How Acquired grew a niche podcast into a large-scale audience.

By Acquired

Categories: VC, Startup, Product

Summary

Even a niche podcast can grow a large-scale audience of millions, if you focus on a global, online community rather than just local geography. Acquired doubled its audience without scaling its production, proving the power of targeted internet niches.

Key Takeaways

1. Recognize that your niche topic may have a much larger global audience online than in your local geography. Focus on reaching that wider, internet-enabled market.
2. You don't need to scale your production operation to dramatically grow your audience. Acquired doubled its audience while keeping the same inputs and workflow.
3. Identify specific internet niches that may be much larger than expected, and target your content and marketing to those global, online communities.
4. Leverage the scalability of online distribution to reach a large, targeted audience without needing to scale your internal operations.
5. Maintain consistent quality and workflow, even as your audience grows, to maximize efficiency and impact.
6. Embrace the power of internet-enabled niche communities to build a large, engaged audience around your content or product.

Topics

• Podcast Growth
• Niche Marketing
• Audience Building
• Online Distribution
• Content Scaling

Transcript Excerpt

The internet niches are way bigger than you think they are. David and I effectively do the same thing that we did two years ago to make an episode, but the audience has grown so much that like every output from the business is dramatically different even though all the inputs are the same. So if you think you're writing about a niche topic, the internet being a global community of 4ish billion people, there might be six people in your geography that care about it in your local town, but there th...