I’ve made no secret of how much I hate interruption-based marketing.
TV and radio ads are ok, because I accept them as part of the deal. The same with podcast ads; I can choose to pay for the premium ad-free version, or I can choose to listen to the ones with ads. It’s my decision, and I’ll live with the consequences.
Beyond that you find things like cold calls, cold emails, and cold messages on sites like LinkedIn, and I have no patience for any of those. If your marketing relies on interrupting my day to pitch your offer, you’ve already lost. And no, I generally won’t be too polite.
In a recent post, Seth Godin put it well when comparing Marketing vs Promotion, as they’re not the same thing.
Marketing is creating the conditions for a story to spread so you can help people get to where they hope to go. Marketing is work that matters for people who care, a chance to create products and services that lead to change.
As Seth said, marketing is work. It’s not easy, but it’s tremendously valuable.
He ends with:
If you have to interrupt, trick or coerce people to get the word out, you might be doing too much promotion and not enough marketing.
David Meerman Scott says that you can either Bug, Beg, Bug, or Earn your way to attention. Go earn it.
Paying for premium to avoid ads doesn’t always work. I pay for Spotify premium for some of its features. I listen to a ton of podcasts that will include ad reads as part of the podcasts with now easy way to skip them (other than continually hit the skip button). I have to go subscribe to that podcasts specific platform (Ad Free Shows, The Athletic, etc) if I want truly ad free shows.
That’s a great point — shows with ads that are fully baked in can’t be removed, other than just skip skip skip.
The other problem, as you pointed out, is that paying for shows can be difficult too since they don’t all work on every platform. There are some I’d be willing to pay for, but their premium setup often doesn’t work on Google Podcasts. That’s a tricky one to solve.