Podcasts have become a staple of long-form content, with 120 million monthly listeners in the U.S alone. They’re popular for a number of reasons, including the ability for hosts to take a deep dive into a niche and the fact that people can listen to a podcast while doing other things like working out or driving.
Starting a podcast is a great way to push your thought-leadership credentials, expand your reach, and grow your business. However, the podcast market can be pretty crowded. There are over two million different podcast titles on Apple Podcasts alone — that’s nearly 50 million podcast episodes!
Taking that into consideration, turning your podcast from a great idea into a successful product requires an effective podcast marketing strategy to make sure you get the listenership needed to justify the effort you’re putting into your podcast. With that in mind, we’ll look at some podcast marketing strategy tips to help you to grow and promote your new podcast.
1. Use soundbites to entice listeners
Take note of your most profound/interesting/funny pieces for each episode and cut them to create short soundbites that you can post to social media platforms. A more powerful advertisement than simply saying “listen to our podcast” repeatedly, a soundbite gives your listeners a low-commitment intro to what makes you worth listening to. Vary the focus of your soundbites to broaden your appeal.
2. Get exposure from guests
Having guests is a great way to deliver cutting-edge insight and boost your podcast’s value. However, having guests also allows you to cross promote your podcast with their social media following. If you feature a guest, thank them for their time and ask that they share the episode on their platforms. They shouldn’t have any issue as it’s also a positive for them — it demonstrates their own status in the field.
3. Make your podcast easy to find
Standing out isn’t just a good idea; it’s essential for success. The first element is making sure your SEO and tagging are on point so that you are appearing in searches for your target audience. The next step is making sure that after you appear in relevant searches, users will click through to your podcast. To do this, your podcast marketing strategy should focus on creating titles and snippets that make listeners curious enough to want to learn more.
4. Launch with more than one episode
While it might seem strange to publish five episodes on the first day, nothing is worse than losing a new listener because they have nothing else to listen to. It can be risky to make several episodes without yet knowing what will work for your listeners, but you risk losing them completely if you release a single episode on launch day. This also means you have as much time as you need to perfect the first set of episodes so the product you do launch is as high quality as possible.
5. Interact with your community
Any good podcast marketing strategy needs to be one built around your “community.” These are regular listeners who will encourage others to listen to you and amplify your voice by sharing on social media. Forming a community early in the process is vital, and you can build loyalty through competitions or giveaways. Sure, it’s an investment early on, but if you show you’re willing to reward these “early adopters,” they can be the driving force of your future growth and success.
6. Use analytics to identify your audience
Like all digital marketing, your podcast marketing strategy should integrate user analytics as soon as reliable datasets are formed. Many podcast hosting platforms provide some level of analytics, but it’s also good to be your own podcast host by setting up a dedicated landing page for your podcast. This way, you can remain in control of your SEO, link to your other pages, and get visitor analytics to help get a clearer picture of who your listeners are.
7. Don’t be afraid to pull back the curtain
Some may feel that showing your audience what goes into making the show might come across as unprofessional and deviates from the image of a “polished masterpiece,” but many podcasts benefit from building a community by letting your target audience feel close. This can include incorporating mistakes and outtakes into your podcast, nothing that would actually reflect badly but enough to show the human side behind the show.
8. Get expert help if you need it
With relatively low entry requirements in terms of start-up costs and labor, starting a podcast is an attractive way to grow your business. By taking the right approach at the start you can build a loyal community and set yourself up for future success. Unfortunately, creating a podcast is a major task in itself. If you need help or advice with any part of your new podcast’s launch, our marketing experts are always ready to lend a hand.
To find out more about how we can help with your podcast marketing strategy, get in touch with us here.
