Podcasting for Business Case Study: From Stranger to “I Need to Attend the Next One”

Sometimes a podcast and a business grow up together, one feeding the other until both are thriving and serving a passionate audience. This is what happened to Dana with the I Swear on My Mother’s Grave Podcast.

Enjoy this snapshot of the case study, and make sure to subscribe to get the whole story and all of the details on Wednesday, February 1st!

Podcast Info:

  • Company:
  • Podcast: I Swear on My Mother’s Grave
  • Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, 
  • Host: Dana Black
  • Reason for Podcasting: Community and Relationship Building, Processing Personal Grief, Storytelling
  • Challenges: Keeping up with demand. Maintaining momentum while focus, audience and personal grief is shifting. It’s expensive to podcast, and this show is emotionally taxing!
  • Format: Interviews in Seasons. It’s also a personal narrative show with some solo episodes.
  • Pivots: Increased investment in production and web presence/PR, and moving to some in-person recording. Also started recording solo episodes.
  • Biggest Benefit from Podcasting: By the launch of the second season, an organically sold-out first Mother’s Grave retreat.
  • Biggest Takeaway: Bring in the expertise to fill the gaps in your own knowledge: editing, PR, whatever it is.
  • Tools and Tech: Audacity, Squadcast, iPhone Voice Memo app while talking over Zoom 

Team Involved in Production:

Learning Resources:

Benefits of Podcasting

The newsletter associated with the podcast has proved an invaluable asset, getting open rates of up to 60% per message. People who hear the episodes want to continue the connection, and subscribe to the newsletter. Dana’s newsletter has around 300 subscribers after launching in August 2022.

Within the newsletter content, Dana put a heavy emphasis on asking her subscribers to be a part of a community by listening and responding with new stories/episodes when they were available. She also used the newsletter to share personal stories about her current life/and how grief is ever shifting, stories about her childhood and her mother, fun photos or stories about her living 96 year old Nana (her mom’s mom), childhood photos, grief resources or other podcasts/memoirs she is enjoying that tackle maternal loss. And she uses the newsletter as the primary means of promoting the Mother’s Grave retreats.

Because of the focus on creating community and providing value, the retreat spots sold out in 3 weeks. For a brand new event in an emotionally fraught industry.

Between the first successful event and now, the funnel of stranger, to listener, to subscriber has been proven highly effective, with complete strangers reaching out to say: “I need to attend the next one.”

The podcast has directly created:

  • A working sales funnel for high ticket events,
  • A platform for building community and making sales, and
  • A list with scores of potential guests eager to be a part of the show.
  • A growing waitlist of ready attendees for future events.


Do you want to check out the podcast? You should!  .

And make sure to check out , and if you think it’s a fit, sign up for the I Swear On My Mothers Grave Newsletter!
Connect with Dana on: , , 

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