How to Promote and Market Your Podcast

If you're seeking to discover how to promote a podcast and grow a listenership, you're in the best location!

You likely got into podcasting with the objective of triggering a conversation around a subject you're passionate about. Cultivating a neighborhood of listeners from worldwide who share your interests, who value your point of view on a subject.

As Hot Pod turned five earlier this year, they asked their readers "What are you most frustrated by about the podcasting industry?". Readers offered their responses with one stating, "It is so difficult to get people to know my show exists. I've attempted whatever to boost my numbers ... it's so hard to promote yourself above the sea of podcasts, specifically if you're not a brand-new buzzy program."

If you're like the above podcaster, gathering 50 downloads per episode was thrilling at the start and now you're ready for more. Consistently hitting hundreds or thousands of listens takes diligence and a desire to check a few different methods so that's where we come in.

In our podcast marketing guide, we are going to share 20 methods real podcasters use to promote their program. Our goal isn't to repeat the exact same methods you've seen everywhere else. Rather, it's to provide you the tools and actionable insights needed to grow a show from one to one thousand listeners.

However first, you'll require to nail the two pillars of podcasting. These are the cornerstones of quality promotion and growth.

Basics of Podcasting

Prior to leaping right into our top advertising methods, let's take one step back to examine the structure of our podcast. We'll begin with the two main pillars of podcasting, quality content and time. We require to make sure what we're currently developing is worth promoting and that we have realistic expectations around the timelines of success.

Quality material

Marketing a bad item is a wild-goose chase. No quantity of money, innovative marketing angles, or Hail Mary techniques will grow a stagnant podcast. So prior to you begin trying to crack the code on promoting a show, initially ensure it's up to snuff.

What makes a good product? It needs to hit these three qualities:

Belongings: Your listeners need to get something from the episode. They either discovered new info or an ability, were captivated, or satisfied an interest.

Distinct: Your podcast's point of view adds something new to the conversation, however small. Originality differs for every subject so begin by producing Venn Diagrams versus others in your niche. If too many data points land in the middle, concentrate on refining your separating factors initially.

Sticky: You podcast needs to capture and sustain an audience's attention. If your existing listeners aren't regularly consuming your episodes completely, focus your efforts on the content better. Listen to podcasts that are similar to yours, study their formats, content, and structure. Think about how you can include those functions into your program and improve upon what they've developed.

The best long-lasting technique to promote a podcast is by supplying worth. Gimmicks and faster ways may operate in the short-term, however they won't sustain you. Instead of leaping on the most recent marketing trend, focus on creating value through strong relationships and quality content.

Time

With quality content under your belt, next turn to the 2nd essential pillar: time. We understand Rome wasn't built in a day and the very same can be stated for podcast audiences.

Keep in mind, numerous hosts produce a podcast for 5-6 months prior to seeing significant upticks in their listenership. That implies constantly promoting ten excellent episodes that eventually see minimal engagement. Don't get dissuaded.

Trust that promoting a podcast takes some time and growth depends on regularly producing engaging material.

How To Find The Right Promotional Strategies

With numerous marketing strategies to pick from, there's a process to figure precisely which tactics are right for your program.

As you work to discover your ideal marketing mix, keep these two consider mind.

Focus on your audience

Audience persona example

It would be terrific if your podcast interested everybody, but that's probably not the case. Instead of attempting to market to all podcast listeners, concentrate on the ones who get the most value from your program. With time, take steps to learn as much as you can about that audience so you can develop promotions that finds them with the right messaging.

Aggregate everything you understand about your listener into an audience persona file so you can describe it when crafting marketing copy.

Experiment

Whenever you take steps to promote a podcast, it's important to try new things and measure their results. In fact, you need to run several tests to discover the strategies that work.

For instance, let's state you choose to respond to concerns on Quora to drive traffic to your podcast's site. It would be wise to add tracking codes to the links in your answer to figure out the number of people ultimately land back on your site. With no tracking parameters, it's tough to decide if a strategy succeeds or not.

The data created by tracking experiments supplies actionable insights into what channels drive new subscribers. In marketing, concentrating on the real life numbers is a much better method than choosing your gut feeling.

With a foundation set, let's begin with our 20 attempted and true techniques to turn up the heat on your podcast promotion.