Solving the Podcast Sphinx Riddle: Podcast Marketing, with Tink Media
Lauren Passell and Arielle Nissenblatt sat down with Bingeworthy on a noisy rooftop during the Tribeca Festival...this post is FULL of solid gold cat poop emoji that you can't afford to miss
When I met Lauren Passell and Arielle Nissenblatt of Tink Media on a lounge rooftop during the Tribeca Festival, I didn’t intend to get personal about ear wax, but that’s where we began.
I had my trimmed-down field small recording set up; a Zoom H5, one Shure mic for them to share, and my end of the conversation being recorded on the Zoom’s built-in XY microphone (plus an external battery pack to keep it all going).
I had not planned for this conversation to be fit for human consumption; it was just for the AI bots to transcribe. But I hadn’t thought through all of the variables; I didn’t anticipate there would be music playing in the background, nor did I foresee a giant storm looming with ominous black thunderclouds lingering in the distance. This made the recording useable, but only after some effort post-AI transcript.
Because I didn’t plan to share this audio, I didn’t bring headphones—which is definitely a rookie mistake (and would have helped me here, clearly). I would have to lug this bag around New York City all day, so I wanted it to fit in a small bag. These are the sacrifices you make.
But I was in the company of audio-first folks, so I felt like I had to explain myself.
Samantha Hodder: I meant to bring earbuds and they were so gross. I went looking for them at home...I found an old Bose pair. I was going to bring them, but it's embarrassing to use them in public…they look like threadbare underwear. So I’m recording here without headphones, which is sort of illegal.
Lauren Passell: Sometimes I get nervous when people ask—Can I see your headphones…No!
Arielle Nissenblatt: It’s a personal thing. That's my ear wax…it actually can tell you a lot about somebody Do you know different races have different types of earwax?
SH: I did not.
AN: I learned this recently, on a podcast probably. Some people have flakier earwax, some people have goopier earwax...
LP: Did you also know that animals have different shaped poop?
AN: I have heard that. But some can be crazy shapes.
LP: Right, like triangles, and pyramids. I think I need to Google this.
AN: I hope you're rolling.
If you have spent any amount of time online in the podcast community, you will have bumped into one or both of Lauren Passell and Arielle Nissenblatt. Both of them have been working in the podcast space for years; Arielle founded Earbuds Podcast Collective back in 2017, she also clocks in as Head of Community and Content at SquadCast. Lauren has been growing her company Tink Media since 2019. More on that below.
Lauren, who’s a bit the straight man that makes you uncontrollably giggle, explained how it all began.
I love discovering the origin story of companies because it always serves as a reminder that the endings of things are most often the beginnings of something else. It’s also a reminder that it’s ok to start going in one direction, and then pivot and change once you, or the market, change.
Lauren Passell: I remember the exact date in 2019. I was fired on June 1.
Arielle Nissenblatt: Yeah!
LP: It was a yeah. I thought I hit my lowest low point. I had had a foot injury for a year. I think it was work-related from stress; no one knew what it was. Because of that, I fell and I broke my arm. But I never went to the doctor; then it turned black.
So anyway, I get fired, and I have to carry all my stuff home. I'm limping, I only have one arm.
Later that day, I walked around The East Village in Victoria’s Secret pajama pants and a Disney t-shirt, just being depressed. I live near a homeless shelter and someone came up to me and was like, Do you want to come inside? And I was like, Oh, this is the bottom.
And then I came home. And I have an old Nintendo, and I played for one week straight.
And then I stopped and I put it down and I started applying for jobs. I literally couldn't get a job anywhere. Actually [I did get a job] … Doordash approved my application, and they sent [me] a refrigerated bag. Is this the bottom?
My husband was like, I don't think should work at Doordash…partially because you've been working in media for 15 years already, partially, because you're going to get murdered.
So that's whem I was thought: I guess I'll start my own company.
But I never thought it would be real.
I [had] worked in book publishing. Originally, Tink was to get authors on podcasts to talk about their books. That was all the company was. I wasn't working with podcasters really.
But the more I started pitching my clients to podcasts, I [realized]: Oh! They don't really know anything about podcasts.
AN: Lauren and I met in 2020. Right? Well, we met on the Internet in 2019…Podcast Movement in 2020. It was right before the world shut down.
I was living in LA, you were living in New York. We met for 15 minutes…
LP: On couches, we fell in love.
AN: We fell in love…Lauren had sparkles on her face, as she does now…
LP: You were just sparkling, in general, and I was like: Who is this person!?
AN: And then, almost another year passed. The pandemic happened. We stayed in touch here and there...but then it was January of 2021, and Lauren messaged me on Twitter. And she's like, Hi, I have a proposition for you. Can I call you? And I was like, yeah!
And then Lauren said…I have a client and they have a lot of they have a lot of work upcoming. And I'm just wondering, do you know what a promo swap is? Do you know how to set up promo swaps?
And we've been working together ever since. That was two and a half years ago. It's evolved so much since then. And we've become really good friends.
Now Tink employs 10 people, in varying amounts, from just a few hours each week, to three-or-four people at full-time.
In order to figure out what Tink Media does, first I had to understand what they don’t do…and at the same time hope to uncover a mystery that I’ve been working to solve for years: all those dudes who DM spam me on socials to offer their “services.”
If I could help anyone with this article, it would be this: to solve this mystery of what those folks actually do.
Samantha Hodder: Lauren, you posted on Twitter something like this: Tell me you're in podcasting without telling me you're on podcasting. And someone wrote: “Promote this on Reality Records” …and I fell off my chair laughing because I get spam on Instagram too!
I guess if you use the #podcast they find you and they claim that they can promote your podcast and get you downloads and subscribers…they even tell you a number, which is like 5000, and it costs you $50.
I just want to know, is this a scam? Or does it actually work?
Lauren Passell: [Looks at Arielle] We haven't talked about this. I bought three of them.
Arielle Nissenblatt: No!
LP: We haven't talked about this….I wanted to write about it. Because it's so cheap. Show me what can do…Right? I have a podcast called Feed The Queue [so I bought some for that].
I'm glad we're talking about this because I kind of forgot to check in on it.
SH: But what does it actually do?
AN: So Reality Records is different from the Apple podcast promoters who hit you up on LinkedIn…it's a bot on Instagram that will pop up if you use certain hashtags. And they want you to DM them and then find a way to like promote you on social media.
The Apple podcast people [are] a click farm. They have a bunch of different computers with a bunch of different IP addresses, and they're pressing play on your show.
SH: Right. They also claim they'll get you reviews.
AN: Kevin Goldberg, who used to run Discover Pods, which is now run by James Griffin, investigated a podcast called Kick-Ass News a few years ago, and he wrote about it on Discover Pods. He basically figured out how this whole thing works.
SH: So...You don't get the bots going. You don't do fake clicks. Tell me what you do? And, how you do it?
LP: I'm always trying to figure out what Tink is. We're obsessed with audio. So sometimes people will hire a PR marketing company that like doesn't understand audio and it's like, yikes!
We are listening. We listen at least five hours a day each, like multiple streams. And we barely overlap.
We don't usually like to [make] promises. People will say: What will our uplift be? Can we double our numbers? We can't promise any of that…but you can rely on us to work really hard.
AN: We can promise the number of outlets that will pitch to. Every single campaign is different. When we work with somebody, we're doing a quote unquote, sales call. And I say quote, unquote, because it never feels like we're actually selling.
We actually did a podcast therapy, which is what we call our consulting sessions, and at the end, she goes, “Okay, what's the pitch?” And we said, “Oh, there is no pitch. That was just an hour of us. You're paying us, which is great.”
She says: “You know, that's a pitch in and of itself.” And we were like, “Yeah, but we don't have time to take you on,” And she said: “I want you even more!”
Lauren and I can be very picky with who we work with. Which is great. Even with this economic downturn, even with the layoffs, and what seems like a slowing down of media, there are still podcasters who have money to spend. And we get to work with a lot of amazing creators.
What are the levers that we pull?
We pitch to podcast newsletters
We pitch to niche newsletters…so if your podcast is about beluga whales, we’ll pitch to a marine biology newsletter… any sort of related keyword, topic, blog or publication.
We pitch to the podcast listening apps for features.
We pitch you to be a guest on other shows. We pitch for more integrated segments. So maybe you become a correspondent once a month on a show that makes sense.
We pitch promos, lap speed drops…all that kind of stuff.
And then really anything that comes up. We’re working with a show right now that is not even technically a podcast, it just uses RSS to distribute white noise. We had to get really out of the box for that one.
SH: You work with both Indies and big box studios…how do you work differently with each of them?
LP: Sometimes when we're working with someone like PRX, they have a marketing team, but they kind of need help breaking out [of their world]. Or iHeart...they need help breaking out of the iHeart world.
Usually, we would get hired to do something a little more specific, like hire us to pitch the guests around to be interviewed, or something like that. For Indies, we're going through it together. And we love Indies!
A lot of the Indies have come to us and been like: Should we be worried? It's rough out there. And we're like: You don't have to worry because you have been making good audio. You're always going to make good audio. And you weren't spending money in a ridiculous way ever. Keep on making good audio.
AN: Sometimes we work with people who have 500 downloads an episode and they want to go to 700. And we can help that happen by way of promo swaps.
Our philosophy is in order to grow a show, you need to be borrowing audience from existing shows.
So if your show is about work-life balance, and you get 500 downloads an episode, you need to be a guest on another show about work or life or balance or mental health…or any of these keyword topics, so that the people who are listening to that show will be ready to listen to more shows.
The philosophy is that people who listen to podcasts tend to listen to more than six podcasts. This is from data that Tom Webster presented at Podcast Movement in 2022, where he said that the average person who listens to podcast listens to seven or eight podcasts. So how do you become a seventh or an eighth, or the first podcast for somebody?
LP: We give so many tips. I literally have a more than 100 tweet Twitter thread about marketing tips, that I add to all the time.
But if I think if I had one tip, it's this:
Promo swap.
Focus on that.
Set up a promo swap on every single episode.
People say that doesn't work.
It does.
It might take time.
But if you do it every time, it absolutely works.
LP: We do something called Podcast Therapy, which is like consulting, it's so much fun. And someone from Tink comes along and takes notes so that they go away with a bible of information. And they learn about the way that they tried to learn about the way our brains work.
But I think a lot of times we're ask: What is your goal? And they don't know, or no one's ever asked them?
Or: I think the very first thing you have to think of is my goal downloads…Maybe it's something else.
AN: I encourage people to have at least three reasons for why they're doing something that is not just about the downloads.
What else are you getting out of making the show?
Could it be you're practicing your public speaking skills?
Could it be you're getting in front of people who you want to talk to?
Could it be…any number of things, but it can't just be the numbers.
SH: What if someone's in there to win an award?
How do you how do the how do you tell them? Like what do you tell him are the steps to get there?
AN: Be aware of all of the awards that are specific for podcasts. But I guess the question then would be: Why do you want to win an award? Is it going to bring you downloads? Maybe.
LP: I had a call with someone and she said: “I want to win an award.” We were like why? And she was like, Well, my friends have won them. That's a fine reason. Maybe it doesn't matter as much as you think it does though, right?
AN: I guess like if somebody wants to win an award, there’s the Signal Awards, there's Tribeca now (it’s been doing audio for the past three years). There's the Podcast Academy, and there's a few other podcast-specific awards.
And then I think it has a lot to do with just being vocal and visible in the podcast space. Not just, as I say, posting and ghosting, usually for social media.
But you've got to be active in the podcast community where you're where your podcast is. So if your podcast is about mental health, it's about being a person in the mental health space who has things to say. Being active is making it so that a potential judge might see you doing X, Y and Z and then know that you have a podcast and then listen to your podcast.
LP: Also, make sure your cover is pretty, but also your audio is good. I think so many people make shitty podcasts. So make sure that like you're not too precious with what you're making.
Make sure that if you hire us to consult for you, and we tell you this needs to be improved…and then you actually take that into account and make some changes. It doesn't have to be every single thing that we say to get a second opinion. But we listen to a lot of shows and we know what we're talking about.
Samantha Hodder: What kind of price range do you work with? If someone wants to work with you and get something happening and make the needle move? What does it actually cost?
Lauren Passell: It's a different proposal for everyone.
It's more of a menu, like, pick-and-choose, or à la carte.
Sometimes people hire us just to pitch them around. Sometimes people want the full menu.
Sometimes people come to us with a problem, and we try to solve it. And so an example is UCLA came to us with their podcast, and they said, We're taking a lot of time off. What can we do?
And we decided to create for them what we're calling a "Feed Warmer Campaign," which is where we find shows with similar audiences, we create a mini-season, based on other people's shows.
They said: “Hey, we think we're gonna be gone for a little bit, we think you'll enjoy these wonderful shows.”
So it kept their feed warm, it got them some downloads, and then it was marketing, because the other shows put their show in there. That wasn't in the menu of services…
Arielle Nissenblatt: And now we have a “Feed Warmer Campaign,” and we're working with Erik Jones at
.He’s been doing fun illustrations about podcast stuff, like the hand warmers…he's drawing us a “feed warmer. "
SH: That’s adorable.
So you're fixing problems as they get uncovered, which is at the same moment you realize them, and then you use your jazz hands to figure out the solution, which then becomes “a term,” such as “feed warmer,” which will become a term d'art in the industry as we move forward.
This is part of the reason I love podcasting…
AN: We’re making it up!
SH: Partly, we're making it up as we go along. But we're just innovating and we're doing shit as it happens.
AN: I think it feeds into our buzz-building idea. I mentioned a philosophy that we have, which is that in order to grow an audience, you need to borrow from other audiences.
But another philosophy is buzz-building and being everywhere all the time, so that a potential listener cannot deny that they must check you out. Right?
If you're featured on
, if you're featured on , if you're featured on Hot Pod, if you're featured everywhere…and somebody is thinking of listening to you, and they get their seven touch point with you, then they're like, You know what, I've got to check it out.So I think I'm not saying that newsletters bring huge download numbers. But it's all part of this compounding effect of if somebody sees you there, they also hear you on a promo swap. They also see you on a podcast-listening app...They're going to check you out.
Lauren Passell: Podcast Therapy is $325 an hour ($550 for two hours)
AN: And campaigns go up to $6,000 depending on what you want, the average is probably $3,000.
LP: Podcast Therapy is the lowest entry point.
SH: I've been that person that has a podcast and basically $0 to do everything…Where do I go? What do I do?
AN: Well, we do 15 minutes for free!
LP: The other thing is, my advice if you have $50, buy an ad in a newsletter. That’s how I would spend money. They're so cheap. And they work. And then they get you noticed by the right people. I'm not saying my newsletter. I'm saying anyone you want.
Pssst: Do you have your summer listening all queued up? Here’s my post from last week to get you started….
