Sometimes real world analogies are the best way to understand the digital world.

Have you ever been to a large conference or trade show? If so, you’ve likely seen a large event space filled with dozens or even hundreds of booths of vendors selling various products and services.

Some booths consist of nothing more than a table and product brochures. These booths all sort of blend in. They’re forgotten as soon as you pass them.

Others have banners or TV screens. These are better, but still low effort and unoriginal. They don’t catch your eye.

The best booths always do something unique. I’ve seen booths with espresso machines to attract weary conference guests, enormous custom displays, magicians or other performers, golf/putting competitions, and even dunk tanks.

Which booths do you think attract the most potential customers? Which booths get the most leads? Which booths are people talking about at the end of the conference?

Now imagine you were a vendor attending a trade show for your podcast content niche. 

If your niche isn’t very crowded and only a few vendors attend, you may still be able ot attract attention with a very minimalistic booth that looks like the others. But if your niche is large and crowded, like most content categories, you’re going to need to do something to stand out from the hundreds or thousands of other podcasts in your space.

This is the part of the process that most podcasters skip. They see popular podcasts about true crime, or business, or history, and think that if they create a similar podcast, it will be similarly successful. Why wouldn’t it be? There are millions of people who enjoy listening to podcasts about those topics?

This may have worked 10 years ago. Today, in addition to having great audio, editing, cover art, dialogue (or monologue), and a niche topic, you also need to make sure your booth stands out.

What’s the equivalent of creating an amazing trade show booth in the world of podcasting?

If you’ve seen the YouTube show ‘Hot Ones’, that’s what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, you’ll likely have to do it without the celebrity guests.

It shouldn’t be gimmicky, though. Fantasy Fangirls differentiates based on their in-depth research and discussion of fantasy romance novels. Instead of discussing an entire book per episode, the Fantasy Fangirls spend hours discussing only a few chapters at a time. They’re well-researched and entertaining, and their audience loves them for it.

It’s easy to think that all the good ideas are already taken. But the truth is there are still plenty of great ideas out there for every niche. It will be well worth your effort to spend some time thinking about yours.