Product Startup Podcast Episode 138: Audio Ads for Hardware Products

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Oh, product innovators, today we learn from the number one audio agency in the country on how to sell your new hardware product using audio advertising.

00:00:10 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors,

00:00:20 Narrator: product developers, and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial

00:00:28 Narrator: idea to getting your product on store shelves. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business.

00:00:37 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development for small product businesses. Now, onto the show.

00:00:47 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today, I'm very excited to introduce Stew Redwine to the show.

00:00:51 Kevin Mako: Stu is the vice president creative services at Oxford Road, one of the leading audio advertising agencies in the world.

00:00:56 Kevin Mako: They ran the audio ads behind Unicorn Physical Product Success Stories, such as, has quip toothbrushes, Therogun, Tommy John, and many more.

00:01:04 Kevin Mako: Today, Sue is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what audio platforms are out there to advertise your product on, how to get

00:01:12 Kevin Mako: started in an audio advertising space for hardware products, and how to make a great audio ad to make your product invention the next big success. Now, on to the episode.

00:01:22 Stew Redwine: Hey, Stu, welcome to the show.

00:01:24 Kevin Mako: Hey, Kevin. Thank you for having me. Well, appreciate being on the show today to talk about audio. We haven't talked about audio

00:01:30 Kevin Mako: before. And it's not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about selling a new hardware product or scaling up a product.

00:01:37 Kevin Mako: But this is something that's going on for 100 years. So it's something that also could be an amazing platform for folks to look into whether they're launching a

00:01:45 Kevin Mako: product or scaling a product. And now you represent one of the biggest firms, if not the biggest firm in the world, the biggest agency in the world for audio.

00:01:53 Kevin Mako: You've been in this game a long time. And you know all kinds of things about how hardware products get to market and then really expand to reach via audio.

00:02:01 Stew Redwine: So before we jump into all of that today, just give us a background. How'd you get to where you are today? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Thank you for the kind words about Oxford Road.

00:02:09 Stew Redwine: Yeah, we like to say we're the number one independent audio agency, but I'll take number one in the world, number one of all time.

00:02:16 Stew Redwine: And how I got to hear, you know, it's funny, I look back over the trajectory of my career. And about 20 years ago, I was moving around lights and stands as

00:02:25 Stew Redwine: grip electric. It's moved. Those two positions are combined back where I'm from in Kansas City. on direct response television commercials. And I didn't know it at the time,

00:02:34 Stew Redwine: but it was like I was already getting steep in direct response. And I kept working in that vein. I like working with my hands. I like doing stuff physical.

00:02:41 Stew Redwine: But there was this moment where I looked around and I saw that the folks that were twice my age that were in the grip and electric department

00:02:47 Stew Redwine: were still moving the same heavy objects I was moving. I was like, wait a minute, I'm going to have to be moving this stuff around for the next 20 years.

00:02:54 Stew Redwine: What's everybody else doing on set? And I saw the people in the agency are on their keyboards. I'm like, well, that doesn't look half bad. but I don't know how to do that.

00:03:01 Stew Redwine: Well, the producer, okay, well, the producer's also working with their fingers on a keyboard. We all go over that way. So I started producing. I'm very grateful.

00:03:08 Stew Redwine: It just set out to do that and I started to do that and the jobs got bigger and it was awesome.

00:03:12 Stew Redwine: We made a significant decision about 10 years ago, my wife and I, to either move to Los Angeles and start chasing bigger work or to stay in the Midwest. I've always been a maker.

00:03:22 Stew Redwine: I've always like creating all kinds of stuff. Oxford Road had just started out around that exact same time. I was working in the same we work as them, and I started freelancing

00:03:31 Stew Redwine: with them, and it just got to a point where it was a really good fit. I was getting to make creative stuff. I've always liked audio.

00:03:38 Stew Redwine: And I made that decision point of going like, okay, do I keep doing stuff on my own? Or do I go and work at Oxford Road? And now here I am full time seven years later.

00:03:47 Kevin Mako: And that's made all the difference. So that's the story in a nutshell. Kevin. Enjoying the best, right? And what an incredible experience.

00:03:53 Kevin Mako: And I'm really excited for you to bring that experience to our listeners here today. So starting big picture at the top of the funnel here, what are audio ads specifically for

00:04:02 Kevin Mako: hardware products?

00:04:03 Stew Redwine: How does it work? And what is the definition? Then we'll get into more detail. Yeah, absolutely. What are audio ads for hardware products? I think they're the same as

00:04:12 Stew Redwine: audio ads across the board, which from the very beginning, you know, it's funny on August 28th,

00:04:19 Stew Redwine: 2022. So here in just a couple of weeks from the time we're recording this is the 100-year anniversary of the first paid radio ad that was on

00:04:27 Stew Redwine: August 28th, 1922. And it was Hawthorne Court Apartments and it was a 10-minute radio ad where they were talking about and painting the picture

00:04:36 Stew Redwine: in the theater of the mind of their apartment complex. And I think that that's where audio ads live.

00:04:42 Stew Redwine: They are either informative or entertaining way to engage a person in a very intimate way in the

00:04:50 Stew Redwine: theater of their own mind to conceptualize. So in the case of products, what this product is,

00:04:57 Stew Redwine: how it is helping me solve a problem or present an opportunity for something that is really

00:05:03 Stew Redwine: important to me in language that I would use and doing it all, like I said, in this, I just think it's so dynamic.

00:05:11 Stew Redwine: We are in audio, you are engaging people's imagination. So audio ads are a way to help people perceive in their

00:05:21 Stew Redwine: own head what it is that your product or service does and either call them directly to action, which is the space that I work in, is in performance

00:05:29 Kevin Mako: marketing, or cause them to feel so fondly about your product or service that when the need arises, they're going to think of you first. This is what's so unique about audio.

00:05:39 Kevin Mako: It's got this different lever that you can pull to really capture the imagination. I think of the concept around cartoons, The Simpsons as an example.

00:05:47 Kevin Mako: The theories came to light that the reason the Simpsons was so popular visually is because the basics of the actual design allowed people to somewhat

00:05:56 Kevin Mako: form their own kind of personalized interpretation of what they see. And this is exactly what we're talking about with audio.

00:06:03 Kevin Mako: So this gives us a very unique ability to present a product, either a solution that you're solving or a pain point that you're helping somebody with and really help them feel it

00:06:13 Stew Redwine: in a different way than all the different types of vision. visual ads that are out there as well. There's no question. I think that then naturally,

00:06:21 Stew Redwine: the most powerful form of audio advertising, and this goes back to that first ad one hundred years ago, is one person talking to another person.

00:06:30 Stew Redwine: And we've seen that time and time again. With the Hawthorne Court Apartments read, that ad read that was 10 minutes long that they paid

00:06:36 Stew Redwine: $50 for, that was a representative of the company talking about the Hawthorne Court apartments. I think that's another thing that you're able to get in audio is when you have one

00:06:46 Stew Redwine: human being talking to another human being testifying about this product or service. I use this

00:06:52 Stew Redwine: and you should use it too or as a representative of the company yourself expressing to the individual

00:06:58 Stew Redwine: who is listening in a very intimate medium why this product or service matters

00:07:03 Kevin Mako: to them to something that in their own language is something that is significant and important to them. Let's talk about how this works.

00:07:10 Kevin Mako: You guys have worked with a ton of different hardware products. Everybody probably knows quipped toothbrushes at this point in time.

00:07:16 Kevin Mako: You've got thermocun, you've got underwear products, bed sheets, etc.

00:07:20 Kevin Mako: So talk about some of these products and how these scaling product companies

00:07:24 Stew Redwine: are using audio ads to either launch their product to sell or to scale their product up.

00:07:31 Stew Redwine: Yeah, at Oxford Road, we've, from the very beginning, have been a part of several companies that have been able to scale to be unicorns.

00:07:40 Stew Redwine: And a lot of them, like you said, a bunch of different product companies, like you mentioned, the quip electric toothbrush, we were part of

00:07:47 Stew Redwine: Bolandbrand sheets, Tommy John Underwear, the Theragon, Billy Razers. When they're coming

00:07:53 Stew Redwine: into offline, so let's say they're talking about audio, we've done what we can do on Facebook,

00:07:57 Stew Redwine: we've done what we can do on Google, where are there other worlds that we can conquer? So let's go offline, let's go into audio.

00:08:03 Stew Redwine: I think the real key thing is that even if you're big time in some of these other channels, a lot of times when it comes to audio and it goes to radio,

00:08:11 Stew Redwine: podcast, Series X-M in people's cars. They haven't heard about you. Maybe they've got some association

00:08:16 Stew Redwine: to you, but they probably haven't heard about you for a lot of these companies, especially when they were starting out. So it's really important is to go, okay, how can I boil this

00:08:24 Stew Redwine: message down to make it as clear as possible about what I'm talking about? And how can I find that one thing about your value prop or about that

00:08:34 Stew Redwine: makes you different? You're positioning against the other products that are out there to be able to make it very clear to people, this is what this brand is about.

00:08:42 Stew Redwine: So I think about Bowlin Branch Sheets. I'm grateful we were a part of their story for a number of years.

00:08:48 Stew Redwine: The copy that we generated with them was that they had presidents, United States presidents that used Bowling Branch Sheets.

00:08:55 Stew Redwine: And so on Series XM and in other audio channels, the message that we put out there and in Radio, Terrestrial Radio, was Bowling Branch Sheets loved by three U.S. presidents.

00:09:05 Stew Redwine: And that was the line that we heard back the most from customers and from the marketplace was like, oh yeah, That's the president's sheets, right?

00:09:13 Stew Redwine: So it was this very short way to establish. Like, these must be really high quality sheets. So what you want to do is boil your message down and we have a framework

00:09:22 Stew Redwine: for how we do that to make it as clear as possible. And then don't deviate from it. Because what you're doing is like in audio, you're checking like, is this thing on?

00:09:30 Stew Redwine: Is this thing on? You want to see what the value of all these different media properties are. So it's really important to keep your message as

00:09:36 Stew Redwine: crisp, clear, and clever as possible and consistent over time to discover what everything's worth.

00:09:44 Stew Redwine: And then you can start pulling levers and start to test and experiment. But when you're first coming into audio with our product, I think it's about boil the message down,

00:09:53 Stew Redwine: be really, really clear about what makes you different, what makes you special.

00:09:58 Kevin Mako: Why would somebody part with their money for you against anybody else? And then blast that message out and repeat it

00:10:05 Kevin Mako: over time. And I think it's easier to get that message out than ever before now. That was one of the

00:10:10 Kevin Mako: daunting things, especially in the hardware startup world, is that people thought, okay, well, it's a big deal to have a national radio campaign or something like this.

00:10:18 Kevin Mako: But the reality is you can start extremely small. You can start testing and running these ads or running different types of ads over time or whatever it might be.

00:10:27 Kevin Mako: It doesn't have to be big anymore because of the advent of the internet. And of course, podcasts is one of the main mediums there. Can you talk a bit about how people

00:10:34 Kevin Mako: can access these different spaces. And then further down in the episode, I want to talk about your actual process for making great ads.

00:10:41 Kevin Mako: You've obviously touched on some here, but let's first

00:10:44 Stew Redwine: talk about how accessible those mediums are and then how to really conquer those mediums

00:10:48 Stew Redwine: for either an early stage hardware startup or somebody that's trying to expand their advertising cam via audio.

00:10:54 Stew Redwine: You know, keeping it about podcasts, like you said, it's such an exciting space and it continues to grow. And just look at, I mean, your show, for instance, right?

00:11:02 Stew Redwine: Like there's an audience out here for people that are in the product space who are designing these sorts of things.

00:11:09 Stew Redwine: And it's gotten to a place now where it's so large and you can slice these audiences thinner and thinner, which is great.

00:11:15 Stew Redwine: There's a couple different platforms where it's self-serve. Somebody could go immediately, somebody listening to this program that's got, I don't know, a better

00:11:23 Stew Redwine: coffee mug or whatever it is. Podcorn, which is an Odyssey company, that would be one that's self-served that they can go to immediately or gumball.

00:11:31 Stew Redwine: And they also offer a host red ass. Those are a couple where you can go, you can transact and you can start to see, is this channel

00:11:38 Stew Redwine: working for me? I just think it's really, really important. And I know we're going to talk about

00:11:41 Stew Redwine: this to really dial in your message first and make sure your message is, every word counts, and it's as clear as possible. And you don't want to change it a bunch.

00:11:49 Stew Redwine: Kind of the next level up, Heather Osgood at True Native Media. She is awesome. That's where you're going to get more of a

00:11:56 Stew Redwine: concierge experience and advertised cast would be another one as well. And then like the next level up from that would be working directly with a network.

00:12:05 Stew Redwine: So let's say ACAST. If you're to do that, you're going to be working with them to put together packages with all of their publishers. And then at

00:12:14 Stew Redwine: that same level, that's where I see Oxford Road, the agency where I'm vice president of creative services, could come in and help put together a package where it's

00:12:22 Stew Redwine: across different channels across different networks based on the hundreds of millions of dollars of performance data that we have to go,

00:12:29 Kevin Mako: okay, where's the best opportunity for you to advertise this based on all of the performance that we've seen across a ton of different advertisers and a lot

00:12:39 Kevin Mako: of different media?

00:12:40 Kevin Mako: I appreciate that you break it down into the starter, somewhere in the middle, and then the advanced level there so that we can kind of paint the picture for the audience.

00:12:47 Kevin Mako: If you're going to try the audio road, let's just start small. Start with your MVP. And then as you're starting to find some success, then you can scale from there.

00:12:57 Kevin Mako: And I really appreciate you painting the picture of how that kind of grows and then how Oxford fits into that whole picture at the end of the day. So let's talk about that ad.

00:13:04 Kevin Mako: If we are going to try one of these platforms, even if it's a serve yourself platform, we want to try putting a few ads out there or our first ad out there on radio

00:13:12 Kevin Mako: specifically, what makes for a great ad? What is something that we could arguably learn from this episode to potentially even do

00:13:19 Kevin Mako: at home or with the small time producers so that we can at least get our first attempt at

00:13:24 Stew Redwine: baking a radio ad to wherever the audio message is going based on your experience, really what captures that type of audience to convert them into a

00:13:32 Stew Redwine: buying customer of your hardware product. Yeah, absolutely. We've got an approach at Oxford Road that we take that breaks up a persuasive message into nine key components.

00:13:42 Stew Redwine: Beyond that, it breaks it up even further into 71

00:13:45 Stew Redwine: subcomponents, which can be like, like that's overkill. I've been working with our founder

00:13:51 Stew Redwine: from before the beginning at Oxford Road, like I said, as a contractor, on this model, on this approach.

00:13:56 Stew Redwine: And I mean, it's based on John Cable's work, you know, the Ada model, AIDA,

00:14:02 Stew Redwine: and looking at Aristotle's, I got Aristotle's rhetoric right here, handy hand prop, you know, pathos, ethos, logos.

00:14:08 Stew Redwine: He's the one that said that a person is not fully persuaded until they consider a thing demonstrated, looking at Les Bonnet's work and how brands grow

00:14:17 Stew Redwine: with Byron Sharp, all of these things to go, okay, how do we call a person to action? And what we've determined is that there are nine key components, eight of

00:14:26 Stew Redwine: them are sequential. The last one is how you say it. That's really crucial because a lot of times

00:14:31 Stew Redwine: that can get put in front of your message where you go like, how are we going to say this? How are you going to dress it up?

00:14:38 Stew Redwine: It's like, no, no, no, no, no, forget about that. Let's figure out first what we're going to say, all right, and how it logically makes sense. And so we've got nine key components.

00:14:46 Stew Redwine: Like I said, the last one is how you say it execution. But it's your setup. How am I going to get their attention? Your value prop. What am I offering?

00:14:55 Stew Redwine: Positioning, why is it better than everything that's out there. Demonstration, hey, let me show you how this thing works or in audio. Let me paint a

00:15:01 Stew Redwine: picture in the theater of the mind.

00:15:04 Stew Redwine: Substantiation, why should I trust you? Again, in audio, intimate medium, where a host can say, I use this and you should too. Great substantiation.

00:15:13 Stew Redwine: It's also good to have any other reasons to believe that you can have in there that are meaningful and then offer scarcity path. And it's easy to combine all of those.

00:15:22 Stew Redwine: So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the call to actions is CTA. But it's like, okay, let's really break it down into component pieces. What's the offer?

00:15:29 Stew Redwine: And that doesn't just have to be 20% off or a dollar amount off. It can be your guarantee. It can be, you know, anybody that watch Madman is

00:15:37 Stew Redwine: familiar with them talking about how their tobacco is toasted. You know, everybody else's tobacco is toast.

00:15:44 Stew Redwine: So what is it that's special about your product? Scarcity, why should somebody get it now? Now, if it is a special offer, then it's going to have some deadline attached to it,

00:15:52 Stew Redwine: but it also can be compounding pain or a loss of opportunity and then path this one's also

00:15:59 Stew Redwine: super critical make it really really easy for them to engage with you you've got to give them a very clear way and a very clear place to go to be able to get that

00:16:08 Stew Redwine: product whatever that great product is and then the last piece is execution which to sum it up nicely into one phrase especially for

00:16:16 Stew Redwine: audio it would be make every word count like i can remember when we started out we would and hosts piles of paper, right?

00:16:25 Stew Redwine: Well, I got to tell them all the different ways that this toothbrush is better. And I have an addendum of this, that, and the other, and 16 different things that makes it special.

00:16:32 Stew Redwine: And it vibrates at this, you know, level and blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, man, I mean, you know, you're behind a mic right now. It's like, can we get it down onto one

00:16:39 Stew Redwine: clean sheet of paper? My setup, my value prop, my positioning, my demonstration, substantiation, offer scarcity path, roughly eight bullet points.

00:16:49 Stew Redwine: And then that last one, make every word count that are, every word is working as absolutely hard as you can. You hand that to a host. They know what to do.

00:16:57 Stew Redwine: Like, hosts can now do their thing.

00:16:59 Kevin Mako: They're your sales force, but you've got to equip them with as much clarity as possible for your sales message.

00:17:07 Kevin Mako: And there's a article that I wrote on this. You could link in the show notes that breaks it all down. It lays it all out of what those nine key components are.

00:17:16 Kevin Mako: I'll put those in that link in the show notes so that if anyone's there,

00:17:20 Kevin Mako: panicking, scrambling trying to write down these nine things. Don't worry about it. Just click through the episode link later on and you can go see those nine specific things

00:17:29 Kevin Mako: that make a great ad. And based on everything that you said, Stu, it seems like it's something that at least at a starter,

00:17:34 Kevin Mako: you could try at home to put your first version of these nine bullet points together on that half a page that you're trying to determine.

00:17:41 Kevin Mako: I think this is very useful for a product in any case. On a lot of different episodes, we talk about MVP, own your niche, be very specific, don't feature

00:17:49 Kevin Mako: creep, start with your high quality, but very simplified version of your value ad or your invention benefit or whatever else it is.

00:17:56 Kevin Mako: And we've had a number of people mention how valuable that is, not just for the product development, obviously cheaper, faster, quicker to market, all that sort of

00:18:03 Kevin Mako: stuff. But the other side is the marketing. When you have a simple, clear to understand value

00:18:09 Kevin Mako: proposition, it's much easier to sell that one or two key features.

00:18:14 Stew Redwine: And I think that's what comes back to that very small set of documents where you can nail down your nine things into,

00:18:19 Stew Redwine: just a half a page, put them together into your first ad and make sure that you, once you've written that ad, every single word counts towards this primary goal without

00:18:28 Stew Redwine: adding a whole bunch of feature creep, without adding a whole bunch of filler. No question. And if you're thinking about dabbling in

00:18:35 Stew Redwine: audio, you know, another thing to do is by reducing it down, like you're saying, like, know your value prop, have that dialed in.

00:18:43 Stew Redwine: When you're wearing Tommy John, you're that much more comfortable so you can do everything better.

00:18:47 Stew Redwine: That's our setup for Tommy John. That's our value prop for Tommy John. Our positioning is four times the stretch of competing brands and a number of other things as well.

00:18:57 Stew Redwine: It's loved by 17 million people now. I think I've got that right. But if you have all of those dialed in, you don't have to

00:19:04 Stew Redwine: stress too much about like being clever for the setup. Because again, I just want to stress for

00:19:11 Stew Redwine: audio, especially if you're doing host red ads, the host to bring that to the table.

00:19:16 Stew Redwine: You know, we've done a bunch of work and studies just recently this year, a huge one on, you know, what is the proper level of customization.

00:19:23 Stew Redwine: So we definitely have thoughts on that. But to your point about MVP, I would say in the space, you

00:19:29 Stew Redwine: know, just reduce, reduce, reduce, make it as clear and concise as possible. And then let's say you do have to do a produce spot.

00:19:36 Stew Redwine: When you look into your other channels, whatever headline, whatever about 25 word or something like that phrase that you've used in other channels, if that's a good,

00:19:46 Stew Redwine: hook that works, you can just as easily apply that into audio. I was just cracking open infomercial marketing by Timothy Hawthorne from Hawthorne Direct.

00:19:56 Stew Redwine: That looks like it's a few years old. It is. It's a sign copy too, which just happened by mistake. It's amazing how so much of that is still super relevant today, right?

00:20:04 Stew Redwine: Oh, it is. And he's talking about breaking stuff into seven second sound bites. So what I'm saying is if you use audioletics to dial everything in,

00:20:12 Stew Redwine: if the last kind of piece is what's my hook or how do I make it interesting, how do I punch through at the beginning? And you're feeling challenge.

00:20:19 Stew Redwine: What I'm trying to address is a potential

00:20:20 Kevin Mako: challenge, like a product maker that's listening to this might have and go, I'm not a writer, is I would look at what have you seen work in other channels and cross

00:20:30 Kevin Mako: apply that over into your

00:20:31 Stew Redwine: audio ad. And if all else fails and you still feel like, well, it's not very clever. It's not clever enough. It never hurts just to be clear.

00:20:38 Stew Redwine: I want to tell you about X, the best new why.

00:20:42 Stew Redwine: the best length for a podcast advertisement or are there different types and different lengths that you'd recommend? Just set some high level ideas.

00:20:51 Stew Redwine: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, most of the time you're looking at 60, 30 seconds, I would recommend for a 60 second ad if you can discipline yourself.

00:21:01 Stew Redwine: It's hard. 150, 160 words. And that's a challenge. But I know for your audience, I imagine I'm

00:21:07 Stew Redwine: talking to, you know, individuals who could actually exercise some control over it. The problem is sometimes when you've got, you're working with a lot of marketing teams and

00:21:16 Stew Redwine: creative teams and more people are involved that translates to pumping up the word count. In general, the idea is like 180 words for 60 seconds.

00:21:24 Kevin Mako: But like I'm saying, if you go through the bullet points of audioletics, I would then go, okay, how can I get this down to 150,

00:21:34 Kevin Mako: 160 words because then you really are setting up the host to be able to ad lib more because they don't

00:21:42 Kevin Mako: feel like there's a ton of copy on that page. I remember hearing about a speaking engagement tip that

00:21:48 Kevin Mako: people will really only take away three key points from any talk no matter what the length. So it

00:21:53 Kevin Mako: really comes back to no matter how much filler you're going to put into this ad. They're only really going to hit your maybe two, three, possibly four value props or whatever it is

00:22:01 Kevin Mako: that you've got in that audio ad before they've either lost interest or any other number of reasons why it's really just not effective.

00:22:08 Kevin Mako: So there's no real purpose in trying to cram everything in, but I know it's difficult. When you've got an invention idea and you're really trying to sell it for the first time,

00:22:15 Kevin Mako: you've put a year plus of time into just the hardcore design, engineering, prototyping, all that sort of stuff.

00:22:21 Kevin Mako: You're really proud of what you've accomplished. And there's a lot of major accomplishments in there. Sometimes it's hard to figure out, well, what is the, you know,

00:22:28 Kevin Mako: number one accomplishment here? Because you've got, yes, your one core feature, but you've

00:22:32 Stew Redwine: also got all these other amazing things that you've done in the path of both building the product and building the business around the product.

00:22:38 Stew Redwine: So it can be difficult, but keep it simple, keep it clean. It also allows you to better analyze the ad. The more clear your message,

00:22:45 Stew Redwine: the simpler the message, the easier it is to A, B test, two very distinct but different messages

00:22:50 Stew Redwine: and see really which one's performing to do the action item that you were intending for on that audio. That's a great point. You know, never use two words when one will do.

00:22:59 Stew Redwine: And the more clear it is and more concise it is, you've got a better view of performance. And just thinking about it, I mean, you know, set up as you're getting their attention.

00:23:09 Stew Redwine: So you've essentially got a value prop, the three things, value prop positioning yourself, and why should I trust you?

00:23:16 Stew Redwine: And then make an offer that's going to interest them. Like, why should they go out of their way?

00:23:22 Stew Redwine: I think that's actually another really critical thing is that if you're testing into the channel,

00:23:27 Stew Redwine: so if you're the listeners are going to do this and whether they're self-serving or they come and want to work with Oxford Road to do it.

00:23:33 Stew Redwine: You want to advocate on the part of yourself as the advertiser to go, just think about it, right? You guys, you're a product designer, engineers and stuff like that.

00:23:42 Stew Redwine: If I'm testing this channel for three months, it's best that I make the audience aware of the window of time I'm looking at to see if it's successful. So that actually

00:23:51 Stew Redwine: then causes you to go, oh, I do want to have a special offer that has an end date because I'm going to stop looking at this and I'm going to assess whether it worked or not.

00:24:01 Stew Redwine: So we want to be able to call them to take action before we turn the thing off and stop looking at it. That's another great

00:24:07 Stew Redwine: case to go, can I make some kind of offer for them that goes, I know my media is going to stop on October 31st.

00:24:16 Stew Redwine: My media is going to stop on October 31st. Do they know that? Do they know that that's the last chance for them to engage with me or else I'm going to determine that this channel

00:24:24 Stew Redwine: was no good. And then when it comes to podcast consumption, we've looked at this a lot as well, most of the consumption happens at the very beginning.

00:24:32 Stew Redwine: So theoretically, there can be this issue of going like, well, you know, when do people listen to the show?

00:24:37 Kevin Mako: Is it going to have a super long tail? There is a tale. But most of the consumption happens around the episode drop. And especially,

00:24:45 Kevin Mako: you know, intuitively, if it's tied to any kind of, you know, if it's news or it's something that's tied to pop culture of things happening that week.

00:24:54 Kevin Mako: Of course, that's going to get consumed right away. But even like your show, what we've seen is that the majority of the downloads are going

00:25:00 Stew Redwine: happen within a week of you dropping the episode. Stu, these are some great insights. If a startup or a manufacturer or wholesaler is looking to

00:25:09 Stew Redwine: actually scale up their business or really launch and hit hard, you guys obviously do this audio management as an agency at a bigger level,

00:25:16 Stew Redwine: at a more sophisticated level with multi-channel planning and all that sort of stuff, How do folks reach out to you?

00:25:21 Stew Redwine: Any other notes that you want to mention about Oxford Road and then I'll let you go. Thank you so much, Kevin. Yeah, they can go to Oxford Road.com. First thing it does is

00:25:29 Stew Redwine: prompt you as soon as you get there. I recommend signing up for our weekly newsletter, the influencer.

00:25:35 Stew Redwine: We've also got a podcast that is released every week or every other week. Those are two great

00:25:39 Stew Redwine: ways to engage with us right away to kind of take a look and see what we're all about. But if you go to

00:25:44 Stew Redwine: Oxford Road.com, just like the street, that's the best way to engage with us. And I think

00:25:50 Stew Redwine: that any other final thoughts, I would say, like we talked about, I think taking a look at this

00:25:55 Stew Redwine: approach, the audioletics approach to structuring your message and keeping it simple, it doesn't have to be something that is overly complex.

00:26:04 Kevin Mako: It is a very straightforward way to put your message together.

00:26:08 Stew Redwine: And I think that the key piece of it is that you want to make sure that it's clear to you and that you're making every word count.

00:26:15 Stew Redwine: And if you do that and you boil your message down to make it as concise as possible, particularly if you're putting it in the hands of hosts to do live read.

00:26:24 Stew Redwine: So they can say, I use this and you should too. You're going to be set up for success in the audio space. Great way to close it off.

00:26:32 Stew Redwine: Thanks again, Stu, for all your words of wisdom, and we'll talk soon. Thank you, Kevin.

00:26:35 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market

00:26:44 Narrator: and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you, by Mako Design + Invent, the original and leading firm

00:26:53 Narrator: in North America to provide global caliber in-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product business clients.

00:27:02 Narrator: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to MakoDesign.com.

00:27:08 Narrator: That's M-A-K-O Design dot com for a free consultation from one of Mako-designs for design studios from coast to coast.

00:27:17 Narrator: Thanks for listening and see you. next time.