Announcement: Marketing Against the Grain

**Sam Parr** (0:13)
What's up, everyone? This is Sam Parr from My First Million. So today's a special day. You are getting a special episode. The two guys who decided to buy my company, their names are Kieran Flanagan, he's the SVP of Marketing at HubSpot, and then Kipp Bodnar, he's the CMO of HubSpot.
They've decided that they love My First Million so much that, guess what, they decided to launch their own podcast. It's actually pretty great. I've been listening to it as they've been getting going, and I love it. It's called Marketing Against the Grain. And it's a podcast all about how to capitalize on marketing trends before they blow up. And in this clip, they're gonna explain how YouTube can beat Apple and Spotify and win podcasting. And they're also gonna talk about Web3 apps and how they will literally pay you to exercise. It's pretty interesting. These guys are kind of geniuses. They are definitely two of the guys who are most responsible for this acquisition of the hustle. They're really, really sharp. I look up to them.
So check it out. It's called Marketing Against the Grain and it starts now.

**Kipp Bodnar** (1:03)
YouTube can win podcasts.

**Kieran Flanagan** (1:06)
Yes.

**Kipp Bodnar** (1:06)
Because it actually has a better distribution engine than Apple, Spotify, any of these other platforms for podcasts, which is Search. Because the death of most podcasts is there is zero long tail equity. You listen to a show and then it disappears.
YouTube, which Search has all of that equity. And I'm curious to get your opinion on what you think about that move by YouTube and what do you think the long term plan here is for podcasts?

**Kieran Flanagan** (1:31)
Kieran, I'm fascinated about what you just said. I want to break it down a little bit more for the listeners before we even go down this. If you think about this first segment of the show, Kieran is dropping some knowledge on YouTube and its advantage in the podcast space. The reason for that is YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world after Google. And if you're a business and you've got a podcast, or if you're an individual, you've got a podcast. Basically how you attract people is through word of mouth and people knowing about the name of your show and looking for the name of your show, listening, subscribing, because they basically have that branded search term. They know what your show is called and what it's about.
There's very little traffic that comes from people looking for topics that they want to just listen to a bunch of different podcasts on.
And that latter part is what YouTube nails, right? You can look at specific topics, specific guests, much better YouTube search than you can in Spotify search or Apple podcast search, because those traditional podcast platforms are anchored around the hosts and the name of the show versus the content of the show itself. And I think we're gonna move to a world longer term where the content is more important or just as important as the host. And so that means if you are a business or individual doing a podcast, you can't ignore YouTube. And the fact that YouTube is now gonna start giving you money to make a version of your show, which takes some of the video production and editing expense away, that is just a no-brainer because then you're gonna see growth and that growth is gonna allow you to fund better and better investment into the work you're doing on YouTube. So I think it's a huge opportunity for creators. And I think we're gonna see the rise of podcasting on YouTube really take off over the next 12 to 18 months.

**Kipp Bodnar** (3:07)
The thing that I think that most podcasts discovery engines miss is one of the big ways that you can get people into different podcasts is through related podcasts. Like you like this thing, you probably like these other things, which is what? Large proportion of your traffic in YouTube will come from related videos. Some of it will come from search, but a lot of it actually comes from recommended videos. And all podcast discovery engines are predicated on, here are other podcasts you like because you listen to this podcast. They all miss out on, here are other podcasts you like because you enjoyed this guest.
And I think YouTube can do those things much, much better.

**Kieran Flanagan** (3:37)
It shows you that audio as a format, podcasts in particular, still has tons of discovery problems. And so when you're thinking about your marketing strategy, thinking about the stories you're trying to tell, audio is a powerful tool with deep engagement, but while there's still some underlying flaws in the infrastructure around how people experience and discover audio stories today.