Naked French: 90K+ social following, top 10 podcast, $0 ads.

The Challenge: Finding a Sustainable Growth Channel

Naked French creates immersive content for intermediate French learners. 

Their microdosing model – short audio snippets on Instagram and bilingual podcast interviews  – allows their audience to practice French daily in just a few minutes each day.

At the start, Naked French planned to launch a podcast and an online course. But as a self-funded venture, they didn’t want to focus a lot of resources on ads.

They needed to take a more resourceful approach. 
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The Process

The Demand Conversion team identified 3 steps that would be key to success.

1. Build an organic social media audience.
2. Leverage that community to co-create content.
3. Develop a paid offer. ‍

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‍Stage 1: Building a social media community

‍Instagram content has a lifecycle of <1 week. We needed a plan that wouldn't require high production costs or be overly time-consuming to execute.

‍Creating high-impact, short-form videos consistently at an efficient production cost was a challenge that required a resourceful approach.

‍From our user research, we knew learners struggled with understanding spoken French far more than written French. To address this pain point, we selected quotes that would resonate with our target persona and turned them into audio and video form.  

‍We also researched key trends and niche language content that had gone viral. From there, we were able to continuously test new trends and see if they would also work for the Naked French audience.

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Stage 2: Co-creating with the audience

‍As we built a thriving community of language learners, it was time to get to work on the podcast. 

‍We leveraged Stories to survey the audience about content they wanted to listen to. Based on this, we advised the team on what storylines and structure would best capture their audience’s attention. This helped inform the way the team captured raw content, ensuring the process was as efficient as possible. 

‍For example, Naked French decided to include English narrations throughout podcast episodes based on audience suggestions. 

‍This allowed listeners to check their comprehension of the spoken French and follow along. This is now a key element of the show and a differentiator.  

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Stage 3: Launch

‍As we had involved the audience in the production of the podcast, they were already engaged and waiting for the episodes to drop.

‍Each week following an episode drop, we sought live feedback via Instagram stories, polls, and newsletters. This allowed us to see what was working, what wasn’t, and iterate accordingly.

‍We also built relationships with a network of French influencers and bloggers to help build hype for the podcast’s debut. 

‍Once episodes were coming out weekly, we leveraged our network to promote their release and get as many listens as possible in the first 7 days. 

Many of our Reels gained over 100,000+ views in just a couple of weeks. One even went hyper-viral, gaining 2 million views and 50,000+ likes. 

Virality doesn’t always translate to growth; however, because we identified exactly what content resonated with this audience through careful testing, we were able to soon convert many curious viewers into dedicated followers. 

Using this method, we scaled from 0 to 80,000 followers in Naked French’s first year, and achieved steady organic growth month after month. 

This dedicated community helped The Naked French Podcast debut in the top 10 of Apple’s Language Learning charts in 12+ countries. With listeners in 101 countries, we’ve helped Naked French build a truly global audience. 

These listeners are also incredibly engaged – in 2022, the Naked French podcast was in the top 10% most shared globally.

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Two years in, the Naked French community has exploded to 90,000 French lovers. Season 2 of the podcast received double the plays in the first 7 days than the first, and Season 3 is set to be even bigger. 

The team even plans to monetize by releasing courses and learning resources.

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