The Content Direction Agency

How We Got 3,500 Downloads In The First Month Of Launching Our Podcast [Update]

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Lacy Boggs

Founder, The Content Direction Agency

$24K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

The Content Direc...

lacyboggs.com

from Denver, CO, USA

started June 2011

$24,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Lacy recommends to grow your business!

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less Greg McKeown

Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself Mike Michalowicz

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Want more updates on The Content Direction Agency? Check out these stories:

1. I Make $300K/Year With A Team Of Ghostwriters That Create Content For Brands (2021) ➜

This is a follow up story for The Content Direction Agency. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published about 3 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

Hey, I’m Lacy and I’m a content strategist, author of the bestselling Kindle ebook Make a Killing With Content, and the Director of The Content Direction Agency.

We specialize in done-for-you content strategy and writing retainers to create evergreen, searchable content that sends traffic and leads to a business 24/7.

Our most popular services are done-for-you content writing retainers for online experts and course creators that allow us to take their genius and turn it into searchable, evergreen content that will continue to send them traffic and leads for years.

We were featured on Starter Story last year, and since then we’ve taken on some fun new projects — specifically, creating (we think) the first ever fiction B2B podcast, which debuted in the top 10% for podcast debuts, in the top 100 on the Apple Podcast charts, and which has generated $22k in ROI so far.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

We saw more than 3,500 downloads in the first month, putting us in the top 10% of podcast debuts

I had wanted to start a podcast for years, but I didn’t have a clear vision for what I could contribute that would be different from what was already out there in the B2B marketing podcast space.

Then, in about August of 2021, I had the idea to do a fiction, radio play-style podcast lampooning the online marketing industry, and I just couldn’t shake the idea. I wrote the first episode and realized I had something fun and very different. I hired a director to help me produce the show, and we created it and released Ace Stone, Marketing Detective in July 2022.

Ace Stone, Marketing Detective follows the adventures of Ace Stone, as she bamboozles bad guys and detects dastardly deeds in the marketing industry. In "The Case of the Missing Content," Ace and her assistant Olympia are hired by influencer Sienna Wonderly to find her "missing content."

As the mystery unfolds, it turns out that Sienna isn't the only person searching for the Missing Content — Ace's dastardly foe, Rex Hackshaw has returned from the dead and is hot on the trail of the Missing Content. They say anyone with this content can turn a launch into gold, and these shady marketers are willing to do just about anything to get it...

The podcast was a big hit. We saw more than 3,500 downloads in the first month, putting us in the top 10% of podcast debuts. And, despite not releasing new episodes (the podcast is a self-contained 8-episode season), we’re still seeing 600–1,000 downloads per month.

We tried a lot of things to make the launch successful. We organized a “street team” of people willing to rate and review the show and share links with their audience when we launched, which got us eight or 10 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts right away. I bought an ad in Podcast Magazine on their new podcasts page, which drove some downloads.

But by far the most impactful thing we did to support the podcast launch was investing in PR. I worked with a local PR firm that sent out two pitches to local and specialty media over about 6 weeks, one for the initial launch, and a second in honor of the final episode airing on National Detectives Day. We got around 450 downloads the day the first pitch went out alone. And from those pitches, we got media mentions in Shoutout Colorado, Authority Magazine, Managing Editor Magazine, Inside Radio newsletter, and more.

More importantly, the podcast became a successful top-of-mind advertising for our agency. We have seen more than $22k in projects directly from customers who discovered us through the podcast so far (in less than 6 months).

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We also updated our website and branding with new photos, which were so much fun to envision and shoot. Although we are an all-remote team, we wanted to give the agency a sense of place, so we rented a vintage home in Denver for the photo shoot.

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

Our biggest challenge over the last year was dealing with a very slow summer. In our 10 years of business, I’ve noticed a pattern that summers are generally slower for us with new business leads, and 2022 has been no exception.

Thankfully, we plan for our slow season, but even planning I always struggle with the fear that this time it will be permanent… This time the leads won’t bounce back…

And as the fourth quarter has bounced back with new projects and new leads, I’m reminded that not only does the pattern hold, but I can prepare for it even more. Maybe I’ll just plan to take all of August off next year!

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

My biggest lesson this year was realizing that, while I’ve successfully gotten myself out of the client delivery side of my business, I’m still too in the weeds when it comes to our sales and marketing.

So, I’ve started taking steps to hire sales and marketing support that will help move me out of the day-to-day sales and marketing activities and into more of a visionary and strategic role overall.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

Because of the Ace Stone podcast, we had a client come to us and ask us to create and produce another fiction podcast for her business. I’m extremely excited about the potential for fun, unusual, audio dramas as a unique way to promote a brand.

We’ve also started offering SEO show notes to podcasters, taking their podcast transcripts and turning them into search-optimized blog posts that will attract a different segment of their audience and drive traffic and leads long after the podcast is “old news.”

What’s the best thing you read in the last year?

I enjoyed “Building a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte. It’s a primer on how to build a database of digital notes that can inspire and spark new thought leadership. A fantastic idea and tool for anyone creating content online.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

There’s an old saying: New level, same devil. I interpret it to mean that every time you level up, you’ll face the same challenges — but perhaps in a different guise.

For me, it’s always about overcoming my imposter complex, that fear that this time the leads won’t come back, the clients won’t show up, and everyone will finally realize that I’ve been a fraud all this time.

I’ve gotten better at recognizing those thoughts for what they are, but they continue to show up. It’s just that now they show up in new and unexpected places or ways.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We’re looking to hire a part-time sales and marketing assistant that can support me and our sales team in the tech around our marketing efforts and create some marketing content for us. Interested candidates can learn more and apply.