Podcasting March 10, 2023

Mamamia: The secrets to growing a more inclusive podcast audience

Reporter

This week, at View By Sydney, Mamamia hosted a breakfast with 150 guests from brands and agencies, and shared how the platform has managed to grow such a big and inclusive podcast audience.

The CRA ranker shows monthly (Au) listens of Mamamia of over 5.6 million (Nov ‘22-Jan ‘23), with Mamamia Out Loud co-hosts Mia Freedman, Holly Wainwright and Jessie Stephens among the most listened-to women in Australian podcasting.

‘The 3 Things You Can Steal From The Biggest Australian Pure Podcast Network’ saw the Outlouders share three principles behind their success, applicable to brand growth in any category:

Respectfully, we disagree. Swimming against the tide of cancel culture, Mia, Jessie and Holly strongly disagree with each other on many of the issues they discuss each week, (it’s whatever women are talking about), but they don’t fall out over it. By embracing conflicting perspectives, with respect intact, a wider variety of people in the audience feel seen and heard, and want to join in.

Listen obsessively, but don’t hand over the wheel. Feedback is constant and it can be overwhelming. Don’t make the mistake of handing over the wheel to your audience, it can run you off the road. You are the one driving your brand. Navigate feedback with your values and the clear role in their life you are aiming for.

Trust is the most important context, the rest you can mess with. Restricting yourself to only category-aligned contexts is old school and unnecessarily narrows your audience. She is three dimensional, she’s interested in everything. “She doesn’t think “This isn’t a beauty show, why are you talking about skincare?” or wonder why a show that just had a segment about politics is now telling me about a meal delivery service.”

Mamamia’s Head of Podcasts Lize Ratliff says “Being a pure podcast network, with no catch-up radio shows, matters for brands.”

“Analytic Partners have shown the marketing ROI of podcasts to be almost three times radio.” (Source: IAB Audio Summit ‘21)