This issue is presented by: ​One of these 3 shows... but which?​

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838 WORDS | READ TIME: 3.2 MIN

Happy Monday friends,

We've finally reached the final hook in our Hook Stacking series, where we've been exploring how to stack, layer, and weave multiple hooks into the fabric of your show to make it utterly irresistible to potential listeners.

If you've missed the previous installments, you can catch up on them all here.

Most podcast hooks are designed to grab and hold attention in the immediate term.

External hooks, for example, are designed to snag the interest of a potential listener within the first second or two of them seeing it, and then, over the next 30 seconds, convince them to give it a chance.

Once a listener clicks place, internal hooks exist primarily to progressively buy a few minutes of attention more from a potentially skeptical listener.

There’s one type of internal hook, however, that bucks this shrot term trend.

In fact, it is designed specifically to hook listeners over the long term, playing almost no role at all in the episode in which its placed... but a huge role in every episode that comes after.

I think of this type of hook as an episode’s Lift.

The Lift is an episode segment that comes near the end of the episode and plays a crucial role in long-term episode retention:

Training your audience to listen through your episodes to the end.

How?

By saving some important revelation or delivery of value for late in the episode.

The effect of integrating Lifts into your episodes is twofold.

1. Listeners are left with a better impression of that individual episode.
2. Over time, listeners are trained to keep listening through the episode to get the gem at the end.

Regardless of your show type or business model, increasing consumption time per listener is one of the most important goals as a host, both in terms of growth (by improving cross-episode retention) as well as monetization (more time = more audience affinity and trust as well as more ad impressions delivered).

Implementing late-episode Lifts in every episode is one of the best ways to achieve this.

It’s worth noting that the most effective Lifts come at the end of what has already been a fantastic episode.

Before the Lift, your listeners should already feel satisfied and enriched by the episode.

The Lift is about taking that satisfaction and ratcheting it up to awe.

It’s a high bar, but one worth aiming for.

Lifts can come in many forms, including:

• Plot twists & Revelations (can apply equally to narrative and educational shows)
• Specific concrete examples or walkthroughs (ie. Seeing a concept discussed in the episode in action)
• Games, challenges, tests, etc
• Stories (especially emotionally poignant stories that drive the point of the home)
• And more

Regardless of the form of Lift you employ, here are a few criteria for executing them effectively:

1. The episode should feel as though it's coming to a natural and satisfying conclusion before you introduce the Lift.
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2. The Lift should be genuinely valuable to your listeners (though the form of value will vary from show to show and episode to episode)
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3. The Lift should be surprising and unexpected

For an example of an episode-specific Lift, consider this episode of Podcast Marketing Trends Explained, with the lift starting at 40:05.

The episode is framed around the concept of how Justin & I would spend budgets of $500/$2500/$10k to grow our show.

We spend the episode discussing these scenarios and are about to wrap up the episode when, in the final five minutes, I introduce a twist by asking Justin how he would grow with zero budget.

This wasn’t a part of our initial episode outline, which meant Justin wasn’t prepared for the question, leading to a live workshop-style discussion.

While totally unplanned, this Lift is effective as it:

1. Is surprising
2. Aligns with and offers a counter-narrative perspective on the theme of the episode
3. Forced Justin to react live, creating suspense and stakes
4. Is highly relevant and helpful to our listeners, many of whom don’t have budgets to grow their shows
5. Closes a loop that Justin unintentionally opened in the episode intro when he asked me whether I thought we’d be able to grow the podcast faster if we had a marketing budget than if we had no budget… thus bringing the episode full circle.

In addition to episode-specific Lifts, Lifts can also be built into the structure of your standard episode format.

A couple of my favourite examples include:

1. ​I Will Teach You To Be Rich — Where the host, Ramit closes the episode by reading the follow up letters his guests have written after their couples money coaching session.
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2. ​Poetry Unbound — Where the host, Padraig, reads the poem the episode is based on for a second time (the first reading comes at the start of each episode) after having spent the episode deconstructing, explaining, and pondering over it. The result is revelation and a new appreciation for the poem that was missing on the first listen through.

Again, Lifts come in many forms, but the goal is always the same:

Once the listener is already satisfied, give the listener an extra hunk of gold that rewards them for listening that far… and trains them to continue to do so going forward.

Stay Scrappy, PS. If you have a validated product/service valued at $1k or more and a show with at least 500 dl/ep, you're likely a few strategies, tactics, and best practices away from adding $1k–$5k/mo in podcast-driven revenue. If you're interested in identifying the hidden opportunities for your show, book a free Rapid Podcast Marketing Assessment with me to explore what's possible & build out a plan to get you there. ​ Think podcasting is hard? When it comes to creative mediums it could definitely be worse... ​

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