Solved: Canva new version access

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It's always interesting to see people thinking about growth beyond the usual organic channels. I've had a look at what you're doing and am happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how you might use paid advertising to really move the needle for your podcasting venture. It’s not as simple as just boosting posts, and frankly, most of the common advice you'll hear is flat-out wrong and will just waste your money.

The core issue isn't really about getting more listeners. It's about getting the right listeners and building a system that turns them from casual listeners into true fans, and eventually, customers. I’ll walk you through my thinking on this.

We'll need to look at the real goal... because it isn't 'more listeners'

Let's be brutally honest from the start. The objective "I want to grow my podcast" is a trap. It's a vanity goal that leads you down a path of chasing download numbers, celebrating meaningless spikes, and ultimately burning cash without building a sustainable business asset. I've seen it countless times. People spend thousands on ads with a "Brand Awareness" objective, get a load of impressions, maybe a few extra listeners for an episode or two, and then... nothing. The numbers drop back down, and they're left wondering what went wrong.

Here’s the hard truth: you are actively paying platforms like Meta to find you the worst possible audience for your podcast when you optimise for reach or awareness. The algorithm is designed to do exactly what you tell it: find the most people for the cheapest price. And who are the cheapest people to reach? The ones who never click, never engage, and certainly never buy anything. They're cheap because no other advertiser wants them. You're essentially paying to fill a stadium with people who have no interest in the game.

The real goal isn't more listeners; it's more valuable listeners. A valuable listener is someone for whom your podcast solves a problem, someone who engages with your content deeply, joins your email list, and eventually buys your course, uses your service, or becomes a patron. One hundred of these listeners are worth more than ten thousand passive downloaders who forget your name the second the episode ends. The entire strategy needs to shift from audience *quantity* to audience *quality* and monetisation potential. This is the only way to make paid advertising a profitable growth engine rather than a money pit.

I'd say you need to become an expert in their nightmare, not their demographics

So, how do we find these valuable listeners? We start by throwing out the old marketing playbook that tells you to define your audience by sterile demographics. "Males, 25-40, interested in business" is utterly useless. It tells you nothing about their motivations, their fears, or their problems. It leads to generic ads with generic messaging that get ignored.

Instead, you need to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by their nightmare. What is the specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening problem that keeps them awake at night? Your podcast—and any products or services you build around it—must be the solution to that nightmare.

You're the "PodcastArchitect." So, who do you help?

• -> Is it the aspiring entrepreneur who's been told a podcast is "great for their brand" but is completely overwhelmed by the tech, the content plan, and the fear of launching to an audience of zero? Their nightmare is wasting six months of effort to talk into a void.
• -> Is it the established business owner who sees their competitors dominating the conversation with a successful podcast and feels like they're being left behind? Their nightmare is becoming irrelevant.
• -> Is it the content creator who already has a podcast but has hit a plateau, unable to grow their audience or figure out how to make any real money from it? Their nightmare is burnout and the slow death of their passion project.

Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. Once you've identified that specific pain, everything else becomes easier. Your ad copy writes itself. Your episode topics become laser-focused. And your targeting becomes incredibly precise. You stop targeting broad interests like "podcasting" and start targeting the specific signals of their pain. What software do they use (e.g., Descript, Riverside.fm)? Which influencers do they follow (e.g., Pat Flynn, James Cridland)? What niche Facebook groups are they members of? This is the intelligence that transforms your ad spend from a wild guess into a calculated investment.

Doing this work first is non-negotiable. Without a deep, almost obsessive understanding of your listener's nightmare, you have no business spending a single pound on ads. It's the foundation upon which everything else is built. I've seen far too many campaigns fail simply because they were trying to talk to everyone, and as a result, they ended up resonating with no one. This is a common and expensive mistake.

You probably should figure out what a customer is actually worth

Once you know who you're talking to, the next question isn't "how cheap can I get a click?" but "how much can I afford to pay to acquire a valuable listener?" This is the single most important calculation in paid advertising, and it’s one that 99% of people never do. It's called calculating the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer.

Knowing your LTV frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap leads. It gives you the confidence to spend what's necessary to acquire high-quality customers who will pay you back many times over. Let's say you sell a £500 course on "Podcast Monetisation." Your funnel might look something like this: Ad -> Free Checklist -> Email Nurture -> Course Purchase.

If you know that, on average, a customer who buys that course is worth £500 in revenue, you can work backwards. What's your profit margin? Let's say it's 80%, so £400 gross margin per customer. A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £133 (£400 / 3) to acquire one new customer.

Now, let's say your email sequence converts 5% of leads into customers. That means you need 20 leads to get one sale. With a target CAC of £133, you can therefore afford to pay up to £6.65 per lead (£133 / 20) for someone to download your free checklist. Suddenly, a £4 cost per lead on Facebook doesn't seem expensive; it looks profitable. This is the maths that unlocks scaleable, intelligent growth.

To make this tangible for you, I’ve built a simple calculator. Play around with the numbers based on your own business model. See how small changes in churn rate or average revenue can dramatically change how much you can afford to spend on ads.

You'll need a better offer... so delete the 'Listen to My Podcast' button

Now that we know who we're targeting and what they're worth, we need to address the most common failure point in all of advertising: the offer. Asking a complete stranger on the internet who has never heard of you to "Listen to my podcast" is an incredibly arrogant Call to Action (CTA). It's a huge ask. You're demanding 30-60 minutes of their most valuable asset—their time—with absolutely no guarantee of a return for them. It’s high friction and low perceived value, a recipe for expensive clicks and zero engagement.

You have to earn their attention. Your offer’s only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on you and your expertise. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve their bigger problems later.

Since you are savvy with creative tools like Canva, creating these assets should be right up your street. Instead of a "Listen Now" CTA, your ad should drive traffic to a simple landing page with a high-value, low-friction offer. We call these lead magnets. Some ideas for your niche:

• -> A 'Podcast Launch Checklist': A one-page PDF that guides an aspiring podcaster through the 20 things they MUST do before hitting publish. Simple, actionable, and solves an immediate pain point of overwhelm.
• -> A '7-Minute Podcast Audit' Video: A short, sharp video where you walk through the 3 most common mistakes you see on podcast cover art, in show notes, and with audio quality. This positions you as an expert instantly.
• -> A 'Guest Outreach Template Kit': A pack of 3 copy-and-paste email templates for securing high-profile guests. This solves a huge problem for podcasters looking to grow their authority.

The goal here is not to get a listener; it's to get a lead. You capture their email address in exchange for the valuable asset. Now you own the relationship. You're no longer at the mercy of the podcast platforms' algorithms. You can build trust over time through an email nurture sequence, sharing your best podcast episodes, offering more value, and eventually, presenting your paid product or service to a warm, engaged audience. This is how you build a real business, not just a hobby with a microphone.

I'd say you should build a system, not just run ads

Running ads without a system is like trying to fill a leaky bucket. You can pour as much water (money) in as you like, but it will just drain away. What you need is a proper funnel—a deliberate customer journey that guides people from being completely unaware of you to becoming paying customers.

A simple but effective funnel for your business would look something like this:

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Attract: This is where your paid ads live. You'll run conversion-focused campaigns on Meta (Facebook & Instagram) targeting your ICP based on the "nightmare" we defined earlier. The ad creative will call out their specific pain point and offer your high-value lead magnet as the solution. The sole objective here is to generate a lead at or below your target Cost Per Lead (which we know from our LTV calculation).

2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - Nurture: Once someone has downloaded your lead magnet and given you their email, they enter the nurture phase. This is where you build the relationship. You send them a series of automated emails that provide immense value. This is the perfect place to introduce your podcast. But you don't just say "here's my podcast." You send them a link to a specific episode that solves the *next* logical problem they have. For example, if they downloaded the "Podcast Launch Checklist," your first email could link to your episode on "How to Get Your First 100 Listeners." You are solving their problems sequentially, building trust with every interaction.

3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Convert: After you've delivered value and built trust over a series of emails and podcast episodes, you've earned the right to make an offer. This is where you introduce your core product or service—your course, your coaching programme, your agency services. Because you've pre-qualified them and proven your expertise, the conversion rate here will be dramatically higher than if you'd just asked a stranger to buy from you. You can also use retargeting ads to show your main offer to people on your email list or who have visited your sales page, keeping you top of mind.

Here's a visual representation of how this all fits together. It's not complicated, but it requires discipline to build and stick to. It's this systemised aproach that separates the amateurs from the professionals.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

To pull all of this together, here’s a table outlining the step-by-step strategic plan I would recommend. This is a proven framework that moves away from wasteful "awareness" tactics and towards a profitable, systemised approach to audience growth and monetisation.

As you can see, this is a lot more involved than simply boosting a post and hoping for the best. It's a strategic process that requires expertise in customer psychology, financial modeling, ad platform mechanics, and copywriting. Getting any one of these pieces wrong can cause the entire system to fail, which is why so many people conclude that "paid ads don't work for me." The truth is, the ads work; it's usually the strategy that's broken.

Working with an expert can help you bypass the steep, expensive learning curve and implement a proven system from day one. For instance, one campaign we worked on for a client selling courses—a similar space to yours—generated $115k in revenue in just a month and a half on Meta Ads by applying these exact principles.

If you'd like to chat through this in more detail and see how it could be specifically applied to your business, I'd be happy to offer you a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We can take a look at what you've done so far and map out a clear path forward.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh