People all over the world are starting podcasts to share their knowledge, widen their reach, and promote their brands. If you’re an expert in a certain field or you feel very strongly about something, starting a podcast could be a great way to attract an audience and monetize your passion. Although you have to make sure your content is engaging, marketing a podcast is just as important as creating it.
Content creators who don’t promote their project are unlikely to succeed because their audience won’t grow as quickly as they imagined. This can be frustrating and cause them to give up. If you want to avoid this problem, you should focus at least 50% of your time on marketing strategies like posting on social media, putting together an email list, and networking with other influential people.
What Are the Best Ways of Marketing a Podcast?
If you’re planning on starting a podcast, you might spend most of your time thinking about what kind of content you’d like to post and making sure the audio quality is excellent. While these factors are crucial, you should put just as much effort into the marketing of your podcast as the production. This is because you won’t be able to earn an income or promote your brand without a decently sized audience.
What’s more, you’re much more likely to give up and stop podcasting if you don’t believe that your content is reaching the intended people. Some of the best marketing strategies include collaborating with people who have a larger audience, creating an attractive website, interacting with others on social media, and building up an email list.
Creating Great Content that Is Targeted to Your Audience
All the marketing in the world won’t be successful if the content you’re posting on your podcast isn’t interesting, funny, or entertaining. Before you get started, think about your target audience and why they would listen to you. Are they interested in deepening their knowledge? Do they want to be entertained during their daily commute?
Once you know what your ideal listener is trying to get out of your podcast, you can create much more targeted content. Over time, your audience might even give you ideas about how you can improve their experience. You should consider whether you can incorporate listeners’ questions or comments in your episodes.
Release Several Episodes at the Start
Your pilot episode is important because it sets the scene and tells people what to expect from you. For this reason, you should spend a lot of time on it and make sure your content is both interesting and entertaining. But while creating a killer pilot is a good way of building up an initial audience, it has caused problems for some podcasters, who got bad reviews because listeners were disappointed that there wasn’t any more content available.
If you’ve managed to hook your audience within one episode, they might be impatient to listen to more. A great way to keep people interested is to release three to five episodes in rapid succession. That way, people will have a reason to keep listening to you, and they’ll be unlikely to forget about you. What’s more, posting a lot of content at once increases your chances of hitting the New and Noteworthy section on iTunes.
Inviting Prominent Guests
Podcast hosts who’ve only just started or who haven’t yet built up a six or seven-figure audience are unlikely to attract A-list celebrities. If you aim too high, you’re likely to be disappointed. Instead, you should think about prominent people within your niche or influencers who have a few thousand more followers than you do. These people might be interested in sharing their knowledge and collaborating with you.
To build up a positive reputation as a good host, you should always learn as much as you can about your guests. Don’t just ask them general questions, which they might have answered dozens of times before. Instead, do your research and approach the subject from a unique angle. This will impress your guest, capture your audience’s interest, and help you attract new, more prominent guests.
Speaking on Other Podcasts
In addition to inviting people to speak on your podcast, you could agree to be interviewed on other people’s channels. Usually, appearing as a guest is free, and you’ll get to promote your own podcast at the beginning or at the end of the episode. If the host’s audience overlaps with yours, you might pick up new listeners who are interested in your content.
Creating an Attractive Website
Marketing a podcast on another person’s channel is a great way of widening your reach, but it’s only effective if you have somewhere to send the new listeners. While some might search for your content on their favorite platform directly, others might want to learn more about you or check out your biography. For this reason, setting up a website is crucial.
If you’ve never done this before, you might benefit from the advice of marketing experts. They can help you design and set up an intuitive website that fits your brand. What’s more, they can make sure that all your content loads quickly and is accessible on desktop as well as mobile devices.
Search Engine Optimization
There are two types of websites. The first kind acts like a business card, and it is where you send people who want to find out more about you. This type of site is usually very simple, and it might not be updated on a regular basis. The second kind, the search engine optimized website, is more intricate, and it has to be updated at least once a week. The aim is not just to show people what you do, but to attract new leads.
Podcasters who would like to build up the biggest audience possible should opt for a search engine optimized website. With the help of your marketing expert, you can strategically place keywords and elements on your site and post regular, high-quality updates to rank higher on search engines like Google. This drives traffic to your website and allows interested people to find you more easily.
Social Media Marketing
Another great strategy for marketing podcasts is to set up several social media accounts. Since you should update every account at least once a day, it’s best to choose two or three platforms your target audience is likely to be on. For example, writers often select Twitter, and people who are speaking about a visual product such as food, art, or fashion might select Instagram and share photos related to their content.
Social media platforms are almost always free to join, so they are a great marketing tool for people on a budget. When you create engaging or amusing posts, you can quickly build up a large following of engaged users, who will listen to your podcast and share it with their friends.
Email Marketing
Almost every marketing expert agrees that building up an email list is crucial. Your social media accounts don’t belong to you, and companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram can make changes to their algorithm, block you from the platform, or even delete your account at any time.
That’s why it’s always a good idea to ask your most engaged followers to sign up to your email list, which isn’t related to a platform and therefore belongs to you directly. Usually, the people who have signed up to receive your emails are your most dedicated fans, so they are likely to read your content and even purchase products you are advertising.
Start a YouTube Channel
You should try to distribute your podcast to as many platforms as possible so different kinds of listeners can gain access to it. Many podcasters create a YouTube channel and upload their content to this site. Not only does this allow you to attract a wider audience, but it also facilitates social sharing of your episodes and provides certain SEO benefits.
Because YouTube is a video platform, you’ll have to record some footage or use some free stock videos from sites like Pexels. A good social media marketing expert can help you write SEO-optimized show notes to go with your video.
Run a Contest
No matter how well you market your podcast, you won’t consistently attract a huge audience. Instead, there will be highs and lows. When your growth has slowed down, you have to be proactive and explore new marketing options.
One great strategy is to run a contest for your listeners. You could give away a product related to your podcast, offer a one-on-one coaching session, or allow the winner to speak on your podcast. Running a contest could encourage your listeners to share your content and follow you on various platforms.
Marketing a podcast is as important as creating it. The faster you grow your audience, the more motivated you’ll be to continue to work on your project. This increases your chances of creating a successful podcast that can position you as an expert in your field and earn you a passive income. Call us at Anthem Software to find out how our software and our marketing experts can help you promote your podcast to the right audience.
