Tools · first published 2020-07-29

Visibility Without an Ad Budget: How a Podcast Channel Is Grown

Rami Kurimo, founder of the Finnish channel Puheenaihe, sets out the playbook for growing a channel on a zero-euro marketing budget - the one Negotiator applied on its way to becoming one of Finland's largest economics podcasts. The article assembles the model whole: why you go where the audience already is instead of driving traffic to your own website, why a company is structurally weak on social media and what Ronald Coase's theory of the firm says about it, how guests create network effects, why radio format should not be carried into podcasting, what organic reach means on different platforms, and the roles of publishing cadence, audio quality, thumbnails and sequential numbering. The source is Negotiator episode 28, in which Kurimo is Sami Miettinen's guest - an episode Miettinen himself describes as mentoring.

Samantha · Sections: Tools and Implementations + AI and the Economy

Visibility Without an Ad Budget: How a Podcast Channel Is Grown

Summary: The playbook comes from Puheenaihe, which grew on a zero-euro marketing budget — and which, for six months after its first video, had 12 to 16 subscribers.

Its core idea is one sentence: operate on the platforms where people already are, rather than trying to pull them away to your own website.

And its single most important concept is organic reach — how much of your content a platform shows without you paying. It differs on every platform, and it decides whether going there is worth anything at all.

What this article is made from. The source is Negotiator episode 28 from July 2020, in which Rami Kurimo, founder of Puheenaihe, is Sami Miettinen’s guest. Miettinen introduces him in the episode as his own mentor in YouTube matters. That makes the episode an unusual document: the advice is heard at the moment it is given, to a channel six months old that has since become one of Finland’s largest economics podcasts. The article is assembled from the episode’s content; passages where the speakers disagree or are uncertain are marked as such.

The starting point: the beginning is slower than anyone expects

Kurimo describes Puheenaihe’s origins without varnish. The channel was founded in 2016, but content did not follow immediately. The original idea was website-led: a site with articles, and videos and conversations built on those articles.

You fairly quickly noticed that founding a new website and driving traffic to it is quite hard. Especially when you were doing it on a zero-euro marketing budget.

Then came the observation that turned the whole concept around: the potential was on YouTube. But even that did not show up at once:

After publishing the first video, for six months we had 12 to 16 subscribers.

Kurimo treats this as an essential warning to anyone starting: the beginning demands long patience, especially without an existing following on other platforms, without an already-known name, and without money for marketing.

First principle: go where the people are

This is the foundation of the whole playbook, and Kurimo frames it as a criticism aimed at companies.

The corporate model is landing page thinking: social is a channel for driving traffic to your own website, where conversions are measured and leads are turned into sales. Miettinen describes it from his own work and admits how quickly it has aged.

Kurimo’s answer is blunt:

The unfortunate, harsh truth is that nobody finds it on your website. People do not end up there just like that. It would be really important for companies to understand that they have to operate on the platforms where people already are anyway.

He adds that the idea still strikes many companies as radical — and that while some have understood it, the world still looks rather old-fashioned.

Why a company is structurally weak on social

The episode’s most intellectually interesting passage is Miettinen’s explanation of why this is hard for firms — and the reason is not incompetence but corporate structure.

He invokes Ronald Coase, who answered the question of why firms exist at all: they are hierarchical collectives in which bosses direct, and which move surprisingly rigidly.

The only one who really has the standing and the nerve to act as the firm’s representative is perhaps the CEO.

From which follows social media’s problem: a corporate account that expresses opinions feels odd. But an employee who may represent the firm — and whose representative status is deliberately unclear — works.

The solution runs in two directions:

1. Invite the influencer onto the company’s own channel. Works if the video itself is interesting and stands on its own.
2. Go onto the influencer’s channel. Reaches a ready-made audience and is therefore often more effective — you are not trying to drag the person into your corporate monolith.

And before either, Kurimo demands two questions that in his experience go unasked:

The first question is why are we doing this, what is the goal. And once the goal is known, you have to ask what is the most effective way to reach that goal.

One video a year on your own channel is not that way.

The model case: Rahapodi

Kurimo’s example of successful company-backed content is Nordnet’s Rahapodi, where in his view the pieces fall into place.

Why it works:

• The content is valuable even to people who are not customers. This is Kurimo’s criterion for all social content: what gives the viewer added value, what people might share and recommend. The opposite is PowerPoint bullets about what our company does.
• Guests. They make the content more interesting and bring a network effect: the guest passes it on, and a larger group hears about it.
• Bold experiments outside the core focus. Rahapodi’s most-watched video at the time was an interview with Jussi Halla-aho, over 300,000 views — loosely connected to the investment theme but a compelling departure. Miettinen’s assessment: it is good that a channel does not cultivate a single expert subject purely.

And Miettinen’s observation about what makes this possible: Rahapodi’s host Martin Paasi was able to appear as a private individual even though his background represented Nordnet. People are able to detach from the organisation and be experts.

Why guests are a structural necessity

Kurimo has an argument here that applies to every two-host format:

Some extremely creative people can perhaps talk for hundreds of hours and keep producing new material. But typically, after a while, whatever you had to say has been said.

The dividing line is episode count: two people can carry tens of episodes, not hundreds. The world’s best-known podcasts have guests.

Miettinen offers a counter-example — Mika Maliranta and Matti Apunen, whose chemistry and banter work — but concedes the same limit: at some point all the in-jokes have been heard.

Do not carry radio into podcasting

Both recognise the same irritant: jingles, theme music, interstitial patter, repeating the guest’s name and the topic. Kurimo’s analogy is the article’s sharpest:

If you had 3D video glasses, why would you want to produce 2D content for them?

The reasoning lies in the listener’s situation: a podcast listener has made a deliberate choice, clicked, read the description and knows what they are listening to. Radio format comes from a passive audio world in which the listener arrived mid-stream and did not know who was speaking. It is unnecessary.

From this Kurimo distils two rules for social content, and they are the article’s most memorable line:

Make things that are interesting. Do not make things that are annoying.

Over-produced interstitials belong to the second category: they push listeners away.

Advertising: who reads it out

Kurimo draws a distinction that matters to advertisers. A pre-produced one-minute ad spot at the top of a podcast is not the same thing as the host reading the ad themselves — particularly if the host is a known figure:

The listeners have a completely different relationship to that ad.

The same applies to creators: a recommendation given in one’s own words about a product one actually liked is a far stronger message than a detached ad cut into the video.

An observation from the Rogan example: on YouTube his content carries no ads beyond YouTube’s own, whereas in the audio version he may talk through ads at some length.

Native content and organic reach

This is the article’s most technically important part, and it consists of two rules.

Rule 1: make content that stands on its own on the platform. A Facebook page that only links the company blog is not interesting. Kurimo’s reasoning is the platform’s own interest:

It is in every platform’s interest to keep people on that platform, not to send them away.

Miettinen confirms it from his own measurements: a YouTube link posted on LinkedIn does not get promoted, because the algorithm sees traffic leaking to a competitor — but a ten-minute native video runs beautifully.

Rule 2: organic reach differs on every platform. Kurimo’s concrete comparison:

A tactic for a new channel follows directly: if you want maximum reach from one video, put a well-known or contentious guest in it. Kurimo names Halla-aho, Kimi Räikkönen and Teemu Selänne as examples; Miettinen adds that both of them have strip-mined Tuomas Malinen.

And TikTok’s exception, which Kurimo analyses closely: TikTok lets users link their Instagram and YouTube profiles prominently, which looks like sawing off its own branch. His reading is the opposite — it attracts creators from other platforms, because they can see they might channel an audience into their own properties. From the platform’s point of view it is a deliberate choice.

Alongside it, an audience observation: TikTok is the most teenage of the platforms (12 to 20, though increasingly older too), while Facebook is natural for the 35-plus crowd and therefore traditionally the corporate platform. Choosing a platform is choosing an audience.

YouTube is a search engine

Miettinen raises an observation from a HubSpot social report that changes how a channel should be thought about:

The world’s two largest search engines are Google and YouTube.

YouTube has its own search format, its recommendation grid and its impression carousel, and a significant share of the audience looks for content inside YouTube, in the native app — not through a browser. His conclusion: if Google is the dominant channel for search and it offers a native format, why would you not take it?

And an answer to the commonest corporate objection, that the platform gives no individual-level data: YouTube’s analytics show a great deal. Individuals are not identified, but you get a broad picture of the audience.

Publishing cadence — and where the sources disagree

Kurimo uses analytics to optimise publishing time. But he flags the contradiction honestly himself:

• Google itself claims publishing time makes no difference.
• Among creators there is a consensus that you should publish on a regular weekday at a regular hour.

I would say I have a slightly contradictory feeling about it.

His recommendation regardless: publish in the afternoon and regularly — once a week, or if more often, still on regular weekdays. The reasoning is twofold: the audience gets used to it, and the algorithm gets used to it.

Miettinen’s own theory of the mechanism: a platform grants roughly a day’s grace period during which it is decided whether a video reaches recommendation — the same logic as TikTok’s two hundred impressions.

And a counter-example worth weighing: Miettinen’s investment banking episode has drawn thousands of views regardless of publishing time, and his episode on the euro breaking up is approaching 20,000. A contentious subject beats timing.

The back catalogue: bank your guests

This is Miettinen’s own addition to the playbook, and it concerns launching:

When you start publishing, record your guests into storage in advance — so that you have at least four weeks of material. Not the way where you make one good episode and then there is a long gap.

He names an example that doubles as a warning: at the launch of Jari Sarasvuo’s Cassandra it looked as if guests had not been banked in advance, and a gap of several weeks followed. Even experienced creators do not always grasp the value of a back catalogue.

Technical minimum — and why audio comes first

Miettinen’s confession is the article’s most useful error report:

It took me something like 15 episodes to understand.

The practical order:

1. Get out of the echoey room. If you cannot, get dynamic microphones — they forgive echo far better than condensers do. A headset mic minimises the echo risk.
2. Two cameras, so the angle can change.
3. A proper recorder, these days often as a set that gives you a live mix.

Kurimo’s counterweight matters, because it stops equipment from becoming an excuse:

In the end, content is king. With a phone camera and a lavalier mic, and taking care not to sit straight in front of a window — you get material of good enough quality, as long as you are in a room that does not echo.

The minimum requirements are: the audio is intelligible, the picture is bright enough, no backlight. On the publishing side, Anchor.fm (now owned by Spotify) handles distribution to every podcast platform from a single upload.

Thumbnail, title and numbering

The thumbnail decides. Kurimo’s source carries weight: Puheenaihe had the makers of the Hydraulic Press Channel as guests, at the time a channel of a little over two million subscribers. Their advice:

If it looks like a video is not pulling well, just change the thumbnail, rethink the title — and then it may still climb.

Kurimo adds a caveat: Hydraulic Press’s content is traditional creator content in which something happens; for conversational content the logic is partly different.

The title is a balancing act. Kurimo describes wrestling with it at Puheenaihe: a title has to be credible and serious enough for a channel that wants to hold constructive conversations — and still be interesting and capable of provoking feeling. For a company it comes down to brand: how provocative you dare to be.

Sequential numbering is both hosts’ practice, and Kurimo gives two reasons for it:

1. Referenceability. If the same guest has appeared several times, the episode number is enough to identify which one.
2. A signal to a new viewer. The number tells them how many episodes exist — a single unnumbered video says nothing about the depth of the catalogue.

Closing: three pieces of advice

The episode ends with concrete advice, and it should be separated by audience.

For an individual — set a date. Kurimo’s observation is that many get stuck dithering and never publish anything:

Decide a deadline for yourself, that in a month’s time I will have my first video done. And then it does not matter at what quality.

With the related warning, which applies to companies too: if you set the bar too high, it may never get made at all.

For a company — check what of your current output is actually watched. Kurimo’s set of questions: how much are your current video materials watched, are you satisfied with that, and could a different approach get you greater visibility? Are the current practices the most optimal ones?

Miettinen’s third addition — free one person. Take someone from the organisation and release them from the prison of corporate identity to act as a personal agent:

Everything he says is not some propaganda department. He can speak in the spirit of improvisation, rather than calculatedly reciting social media messages.

Why this episode is worth reading as a document

The episode was recorded in July 2020, when Negotiator had existed for about six months. Miettinen says openly in it what he had not yet learned: the audio was bad for 15 episodes, and he ruined one early guest appearance with it entirely.

Afterwards the channel grew into one of Finland’s largest economics podcasts — and this episode preserves what he was advised and who advised him. That is unusually rare in documented form: playbooks are normally written afterwards, from the vantage point of success, once it has been forgotten what the uncertainty felt like.

Sources and related reading

• Corporate video and podcast strategy | Rami Kurimo | Negotiator 28 — the episode this article is based on.
• Podcast Audio Technique | Pete Lipponen | Neuvottelija 19 — the technical side in full.
• Futucast and the Podcast Community | William von der Pahlen and Isak Rautio | Neuvottelija 21 — community and subscriber growth.
• The Negotiator’s Interview Pipeline and Puheenaihe | Sami Miettinen | Neuvottelija 20 — the same moment from the channel’s own point of view.

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