In this engaging episode, host Brian sits down with marketing and entrepreneurship experts, Alex Garashchenko and Josh Hoffman, to explore their incredible journey. They shed light on the dynamic world of podcasting as a potent marketing tool, sharing their experiences in evolving their own podcast. Dive into their insights on community building among agency owners and discover how it becomes a catalyst for valuable partnerships and industry referrals. The discussion underscores the art of maintaining engagement while monetizing communities and the strategic steps to avoid any negative impact. Tune in for a valuable discussion on marketing and entrepreneurship, led by the experts themselves.
Josh Hoffman, a seasoned M&A and business development pioneer who founded GamePlan and is currently Head of M&A at Pulsar, has demonstrated remarkable versatility throughout his career. An alumnus of the University of Central Florida’s College of Business Administration, Josh now showcases his marketing acumen as a podcast host of “Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast” at DevNoodle. Meanwhile, Alexander Garashchenko, Managing Member of DevNoodle and a driving force behind DevNoodle, excels at fusing marketing with technology. With a background in marketing and a certificate in Entertainment, Media, and Entrepreneurship from UCLA Anderson School of Management, Alex dedicates himself to providing technical strategies and implementation services to entrepreneurial minds. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Hard to Market Podcast:
- Embracing a hands-off approach and focusing on customer success for differentiation
- Learning from listening to other podcasts and making improvements to their own.
- Monetizing the community by offering referral charges for successful partnerships.
- Building a community keeps in touch with potential clients and allows for future business opportunities.
- The podcast is just the beginning, with plans to monetize and expand its value.
- Monetization can ruin the engagement and effectiveness of communities like Facebook and Reddit.
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Quotables:
- 07:40 – “We knew because companies are worried, especially for their own quality control, to hand over the reins to someone else, especially when they spent so much time building up the trust, whether there’s a specific industry that they work in, like if they’re going to fail, they’re going to feel it. We don’t want to be the reason that they fail. So for us, the differentiation is consistency. We are very strict about our due dates. The most important thing for us is managing expectations. And we say that we’ll never embarrass you, which that’s been our differentiation. So we have a policy within the company that no superheroes work here because super superheroes create chaos and they may save the day one day and they may destroy a town next. So that was the differentiation that we went for.”
- 10:28 – “We decided to use Podcast Chef, and he explained the process to me, and it made perfect sense. We needed to reach a market that was essentially hard for me to get in front of, if I was just pitching to them, everyone gets the emails of, we found your website and we could do SEO for your website and make it better, or for your clients, or we have this dev team to help you, or to help you sell more. And that approach largely doesn’t work unless someone is really in a desperate place. And we weren’t looking for clients that were in a desperate place. So we needed a way to make introduction or get introduced to companies.”
- 14:39 – “When you listen to so many podcasts, you just naturally think, “oh, why did they say that?” Or you try to pick up best practices and stuff, but when you’re the host, it’s not as evident, right? You don’t know, especially in the beginning, like I had all my questions and I actually think my question format hasn’t really changed that much throughout. So I think my studying of podcasts in the beginning did an okay job there, but I would go back and listen. And that’s when you notice, like, even if you cut someone off like a half a second, it’s kind of a bigger deal.”
- 23:14 – “But at least our intention right now is not to make it some big “.com” sharing referral website. It’s starting with our podcast. So we’ve brought it up almost to everyone that we’ve recorded to lately about, “hey, this is our intention and we’re not charging upfront.” Check that off. We don’t have to worry about that, but can we give you business? Like sure, well we take a portion of it, and then call it like a referral charge. I think we have to, but I also think that everyone in the ecosystem is more than okay with that. All they want is for their customers to be happy. And when their customer asks for something that they don’t have and they can go through this effortless process to just get the answer, I think everyone will pay for that.”
- 28:35 – “With that community concept, one of the biggest challenges that you have when you build a community is continuing to maintain that engagement. So I love the idea that you’re going to continue to try and nurture that. What are you going to do to foster that engagement? They’ve already recorded their episode, so whatever initial bait you had on the hook to get them to participate is now spent.”