“Never give up, just do it!” This is Marco’s motto.
Podcast host of "l'Accélérateur", with over 200K downloads since its inception in 2017, he has established himself as an expert in Marketing, Social Selling and Entrepreneurship. From January 2021, he will deal mainly with the creation of written and audio content.
With his second podcast "L'Académie Du Podcast", he helped more than 400 French-speaking people to launch their podcast over a period of 2 years.
Through this interview, discover with Marco Bernard why podcasts could be the future of radio. Marco also encourages everyone who wants to create his Podcast to get started now!
Versatile and talented, he teaches entrepreneurs and business owners who want to stand out from the crowd to create highly engaging content and generate profitable results for their business.
Below you will find some striking excerpts from the interview. If you would like to see the whole interview, watch this video and discover Marco's journey!
Can you tell us about your background and experiences?
I've been a podcaster since 2014. Actually, I launched my first podcast in 2014, but by the time I launched it, I screwed up, as they say.
I started the podcast, I did six episodes over six months and then I gave up on it because it wasn't quite what I wanted.
I was convinced of the format but I didn't have a good structure behind so I had to abandon the ship.
And then, to kick it off again in 2017, I launched "L'Accélérateur". This is my flagship podcast. On which I'm up to 300 episodes into as we speak. This podcast received hundreds of entrepreneurs, people who have a very successful in their company, with their sales, with their marketing and all that. So we've got some very, very big names as well.
"L'Accélérateur" is on pause currently, being relaunched in January with a new format, new concept and the "L'Académie du Podcast" which is another podcast that I host, which is now at 125 episodes I don't have the exact count, but around 125 episodes as we speak. And which obviously deals with podcasting.
Can you tell us about your favourite professional subjects?
At the level of the "L'Académie du Podcast", the podcast deals with podcasting. So as soon as we get a podcast, we're gonna find something of interest inside the Podcast Academy.
There's a bunch of techniques that are addressed through that, guests too, people who have podcasts and did well with that, or who have had failures and then bounced back.
The Accelerator was basically about marketing, entrepreneurship and sales. And in January 2021, it will deal essentially with content creators, whether it's people who create content written, video or audio, and it's just gonna be interviews.
Nowadays, you can feel the excitement rising, you can feel that there's something really happening in the French-speaking podcasting community. As a podcaster, it's really interesting to have your vision of what you see, because if I look at most-listened podcasts in France today, often they're kind of replay of radio shows?
I know that radio in Europe is not done the same way it is done in Quebec or in Canada and even in the United States. The "Radio racontée" (storytelling radio) is something that we see much more in Europe than we see here.
What's interesting in my opinion in podcasting is when the content becomes timeless, it's evergreen. It means we can consume content today. And in three months or six months, it's still going to be relevant. And it is something very, very interesting.
And podcasting is going to allow you to do that, something that the radio focusing on the news is not going to be able to do. Or it's actually going to be a lot less interesting.
Which I notice because, just a few years ago, the radio was looking down on podcasters and all podcast media, and today there isn't a radio station that isn't at least considering launching its own podcast channel.
Well, I have clients who are podcast channels, that are, which are radio channels or radios who have decided to put forward both original and replay content, as you said earlier.
Which will make people find what they want, whatever they came for.
So, for example, if people want to hear it again, an interview with the director of the chamber of commerce on a current topic, they will find it on the podcast, knowing well that this content will vibrate much less in terms of interest, because the interview on the hot topic is going to be valid for a few days or a few weeks at most.
In a few months, this interview won't be of any interest while evergreen and timeless content doesn't have that problem.
So at that point, they were forced to do - and I think it's a great way to evolve over time - with the FM radio business model more and more space for timeless content in the standard grid and in the podcast grid to make sure they have content that appeals to everyone and expand their customer basis. So they used the podcast as a way to get back on track.
Before the pandemic, and even during the pandemic, it's even worse there, but it wasn't doing very well in terms of radio advertising sales
So they use the podcast to sell to new pairs of ears, new advertisers, new businesses who may be interested in posting in podcasts or in live FM radio broadcasts or make sure that advertisers will have access to both advertising vehicles at the same time.
What you also mean by that is that somehow podcasting is reinventing the business of radio?
I'll go further than that, I'll say that podcasting is saving FM radio in a certain way. Because advertising possibilities are much bigger with podcasting than with radio.
We just have to think, for example, of a radio station based in Montreal. There is a very good chance that, once we've gone beyond the one-hour radius around Montreal, we won't be able to pick up the airwaves.
On the digital level, you who are based somewhere in France can very well tune in to a radio station live or listen to a replay via podcasts, no matter where you are.
What it brings as a possibility is that if I'm a business executive in Montreal, if I have an FM radio station, I can very easily approach an international advertiser and tell him, that we're going to put forward offers based on the listener's location, whether the listener is in Europe or whether he or she is in Montreal or Quebec City or anywhere in Quebec.
And we're going to geolocate their offers so that the listener will hear the right advertising based on where they are.
At the very limit, it can even adapt to the device they are using to listen to the podcast.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Ten years is a long time. There is time, we have time to change a lot of things by then. The podcast will certainly still be in my world at that time. I think the podcast is very, very young as we speak. Or at least French-speaking podcasting is very young.
I have no difficulty imagining me podcasting, teaching and consulting in podcasting in about ten years from now. There are a lot of new features every week.
There are still people who come to me, people who want me to speak at conferences.
So there is certainly a huge market that is still far from being saturated, which is in its infancy as we speak. And so I have no difficulty at all in imagining myself still podcasting and continuing to teach and consult in this field.
If you have one last piece of advice for someone who wants to get into podcasting besides listening to the Podcast Academy?
Just do it. If you only knew how many people come up to me and say, "It's in my 2021 plans, now I'll launch this. I've got my podcast, my idea, I'm not bad, this whole operation, my subject's not bad, In 2021, I'll definitely be launching my podcast."
These are probably the same people who told me in 2019 that they were going to do it in 2020. So, at some point, you have to make the leap.
I don't know when is going to put this interview online this week. There's a challenge that I put forward precisely to help those people who are wondering "Should I go or not?".
For those who always put off until tomorrow, I have a seven-day challenge to help them launch their podcast. So, if people want to, they can check it out at academiepodcast.com
And then people will be able to discover the challenge over 7 days which will allows them to validate their podcast idea.
And at the end of the 7th day, they're going to have launched their first content. So in seven days we're gonna be able to get to do all of this.
Where to follow Marco Bernard?
▶︎ Website
▶︎ Linkedin
▶︎ Twitter
