Your Podcast Isn't the Problem. The Way You've Positioned It Is.
- Kelsea Koenreich
- Jul 16
- 7 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
I've had a podcast for years and reinvented it more than once, and one of the things I tell anyone thinking about starting one is the same thing I tell my clients about every marketing tool they want to add: before we talk about the how, we need to talk about where it fits.
I sat down recently with Jenny Suneson, a podcast strategist for mom entrepreneurs who has been in the podcasting industry since 2018, and what came out of our conversation was less about podcasting tactics and more about something I see constantly in the businesses I work with: the gap between adding a thing and making it work.
Most founders who abandon their podcasts didn't have a content problem. Episode seven rolls around and the downloads aren't moving and the inquiry form is quiet, and the podcast becomes another thing on the list of things they tried that didn't work.
The podcast didn't fail. The ecosystem around it did.
A Podcast Is a Piece of Something Bigger
Marketing is layering. I say that to my clients constantly, and it applies here more directly than anywhere else.
Someone finds you on Instagram on a Tuesday. They click the link in your bio and see you have a podcast. They listen to three episodes while they drive their kids to school. They download your free resource. They get your emails. Four weeks later they inquire. That is how a podcast converts, and almost nobody who quits podcasting at episode seven has built any of that path.
Jenny put it plainly: the podcast is a top of funnel tool for most business owners, and top of funnel means it introduces people to you, it doesn't close them. The close happens somewhere else in the ecosystem, which means if the ecosystem has gaps, the podcast can't do its job.
The bridge Jenny talks about, from episode to offer, is the piece that's almost always missing. Founders spend hours researching microphones and podcast hosts and cover art, and they publish an episode and then tell people to follow the show or leave a review. Neither of those things moves someone closer to working with you. A clear next step does. A free resource that deepens the episode topic does. An invitation into your world that makes sense in the context of what they just listened to does.
The CTA isn't the uncomfortable part. The lack of one is what makes the podcast feel like a hobby.
One more thing worth naming here while we're on the ecosystem question: the right size for your business is a design decision, not a ladder you're supposed to keep climbing. Jenny went from an eight-person agency at the peak of the pandemic podcast years to a twenty-hour-a-week shop with one team member, and she named it as a choice, not a failure. I've had clients arrive at that same realization, having built something impressive that felt hollow from the inside.
A podcast can serve a very large business. It can also serve a smaller, more intentional one just as well, just with a different definition of success. If your podcast is driving listeners into a room of thirty people who work closely with you, that is a different result than a hundred thousand downloads a month, and depending on what you're building, it might be the better one. Know what you're building first. Then connect the podcast to it.
Why Your Podcast Might Be Working Better Than You Think
Here's a reframe worth sitting with if you have a podcast and you're unsure it's doing anything.
Jenny shared a detail from her research that I want every founder who has been thinking about quitting to hear: there are only around 400,000 active podcasts. Blogs have millions. YouTube channels have millions. Podcasting is one of the least crowded long-form content channels there is, and most of the shows that technically exist haven't published an episode since 2020 or 2023. The space you think is full is mostly abandoned storefronts.
Which means if you're showing up consistently, you already have an advantage most people in your space don't.
The second thing worth knowing is that podcast listeners are loyal in a way social media followers rarely are. Someone who subscribes to your show and listens week after week has a relationship with your voice, your thinking, your perspective, that no Instagram caption can build in the same way. When that listener hears you mention an offer, a resource, or an event, they already trust the source. That trust is harder to build and more valuable than the follower count most people are chasing.
The download numbers might not look impressive. That doesn't mean the podcast isn't working. It means the people who are listening are paying more attention than you know.
The Fixes That Take Twenty Minutes and Actually Move the Needle
Jenny walked through a handful of podcast SEO moves that I'll be honest I immediately sent to my team after we got off the call, because this is exactly the kind of tactical thing I'm always talking about: small shifts that most people overlook because they're looking for the revolutionary breakthrough instead.
The first one is your podcast title. If the word "the" is the first word in your show's name in your podcast host settings, that is wasted real estate. "The Mom Founders Table" has the same problem, but in the name field where it matters for search, you want your first word to be a keyword someone would actually type. Mom. Entrepreneur. Business. Whatever the thing is that your listener is searching for.
The second is your name field inside your podcast host, the one where most people just put their first and last name. That field is searchable. Jenny's reads: Podcast Growth Strategist for Mom Entrepreneurs. Every word in there is a search term. You can update yours today without touching a single episode.
The third is your show description. Optimize it the way you'd optimize a web page, with the keywords your listener would type to find a show like yours. Jenny recommends adding a section that starts with "in this podcast, we answer questions like" and then listing actual questions your audience is googling, because when someone types a question into Spotify or Apple Podcasts, your show is more likely to surface.
All of this takes about twenty minutes. Most podcast hosts who have been publishing for a year have never touched any of it. Jenny has watched hosts make these changes and see downloads grow fifty to a hundred and fifty percent in the weeks that follow, not because they created better content, but because the right listeners could finally find them.
This is what I always tell clients: you don't need a breakthrough. You need someone to see the gap and tell you what it is.
The Belief About Your Voice That's Keeping You at Episode Seven
There is a tactical side to making a podcast work, and Jenny covered it well. But I want to stay here for a minute because this is where I see women get stuck, and it has nothing to do with microphones or episode length.
I told Jenny something during our conversation that I mean every time I say it: you have to have the who and the how. You could hand someone every tactical move on this list, and if she believes she doesn't have a voice worth sharing or ideas worth people's time, she is not going to implement any of it. She'll stay at episode seven and call it a content problem when it's a belief problem.
The belief that gets in the way most often is not "I'm not good enough." It's quieter than that. It's "I don't think anyone's really listening" or "I feel like I'm repeating myself" or "I should probably wait until I have more to say." Each of those thoughts is a reason to do less, and less is what kills a podcast slowly, not loudly.
Your voice is worth sharing before you feel ready to share it. That's not a pep talk. It's just true, and the founders who figure it out earlier stop waiting for a confidence they were never going to feel before hitting record.
The Selling Problem That Has Nothing to Do With Your Podcast
The second belief worth naming is the one about selling, because it shows up in podcasting the same way it shows up everywhere else in a founder's business.
Underneath most founders' sales avoidance is a story about being annoying, about saying the same thing too many times, about not wanting to make people feel pushed. And so they mention the offer once, quietly, at the end of the episode, and then wonder why nobody took the next step.
You are not annoying anyone. Your listeners are inundated with noise from every direction, and they are not tracking what you said three weeks ago or even last Tuesday. You have to say the thing, and say it again, and say it a different way, and keep saying it across every platform because that repetition is marketing and the alternative is invisibility.
I see sales avoidance just as often in client conversations as I do in podcasting. Founders who have genuinely interested people in their world and then get so casual about the next step that the interested person doesn't take it. Recording a brief ad segment for your launch and having your producer drop it into your episodes is not aggressive selling. It's making sure that the people who are already paying attention actually know what to do next.
Fix the belief first. Then the tactics work.
The Mom Founders Table Is Where the Strategy Gets Built
The women inside The Mom Founders Table are working on exactly what we covered in this post: the offers, the funnel, the marketing pieces, and how all of them connect into something that works together instead of pulling in separate directions.
We look at your people, your pricing, and your processes, and we look at how the things you're creating, whether that's a podcast, a social presence, or an email list, are actually serving the business you're trying to build. If they're not connected to each other and to an offer that converts, we fix that too.
You get my accountability, a curated room of women building at your level, and twelve months of work that gets your infrastructure and your marketing pointed in the same direction.
Applications are open now for the September 1st cohort, with 30 seats. Full details are on the application page.
If you've been creating content and wondering why it isn't converting, I want to look at the ecosystem with you. Apply for The Mom Founders Table or message me on Instagram first if you want to talk through where you are. Either way, you know where to find me.
You can find Jenny Suneson at podcastingformoms.co and her podcast, Podcasting for Moms, on all the major platforms. If you have a podcast or you've been thinking about starting one, go listen. She knows her stuff.
