Stop wasting time on Small Tactics That Don’t Create Big Growth
Are You Tired of Being Stuck?
The hardest part about being a podcaster is growing an active and engaged audience. After nearly 400 million podcast downloads we’ve learned one thing: there is no such thing as an expert podcast marketer. And while we aren’t claiming that title, we do help dozens of podcasters actually grow their audiences each year - the kind of growth that makes you see a chart and say, “What the hell happened there?”
Many years ago, a coach advised us that if you want to solve a small problem start by dreaming up big solutions. That is what you will find here.
It is simple: we run campaigns starting at a $10,000 investment to grow shows by thousands of listeners.
Who You’ll Work With —>
Casey Helmick, Terra Firma President
A real solution to grow your podcast
It all began out of frustration. My name is Casey and I run Terra Firma. We produce dozens of podcasts each month that are downloaded and listened to millions of times, yet we couldn’t find anyone who truly understood podcast audience growth. So we decided to build the it ourselves.
It is simple: we run campaigns starting at a $10,000 investment to grow shows by thousands of listeners.
Our Approach
”If you give a person a fish, they will be hungry tomorrow. If you teach a person to fish, they will be richer forever.”
Our Services
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90-Day Strategic Consultation*
It all begins with the 90-Day Strategy Build. Our seasoned team of producers and marketers walks you through our educate+activate process, ensuring your audience growth plan is destined for long-term success. We not only focus on tactics but training you to become the lead marketing mind for your own podcast.
*mandatory of all first-time clients
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Micro-Content Development
Using our custom-curated suite of tools, we assist podcasters in the creation of highly effective micro-content that moves beyond simple audiograms into data-driven (and sometimes AI-driven) content creation. We believe in creating things that move against the cultural grain. As the quote goes: “Whatever you do, be different. If you're different, you will stand out.”
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Podcast Guest Plan Development
No - we are not a guest booking service. But we don’t believe you need a guest booking service to be able to effectively appear on relevant podcasts. We work directly with you to identify the right podcasts for collaboration, compile the podcast contact information, and help you craft your own pitch.
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Podcast Branding
With over 2mm podcasts available it is more crucial than ever to visually stand out. Podcasts are most often consumed inside of apps that display your artwork as a tiny square inside of a busy feed. Our team will craft a refreshed brand that ensures your show will stand out, including main artwork, brand guideline documentation, updated and optimized podcast title and description, and templates for micro-content creation.
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Podcast App Placement
We have worked tirelessly to build relationships with some of the top podcast listening apps in the world so we can build cost-effective media spends for you. We’ll create a media plan within your budget, execute the promotion, and report your results. This is as close to “guaranteed results” as podcast marketing gets and we’ve used it to scale podcasts from >100 downloads/episode to hundreds of thousands.
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Audio Ad Placement
There is no better way to connect with podcast listeners than through audio. We’ve developed a simple and predictable audio ad campaign strategy that shares your audio ad via digital audio channels (Spotify, Pandora, Deezer, TuneIn, digital radio stations, and podcasts across many streaming audio apps and websites). We can target audiences based on age, gender, location, interests, genres of interest, fanbases of influencers, and more.
Audio Ad & App Placement
Here are a few of the places we use for promotional outlets for podcasts. But know, we leave no rock unturned. If we can find cost-efficient audience growth on a platform we will test it and activate it inside our campaigns.
Trigger Warning:
You will need a budget to grow your audience with us. The painful (and often secret) truth is that your favorite podcast likely became your favorite because of the media spend that displayed it in front of your eyes (and ears).
It is simple: we run campaigns starting at a $10,000 investment to grow shows by thousands of listeners.
Meet Our Friends
Capitol Broadcasting.
In 2021 we were approached by the digital audio team at Capitol Broadcasting / WRAL based in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina with the opportunity to provide podcast audience growth support for their upcoming release of podcast: Follow The Truth.
Our team developed a comprehensive media buy that would place the first-ever national podcast rollout from Capitol Broadcasting in a position to secure seven-figure ad impressions and, more important, six-figure downloads.
The campaign resulted in 1,600,000 Podcast Ad Impressions, 40,000 Subscribers, and over 100,000 downloads that we can specifically track to the media buy.
Meet Our Friend
Dr. Emily Jamea.
With over 2mm podcasts available it is more crucial than ever to visually stand out. When we met Dr. Emily Jamea we did some market analysis and realized her podcast - then named Sex and Love - had a major problem. Emily’s podcast was nearly undiscoverable because her show was directly competing with a much larger content creator with a nearly identical brand (including the competitor being named Emily!).
We got to work researching what truly made Dr. Emily unique and completely rebranded her podcast “Love & Libido.” We developed an entirely new visual brand and rewrote her show description, giving strong language to her refocused objectives.
This new brand has completely breathed new life into her podcasting efforts and will result in better discoverability of her podcast.
Meet Our Friend
Mory Fontanez.
We got the honor of working with Mory Fontanez - Purpose Guide and Founder of 822 Group - to launch her fast-growing podcast, Signal.
Let’s lay the cards on the table: Our team built a custom launch plan for Mory to ensure that her show reached a highly-targeted audience from day one. Taking advantage of your full show or season launches is a critical part of our strategy to grow podcast audiences.
Podcast episodes that receive 300 downloads within the first 7 days of publishing are in the top 10% of all podcasts (according to Buzzsprout data). Mory’s podcast averages nearly 5,000 downloads/episode in the first 7 days of publishing.
Meet Our Friend
Warwick Fairfax.
When we met Warwick, his podcast (Beyond The Crucible), was receiving less than 100 downloads an episode. Warwick and his team were working as hard as possible to create something meaningful but the audience just was not expanding.
Let’s lay the cards on the table: Our team came into the picture in July, conducted our 90-day strategic consultation focused on educate+activate. We then initiated a custom-built $4000 media spend that resulted in a Q4 audience of 25,680 audio podcast downloads.
From less than 100 downloads/episode to more than 1,500/episode in roughly 4 months.
FAQs
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Terra Firma is an Austin-based audio production and strategy firm focused on podcast and audiobook creation, as well as audience development and content monetization. We're on a mission to bring the world’s smartest people into podcasting. Terra Firma - a latin phrase literally meaning firm land - exists to create sustainable and high growth strategies that translate brilliant ideas into entertaining audio content. Find out more here: https://www.terrafirmaaudio.com
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We are an incredibly transparent company. For all first-time clients we require a 90-day strategic consultation that costs $10,000. From there the campaign investments range from $5,000 - $100,000.
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We truly do believe in this quote: “If you give a person a fish, they will be hungry tomorrow. If you teach a person to fish, they will be richer forever.” We are not a marketing agency and our goal is not to create an “on your behalf” service. We believe the best marketing ideas will come from you and our role is to create a foundation that assists to educate+activate those ideas.
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While we make no guarantees, many of our campaigns do provide highly-predictable and measurable results. An example of this is an In-App media spend where the App is contractually obligated to deliver specific results such as ad impressions, subscribers, and total downloads.
We Make, Market, and Monetize Audio
Let’s Get Growing
It is simple: we run campaigns starting at a $10,000 investment to grow shows by thousands of listeners.