How To Start A Podcast Your Audience Will LOVE

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Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify


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Wondering how to start a podcast? I want to let you in on a secret…we don’t just produce this podcast for fun (although we love doing it), it’s helped us generate hundreds of thousands of pounds of new business for our Marketing Agency. In this podcast episode, we open the bonnet & share our podcasting secrets, what we’ve learnt along the way & actionable steps you can take to start a podcast that generates a worthwhile return on investment for your company!

Timestamps

00:00 – 01:03 Intro
01:04 – 04:48 Why podcasting is a game-changing platform
04:59 – 08:27 Why we started Businesss Anchors & our download stats
08:28 – 09:37 Why download numbers aren’t as important as you think
09:38 – 19:07 How to start a podcast your audience will love (4 steps)
19:08 – 25:44 Lessons we learnt from podcasting
24:45 – 25:57 Outro

How To Start A Podcast Clip

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Transcript

0:00 Pat
Hi, Pat the podcast editor here. What does it take to start and run a successful podcast? Well, today Dan and Lloyd discuss how they built their podcast and share tips for getting started and growing over time.

0:13 Lloyd
The value that Dan and I would get for our business. And for us, as people from like one episode of the podcast may be equal to the value we would get from shitloads of other tech, like 30 Tik Tok videos, think like the time consumed.

0:29 Pat
We’ll also explore some of the ways a podcast might be a better option for growing an audience or a business than other platforms.

0:36 Lloyd
There is kind of four steps that I think can get you, to record something and be on a good path to having a good podcast in the future.

0:46 Pat
Right. Let’s get stuck in this is episode 82 of the business anchors podcast.

1:04 Lloyd
Why is podcasting a game-changing media platform that anchors shouldn’t ignore?

1:09 Dan
Good question.

1:10 Lloyd
Thank you.

1:14 Dan
The main thing I think about podcasting is it’s one of if not the only media platform you can consume effectively whilst doing other stuff like audio in general. And I think from an early stage, we both were quite big audiobook listeners.

I don’t do that so much anymore. I’m more of a podcast guy. But we both used to do that whilst doing crappy chores and like cleaning. And that from that point, I saw the value in Wow, we could produce content that people can listen to when they’re doing boring stuff like driving, and that’s one of the main ones.

The second one, I think we found, it’s a longer form, type of content that you can build deeper relationships with your audience or listeners, in this case, you know, rather than getting a three-second video of you on Facebook, this is a half an hour to a 45-minute piece of content, where you the listeners are listening to us communicate what we want to communicate to you.

And finally, I think podcasting can be super, a super-efficient way of producing content. Yes, we’ve got a bigger setup here. But we could just have like an audio recorder, two mics, and just do that which could be done very efficiently. So there are my three reasons why I think it’s so powerful.

2:34 Lloyd
Yeah, I think that your second point about the kind of deeper relationships from podcasting, rather than posting a three-second video is a massive one. I think it’s not unique to podcasting, but I guess it’s unique to long-form content. So you could create a 30 minute YouTube video, or you know, video on various platforms.

But podcasting is something, audio, and video, you can do long-form, and it’s such a difference, I think, TikTok’s obviously blowing up and has been for the last couple of years. And I think there’s real value there. But it’s I think, you know, the value that perhaps we Dan and I would get for our business. And for us, one episode of the podcast may be equal to the value we would get from shitloads of other tech e.g., 30 TikTok videos.

3:29 Dan
Like the time consumed the minutes of our content consumed with the podcast.

3:34 Lloyd
And anything you’re putting out to the world you’re communicating stuff, and educating them about you, what you believe and the knowledge you have and what you do. And that’s why, you know, someone would have to follow you on TikTok for six months to consume enough to go, oh, okay, there’s kind of themes here. Oh, these guys are honest people, and they want to know their doing, they would know what they’re doing. And there they have a good knowledge base on marketing and social media.

Whereas you can get that from, you know, you business anchors, obviously think we’re brilliant, but we’ve probably communicated all of those things to you in one episode previously. So we’ve kind of got you in and got you to listen somehow, thank you very much, emulated all that with one piece of content, which that deeper relationship offers you more opportunities basically.

4:30 Dan
And as the podcast has been so valuable to our business, in this episode, I want us to break down a bit of the backstory as to why we started the podcast, but then also share some like how to stuff I think you’ve got a few more how-to today people are listening like I actually might consider starting a podcast the actual practical steps.

Yeah, I think towards the end, I’ll go through, basically, there’s kind of four steps that I think can get you to record something and be on a good path to having a good podcast in the future. So quick backstory. as to how this all came about, in February 2020, we started the podcast as a bit of an experiment. Really?

5:08 Lloyd
Do you know when we first record the podcast? We didn’t know COVID existed? Because it was. Yeah, yeah. a month, recorded in January. Yeah.

5:18 Dan
Anyway, we recorded it. And I think for us, we always try to focus at least 20% of our marketing efforts on something new. Rather than just knowing like, for us, LinkedIn works well. We’re always trying different things. And for that year, that test and experiment was the podcast.

And I don’t know about you, Lloyd. But I saw a bit of a gap in the market because there were lots of marketing podcasts out there may like all the ones in the marketing charts, were very practical. How to grow a YouTube following how to build a strategy for, you know, Twitter step one, do this.

5:55 Lloyd
Step two, do this. Step three, this is all very useful. So we’re not taking the piss. But yeah, that’s which is good.

6:03 Dan
But I listened to a lot of them. And I didn’t find them very interesting to listen to, in the sense of like, the kind of thing I’d want to listen to at the weekends.

6:11 Lloyd
It’s more effort, because you’re like, oh, I should learn about this. I’m going to make myself listen.

Yeah. Whereas we try and make, we thought it could be an opportunity for us to provide value through our own experiences of growing a business of running marketing campaigns for some of the biggest brands in the world, all of that insight. And all the things we’re learning and the mistakes we’re making, share that with you listeners, whilst also taking the piss out of it because we’re brothers and we like to poke fun at each other.

We’re such a laugh, aren’t we? Yeah, we have such laughter on business anchors.

6:40 Dan
Oh, so that was the start of the podcast. And I’ve actually got some data to share with you some insights. Don’t tell anyone this stuff because we don’t everyone know. So month one of the podcasts, how many downloads? Do you think we had Lloyd in February 2020? Oh, trying to think back in that it wouldn’t have been many in month one. What like 250. So we had 757. Right, I think was really quite good. Yeah. And there’s a point I’m sharing these numbers, which Oh, yeah. Okay. So I thought we had 257 downloads. Now that across the next few months, that number fluctuated, went up and down. And in October 2020.

It went down to 481 downloads. And I remember the time Lloyd was, you know, cracking the whip and saying to me, Dan, this bloody podcast isn’t working. We’re putting lots of resources into it. Why are we not doing getting, you know, hundreds of 1000s of listeners? But in February 2021, which is a year later, the numbers continue to fluctuate up and down. And we were still learning. February 2021, a year ago, we got a call from a marketing manager from a brand who said, who said I want to speak to you about doing a marketing campaign ended up pitching this quite significant campaign.

And when I got on, in the pitch, the managing director was there and he instantly said has Lloyd managed to find all these Bitcoin yet, because he was an avid podcast host. And we did an episode on that. So we ended up winning that contract. And that was the first real return on investment we got from the podcast.

And since then, we’ve continued to get new business referencing this podcast. So I guess the reason I wanted to share the numbers as you don’t have to have hundreds of 1000s of downloads and listeners to have a successful podcast. Yeah, we’ve obviously increased our downloads significantly. Now. I think we’ve had over 25,000 downloads now. But yeah, don’t be put off if your own because if you think 10 people listening to you for half an hour is better than 100 people seeing a three-second video view as we learned. And now we’ve continued to upgrade this production because we know it’s adding value to our business.

8:58 Lloyd
I think that’s really interesting about the numbers, like if you think we’re all fighting for people’s attention, and the reality is just one of those downloads one of those listeners we potentially getting for our podcast, like half an hour of their attention. So like you’re saying even though on LinkedIn, we might be reaching hundreds of 1000s of people each week, and the podcast could be under 1000. Those podcast listeners where we’re reaching people on a much deeper level, and those kinds of relationships are much stronger and could be worth a lot more.

9:38 Dan
So on a more practical front, I’ve got some things that I want to share in terms of what we’ve learned from the podcast, but to get into more of the practical, how to start. If someone’s listening and thinking I trust what the Knolton brothers are saying, I want to start a podcast or try and test it, what kind of practical steps can they take?

10:00 Lloyd
Well, Dan. Let’s go into every other marketing podcast. I do actually have four steps.

10:10 Dan
We just shat on the marketing podcasters that do this.

10:12 Lloyd
So I think the big mistake people make when they start podcasts is that almost everyone goes, don’t really know what we’re going to talk about. I mean, we’re just going to, we’re going to record on just see, I think it will be fun. We’ll see what we talk about. I think most podcasts start like that, and you know no offence to people we were, although we thought we were structured and organised, there was part of that without first episodes. But I think step one, try and be clear on why you’re doing this and who you want to listen to.

Because that will skip the whole process of the first 20 episodes of you going, just having a chat. You might enjoy that. So that may be good for the enjoyment and stuff. But if you know if you’re starting a podcast, because you want to grow your business, or you’re starting a podcast, because you’ve got a YouTube channel, and you want to drive more people to that YouTube channel, you need to look at why you’re doing it and who you want to listen.

11:10 Dan
So are you saying the business anchors podcast is very structured and strategically designed to ultimately get us business for our agency, rather than just off the cuff entertainment?

11:19 Lloyd
Yes, exactly. I know, it’s interesting, because you listen to it and think this is so entertaining, their main goal must be entertainment. But it’s not. But that’s a really good point, yes. So I think as a starting point, I think that’s working out why am I doing this? Who do I want to listen to, and that will help you skip a load of crap that you’d have to get over. The second part, once you’ve worked that out, is actually taking action and recording something. So me saying oh, you need to know, be clear on why you’re doing this. And you want to listen, I’m not saying everything has to be perfect for you to start because that often stops people from starting.

12:07 Dan
Can I add one tip in? Yeah, I think something that is super useful at these early stages in your process as well is actually listening to podcasts. Because I think we got a lot of insight into what we thought worked well and didn’t by actually listening to podcasts to help shape what you’re going to hear.

12:25 Lloyd
Great. So take action record podcast, knowing that it won’t be the best podcast ever. And it will improve over time. And then you need to repeat that. But and I’ll go into by the way, in a minute, I’ll tell you a tool you can use to upload because the technical stuff where you’re like, well now I’ve got a microphone, but then what do I do?

12:44 Dan
It’s not actually as difficult now, that makes it nice, upload it to one place, and it puts it all on Apple or Spotify.

12:51 Lloyd
But yeah, so you’re recording a podcast? Great. Then the third, that there’s kind of four sections to this third part step three, to think about with every episode that I think, from what we’ve learned will really help. So first thing, Why will my people click this, and by my people, I mean, you’ve decided that you want this type of person to listen. So each episode is going to have a title before people hear anything. It’s going to have a kind of topic of discussion or several and a title. So thinking why will people click on this title?

13:25 Dan
Like how to start a podcast, your audience will love? something just like that example?

13:30 Lloyd
And then secondly, why will people keep listening, so don’t have a clickbait title and then not offering the value or the entertainment or the inspiration or whatever it is that you’re giving isn’t good enough? Because you’ll never get any listeners that return. They’ll just go oh it’s a clickbait title and I’ve got to get off. So thinking about right what we’re actually going to be discussing or what am I talking about that it’s going to keep people listening and keep people engaged?

Third point what can we discuss that would help promote this and reach new people? So we talk about clips that we’re going to break up from the business anchors podcast of you know, some of the best ones we’ve had are me discussing about how I lost 12 million pounds in Bitcoin. We knew that putting that on social media saying lawyers lost 12 million pounds per minute coin.

We knew that putting that as a clip and writing that on social media on various platforms is going to get people to listen. So kind of thinking right? We’re talking about cryptocurrency or we’re talking about money. What can be the thing that’s going to grab people’s attention? Get them in. The fourth point. 4D?

14:43 Dan
Oh no sorry, it’s 3D.

14:45 Lloyd
That’s why it feels so real. Dad joke. What can we discuss that will encourage my listeners to take the action we want them to? So remember at the start, I said to be clear why you’re doing this and who you want to listen to. So we talk about topics that not all the time, but sometimes we talk about topics that allow us to demonstrate the skills we have within our business or our knowledge that may help others that we can really benefit from the business.

And although it’s great, like our previous podcasts were about, if you haven’t listened to about healthy habits, and I think that was a great episode positive, that’s when we didn’t actually communicate much about how amazing campaigns around the world. Yeah, yep. Where is this one? Dan’s just mentioned all these marketing campaigns. But so it doesn’t have to be you don’t want it to be just a sales thing of my business is great, because no one will give a shit.

15:45 Dan
But being able, to smoothly fit in those conversations. Yeah, like we’ve broken, we’ve done episodes where we break down why how campaigns we’ve done, have been successful to give that value element rather than just become a customer of ours. Yeah.

15:59 Lloyd
Or if your goal is to build your YouTube channel, or if your goal is to sell your book, your book, for example, there’ll be topics in that book. And you’ll kind of you can reference that in some of your conversations. And after six months of someone listening and you referencing that book 12 times for a couple of minutes, it builds that and helps you achieve that goal. And that’s a lot of people miss that kind of link to what they’re actually trying to achieve.

16:28 Dan
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make, not just podcast, but content in general is just going too far on the entertainment fun side. I’m doing fun videos, I’m going to do TikTok trends doing dances, really tempting, the most fun thing is to do that get more views to get more engagement, but it doesn’t ever shoehorn into how you can actually help them in their business.

16:47 Lloyd
That’s the real skill. And part of how we help our clients within our marketing agency is we are known as a creative marketing agency. And we do creative, weird and wacky stuff. But the real skill and our value is how within that creative content, do we communicate those things that are really important for your business and make them take action? That’s the key.

17:11 Dan
This is so meta because you’ve just done what we’ve said we need to do you need to do in a podcast.

17:14 Lloyd
Yes. Oh, that’s like Inception. And finally, I just want to say I said, if you’re thinking right, I’m going to start podcasts. How can we make it easy? You can Google, how to find the microphone you need and stuff like that. But we use Buzzsprout. But basically, most people think how do I get it on Spotify and Apple podcasts and stuff. So with Buzzsprout, there will be other services, but we upload it there, we started on the free version, which allows you to upload two hours of content per month. So you don’t even have to pay anything to do this.

And with a few clicks, you upload it and within sort of 24 hours, your episode will be on Spotify, Apple podcasts, all those other places. So it’s simple and free to do that, which people don’t realise we now pay. Because of the amount we post for weekly podcasts, I think we pay $18 a month, which allows us to post six hours of content. So the cost isn’t high. The time and effort aren’t high, it’s you know, it will the first time you’re doing it, you’ll have to work out how to do it. But there’s not as much of a barrier to entry as you would think from the outside.

18:27 Dan
And chartable was another really good tool that we use, which helps you see it’s like more in-depth analytics for your episodes helps you understand how they’re performing compared to other episodes you’ve done. And also they’ve got these really cool things that I’ve spoken about before called Smart Links, where you can create one link that easily takes people to their favourite podcasting platform. They click it either Apple, Spotify, Google podcast.

18:49 Lloyd
So just to be clear, for instance, I listen on Spotify, and I’m on an Android phone. If I click that link, that’s where it’ll take me. Yeah, if Dan’s got an Apple phone, it will take him to Apple Podcast.

18:58 Dan
You can set rules basically for different devices where it will take them to. So that was useful. I think it’s a good practical step there. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of things that I’ve kind of, I think we’ve learned from doing podcasting for how many is it 2 years now? Feb. 2020. It must be.

19:22 Lloyd
Yeah, shit. It’s two years. Bloody Hell.

19:25 Dan
We’re on episode 80 Lloyd.

19:29 Lloyd
What we’re gonna do for 100. We should start thinking about that.

19:32 Dan
Do you know what we should do? We should do a live in-person Business Anchors podcast. So in terms of things that we’ve learned, one of the main things I think is if you’re starting a podcast, focus more on how good the podcast is, rather than the download numbers it gets a mistake we made early on… yes, download numbers are important and to continue, you want to grow the podcast more people listened to it.

But if you are just heavily focused on that you can end up just making episodes that you think or know will get downloads rather than are actually going to help your overall objective for us driving business for our agency. We could get more downloads, just talking about trending stuff, he just burped again didn’t you?

20:15 Lloyd
Yeah. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m sorry. I’m going to get such a bad reputation.

20:28 Dan
Somebody commented last time you did this saying I don’t know why there’s such a stigma around this. It’s just a bodily function.

20:34 Lloyd
Oh, thank you.

20:39 Dan
Don’t focus on the download numbers, focus on making a good episode of people to listen to. Another thing we’ve learned, I think we’ve learned from this is done is better than perfect. For example, over the last two years, we’ve improved the podcast set and how this looks and sounds. And I think sometimes we’ve waited for it to be perfect before doing something and it’s taken months, and then we never do it. Whereas even with this newest set, we’re doing it in stages. So, it started a few weeks ago. And it wasn’t perfect.

And now we’ve got some really cool new stuff. Tay’s worked really hard on making this set really good. You’ve got pictures on the wall, we’ve got other props here. And we’re going to keep we aka Tay from the team is going to continue to make this better and better, because done is better than perfect. I was going to say shout out to Tay and with the support of pat on sound, really been improving the business anchors podcast

21:33 Lloyd
As Dan said, it’s been such a positive thing for us to go, Oh, we’re going to improve this over time. And Taylor’s been taking like steps each episode improving the set improving the sound. And gosh, oh, my body is not functioning well today. Sorry. And yeah, we wouldn’t have even gone live with this set and improved sound at all, because it’s still not completely perfect. Yeah. Whereas we’re now producing better stuff every single week. I think that’s important not to just not do anything because it’s not perfect.

22:10 Dan
Definitely. I think the final thing, I think, which will hopefully be valuable in promoting the podcast is just as if not more important than producing it. Because you can have a brilliant podcast, but if you don’t promote it to a number of channels, then no one’s gonna listen to it.

22:26 Lloyd
Have you heard the phrase build it and they will come? Yeah, not true.

22:31 Dan
No.

22:32 Lloyd
Don’t just expect if I’m producing something brilliant. Well, the listeners will find me. They won’t.

22:38 Dan
I mean, if you think about this podcast, we do a lot of different things to promote this. So we clip it up, and put it across all social platforms, clear, optimised versions on TikTok and Instagram reels, we share it to our weekly email newsletter, we do a competition to get people to listen to this, you can win a bottle of wine on the Friday club, which is our weekly email newsletter. We talk about it in person with people who we meet, we strategically have clips going out each week in the form of Knowlton nuggets, so that we have more downloads so that we get in the charts more. There are just all these things we do.

23:13 Lloyd
Don’t let that put you off. Remember what we said. It doesn’t have to be perfect to start.

23:17 Dan
This is us now two years on.

23:19 Lloyd
Yeah, two years on, we’ve worked out all these things. But at first, we were only clipping it up and putting it on socials. So yeah. Don’t let it put you off. We’re saying all this stuff to promote it. We only need to do that because we’re trying to scale this and scale the positive effects two years down the line. But yeah, like Dan said, that promotion once you’re in the swing of things, and you’re like, I know what I’m doing with this podcast, you can literally start using the microphone on your Apple headphones and using a tool like anchor as a starting point.

Yeah, I won’t mention names. But I know in the marketing, podcast charts for the UK, I know of two that are or at least were just recorded on a phone that was in the top 10. So don’t think that you can’t do really well with that level of production.

24:11 Dan
An interesting point. I did a talk recently, and there was a lady there forgotten her name. Dammit, Janice, Janice. But she said a really interesting tip, which was to do enough to make sure the audio isn’t annoying as a base level, because if it’s like oh like it sounds annoying, people just won’t listen. So it doesn’t have to be you know, really good like this, but just not like oh, yeah.

24:38 Lloyd
Yeah. And that that will mean that it’s not having a negative effect. People won’t be put off and might be like, I’m not listening to that. And that’s the base you need to get started.

24:48 Dan
Cool. Well, hopefully, this episode has been useful. I’m also just as a final point in the Friday club, which I mentioned in our weekly email newsletter. I’m going to be updating our journey of how our podcast downloads to 100,000. Which our goal this year go, and what we’re learning the mistakes are making and things that are working and aren’t working. So if you want to know that then sign up for the Friday club. Just search the Friday club.

25:11 Lloyd
Let us know if you’ve got any questions that you want to be answered. If you’re considering starting a podcast and that sort of thing. Ask us because we want to help.

25:20 Dan
We’ve got a podcast studio that can record podcasts as well if you want to record your podcast or you can do it for yourself.

25:25 Lloyd
He’s being a salesman now. Yeah, we have a studio and that’s a service we can provide.

25:32 Dan
Okay, so look forward to seeing you in your ears next week.

25:37 Lloyd
And book a studio session to record your podcast. See you in your ears next week. Bye now.
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How To Start A Podcast Your Audience Will LOVE

left

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify


left

Wondering how to start a podcast? I want to let you in on a secret…we don’t just produce this podcast for fun (although we love doing it), it’s helped us generate hundreds of thousands of pounds of new business for our Marketing Agency. In this podcast episode, we open the bonnet & share our podcasting secrets, what we’ve learnt along the way & actionable steps you can take to start a podcast that generates a worthwhile return on investment for your company!

Timestamps

00:00 – 01:03 Intro
01:04 – 04:48 Why podcasting is a game-changing platform
04:59 – 08:27 Why we started Businesss Anchors & our download stats
08:28 – 09:37 Why download numbers aren’t as important as you think
09:38 – 19:07 How to start a podcast your audience will love (4 steps)
19:08 – 25:44 Lessons we learnt from podcasting
24:45 – 25:57 Outro

How To Start A Podcast Video Clip

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nx4fqXIsA6M

Transcript

0:00 Pat
Hi, Pat the podcast editor here. What does it take to start and run a successful podcast? Well, today Dan and Lloyd discuss how they built their podcast and share tips for getting started and growing over time.

0:13 Lloyd
The value that Dan and I would get for our business. And for us, as people from like one episode of the podcast may be equal to the value we would get from shitloads of other tech, like 30 Tik Tok videos, think like the time consumed.

0:29 Pat
We’ll also explore some of the ways a podcast might be a better option for growing an audience or a business than other platforms.

0:36 Lloyd
There is kind of four steps that I think can get you, to record something and be on a good path to having a good podcast in the future.

0:46 Pat
Right. Let’s get stuck in this is episode 82 of the business anchors podcast.

1:04 Lloyd
Why is podcasting a game-changing media platform that anchors shouldn’t ignore?

1:09 Dan
Good question.

1:10 Lloyd
Thank you.

1:14 Dan
The main thing I think about podcasting is it’s one of if not the only media platform you can consume effectively whilst doing other stuff like audio in general. And I think from an early stage, we both were quite big audiobook listeners.

I don’t do that so much anymore. I’m more of a podcast guy. But we both used to do that whilst doing crappy chores and like cleaning. And that from that point, I saw the value in Wow, we could produce content that people can listen to when they’re doing boring stuff like driving, and that’s one of the main ones.

The second one, I think we found, it’s a longer form, type of content that you can build deeper relationships with your audience or listeners, in this case, you know, rather than getting a three-second video of you on Facebook, this is a half an hour to a 45-minute piece of content, where you the listeners are listening to us communicate what we want to communicate to you.

And finally, I think podcasting can be super, a super-efficient way of producing content. Yes, we’ve got a bigger setup here. But we could just have like an audio recorder, two mics, and just do that which could be done very efficiently. So there are my three reasons why I think it’s so powerful.

2:34 Lloyd
Yeah, I think that your second point about the kind of deeper relationships from podcasting, rather than posting a three-second video is a massive one. I think it’s not unique to podcasting, but I guess it’s unique to long-form content. So you could create a 30 minute YouTube video, or you know, video on various platforms.

But podcasting is something, audio, and video, you can do long-form, and it’s such a difference, I think, TikTok’s obviously blowing up and has been for the last couple of years. And I think there’s real value there. But it’s I think, you know, the value that perhaps we Dan and I would get for our business. And for us, one episode of the podcast may be equal to the value we would get from shitloads of other tech e.g., 30 TikTok videos.

3:29 Dan
Like the time consumed the minutes of our content consumed with the podcast.

3:34 Lloyd
And anything you’re putting out to the world you’re communicating stuff, and educating them about you, what you believe and the knowledge you have and what you do. And that’s why, you know, someone would have to follow you on TikTok for six months to consume enough to go, oh, okay, there’s kind of themes here. Oh, these guys are honest people, and they want to know their doing, they would know what they’re doing. And there they have a good knowledge base on marketing and social media.

Whereas you can get that from, you know, you business anchors, obviously think we’re brilliant, but we’ve probably communicated all of those things to you in one episode previously. So we’ve kind of got you in and got you to listen somehow, thank you very much, emulated all that with one piece of content, which that deeper relationship offers you more opportunities basically.

4:30 Dan
And as the podcast has been so valuable to our business, in this episode, I want us to break down a bit of the backstory as to why we started the podcast, but then also share some like how to stuff I think you’ve got a few more how-to today people are listening like I actually might consider starting a podcast the actual practical steps.

Yeah, I think towards the end, I’ll go through, basically, there’s kind of four steps that I think can get you to record something and be on a good path to having a good podcast in the future. So quick backstory. as to how this all came about, in February 2020, we started the podcast as a bit of an experiment. Really?

5:08 Lloyd
Do you know when we first record the podcast? We didn’t know COVID existed? Because it was. Yeah, yeah. a month, recorded in January. Yeah.

5:18 Dan
Anyway, we recorded it. And I think for us, we always try to focus at least 20% of our marketing efforts on something new. Rather than just knowing like, for us, LinkedIn works well. We’re always trying different things. And for that year, that test and experiment was the podcast.

And I don’t know about you, Lloyd. But I saw a bit of a gap in the market because there were lots of marketing podcasts out there may like all the ones in the marketing charts, were very practical. How to grow a YouTube following how to build a strategy for, you know, Twitter step one, do this.

5:55 Lloyd
Step two, do this. Step three, this is all very useful. So we’re not taking the piss. But yeah, that’s which is good.

6:03 Dan
But I listened to a lot of them. And I didn’t find them very interesting to listen to, in the sense of like, the kind of thing I’d want to listen to at the weekends.

6:11 Lloyd
It’s more effort, because you’re like, oh, I should learn about this. I’m going to make myself listen.

Yeah. Whereas we try and make, we thought it could be an opportunity for us to provide value through our own experiences of growing a business of running marketing campaigns for some of the biggest brands in the world, all of that insight. And all the things we’re learning and the mistakes we’re making, share that with you listeners, whilst also taking the piss out of it because we’re brothers and we like to poke fun at each other.

We’re such a laugh, aren’t we? Yeah, we have such laughter on business anchors.

6:40 Dan
Oh, so that was the start of the podcast. And I’ve actually got some data to share with you some insights. Don’t tell anyone this stuff because we don’t everyone know. So month one of the podcasts, how many downloads? Do you think we had Lloyd in February 2020? Oh, trying to think back in that it wouldn’t have been many in month one. What like 250. So we had 757. Right, I think was really quite good. Yeah. And there’s a point I’m sharing these numbers, which Oh, yeah. Okay. So I thought we had 257 downloads. Now that across the next few months, that number fluctuated, went up and down. And in October 2020.

It went down to 481 downloads. And I remember the time Lloyd was, you know, cracking the whip and saying to me, Dan, this bloody podcast isn’t working. We’re putting lots of resources into it. Why are we not doing getting, you know, hundreds of 1000s of listeners? But in February 2021, which is a year later, the numbers continue to fluctuate up and down. And we were still learning. February 2021, a year ago, we got a call from a marketing manager from a brand who said, who said I want to speak to you about doing a marketing campaign ended up pitching this quite significant campaign.

And when I got on, in the pitch, the managing director was there and he instantly said has Lloyd managed to find all these Bitcoin yet, because he was an avid podcast host. And we did an episode on that. So we ended up winning that contract. And that was the first real return on investment we got from the podcast.

And since then, we’ve continued to get new business referencing this podcast. So I guess the reason I wanted to share the numbers as you don’t have to have hundreds of 1000s of downloads and listeners to have a successful podcast. Yeah, we’ve obviously increased our downloads significantly. Now. I think we’ve had over 25,000 downloads now. But yeah, don’t be put off if your own because if you think 10 people listening to you for half an hour is better than 100 people seeing a three-second video view as we learned. And now we’ve continued to upgrade this production because we know it’s adding value to our business.

8:58 Lloyd
I think that’s really interesting about the numbers, like if you think we’re all fighting for people’s attention, and the reality is just one of those downloads one of those listeners we potentially getting for our podcast, like half an hour of their attention. So like you’re saying even though on LinkedIn, we might be reaching hundreds of 1000s of people each week, and the podcast could be under 1000. Those podcast listeners where we’re reaching people on a much deeper level, and those kinds of relationships are much stronger and could be worth a lot more.

9:38 Dan
So on a more practical front, I’ve got some things that I want to share in terms of what we’ve learned from the podcast, but to get into more of the practical, how to start. If someone’s listening and thinking I trust what the Knolton brothers are saying, I want to start a podcast or try and test it, what kind of practical steps can they take?

10:00 Lloyd
Well, Dan. Let’s go into every other marketing podcast. I do actually have four steps.

10:10 Dan
We just shat on the marketing podcasters that do this.

10:12 Lloyd
So I think the big mistake people make when they start podcasts is that almost everyone goes, don’t really know what we’re going to talk about. I mean, we’re just going to, we’re going to record on just see, I think it will be fun. We’ll see what we talk about. I think most podcasts start like that, and you know no offence to people we were, although we thought we were structured and organised, there was part of that without first episodes. But I think step one, try and be clear on why you’re doing this and who you want to listen to.

Because that will skip the whole process of the first 20 episodes of you going, just having a chat. You might enjoy that. So that may be good for the enjoyment and stuff. But if you know if you’re starting a podcast, because you want to grow your business, or you’re starting a podcast, because you’ve got a YouTube channel, and you want to drive more people to that YouTube channel, you need to look at why you’re doing it and who you want to listen.

11:10 Dan
So are you saying the business anchors podcast is very structured and strategically designed to ultimately get us business for our agency, rather than just off the cuff entertainment?

11:19 Lloyd
Yes, exactly. I know, it’s interesting, because you listen to it and think this is so entertaining, their main goal must be entertainment. But it’s not. But that’s a really good point, yes. So I think as a starting point, I think that’s working out why am I doing this? Who do I want to listen to, and that will help you skip a load of crap that you’d have to get over. The second part, once you’ve worked that out, is actually taking action and recording something. So me saying oh, you need to know, be clear on why you’re doing this. And you want to listen, I’m not saying everything has to be perfect for you to start because that often stops people from starting.

12:07 Dan
Can I add one tip in? Yeah, I think something that is super useful at these early stages in your process as well is actually listening to podcasts. Because I think we got a lot of insight into what we thought worked well and didn’t by actually listening to podcasts to help shape what you’re going to hear.

12:25 Lloyd
Great. So take action record podcast, knowing that it won’t be the best podcast ever. And it will improve over time. And then you need to repeat that. But and I’ll go into by the way, in a minute, I’ll tell you a tool you can use to upload because the technical stuff where you’re like, well now I’ve got a microphone, but then what do I do?

12:44 Dan
It’s not actually as difficult now, that makes it nice, upload it to one place, and it puts it all on Apple or Spotify.

12:51 Lloyd
But yeah, so you’re recording a podcast? Great. Then the third, that there’s kind of four sections to this third part step three, to think about with every episode that I think, from what we’ve learned will really help. So first thing, Why will my people click this, and by my people, I mean, you’ve decided that you want this type of person to listen. So each episode is going to have a title before people hear anything. It’s going to have a kind of topic of discussion or several and a title. So thinking why will people click on this title?

13:25 Dan
Like how to start a podcast, your audience will love? something just like that example?

13:30 Lloyd
And then secondly, why will people keep listening, so don’t have a clickbait title and then not offering the value or the entertainment or the inspiration or whatever it is that you’re giving isn’t good enough? Because you’ll never get any listeners that return. They’ll just go oh it’s a clickbait title and I’ve got to get off. So thinking about right what we’re actually going to be discussing or what am I talking about that it’s going to keep people listening and keep people engaged?

Third point what can we discuss that would help promote this and reach new people? So we talk about clips that we’re going to break up from the business anchors podcast of you know, some of the best ones we’ve had are me discussing about how I lost 12 million pounds in Bitcoin. We knew that putting that on social media saying lawyers lost 12 million pounds per minute coin.

We knew that putting that as a clip and writing that on social media on various platforms is going to get people to listen. So kind of thinking right? We’re talking about cryptocurrency or we’re talking about money. What can be the thing that’s going to grab people’s attention? Get them in. The fourth point. 4D?

14:43 Dan
Oh no sorry, it’s 3D.

14:45 Lloyd
That’s why it feels so real. Dad joke. What can we discuss that will encourage my listeners to take the action we want them to? So remember at the start, I said to be clear why you’re doing this and who you want to listen to. So we talk about topics that not all the time, but sometimes we talk about topics that allow us to demonstrate the skills we have within our business or our knowledge that may help others that we can really benefit from the business.

And although it’s great, like our previous podcasts were about, if you haven’t listened to about healthy habits, and I think that was a great episode positive, that’s when we didn’t actually communicate much about how amazing campaigns around the world. Yeah, yep. Where is this one? Dan’s just mentioned all these marketing campaigns. But so it doesn’t have to be you don’t want it to be just a sales thing of my business is great, because no one will give a shit.

15:45 Dan
But being able, to smoothly fit in those conversations. Yeah, like we’ve broken, we’ve done episodes where we break down why how campaigns we’ve done, have been successful to give that value element rather than just become a customer of ours. Yeah.

15:59 Lloyd
Or if your goal is to build your YouTube channel, or if your goal is to sell your book, your book, for example, there’ll be topics in that book. And you’ll kind of you can reference that in some of your conversations. And after six months of someone listening and you referencing that book 12 times for a couple of minutes, it builds that and helps you achieve that goal. And that’s a lot of people miss that kind of link to what they’re actually trying to achieve.

16:28 Dan
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make, not just podcast, but content in general is just going too far on the entertainment fun side. I’m doing fun videos, I’m going to do TikTok trends doing dances, really tempting, the most fun thing is to do that get more views to get more engagement, but it doesn’t ever shoehorn into how you can actually help them in their business.

16:47 Lloyd
That’s the real skill. And part of how we help our clients within our marketing agency is we are known as a creative marketing agency. And we do creative, weird and wacky stuff. But the real skill and our value is how within that creative content, do we communicate those things that are really important for your business and make them take action? That’s the key.

17:11 Dan
This is so meta because you’ve just done what we’ve said we need to do you need to do in a podcast.

17:14 Lloyd
Yes. Oh, that’s like Inception. And finally, I just want to say I said, if you’re thinking right, I’m going to start podcasts. How can we make it easy? You can Google, how to find the microphone you need and stuff like that. But we use Buzzsprout. But basically, most people think how do I get it on Spotify and Apple podcasts and stuff. So with Buzzsprout, there will be other services, but we upload it there, we started on the free version, which allows you to upload two hours of content per month. So you don’t even have to pay anything to do this.

And with a few clicks, you upload it and within sort of 24 hours, your episode will be on Spotify, Apple podcasts, all those other places. So it’s simple and free to do that, which people don’t realise we now pay. Because of the amount we post for weekly podcasts, I think we pay $18 a month, which allows us to post six hours of content. So the cost isn’t high. The time and effort aren’t high, it’s you know, it will the first time you’re doing it, you’ll have to work out how to do it. But there’s not as much of a barrier to entry as you would think from the outside.

18:27 Dan
And chartable was another really good tool that we use, which helps you see it’s like more in-depth analytics for your episodes helps you understand how they’re performing compared to other episodes you’ve done. And also they’ve got these really cool things that I’ve spoken about before called Smart Links, where you can create one link that easily takes people to their favourite podcasting platform. They click it either Apple, Spotify, Google podcast.

18:49 Lloyd
So just to be clear, for instance, I listen on Spotify, and I’m on an Android phone. If I click that link, that’s where it’ll take me. Yeah, if Dan’s got an Apple phone, it will take him to Apple Podcast.

18:58 Dan
You can set rules basically for different devices where it will take them to. So that was useful. I think it’s a good practical step there. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of things that I’ve kind of, I think we’ve learned from doing podcasting for how many is it 2 years now? Feb. 2020. It must be.

19:22 Lloyd
Yeah, shit. It’s two years. Bloody Hell.

19:25 Dan
We’re on episode 80 Lloyd.

19:29 Lloyd
What we’re gonna do for 100. We should start thinking about that.

19:32 Dan
Do you know what we should do? We should do a live in-person Business Anchors podcast. So in terms of things that we’ve learned, one of the main things I think is if you’re starting a podcast, focus more on how good the podcast is, rather than the download numbers it gets a mistake we made early on… yes, download numbers are important and to continue, you want to grow the podcast more people listened to it.

But if you are just heavily focused on that you can end up just making episodes that you think or know will get downloads rather than are actually going to help your overall objective for us driving business for our agency. We could get more downloads, just talking about trending stuff, he just burped again didn’t you?

20:15 Lloyd
Yeah. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m sorry. I’m going to get such a bad reputation.

20:28 Dan
Somebody commented last time you did this saying I don’t know why there’s such a stigma around this. It’s just a bodily function.

20:34 Lloyd
Oh, thank you.

20:39 Dan
Don’t focus on the download numbers, focus on making a good episode of people to listen to. Another thing we’ve learned, I think we’ve learned from this is done is better than perfect. For example, over the last two years, we’ve improved the podcast set and how this looks and sounds. And I think sometimes we’ve waited for it to be perfect before doing something and it’s taken months, and then we never do it. Whereas even with this newest set, we’re doing it in stages. So, it started a few weeks ago. And it wasn’t perfect.

And now we’ve got some really cool new stuff. Tay’s worked really hard on making this set really good. You’ve got pictures on the wall, we’ve got other props here. And we’re going to keep we aka Tay from the team is going to continue to make this better and better, because done is better than perfect. I was going to say shout out to Tay and with the support of pat on sound, really been improving the business anchors podcast

21:33 Lloyd
As Dan said, it’s been such a positive thing for us to go, Oh, we’re going to improve this over time. And Taylor’s been taking like steps each episode improving the set improving the sound. And gosh, oh, my body is not functioning well today. Sorry. And yeah, we wouldn’t have even gone live with this set and improved sound at all, because it’s still not completely perfect. Yeah. Whereas we’re now producing better stuff every single week. I think that’s important not to just not do anything because it’s not perfect.

22:10 Dan
Definitely. I think the final thing, I think, which will hopefully be valuable in promoting the podcast is just as if not more important than producing it. Because you can have a brilliant podcast, but if you don’t promote it to a number of channels, then no one’s gonna listen to it.

22:26 Lloyd
Have you heard the phrase build it and they will come? Yeah, not true.

22:31 Dan
No.

22:32 Lloyd
Don’t just expect if I’m producing something brilliant. Well, the listeners will find me. They won’t.

22:38 Dan
I mean, if you think about this podcast, we do a lot of different things to promote this. So we clip it up, and put it across all social platforms, clear, optimised versions on TikTok and Instagram reels, we share it to our weekly email newsletter, we do a competition to get people to listen to this, you can win a bottle of wine on the Friday club, which is our weekly email newsletter. We talk about it in person with people who we meet, we strategically have clips going out each week in the form of Knowlton nuggets, so that we have more downloads so that we get in the charts more. There are just all these things we do.

23:13 Lloyd
Don’t let that put you off. Remember what we said. It doesn’t have to be perfect to start.

23:17 Dan
This is us now two years on.

23:19 Lloyd
Yeah, two years on, we’ve worked out all these things. But at first, we were only clipping it up and putting it on socials. So yeah. Don’t let it put you off. We’re saying all this stuff to promote it. We only need to do that because we’re trying to scale this and scale the positive effects two years down the line. But yeah, like Dan said, that promotion once you’re in the swing of things, and you’re like, I know what I’m doing with this podcast, you can literally start using the microphone on your Apple headphones and using a tool like anchor as a starting point.

Yeah, I won’t mention names. But I know in the marketing, podcast charts for the UK, I know of two that are or at least were just recorded on a phone that was in the top 10. So don’t think that you can’t do really well with that level of production.

24:11 Dan
An interesting point. I did a talk recently, and there was a lady there forgotten her name. Dammit, Janice, Janice. But she said a really interesting tip, which was to do enough to make sure the audio isn’t annoying as a base level, because if it’s like oh like it sounds annoying, people just won’t listen. So it doesn’t have to be you know, really good like this, but just not like oh, yeah.

24:38 Lloyd
Yeah. And that that will mean that it’s not having a negative effect. People won’t be put off and might be like, I’m not listening to that. And that’s the base you need to get started.

24:48 Dan
Cool. Well, hopefully, this episode has been useful. I’m also just as a final point in the Friday club, which I mentioned in our weekly email newsletter. I’m going to be updating our journey of how our podcast downloads to 100,000. Which our goal this year go, and what we’re learning the mistakes are making and things that are working and aren’t working. So if you want to know that then sign up for the Friday club. Just search the Friday club.

25:11 Lloyd
Let us know if you’ve got any questions that you want to be answered. If you’re considering starting a podcast and that sort of thing. Ask us because we want to help.

25:20 Dan
We’ve got a podcast studio that can record podcasts as well if you want to record your podcast or you can do it for yourself.

25:25 Lloyd
He’s being a salesman now. Yeah, we have a studio and that’s a service we can provide.

25:32 Dan
Okay, so look forward to seeing you in your ears next week.

25:37 Lloyd
And book a studio session to record your podcast. See you in your ears next week. Bye now.

Hopefully this has taught you everything you bneed to know about how to start a podcast, if you have any more questions or want to know how Knowlton can support you to produce your own podcast Start A Conversation
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How To Start A Podcast Your Audience Will LOVE

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Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify


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Wondering how to start a podcast? I want to let you in on a secret…we don’t just produce this podcast for fun (although we love doing it), it’s helped us generate hundreds of thousands of pounds of new business for our Marketing Agency. In this podcast episode, we open the bonnet & share our podcasting secrets, what we’ve learnt along the way & actionable steps you can take to start a podcast that generates a worthwhile return on investment for your company!

Timestamps

00:00 – 01:03 Intro
01:04 – 04:48 Why podcasting is a game-changing platform
04:59 – 08:27 Why we started Businesss Anchors & our download stats
08:28 – 09:37 Why download numbers aren’t as important as you think
09:38 – 19:07 How to start a podcast your audience will love (4 steps)
19:08 – 25:44 Lessons we learnt from podcasting
24:45 – 25:57 Outro

Podcast Video Clip

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Transcript

0:00 Pat
Hi, Pat the podcast editor here. What does it take to start and run a successful podcast? Well, today Dan and Lloyd discuss how they built their podcast and share tips for getting started and growing over time.

0:13 Lloyd
The value that Dan and I would get for our business. And for us, as people from like one episode of the podcast may be equal to the value we would get from shitloads of other tech, like 30 Tik Tok videos, think like the time consumed.

0:29 Pat
We’ll also explore some of the ways a podcast might be a better option for growing an audience or a business than other platforms.

0:36 Lloyd
There is kind of four steps that I think can get you, to record something and be on a good path to having a good podcast in the future.

0:46 Pat
Right. Let’s get stuck in this is episode 82 of the business anchors podcast.

1:04 Lloyd
Why is podcasting a game-changing media platform that anchors shouldn’t ignore?

1:09 Dan
Good question.

1:10 Lloyd
Thank you.

1:14 Dan
The main thing I think about podcasting is it’s one of if not the only media platform you can consume effectively whilst doing other stuff like audio in general. And I think from an early stage, we both were quite big audiobook listeners.

I don’t do that so much anymore. I’m more of a podcast guy. But we both used to do that whilst doing crappy chores and like cleaning. And that from that point, I saw the value in Wow, we could produce content that people can listen to when they’re doing boring stuff like driving, and that’s one of the main ones.

The second one, I think we found, it’s a longer form, type of content that you can build deeper relationships with your audience or listeners, in this case, you know, rather than getting a three-second video of you on Facebook, this is a half an hour to a 45-minute piece of content, where you the listeners are listening to us communicate what we want to communicate to you.

And finally, I think podcasting can be super, a super-efficient way of producing content. Yes, we’ve got a bigger setup here. But we could just have like an audio recorder, two mics, and just do that which could be done very efficiently. So there are my three reasons why I think it’s so powerful.

2:34 Lloyd
Yeah, I think that your second point about the kind of deeper relationships from podcasting, rather than posting a three-second video is a massive one. I think it’s not unique to podcasting, but I guess it’s unique to long-form content. So you could create a 30 minute YouTube video, or you know, video on various platforms.

But podcasting is something, audio, and video, you can do long-form, and it’s such a difference, I think, TikTok’s obviously blowing up and has been for the last couple of years. And I think there’s real value there. But it’s I think, you know, the value that perhaps we Dan and I would get for our business. And for us, one episode of the podcast may be equal to the value we would get from shitloads of other tech e.g., 30 TikTok videos.

3:29 Dan
Like the time consumed the minutes of our content consumed with the podcast.

3:34 Lloyd
And anything you’re putting out to the world you’re communicating stuff, and educating them about you, what you believe and the knowledge you have and what you do. And that’s why, you know, someone would have to follow you on TikTok for six months to consume enough to go, oh, okay, there’s kind of themes here. Oh, these guys are honest people, and they want to know their doing, they would know what they’re doing. And there they have a good knowledge base on marketing and social media.

Whereas you can get that from, you know, you business anchors, obviously think we’re brilliant, but we’ve probably communicated all of those things to you in one episode previously. So we’ve kind of got you in and got you to listen somehow, thank you very much, emulated all that with one piece of content, which that deeper relationship offers you more opportunities basically.

4:30 Dan
And as the podcast has been so valuable to our business, in this episode, I want us to break down a bit of the backstory as to why we started the podcast, but then also share some like how to stuff I think you’ve got a few more how-to today people are listening like I actually might consider starting a podcast the actual practical steps.

Yeah, I think towards the end, I’ll go through, basically, there’s kind of four steps that I think can get you to record something and be on a good path to having a good podcast in the future. So quick backstory. as to how this all came about, in February 2020, we started the podcast as a bit of an experiment. Really?

5:08 Lloyd
Do you know when we first record the podcast? We didn’t know COVID existed? Because it was. Yeah, yeah. a month, recorded in January. Yeah.

5:18 Dan
Anyway, we recorded it. And I think for us, we always try to focus at least 20% of our marketing efforts on something new. Rather than just knowing like, for us, LinkedIn works well. We’re always trying different things. And for that year, that test and experiment was the podcast.

And I don’t know about you, Lloyd. But I saw a bit of a gap in the market because there were lots of marketing podcasts out there may like all the ones in the marketing charts, were very practical. How to grow a YouTube following how to build a strategy for, you know, Twitter step one, do this.

5:55 Lloyd
Step two, do this. Step three, this is all very useful. So we’re not taking the piss. But yeah, that’s which is good.

6:03 Dan
But I listened to a lot of them. And I didn’t find them very interesting to listen to, in the sense of like, the kind of thing I’d want to listen to at the weekends.

6:11 Lloyd
It’s more effort, because you’re like, oh, I should learn about this. I’m going to make myself listen.

Yeah. Whereas we try and make, we thought it could be an opportunity for us to provide value through our own experiences of growing a business of running marketing campaigns for some of the biggest brands in the world, all of that insight. And all the things we’re learning and the mistakes we’re making, share that with you listeners, whilst also taking the piss out of it because we’re brothers and we like to poke fun at each other.

We’re such a laugh, aren’t we? Yeah, we have such laughter on business anchors.

6:40 Dan
Oh, so that was the start of the podcast. And I’ve actually got some data to share with you some insights. Don’t tell anyone this stuff because we don’t everyone know. So month one of the podcasts, how many downloads? Do you think we had Lloyd in February 2020? Oh, trying to think back in that it wouldn’t have been many in month one. What like 250. So we had 757. Right, I think was really quite good. Yeah. And there’s a point I’m sharing these numbers, which Oh, yeah. Okay. So I thought we had 257 downloads. Now that across the next few months, that number fluctuated, went up and down. And in October 2020.

It went down to 481 downloads. And I remember the time Lloyd was, you know, cracking the whip and saying to me, Dan, this bloody podcast isn’t working. We’re putting lots of resources into it. Why are we not doing getting, you know, hundreds of 1000s of listeners? But in February 2021, which is a year later, the numbers continue to fluctuate up and down. And we were still learning. February 2021, a year ago, we got a call from a marketing manager from a brand who said, who said I want to speak to you about doing a marketing campaign ended up pitching this quite significant campaign.

And when I got on, in the pitch, the managing director was there and he instantly said has Lloyd managed to find all these Bitcoin yet, because he was an avid podcast host. And we did an episode on that. So we ended up winning that contract. And that was the first real return on investment we got from the podcast.

And since then, we’ve continued to get new business referencing this podcast. So I guess the reason I wanted to share the numbers as you don’t have to have hundreds of 1000s of downloads and listeners to have a successful podcast. Yeah, we’ve obviously increased our downloads significantly. Now. I think we’ve had over 25,000 downloads now. But yeah, don’t be put off if your own because if you think 10 people listening to you for half an hour is better than 100 people seeing a three-second video view as we learned. And now we’ve continued to upgrade this production because we know it’s adding value to our business.

8:58 Lloyd
I think that’s really interesting about the numbers, like if you think we’re all fighting for people’s attention, and the reality is just one of those downloads one of those listeners we potentially getting for our podcast, like half an hour of their attention. So like you’re saying even though on LinkedIn, we might be reaching hundreds of 1000s of people each week, and the podcast could be under 1000. Those podcast listeners where we’re reaching people on a much deeper level, and those kinds of relationships are much stronger and could be worth a lot more.

9:38 Dan
So on a more practical front, I’ve got some things that I want to share in terms of what we’ve learned from the podcast, but to get into more of the practical, how to start. If someone’s listening and thinking I trust what the Knolton brothers are saying, I want to start a podcast or try and test it, what kind of practical steps can they take?

10:00 Lloyd
Well, Dan. Let’s go into every other marketing podcast. I do actually have four steps.

10:10 Dan
We just shat on the marketing podcasters that do this.

10:12 Lloyd
So I think the big mistake people make when they start podcasts is that almost everyone goes, don’t really know what we’re going to talk about. I mean, we’re just going to, we’re going to record on just see, I think it will be fun. We’ll see what we talk about. I think most podcasts start like that, and you know no offence to people we were, although we thought we were structured and organised, there was part of that without first episodes. But I think step one, try and be clear on why you’re doing this and who you want to listen to.

Because that will skip the whole process of the first 20 episodes of you going, just having a chat. You might enjoy that. So that may be good for the enjoyment and stuff. But if you know if you’re starting a podcast, because you want to grow your business, or you’re starting a podcast, because you’ve got a YouTube channel, and you want to drive more people to that YouTube channel, you need to look at why you’re doing it and who you want to listen.

11:10 Dan
So are you saying the business anchors podcast is very structured and strategically designed to ultimately get us business for our agency, rather than just off the cuff entertainment?

11:19 Lloyd
Yes, exactly. I know, it’s interesting, because you listen to it and think this is so entertaining, their main goal must be entertainment. But it’s not. But that’s a really good point, yes. So I think as a starting point, I think that’s working out why am I doing this? Who do I want to listen to, and that will help you skip a load of crap that you’d have to get over. The second part, once you’ve worked that out, is actually taking action and recording something. So me saying oh, you need to know, be clear on why you’re doing this. And you want to listen, I’m not saying everything has to be perfect for you to start because that often stops people from starting.

12:07 Dan
Can I add one tip in? Yeah, I think something that is super useful at these early stages in your process as well is actually listening to podcasts. Because I think we got a lot of insight into what we thought worked well and didn’t by actually listening to podcasts to help shape what you’re going to hear.

12:25 Lloyd
Great. So take action record podcast, knowing that it won’t be the best podcast ever. And it will improve over time. And then you need to repeat that. But and I’ll go into by the way, in a minute, I’ll tell you a tool you can use to upload because the technical stuff where you’re like, well now I’ve got a microphone, but then what do I do?

12:44 Dan
It’s not actually as difficult now, that makes it nice, upload it to one place, and it puts it all on Apple or Spotify.

12:51 Lloyd
But yeah, so you’re recording a podcast? Great. Then the third, that there’s kind of four sections to this third part step three, to think about with every episode that I think, from what we’ve learned will really help. So first thing, Why will my people click this, and by my people, I mean, you’ve decided that you want this type of person to listen. So each episode is going to have a title before people hear anything. It’s going to have a kind of topic of discussion or several and a title. So thinking why will people click on this title?

13:25 Dan
Like how to start a podcast, your audience will love? something just like that example?

13:30 Lloyd
And then secondly, why will people keep listening, so don’t have a clickbait title and then not offering the value or the entertainment or the inspiration or whatever it is that you’re giving isn’t good enough? Because you’ll never get any listeners that return. They’ll just go oh it’s a clickbait title and I’ve got to get off. So thinking about right what we’re actually going to be discussing or what am I talking about that it’s going to keep people listening and keep people engaged?

Third point what can we discuss that would help promote this and reach new people? So we talk about clips that we’re going to break up from the business anchors podcast of you know, some of the best ones we’ve had are me discussing about how I lost 12 million pounds in Bitcoin. We knew that putting that on social media saying lawyers lost 12 million pounds per minute coin.

We knew that putting that as a clip and writing that on social media on various platforms is going to get people to listen. So kind of thinking right? We’re talking about cryptocurrency or we’re talking about money. What can be the thing that’s going to grab people’s attention? Get them in. The fourth point. 4D?

14:43 Dan
Oh no sorry, it’s 3D.

14:45 Lloyd
That’s why it feels so real. Dad joke. What can we discuss that will encourage my listeners to take the action we want them to? So remember at the start, I said to be clear why you’re doing this and who you want to listen to. So we talk about topics that not all the time, but sometimes we talk about topics that allow us to demonstrate the skills we have within our business or our knowledge that may help others that we can really benefit from the business.

And although it’s great, like our previous podcasts were about, if you haven’t listened to about healthy habits, and I think that was a great episode positive, that’s when we didn’t actually communicate much about how amazing campaigns around the world. Yeah, yep. Where is this one? Dan’s just mentioned all these marketing campaigns. But so it doesn’t have to be you don’t want it to be just a sales thing of my business is great, because no one will give a shit.

15:45 Dan
But being able, to smoothly fit in those conversations. Yeah, like we’ve broken, we’ve done episodes where we break down why how campaigns we’ve done, have been successful to give that value element rather than just become a customer of ours. Yeah.

15:59 Lloyd
Or if your goal is to build your YouTube channel, or if your goal is to sell your book, your book, for example, there’ll be topics in that book. And you’ll kind of you can reference that in some of your conversations. And after six months of someone listening and you referencing that book 12 times for a couple of minutes, it builds that and helps you achieve that goal. And that’s a lot of people miss that kind of link to what they’re actually trying to achieve.

16:28 Dan
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make, not just podcast, but content in general is just going too far on the entertainment fun side. I’m doing fun videos, I’m going to do TikTok trends doing dances, really tempting, the most fun thing is to do that get more views to get more engagement, but it doesn’t ever shoehorn into how you can actually help them in their business.

16:47 Lloyd
That’s the real skill. And part of how we help our clients within our marketing agency is we are known as a creative marketing agency. And we do creative, weird and wacky stuff. But the real skill and our value is how within that creative content, do we communicate those things that are really important for your business and make them take action? That’s the key.

17:11 Dan
This is so meta because you’ve just done what we’ve said we need to do you need to do in a podcast.

17:14 Lloyd
Yes. Oh, that’s like Inception. And finally, I just want to say I said, if you’re thinking right, I’m going to start podcasts. How can we make it easy? You can Google, how to find the microphone you need and stuff like that. But we use Buzzsprout. But basically, most people think how do I get it on Spotify and Apple podcasts and stuff. So with Buzzsprout, there will be other services, but we upload it there, we started on the free version, which allows you to upload two hours of content per month. So you don’t even have to pay anything to do this.

And with a few clicks, you upload it and within sort of 24 hours, your episode will be on Spotify, Apple podcasts, all those other places. So it’s simple and free to do that, which people don’t realise we now pay. Because of the amount we post for weekly podcasts, I think we pay $18 a month, which allows us to post six hours of content. So the cost isn’t high. The time and effort aren’t high, it’s you know, it will the first time you’re doing it, you’ll have to work out how to do it. But there’s not as much of a barrier to entry as you would think from the outside.

18:27 Dan
And chartable was another really good tool that we use, which helps you see it’s like more in-depth analytics for your episodes helps you understand how they’re performing compared to other episodes you’ve done. And also they’ve got these really cool things that I’ve spoken about before called Smart Links, where you can create one link that easily takes people to their favourite podcasting platform. They click it either Apple, Spotify, Google podcast.

18:49 Lloyd
So just to be clear, for instance, I listen on Spotify, and I’m on an Android phone. If I click that link, that’s where it’ll take me. Yeah, if Dan’s got an Apple phone, it will take him to Apple Podcast.

18:58 Dan
You can set rules basically for different devices where it will take them to. So that was useful. I think it’s a good practical step there. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of things that I’ve kind of, I think we’ve learned from doing podcasting for how many is it 2 years now? Feb. 2020. It must be.

19:22 Lloyd
Yeah, shit. It’s two years. Bloody Hell.

19:25 Dan
We’re on episode 80 Lloyd.

19:29 Lloyd
What we’re gonna do for 100. We should start thinking about that.

19:32 Dan
Do you know what we should do? We should do a live in-person Business Anchors podcast. So in terms of things that we’ve learned, one of the main things I think is if you’re starting a podcast, focus more on how good the podcast is, rather than the download numbers it gets a mistake we made early on… yes, download numbers are important and to continue, you want to grow the podcast more people listened to it.

But if you are just heavily focused on that you can end up just making episodes that you think or know will get downloads rather than are actually going to help your overall objective for us driving business for our agency. We could get more downloads, just talking about trending stuff, he just burped again didn’t you?

20:15 Lloyd
Yeah. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m sorry. I’m going to get such a bad reputation.

20:28 Dan
Somebody commented last time you did this saying I don’t know why there’s such a stigma around this. It’s just a bodily function.

20:34 Lloyd
Oh, thank you.

20:39 Dan
Don’t focus on the download numbers, focus on making a good episode of people to listen to. Another thing we’ve learned, I think we’ve learned from this is done is better than perfect. For example, over the last two years, we’ve improved the podcast set and how this looks and sounds. And I think sometimes we’ve waited for it to be perfect before doing something and it’s taken months, and then we never do it. Whereas even with this newest set, we’re doing it in stages. So, it started a few weeks ago. And it wasn’t perfect.

And now we’ve got some really cool new stuff. Tay’s worked really hard on making this set really good. You’ve got pictures on the wall, we’ve got other props here. And we’re going to keep we aka Tay from the team is going to continue to make this better and better, because done is better than perfect. I was going to say shout out to Tay and with the support of pat on sound, really been improving the business anchors podcast

21:33 Lloyd
As Dan said, it’s been such a positive thing for us to go, Oh, we’re going to improve this over time. And Taylor’s been taking like steps each episode improving the set improving the sound. And gosh, oh, my body is not functioning well today. Sorry. And yeah, we wouldn’t have even gone live with this set and improved sound at all, because it’s still not completely perfect. Yeah. Whereas we’re now producing better stuff every single week. I think that’s important not to just not do anything because it’s not perfect.

22:10 Dan
Definitely. I think the final thing, I think, which will hopefully be valuable in promoting the podcast is just as if not more important than producing it. Because you can have a brilliant podcast, but if you don’t promote it to a number of channels, then no one’s gonna listen to it.

22:26 Lloyd
Have you heard the phrase build it and they will come? Yeah, not true.

22:31 Dan
No.

22:32 Lloyd
Don’t just expect if I’m producing something brilliant. Well, the listeners will find me. They won’t.

22:38 Dan
I mean, if you think about this podcast, we do a lot of different things to promote this. So we clip it up, and put it across all social platforms, clear, optimised versions on TikTok and Instagram reels, we share it to our weekly email newsletter, we do a competition to get people to listen to this, you can win a bottle of wine on the Friday club, which is our weekly email newsletter. We talk about it in person with people who we meet, we strategically have clips going out each week in the form of Knowlton nuggets, so that we have more downloads so that we get in the charts more. There are just all these things we do.

23:13 Lloyd
Don’t let that put you off. Remember what we said. It doesn’t have to be perfect to start.

23:17 Dan
This is us now two years on.

23:19 Lloyd
Yeah, two years on, we’ve worked out all these things. But at first, we were only clipping it up and putting it on socials. So yeah. Don’t let it put you off. We’re saying all this stuff to promote it. We only need to do that because we’re trying to scale this and scale the positive effects two years down the line. But yeah, like Dan said, that promotion once you’re in the swing of things, and you’re like, I know what I’m doing with this podcast, you can literally start using the microphone on your Apple headphones and using a tool like anchor as a starting point.

Yeah, I won’t mention names. But I know in the marketing, podcast charts for the UK, I know of two that are or at least were just recorded on a phone that was in the top 10. So don’t think that you can’t do really well with that level of production.

24:11 Dan
An interesting point. I did a talk recently, and there was a lady there forgotten her name. Dammit, Janice, Janice. But she said a really interesting tip, which was to do enough to make sure the audio isn’t annoying as a base level, because if it’s like oh like it sounds annoying, people just won’t listen. So it doesn’t have to be you know, really good like this, but just not like oh, yeah.

24:38 Lloyd
Yeah. And that that will mean that it’s not having a negative effect. People won’t be put off and might be like, I’m not listening to that. And that’s the base you need to get started.

24:48 Dan
Cool. Well, hopefully, this episode has been useful. I’m also just as a final point in the Friday club, which I mentioned in our weekly email newsletter. I’m going to be updating our journey of how our podcast downloads to 100,000. Which our goal this year go, and what we’re learning the mistakes are making and things that are working and aren’t working. So if you want to know that then sign up for the Friday club. Just search the Friday club.

25:11 Lloyd
Let us know if you’ve got any questions that you want to be answered. If you’re considering starting a podcast and that sort of thing. Ask us because we want to help.

25:20 Dan
We’ve got a podcast studio that can record podcasts as well if you want to record your podcast or you can do it for yourself.

25:25 Lloyd
He’s being a salesman now. Yeah, we have a studio and that’s a service we can provide.

25:32 Dan
Okay, so look forward to seeing you in your ears next week.

25:37 Lloyd
And book a studio session to record your podcast. See you in your ears next week. Bye now.

Hopefully this has taught you everything you bneed to know about how to start a podcast, if you have any more questions or want to know how Knowlton can support you to produce your own podcast Start A Conversation
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How To Format A Script

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Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify


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If you’re wondering how to format a script and want your videos to drive more leads, sales, engagement, or action in general, this is a must-listen. In this episode, we read through a recent script we wrote for a Knowlton video & breakdown how to format a script that drives action.

There are so many value-nuggets in this, not just for script writing but for producing content in general. Get ready to learn how to format a script!

Timestamps

00:00 – 01:16 Intro
01:17 – 06:10 Why script writing is so important
06:11 – 13:02 Knowlton’s live script read
13:03 – 17:34 How to format a script & script writing tips
17:35 – 19:02 Where to find character inspiration
19:03 – 23:20 Our #1 script writing tip
23:21 – 23:34 Outro
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Transcript

0:00 Pat
Hi, Pat the podcast editor here. What does it take to write a script that converts customers? Well, today, Dan and Lloyd discuss the importance of your scripts and how small choices can have a big impact.

0:12 Lloyd
You might say a word or phrase that turns off 2% of people, if you\’re putting paid-spend behind that you\’re going to exaggerate that result. So rather than like 20 people going, Oh no not for me, maybe 200,000 people get switched off, you get a much worse return on your investment.

0:34 Pat
We also explore some of the ways that Dan and Lloyd make sure their videos are relatable and hook in the right audiences.

0:40 Lloyd
We had a title come up after the hook title on screens saying creative marketing agency, the edgy one. So that\’s if you\’re in marketing, there\’s the word marketing on the screen. If there\’s any doubt then you\’re going oh, this is a thing relevant to marketers? That\’s me. Yeah. This is a video made for me that I should watch.

1:00 Pat
Right? Let\’s get stuck in. This is episode 84 of the business anchors podcast.

1:17 Dan
Why are we talking about script writing Lloyd? Surely we can just wing it when speaking on video like we used to?

1:22 Lloyd
Well, you could wing it if you want. But if you\’re, if you\’ve got specific goals you\’re trying to achieve, then language and communication are important. It\’s important to be specific with that language.

1:38 Dan
I remember when we started making videos, I don\’t think we ever scripted anything, did we?

1:43 Lloyd
No, no we would kind of have bullet pilot points.

1:48 Dan
It just took ages and they weren\’t that good. And then I think when we realised, we don\’t mean scripting as in this isn\’t completely scripted, we\’re not reading off a bit of paper now.

2:02 Lloyd
No, we are not. Pause for Dan to laugh.

2:13 Dan
Explain what we mean by scripting Lloyd, why will anchors give a shit about this episode, basically, what value are we adding.

2:19 Lloyd
If you\’re into creativity and scriptwriting and video, you\’d be very interested but also more about communication and how in your marketing or in anything you do that you want to communicate to anyone in the world.

Especially with the sorts of stuff we do, so we create videos for online platforms, and social paid ad campaigns, if you\’re creating a video, and you\’re gonna post it organically on the internet somewhere, so say you\’re gonna post a video to Instagram or reels.
Then you might say a word or phrase that turns off 2% of people as in like, you kind of show that you\’re not an expert in this thing because you use the wrong terminology, you might use a certain word. If you post that organically 2 people might go I\’m going to stop watching that.
If you\’re putting paid-spend behind that to let more people see it, which you do in marketing, normally with anything, you\’re going to exaggerate that result. So rather than like 20 people going, Oh, nope not for me. Maybe 200,000 People get switched off, you get a much worse return on your investment.

And it could be the same the other way, if you do something positive, those specific ways you communicate and that language you use those words, those phrases that laugh that relatability is going to exaggerate and have a huge effect.

4:00 Dan
We understand this. Because when we\’re producing videos for clients, we have to make sure that what\’s being said is the correct information like for your own company, you know, you may be listening and have your own company, so I know what I\’m talking about.
But if you\’re marketing and providing marketing service for some services for someone else, you need to make sure the wording is correct.

4:20 Lloyd
The specificity of language and communication is much more important than people think. And there are a couple of examples that I\’ve read or listened to this week, and one is one from Spotify. So this isn\’t a part of a video script or anything but this is the text that was on their platform.
And they changed free users to saying your subscription is currently free to your subscription is currently zero pounds, zero pence. And that change meant more people click the button underneath to sign up for a premium account, so like a change of a word, especially if you\’re a big business or you\’re planning to have, 100,000, millions of people look at things that might have got them another 200,000 users worldwide.
And there\’s another example in Facebook, in the early years of Facebook when they were trying to increase their user base around the world. In the culture of Japan, it\’s seen as rude to invite people to say you\’re a Facebook user around the world. Normally, it\’s like you sign up, invite your friends and invite them.
In Japan obviously, I don\’t understand the Japanese culture well, but the guy that was in charge of this in Japan said, it\’s seen as rude to kind of invite people to stuff like that. And they change the word invite to announce that you\’re on Facebook.
And suddenly, it became one of the quickest growing countries for Facebook users where it was the slowest. So words, you have much more impact than you could ever imagine, especially if you\’re scaling them in a marketing context.

6:11 Dan
On that note, I want us to try something completely different than we\’ve never done in business anchors history, Lloyd. I want us to actually read through one of our most recent scripts for a Knowlton video, and then dissect it and talk about why we\’ve done what we\’ve done. And by the way, this is mainly you.

6:32 Lloyd
Do you know what, that makes perfect sense as to why you printed the script and go Yeah, for this episode? I did think it was weird.


6:39 Dan
But I think this would be a good way of a real-life example of a video that we\’re producing today actually, we\’re producing this video. And this is the script that you\’ve developed based on ours. </p

6:50 Lloyd
Should we do what we do? At Knowlton? Yeah, you\’re not usually involved in this process table. Both the production team and the creative team usually do a table read of a script when we have it.

As in, we read what the characters say, the bits in the script. Shall we do that for business anchors, give them an insight. And then afterwards, we\’ll get into the detail.

7:09 Dan
Do you want to start by giving the context of what this video is?

7:14 Lloyd
Yeah. So at Knowlton, what we are trying to achieve, because we always tell you, this is important to understand that so, hopefully, you understand that we are trying to reach as many sorts of marketing manager level people in brands and businesses around the UK.
That\’s our main thing. A secondary goal is to try and convince them we know what we\’re doing. Well, Dan. Let\’s go into every other marketing podcast. I do actually have four steps.

7:40 Dan
And convert them as clients.

7:41 Lloyd
Yeah, yeah. So this script is about a marketing meeting. Oh, relatable. So I\’ll play the role of Edgy Sean.

Do you wanna play the role of Ben?

7:59 Dan
Yep. Then we\’ve got boss Barbara as well.

8:04 Lloyd
Okay, shall I play boss Barbara? And you read the parts in between.


8:08 Dan
Okay, Yeah. So this is a creative marketing agency meeting. That we\’re going through, shall we start? Are you ready? Okay.

So, hook section. Quick two to five seconds of Edgy Shawn enthusiastically shouting his edgy shit thoughts and ideas.

8:29 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Fudge the client, fudge the boss. No one says another word until you\’re over the drink-drive limit.

8:39 Dan
Does that say title creative marketing agency?

8:42 Lloyd
You can tell Dan isn\’t usually part of our table read. So now title on screen, Creative Marketing Agency, The Edgy One.

8:49 Dan
We see a group of creative marketers around a table ready to start a meeting.

8:54 Lloyd
Boss Barbara: We\’re here to discuss some creative ideas and concepts for some amazing brands. There\’s a lot to do so let\’s get straight into it. Ben?
9:02 Dan
Ben: First up we have Grenade, protein bars, energy drinks, performance nutrition. Shot of team member about to speak whip pan to edgy Sean sat back was on my chair in the corner drinking directly out of the coffee pot.

9:15 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: We change the pronunciation of Grenade to *Pooooowhhh*.

9:20 Dan
Ben: We can\’t change the name of the brand Sean.

9:22 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Can\’t is just can with the T. Oh, next page of the script, right? Yes. Sounds are more recognisable than words. But bah bah, bah, I\’m loving it.

9:38 Dan
Sean looks around the room encouraging others in the meeting to speak.

9:41 Lloyd
Boss Barbara: McDonald\’s?
Edgy Sean: *Pooooowhhh*.
Boss Barbara: Grenade?
Edgy Sean: I don\’t know the brand of that name. But if you mean *Pooooowhhh* you\’d be right for once Barbara.

9:52 Dan
Ben: Sean, the clients not going to authorise that.

9:55 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: F the client.

9:57 Dan
Ben: We can\’t though can we Sean, they pay us and doing that with a client was
what got you your first written warning from the boss.

10:04 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Fudge the boss.

10:05 Dan
Whip pan to Boss. Boss looks horrified.

Ben: I\’m not sure this is useful.

10:11 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: You\’re making a bad call guys. In 2008 McDonald\’s ignored my Mcfudger idea and they haven\’t recovered since.

10:19 Dan
Ben: I think they\’re doing all right, Sean.

10:20 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Fudge Ronald (Quietly in the background was Barbara beginning to speak.)

10:25 Lloyd
Boss Barbara: Let\’s move on, to the ecology project. They\’re focused on climate solutions, carbon reduction, and tree planting to try and undo the damage we\’re doing to the planet. Wholesome stuff. The video is a triangle. No one\’s done it before.

10:38 Dan
Ben: But surely they haven\’t done it because none of our screens are triangular. And what video?

10:44 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: The video is just constantly spinning.

10:47 Dan
Ben: Sean that isn\’t a concept. That\’s just a spinning triangle.


10:51 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: I drink sambuca through my eye and only take eyedrops through my mouth.

10:55 Dan
Ben: Sean now we\’re just saying things to try and be edgy that have no link to this conversation.

11:01 Lloyd
These pages are very hard to turn, aren\’t they?

Edgy Sean: Okay, fine. We got 100 of us in a room and we do a shot for every time there\’s a tree planted. p>

11:08 Dan
It\’s you boss Barbara. p>

11:13 Lloyd
Boss Barbara: Oh, they\’ve planted over 30 million trees, Sean. Exactly. If anyone is used to social norms and business, as usual, you might want to step out, this is business as unusual.

11:28 Dan
Ben: Sean, we\’re not going to get anywhere just shouting swear words. At Knowlton, we have processes and structures in place to maximise our creativity in ways that benefit our clients. Our concepts need strong hooks in the first three seconds otherwise, no one will watch.
We need to engage the target market in the next couple of seconds to ensure the concept is relatable, and viewers think this is for me.

11:51 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Maybe it\’s not for them.

11:53 Dan
Ben: That doesn\’t make any sense, Sean.

11:55 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Maybe that\’s a good thing.

11:57 Dan
Ben: You\’re saying anything to contradict the norm. But none of it makes any sense. We can\’t entertain this anymore.

12:07 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Maybe our ads shouldn\’t be entertaining.

12:10 Dan
Ben: The entertainment in our ads is what allows us to engage the viewer for long enough to communicate what we need to about the brand we\’re representing.

12:18 Lloyd
Nice, that\’s kind of, where we\’ve got to with that. There are a few lines that didn\’t make the cut at the end. One of my favourites is the videos of the ice cream and you\’re the cone. I\’m the flake, I\’m going to get inside the ice cream. Doesn\’t make sense, that\’s probably why It didn\’t make the cut.

12:37 Dan
We\’re also going to make a shortcut TikTok sketch video of you just saying edgy lines.

12:43 Lloyd
We need to push boundaries here? Mood boards put me in a bored mood. Let\’s make notes on the wall. And yeah, so obviously, we\’re pretty bad at that.

12:55 Dan
So what that was was it was playing out at a marketing meeting where there\’s a guy who\’s just trying to be edgy. Because you know, sometimes you get that in marketing people just trying to be weird, because it\’s marketing like let\’s do this.

13:17 Lloyd
Yeah, exactly. If you\’re in a marketing department in a big business, or you\’ve worked in agencies if you\’ve been there several years, you\’ve likely come across a character like Edgy Sean, someone that\’s just coming up with different ideas, but only for the sake of it not to benefit anything.
Yeah, so that\’s the whole idea. We spoke in the last episode about how it needs to be able to relate to your audience. And this is someone in our, the world of marketing, and the world of creative strategy and stuff. There\’s all there\’s always an Edgy Sean on who\’s just trying to be different and weird.

13:57 Dan

So what I think is clever about this is that it hooks you in instantly like there\’s this weird edgy character who\’s dressed weird and saying relatable stuff. It hooks you in and grabs your attention and is relatable long enough for us to then actually communicate some sales messages, that are talking about why Knowlton are good.
If you were listening to the final part of the video is like well at Knowlton we don\’t just do that we do this and this rather than this just being a sales video, come work with us, at Knowlton, we can do creative stuff.

14:29 Lloyd
Exactly. That first point that we spoke about in the previous episode is about a thumb-stopping hook to a video and you might notice here it starts with five seconds of Edgy Sean enthusiastically shouting edgy shit thoughts and ideas. Fudge the client.
By the way, it\’s it I said fudge instead of you know, I didn\’t want to offend you guys. Fudge the client, fudge the boss. No one says another word until you\’re over the drink-drive limit.

14:58 Dan
So ridiculous.

15:00 Lloyd
If we\’re thinking about standard storytelling, that\’s not the start of the story. That\’s just some random funny lines he said. But because it\’s an online ad, we need to hook people in with this kind of stuff to make sure we get their attention at the start. So that\’s why it\’s there.
If you were just telling this story, you would have just started with Barbara saying, we\’re here to discuss some creative ideas and concepts for some amazing brands. But that\’s not going to get the attention that shouting, fudge the client fudge is gonna get.

15:32 Dan
And I think this has also got the light bulb moments that we always speak about, when you see Edgy Sean, we should show what\’s what you shouldn\’t be doing in a marketing meeting to come up with creative ideas, it then gives us the ability to then position Knowlton, as this is how you should be doing it, rather than doing it like Edgy Sean with his spinning triangle.

15:53 Lloyd
yeah, it\’s that lightbulb moment that we\’ve spoken about in previous episodes, you need the viewers and the people you\’re trying to convince to have that thing of saying, oh, that\’s me, I need that.

Where we\’re taking the Mickey in an exaggerated way out of a creative meeting where basically, you need to come up with some great ideas for your marketing projects. And it\’s tough. And then we add a bit in with a relatable character kind of saying, oh, Knowlton, we do this. And it\’s kind of like, supposed to be that thing of, ah, I need that so I stopped wasting time in these creative meetings. And we\’re not coming up with good enough ideas.

16:29 Dan
So I guess to provide value to some of the listeners, you\’re one of the people that write these kinds of scripts. What advice do you have? Or what approach do you take to write these scripts that could be useful to listeners? Are there any tips that you\’ve got?

16:46 Lloyd
Well, there are lots of things that we\’ve spoken about previously, I guess we\’ve already spoken about the hook. That\’s so key at the start, we need it to be relatable, just like we\’re talking about in a lot of things relating to the previous episode. But you need it to be relatable to who you\’re trying to get in front of.

For this obviously, it\’s marketers. And that\’s why it\’s a marketing meeting setting, you need people to think this is for me. So even elements, like we had a title come up after the hook title on screens and creative marketing agency, the edgy one.
So that\’s if you\’re in marketing, there\’s the word marketing on the screen. If there\’s any doubt, then you\’re going oh, this is a thing relevant to marketers? That\’s me. Yeah. This is a video made for me that I should watch. So that\’s important early on in the video.


17:35 Dan
Where do you just random questions, but you\’re good at coming up with these characters? Where do you get inspiration for these characters from when you\’re writing stuff? Like, um, for client campaigns? We\’ve had a whole raft of interesting characters in client concepts. Where do you get inspiration from?


17:51 Lloyd
So a few places? One, we\’ve mentioned this before, the to the anchors, not from ads. So basically, if you\’re looking in your industry, or what\’s the best marketing ad, you\’re not going to find really good characters and entertaining. So from shows like the office that\’s seen as one of the best comedies ever made and stuff for sitcoms, like, get your inspiration from, from characters on there.

Also like real life, like exaggerated versions of people you meet in real life.


18:27 Dan
We\’ve done episodes before about networking, like one of our past services talking about that. And we\’ve met some really interesting characters like the lady who tried to heal you with stones.

18:35 Lloyd
Exactly. And some characters are exaggerated versions of the guy that tried to tell me that cows would explode if we didn\’t drink milk at networking events. By that guy. He\’s a nice guy\’s he\’s funny, but obviously, an exaggerated version of him is a great character.

But yeah, I think trying to create that relatable kind of exaggerated character in this kind of video is key.

One big tip as well. So, Dan, I don\’t think you\’re aware. But this was the first draft of the script. And it\’s been improved since. And one of my biggest tips is if you\’re writing a script, or even if it\’s not a script like this, and you\’re just writing notes for your first video, and you\’re kind of just writing almost the story, because you haven\’t done this before you\’re writing bullet points, get someone else to read it and be critical with feedback.

Ellie, who\’s a great part of our team, our production team. Now knows I won\’t be offended if she just writes notes all over the scripts. This is bad. This should be cut. This could be funnier. That\’s what she did for me. Yesterday when I did the second draft for this script. And it\’s so helpful because there\’s perfection is too much for any one person.
And obviously, with stuff like this is like you\’re trying to get the closest you can to the perfection of how good this video can be, how relatable it could be, how entertaining it can be, how well you can persuade the viewers to do what you want them to do and take the action.
And it\’s just too much for one person, if you get someone else\’s eyes on it, that has the confidence to be critical. It\’s very helpful.

Why are you smiling?

20:24 Dan
Just because you always get me to look at this kind of thing as well. And it\’s always a good sign when I\’m laughing to myself and reading it. And this was one of those were things like the spinning triangle video just really tickled me.

20:39 Lloyd
That\’s another point I was gonna make. So I think we usually, with scripts like this is a working environment, we send it to each other for feedback and stuff. And you\’re the first person I got to read this, Dan, and I deliberately watched your reaction while you were reading it.
Because it\’s such a key, we always talk about triggering emotion. And that\’s what helps in marketing, how you\’re going to get people to take action and feel something. And with a lot of this, we\’re trying to trigger like joy, and we\’re trying to make people laugh and that kind of thing.

When Dan was reading this, there were a few bits where he laughed out loud while he was reading it. And then I said, Well, what, what are you laughing at there? Because it\’s the first experience of okay, one person\’s looking at the script. And these parts already make them laugh out loud and trigger emotion. So obviously, we need more bits like that we need more of that.
And any bits where he was just kind of silently reading, you probably think, okay, there\’s probably a bit of a gap there where there\’s not enough so losing that and getting someone\’s reaction before it goes to the world.

21:49 Dan
This was one of the best bits that made me laugh as well. He says, I only drink sambuca through my eye and only take eyedrops through my mouth. How do you come up with this ridiculous shit?

21:58 Lloyd
What is the benefit of having very strange thoughts? It becomes useful when you\’re trying to write a script that\’s supposed to be funny.

22:10 Dan
I found that quite interesting. I hope that was interesting to the listeners. And this is a bit of a different style of a podcast episode. But we thought we\’d give it a go. And hopefully, you found this useful.

22:22 Lloyd
This gives you a bit more of an insight into our business and the random things that we do that are such an important part of our world that might not be part of your world. Yeah, in the different business anchors, listeners, homes and workplaces. But if you want to hear any more like see or hear any more parts in detail about what we do let us know, because we\’re just trying to do the best stuff for you really, whatever you\’ll be interested in.

22:45 Dan
This video will be live when this podcast is out. So go to our LinkedIn or my LinkedIn.

22:52 Lloyd
It\’ll be the one with millions of views. With viewers going \’Oh my god, this deserves an Oscar\’.


22:58 Dan

And if you have found this useful, and you think anyone else would be interested, please do tell them about the business anchors podcast so that we can spread the love and get more people in our little community of anchors.

23:08 Lloyd
And if you have any expertise in scriptwriting, please let me know I want to learn and improve and improve everything we\’re doing. I\’m open to your critical feedback.

23:18 Dan
See you next week in your ears.

23:20 Dan
See you in your ears.


ENDING
Hopefully this has been useful and taught you a little more about how to format a script that can drive sales and leads. If you have any more questions or want to know how Knowlton can support you in script writing or video production Start A Conversation.
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How To Format A Script

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Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify


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If you’re wondering how to format a script and want your videos to drive more leads, sales, engagement, or action in general, this is a must-listen. In this episode, we read through a recent script we wrote for a Knowlton video (Edgy Sean Video) & breakdown how to format a script that drives action.

There are so many value-nuggets in this, not just for script writing but for producing content in general. Get ready to learn how to format a script!

Timestamps

00:00 – 01:16 Intro
01:17 – 06:10 Why script writing is so important
06:11 – 13:02 Knowlton’s live script read
13:03 – 17:34 How to format a script & script writing tips
17:35 – 19:02 Where to find character inspiration
19:03 – 23:20 Our #1 script writing tip
23:21 – 23:34 Outro
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Transcript

0:00 Pat
Hi, Pat the podcast editor here. What does it take to write a script that converts customers? Well, today, Dan and Lloyd discuss the importance of your scripts and how small choices can have a big impact.

0:12 Lloyd
You might say a word or phrase that turns off 2% of people, if you\’re putting paid-spend behind that you\’re going to exaggerate that result. So rather than like 20 people going, Oh no not for me, maybe 200,000 people get switched off, you get a much worse return on your investment.

0:34 Pat
We also explore some of the ways that Dan and Lloyd make sure their videos are relatable and hook in the right audiences.

0:40 Lloyd
We had a title come up after the hook title on screens saying creative marketing agency, the edgy one. So that\’s if you\’re in marketing, there\’s the word marketing on the screen. If there\’s any doubt then you\’re going oh, this is a thing relevant to marketers? That\’s me. Yeah. This is a video made for me that I should watch.

1:00 Pat
Right? Let\’s get stuck in. This is episode 84 of the business anchors podcast.

1:17 Dan
Why are we talking about scriptwriting Lloyd? Surely we can just wing it when speaking on video like we used to?

1:22 Lloyd
Well, you could wing it if you want. But if you\’re, if you\’ve got specific goals you\’re trying to achieve, then language and communication are important. It\’s important to be specific with that language.

1:38 Dan
I remember when we started making videos, I don\’t think we ever scripted anything, did we?

1:43 Lloyd
No, no we would kind of have bullet pilot points.

1:48 Dan
It just took ages and they weren\’t that good. And then I think when we realised, we don\’t mean scripting as in this isn\’t completely scripted, we\’re not reading off a bit of paper now.

2:02 Lloyd
No, we are not. Pause for Dan to laugh.

2:13 Dan
Explain what we mean by scripting Lloyd, why will anchors give a shit about this episode, basically, what value are we adding.

2:19 Lloyd
If you\’re into creativity and scriptwriting and video, you\’d be very interested but also more about communication and how in your marketing or in anything you do that you want to communicate to anyone in the world.

Especially with the sorts of stuff we do, so we create videos for online platforms, and social paid ad campaigns, if you\’re creating a video, and you\’re gonna post it organically on the internet somewhere, so say you\’re gonna post a video to Instagram or reels.
Then you might say a word or phrase that turns off 2% of people as in like, you kind of show that you\’re not an expert in this thing because you use the wrong terminology, you might use a certain word. If you post that organically 2 people might go I\’m going to stop watching that.
If you\’re putting paid-spend behind that to let more people see it, which you do in marketing, normally with anything, you\’re going to exaggerate that result. So rather than like 20 people going, Oh, nope not for me. Maybe 200,000 People get switched off, you get a much worse return on your investment.

And it could be the same the other way, if you do something positive, those specific ways you communicate and that language you use those words, those phrases that laugh that relatability is going to exaggerate and have a huge effect.

4:00 Dan
We understand this. Because when we\’re producing videos for clients, we have to make sure that what\’s being said is the correct information like for your own company, you know, you may be listening and have your own company, so I know what I\’m talking about.
But if you\’re marketing and providing marketing service for some services for someone else, you need to make sure the wording is correct.

4:20 Lloyd
The specificity of language and communication is much more important than people think. And there are a couple of examples that I\’ve read or listened to this week, and one is one from Spotify. So this isn\’t a part of a video script or anything but this is the text that was on their platform.
And they changed free users to saying your subscription is currently free to your subscription is currently zero pounds, zero pence. And that change meant more people click the button underneath to sign up for a premium account, so like a change of a word, especially if you\’re a big business or you\’re planning to have, 100,000, millions of people look at things that might have got them another 200,000 users worldwide.
And there\’s another example in Facebook, in the early years of Facebook when they were trying to increase their user base around the world. In the culture of Japan, it\’s seen as rude to invite people to say you\’re a Facebook user around the world. Normally, it\’s like you sign up, invite your friends and invite them.
In Japan obviously, I don\’t understand the Japanese culture well, but the guy that was in charge of this in Japan said, it\’s seen as rude to kind of invite people to stuff like that. And they change the word invite to announce that you\’re on Facebook.
And suddenly, it became one of the quickest growing countries for Facebook users where it was the slowest. So words, you have much more impact than you could ever imagine, especially if you\’re scaling them in a marketing context.

6:11 Dan
On that note, I want us to try something completely different than we\’ve never done in business anchors history, Lloyd. I want us to actually read through one of our most recent scripts for a Knowlton video, and then dissect it and talk about why we\’ve done what we\’ve done. And by the way, this is mainly you.

6:32 Lloyd
Do you know what, that makes perfect sense as to why you printed the script and go Yeah, for this episode? I did think it was weird.


6:39 Dan
But I think this would be a good way of a real-life example of a video that we\’re producing today actually, we\’re producing this video. And this is the script that you\’ve developed based on ours. </p

6:50 Lloyd
Should we do what we do? At Knowlton? Yeah, you\’re not usually involved in this process table. Both the production team and the creative team usually do a table read of a script when we have it.

As in, we read what the characters say, the bits in the script. Shall we do that for business anchors, give them an insight. And then afterwards, we\’ll get into the detail.

7:09 Dan
Do you want to start by giving the context of what this video is?

7:14 Lloyd
Yeah. So at Knowlton, what we are trying to achieve, because we always tell you, this is important to understand that so, hopefully, you understand that we are trying to reach as many sorts of marketing manager level people in brands and businesses around the UK.
That\’s our main thing. A secondary goal is to try and convince them we know what we\’re doing. Well, Dan. Let\’s go into every other marketing podcast. I do actually have four steps.

7:40 Dan
And convert them as clients.

7:41 Lloyd
Yeah, yeah. So this script is about a marketing meeting. Oh, relatable. So I\’ll play the role of Edgy Sean.

Do you wanna play the role of Ben?

7:59 Dan
Yep. Then we\’ve got boss Barbara as well.

8:04 Lloyd
Okay, shall I play boss Barbara? And you read the parts in between.


8:08 Dan
Okay, Yeah. So this is a creative marketing agency meeting. That we\’re going through, shall we start? Are you ready? Okay.

So, hook section. Quick two to five seconds of Edgy Shawn enthusiastically shouting his edgy shit thoughts and ideas.

8:29 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Fudge the client, fudge the boss. No one says another word until you\’re over the drink-drive limit.

8:39 Dan
Does that say title creative marketing agency?

8:42 Lloyd
You can tell Dan isn\’t usually part of our table read. So now title on screen, Creative Marketing Agency, The Edgy One.

8:49 Dan
We see a group of creative marketers around a table ready to start a meeting.

8:54 Lloyd
Boss Barbara: We\’re here to discuss some creative ideas and concepts for some amazing brands. There\’s a lot to do so let\’s get straight into it. Ben?
9:02 Dan
Ben: First up we have Grenade, protein bars, energy drinks, performance nutrition. Shot of team member about to speak whip pan to edgy Sean sat back was on my chair in the corner drinking directly out of the coffee pot.

9:15 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: We change the pronunciation of Grenade to *Pooooowhhh*.

9:20 Dan
Ben: We can\’t change the name of the brand Sean.

9:22 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Can\’t is just can with the T. Oh, next page of the script, right? Yes. Sounds are more recognisable than words. But bah bah, bah, I\’m loving it.

9:38 Dan
Sean looks around the room encouraging others in the meeting to speak.

9:41 Lloyd
Boss Barbara: McDonald\’s?
Edgy Sean: *Pooooowhhh*.
Boss Barbara: Grenade?
Edgy Sean: I don\’t know the brand of that name. But if you mean *Pooooowhhh* you\’d be right for once Barbara.

9:52 Dan
Ben: Sean, the clients not going to authorise that.

9:55 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: F the client.

9:57 Dan
Ben: We can\’t though can we Sean, they pay us and doing that with a client was
what got you your first written warning from the boss.

10:04 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Fudge the boss.

10:05 Dan
Whip pan to Boss. Boss looks horrified.

Ben: I\’m not sure this is useful.

10:11 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: You\’re making a bad call guys. In 2008 McDonald\’s ignored my Mcfudger idea and they haven\’t recovered since.

10:19 Dan
Ben: I think they\’re doing all right, Sean.

10:20 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Fudge Ronald (Quietly in the background was Barbara beginning to speak.)

10:25 Lloyd
Boss Barbara: Let\’s move on, to the ecology project. They\’re focused on climate solutions, carbon reduction, and tree planting to try and undo the damage we\’re doing to the planet. Wholesome stuff. The video is a triangle. No one\’s done it before.

10:38 Dan
Ben: But surely they haven\’t done it because none of our screens are triangular. And what video?

10:44 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: The video is just constantly spinning.

10:47 Dan
Ben: Sean that isn\’t a concept. That\’s just a spinning triangle.


10:51 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: I drink sambuca through my eye and only take eyedrops through my mouth.

10:55 Dan
Ben: Sean now we\’re just saying things to try and be edgy that have no link to this conversation.

11:01 Lloyd
These pages are very hard to turn, aren\’t they?

Edgy Sean: Okay, fine. We got 100 of us in a room and we do a shot for every time there\’s a tree planted. p>

11:08 Dan
It\’s you boss Barbara. p>

11:13 Lloyd
Boss Barbara: Oh, they\’ve planted over 30 million trees, Sean. Exactly. If anyone is used to social norms and business, as usual, you might want to step out, this is business as unusual.

11:28 Dan
Ben: Sean, we\’re not going to get anywhere just shouting swear words. At Knowlton, we have processes and structures in place to maximise our creativity in ways that benefit our clients. Our concepts need strong hooks in the first three seconds otherwise, no one will watch.
We need to engage the target market in the next couple of seconds to ensure the concept is relatable, and viewers think this is for me.

11:51 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Maybe it\’s not for them.

11:53 Dan
Ben: That doesn\’t make any sense, Sean.

11:55 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Maybe that\’s a good thing.

11:57 Dan
Ben: You\’re saying anything to contradict the norm. But none of it makes any sense. We can\’t entertain this anymore.

12:07 Lloyd
Edgy Sean: Maybe our ads shouldn\’t be entertaining.

12:10 Dan
Ben: The entertainment in our ads is what allows us to engage the viewer for long enough to communicate what we need to about the brand we\’re representing.

12:18 Lloyd
Nice, that\’s kind of, where we\’ve got to with that. There are a few lines that didn\’t make the cut at the end. One of my favourites is the videos of the ice cream and you\’re the cone. I\’m the flake, I\’m going to get inside the ice cream. Doesn\’t make sense, that\’s probably why It didn\’t make the cut.

12:37 Dan
We\’re also going to make a shortcut TikTok sketch video of you just saying edgy lines.

12:43 Lloyd
We need to push boundaries here? Mood boards put me in a bored mood. Let\’s make notes on the wall. And yeah, so obviously, we\’re pretty bad at that.

12:55 Dan
So what that was was it was playing out at a marketing meeting where there\’s a guy who\’s just trying to be edgy. Because you know, sometimes you get that in marketing people just trying to be weird, because it\’s marketing like let\’s do this.

13:17 Lloyd
Yeah, exactly. If you\’re in a marketing department in a big business, or you\’ve worked in agencies if you\’ve been there several years, you\’ve likely come across a character like Edgy Sean, someone that\’s just coming up with different ideas, but only for the sake of it not to benefit anything.
Yeah, so that\’s the whole idea. We spoke in the last episode about how it needs to be able to relate to your audience. And this is someone in our, the world of marketing, and the world of creative strategy and stuff. There\’s all there\’s always an Edgy Sean on who\’s just trying to be different and weird.

13:57 Dan

So what I think is clever about this is that it hooks you in instantly like there\’s this weird edgy character who\’s dressed weird and saying relatable stuff. It hooks you in and grabs your attention and is relatable long enough for us to then actually communicate some sales messages, that are talking about why Knowlton are good.
If you were listening to the final part of the video is like well at Knowlton we don\’t just do that we do this and this rather than this just being a sales video, come work with us, at Knowlton, we can do creative stuff.

14:29 Lloyd
Exactly. That first point that we spoke about in the previous episode is about a thumb-stopping hook to a video and you might notice here it starts with five seconds of Edgy Sean enthusiastically shouting edgy shit thoughts and ideas. Fudge the client.
By the way, it\’s it I said fudge instead of you know, I didn\’t want to offend you guys. Fudge the client, fudge the boss. No one says another word until you\’re over the drink-drive limit.

14:58 Dan
So ridiculous.

15:00 Lloyd
If we\’re thinking about standard storytelling, that\’s not the start of the story. That\’s just some random funny lines he said. But because it\’s an online ad, we need to hook people in with this kind of stuff to make sure we get their attention at the start. So that\’s why it\’s there.
If you were just telling this story, you would have just started with Barbara saying, we\’re here to discuss some creative ideas and concepts for some amazing brands. But that\’s not going to get the attention that shouting, fudge the client fudge is gonna get.

15:32 Dan
And I think this has also got the light bulb moments that we always speak about, when you see Edgy Sean, we should show what\’s what you shouldn\’t be doing in a marketing meeting to come up with creative ideas, it then gives us the ability to then position Knowlton, as this is how you should be doing it, rather than doing it like Edgy Sean with his spinning triangle.

15:53 Lloyd
yeah, it\’s that lightbulb moment that we\’ve spoken about in previous episodes, you need the viewers and the people you\’re trying to convince to have that thing of saying, oh, that\’s me, I need that.

Where we\’re taking the Mickey in an exaggerated way out of a creative meeting where basically, you need to come up with some great ideas for your marketing projects. And it\’s tough. And then we add a bit in with a relatable character kind of saying, oh, Knowlton, we do this. And it\’s kind of like, supposed to be that thing of, ah, I need that so I stopped wasting time in these creative meetings. And we\’re not coming up with good enough ideas.

16:29 Dan
So I guess to provide value to some of the listeners, you\’re one of the people that write these kinds of scripts. What advice do you have? Or what approach do you take to write these scripts that could be useful to listeners? Are there any tips that you\’ve got?

16:46 Lloyd
Well, there are lots of things that we\’ve spoken about previously, I guess we\’ve already spoken about the hook. That\’s so key at the start, we need it to be relatable, just like we\’re talking about in a lot of things relating to the previous episode. But you need it to be relatable to who you\’re trying to get in front of.

For this obviously, it\’s marketers. And that\’s why it\’s a marketing meeting setting, you need people to think this is for me. So even elements, like we had a title come up after the hook title on screens and creative marketing agency, the edgy one.
So that\’s if you\’re in marketing, there\’s the word marketing on the screen. If there\’s any doubt, then you\’re going oh, this is a thing relevant to marketers? That\’s me. Yeah. This is a video made for me that I should watch. So that\’s important early on in the video.


17:35 Dan
Where do you just random questions, but you\’re good at coming up with these characters? Where do you get inspiration for these characters from when you\’re writing stuff? Like, um, for client campaigns? We\’ve had a whole raft of interesting characters in client concepts. Where do you get inspiration from?


17:51 Lloyd
So a few places? One, we\’ve mentioned this before, the to the anchors, not from ads. So basically, if you\’re looking in your industry, or what\’s the best marketing ad, you\’re not going to find really good characters and entertaining. So from shows like the office that\’s seen as one of the best comedies ever made and stuff for sitcoms, like, get your inspiration from, from characters on there.

Also like real life, like exaggerated versions of people you meet in real life.


18:27 Dan
We\’ve done episodes before about networking, like one of our past services talking about that. And we\’ve met some really interesting characters like the lady who tried to heal you with stones.

18:35 Lloyd
Exactly. And some characters are exaggerated versions of the guy that tried to tell me that cows would explode if we didn\’t drink milk at networking events. By that guy. He\’s a nice guy\’s he\’s funny, but obviously, an exaggerated version of him is a great character.

But yeah, I think trying to create that relatable kind of exaggerated character in this kind of video is key.

One big tip as well. So, Dan, I don\’t think you\’re aware. But this was the first draft of the script. And it\’s been improved since. And one of my biggest tips is if you\’re writing a script, or even if it\’s not a script like this, and you\’re just writing notes for your first video, and you\’re kind of just writing almost the story, because you haven\’t done this before you\’re writing bullet points, get someone else to read it and be critical with feedback.

Ellie, who\’s a great part of our team, our production team. Now knows I won\’t be offended if she just writes notes all over the scripts. This is bad. This should be cut. This could be funnier. That\’s what she did for me. Yesterday when I did the second draft for this script. And it\’s so helpful because there\’s perfection is too much for any one person.
And obviously, with stuff like this is like you\’re trying to get the closest you can to the perfection of how good this video can be, how relatable it could be, how entertaining it can be, how well you can persuade the viewers to do what you want them to do and take the action.
And it\’s just too much for one person, if you get someone else\’s eyes on it, that has the confidence to be critical. It\’s very helpful.

Why are you smiling?

20:24 Dan
Just because you always get me to look at this kind of thing as well. And it\’s always a good sign when I\’m laughing to myself and reading it. And this was one of those were things like the spinning triangle video just really tickled me.

20:39 Lloyd
That\’s another point I was gonna make. So I think we usually, with scripts like this is a working environment, we send it to each other for feedback and stuff. And you\’re the first person I got to read this, Dan, and I deliberately watched your reaction while you were reading it.
Because it\’s such a key, we always talk about triggering emotion. And that\’s what helps in marketing, how you\’re going to get people to take action and feel something. And with a lot of this, we\’re trying to trigger like joy, and we\’re trying to make people laugh and that kind of thing.

When Dan was reading this, there were a few bits where he laughed out loud while he was reading it. And then I said, Well, what, what are you laughing at there? Because it\’s the first experience of okay, one person\’s looking at the script. And these parts already make them laugh out loud and trigger emotion. So obviously, we need more bits like that we need more of that.
And any bits where he was just kind of silently reading, you probably think, okay, there\’s probably a bit of a gap there where there\’s not enough so losing that and getting someone\’s reaction before it goes to the world.

21:49 Dan
This was one of the best bits that made me laugh as well. He says, I only drink sambuca through my eye and only take eyedrops through my mouth. How do you come up with this ridiculous shit?

21:58 Lloyd
What is the benefit of having very strange thoughts? It becomes useful when you\’re trying to write a script that\’s supposed to be funny.

22:10 Dan
I found that quite interesting. I hope that was interesting to the listeners. And this is a bit of a different style of a podcast episode. But we thought we\’d give it a go. And hopefully, you found this useful.

22:22 Lloyd
This gives you a bit more of an insight into our business and the random things that we do that are such an important part of our world that might not be part of your world. Yeah, in the different business anchors, listeners, homes and workplaces. But if you want to hear any more like see or hear any more parts in detail about what we do let us know, because we\’re just trying to do the best stuff for you really, whatever you\’ll be interested in.

22:45 Dan
This video will be live when this podcast is out. So go to our LinkedIn or my LinkedIn.

22:52 Lloyd
It\’ll be the one with millions of views. With viewers going \’Oh my god, this deserves an Oscar\’.


22:58 Dan

And if you have found this useful, and you think anyone else would be interested, please do tell them about the business anchors podcast so that we can spread the love and get more people in our little community of anchors.

23:08 Lloyd
And if you have any expertise in scriptwriting, please let me know I want to learn and improve and improve everything we\’re doing. I\’m open to your critical feedback.

23:18 Dan
See you next week in your ears.

23:20 Dan
See you in your ears.

Hopefully this has been useful and taught you a little more about how to format a script that can drive sales and leads. If you have any more questions or want to know how Knowlton can support you in scriptwriting or video production Start A Conversation.
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