Who Is This Show Actually For?
A podcast built to serve two different audiences equally, in every episode, usually ends up serving neither one well. Pick a single, real audience to build for, and let everyone else benefit as a side effect of the show being good.
Why Splitting the Difference Fails
Different audiences are listening for different things. Take this example from a nonprofit who wants to make a show about their work: Donors want reassurance and a sense of being on the inside, but a general audience wants a story worth their time regardless of what they know about your organization. Experts want depth and precision. Newcomers want to be met where they are. Try to hit two of these directly in the same episode, and you usually end up with a show that keeps switching gears. You’d start with a real story, but then get interrupted by a pitch. Or imagine you’re listening to a deep dive that keeps stopping to explain the basics. Neither audience gets fully served, and both audiences eventually tune out.
What Works
Build the show for one real audience, the one you actually want listening consistently, and trust that quality does the rest of the work. A story compelling enough to hold a stranger's attention, with zero prior investment in your organization, tends to reassure that existing donor from our previous example far more than a small segment inside a show ever could. An expert-level conversation that's genuinely rigorous earns respect from a general audience too, even if they don't catch every reference, because rigor reads as credibility regardless of who's listening. The show being good for its real audience is what does the work for everyone else.
When You Genuinely Need Something Separate
OK but not always, right? Sometimes a specific group really does need something the main show can't give them, deeper detail, more assumed context, material aimed at people already invested rather than people discovering you for the first time. When that need is real, it's usually better solved as its own smaller channel, like a bonus feed or a members-only series rather than folding that material into the main show and diluting it for everyone else.
What To Watch For
If your show keeps switching registers between episodes, or even within a single episode from one built for insiders, the next built for newcomers, that's a sign you haven't actually decided who the show is for. Pick the audience the show is genuinely for, build for them, and let everyone else benefit from the work being good.
Seaplane Armada builds shows around one real audience, and lets everyone else benefit from the work being genuinely good. If you're trying to figure out who your show is actually for, get in touch at theadmiral@seaplanearmada.com
