Marketing can mean a whole lot for your podcast. If no one knows about your podcast, does it even exist? Without an audience, you’ll find it really hard to keep going and finding motivation. You’re putting so much effort in planning, producing and recording your podcast. It’s a great idea to start investing some time in the marketing side as well and have a solid marketing strategy for the long term. It’s key to make progress and grow your podcast!

Assuming you already know how to start a podcast and have your own podcast up and running, the very next step would be to distribute your podcast in all the major apps and directories. In this guide, we’ll focus on the final step of the process – how to do podcast marketing and grow your listener base. The ultimate guide to podcast marketing for 2023 is here!

So what is podcast marketing anyway? Do you need to develop your own strategy around it?
The term “Podcast Marketing” is very broad – it essentially includes all the different things you can do in order to get more potential listeners or make more people aware of your podcast.
There’s no single “marketing plan” that would work for all podcast. Each show is different with a different listener base, so you’ll have to try, try and then try some more until you find something that works consistently.
Marketing is not just about sharing a link to your podcast on social media once in a while, there’s so much more to it! You should probably think and plan a long-term podcast marketing strategy and an effective podcast marketing plan to succeed. With that being said, it’s always good to have some patience and continue to release podcast episodes on a regular basis. Even if your audience size is still small, releasing episodes constantly can always help.

Defining your podcast marketing strategy

Before you dip your toes in podcast marketing, you definitely need to develop a broad strategy. You don’t have to write a 20 pages executive summary. Just ask yourself a few key questions – who is my ideal listener persona? How many people I want to reach with the podcast? How am I going to reach all of those potential listeners?
Let’s dive into it right now and review different approaches you can use to develop your own podcast marketing strategy:

1. Create a brand around your podcast

Building your own podcast website is one of the best moves you can do in terms of podcast marketing. You’ll have much more control over your own content, and this essentially helps you establish a brand around your podcast.

When you have your own website, you don’t need to share links to any other podcast app, bio-link (like LinkTree or alternatives), or third-party website – always share a link to your own URL. This would both help you with Podcast SEO and will help your audience remember where your podcast is located.

With a website, you can grow your organic traffic over time, and this could easily becomes your number one source of new listeners. You can even use the podcast website to monetize your podcast through ads, memberships, premium content, and many other creative ideas.

2. Find marketing channels that work

When you plan your podcast marketing strategy, you’ll need to find at least 2 or 3 separate channels where you plan to promote your podcast. There are tons of marketing channels available. You can use Social Media, Organic/SEO, Influencer Marketing, Paid Marketing and more.

You’ll have to first try multiple marketing channels. Keep going and publish your content on those channels, then see which ones work best. Then you could double down and get more content released on the channels that work best.

3. Leverage your current social media followers

If you already use social media, get your followers involved in the process. Not only you should share your podcast content yourself, but try to get your followers actively engaged in your own posts. As soon as someone shares, retweets, comments, likes your post or anything else, you get their own followers’ attention as well. Read our “Social Media” guide to grow your podcast in order to learn more about that part.

Social media can be one of the biggest growth engines for your show, especially if your podcast is dealing with current events or can be viral for any reason.

4. Leverage your podcast guests

If you regularly invite guests on your podcast, you can always try to get them to share the episodes they’re featured on with their own audience. This can help you get more subscribers and grow your podcast audience.

See how Harry Stebbings did not hesitate to ask Guy Kawasaki (1.4M twitter followers) to promote it on his social media accounts. Your guests probably do not have so many followers, but any push could help promote your podcast.

6 years ago today I recorded the first-ever 20VC with @guykawasaki.

I was 18, had about $50 to my name and knew no one in venture.

Today the show is 2,500 episodes in with 80M+ downloads.

Thread on the biggest lessons learned along the way 👇👇 pic.twitter.com/JlTMBkdf0C

— Harry Stebbings (@HarryStebbings) December 30, 2020

If you have a website, creating profiles for your show hosts, guests and any other participants (like Composers/Producers/Editors/etc.) can really help as well. Podcastpage includes this type of functionality by default and even let you create a Guest Intake Form so you can receive inquiries from potential guests as well.
Once your guest see their episode on your website, along with their own profile image, links, bio and so on – they’ll be even more interested to share the URL.

5. Don’t limit yourself to one social media platform

Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Discord, TikTok – there are so many platforms out there. Try to be active on at least two platforms and engage with different types of users. Make sure to share the content in the right format. Each platform can have its own nuances or styles.

Your website can also turn into a social hub if you encourage listeners to leave you comments or if your site has social/community features.

6. Repurpose content on a regular basis

You can repurpose your podcast to blog posts, videos, audiograms, quotes, images and much more. This can help you create more online content from the very same source, and help tremendously with your podcast marketing strategy.

This can often be automated, so you can get a better reach from the same episode without adding much work on top of that.

A lot of podcast episodes may be “time limited” and not be relevant after some time, but you can probably extract short parts of those episodes and re-post those infinitely. It’s easy to create 30 pieces of content from each episode (quotes, audiograms, screenshots etc. etc.) so go ahead and leverage your existing content.

7. Form partnerships

Partnership is a win-win situation where you collaborate with someone else and everyone gains something from the collaboration. You don’t have to stick to other podcasts as partners. It’s also possible to try working with other brands, websites, newsletters or companies that can be relevant to your podcast audience.

You can work with other podcasts to help spread the word on each other’s show, or get one of your colleagues or podcast guests to put the word out about your show.

8. Create a community around your podcast

A highly involved community is one of those things that can help make your listeners return and even pay to be part of your podcast community. You can create a private group, a sub-reddit, Slack channel, or use other platforms to get your audience more involved.

There’s so many platforms available today for these types of things, it’d be quite easy to achieve. A community can take time to manage, so make sure you’re behind that idea before jumping in.

9. Pick a unique name for your show

With so many podcasts, newsletters, websites, and other types of content creators and brands – it can become really confusing for your audience if you give a too broad of a name for your podcast. Make sure your podcast name is unique, and can be found easily both in podcast apps and when you search for it online. Choosing a name for your podcast is key for success, a unique and memorable name can go far and help with your podcast growth.

Podcast marketing plan & tactics

1. Post often on social media. For each episode you’re releasing, try to create a teaser/trailer before the episode is fully available. You can also share links to each episode once it’s published (this can be automated).
   
2. Add your podcast to podcast directories. Optimize your podcast discoverability by using the right tags in those platforms. Make it easier for potential listeners to find your podcast. Even if they do not know that it exist, by adding a good description and categories tags.
   
3. Create a website for your podcast. A website gives your podcast so much in terms of marketing. From better branding, organic/SEO upside, and the possibility to include different types of content on top of the podcast episodes (videos, transcripts, blog posts, downloadable material, attachments and more). A website is the best investment you can make for your podcast. Your website should also include an easy way to follow your podcast, ways to connect with you, and more.
   
4. Transcribe your episodes. While creating transcripts can be a tedious process (or an expensive one, if you hire someone), it can really help with podcast SEO. Transcribing your podcast makes it more accessible. It can help you repurpose some of your episodes into articles or blog posts.
   
5. Create contests and giveaways. If you have the resources, running a contest or a giveaway can help you gain a nice bump in followers. You can also be creative and provide premium content or services instead of a real “prize”.

Marketing services and tools for podcasters

Here are the podcast marketing tools you should know about if you are just starting to promote your podcast on your own:

The best podcast marketing tools:

1. Podcastpage.io – Create a complete podcast website in just a few clicks. Your episodes will by updated automatically and each one will get a page on the website. Add subscribe buttons and social media links – have a main online hub for your podcast.
2. Wavve / Headliner – Create audiograms for your podcast episodes. These are short video clips that often include a short bit of audio from your show, along with animated soundwaves. You can also add subtitles. The audiograms are often shared on social media and are known to help podcasters gain more attention there.
3. Duplikit – Convert podcasts and videos into blog posts. Transcribe, edit and add stock photos from their platform.
4. Repurpose – Automatically convert podcasts to videos – then publish those on social media platforms (YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter).
5. Canva – Design posts for social media. Canva lets you create great designs easily for a post/story or other creative idea you might have. You can also connect your social media accounts and publish straight from the Canva platform.
6. Descript – An audio/video editor for your podcast. You can transcribe, add speaker labels, and more. More importantly, you can edit your podcast audio by editing the text.
7. Bannerbear – Automate your visual marketing. Bannerbear helps you auto-generate social media visuals and podcast videos.
8. Buffer – Social media scheduled posting tool. You can use it to plan your posting schedule and set it up in advance.
9. Discord / Slack / Circle – Community building tools. The first two are chat enablers. Circle is a complete community building platform that comes with discussions, membership, and more.

Podcast marketing services:

If it all sounds too much for you, you can always hire a professional marketer. There are also great resources, and even podcasts that discuss marketing in general. You can check out the Learn Growth Marketing podcast or the Today In Digital Marketing podcast if you want to learn more about marketing.

Paid marketing is also a popular channel. If you have the budget to create PPC (pay per click) campaigns for your podcasts, it can also help bring additional listeners. There are many platforms where you can use PPC for podcast marketing – Google AdWords, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms all offer PPC options which you can use to promote your podcast.

There are several pro podcasting agencies you could explore if you really want someone to plan, build, launch and promote your podcast. Many business podcasts are produced via agencies, and they can really help your business with their know-how and experience.

Conclusion – Podcast Marketing Strategy

Building a decent marketing plan for your podcast is a must. You can pick almost any podcast marketing strategy mentioned in this article and succeed with it. We highly recommend to try at least two or three different methods, and marketing tools go with them simultaneously.

A podcast website is one of the most important tools for promoting your podcast and gaining new listeners. Podcast SEO has a high ceiling if you can be patient and invest in creating content for your podcast website.