Transcript:
Adam Stoker: [00:00:01] Audio is such a powerful format because it provides the concept of passive consumption and allows you to tell a much deeper story. They can do it while they're driving in the car, while they're doing laundry, going to the gym and that's when the lightbulb kind of turned off with me. That podcast was really going to be a thing.
[00:00:20] Hey, I'm Adam Stoker. I'm really excited to be here for those of you that have only heard my podcast. It's called the Destination Marketing Podcast. If you're disappointed with what you're actually seeing in person, there's not much I can do, but it's the reason I did a podcast, right? If you're familiar with the term ‘hat fishing,’ it's where you look good with a hat, but not necessarily without one. So it's like catfishing but with a hat. I've been accused of that a few times, which is why I'm wearing the hat here today.
So like she mentioned, I'm Adam Stoker, President and CEO of Relic and also the host of the Destination Marketing Podcast. And we created over the last couple of years, the Destination Marketing Podcast Network where we have really tried to pioneer the idea of destinations using audio as a format to promote their destinations and to build an audience. I've got a couple of my colleagues here who have done a great job of doing just that, of starting podcasts for their destinations and using those podcasts as part of their marketing strategy. And so I think it'll be a fun conversation today. I'd love, first of all, Melea for you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.
Melea Hames: [00:01:36] Hi, I'm Melea Hames, I'm Social Media Manager for Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association, it's Visit North Alabama on social for a reason because it's shorter. I have been with Alabama Mountain Lakes for 12 years and we recently started our podcast in September, October I believe.
Adam Stoker: [00:01:55] Awesome. Thanks, Melea. Stuart?
Stuart Butler: [00:01:59] Thanks, Alex. Adam.
Adam Stoker: [00:01:59] I'll go by whatever.
Stuart Butler: [00:02:03] Yeah, so I'm Stuart Butler, I'm the CMO of Visit Myrtle Beach. I've only been in that role for about a year. Just hit my anniversary. So I don't know many people in the industry yet, but so come tell me, hey outwards, I need friends. We only just launched our first podcast as a DMO a couple of weeks ago. But before I came to the dark side, is it the dark side of the light side? I was on the agency side before, so you pick your poison. I ran a digital agency and much like Adam, we had a podcast for five or six years and by the time we sold the agency and I left it was the number-one podcast in the hotel industry so it was a fun five years.
Adam Stoker: [00:02:47] Awesome. We'll talk a little bit about, even though Stuart’s really early in the Myrtle Beach Podcast journey. We'll talk a little bit about his vision and where it's headed today because I think that's an important part of the conversation. I guess my first question for both of you, why a podcast? What is it about the concept of a podcast that made you decide yeah, this is something we want to try?
Melea Hames: [00:03:15] Well, podcasts have increasingly become more popular over the years. I remember when you came to Decatur to do one of your podcasts and we had some of our local stakeholders on that. I remember you approached me then and I'm thinking, I don't know. It's so far out of my comfort zone which this is out of my comfort zone as well just so you know. But then I remember my boss said one day, like months later, “I think we should start a podcast,” and I kind of felt like we needed to, but it was just hesitant in like, okay, I know I'm going to have to be the host here. So anyway, we just decided that it would be good to reach a different audience to attract visitors to our destination.
Adam Stoker: [00:03:59] Great. All right, Stuart.
Stuart Butler: [00:04:02] Yeah, So I've been a podcast consumer for a long time. I think I really started consuming podcast right when Serial came out and hit it big. So almost 10 years ago now in podcast. Went from being something you heard about, but didn't really know how to really mainstream. I've actually dabbled with a personal podcast before that, but it wasn't a platform. There wasn't a podcast app or anything like that, so it was hard to get audience.
But one of the things that I really have enjoyed as a consumer podcast is it's a very intimate format. Like you actually get to feel like you're part of the conversation, you get to feel like the people that are talking are part of your family or part of your tribe. So I think for destinations especially, that's a really, really big opportunity because you can connect with people on a different level than you can in traditional and digital formats. So, it is definitely about finding a different audience, but it's also about really, more importantly, having a conversation with people informing a much deeper relationship with your consumer.
Adam Stoker: [00:05:04] Yeah. Three years ago when I started my show, I didn't really have any idea, I wasn't a big podcast listener, the gateway drug is True Crime like you said Serial. Right? So that's where I had started, I had done some sports podcasts and as I got into it, what I realized is that audio is such a powerful format because it provides the concept of passive consumption. Whereas if you're planning a trip on a destination website, I would call that active consumption. You have to be sitting down at your computer and reading through all that content that we spent so much money to have written and put together, and the reality is that not many people are taking to the time to read all of that content.
But audio as a format allows you to do it in a passive way and allows you to tell a much deeper story. They can do it while they're driving in the car, while they're doing laundry, going to the gym. That's when the lightbulb kind of turned off for me, that podcast was really going to be a thing. Then COVID hit and it's like podcast had this resurgence, right, that really I think opened the door for so many organizations who hadn't thought about a podcast to actually get into it.
So as we talk about the concept of passive listening or passive consumption, how does that play into what you've decided to do with your podcast strategy? Why are you telling your story through this format?
Stuart Butler: [00:06:35] Well, so you're 100% right. It's a very different relationship because it's passive but it's also selective. People are very discerning about how they spend their time. A lot of times podcasts are consumed at the same time as doing something else. Like I personally, I usually listen to podcasts when I'm running or doing housework or stuff like that but I have a finite amount of that time and so I'm really selective about what I listened to. So I think where that plays into our strategy is and I realized this when we did our podcast. The reason it became the number one in the hotel industry wasn't because we had the best information or the best advice or the best interviews. It was because we were the most entertaining.
I think for podcasts as a format DMOs really have to embrace that side of it. Like there's very few people are going to choose your podcast over This American Life or My Favorite Murder or Joe Rogan Experience or These Big Behemoths, they're really entertaining. They're not going to choose to listen to a candy shop in your destination unless you're doing it in a way that actually interests them and it's entertaining.
Our strategy is more about how do we entertain first and educate second, how do we develop a relationship with these people? And so what that really means is we're leaning into becoming a lifestyle brand and less of a DMO. We're doing that through the branded content but with the content is so high in the funnel that it's less talking about Myrtle Beach, it's more connecting with someone on something that they're interested in and then it's a trojan horse that sells them on Myrtle Beach secondarily. That’s our approach.
Adam Stoker: [00:08:11] Yeah Melea before you jump in. I want to actually respond. This is one of the reasons that I felt like Stuart and Melea would be a couple of great examples to have here on the panel today because Stuart is the CMO of Visit Myrtle beach, a massive destination with maybe comparatively a little bit larger budget than a lot of destinations have. Right? Then Melea is from a small destination in North Alabama and so the way they're using the format is completely different.
That's where Melea, I'd love to have you maybe chime in with how you're using the format. Stuart talked about this concept of branded entertainment that I want to come back to where it's entertainment first and then the trojan horse method of plugging Myrtle beach. How are you guys doing it?
Melea Hames: [00:08:54] Yeah, well kind of, can I answer or respond to him really quickly and it kind of answers your question as well. But again we were looking for a new audience, a younger audience and what we typically had on social media and our website. At the beginning, my strategy was highlight the places in North Alabama. It's called Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama because the more I talk to people, people are like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that that was there, I had no idea this was there. So, in our, onboarding we decided to name it that.
In the beginning, it was okay, let's just highlight these things but then I found, like, Stuart said that having those conversations and those episodes that I've done where it's been like a conversation, like, it's just like picking up a phone and you're talking to your friend on it. I have been trying to pull out people now and kind of focus on not just the destination or not just the attraction or event or whatever in the episode but also the people behind that, so it's kind of, I guess, shifted our strategy shifted a little bit as we've gone on.
Adam Stoker: [00:10:16] Which I think is a good thing, right? The show kind of takes on a personality of its own as you go. What has highlighting these stakeholders done for the stakeholder engagement portion of your role at the destination?
Melea Hames: [00:10:28] I mean, they love it. Of course, they love anything additional that we can give them to get their name out there, and we keep track of all of that of, okay, you were mentioned after each episode I write down, I mentioned this, this, this and this, so it adds into providing that value to our stakeholders. I think it's good too for them that they, again, I keep harping on this, but that different newer audience out there.
Adam Stoker: [00:10:57] Yeah, for me, I know that stakeholders and none of you have felt this, I'm sure. But every once in a while it can be like, what have you done for me lately? Right? That's none of you have ever felt that. But podcast and having them as a guest on the podcast is a really, really tangible way to provide value. When in some destinations, and I know there's a lot of amazing data resources out there in the industry right now, but some destinations don't have those data resources, but to provide the tangible value of having stakeholders a guest on the show. They can go show people that and they hear themselves talk and it usually goes over really well for stakeholders.
Melea Hames: [00:11:33] I remember that.
Stuart Butler: [00:11:35] And I think that's really important because there's two ways you can look at the content you're producing but it depends on the audience you're trying to talk to. I would suggest that a lot of the podcasts that have been created in that space thus far have been more targeted at the local audience, which is a great thing to do, right, because obviously that local stakeholder engagement and pro tourism in your destination is really important.
I don't think it's possible. At least, I haven't seen anyone do it successfully where you can really talk to that local audience and attract at a large scale and external audience, because the value proposition is different for them. What they're looking for is different. I think it's perfectly acceptable for a lot of DMOs to do what they're doing and they're doing a great job. But I wouldn't suggest trying to make it something it's not. Like know your lane, say my audience is my local stakeholders. Maybe I do a second podcast is talking to the external ones. But if I'm talking to a bunch of local businesses.
I would say Murrells Inlet because it's in my geographic region and I'm not picking on anyone else. So in Murrells Inlet in South Carolina, there's not a person in this room that's going to choose to listen to that podcast repeatedly and become a part of that consistent audience unless they have a reason to do it, unless they have a tether to Murrells Inlet. Unless I make it entertaining and valuable in some other derivative way.
Adam Stoker: [00:12:59] I think that's one of the reasons Stuart that I wanted to have this conversation with you today because we've talked a lot about the concept of branded entertainment where we're going to entertain first and then of course, we'll sprinkle in the destination as we go. One of the ways that you've done that is this brand new podcast that you launched called Myrtle Moms with Margaritas. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you're using that strategy?
Stuart Butler: [00:13:24] So let me let me back up a little bit first. So my opinion is, and you can agree or disagree with this, but this is how my brain works. Over time, it's getting more and more expensive to pay to reach an audience, right? Where a lot of our money goes to places like Google and Facebook and maybe the OTAs but it's paid media. Over time that gets more expensive, it's just natural, and over time because of privacy regulations, because of fragmentation of media consumption, that audience is getting smaller or less targeted.
If you follow that logic through, every year that you do this job fast forward 30 years now, it's going to be 30 years more expensive and you're going to have a 30 years fewer smaller, less qualified audience. Right? So it's madness to assume that this is sustainable long term. So we have to as an entity, as an industry, we have to say, okay, what's next? How do we reach the audience in a more organic way? I think the way to do that is to shift budget, tangible amounts of your budget from paid media to owned media. I think everyone should be doing that if they're not.
In the owned media, you should be investing in should be focused on building audience and audience that you can repeatedly talk to at no cost. Right now we're leasing ground on Expedia and Google and Facebook, but we don't own that ground, like we’re building or we're renting the house. You could argue that your organic Facebook page is you own the house, but you don't own the land that is on. We need to invest in real estate that we own, we control and where we can communicate with the audience, so that's sort of why we start.
With that mindset, what we're doing with the Myrtle Moms with Margaritas Podcast is we said, how do we talk to an audience about something they deeply care about in an entertaining way that's way high in the funnel and where someone doesn't necessarily have to give two hoots about Myrtle Beach, right? So we said, okay, what's a good one to start with? What we said, moms. Being a mom is a thing that's universal, even if you're not a mom, you probably have experienced a mom somewhere in your life, right?
Adam Stoker: [00:15:35] Probably.
Stuart Butler: [00:15:37] Even if you're not a mom, you may just want to understand how moms think, because as a dad, like, it's an interesting show to me too. So we said, let's start with that as an audience, let's get two of our team members who are moms of young kids. One of them, and this is purely serendipitous just found out she was pregnant like in the second episode, so now it's going to be about pregnancy too.
But we're going to build an audience at a very high level of the funnel about people that are doing the same thing that every mom universally is going to experience that happens to be in Myrtle Beach, happens to drip in information about Myrtle Beach, sometimes the episodes are recorded in a restaurant in Myrtle Beach and they may talk about it a little bit and they may be drinking a margarita or now a virgin margarita. In the show over time, people are going to get to know them and trust them and they're going to have influence on future decisions and will run ads at the end of the show to promote Myrtle Beach a little more aggressively, but it's not about selling, it's about audience building. If we can build an audience that's captivated over time we can sell to them and we can invite them to our destination and then they'll feel an affinity to our destination and they'll come back more and more frequently.
It is a long-term strategy, long-term strategy. You're not going to build that audience overnight, you're not going to have great success in terms of how many people show up tomorrow, but over the next 5, 10, 20 years we think we're going to make it move the needle significantly with that kind of approach.
Adam Stoker: [00:17:04] I think that demonstrates a great understanding of the marketing funnel, right, awareness consideration and purchase. You're going to reach these people when they're not planning a trip. They're going to build a relationship with these moms that are just communicating and telling stories and building relationships with the audience. But then when it comes time to plan a trip, that relationship comes in handy, right?
I really like how you're using that. You touched on something that I think is really critical. There's three types of media. There's, well, some would argue that there's a fourth which is shared, but we'll talk about the three that I think are the most important. So first you've mentioned owned, which I think is really important. Paid, which is where we're leasing access to someone else's audience. I own an advertising agency, there is a place for paid media, right? This is not a pitch to abandon paid media completely. Then there's earned media, which is through your public relations efforts and other efforts related to that.
If you're not nurturing those three types of media, then there's a hole in your plan. What we're looking at here is a way to build an owned audience. If you have the correct long-term strategy over time, building that audience will allow you to not be so reliant on other people's audiences long term. I thought you articulated that really well.
Stuart Butler: [00:18:25] Early on before you coined the term branded entertainment or at least that you were the first person I heard that said it. I was referring to what we were doing is valued media. So it's sort of an extension of that owned media, but it's media that people actually value consuming. It can manifest in pay and it will inevitably manifest in earned as well but it starts at owned. I'm not suggesting I want to be clear, I'm not suggesting the majority of your budget should go in to own media. What I'm suggesting is some of what you're spending on paid right now should shift incrementally. You want to upset the stakeholders and break the system you've created over dozens of years, but gradually each year you should move some of the money from this pocket over here, paid media in the owned media.
Adam Stoker: [00:19:15] Great, thank you. So Melea, you have a smaller team and you wear a lot of hats on your own. Tell me a little bit about the nuts and bolts of creating your podcast and the different responsibilities that go in. Like how did you get it off the ground?
Melea Hames: [00:19:33] Well, a small team, it's me. I do the social media, the blogs, the podcast, all of that. That was one thing that I was kind of hesitant about because I mean everyone's plate is already full enough as it is. And I thought, oh goodness, here we go with one more thing to do, even though I wanted to do it. But I will say it's been going from being hesitant to now I'm just always wanted to talk about it and just getting it off the ground. I feel like your team was amazing. He didn't pay me to say this at all.
But your team really has been amazing. Just that first initial meeting, it resolved a lot of my fears that I had of, I'm not going to be able to do this, am I going to be able to handle this? Am I going to be able to have content? Which now I think why did I ever worry about content? I mean we've got 16 counties in our region. Why did I ever worry about having enough content? I actually have too much content. But it has been an amazing experience of just having the organization of your staff, of getting everything together and helping me out with outlines, so it's been a very pleasant experience of getting it off the ground.
Adam Stoker: [00:20:56] So what do you do on your own versus what you rely on the team on my side to do?
Melea Hames: [00:21:03] They send the outline to me. Of course, I send them information like where to find the information and then they'll put an outline together for me. Of course, I do tweak it. I've learned over the process of doing this is I have problems with transitions when I'm under pressure. So I would write out my transitions and try not to read it to where it's like thank you for joining, try to make it sound lively. But if I have that in front of me as a reminder of okay, this is what I wanted to say to connect the thoughts the dots there.
But yeah, y'all do the outline for me. You do my social media graphics which are amazing and I find the guests of course the content and the guests.
Adam Stoker: [00:21:50] So you arrange the guests, we kind of collaborate on the outline and then you obviously show up and do the recording, and then we handle the production editing and distribution?
Melea Hames: [00:22:00] Yes.
Adam Stoker: [00:22:00] -- after that. Okay. Now Stuart what does your team look like to execute on some of these? Because we talked about one show, the Myrtle Moms and Margaritas. We have several in the pipeline. So what does your team look like to be able to execute on this?
Stuart Butler: [00:22:17] Yeah, well we're very fortunate in that. We have ample resources. I have a team of 8 people that work directly for me. Then we have – we’re a CVB and a chamber of commerce. So we have 40 plus employees total within the organization and we have a healthy budget. So I talked a little bit about us, but then I want to touch on what we did before Fuel Travel my previous agency because it was sort of the opposite. We're very fortunate and that we can figure out how to resource any project that we really want and I fully understand how blessed we are to be in that position.
What we're trying to create is essentially a media company within our DMO and it's not just podcasting, it's YouTube channels, it's TV shows, it's a whole bunch of stuff. We have to have the conversation what makes sense for us to do internally versus what makes sense for us to hire experts to do. The happy medium we've structured right now which is working great for us is we are sort of the architects of the concepts that why does this exist? Who's the audience? What's the name look like? Then we collaborate with your team on that, make sure we're considering all that, all the options.
Then we record, produce and then we're still kind of in this gray area right now where we're editing some of them, your team's editing some, you guys have trained our team a lot on how to publish and things like that. I think what we'll get to because we probably got five shows that will launch between now and the end of the year. I think where we'll end up as a sweet spot is we'll be recording and shipping them off to you to edit, publish. So you're sort of doing that laborious work that our team doesn't find as enjoyable and we can pay you guys to do that.
I realized the vast majority of DMOs are not in that situation where they can do five shows and do that. But what I will say is anyone can podcast. So my previous career, we were a small digital agency for the hotel space for Fuel Travel and we wanted to find an audience. We wanted to make a name for ourselves in the DMO world. We literally, our budget for our podcast was $80. We went and bought a Yeti microphone off of Amazon for $80 and put it in the middle of a circular table and four of us, the four co-hosts sat around and just had conversations about real tangible technical things that hotels could do to improve their digital marketing and that was it.
In the first dozen or so episodes, were rough. We had no idea what we were doing. I had gone on Google for like an hour and figured out how to record a podcast, how to edit in GarageBand, where to publish, how to get it syndicated. Like, Google. I don't know if you've ever heard of this website, G-O-O-G-L-E is amazing. You literally can type in any question and it will give you an answer and often there's a video that shows you exactly how to do the thing you're trying to figure out. It's amazing. Everyone should use it.
But that was what we did. We were just really scrappy, right? We just said we'll figure this out. We have no budget to do this, $80 was it. So any DMO can go and do that thing. Every single podcast starts sucks to start with like the first couple of episodes are not great because you're self-conscious, you're pretending to be a presenter, right? You put on this fake radio voice, you over-read, it's stuffy. That’s not what podcasts. Podcasts are conversations like this, right? You want the audience to be a part of that conversation. The more natural, the more unscripted, certainly have a framework and the beats of a show, know what you're going to hit on, just like this conversation we sort of knew the outline, right?
Embrace where it goes and have fun. It doesn't have to cost. Now I will admit after $80 and about 50 episodes in, 30 episodes in and we started getting an audience, we felt like we should up the production budget. So we went and blew our budget and spend an extra $500 on better microphones. So $600 total is all we invested and we had the number-one podcast in the hotel industry. So you don't have to break the budget, it doesn't have to be a type of, you're small and you can't afford to buy the experts just go figure it out like. It’s a couple of hours a week, like choose to put your time into that instead of something else. Best in the long term success.
Adam Stoker: [00:26:44] One of the newer trends that I'm seeing too, and I think this speaks to the success you had with your podcast at Fuel before you came to Myrtle Beach. People are using these podcast platforms like a search engine because they want to consume the content in the format they want to consume it in and so which was a real circular sentence that I just said. But I think you get the gist of what I was trying to say. They're typing keywords into these different like Apple Podcast, Spotify, and they're seeing what pops up and you don't even have to in some cases have major paid promotion behind your podcast in order to make it successful because people are already searching for those keywords.
The Destination Marketing Podcast, there's only 10,000 or so people such as yourselves in this room in country and we've got 60,000 downloads on that podcast from people that found it organically because the only place where we've advertised it is here on stage, through our email list, or just through the organic search function. So people are typing your same as your SEO keywords that you're optimizing for on your website, people are searching for those keywords on podcast platforms now which is interesting.
Stuart Butler: [00:28:00] That's how I found you. When I moved into the DMOs, but when I came to the light side, we'll call it that. When I came to the light side, one of the first things I did, because I had terrible vision. I don't read a ton. So I listened to a lot to educate myself. The first thing I did was I went and looked for DMO podcasts and I found like Bill Geist, I found yours, there was a couple of others as well. I mean it works. That's how people consume.
Adam Stoker: [00:28:24] Yeah. Nicole at Destination on the Left also has a great show. If any of you haven't heard it, you should check that out as well. Okay, Melea, what have you learned over the last several months that you've been building your show, what have you learned?
Melea Hames: [00:28:40] Podcasts are fun. Like Stuart said there's no need to be afraid. Just know going into it. I mean, yeah, I know my first couple of episodes probably sounded like I was reading a script like this. But yeah, it's fine and I absolutely love doing it because like I said, as we have kind of shifted trying to draw out some of the people in the destinations, for example, we've got a mural trail and so I thought, you know it'd be really cool to get some of the mural artists to come on.
I had a guy who was originally from Decatur and he had done a couple of murals in Decatur in Athens. He told the stories about behind those murals and one was about a sister who had passed away and that was the one that was the most like just like a conversation. It was amazing. I mean when I got through with that podcast, I thought this is what I want every one of them to be like. It was probably episode 17, maybe 16, 17. It took me a little while, I guess to get to that point. But after that conversation, I thought this is the direction I want to go now of trying to make it more like that every time.
Adam Stoker: [00:29:59] I love that and the relationship that the artists behind these murals can build with the audience through an audio format where they're not just reading these flat words on a page. What a cool episode.
Melea Hames: [00:30:13] Yeah, because we're still highlighting the mural trail, we're still saying, hey, he did this one, he did this one and you can go see these and but it's really cool that you know the stories behind that and I've got another mural artists scheduled coming up soon, so I can't wait to have her on and learn. He talked about his process, which was very interesting. So it was really neat.
Adam Stoker: [00:30:37] I love that. So I feel like every destination has a comprehensive story. There's a whole story. You're never going to tell the whole thing, but with a podcast, you can tell chapters bits and pieces of that story and going deep on some of these murals, something that would be very difficult to do in another format. I like that.
Melea Hames: [00:31:00] It has more meaning when you go and see it because then you're like, oh I know, you don't wonder. I wonder who this person is in this mural. I wonder what this is about. You know that story.
Stuart Butler: [00:31:09] Yeah I'd expand on that a little bit and maybe politely pushed back a little bit on that statement from Adam. I don't think it's our story. I think with storytellers like the DMOs role is to tell the stories. We’re not the protagonist of the story, right? It's the audience and the people that make up the community I think are the protagonists. What I've done is always more effective is when you talk less about yourself as a destination and try to connect with people on a level where they can see themselves in that story. Right? That tends to be I think the types of podcast that people are going to gravitate towards.
Why things like true crime dominate podcasts? Because it's a story that people can connect with on a personal level.
Adam Stoker: [00:31:58] I think that's fair. Like features tell, benefits sell. Right? And if all we do is talk about the features of our destination, we're not going to sell our destination.
Stuart Butler: [00:32:07] Yeah, for sure. But we are in a unique position to facilitate the storytelling. So our job is one, to identify who the audience is that we want to talk to in the podcast. Two, identify what the why is of the show. Like what's the hook, what's the unique value proposition or the differentiator that will keep someone interested in coming back and there's a million, bazillion wise that could exist. You got to choose something that is organic and authentic to your destination. Then you've just got to go out and try it and be fearless and don't be afraid to fail. There's zero stakes because at the beginning of starting a podcast, the hardest part is just recording and published that first episode. When you do that, the worst thing that can happen is no one listens so you're in the same position you were in before.
I've talked to a lot of folks in this space in the last year and a lot of like, yeah, we want to start a podcast. We've been talking about starting a podcast for a long time. Stop talking about it and just do it. Just go record the first episode. Maybe it's garbage, maybe it's not, maybe you think it's garbage. Maybe someone else thinks it's gold. So just go try it and if you can't do it all in-house, go find someone like Adam and Relic and can certainly help you or come talk to the folks that are already doing it.
I think the one thing I've really been blown away by in this industry is how generous everyone is in terms of sharing and collaborating. Even though we're technically competing in a lot of ways, it doesn't feel like that. Everyone is so generous at sharing what's working for them. So anyone who’s doing podcasting, come pick their brain and ask them how they got over the hurdles and the barriers. But just do it, be fearless, try it.
Melea Hames: [00:33:55] Yeah, be brave.
Adam Stoker: [00:33:56] What do you mean, be brave? Tell me more there.
Melea Hames: [00:33:59] Well like Stuart said, just don't be afraid to fail. Just, the words, I love that too the worst that can happen is that no one listens and then you're in the same spot you were when you started. You can only go up from there.
Adam Stoker: [00:34:14] That's why you shouldn't worry about your first few episodes sucking because guess what? Nobody's listening anyway to the first few episodes, right?
Melea Hames: [00:34:20] That’s right.
Stuart Butler: [00:34:21] Exactly right.
Adam Stoker: [00:34:21] Real quick from both of you, then we'll take a couple of questions from the audience, short statement about what's next for your podcasts.
Melea Hames: [00:34:30] I think more of like I mentioned earlier of drawing the people out, getting the people in the destinations. I've also thought about doing sprinkling some episodes in there of like an outsider's view of North Alabama because we have a lot of people who move and -- well we have a new Orion Amphitheater, which is amazing in Huntsville, it's so awesome. Saw Dave Matthews not long ago, it was so amazing. Side note.
But the guy Ben Lovett from Mumford and Sons is the brainchild behind that and then the general manager of the Amphitheater also is not from North Alabama. So I'm trying working on an episode with getting them on just to talk about, why did you choose this destination? So then that way other people who are outside, because sometimes people hear Alabama and they're like, oh Alabama. They're like it's amazing just come and visit us. It is so beautiful.
But then to hear outsiders say this is why I chose it because naturally I grew up in North Alabama, moved away but came back. But naturally, I'm going to say that because I'm from there. But when you have people who are you know outsiders, so to speak, say this is amazing, it means more.
Adam Stoker: [00:35:54] I'm excited to hear those episodes. How about you Stuart?
Stuart Butler: [00:35:57] Yeah, I mean it's a learning process for us. We just launched our first podcast. Like I said, we got four or five more in the hopper as well as YouTube Channels and TV shows, movies, even the children's book. So we were really embracing branded entertainment across every medium, every format. Our goal is to really become a lifestyle brand. We don't think just being a destination is enough in today's world. We've got to compete for attention in a different way. So how do we connect with people? How do we become a part of the DNA? And a part of their mind, body and soul?
So we're really looking at a very deep psychological level. Like, what motivates people and how the people connect and trying to figure out how do we sort of hack that in a way that that's valuable to them, but also build the audience that over time becomes interested in Myrtle Beach. So yeah it's going to be a fun journey and I said when I took the job it was like this is just going to be a fun ride. I think we're going to shake some things up in the DMO space and change some perceptions of what a DMO can do. I'm either going to be successful, I'm going to get fired trying because I'm relentless.
The good thing is I have a secret weapon. I was actually on our Board of Directors before I became an employee. So I've sort of got this weird relationship with my Board of Directors where they've given me pretty much carte blanche for the first year and probably for the second year where they're like, that seems like a crazy idea, but we sort of, we trust you, you got this. So it's been I've had some latitude that I don't think everyone's afforded, which is very fortunate. I think we're going to surprise a few people. We're shooting a TV show right now. Like I'm missing the shoot because I'm here. So we were doing some crazy stuff but it's fun.
Adam Stoker: [00:37:50] Thanks for the sacrifice of being here. I appreciate both of you joining me here and I'm excited to be a part of the future of both of your shows. I want to take a couple of questions. Do we have time? Are we okay?
Female Speaker: [00:38:03] We have a couple of minutes for some questions.
Adam Stoker: [00:38:07] We've got a heckler over here. Are you asking a question or are heckling?
Audience: [00:38:15] So Stuart, if you're willing to share, you have an interesting plan that I know of that is built to lift the personalities that you're creating through your integrated strategy. Are you willing to share with the audience that strategy of how you're going to build up these moms and some of the YouTube personalities through some of your other efforts?
Stuart Butler: [00:38:40] Yeah I got to be careful. Some of this is still confidential but I think we as marketers tend to sort of get monolithic in our thinking. We think about okay here's our podcast strategy and here's our paid media strategy and here's our social strategy. Really what we're trying to do is look at this all these are different pieces of a bigger puzzle. So the podcasts are tied to the YouTube channels, are tied to the TV shows, are tied to the children’s books and whatnot, in the characters were creating some other crazy stuff.
I'll give an example. So Myrtle Beach is known as for a lot of things, some good, some not so good but mostly good. But one of them things were not really known for is the food, the culinary scene. Right? So we're known for seafood buffets and pancake houses and we have those. But we also have like 60 plus unique nationalities represented in cuisines. We've got over 2000 restaurants like there's a really vibrant up-and-coming foodie scene.
What we try to do is look at: how do we elevate that? So we're looking at like awards and things, but we're like let's swing for the fences. So the TV show we're recording right now, it's going to be on the cooking channel in the fall. We have a celebrity chef who I can't mention that a judge on Chopped that’s going to be a part of that show. We also put to local people as judges on that show who are connected to the food scene. One is a chef that's been around for a long time and the other one is a food critic that's been around and loves the Myrtle Beach market.
Those two people are now getting this elevated platform on national TV. We've taken both of those two, they're hosting their own YouTube shows. Then we're doing another spinoff TV show I'm not sure if it's going to be on TV or YouTube yet, but they're going to be a host to that. Then one of them is also going to do a podcast and all of the content is sort of laddering up together so that we elevate with the national exposure. These people, they get credibility and an audience and then we leverage that audience to get more awareness for other shows. You should not look at my whiteboard in my office, it's crazy. It's like, yeah.
Female Speaker: [00:40:49] I think we have one more question.
Audience: [00:40:52] So, when launching on a new platform, I managed social media as well. One factor that we pay particular interest in this cadence. How do we present this? How many are we releasing per week? How can we plan to have content released in a timely manner? Is there any particular method or cadence that you’d come up with when taking on podcasts?
Adam Stoker: [00:41:15] So if you don't mind, I'll take that one? The real thing that I would tell you is that it's so much easier to add than it is to subtract. When you set audience expectations with a cadence and then you miss your release date, they think the show failed or went out of business or whatever. So I would start light and increase as opposed to starting heavy, realizing it's too much and then pulling back. There's not a specific cadence that is the correct cadence. Consistency is the critical part of this. So you set audience expectations and you can over-deliver on those expectations, but you cannot under-deliver.
Stuart Butler: [00:41:58] Yeah, and I would double down on that because I would definitely start further apart than closer together. Weekly as aggressive and it's hard to do. So unless you've got a bunch of episodes in the can, I would caution you against starting weekly. What we found with the Fuel podcast was two weeks seemed to be the sweet spot in terms of what we could manage and what would keep the audience. When we went to three weeks, sometimes you'd see a dip for a couple of episodes in the audience numbers.
So we would go to – occasionally we do an extra bonus one in between if we had enough content, but I think Adam's exactly right. I think you don't want to be inconsistent. If you're inconsistent, then you're going to lose audience. The way that a lot of the podcast players work is things that you're listening to more frequently are going to show up at the top and stuff that you stop listening to gets buried and you lose it into like the abyss because everyone has more podcasts they’re subscribed to than they can physically listen to. So there's always some that dropdown. So when you start being inconsistent, that's when you start losing audience. I would encourage to stop bi-weekly. But if you can, that would be my advice.
Melea Hames: [00:43:11] We do bi-weekly and I find that that's very with a team of one, it's very manageable for me.
Stuart Butler: [00:43:18] Weekly is ideal, but it's hard.
Adam Stoker: [00:43:20] I know they're going to cut us off here. So if you would like to feature your destination on the Destination Marketing Podcast and talk about something really unique, you're doing, come find me. We've got a studio right across the hall, we’ll be recording in and we really appreciate Stuart and Melea, and thanks to the Tourism Summit for allowing us to be here. This has been really great.
[End of Transcript]
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