video. I don’t know why we have had this fear of doing videos all the time. I love seeing clips of my favorite podcasts on Instagram or YouTube. It does draw me in.

I understand not doing videos in the beginning. We didn’t do it with all our shows but now, we’re recording it anyway because we’re recording an interview. I was like, “Why aren’t we using it?” We’re discovering that it is going well. In our agency, we have over 1,000 podcasters but about 56% to 58% of them do videos. We probably have another 10% or 15% that don’t use long-form video but only use short. They are capturing it. They’re not using it in its entirety.

That’s smart. YouTube is the number one search engine next to Google.

Stylistic Podcast Show: YouTube is the number one search engine next to Google. Might as well use it through video content.

We might as well use it.

Why not?

That’s the last one that I would say for content strategy. You have to blog all this. You have to have full-length blogs. It’s time because you’ve got great content association. When you redo your website, adding that blog in there is going to be a killer content association for you.

I have a question for you on that. This is what we have debated because we have our Will It Stick? podcast website. Should we make this instead a landing page on Serendipit Consulting so we’re driving that traffic to our agency but it still is skinned Will It Stick? That seems more beneficial to me than our podcast website.

In your particular case, your podcast is so associated from a keyword standpoint with how you’re reviewing and what you’re talking about in terms of campaigns with your core business. If it wasn’t, separate it but because it is, bring them together. You can always have a Will It Stick? website that’s a one-pager but the minute we go through and click on any of the blogs, those blogs are on your main site.

You also have the podcast or you have a podcast page that is on your regular website and Will It Stick? is a forwarding URL to it. That’s the easiest, to be honest with you. No one is going to look twice because when the URL changes to your core business, they know it’s you. They have gotten to know you. It’s not a big deal. At the end of the day, that’s what I would recommend as a business strategy for you because it’s going to give you the most power in the long run.

This is a little-known fact. You can go back and blog episodes that are a few years old. No one is going to care. Google is seeing it now for the first time when you blog it. I would do that. One of the things that we do a lot with our blogs is to put all our social assets into the blog. If we created a TikTok, a YouTube Short, or an Instagram audiogram, we put it right into the blog page because one of the problems that we have is on Instagram if I try to go through your whole feed and find all of your podcasts, I could never do it. I would never be able to find all your audio. Here, we’re keeping it consolidated in the whole blog associated with each of your episodes. We meld the social media and the blog together.

That’s such a great idea because we’re doing show notes deeper on each episode on WillItStickPodcast.com with our sources. That’s so important to make sure we’re linking our sources. We have a lot of great sources but we need to make that transition and get the content on Serendipit.

Take the show notes and put them right on them. Move them right over to your regular website. If you want to write a short summary article, that’s what you put out at that publication level and the trade publications.

That’s a great idea.

Here you go. We strategize together. I love it when I can strategize with someone who’s going to be like, “I know how to take this and run with it. I know what to do.” You had the Marketing Podcast of the Year by Adweek. You were voted that. That is amazing but you and I also know in the industry that awards don’t come easily. They don’t get dropped on you. You probably had to work for that. Can you give anyone some tips about getting your podcast noticed by some of these contests?

The reality is that you have to apply for the award. It’s very rare that any nominating source will pick you and find you. We kept a close watch on all of our trade publications and awards that would make sense for podcasts. Adweek is the top industry reg in marketing and advertising. We probably developed a pretty strong relationship with that outlet over social media, engaging with their content because we authentically love their content.

Sharing their content has been impactful and important and then making sure we are actively submitting for awards, doing it right, writing a solid summary, and making sure that we give them the links to the episodes that are the most powerful. There were a ton of submissions but to get named Marketing Podcast of the Year was so insanely cool because there are so many amazing marketing podcasts. If you look at that category, it’s crazy full of amazing people telling amazing stories. It’s cool to get an award from an outlet that you love and respect.

I’ve heard of a lot of podcast awards that I question but that one is an awesome one. It’s valued and honestly much deserved. Your show is fantastic. I want to give both you and Alexis credit for building such a wonderful show. Keep it up.

Thank you.

Selfishly, I want you to be around because I want to make sure that I can still hear your great stories. That makes it fun for me.

It’s so funny because another marketer said, “If you stop doing this, I’m going to pick it up because it’s a good idea for a podcast.” I’m like, “I’m not stopping.”

Let’s broker your show, sell it when you’re ready, and make money off of it. We will have to talk about that then. I love it. Is there any advice that you want to give out there to aspiring podcasters or someone who’s got a show and maybe isn’t sure that they’ve got the creative down?

You’ve got to pursue what you’re passionate about. If you’re not passionate about what you’re covering, it comes through. People buy passion. They want to hear that from you. Make sure you love the topic because podcasting takes a lot of work. I binged a lot of podcasts before I started my own. I would never have guessed the amount of work it takes. It’s loving the topic, being ready to put in the work, and being creative and authentic about who you are. Make sure that comes through. That has worked for us well. It makes the work easy when you like it.

Stylistic Podcast Show: People buy passion. They want to hear that from you. Make sure you love the topic because podcasting takes a lot of work.

Melissa, congratulations on your award. Congratulations on a great podcast. I look forward to hearing more about your podcast and your agency coming up.

Thank you.

Important Links

• Will It Stick?
• Serendipit Consulting
• Pentagram
• Podetize
• https://Instagram.com/WillItStickPodcast

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