Bad Podcast Pitches

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Oh, that old chestnut? Yup. Here we  go again with a bad pitch from my Facebook Messages...

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I received the same "podcast promoter" pitch multiple times in my inbox and DMs from different people over several months. I see several red flags, such as vague promises of "thousands of active listeners," secret groups, questionable SEO claims, a focus on SoundCloud growth, and unverified "targeted country" audiences. These offers can give misleading numbers that don't accurately represent your true listeners. Fake downloads and ratings might hurt your show's long-term success and lead to penalties in directories. 

I explain how I'm asking this promoter for specific details—proof of audience fit, methods, and outcomes. If you engage, make sure to ask for targeting information, portfolio examples, and verifiable reputation. I aim to help you quickly identify schemes, safeguard your show's integrity, and expand on key platforms like Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and trustworthy indie apps. 

If you’ve received a different bad pitch, send it my way so we can dissect it on a future episode.

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Key Sections:

(00:00) The recycled pitch returns

(00:42) Have you heard this before?

(01:41) This should be a red flag

(03:30) Maybe ask questions like these

(04:10) No more secrets!!!

(07:34) Be part of the solution

[00:00:01] Bryan Entzminger:

I am a podcast promoter. I have seven years of experience in podcast promotion.   Again,   we've heard this one before. This is Bad Podcast Pitches. I'm Bryan Entzminger. This is a show where we talk about some of the bad pitches that come through   and try to understand maybe what we can do a little bit better. And, also, in case you haven't received these before, identify some of the things that might be red flags for you. This is definitely a red flag episode.   One of those red flags is the fact that   if you've listened to this show before, you know   and as I read through this, you'll realize I've gotten this before. And to that, I would say,   there's not a lot of creativity out there.  

There there just isn't, and so it becomes a little bit boring. But we're gonna do it all the same because somebody might find this valuable, so I don't wanna just leave that out. I'm gonna go ahead and read it, and then we'll talk a little bit more. Hello. I am a podcast promoter. I have seven years of experience in podcast promotion, so you can trust my services.   How do I market your show?   I have the emails of thousands of podcast lovers.   I send them your most recent episodes to listen to and download.   I have some secret groups and lots of members all around the world using SEO to promote your podcast.  

All listeners and audiences are real and active.   What kind of results can you expect? You will get thousands of active subscribers and listeners,   lots of downloads from your part target audience, unique subscribers,   targeted country listeners,   and top shows improving your rankings, written reviews, and ratings.   I offer twenty four seven customer support. What platforms are available? ITunes store, Spotify, SoundCloud, and many others.   Like I mentioned just a little bit ago,   you've heard this pitch before if you've listened to this show. In fact,   this pitch came into my Facebook messages, and I had two   word for word promotions   from two different people accounts   that that were literally word for word and months apart. This is not new. It's boring. And if you're listening to this and go, man, I don't wanna hear another one of these. If you've got a better pitch, send it to me, please. If you've gotten some bad pitch that's not this one, please send it to me because I would love to see that and bring that to people as well. Let's talk about this pitch.  

First off,   this   I hesitate to call this person a scammer, but I do think this person is being misleading, and I've mentioned this a bunch of times before. I believe they will probably give you most everything that they're actually saying that they're going to give you   except that it's probably not going to be your targeted audience. So let's talk about this. They're gonna market your show because they have the emails of thousands of podcast lovers.   That's probably true.   The question I have is, are those podcast lovers actually people that you want to reach?   Do they even speak the language of your show? Are they where you want them to be? Are they even real people, one per device? Or do they have an army of people who have an army of devices   that are all doing the Mechanical Turk version   of automation? They're just downloading   and letting it play possibly in the background, possibly on mute. Who knows? Who cares? Are those the people you wanna listen to or that you wanna reach? And if you're gonna respond to somebody like this, then I'll I'll share with you that I am responding to this person because I wanna take this conversation a bit further.  

I would ask for very specific and detailed information.   How do they know that the people you're they're delivering   actually care about your show?   The listeners the listeners and the audience may be real and active, but are they your target audience?   I would submit to you   that in most cases, possibly all, where you're receiving a pitch like this,   the audience they're delivering   is probably not the people you want to reach unless you're wanting to reach people who just download a bunch of podcast episodes for no other reason than they're being paid to or they're they're they're involved in something like this.   I I would suggest that that is not what you're wanting to reach. Targeted country listeners? Yeah. Possibly. What about these secret groups?  

I always get a little bit weirded out when I get a pitch, then it talks about something that's secret.   I get that companies have proprietary processes.   I get that people have proprietary processes. I actually know some podcast editors who part of their process in terms of editing and producing an episode   is proprietary. They don't share it with anybody.   However, that's not how they market themselves either. They come in and they say, hey, this is the work that I've done in the past and they actually have a portfolio they can share with you. There's another red flag we don't have here or another thing that would maybe make it less of a red flag.   That they have a portfolio. They have a reputation.  

They're known.   And the fact that the part of their process is proprietary or secret or whatever is kind of a nonissue because when people hire them, they know what they're getting because they've talked to somebody or they've heard a show that they've worked on or something like that. So secret groups, I don't like that at all.   SEO to promote your podcast,   maybe. Probably not super valuable.   But again, my question is,   can you tell from the pitch that what they're selling you is what you're actually going to want? They're saying they'll give you thousands of active subscribers and listeners.   That's probably true.  

But are they actually subscribers and listeners that you care to care about? I don't think so. Another huge red flag,   SoundCloud.   They talked and we've talked about this before. They're they're targeting people on SoundCloud. They're going to deliver you an audience on SoundCloud.   As a podcaster,   who cares?   SoundCloud,   yes, has the ability to deliver podcast episodes   and for people to subscribe and listen to audio, although it's rehosted and there's a whole other thing there. But SoundCloud isn't, in most cases, where your audience is going to be. I'm not going to say don't ever put your show on SoundCloud,   but my feedback to you would be don't try to grow your audience there. SoundCloud has been notoriously bad for scammers and spammers and download schemes and all kinds of crazy stuff over the years. And while I don't wanna say that it's necessarily the same, it's not one of the big players. You want Apple. You want Spotify.  

You want   the,   possibly YouTube.   And then some of the other major apps. Right? You've got cast, PocketCasts and CastMagic and I'm sorry. CastMagic is something else. Pocketcast and Castro and a bunch of the other sort of indie apps. Those are the places where you want your audience to come from, not SoundCloud. That's my opinion. Take it for what it's worth. Now I mentioned that   in this particular case, I'm going to follow-up, and I've actually started the process of following up with the person that sent this pitch. And I'm just gonna kinda see how this plays out. I tried the same thing last week. The person that I reached back out to never got back to me. So we're on to this one because I wanna start digging a little bit into this to try and find out what they're doing or what we can find out from them. Again, this is not a name and shame show. I'm not gonna tell you who this person is partly because I'm not gonna name and shame them, but also partly because, let's be quite honest here, most of the times, the accounts or the email addresses or whatever that are reaching out to you   are fake. They're it's a real account with a real person, but that's not the person. They may have 10 or 15 or a 100 different accounts, and they're just reaching out. And when one one of them gets shut down for spamming, they just move on to the next one. So there's no value in me sharing this person's name with you.  

As far as this show,   this is a value for value show. And you have the ability, if you've received some kind of value from the show, to give some value back, and that could be in the form of money or something else. Go to badpodcastpitches.com   if you wanna do that. What I'm really interested in, and I just wanna make this really clear,   I I would love for you to share this show with a friend, especially   if you come across somebody who's   received a pitch like this and they're going, is this real or not? Not because I wanna necessarily tell them the pitch that they're getting is not real, although it's probably not, but more because I want for us as   a group of people to start   recognizing these things early and fast and not get sucked in because I don't wanna see   some podcaster   who's created a show that they care very deeply about and is trying to grow that show, find that it gets tanked because somebody like this promoter comes in, sells them a bill of goods that gives them some level of what I'll call hockey stick growth or some kind of exponential growth that's outside of the ability of the show to support that. And then once that goes away, it either tanks or it gets removed from the directories because of some kind of download scam or something like that. I just don't wanna see that happen. So   if you know somebody who you think would find this interesting or useful,   send it to them. Just send them the link right to the episode or send them to in their favorite podcast app. Whatever. Just send it to them. With that, I'm Bryan Entzminger. This is Bad Podcast Pitchers. And hopefully, next week, I might have a follow-up on this one.