GRACE ANDREWS: THE MARKETER BEHIND STEVEN BARTLETT

Morning!

It’s a wet and windy day here in Porto. In fact, it has been all week. Low clouds, grey skies, and lots of rain. But I did force myself to go and do legs at the gym today, so that’s a positive.

Anyway, less moaning, more marketing.

Here’s what you’re going to learn by reading this:

• How to build the UK’s most popular business podcast.

• The growth hacks the Diary Of A CEO team uses.

• The secret marketing director behind it all.

Listen to the audio version HERE. 

CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION

BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY

There are very few people I would take advice from under the age of 30. Mainly because I am under 30 and I know my ideas, thoughts, and beliefs change like the wind.

If you asked me to give you advice 12 months ago, it would probably be very different to the advice I give you today.

But I needed a podcast to listen to while I was dragging myself through a leg session at the gym and this popped up as a recommendation…

I recognised the girl they’d blurred out - it was Grace Andrews.

I’d seen her on LinkedIn before and enjoyed some of her content, but was it worth sitting down and listening to her thoughts on marketing for an hour?

“She’s only young,” I told myself. “I’m guessing she has a team around her,” I thought.

F*ck it. Let’s just watch it.

I hit play.

1 hour and 7 minutes later, Grace had walked me through an absolute masterclass on how Diary Of A CEO became the biggest business podcast in the UK.

(Whilst also dropping gems on marketing, social media, and branding.)

I was gobsmacked.

So much so, that I feel like it would be a sin to keep all of the lessons I learned for myself.

So here are 5 marketing lessons Grace Andrews taught me about building DOAC:

Lesson 1: Think Social First

I very rarely listen to The Diary Of A CEO, yet it feels like when an episode drops it somehow finds its way onto one of my social media feeds.

Grace explained that it wasn’t by mistake, the team spend a scary amount of time optimising the podcast for socials.

That doesn’t mean just sitting there and chopping up videos, no, they optimise for socials before the guest has even entered the room.

Here are 3 things Grace said they do to optimise for socials:

1/ Trackpad under the desk

One thing that you probably don’t realise while watching the podcast is that Steven has a trackpad under the desk on his side.

He raises his thumb when he thinks the conversation is engaging, AI then sends that segment of the podcast straight to his team, who begin testing it with Meta ads.

Crazy.

While he is deep in a conversation with the guest his brain is still thinking about what snippets of the conversation will do well on social media.

2/ Behind-the-scenes videos

From the second the guest enters the room the team are filming, but not for the podcast - for social media.

They’re looking for:

• Behind-the-scenes moments fans want to see

• Clip-worthy moments between Steven and the guest

• Or anything at all they can post on socials.

While this seems like a minor point, I think it sets the scene for the team’s priorities when a guest enters the building.

Steven’s focus = creating a great episode
The teams focus = sending the pod viral online

3/ Pre-Podcast Researches

How do they manage to get so many viral clips from every podcast episode?

Because Steven is handpicking topics he thinks will go viral on social media.

Yep, on the podcast Grace admitted they have a team of full-time staff who are specifically there to research what topics they believe perform well on socials for each guest.

Before the podcast they give Steven 10-20 topics they want him to touch on in the podcast and boom… they have their viral clips.

Even before the guest enters the room, they are prepping the podcast for socials.

Quite incredible.

Now, I’ve shown you how they optimise the podcast for socials… but how do they attack their social media channels?

Lesson 2: Match Your Steven To Your Platform

If you only followed Steven Bartlett on LinkedIn, you’d see him as an inspiring entrepreneur and businessman.

But if you only followed him on Instagram, you’d see him as a health-conscious, thoughtful podcaster.

For each channel, you get a slightly different version of Steven.

That’s because Grace and her team are matching specific topics to specific platforms - and only posting clips that match.

For Instagram, she said the focus on the topics of:

• Mental health.

• Physical health.

• All around wellness.

So they find where Steven talks on those topics and use those clips for Instagram.

For LinkedIn, the key topics are:

• Entrepreneurship.

• Inspirational.

• Business.

So they use the clips of him talking on those topics for LinkedIn.

Steven is posting on all platforms, but what he’s posting on each platform is very different.

The team are presenting a different side of Steven to match each platform’s audience base. So everyone loves the side of him they see.

Lesson 3: Only Post Sharable, Stand-Alone Pieces

According to Grace one of the biggest mistakes most podcasts make is that they focus all of their short-form content on driving people to the long-form podcast episode.

But the DOAC team have a completely different approach.

Their goal: “Reach new people and keep them engaged for as long as possible.”

They want each piece of content (particularly their short-form clips) to be stand-alone pieces of content. Meaning you don’t need to watch the entire episode to get enjoyment out of them.

She gave a couple of key things they focus on to make that happen:

1/ Completing the story arc

She said too many podcasts will release clips that start the story and then end on a cliffhanger.

That seems great, but a few weeks later no one will enjoy any of your content. They have to leave the piece feeling satisfied.

2/ Create something so great they want more

I love the way Grace framed this. She said that pushing people to consume more content from you - or go and view the whole podcast - isn’t about leaving people on a cliffhanger. It’s about creating something so great they want more.

When you can create that feeling, you’re on a rocket ship to the top.

I couldn’t agree with her more.

Lesson 4: You Can’t Know Everything, But You Can Learn Anything

One of the best things I’ve ever heard Steven Bartlett say is this:

Steven puts a huge emphasis on experimenting with everything he does - especially with the DOAC podcast.

Grace explained that they recently hired a “Head of Experiments” to make sure every department is vigorously testing every single week.

But what kind of experiments are they running?

There were 3 experiments Grace broke down on the podcast:

1/ The Thumbnails & Headlines

This image looks like a crazy grid pattern from a distance…

But what you’re looking at is Steve Bartlett’s team testing 100+ headline topics for his next “Behind The Diary” YouTube video.

Here’s how the tests work:

• The team crafts 20-100 different title ideas.

• They put a small amount of money behind ads with each of them.

• They see which ads get the most clicks.

They then use that for the video.

Then they do the same with the thumbnail.

Yep, every single DOAC thumbnail and title has been tested 100s of times before it ever hits YouTube, and then they test even more once it goes live too.

It’s no wonder every episode performs so well.

2/ The Topics For Socials

You know that trackpad we talked about earlier? Here’s what Steven says happens after he hits it:

• AI sends the section of the podcast to his team.

• His team tests different angles of that topic across Meta Ads.

• They use the highest-performing angle to craft the social piece around.

It’s almost a cheat code to never have badly performing social media posts - but it’s just not cheating, it’s genius.

Lesson 5: Make It Impossible Not To Watch

The Diary Of A CEO trailers have become infamous and a lot of that is down to the great Anthony Smith who spearheads them.

But they aren’t great just solely down to raw talent.

Grace says that every single time they release a trailer 2 different experiments happen:

A) They test the topics (like we talked about in lesson 1) for what people will be most interested in.

B) The editing to test each trailer and see which one is the most engaging.

It’s just yet another way that the DOAC team do it better than anyone else.

Grace also had a fantastic point about why they put so much emphasis on their trailers.

She said:

And it’s safe to say, DOAC episodes have some unbelievable trailers.

 🌱 THE GREENHOUSE

Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:

• Watch the full podcast with Grace. (See here)

• Steven Bartlett on the importance of experiments. (See here)

• See Grace Andrews’ Instagram feed. (See here)

TL;DR

1/ Think Social First
2/ Match Person To Platform
3/ Only Post Stand-Alone Content
4/ You Can’t Know Everything, But You Can Learn Anything
5/ Make It Impossible Not To Watch

Grace is clearly well ahead of the game when it comes to marketing podcasts and it’s no surprise with the people she has surrounded herself with.

I think she’s only 27, yet just look at what she’s done with DOAC.

She’s even racked up 200,000+ across her on socials - incredible. So much to learn from her and hopefully you learned something from reading this.

If you did enjoy the breakdown, why not forward this to a friend?

Until next Sunday.

— Niall

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THAT’S ALL!

This has been a breakdown of Grace Andrews's podcast marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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